2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

This week, we discuss Craig’s pick, A24’s 2024 horror film Heretic, noting its strong reviews, the writers’ long theology research, and how it rewards rewatching.

We praise the film’s claustrophobic, dimly lit first half as Hugh Grant’s Reed lures Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) into a polite but escalating philosophical trap, using arguments against religion while the women prove smart and resourceful.

We debate plot contrivances, Reed’s improvised psychopathy, and the intentionally ambiguous ending that raises existential questions without taking a firm stance.

Episode 498, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: Well, this week, Craig, was your choice, and you chose a pretty modern film, 2024’s Heretic, which was actually pretty well-reviewed when it came out. I think it’s got a seven on IMDb. It’s got at least 80 or 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. And, uh, it was done by the same guys who did another movie or two that people were pretty impressed with, which was A Quiet Place- Mm-hmm

I believe. And we also did Haunt in 2019, and I think we enjoyed that one quite a bit, if I remember correctly. 

Craig: I think so, yeah. 

Todd: But he- they’ve done quite a few other things. The Boogeyman. I don’t know. The Quiet Place really took off, right? But I think they only did the screenplay and story for the original.

Craig: Yeah. They were writers on it, I think. 

Todd: So, uh, Heretic, I had actually seen this twice before . I don’t remember why. When we org- when you originally brought this up, I thought we had done it on the podcast ’cause normally I just don’t watch horror movies until… unless we’re gonna do them for the podcasts these days.

And, uh, it must have been somebody who really wanted to see this with me. So we, uh, took a look at it, and I saw it and, and, I don’t know, maybe went back to see it again with somebody else. I, I enjoyed the movie, and I was really happy to watch it the second time around. Even though it has twists and turns in it, I think it was the kind of film that w- works even better on a second viewing once you kinda know where it’s going because it gets a little heady at times.

And so it’s good to have the second opportunity to go through it again with a more critical eye and kinda decode the messages that it’s trying to say because the, the writers of this movie really took, took their time with it. I think they said that they worked for about 10 years on the screenplay just because they were doing, uh, research on theology and stuff like that and really wanted to make it deep, so.

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Here we are, Heretic, starring Hugh Grant as well. How about you? Why did you recommend this? I assume you’d seen it before? 

Craig: I had seen it before, and I don’t remember when, but it’s been a while. I would say at least a year, if not more. And I don’t remember when I saw it the first time if I knew anything about it.

I maybe had seen a trailer, but I, I just remember that when I watched it, I thought, “Oh, this would be a really good one to talk about on the podcast.” And I may have mentioned it at some point, but we never got around to it, and I kinda forgot about it, and that happens all the time. 

Todd: Mm. 

Craig: But, uh, I was looking for something to watch, and I stumbled across it again, and we needed something to watch, and, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about- Yeah

for a variety of reasons. But it’s funny because you… When, when I brought it up, you’re like, “Haven’t we already done that?” And the more I thought about it, I was like maybe we did, but we didn’t, I don’t think. 

Todd: It’s not coming up on my search. 

Craig: No. I, I th- I think maybe part of the reason that I thought that we had is because after this movie was over, I feel like I thought about it a lot.

Mm. And so maybe that translates into memory of talking about it. But that’s one of the things that I like about this movie, and it’s an A24 movie, right? 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And, you know, A24 is getting really big, and, and they’re kinda branching out and doing different things, but my experience with them has been really positive.

I tend to really like the stuff that they put out because it’s unique and interesting and often unexpected. The stories themselves or, or twists in the stories often take me by surprise, which is refreshing. They’re entertaining, and they’re well made, which is the most important. You know, those are the most important parts, but they also tend to make me think more than your typical fare.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And I don’t need tha- And I don’t need that all the time. I don’t need horror movies or movies in general to really make me think. In fact, sometimes I don’t want that. No, right. Sometimes I’m going, sometimes I’m going to movies specifically so that I don’t have to think, especially about serious things.

But occasionally, and when it’s done well, I like it, and this is one of those cases. 

Todd: Yeah. A24 reminds me of what the film industry kinda used to be like. particularly in the ’70s, right, when it was really exploding with a lot of experimental movies and a lot of independent cinema that made it to the big screen.

Like, the, the movie-going audience had a lot to choose from, and this was sort of before the age of the blockbuster, right? So nowadays, the studio model seems to be let’s invest a lot of marketing and money into these huge tentpole films that are almost guaranteed successes- Mm-hmm … so that we can stay afloat and y- and then fund, you know, the smaller movies as well.

But, but they seem to do less and less of funding smaller movies, and they just wanna go from tentpole to tentpole. It’s like the book industry. I read that at one point, and I think it’s still true today, that it’s really the blockbuster authors that float Every major publishing house. But publishers, editors then, you know, take that money and they turn around and, and invest it in taking chances on newer authors.

Sure. That’s what editors pride themselves in doing. Whereas the movie industry s- I- seems to be veering away from that model. Anyway, it’s a lot more expensive nowadays to make movies, and it’s harder to get them distributed if you’re not a big, giant studio, and movie theaters basically just show the big studio films and are not gonna take a chance on some indie production.

The days of sh- you know, shooting your movie with your friends and shopping around to movie theaters and drive-ins and stuff are over. So, you know, that’s kinda changed the kind of films that we get, and so it’s really neat to see a studio like A24 get well-known for doing these kind of movies that are just off the beaten path.

They’re unique, like you said. It seems like they take a lot of chances on really odd, interesting, bizarre, fun material. You kinda know you’re guaranteed to get a film like this. You may not like it, it may not be successful, but God, they’ve had a lot of hits. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And this is just exactly the kind of film that they make.

I mean, when you’re open up an A24 movie, this is exactly the kind of movie you’re hoping to get, I think. 

Craig: You … Well, I, I think part of the fun of it is that you never really know what you’re gonna get. This movie surprised me in several ways. I, i- in fact, in at least one way, to me, it kind of feels like two different movies.

The first half and the second half feel like very different kinds of movies, and I like them both, and, and the transition is interesting, but I think that’s … Whether or not the balance works, I, I think is a good point for debate. But you mentioned the directors. I don’t remember who. I- it’s a team, a writing and directing team, and I don’t remember which one of them it was, but one of them was inspired to think about this story by the death of his own father.

And when his father passed away, uh, you know, and, and he was an adult, it, of course, made him start having, like, existential thoughts about life and death and, and belief and faith and, and what happens to us after we die and, and all that stuff, and he wanted to take kind of a serious approach. He wanted to approach the idea of religion and faith and death and the afterlife, he wanted to approach it in a serious way, but in a horror movie.

I don’t know. You know, i- in terms of … You, you mentioned before, like, I don’t remember even exactly the context of what you were talking about, but you s- you said something about, like, what the movie has to say or what these types of movies have to say. I don’t know if I walk away from this movie feeling like it really has a strong message one way or the other It almost presents itself like an existential puzzle.

Yeah. It, it’s more … I, it, it … To me, it feels more about presenting questions- Than providing answers … than about positing a lot of answers. Right. 

Todd: Yeah. I think it’s deliberately vague in the end, and I feel like that’s just as well. Some people might call it cop-out, I suppose. But I don’t know, these movies about kind of a crazy person or crazy religious person, they don’t tend to do themselves many favors if they try to land one way or the other on some religious debate.

Like, what is the meaning of life? Does God exist? You know, that kind of thing. So much easier to just be like, “Well, this is this one unhinged person’s perspective,” and you can just leave it at that because it’s a horror movie. We’re, we’re, we’re looking at what he does with who he is in- instead of necessarily solve those questions.

It’s not really the forum for that I think. 

Craig: Yeah. A- and, and to, you know, talk about crazy people or, or, or zealots or crazy religious people or people who are trying to answer these big questions about God and faith and, and life and death and all of those things, that is kind of a stock-type character, but that’s one of the many ways that this movie subverts things for me.

Because Hugh Grant, they wrote this movie at least in part with Hugh Grant in mind because they had seen, he had said somewhere in an interview that he feared falling into a particular niche or, or category and, and being typecast. And, and there was a period in his career where he was doing very, very well, uh, you know, professionally and financially, but I, I don’t think that he really was thrilled doing all of those rom-coms in the ’90s.

Todd: Mm. 

Craig: So they wrote this with him in mind and, and he was a little … I wouldn’t say that he was reluctant to take it based on what I read, but he was … There was a lot of conversation that was had, and he had a lot of input before he finally decided to take it, and he did. But Hugh Grant is really charming and really charismatic and handsome, and his character is also Clearly really smart and well, I don’t know if well-educated is the right word, but well-read.

You know? Like, he kinda knows what he’s talking about. And, and we’re, we’re jumping the gun, but as an antagonist, which he seems to be, you- I found myself not necessarily agreeing with him, but z- like seeing his point of view. He, he, he wasn’t just a bad guy. He is a bad guy n- no question, but, uh, a- an interesting one.

And another way, I don’t know. I don’t think that this subverted any expectations for me, but it would’ve been easy. The, the movie focuses on these two young women. Everybody, the three main characters, none of them are given first names. Hugh Grant’s name is Reed, Mr. Reed, and the girls’ names are Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, who are Mormon missionaries, and they’re, they’re going door to door to spread the word or whatever.

Sister Barnes is played by Sophie Thatcher, who I’m a huge fan of. I mean, she’s really establishing herself as a scream queen in the genre right now. She’s done a lot of big budget movies. She is in the, the Showtime series Yellowjackets, which is a really good show, and she’s… It’s a great show and a great ensemble cast, but she’s a highlight.

And then Sister Paxton is played by a girl named Chloe East, who I don’t really know a whole lot about But she’s great in this movie too. It focuses primarily on these three core characters, and they’re just all really good. They’re all played really well. It’s shot really well. It’s directed really well.

But it would’ve been easy and stupid for them to make these girls, uh, stereotypical. 

Todd: Uh-huh. 

Craig: I- either as Mormons. They even talk about… They, they mention the, the South Park guys’ musical Book of Mormon and- Mm-hmm … you know, are kind of concerned that that might be people’s perception of them. I don’t think that the, the filmmakers had any interest in belittling or making fun of Mormons, and I think that that’s kind of l- for whatever reason, maybe it has to do with the South Park guys’ musical, but it seems like that’s kind of low-hanging fruit.

And the approach to these young women, not only do they seem kind and, and respectful and, and courteous and, and all of those things, but they’re smart and, and resourceful. Though Mr. Reed ultimately challenges their faith, it doesn’t seem to be an attack on any particular faith or denomination, and I appreciated that too.

Todd: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of space in this movie for us to really dive too deep into their characters. A lot of it is dialogue between them and him, and not much of it gets terribly personal. It’s mostly philosophical, and then by the end of the movie, it’s just them trying to survive. I wouldn’t say that I feel like these are two…

Maybe the diversity here comes from the fact you have two different girls. You know, they’re not alike. They’re alike in the fact that they’re Mormon and they’re missionaries and they’re believers, but they seem to have different approaches and different, like, levels of faith. And I feel like Sister Paxton is the person who’s painted as the, what you might call stereotypical Mormon.

She’s just very, very full of faith, very full of positivity. She doesn’t seem to question too much. She seems to be really toeing the line quite nicely. N- not to say that this isn’t genuine, I’m just saying that that’s just who she seems to be. Super polite even when she shouldn’t be and all that gets her into trouble.

I feel like Sister Barnes is the one who seems a little more She’s clearly has her faith. She clearly does believe in God. She’s not as willing, as you would think, to question it so much, but she’s got a little bit more of an edge to her. She seems, in my mind, to be just a little more thoughtful, maybe a little more intelligent than the other girl.

Craig: Uh, I don’t know if I’d say that. I- All right … I would say it’s a, a difference between kind of naivete and being worldly-wise. Like- Maybe 

Todd: that’s it … S- 

Craig: Sister Paxton has been raised in the church, and it- True … it appears, it appears that her experience is somewhat limited to that experience, whereas Sister Barnes was not raised in the church.

I, I think her mother died, I think. Yeah. Or, or her da- One of her parents died, and I think she and her dad, she said that they auditioned a bunch of different churches- Mm … before they finally landed on Mormonism. So not only is she relatively new to the faith, but she’s been through some difficult things in her life.

And sh- before picking this faith, she kind of educated herself in, in other faiths, too. So it’s set up, it seems like in the beginning, that they are trying to paint Sister Barnes as being the one who’s kind of questioning the faith. Like, Sister Paxton seems like she’s completely resolute in her faith, but it seems like they’re setting Sister Bar- Sister Barnes up to be more of a questioning person.

Yeah. But I think that’s a little bit of a mislead. Yeah. I don’t think that it’s necessary… I don’t think that it’s that she doubts her faith. 

Todd: No. 

Craig: It’s just that she’s She is somebody who questions, and that’s not a bad thing 

Todd: Yeah, and I- my shortcut for that is I think she’s just smarter about it, I think is what I say.

And I mean, look, you know, you’re, we’re all products of our upbringing, and sometimes w- we just have a certain naivete just because we don’t know any better. We’ve never been exposed to anything else. And so a person who’s naturally been a little more worldly or come to the faith of their own volition, like you said, after searching, and has had all these other experiences and has had ways of thinking, you know, outside of God and, and that sort of stuff, is definitely going to have, I think, a much more naturally balanced perspective on everything than a person who was raised in it and hasn’t known any different.

And so I guess, you know, saying she’s more intelligent is just, is maybe not accurate. It… What I mean to say is she’s more worldly, and I think she has more to pull from when it comes to reasoning these things out and her pers- and a perspective. 

Craig: It’s interesting, though, because I think that it almost feels like we’re set up to view Sister Paxton that way.

Todd: Mm. 

Craig: Sister Barnes is the tough one. She’s the one who’s on her toes. She seems to be a little bit more well-read, more educated, more worldly wise, and Sister Paxton appears to be the kind of doe in the headlights. She’s, she’s usually taking her lead, taking her cue from Sister Barnes. But I think that that’s intentional so that they can- 

Todd: Switch it around?

Craig: surprise us later. To, not necessarily switch it, but I mean, without spoiling anything, Sister Paxton is not stupid. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: And, you know, she may not be as well-read, but she’s not incapable. She’s not dumb. She’s not incapable of figuring things out, and when necessary, she’s not incapable of taking care of herself.

Correct. And, and that was one of the ways that it kind of subverted my expectations, and it comes at a moment. There was one particular moment in the movie that really took me by surprise. Mm. And it kind of had to do with that revelation. But that’s really getting ahead of ourselves. I guess we should say, you know, we’re introduced to these girls.

They seem very, very nice. Sister Paxton, the only thing that she really kind of seems to be, not questioning about her faith, but struggling with, is that she’s a kind of a girly girl, and she sees other teenage girls, air quotes, normal girls, you know, having fun together on the street, and she tries to engage with them, but they end up just making fun of her- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: because of her Mormonism. They, they, they pants her and, and make fun of her traditional undergarments or whatever. 

Todd: Yeah, talk about their magic underwear. 

Craig: Right. I mean- 

Todd: Easy target. 

Craig: It is. I mean, I mean- It’s a thing, but whatever. So whatever. Th- that’s how they’re set up. They go to this guy’s house. He seems very charming and charismatic, but I don’t know.

I mean, I, I, I think it’s projected. Of course, we’re watching a horror movie, so we know that there is potentially something off about him from the very beginning. They wanna come in and, and talk about Joseph Smith or whatever, but they say, “We can only come in if there’s a woman in the home.” I assume that’s a real thing.

It, it, it seems that the filmmakers really went out of their way to make sure that they were portraying things in a fair and accurate way. And if that’s the case, and women Mormon missionaries, or any missionaries for that matter, have that rule, that’s super smart. 

Todd: Yeah. W- well, I think they had a Mormon person as an advisor to make sure that they were getting that, those parts accurate.

And I did read that after the movie came out, different religious people had different takes on it, and some representative of the, of the Mormon Church, or maybe just a prominent Mormon pastor or something, did come out and say that they appreciated the fact that this movie in, in some ways served as a cautionary tale for other missionaries to, like, you need to follow the rules and, and you know, and make sure that you’re taking care of yourself or bad things can happen to you as well.

And, uh, that w- I thought that was an interesting take on the messages of the film. I- in w- in some ways, the movie reminded me, this aspect of it anyway, reminded me of like, uh, Oh! Barbarian- 

Craig: Yes … 

Todd: Funny Games, these films where people are so polite that their politeness can get them into trouble. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: And certainly in this case, almost to a comical degree, actually, and I think there’s definitely some moments of comedy where even when things are getting very intense, these w- at least one of these girls cannot help but be so polite, because it’s how she’s programmed, that you’re just like, “Oh girl, come on.

You’re in a situation here.” 

Craig: Th- well, there al- but there comes a point where it also seems to be, I don’t know if a defense mechanism is the correct word, but- 

Todd: Hmm, a way of keeping things diffused? 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. Right, right. But I mean, I don’t know. He manipulates them. He gets them to come in the house. He says he has a wife.

Clip: Prophets- Talking of Noah, it is very, very wet … teach about

God and receive revelation a- and they interpret the Word of God and, and preach the gospel to the world. And because of apostles, people who know the gospel- Would you like to come inside? D- do you have a girl roommate? Yell who? A, a roommate. We can’t come inside unless another woman is present, but, um, we can, uh, stay out here in the doorway if that’s fine with you.

It’s just for safety. Oh. We don’t mind the rain. Well, my wife is home. Does that count? Yeah. Perfect. Okay, good. When you said roommate, I panicked. I, I haven’t had a roommate since, uh… Anyway, I, I have a soulmate, and that is good enough. Yes. That’s great. We’d love to come in and meet your wife. Then come on in.

Great. Do you like pie? Yeah. My wife has pie in the oven. 

Craig: And so they’re relieved, uh, but they naively go into the house without meeting the wife. And, and he locks the door behind them, I think, and he immediately says something like, “Oh, by the way, there’s metal in the walls and ceiling.” And they’re like, “Okay.”

Todd: Yeah, that’s fine. Ding, ding, ding, ding. 

Craig: Well, I mean, he just says… It, it’s just such an odd thing to say, and he says it in just such a casual and offhand way that I think that they don’t really know how to respond. Like, we, as viewers, are watching the movie. We know something’s going on. I immediately thought, “Oh, well, their cellphones aren’t gonna work in there-” 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: which, which is the point. But he tells them his wife is in the kitchen and, and he keeps making excuses for why she isn’t coming out. She’s shy or whatever, but she’s making a pie. She’s making a blueberry pie. He starts to ask weird questions about… Well, not weird necessarily, but a little bit invasive or intrusive so quickly, I guess.

And, and, you know, he asks about her dead dad, and there’s some awkward stuff going on there. But then he asks them their, their feelings on polygamy. Gosh, I don’t know. It, it all gets down into lots of, of stuff about religion and organized religion. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But again, this is mostly a ruse. But this whole scene with them sitting in the living room talking casually, it’s shot in such a way, and the whole movie is shot in such a way that it feels, I don’t know, claustrophobic and uncomfortable.

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: There’s a lot of, you know, extreme close-ups on the actors’ faces to kind of show you Their level of comfort and, and I don’t know, I just thought that it was very well done. It’s, it’s tense and suspenseful and you wonder- I wondered, where is this going? 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: And, and I, I didn’t know. I was, I was scared for these girls.

I knew that they had put themselves in a precarious situation, but I didn’t know where it was going. 

Todd: You know, the lighting is very dim in this film. It- almost all throughout, I c- I can’t really think of a scene except for the… Even in the very beginning it’s a bit washed out. You know, when they’re outside doing things, it’s almost like overcast and washed out.

So the whole picture feels pretty, in a murky way, it’s almost like fireside chat impression- 

Craig: Yes … 

Todd: that you get, right? There’s, it’s, it’s kind of a glowing light that’s in there but it’s not necessarily a, a good one. It, it all, it contributes, I think, to the unsettling nature of it. I mean he has a candle in there as well and it almost seems as though the movie’s intended to be lit by this candle that he has.

At one point the electricity seems to flicker. Some lights do go out and he’s like, “Oh, that happens from time to time.” There is a storm brewing outside so we get that as well. So it’s almost like they’re inside this impression of taking shelter by the sto- from the storm by a campfire. To the visual, these are the kinds of conversations you would have around a campfire where everybody’s staring into the fire and talking about God or, or the meaning of life or what’s important to them or what their goals and dreams are.

But you know he’s really turning this on them as well by questioning them in a very intelligent way. He’s very clearly practiced in this and he clearly knows a lot about the Mormon faith already even though he has asked for the information. I mean it- they’re not going door to door just to random people’s homes.

They’re going to people’s homes who have asked for information so this guy’s actually invited them there in a way. So he’s expecting them and then it turns out that he’s a guy who actually knows quite a bit about the Mormon faith because he’s immediately questioning them about some very specific things, uh, based on their history and stuff.

And so you could see why that would be very uncomfortable for the girls because right away they feel like they’ve fallen into a bit of a mental trap- Mm … this guy has kind of set up for them and they’re not ill-equipped to deal with these questions but you can tell they’re uncomfortable because now they feel like- Yeah

they’ve been there under false pretenses I think. 

Craig: Well, yes. The first time I watched this too, I don’t think that I noticed how claustrophobic it was. Like, I, I, I don’t remember seeing any windows. If there are windows, all of the drapes are closed. It does feel… The lighting is very yellow, like firelight, like you said, but it, it feels very enclosed.

And there are no pictures anywhere on any of the walls. It’s all very sterile. There’s only one picture in a frame in the whole room, and it’s of him and a dog, and I think Sister Barnes notices that. She, she seems to be very aware of her surroundings. Mm. But like you said, at this point it could just be that he’s an asshole.

Yeah. Like, somebody… And I, I, I… There are people who do stuff like this, like invite missionaries into their homes or whatever to try to ridicule them or to try to have theological debates with them. Like, that’s a dick move. Like, if you don’t wanna talk to the people who are coming around to talk to you about their faith, just don’t talk to them, but don’t berate or ridicule them.

Just leave them alone. They’re, they’re doing their thing. They’re not hurting anybody. Yeah. But it, it could just be that. It appears like he may have lured them here to challenge them on the aspects of their beliefs and the history of their religion, because he does ask them about polygamy, which again, you know, if you wanna talk about low-hanging fruit, if you’re gonna go after Mormons, I mean, that’s one of the, you know- Easiest ways

I guess if you’re gonna be… The easiest ways, I suppose. But she, Sister Barnes, responds to it in a very articulate and logical fashion. I- in fact, it was probably the most articulate defense, and not defense, but explanation of why polygamy was a part of their historical culture. 

Clip: Yeah, I know that, um, it may be difficult to understand, um, but, uh, polygamy was a spiritual mission needed at the time in order to grow the ranks of our membership in the wake of much hardship and bloodshed.

Um, a man having plural wives meant more, well, more babies to help the community grow It’s, yeah, it’s sketch for sure to a modern lens And it was, it was removed from the church not just because it was grotesque or controversial, but just because it wasn’t necessary anymore. 

Craig: I mean, that’s, that’s logical.

You know, I’m Catholic, and Catholics disallow birth control. Birth control is a sin. Now, why do you think that might be? It’s, it’s the same, you know, it’s the same thing. You know, they, they want more Catholics. They want more Mormons. Again, I’m not a fan of polygamy. I don’t, you know, endorse polygamy, but she’s really articulate in the way…

And, and so it sets it up that I don’t know what he expected. I think that he’s surprised to find that he has found in these girls, or at least in Sister Barnes, a worthy adversary. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: I, I don’t, I don’t think that he was necessarily prepared for that And I like that too. I like that dynamic. Now, it, it, it comes down to he, he leads them into the back, and it’s kind of this big library room.

Todd: Looks like a little chapel. 

Craig: Yeah, and, and, and he basically, I mean, through, you know, manipulative double-talking, he, he basically reveals to them that there is no wife, that he’s lured them there and, and to get them to really consider and think about the nature of, of their belief. And they’re trapped in there.

You know, the door’s padlocked. He says they can’t get out. The only way out is through the basement, and there are two doors. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And they have to pick between two doors. 

Todd: It’s very much like a little chapel. He’s got a little altar there. There are two sconces on the walls like you might have two candles.

Those two doors, just like those two doors at the top, at the front of the church where the altar boys and the pastors come in and come out of. There’s a library around. He even mentions the pews that he drop- drapes their coats over. Mm-hmm. It’s here in this little chapel-like setting that he’s putting forth his biggest arguments.

And again, he’s got all the materials. It’s like you bring out books or something. He’s got a Monopoly board, and he gives this great thing about a monopoly, and he talks about, uh, you know, how Monopoly, the game that we enjoy, was actually an iteration of an earlier version of a game called the Landlord Game, which was basically stolen from her.

Uh, the woman who invented that didn’t get any royalties or whatever, and the guy who stole it from her changed it and made it into Monopoly, was the first millionaire board game producer. And, uh, and then how we have later iterations of Monopoly that are totally different. He just talks about that.

You’ve got Judaism, you have Christianity, you have Islam. They’re all iterations on the same thing that go back. And then he’s like, “And then I got these pictures on the wall.” And I mean, it’s, it’s a presentation. Again, it’s just like he’s a pastor giving a sermon to an audience that he has prepared. You know, he flips off the lights, and he’s got a slideshow.

He, he has pictures on the wall. He’s like, “These are the 12 gods and prophets that predate Christ and Christianity that have basically the same story,” virgin birth, followers, ended up crucified or killed or something like that, resurrected, that sort of thing. His whole premise is, “Look, this is just the latest iteration of something that’s very ancient and maybe just doesn’t even exist anyway.”

And this is not a… To me anyway, this is not a groundbreaking argument. I suppose there are people who will watch this movie Who were like blown away by these facts. But I mean, I studied philosophy and religion in college. I, I was a minor in it, and I took some classes where they did historical criticism of the New Testament, and we studied Islam and all that stuff, and it’s pretty well known that there are many, many aspects of the religions that we have today that are not original to those religions.

Everything that he talks about, I was surprised to find that the authors of this said that they, took them a really, really, really long time to study all the theology to get this right because I thought the theology was rather simple. I didn’t find these arguments to be that new or novel or groundbreaking, nor that complicated.

It’s all stuff I’ve heard before, and I wasn’t listening rapt with this guy’s theology. I was just watching rapt to see where he was gonna go with it. What was his endgame here? So I, I was a little surprised at how thin ultimately I felt like his arguments were considering supposedly how much effort the writers put into it.

Craig: See, and I found his argument to be compelling, but I think that the reason that I found it to be compelling was because he drew all of these parallels between these different religions and traditions. Again, not things that I was unaware of or that I hadn’t even observed myself just in my brief understanding of, of different religions throughout history.

But he sparks notes it in such a way that the parallels seem really compelling. But I think that that’s kind of the weakness of his argument, and I think that he’s taken aback when Sister Barnes calls him out on that ultimately. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: She basically says… And, and this goes on for a while. He also uses music.

Uh, he uses an, an older song, The Air That I Breathe, which it’s a great song. I love that song. But he talks about, you know, they’re like, “No, we’ve never heard it.” And he’s like, “Yes, you have, but you heard it when it was Creep by Radiohead.” And apparently, the band who put out The Air That I Breathe sued Radiohead for using similar melodies and, and, and keys and whatnot, and I- they settled out of court, and then Lana Del Rey, I guess, stole from it.

The point that he’s trying to make is that nothing is original, basically, that everything is, you know, just kind of building upon things that have come before it, and the same is true with religion. But what she calls him out on is, you know, yeah, you point out all of these similarities, but you completely ignore all of the vast differences between all of them.

And she’s right. And, and- Yeah … it just, you know, she’s smart, you know. She, she’s not gonna fall for that kind of argument in the way that I think a lot of people, myself included. Like, I wouldn’t necessarily fall for it. I would question it, but I did find the way that he presented it to be compelling, and I was a little taken in by it.

So I was impressed when she Kind of called out the, the faulty logic in, in, in his presentation. 

Todd: Yeah, that was really good. Sister Paxton seems a little less concerned about it. She’s maybe a little more bulletproof in that she- just her faith seems a little too strong for her to question too much. That was my feeling anyway.

She seems a lot more concerned about just getting out of there. 

Craig: Right, 

Todd: right. But she continues to be very, very polite. There’s one aspect of this that’s kind of important to mention is that he had taken their coats early. They had freaked out a little earlier before they were led into the back room, realizing that something was wrong when they saw that this candle that he had lit was blueberry scented, so there was no pie.

Craig: Right. 

Todd: It was just a smell was coming from that candle. And they tried the door and couldn’t get out, and they discussed that their bike key for their bike locks is in one of their coats. I think it was supposed to be in Sister Paxton’s coat. So they needed to get their coats. So they go to the back, they pu- they end up putting their coats on, and that bike key is…

Turns out it’s in Sister Barnes’s coat, so he’s clearly switched the, the bike key from one to the other for some reason. But ultimately, his whole game leads to this whole thing. He’s like… And, and what I liked about this is he’s kind of using their techniques on them as well, which keeps everything from escalating.

I mean, they’re in there, they’re super polite. They have these nice ways of phrasing things like, “I would like to see your wife. We would really like to leave now.” And his responses are, “Well, of course, of course. You know, you can leave whenever you want, and nobody’s gonna keep you from leaving, and you can leave through these doors right here, and I don’t wanna keep you.”

You know, he’s really flipping it back to them, this politeness, and all of this keeps everything, like I said, from escalating, but continues to create a huge tension in the room because they’re all dancing around what they really wanna say. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Uh- 

Craig: Right. But that, that dance, I feel like it’s ultimately S- Sister Barnes who realizes that it is just a dance.

Todd: Mm. 

Craig: So there’s these two doors, and one is belief and one is disbelief, and he says, you know, I don’t know, one leads outside or something. I don’t remember. Mm-hmm. Um, but he makes them choose, and Sister Paxton thinks that he just wants to be right- Yeah … and he wants to convince them that he’s right, and she’s willing to say, “Oh, you’re right.”

“It’s all stupid. Disbelief, I’m ready to go.” But I think that Sister Barnes realizes that it’s just a dance, and I think that she realizes, as I suspected, that it doesn’t matter which door they pick. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: I think that she knows, and so she’s not going to allow him to manipulate her into just a- agreeing with him.

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: And so she convinces Sister Paxton to go into the belief door with her, and she says, “So let’s go in the belief door and let God decide or, or leave it up to God.” And so they go in there, and this is where it becomes a sec- a different movie. Yeah. Like- Totally … the, the whole first part felt like a psychological thriller that I was very much engaged in, and I found it really suspenseful and tense.

Now, you mentioned before… Oh gosh, what was that other movie where it’s very normal in the beginning, like a psychological thriller, and they’re in that B&B- Barbarian … and… Barbarian. And then all of a sudden there’s this crazy dungeon. Uh- Yeah. And, and that happens again here, and they’re down in this crazy dungeon, and then all of a sudden there’s some weird thing down there with them.

Todd: With a pie. 

Craig: I didn’t, I didn’t know what was going on. 

Todd: Yeah, it got very weird very fast. This is a dungeon very unlikely to be in the back of this, this building, of this, this suburban house. I guess he’s a little out away from the rest of the homes. I don’t know. He says the house is built by a hillside or something like that.

But, uh, yeah, it, it’s very weird, this, this crazy-ass dungeon. There’s a table there, and this, uh, this crone l- lady draped in rags whose face is half messed up, uh, hobbles in and sets a pie down on the table. And, and he comes across a very rudimentary sort of loudspeaker. It’s just sort of a pipe leading down there where he can communicate with them.

Clip: You are now in the presence of a living prophet of God. The reason I invited you into my sanctuary tonight is because I have been shown a miracle. I believe this miracle is proof that all known religions are demonstrably false and only an ancient echo of something true I need a witness, you, to verify that the miracle is real 

Todd: And in short, the, the prophet’s gonna be dead from consuming the pie, and then after that she will be resurrected, and I need you to be there to verify all this.

It’s so bizarre. Yeah. And it really threw me off-guard. I’m like, “What is going on here?” And it, it happens. She eats the pie, this woman. She drops face-first into it, and he asks them to feel her pulse and breath. And he says, “When she return, she will return, don’t worry, and she’s gonna tell us what she saw in the afterlife.”

Craig: But, but just then the doorbell rings. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: It’s their elder who has come to check on them, which I thought was really nice. Did you notice that that elder was played by Topher Grace? I would’ve never- 

Todd: I- 

Craig: I never would’ve noticed … I 

Todd: never would’ve noticed at all. Uh, n- yeah, he didn’t look at all like Topher Grace.

Craig: That was weird. But anyway, he shows up and, and so while Mr. Reed is distracted at the door… I mean, Mr. Reed eventually just sends the guy away, and when he sends the guy away, it’s revealed that their bikes are no longer chained to the gate. Mm. We didn’t know that up until this point. You said the thing about the key, but we see now that their bikes are not there.

So I thought, you know, they chained their bikes to the gate. I thought, “Well, somebody will find them eventually because their bikes are there.” But they’re not. They’re gone. The girls, like, try to get some matches by pulling a rug under the door while he’s gone, and they do, but when they run back down, I, I think they’re gonna try to make a fire, like, in a pipe to, like, make smoke signals or something.

Yeah. I don’t know. It doesn’t pan out, so it doesn’t really matter. But as soon as they run back in, Paxton is like, “That body moved.” And Barnes is like, “No it didn’t. You’re imagining things.” And then they go to try to make the fire but he comes down and stops them and- 

Todd: The woman wakes up. 

Craig: That’s right. She 

Todd: shows up next to them.

She pukes blood and she says this cryptic stuff. She says, “The conductor says my name. White clouds, not heaven. They unplug my brain. It’s not real.” And then he’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, you must be…” Comes down, he, “Oh, well, you must be exhausted. We’re gonna record your prophecy in the liturgical texts,” and shoos her away.

Uh, which was also weird. Like, what? W- what is this? Then he comes to the girls and he says that one of them has a very, very big secret he knows. It has something to do with how the flame reacts to her. It’s so weird And then he asks them what they saw. And again, he’s, he’s, he’s trying to get them to think about this as a miracle or whatever.

And h- he says, “I could show you God if you’re willing to die. You can see what, you know, what this is all about.” And Paxton at least claims that she believes what he’s saying, but Barnes doesn’t. She says it was all a magic trick, and she seems to have figured it out. Kind of explains, “Hey, there’s a woman.

You switched the women while we were upstairs,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and I give her a lot of credit for that. I don’t know how I would’ve figured that out from what she was talking about. And she says, “And you switched our bike keys because you knew all along…” Oh, no, I’m sorry, that comes later.

Sorry, that’s not her. 

Craig: Yeah, it was… C- she does figure this out, but First, it’s Barnes who’s like, oh, when he starts talking about, “I can help you see God, I can give you all of the answers, you just have to die and come back,” and Barnes is like, “Oh, I get it now. I’ve been trying to figure out since we realized we were locked in here how he was going to get us to make us think that him killing us was our choice,” or something like that.

Right. Right. That, that it was our idea. And, and that’s when she says she’s not buying it and it’s not a miracle, that it was a magic trick. And she says something about how Taco Bell killed her when she was a kid. 

Todd: Almost killed- Killed her and brought her back to life, right? 

Craig: Yeah. But she had a near-death experience, and she says that she experienced all the things that people describe, like the white light and the feeling of wanting to come back or whatever, but she says it’s just brain chemistry.

And meanwhile, all the time that she’s been doing this, she’s been circling him so that he’s turning his back to Paxton because they’ve made a plan before. They f- out of that office library space, they had… One of them had, had swiped a letter opener and, and I think it was Barnes, and she had gotten it to Paxton, and she said, “We have to have a code word.

When I say magic underwear, you stab him.” So through all this time, Barnes, who seems to be totally onto him and, and totally, you know, calling out his game to his face, she’s getting him turned around, he’s facing her, Paxton is, is behind. Again, all these extreme close-ups where they’re, like, sharing eye contact, and Paxton’s like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do it.”

And just as Barnes goes to say… And this building, it’s building and building, and the music is swelling, and just as she goes to say “magic underwear,” the code word, Reed, in a split second, reaches out and slits her throat. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And I was floored. 

Todd: Me too. 

Craig: I couldn’t believe what was happening, and I thought, “Well, that can’t be right.”

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. Something, something is wrong because she, Barnes, is our smart final girl. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: How is she not going to be dead? But she is. I don’t know. Like, I, I don’t know if there was a, a cinematography technique or if it was just because now Barnes is dead. It so smoothly transitioned to changing the narrative focus to Paxton that it didn’t feel jarring, but I was so surprised.

You know, it… From this point, Barnes is basically out of the picture and Paxton is on her own, and this is where she starts to prove that she’s not the doe-eyed little simpleton that we may have thought her to be. She can figure things out too, and she does The, w- one of, like you said, she, she reiterates, you know, “I know exactly what you did.”

The prophet or whatever was an actress, or n- no, like she really did die, so when we checked her pulse, she really was dead, but then when we were distracted by the doorbell, which how would he have planned that? I don’t know. Yeah. But while we were distracted by that, another woman who looked just like the dead woman came in and replaced the body.

You got rid of our bikes, that’s why with the bike he was in the wrong thing. And it appears that she’s right, and we see all of this play out like a flashback. I, I don’t know that we necessarily can know if she gets all the details right or not. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, I guess. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: But, but that did bother me that a big part of her story hinged on the fact that they had to be distracted so that somebody could come out and replace that body.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: He couldn’t have planned the elder ringing the doorbell. Now I, I, I’m sure he could have distracted them in some other way, but that couldn’t have been part of his plan. But anyway, she seems to be onto him, and he’s like, “Well, if that’s true, then there would have to be another way into this room or out of this room,” and he kind of looks around and she’s looking around.

Um, and ultimately she figures out that there is a trapdoor in the floor, and he’s like, “Well, if you’re right, then there would have to be a body down there. Are you gonna go check?” And she’s like, “Yeah, whatever.” Now again, this you have to have some willing suspension of disbelief, I suppose. Because if her theory is correct that somebody came in and replaced that body and put it down in that floor, that door, nobody could have gotten in and out of there without them knowing.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: It was underneath a table in the middle of the room, and that table was on a rug, and when she pulls the rug away, she has to like search through silt and dirt to find the handle. That door has clearly not been opened- No … anytime recently. But whatever. She goes down there. There is a body, so apparently she was right And I think at this point he kind of closes the door on her and she goes exploring.

And you said before it made no sense that this dungeon would be down there. Well, it’s not just a dungeon. Apparently there’s a whole series of like tunnels and different rooms, and he’s got some sort of room that’s like lit with, I don’t know, some kind of weird blue lighting, and it’s full of these small like three by three by three metal cages with people in them- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: that he apparently just keeps down there. It’s very kind of like the people under the stairs. Yeah. Like they’re all gross and- 

Todd: Half dead. I wish I could understand this. I don’t really understand where those people came from. Are they other missionaries that he has brought in and then- 

Craig: I think it’s just other people- They’re all women

that he has lured them in there to challenge their faith, whatever that faith may have been, to basically beat them into submission and to conceding that the ultimate true religion is control And he claims that because they submit to that and they submit to his control, that that’s kind of like ecstasy or paradise for them.

I mean, it’s all delusional and psychotic. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: But, but that’s- Yeah … what he claims. It… He’s not really torturing them. He’s allowing them to feel the full ecstasy of the ultimate religion, which is his control. Whatever. He’s a psychopath. 

Todd: Yeah, I mean, ultimately that’s where I said earlier, like, it’s really just about this guy being a psychopath, and it’s not really trying to solve any…

How is he possibly proving anything about religion by what he’s going through? Who’s his witness? You know, at the end of the day, it’s not like he’s gonna write a book about this and publish his findings. You know? It’s just this little personal thing that he’s doing, but he’s got, like, a, a model of the room and the house and everything upstairs as well.

He’s taking notes. It’s all very crazy. But yeah, she’s like, “Oh, but y- you’re improvising. That woman went off the book by telling us it’s not real, and now you’re just winging it with me now and your explanations,” which I think is maybe an indication that maybe he really is even more psychotic than… Uh, like, maybe he really has no real big plan behind all this.

Maybe this is just his script for luring the Mormon girls in. Maybe he’s got a whole other tactic for luring some of these other women in. 

Craig: Maybe. 

Todd: I thought it was interesting how she finally gets him. He’s approached her. She ends up kind of escaping. She runs upstairs, slams the door on him down there, goes upstairs again to leave, but then she turns around and goes back down, and I’m not exactly sure why.

Craig: I’m not either. I didn’t even really understand how she ended up back down there. But she does, and he stabs her. 

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: And they both seem to be dying because she’s already stabbed him. She stabbed him in the neck with something. He thought that she was, like, she was kind of cowering with her back to him, and he thought that he had her dominated or whatever, but she turns around and stabs him in the neck.

Todd: Right when he says magic underwear, she stabs him, which I thought was a cute. I, that’s, 

Craig: that’s nice. Oh, I missed that. That is cute. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So they’re both, they’re both there in the cellar, the s- the original cellar where they w- w- were after going through those doors, and they both seem to be dying. And she talks about prayer, and she says that there was this study, this academic study on the power of prayer, and basically there was, I don’t know, a, a group that got prayed for and then a group that didn’t get prayed for, and the study showed conclusively that prayer has no effect.

So she says prayer doesn’t work, but she still thinks that it’s beautiful that we, people, pray for each other anyway. And so she starts praying, I guess, for him or for both of them, and he crawls to her, lays his head in her breast- As she’s praying, and then out of nowhere, Barnes jumps up off the floor and kills him with a board that we had seen fall out before.

There was a board with three big nails sticking out of it, and she jumps up and hits him with the board, and he falls over dead apparently. And then the end of the movie is that Paxton escapes through a window and walks out into the snow, and a butterfly fl- lands on her hand. Somewhere earlier in the movie, she had said, “When I die, I’m gonna come back as a butterfly, and I’m gonna land on the hand of people who I love.”

She said, “Not just, you know, not on their arm or their shoulder, but specifically their hand.” And she walks out and, like, the snow is falling, and it’s all bright and beautiful, and this butterfly lands on her hand, and then that’s the end. 

Todd: Well, it lands on her hand, but then it seems to disappear, right? It doesn’t fly off.

It shows us from one angle the butterfly landing on her hand and her looking at it, and then it cuts to another angle of her looking at her hand and the butterfly is not there. I think… Well, first of all, there’s a few things here. There’s a kind of resurrection of Barnes apparently- 

Craig: Right … 

Todd: implied here, and then there’s her going off into the bright light, having perhaps a vision of a butterfly landing on her hand, which may or may not have been.

I think it’s possible she didn’t escape, and this is her afterlife vision before she passes. 

Craig: The r- yeah, and I think that f- y- you talked about the lighting in the beginning and how it was very, like, yellow and claustrophobic. It… That completely changes when we get down into the basement. Then it becomes all dark and blue, and, and it’s a completely different atmosphere.

Now, here in the end when she escapes, it’s entirely different again. It’s almost shot through, like, a gauzy filter. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And everything is very beautiful and ethereal and bright. Now, it could just be that metaphorically she’s escaped the darkness and she’s, you know, coming out. But I think that it also could easily be read that she did die down there.

Todd: Yeah. It’s hard to know. 

Craig: Well, and that the afterlife, you know, whatever it is, is peaceful and freeing and beautiful, which is nice. Or it could… I- I think it’s intentionally ambiguous. Yes. Because she could have just as easily, she could just have easily have really escaped. Now, I find it really difficult to believe that Barnes was still alive.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Not only had she had her throat cut- But then after that, Hugh Grant had also gone digging around in her arm to pull out a birth control implant to try to convince Paxton that, that Barnes was, like, a robot and that they were all living in, like, some Matrix-style simulation. That was weird. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: That was another way, I think, to try to get her to kill herself, ’cause he said that if she killed herself, then she would wake up in the real world.

But whatever. Weird. I think it could go either way, and the movie, again, like I said, the first time I watched it, I thought about it a lot. I find that the older I get, and I can only imagine that this is just part of the human condition, the older I get, the more existential questions I have Uh, I was raised Catholic.

I, I, in, in terms of organized religion in the Catholic Church, I definitely have issues with, you know, some of the uglier parts of the church’s history, and I certainly don’t agree with all of their stances on some things today. But Christianity, for me, has been a very comfortable perspective to view the world from, at least Christianity in the way that I understand it, where, you know, you treat other people that you would, uh, as you would like to be treated, love, uh, love your neighbor, you know.

I appreciate that lens. But the older I get, the more I, you know… I don’t know. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. I don’t know what happens to us after we die. The idea of an all-knowing and protective God is really comforting, but logically it also makes a lot of sense that we as human beings would construct things to ease our fears about things that we have no way of knowing about.

Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Giving us control and power of some sort over things that we ultimately can’t control or, or- 

Craig: R- right. We can’t, we can’t know what happens after death, and that’s scary. So it, it’s logical that we might construct some belief about what happens after death that is comforting to us. That makes sense, and even if that’s true, fine, that’s okay.

Todd: Right. 

Craig: But I don’t know. And, and I like that this movie had me thinking about that stuff without taking a hard position on it one way or the other. I think that the cynicism is addressed through Mr. Reed, and I definitely feel cynical and, and questioning in that way sometimes. But I also thought that it was kind of a fresh perspective to have somebody like Barnes, who has life experience, who has done their research, is not ignorant of other traditions and other religions and, and the similarities between them, but still chooses faith.

I don’t know. I, I thought that it was a fair and interesting balance and, you know, it made me think about things for several days, and I thought… I don’t know. That, that was cool for me. I, I liked it overall. And I mean, even if you don’t care about that stuff, whether you’re religious or not religious, or whether that debate i- is even of any interest to you, I just think that it’s a good movie.

It’s, it’s suspenseful and tense and well-written and, and well shot and, and all three actors I think do a, a, a really brilliant job. So even if you don’t care to have that debate Either with others or even internally, you can still… I, I, I would imagine you could still enjoy the movie. 

Todd: Oh, yeah. I, I think that’s part of the brilliance of the movie is just that the debate aspect is sort of superfluous to what’s going on.

You know, and that’s this manipulation of these girls and their minds and, and this control thing that this guy has that, you know, a- again, a situation that they’re trying to get out of that they find themselves in due to their naiveté, then some bad decision-making, and this guy who’s really smart trying to outwit them, you know, in one way or another.

You could just do it with just normal logic and normal human manipulation. This movie is choosing to do it in the context of a religious debate. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: And, and I think that the beauty of it is that the religious debate, like you said, it’s kept ambiguous because it’s not that important. Don’t get me wrong, it is an important aspect of the movie.

It’s the, thematically what the movie is about, what this man is obsessed with, and what these girls are out taking their time and their life to do. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: But ultimately, the movie isn’t interested in teaching us, “This is right, this is wrong. Now what do you think?” You know? It’s, it doesn’t have that posture.

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Even though the characters do. So yeah, I, I like, I like that aspect of the movie and I, that, that’s one reason why I think the ending is so smart. It leaves itself up to interpretation a couple different ways, but doesn’t come down hard on, I think, any definitive answer, and I like that as well, so… I liked this movie a lot more on my second viewing.

On my first viewing, I thought it was kind of a contrived, muddled mess. And in some ways it is a little bit. Like you said several times, you really do have to suspend your disbelief. This is such a complicated, convoluted setup. Mm-hmm. It’s really almost dreamlike in a way. I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, if the whole thing was just a fever dream- Mm-hmm

or in these girls’ minds. Uh, n- so in that respect, it’s really weird and it seems a little contrived But I enjoyed it. I was along for the ride. I had a good time with it, and I did think about it afterwards. And, uh, and I– the fact that it held up on second viewing, you know, really leads me to, to appreciate a lot more than I did after my first time around.

Craig: Yeah, keep your eye on Sophie Thatcher too. She, I think, is really establishing herself. I’m a big fan of hers. 

Todd: Did you see Companion? 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Oh, love that. She is fantastic in that, and that’s another really good, smart movie. 

Craig: Uh-huh. Yeah, she’s a very talented young lady. And there is a cover of Knocking on Heaven’s Door that plays over the credits, and she sings it.

She has a beautiful singing voice too. It’s interesting. Again, it, it plays with that idea of nothing be ori- being original, of everything building on something else. It’s a, a cover of Knocking on Heaven’s Door, but it’s set to the instrumentation of Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You. And they match up really nicely.

It’s, it’s kinda cool. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good movie. Good– I mean, A24, you know… I, I, I will confess that I’ve seen one or two A24 movies that I didn’t think were great. I think there was one Brandy did where, like, she had an evil mother-in-law, and it was entertaining, but it wasn’t like- … it wasn’t as, perhaps as thoughtful as, as some of them have been.

But I’m a big fan of the studio in general. I’m glad they’re doing well. They obviously have a strong reputation because talented people, actors and writers and directors want to work with them, and it shows. So yeah, check this movie out. It’s good. 

Todd: By the way, did you see the, the latest news on A24 and about how they’re entering this AI agreement?

Clip: No. 

Todd: Oh, God, that was so depressing. Uh, they wanna dive in and use AI in what they claim are, are, are better ways that enhance human creativity instead of- 

Craig: Stealing it … 

Todd: I’m a little skeptical, but, uh, they’re suggesting that there are parts of the process, and this is actually probably true, there are parts of the process that, you know, AI could be well-suited for if we start taking this seriously and stop being so opposed to it.

Clearly they’re- Yeah … already using it maybe. So, so, uh, anyway, they had this very big, high profile… I don’t know if they, they were i- invested in or there was some project. God, I should know what I’m talking about. But this is a subject pretty near and dear to my heart because AI pretty much has literally stolen my job.

Mm-hmm. So I’m a little sensitive to it. But they have this deal with Google, some $75 million AI deal that they’re gonna do some artificial intelligence research and how it can, uh, help with the filmmaking process, and so many people are pissed off that they’re You know? 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, that’s a whole other issue.

I, I have really mixed feelings about AI, but I’m kinda not surprised that they are trying to get ahead of it or at least stay on it. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I, my feelings about it though, I, I totally understand the environmental concerns, I understand the implications for, for artists and creators and that’s crappy that it’s, you know, mining other people’s material and, and, uh, intellectual property.

Yeah. I don’t like that. My concern is the cat’s out of the bag and so I feel like we’ve s- somebody’s gotta start figuring out either how to rein it in or to use it in an ethical and effective way and- Yeah … I don’t know. I mean, I, I think A24 values artists and artistry so… But I also know that money makes the world go round so who knows?

But I, I would hope that as a studio that they would have the integrity to try to use it as ethically as possible and, and hopefully if studios like them and other, you know, people with integrity kinda get ahead of it, maybe we can use it in good ways. ‘Cause like I said, there’s, there’s no putting it back.

Todd: Yep. Indeed. Anyway, uh, this movie was good. I don’t think that any AI was used in the production of this. Who knows? But, uh, we certainly enjoyed it and, uh, thank you guys for listening to our discussion on it. If you have your own opinions about this and wanna discuss this movie a little deeper, just find us on our socials, Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast, or, uh, find us backstage on our Patreon, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast.

For just five bucks a month you can have access to us in our book club and our unedited discussions and all that good stuff that we have behind the scenes. Otherwise, no matter how you listen to us, please, uh, leave a review. We would love to hear your thoughts about our podcast as long as they’re positive.

I’m dead serious about that. No really. Keep your negative comments to yourself people. Let people form their own opinions if they’re bad.

Until next time, I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We head into horror-comedy with Pandemonium (1982), a PG-rated slasher parody Todd discovered while looking into Paul Reubens’ filmography.

Despite an “insane” cast packed with recognizable comedians and performers, we talk about why the movie tanked, why it feels plotless, and how its nonstop juvenile gags, dated stereotypes, and heavy improvisation don’t land for us.

We dig into behind-the-scenes factors—director Alfred Sole admitting he didn’t know how to direct comedy, mismatched performance styles, and the title change from Thursday the 12th to Pandemonium—and we walk through key bits like the opening javelin kill, the cheer-camp setup, and the final reveal.

Episode 497, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week I thought we would go into the horror comedy section with something that I’ll bet nobody, maybe none of our listeners have ever heard of. I would be surprised because I thought that I would have heard of this movie.

As soon as I heard about it, I thought, “

Craig: Oh my God, Craig,

Todd: we have to do this.” And I think I discovered it around the time that Paul Reubens died. 

Yeah, I think I… Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah, I was looking up… So it was a couple years ago maybe. I was looking up stuff that he had been in and this came across and I looked over it. Oh, it’s, it’s a comedy. But then I realized it was a parody of slasher movies.

And then I looked at the cast and I’m like, “There is no way.” This movie just didn’t seem like it could exist without me knowing about it. It’s called Pandemonium from 1982. It’s rated PG. It’s not bloody or anything. It is more comedy, I would say, than horror parody, but that’s the through line. God, the cast list is insane.

If you grew up watching movies and television in the ’70s, ’80s, this is an all-star cast of comedians all together in one film. A lot of the Groundlings in here. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: So I, I thought we would watch it finally because I had it. You know, you couldn’t find this for a while. Part of the reason why we waited so long is that I had a hard time getting a hold of it.

It wasn’t streaming on anything. It wasn’t available on Amazon. I don’t remember if you could even buy a DVD. And I managed to s- track down some really, really crappy copy of it, and I was like, “Ah, this copy’s too crappy.” And at some point in time it became available on Tubi. Mm-hmm. Because I was looking for it again for the 10th time, and suddenly it popped up on Tubi and I’m like, “Well, great.”

And it’s a beautiful pristine copy of it, too. 

Mm-hmm. 

Todd: It looks like, yeah, like you would’ve seen it in the theater. So here we are, Pandemonium, 1982. I’m curious if you heard about this before, ’cause I never mentioned it to you. 

Craig: I think maybe you did. Just… I think you’re right. I think it was when Paul Reubens passed away, we were talking about him and, and potentially what we could talk about to pay tribute to him, and I think that this came up.

But I had never heard of it before, and I didn’t really look into it then. So no, I, I had no familiarity with this movie at all, which I guess kind of surprised me only because I’m so familiar with so many of the people, not only familiar with the cast, but also at the time that the movie… Well, not at the time that it came out.

The time that it came out I would’ve been three, but- In the ’80s, some of these people were people I was really familiar with and fond of. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And, and it also seems like, I think that it was kind of obscure. It didn’t do well at all. It, it tanked for, I don’t know, people argue different reasons that I’m sure that we’ll talk about.

I think the most obvious reason is because it’s not good. 

Todd: No. 

Craig: But 

Todd: That’s the best reason. 

Craig: But I, I, I guess because it didn’t, you know, it, it, it didn’t do well, the producers or distributors or whoever just kind of dumped it into late night cable territory where I guess apparently it played fairly often.

This is the kind of movie that I would’ve expected to see on Up All Night with Rhonda Shear. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And I o- I think that that’s the only context in which this movie could be enjoyed. Yeah. You have to appoint to… You, you have to approach it from that mindset. Like- 

Todd: Right … 

Craig: you, you have to go into it knowing that this is going to not only be stupid, which it is, but really pretty bad.

Yeah. And it’s, it’s really not the kind of thing, I think, that you can sit down and pay close attention to and enjoy. 

Todd: Yeah. It, it might be so stupid that it drives you crazy. 

Craig: Uh-huh. 

Todd: Now, we’ve done some things like this. Obviously Student Bodies I think was one of the earliest horror comedies, and that predates this.

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: And that one’s actually pretty good. 

Craig: It was funnier than this one was. 

Todd: It was funnier. I mean, it’s dated in its references of course, because it’s just referencing movies from the ’70s, and horror’s gone through a lot since then. But and it’s dated in some of its, you know, I don’t know, I think there’s like references to weed and things like that, you know, stuff that was just a little more pop culture-y at the time.

But I feel like that one- At least followed the assignment to a T. They were making a straight out slasher parody and they did it. And I find it chuckle-worthy. 

Mm-hmm. 

Todd: I still like it. And there, and there’s a weird… You know, there’s some interesting actors in there. There’s that guy who was really lanky who they called the Human Stick.

Remember him? 

Craig: Vaguely. 

Todd: I still sometimes go back and watch Student Bodies if it happens to be around and I’m bored. 

Craig: Sure. 

Todd: Then we did, um, as a tribute to another comedian who passed away, we did Frankenstein’s General Hospital. Remember that? 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: God. 

Craig: It was bad, too. 

Todd: That was maybe worse than this one, I kinda think.

Craig: I don’t know because it, I felt like at least that one, as stupid as it was, had a plot. This movie doesn’t really have a plot. 

Todd: Although you can argue that most slasher movies don’t really. 

Craig: I guess. I mean, there, right, there’s that setup. Cheer camp, slasher. That’s it. Like- 

Todd: Mm-hmm … 

Craig: I mean, you, you’ve kind of got other bits and pieces, like jokey bits of exposition.

But ultimately none of it matters. The, the plot is entirely insignificant. It’s just A series of really juvenile, really silly gags over and over and over, and like, it, it just never stops. Like, everything is a gag. Yeah. The closest thing, I mean, like you said, Student Bodies. Student Bodies was a lot like this.

I think they did it better. I, I think that when it’s done really well, like when we’re talking like Mel Brooks or Leslie Nielsen, like Naked Gun, Airplane type stuff- Mm-hmm … those movies are stupid too, but they’re funny. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: The jokes may be dumb and juvenile and crass, but they’re funny. Yeah. This movie isn’t funny.

Todd: It’s not. 

Craig: It’s not funny. No. The jokes aren’t funny. The gags aren’t funny. They’re just, they’re groaners. They’re roll your eyes, like, “Oh my God.” Like, it’s, it’s bad. 

Todd: I liken it to Transylvania 6-5000. 

Craig: Ugh, I liked that better than this. 

Todd: Yeah. That was years after this, and that one I think benefits from maybe just the humor’s a little bit better.

Again, they’re trying… And that, you know, I think we talked about this when we talked about Transylvania 6-5000, about how some of it was so stupid. I, I think Carol Kane was in that too, wasn’t she? 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And some of it was so dumb, but you could tell they were going for this Mel Brooks style comedy. 

Craig: Right.

Todd: And on paper it looked to be fine, I think, and it turned out that so much of the movie was ad-libbed. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Was, uh, was, was, you know, just these guys who were really good comedians riffing, but the, you know, it just didn’t really work because it couldn’t… Y- you just can’t have a movie like that. It just wasn’t clever enough.

And I think at that time, I’d have to go back and listen to that episode, we kinda talked about what makes a movie work and what makes it d- what makes comedy work and what makes it doesn’t. You know, like Mel Brooks’ comedies are pretty consistently funny. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And they’re really in this same vein. And the Airplane movies, what were those, Abrams?

J- Abrams and Bruckheimer movies? 

Craig: I don’t remember. 

Todd: They’re groaners too, but I don’t know, they’re just more fun, aren’t they? 

Craig: Uh-huh. 

Todd: And they have ensemble casts just like this one- Uh-huh … just full of stars that you’ll recognize, and people work together all the time. They work. This absolutely doesn’t. 

Craig: Great.

Todd: And it’s a shame Because they’re trying. Again, I, I don’t, I don’t get it. What is the, what is the secret sauce, you know? What, what’s different? 

Craig: I, I, I’m not sure. H- honestly, I, I think, and this is a huge discussion, but basically I think that to do really stupid comedy well, you have to be smart and, and you have to have a really good sense of timing.

But it’s not even just about the timing, it’s the writing. I mean, Mel Brooks’ stuff, yes, his jokes are low. Like, it, it, a lot of it is low humor, but there’s something smart underneath it. It’s not always satire or com- or, or commentary. It is sometimes, but not always. It’s just really well done. This, I read a whole lot of theories for why this is as bad as it is Because I felt kind of bad, like- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: I, I was trying to find, you know, like is there a cult audience? Like, what does this cult audience… A- and apparently there is a small one. I, I don’t know if it’s, again, just based on nostalgia, like kids who grew up catching this late at night on HBO or… But a variety of things, I think, didn’t work. First of all, the director was Alfred Sole?

Yeah. Sole? I don’t know. Whose only other, if I remember correctly, really big thing was Alice Sweet Alice, which we haven’t done, have we? 

Todd: No, and why not? 

Craig: I, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve started watching that movie before and, and haven’t been able to finish it. But it is kind of a notorious, and, and well-known and, you know, I think respected film in, in the horror genre.

And so he went from that to this, and a- as I understand, again, I don’t think I’ve seen it in its entirety, but as I understand, it’s kind of a stylized, you know, straight horror film, whereas this is just a goofy, off-the-wall comedy, and he has said since, “I was not a comedy director. I didn’t know how to direct comedy.”

Yeah. A- and I think that that shows. And though there are so many amazing performers in here, and again, like people that you are definitely going to recognize, it was kind of a mix-match of different styles that didn’t know how to work together. 

Todd: Oh. 

Craig: I didn’t think about that un- till I read it somewhere, but then h- having read it, I, I see it.

Because I read that, like you said, several of them came from the Groundlings, like Paul Reubens, who ag- is fantastic. I’m such a, a huge, huge fan. Phil Hartman, who was a genius. Tragic that he was taken in his prime. Edie McClurg, who was everywhere- Yeah. … in the ’80s, but people would know her best, I think, from she was the secretary in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and then any other number of movies where she basically played that same character.

Todd: Yeah. I- 

Craig: But you’re definitely gonna recognize her. These are all Groundlings, and so they come from a really, you know, strenuous improv background. And then you’ve got these more, like, old school Hollywood actors, like Eve Arden, who… Wasn’t she the principal in Grease? Yeah. That’s who I know her from. She 

Todd: was.

Craig: And, and this guy, Tom Smothers, who I don’t really know much about him, but he was kind of an older Hollywood leading man. Oh, 

Todd: dude, it’s so funny you don’t know much about Tom Smothers. You never saw The Smothers Brothers on TV, did you? 

Craig: No, I didn’t. I, I think that was, like… I remember my dad talking about The Smothers Brothers- 

Todd: Yeah

but I don’t 

Craig: think I ever saw it. 

Todd: I used to watch the reruns of them all the time, and so, you know, I mean, obviously, because they were on before my time. But, uh, they would show up in syndication and reruns all the time, and maybe after reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show or something like that. But The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was great.

It was pretty notorious as being very counterculture for its time. In fact, that’s what got them into trouble with the network, is they were very anti-war and the network didn’t like that, and they were like, “Well, screw you.” 

Yeah. 

Todd: And then they eventually got taken off the air. But Tom Smothers here, his, his brother Dick Smothers, but Tom Smothers here was also known as the Yo-Yo Man.

He did yo-yo tricks on the show. 

Oh, that’s funny. 

Todd: And he also, like, sold instructional videos on how to do tricks with the yo-yo, and sold his own yo-yos, and I was a fan. I learned, I learned how to yo-yo from Tom Smothers and watching his instructional videos. 

Craig: I, I can’t say I’m surprised. 

Todd: It sounds like something I would do, right?

God. I… 

Craig: These guys- So you, so you had them. There’s a theme song. Well, there’s a theme… I’m sure there is. Oh my God. So- So these guys kind of, uh, from an earlier generation, and then Carol Kane, who again, huge fan. I mean, she’s been working… I, I, I think, uh, Taxi came after this. I think this was really early. I think that she had already done When a Stranger Calls.

Hmm. ‘Cause that may have been the only thing she had done at this point. But she went, you know, on to be on Taxi and, and has been working since then. I always remember her from Scrooged. Yeah. She’s one of my favorite parts of that movie. We 

Todd: love that one. 

Craig: She was also Corey Haim’s mom in License to Drive, and she’s hilarious in that movie too.

Todd: She’s, uh, Mad Max’s wife in, uh, Princess Bride. Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. And so she’s excellent, but she is classically trained in theater. So you’ve got these young improv kids, and then you’ve got Carol Kane and these older actors, and they were just approaching it in different ways. And then you’ve got a director who doesn’t know how to direct comedy and doesn’t really know comedy.

So most everything, and I was not at all shocked to hear this, most everything was improv’d. Hmm. And they were just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck. And I don’t know how they picked what stuck because it didn’t stick for me. It just wasn’t funny. And then, and then the last thing, the last thing that the, the, the cast and crew I read Knew that they were DOA when the movie was gonna come out because they had filmed it under the title Thursday the 12th, and it was meant to be an intentional obvious spoof of Friday the 13th.

But while they were in production, they found out that there was another movie being in production and they were using the title Saturday the 14th. And so to avoid confusion or, or to, you know, whatever, avoid seeming like they were ripping off somebody else, they changed the title, and the title doesn’t really give any suggestion of what the movie is or what it’s about.

Todd: It’s an awful title. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s really bad. Nobody knew what it was, nobody knew what to expect, and it just bombed and I’m, I’m not surprised. 

Todd: Yeah. Alfred Sole got the job because he was going to direct another horror film called Ghouls and that, that fell through. And around the same time, the press was going on about the death of horror movies.

You know, this was one of those cycles just before the slashers got big in the earl- in the ’80s. I think Terror Train didn’t do very well. And so anyway, like, people weren’t terribly interested in doing another horror movie all of a sudden. And so there were these, there was this screenplay out there written by these two guys, Jamie Klein and Richard Whitley, who really hadn’t done much, had never did much, but they thought that, you know…

They saw Friday the 13th and thought that it was ridiculous enough they could, they could make fun of it. But, like, clearly over time they lost the plot a little bit because although it does, especially toward the latter quarter or latter third I would say, kinda slip back into its parody of slasher movies, a good portion of it, as you said earlier, is just broad comedy.

Mm-hmm. 

Todd: It, it’s just silly scenes between people at this cheerleading camp. I would almost say it loses some focus there too because it doesn’t have a plot. What’s the through line? There is no, there is no through… Even the through line of it being a, a, a slasher is lost after the first 10 minutes or so.

Craig: Well, and it, like, for the first, I don’t know, 45 minutes or an hour, I don’t even remember how long this was, but for at least what seems like the first half, you’re just kind of reminded that it’s a slasher because a black gloved hand will come into frame in the back of a scene, or, like, just as somebody is walking off- Yeah

screen, the black hand will show up and be like, “Oh darn, missed him again.” Like, that’s- 

Todd: Swipe at them. 

Craig: Yeah Like 

Todd: a cartoon. 

Craig: Right. It’s really silly. And it I don’t know. I was gonna say it doesn’t really know what it wants to be. It’s, it’s really not much of anything in particular, but there are also things like in the beginning I thought, “Okay, maybe this is gonna be like a Scary Movie, uh, the franchise Scary Movie.

Maybe it’s gonna be that type of- Hmm … parody, where it’s not just parodying necessarily one movie, say Friday the 13th, but it, it’s really pulling jokes from a variety of things. And I was led to believe that because when we’re introduced to Carol Kane, her name… What’s her name? They’re all Sandy, Mandy, Andy, Randy.

Todd: Oh, she’s Sandy. Yeah, she’s Sandy. That’s funny. There’s a point at which they’re all rattled off, right? That, that was hilarious. 

Craig: Whoever she is. 

Todd: I didn’t even catch that until that was rattled off. 

Craig: I didn’t either. 

Todd: I wrote it down. Sandy, Mandy, Candy. 

Craig: Sandy- Yeah … Mandy, Candy, Randy, Andy, and Glen. Dan. And 

Todd: Bambi.

Craig: And Bambi. Bam- Bambi is the head of the camp or whatever. She’s an old- Yeah … cheerleader. But when we’re first introduced to, I think she’s Candy, I think. Uh, whatever. Carol Kane. She’s at the bus station or train station with her mom, who is played by Eileen Brennan. Yeah. Yeah. Who again, you would totally recognize.

I remember her as being Jack’s acting teacher from Will & Grace, but that was when she was much older. She’s been in a bazillion things. 

Todd: I think of her from Clue. She’s, 

Craig: um- Yes. Oh, absolutely … Miss Peacock. Is that right? Miss Peacock. Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: Oh, she’s great in that, too. Great movie. But she is, like, playing the mom from Carrie, and she says something about Candy’s dirty pillows.

Clip: Don’t be tempted, child. Don’t get on that bus. Mama. You mustn’t go to that evil camp with those, those cheerleaders. Um Everyone will see your dirty pillows. Those aren’t dirty pillows, Mama, they’re breasts.

Not those. Those are titties. Those are dirty pillows. Those aren’t my dirty pillows, Mama. They’re his dirty pillows. They’re not dirty pillows. They’re breasts. But out. 

Craig: And she turns to some bum who’s standing right there holding pillows, and even that guy was a guy that we just saw in some o- I think he was in Curse 2.

Todd: Hmm. 

Craig: Wasn’t he one of the guys in the… Like, after the guy got bit by a snake and they stopped at, like, a hotel and there was a bar in the hotel? I think he was one of those guys. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Anyway A- and then Candy has telekinesis that also comes with a side of laser eyes. And so I thought that that was gonna be more of a thing, and I thought, “Okay, good.

This is going to be kind of a broad jab at, you know, a lot of popular cliches or popular films, and it’s gonna be a lot of in jokes.” And I’m down with that. I really… Like, I enjoy the Scary Movie franchise. But it’s not. If it is, the jokes or the references were so broad or obtuse that I missed them. 

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Because that was one of the only direct references that I can recall. 

Todd: Yeah, there were not many. They, they were just broad, like you said, like slasher-type things. The, it starts out even almost pulling from, um, Student Bodies, where there’s a lot of s- text on screen. 

Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Right? It says, like, “Victim number one”- Mm-hmm

and flashes, and we see Carol Kane scene. And then victim number two, we were introduced to Glen, who was Judge Reinhold, who doesn’t belong in this movie really. I mean, yes, he’s a comic actor, but he’s almost a different flavor than all the rest. I, I don’t think of him as the silly, goofy guy. 

Craig: He, he plays more of the straight man later in his early career, which was just about to take off.

I thought it was funny seeing him in this because I felt like it really showed him cutting his teeth. Like- 

Todd: Ah, yeah. 

Craig: Like, this is… I- Judge Reinhold, bless him, you know, was- Yeah … cute and silly in the ’80s. I liked him. He was funny in Beverly Hills Cop and, and some other stuff, too, but- 

Todd: I mean, I watched Vice Versa over and over again- 

Craig: Yeah, that was all right

so 

Todd: I’m gonna be able to… Yeah. Again. 

Craig: He was, he was a good butt hole in Gremlins. I mean, he was around. He was, he was doing stuff. Yeah. He is really, really green in this movie. But I mean, the whole thing can’t be taken seriously, so I don’t know what more he could have done. But it, it is funny to see him in a terrible blonde wig- Being goofy, being goofy in this movie 

Todd: When we’re introduced to him, and this is just kind of an idea of the level of humor you’re looking at, you know, his mother is telling him, “Now, at camp you can’t ever touch yourself or you’ll go blind.”

He’s like, “Okay, Mother.” And then his father comes out and he is blind. He’s got dark glasses on, and he’s got pencils in a… I think this must have been a thing where blind people sell pencils or something. 

Craig: On the street, I th- yeah. 

Todd: Oh my God. And so, you know, it’s very cringey and dated when we thought all of this kind of humor was okay, and it’s so bad.

You know, he’s just like, “Hey, oh, by the way, you wanna buy a pencil?” And he’s like, “Sure, Dad.” Like he always does it. And as he goes to put the pencils away in his briefcase, he op- his briefcase flies open and it looks like he’s got like a million pencils in there like he’s done this a bunch before. So it’s just these old-school blind jokes.

He says, “Okay, goodbye son,” you know, as he walks off the camera, and of course he’s waving in the wrong direction. I’m like, “Oh my God.” 

Mm-hmm. 

Todd: He says, “Dad, I’ll buy you a pencil as soon as you do your Ray Charles impression.” And so his dad bobs his head left and right. He’s like, “Okay.” Really? Mm-hmm. Oh, Jesus. Uh, he’s victim two.

Victim number three is, uh, is so bizarre. 

Craig: Mandy. Yeah, this was so weird. 

Todd: Oh, what is going on here? There’s like h- Mandy’s father is talking to us, breaking the fourth wall, as though he’s a television presenter. 

Clip: And time to meet the breakfast. First, from the dairy wonderland of Wisconsin, it’s eggs, presented by my own son Chip Junior.

And now from the golden wheat fields of Nebraska, it’s Toast, presented by my lovely wife, Chip Sr. Good morning, Daddy 

Todd: Ugh. Oh I don’t know. It’s 

Craig: weird … 

Todd: introduces his family, his wife, her, all that. Like, what, what? What a weird mashup. 

Craig: And his daughter, she’s like a beauty queen type, I guess. 

Todd: And she’s really into brushing her teeth.

What… Whose idea was that? I wondered if at one point this was a slight nod to Grease. 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: You know, there’s that bit in the t- where they do the, the toothbrush- Yes … brusha, brusha, brusha with- 

Craig: Uh-huh … 

Todd: but I don’t know. She’s really into brushing her teeth. She’s a beautiful woman. I, I thought she’d been in more, but she’s hardly been in anything.

This was her claim to fame, really, ’cause she’s got that look typical of this time that seemed like it would do really well on, like soaps or television or s- you know, The Love Boat or whatnot. So that’s her. Victim number four flashes on the screen and is asking which way to cheerleading camp at a, at a food truck.

And, you know, this is your very light parody of the scene where everybody s- in the restaurant stops and stares. In this case, they all run out, and then the food truck people warn her about, uh, going, ’cause that cheerleading camp had an accident. We didn’t talk about the accident, and this is the thing that made me think it had promise.

The very first thing in the movie is a football team, and this guy, star quarterback, I don’t even remember his name, wins the whole deal, yada, yada, yada. They all go into the, the locker room, and there’s this one girl who’s going to his locker, and I don’t know, she hides, and then everybody gets in, and then she’s, goes back out with the other cheerleaders, but she’s not so popular with them.

I don’t know. But then the other cheerleaders ru- then she’s… They’re like, “Oh, I think our vegetable routine went really well,” and they have these giant vegetables that they’re holding. They’re like prop vegetables. And as they walk away, we see, like, are, the first of our POV from the Black Glove killer’s hand, who is unlocking a door to a javelin, where the one javelin is kept- 

Yeah

Todd: under lock and key. Okay. Opens it up. It pans up this huge javelin, and as soon as we see the, the pointy end of it, there’s like a sparkle, like an animated sparkle on it as he picks it up. And then POV style, you know, uh, reminiscent of Bay of Blood. The first Friday the 13th, I think, has a kill, or one of the Friday the 13ths has a kill like this in it, where, you know, it’s POV with a long stick and a b- some people get skewered.

He tosses the javelin at the cheerleaders as they’re walking away in a line. And almost as though it’s a routine, each of them in turn s- turns around towards the camera. I thought this was really well filmed, by the way. This is my favorite part of the whole movie. They’re like, “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.” And of course, that javelin goes through all of them, so they’re like, literally like a giant shish kebab.

And later, when they’re carted off in the ambulance, they’re all laying down just like a giant shish kebab. And so Apparently this is one of several murders that starts happening to cheerleaders and at cheerleading camps, which we see from newspaper reports that flash on the screen. 

Craig: The cheerleading camp closes down because of all these murders, but then we pick up when it’s opening up again.

Todd: Exactly. 

Craig: And Bambi, the girl who the other cheerleaders were mean to and wouldn’t let her on the team is, you know, she’s gonna have her own little cheerleader experience now and coach all these new folks or whatever. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: God. The, the, the last two, victims five and six are these, like, letterman sweater, joint smoking douchebags, Andy and Randy.

One of them was Jimmy Olsen from Superman, I think. 

Todd: Oh. 

Craig: From the, the Christopher Reeves Superman. 

Todd: Oh, okay. 

Craig: Pretty sure I didn’t catch that. But my… There was one line that for whatever reason made me laugh out loud, and it was when, like… So w- once we’ve been introduced to all of them, they all congregate on this college campus, which I think they filmed almost all of it at USC, but they all kind of congregate.

And I think the last one to arrive is Sandy, who’s the brunette, and she’s kinda like the sassy, tough one. And when she arrives, it parodies that scene in mostly, like, teen romance comedies, but whatever, where the boy, like, sees the girl and, you know, she’s almost, like, i- in slow motion and soft lighting.

And in this case, one of the boys sees the girl and he’s like, “Oh my God, look at her. She’s the girl of my dreams,” or something like that. And he goes, “I know just what I’m gonna say to her.” And she walks by and he goes, “Hello, bitch.” 

Clip: And I 

Craig: just thought that was so funny. “I know just what I’m gonna say to her.

Hello, bitch.”

Oh, God. I don’t know why that made… That was the only thing, I think, in the movie that made me laugh out loud. Oh my gosh. It was so funny to me. Oh my gosh. Uh, but then, I mean, nothing really happens. I mean, we’re… Okay, I guess we find out that a, somebody has escaped from prison? And his name is Jarrett and another person has also escaped from the nearby mental institution.

So there are two killers supposedly on the loose. And then we’re introduced to Cooper, I think. Hmm. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Who is this guy? I, I, I couldn’t figure out who he is. He’s come… 

Todd: I don’t know who he is either. He’s, I guess he’s a cop of sorts? 

Craig: A cop or I couldn’t tell if he was, like, a cop or if he was, like, campus security.

He’s dressed as a Canadian Mountie. 

Clip: Ugh, God. 

Craig: And, and he ha- and he rides a horse named Bob, who is also a character in the story, sometimes played by a real horse, sometimes played by, like, a papier-mâché horse. Uh-huh. Like, he sits on the horse at a desk that’s specially made for horse height. It’s so weird and so stupid, and I could not figure out why he was dressed like that.

Maybe that’s a spoof of Animal House with that- 

Todd: Well- … general 

Craig: guy? 

Todd: Or it was j- I mean, it’s a reference to, um, Dudley Do-Right. 

Craig: Okay. 

Todd: The Mounties, right? And he, “I always get my man,” and he repeats this multiple times as though it’s funny. Ugh. 

Craig: Okay. Well, it went right over my head. Now, maybe that’s just a time thing.

Maybe that joke was a little before my time. I don’t know- Yeah … 

Todd: but it was dumb. Still not funny. 

Craig: Right. And he has… I don’t know. The, they just work in the same building, I think is the only reason that they’re always together, but it’s Paul Reubens, who I guess is a janitor named Johnson. 

Todd: Well, he’s named Dribble until he says, “Change your name,” and he’s like, “Okay, now my name’s Johnson.”

What? Was that a joke? 

Craig: I don’t know. I didn’t get it. Oh. I didn’t get it. And they’re just around every once in a while. Like, we’ll have scenes with them every once in a while. They’re always stupid. I mean, I guess the only notable thing here is that this was when Pee-wee Herman was, I think, in the Groundlings or Pee-wee Herman, Paul Reubens.

But it really seems like- I would prefer to think that he was developing what would eventually become the Pee-Wee Herman- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: kind of voice. 

Todd: I really think so. I think that’s what’s happened. 

Craig: I would rather think that than to just think that he had kind of a limited range. I, I, ’cause I don’t believe that to be true.

So it really seems here like he’s experimenting with the voice that will eventually become Pee-Wee Herman. So I guess that from a historical perspective, it’s kind of- … interesting to see that. But knowing who Paul Reubens was and would become, he’s terribly underutilized. Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: it’s not worth it to see it just, like don’t go in thinking, “Oh, you know, I’ve never seen this Paul Reubens movie before.”

No. It, like he, he doesn’t have the opportunity to do anything really fun or interesting. It’s not worth it. 

Todd: It’s confusing from a modern perspective, ’cause you look back and you almost think he’s doing the Pee-Wee Herman schtick, but he’s not. He’s not that character. He’s just got the voice and some of the facial expressions, but- 

Craig: Right

Todd: you know, he’s not childlike, he doesn’t have that suit on. He- Right … he’s just doing it. I think you’ve, I think you probably nailed it. And I think we talked about this when Paul Reubens died. I think we discussed a little bit about how, you know, he really locked into that and really developed it and then really protected it and- 

Craig: Yeah

Todd: for a while would even… He wouldn’t go out not in character and- 

Craig: Right … 

Todd: even some of his friends at the Groundlings would be like, “God, this guy is so talented.” They were like, “Dude, you’ve gotta do… You can’t just be doing this one character your whole life. You’ve, you have more to offer than that.” 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: But yeah, uh, this would be an early time when he was clearly trying that out everywhere and trying to figure out what it was gonna be.

And so yeah, I think for that perspective, it is kind of historically interesting. But it’s a shame, like you said, he’s got nothing to do, and he has really even no schtick to do. 

Craig: No. 

Todd: He’s got almost no jokes. He’s just got some line, one-liners. That’s about it. Oh. I love this bit, though, when the guy from the asylum and the guy from the prison end up in the same truck, like one of them’s driving a truck and picks up the other guy as a hitchhiker Uh-huh

as the truck is driving off. 

Clip: Where you going? To college. Me too. Where you from? The prison. Really? I’m from the asylum. No kidding. Maybe we ought to form a club. Yeah. You know, my dad has this old barn that we could use. You know, and, uh, it needs some curtains. You make curtains? I don’t do curtains. 

Todd: It was stupid- 

Clip: Yeah

Todd: but I did chuckle at this bit. I thought this, this could have been really funny. 

Could have been. Right. Right. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean, it’s just a bunch of gags. Like, we don’t have to go through it all, right? Right. Like, but I do wanna point out a few things. One of them is, it keeps coming up, this, this really cringey racial comedy that just does not fly today.

The cheerleaders get ready in- together at gym for their first lesson, and I think it’s the… Oh, the guy who played Squiggy in Laverne & Shirley. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: He’s a character in there. 

Craig: Yeah, Salt and Pepa. They’re, they’re… His name is Pep- Pepe, and then there’s this other lady. I don’t even know who they are. They just hang around.

Todd: They check her in. It’s like they’re handling the front desk at the cheerleading camp, which is more like a school than anything else, so it’s confusing. 

Craig: I have no idea who these people are. 

Todd: But I think this would go over a lot of people’s heads if they’re not familiar. That scene is clearly a parody of old, like, werewolf movies.

There’s always this moment where, you know, somebody checks into an old inn in this dark village out in the middle of Transylvania or something like that, and there’ll be some weird young guy at the front that’s almost like an Igor-type character. And then there’ll be some older, like, crone-like lady, you know, who comes in from the back, who’s mysterious, maybe like a witch or something like that.

They’re creepy and they’re warning someone, you know, that these parts are magical and don’t be here, and things like that. And I think this is… Th- their introduction is clearly trying to spoof that, but it’s so out of place. And there’s no werewolf in this movie ever again. 

Craig: No. 

Todd: But we hear a lot of howling during this scene, and a weird effect of, like, smoke at the bottom?

Craig: Yeah. That was strange. Especially when she was ar- But I feel like what you were gonna say was, you know, during their class- They, like a murder tour comes through, like on a tr- like a 

Todd: dead cheerleaders tour. 

Craig: God. 

Todd: I mean, I like the idea. The camp reopened, and now, like, they’re also making, like, a tourist attraction out of it.

Like, “Here, see where the murders happened.” Because this is actually a thing, right? And they’re driving around while these new cheerleaders are practicing. But what we have on there are these Japanese tourists who are, “Ooh, ooh, I saw, I saw,” taking pictures. 

Craig: It was a very popular joke in the ’80s, yeah. 

Todd: It really was.

Japan was big for us in the ’80s. We thought they were gonna take over the world, and they did a lot of traveling to the US to, as tourists, and they got a big reputation for just taking a lot of photos, ’cause they made all the good cameras at the time. 

Craig: Right, right. 

Todd: I mean, it all made sense back then. It, it’s very cringey now.

Craig: I know. I mean, i- i- even, I mean, even then it was a ridiculous joke. You know, like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: it was, it was a blatant stereotype. I don’t think anybo- I don’t know Yeah, it was- It, it was a different time … caricature Our sense of humor was different. But right, it was caricature. I don’t know. We didn’t find it offensive in the ’80s, but we didn’t find a lot of things offensive in the ’80s, so who knows?

Todd: True. True. But then this gets taken to a whole other extreme later on when there is an airplane scene. 

Craig: Glen, what is his last name that rhymes with dandy? Glen Dandy. 

Todd: Oh man, this is so convoluted. 

Craig: He, what is his name? We just were talking about him. Judge 

Todd: Reinhold. Judge Reinhold. Yeah. 

Craig: He gets, like, sexually frustrated or something and decides to go do gymnastics in the gym, jumping on the springboard.

I can’t remember what that thing is actually called. 

Todd: Trampoline? 

Craig: It- it’s… No, no, no, it’s not the trampoline, right? He- he’s, like, jumping, he’s jumping off of a springboard over something, I think, and this also didn’t make any sense. Somebody is standing outside with a giant comical cartoonish TNT box, I think, the ones that you, like, push the handle down.

The 

Todd: detonator, 

Craig: yeah. A detona- it, like a cartoon detonator, and he keeps jumping on this springboard, and the first few times we see it, there’s nothing there. But then the last time we see it, it’s all strapped up with dynamite, with TNT. 

Todd: That had to be an editing mistake. 

Craig: No, I think it was supposed to be a joke.

Like, somehow they armed it with TNT in between his jumps or something. I don’t know. Oh, okay. But anyway, the whole point is he jumps on it, it explodes, it shoots him like a rocket out the window and into the sky, and then he flies alongside a commercial aircraft and is, like, out the window begging the people inside for help.

It was really silly. 

Todd: Which must have been a slight reference to that Twilight Zone episode. 

Craig: Oh, I don’t know. I feel like we’ve seen this kind of silly thing in a bunch of places, but I don’t even remember how it, it, like, that’s the last that I remember is, like, he’s, like, pounding on the window and, again, it’s, like, Ja- maybe it’s the same Japanese tourists.

I don’t know. 

Todd: I’m not sure it really ends in any particular way. I think he just ends up being, he’s just dead. 

Craig: We never see him again, right? 

Todd: But this is Air Tanaka, and there is a white woman dressed like a geisha who gets over the intercom before he’s there and gives, in a terrible, terrible Japanese-English accent-

Clip: Welcome to Air Tokyo flight 45. We hope that you enjoy your flight. Right now, stewardess Godzilla is serving your favorite beverage. Wake up! There’s a literal person dressed as Godzilla, and so there are these dumb little gags where somebody complains and so he breathes fire on them. Oh my word, this

was a mess. Big gags. Right, and then it cuts

Craig: to Mandy, the tooth girl, playing with giant stuffed teeth. And then she has a scene where she brushes her teeth when- with an obscene amount of toothpaste on the toothbrush, which also- Which is just gross … it almost made me gag just- I know … watching it. And then a black glove grabs her through the medicine cabinet, and does he, like, drill through her mouth?

He’s got a drill. He’s got a drill, which was cool, and of course, like… And I thought, “Oh, this is actually getting serious,” ’cause this, this looks like it’s gonna be a very gruesome scene. The drill goes into her mouth and foam starts coming out of her mouth, like toothpaste. Like, I guess

Todd: Her mouth or throat are so full of toothpaste, or maybe just her body, that instead of bleeding she just exudes toothpaste foam 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what that gag… I liked it, actually. I thought it was kinda cool. 

Craig: It was one of the better parts i- in terms of the slasher spoof, it was one of the better parts.

But th- but then there’s a whole lot going on, like there’s a, a lover’s lane scene, and there’s prison scenes where the principal from Grease gets put into the gas chamber, and it’s just a chamber where some big fat guy who eats beans farts into it. Like- And then there’s a whole scene where they just sit around a table, these dumb kids sit around a table talking about who wants candy.

And it’s like, “Hey, Andy, do you want candy?” “No, thanks, Randy. Give Sandy my candy, Randy.” And it goes on- … for a good 45 seconds. 

Todd: Uh-huh. It’s not funny. It’s not funny. It 

Craig: went on for so long. 

Todd: Oh. 

Craig: And then, I don’t know, there’s a bunch going on. Like, both of the escapees, the convict, vict and the insane asylum patient both end up at the hospital, where we also find out that some doctor was in on all of this.

What all of this is, I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going on. 

Todd: He’s talking about turning people into furniture. What the hell? 

Craig: I don’t know. At one point they went to see somebody in the morgue, and they pulled out the slab and it was a coffee table, and they just acted like that was normal. I don’t know what was happening.

I 

Todd: have no idea what was going on here. One of the things that made me laugh out loud was Paul Reuben’s character. As they’re going through… And again, because we had no context for why this furniture was there or what they were talking about, we have no idea what’s going on. But they pass by, it’s almost like a tall jewelry chest or something.

Clip: Hey, Sarge, this is Trixie, the waitress at the Kit Kat Klub. You’re right, Johnson. I’d recognize those legs anywhere. She’s a fine woman.

Jump shot!

What are you doing?

Are 

Todd: you- I was trying to get your drawers. Even though I still had no idea what they were talking about- 

No … 

Todd: something about that delivery and that line made me laugh out loud. 

God. I don’t know. 

Todd: And this doctor’s like, “Every doctor has furniture. Not every doctor has patients. Now every doctor will have furniture and patients in one.”

What? 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: What? Oh. I 

Craig: don’t know, but then all f- but then I have in my notes all three of them get electrocuted. 

Todd: Yeah, and they’re gone, but it has nothing to do with the slashing. Like, what’s going on? 

Craig: Right? Because then- What are they doing here? … then Bambi takes a bath in milk and cookies. Why? I don’t know.

Todd: Meanwhile, the killer… This is a clear Psycho reference. And again, I didn’t know if like… ‘Cause Hitchcock notoriously used chocolate milk as blood in the shower scene. I don’t know, I wondered if this had the genesis from that at least. But the killer, as she’s l- sitting there reading her magazine, he, like, stabs through the curtain, which she doesn’t notice.

He stabs into a carton of milk, she doesn’t notice. He stabs into the magazine she’s reading, she doesn’t seem to care or notice. He stabs everything but her, and eventually lifts her up and drowns her in this. But it’s like she has to save her cookie or something. 

Craig: Ugh. Wow. 

Todd: It’s so weird. 

Craig: I know. I honestly don’t remember because everything was so random.

Todd: It’s so random. 

Craig: I, I… She, but she’s dead, apparently. And then Sandy and Randy go to the sex ed room, which has a cover and a drink minimum. 

Todd: And a bed. 

Craig: And a bed. God, I don’t know. And then Candy, Carol Kane, finally has sex with the other guy, and likes it, sort of, she says. 

Todd: Ugh. I love, I love it when Randy leaves Carrie in there for a little while, or whatever her name was, ’cause he’s going to investigate, and, and she says, “Do you want me to come with you?”

And he says, “Sure, if we time it right.” 

Craig: Yeah, that was funny. 

Todd: That might’ve been the funniest line in the whole 

Craig: movie. That was funny, I will admit. Mm. And it’s funny because, like, I was barely paying attention, and the line happened, and it took me a second, and I was like, “Oh, that was funny.” 

Todd: Inspired. One inspired line in this entire hour and a half.

Oh. God, 

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know. More of the… Somebody gets suffocated with a pom-pom, one of the guys. Mm-hmm. Sandy, the sexy brunette, gets stabbed with a megaphone. Is that what that was supposed- Yeah … to be? Like a giant cheerleading megaphone she gets stabbed with. And then we have, I guess, the homage scene where the final girl, Candy, runs around and finds all the bodies.

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And I have in my notes she’s now pursued by the killer, who is now in a miniskirt. 

Todd: Yeah, with fingernails and- dress, and it turns out that the killer is the quarterback from the very beginning. I mean, it’s pointless. Like, we never saw this guy except in the first five minutes, and he’s like, “If I can’t be a cheerleader, n- nobody can.”

I don’t know if this is, like, supposed to be making fun of feminism or something like that. I don’t know, but, uh- I 

don’t know. 

Todd: Then his parents show up, Edie McClurg and whoever that other guy was, as ghosts taunting him or whatever, and then he gets freaked out and he runs out and she runs out into the football field, starts using her Carrie powers, and eventually pulls a statue of himself over him.

And Dick Smother- uh, suddenly Tom Smothers is there riding in, and they love each other. 

Craig: Yeah, they had a musical moment earlier, and they reprise that here. It’s like an old Hollywood… They’re not even really singing. Like, they just open their mouths and- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: old school Hollywood voices come out. 

Todd: Lip syncing, yeah.

And then we pan up to the scoreboard and we get that typical for the time, that closing montage of credits where there’s a quick little scene from each person, and they put their names up on there. 

Craig: Did they even? I don’t… I didn’t even think they put their names up. I thought it was ju- Oh, no, they did.

They put their character names up, but they didn’t put their credit. Like, they didn’t put the actor’s name, which I thought was really strange. It’s just like, “Here’s Randy,” and a little Randy scene. Like, yeah, I know. I just watched this movie.

Todd: Oh, revisit the joys of the earlier hour- Yeah … and 29 minutes. God. Oh, man. I- you know, it was painful to get through because it was so cringey and I was so disappointed. Because it’s so disappointing to see so many good, wonderful comedic actors in something that just falls so completely flat. You can see what they’re trying to do.

You can see that they’re trying to parody some horror movies, and they got some scenes to parody it. Most of it was not that. Most of it was just weird byplay. And in a sense, this was a lot like, I think, Transylvania 6-5000. But I can’t recommend it- 

Craig: No … 

Todd: except as a really interesting time capsule if you were really bored and wanted to see some early work by some of the…

by Paul Reubens, for example. 

Craig: Yeah, but it’s not worth it just for that. I mean, like, like I said before, you, you might look at it and say, “Oh my gosh, Phil Hartman’s in this, and Carol Kane,” like these are some really great people and, and you might get excited- Mm-hmm … because you like those people, and then you will see this movie and you’ll be terribly, terribly disappointed.

Yeah, I, I, I can’t recommend it either. Like I said before, if you can somehow recreate the up all night experience, like if you’re 11- Mm-hmm … and you’re a boy and you’re having a sleepover and you’re not really gonna be paying attention to it and you’re just gonna be goofing on it, maybe. Maybe. I, I can’t think of another way that you could set it up for yourself to enjoy this.

I, I, I could be wrong. You know, to each their own. I, I don’t mean any offense to those of you who grew up with it and have a soft spot for it. But seeing it for the first time in 2026 It did not do it for me at all. 

Todd: Hard pass. Hard, hard pass. But it was fun to talk about. 

Craig: Yeah, sure. 

Todd: And thank you guys for listening as well, and if you have anything to say about this movie, as Craig said, drop us a line.

ChainsawHorror.com is our website. Just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast and you’ll find us on social media. Drop us a line in any one of those places. Or if you, uh, would like to chat with us a little more directly, join our patrons at Patreon.com/ChainsawPodcast. We have complete unedited phone calls as soon as they’re made that, uh, include all the things that I cut out of these and, uh, s- for streamlining and all the personal stuff that we do.

All the stuff we’re trying to keep from the general public is wide open and available for you for just five bucks a month, along with some minisodes we’ve done in the past and some other things. We have a book club over there as well, where we’ll read horror books and, uh, talk about them via video chat a couple times a month.

If that interests you, join our Patreon, Patreon.com/ChainsawPodcast. Otherwise, just leave us a review somewhere. Let us know what you thought of this. Uh, we always like good reviews over at Apple Podcasts or on our webpage. You can, uh, send us a voice message by clicking Talk to Us and record a quick 90-second clip which automatically gets sent to us, and, uh, we will play it on the air.

And if we get requests through that, we usually bump those a little higher to the top. Until next time, I’m Todd. 

And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We head back to 1980 for a horror-comedy detour with Motel Hell, a quirky, blackly comic cult favorite that we both remembered more fondly than it played this time around.

We talk about the film’s odd tone, slow pacing, and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre-style setup of Farmer Vincent’s famous smoked meats, plus the bizarre “garden” reveal where victims are buried up to their necks.

Along the way we dig into the performances, the dated humor, the strange character turns, and that iconic pig-head-and-chainsaw finale, including the movie’s straight-faced closing joke about “artificial preservatives.”

We also debate whether this is a charming product of its time or just too dumb to fully work today, and where it lands as a cult curiosity.

Episode 496 – 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m  Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig 

Todd: This week, uh, thought I’d take us back to the ’80s, 1980 to be exact, to the point in which horror movies were coming big on the scene, slasher movies, things like that. Uh, we’ve done several slasher films from 1981, 1979, whatever, just around this era, oh, a few weeks ago and, and we had been- I’d been on a bit of a kick doing these, uh, old early ’80s slashers, and I promised Craig this week that I would not choose another early ’80s slasher.

We were both just ready for something fresh. So, um, I pulled up this movie that I know I had seen at some point, or at least run across on cable, maybe not seen the whole way through, but it certainly haunted the video store shelves of my childhood. And I knew it was a horror comedy, and it comes up every now and then and people talk about it as a quirky satire, comedy horror movie, blah blah blah.

And so I said, “Let’s do it, Craig. Let’s do Motel Hell.” Had you heard of this one before? 

Craig: Yeah. Like you, I know I’ve seen it. I think I’ve probably seen it more than once. And I remembered a lot of things about it, but it had been a long time since I’d seen it, so I didn’t remember a whole lot. And I mean, I guess I was gonna say you could technically call this a slasher, but it’s not really.

No. It’s got a similar vibe, but it’s different in that it’s… I mean, y- you already said it’s a comedy, and it is, but it’s, it’s more of a black comedy, not a scary movie parody, slapstick, goofy comedy. It’s… I mean, it’s still silly, but it’s a little bit darker and it’s not as in your face with gags and stuff- Right

um, as, as some things. 

Todd: It’s a shame too. 

Craig: Well, I don’t know. I thought it struck kind of an interesting balance. Uh, I don’t know if it was perfect, but I don’t know. I’m interested to hear what you thought. 

Todd: I don’t know. Like I’ll be honest with you, I had a hard time staying awake. Now, I was watching it at like 11:30 PM or something like that.

I’d had a long day. My parents are still visiting. We’ve been running a little hard, and so I was already pretty tired going into this. But I kind of expected it to perk me up. I thought this was gonna be this fun, irreverent, satirical black comedy that everybody says it is, and both my dad and I found it hard to stay awake.

About halfway through I wanted so bad to just shut it off and finish it in the morning, but unfortunately, I mean he was watching it with me and he was staying up too, so I just pushed through. So I don’t know if that affected my reception of it, but w- I was just groaning and rolling my eyes through the whole thing, and I didn’t find it particularly funny, and I didn’t find it scary at all.

I was pretty disappointed overall. It wasn’t what I remember from flashes of my childhood. 

Craig: Yeah. Gosh. I don’t know how we want to approach it, but I mean, I, I feel similarly and I r- first of all, I just decided, like, I’m just gonna watch this. I’m not gonna take any notes. How serious can it be? And so I cuddle up in bed and turned all the lights off.

Had the, you know, laptop, like, right there next to me, and I got about halfway through it and I was like, “I have to turn this off and go to sleep.” And it was early, like- Ah. Like, it was earlier than I would usually go to bed. So I was like, “No, I’m just gonna wait until the morning.” 

Todd: No. 

Craig: And then I finish it this morning.

Yeah, I mean, it is kind of slow and there’s really not a ton that happens, but it’s odd. 

Todd: Definitely odd. 

Craig: Well, and I, I, I think that that oddity saves it, and I, there, like, there are some interesting performances. I don’t think it’s poorly shot or anything. 

Todd: No. 

Craig: And I kinda think that maybe they got what they were going for because originally, and I don’t remember, it was s- I don’t remember if it was attached to a particular director initially, but the, I know that the original script was a lot darker.

It was written by a couple of brothers, I guess, Robert and Stephen Charles Jaff, and it was, like, I don’t know, just more violent and graphic and had, like, bestiality in it and stuff. But when they got the director, Kevin Connor, he said that he would do it, but he wanted it to be a dark comedy because some of the crazier elements, I guess he thought if we played this totally straight, audiences aren’t gonna buy it.

Todd: Yeah. And I can see that. 

Craig: Yeah. And I can see that too. I think it was probably… I, I, I certainly wouldn’t, I don’t think. I mean, it would, it would take a lot to get me on board with some of these plot points if they weren’t presented in a ridiculous fashion, because they are ridiculous. Yeah. So- I don’t know.

I think it was, it was, uh, intended to be a little dark and weird and quirky, but it is a little bit slow too. I mean, I… How do, how do we wanna talk about what it’s about? I mean, it’s- 

Todd: Well, ultimately it’s, it’s a little bit inspired, I would say, slightly Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in that you have a, not a whole family, but you got, you got, you got a guy, and Nuts is not his wife, it’s his sister, right?

Craig: It’s, I, yeah, I thought it was his wife- For 

Todd: the longest time … or 

Craig: girlfriend or something for the longest time, but apparently it’s his sister, 

Todd: right? Yeah. So you got Vincent and Ida, and instead of running a restaurant, they run a motel. The Motel Hello, you know, which conveniently the O burns out at points to make it Motel Hell.

Right. And he serves his famous meats. Smoked meat. Smoked meats. Farmer Vincent’s Smoked Meats. This 

Craig: is it. 

Todd: So it’s so similar in that way to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ’cause they had what? They had a barbecue place, didn’t they? Yeah. 

Craig: I’m not confusing 

Todd: that with- 

Craig: That may have been part two. I don’t remember. 

Todd: Oh, maybe that was part two.

Craig: They definitely did cook people up, though, and serve them to people, that’s for sure. 

Todd: Yeah. And so, um, it, you know, it really kicks off with Farmer V- Vincent, who’s this man played by Rory Calhoun, who is a pretty well-known Western guy. He was in a million Westerns and all over television and stuff I think if you watch movies and TV in the ’80s, in particular if you were into Westerns, you would recognize this guy right away.

Craig: Yeah, he’s got a really recognizable face. I didn’t watch those types of things. My grandparents, my mom’s parents were into those shows, so they were kind of always on in the background. But he has that typical look, and if you look him up on- online, you’ll see old black and white photos of him where he’s, you know, a handsome, rugged kinda looking guy.

But ironically, I think I read that he was kind of known as being the reliable, trustworthy, good guy in most of the stuff that he did back in the day. So to put him in this more menacing role was a switch for him, but I thought that it played well because he’s supposed to be charming. Like, they’re well-respected in their community, and his meats are famous.

Todd: Yes. His smoked meats with no preservatives at all. I, I don’t know how this works. With 

Craig: no preservatives. 

Todd: I think you’d wanna refrigerate these no preservative smoked meats a lot more than they ever do in this movie, but… It’s, it’s similar, isn’t it, a way similar to Tourist Trap and Chuck Connors? I mean, it’s almost the- 

Craig: Yeah.

Yeah, for sure … 

Todd: it’s got a similar vibe. And you’ve got, again, this guy who played mostly, uh, the good guy in old country Westerns who’s later in his career playing against type in a horror movie just the year before this, Tourist Trap. The movie feels a bit like Tourist Trap, and- It does … weirdly enough, it’s almost like these guys swap notes, right?

Like, “Hey, uh, you should be in a horror movie like I was last year.” “Okay, I’ll do that. Thank you, partner.” 

Craig: Yeah, they are strikingly similar now that you mention it. I mean, even down to I, I feel like there was old man, young… Well, that guy, whoever you were just talking about, there was a love interest that was younger than him just- 

Todd: Yes

Craig: kind of like there is here, which is also- 

Todd: Yes. … 

Craig: weird, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The sister, Ida, is played by Nancy Parsons, and I’m like, “I recognize her. She’s been in stuff,” and she totally has. I think probably what I remember her from around the same time was Porky’s. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: Porky’s, uh, I think, I don’t know how many of them there were.

I think there were… I know there were two. There may have been three, and I think that she played the same character. I don’t remember if she was a coach or, or what, but she was such a popular character in the first one that they put her on the poster for the second one. And she’s hilarious. And she also played Janice Van Meter in Steel Magnolias- Right

who was the heavyset woman that Dolly Parton and Olympia Dukakis make fun of on the dance floor, and they say she looks like two pigs rustling under a blanket or something. 

Todd: Oh, God. Oh. Oh, 

Craig: Iris Van Meter. 

Todd: Back in the ’80s it was so fun to f- to laugh at fat people, right? God. 

Craig: But she’s funny. Like- She is … and, and she, i- if, if you look at her IMDb, I mean, she’s again been in everything.

Th- I, I could say the same thing about Rory Calhoun. You look at his IMDb page, you know, it’s just hundreds of credits with him in one episode of such and such. And same thing with her. She played a nurse a lot. She played a coach a lot, like in one episode of that show that you used to watch. Mm-hmm. And she’s very recognizable.

And I, I like the two of them. And I read that they were both really pleasant to work with, and they enjoyed each other, working with each other. I don’t remember who it was, somebody involved, I don’t remember if it was the director, but somebody in an interview much later talked about the making of the movie and said that it was a really positive experience.

They had a really good time. So that’s nice. 

Todd: One would hope so. Definitely much more positive and pleasant time apparently than Texas Chainsaw Massacre was. 

Craig: Yeah. Though again, some similarities because this d- because he do- well, he makes smoked meats. The big twist is what he’s making them out of, which is people, which is a twist enough.

Right. But that’s not the weird part. The fact, the fact that he sets up not even elaborate, but very simple traps on like a curve in the road to cause people to have accidents, and then he like gets them and turns them into meat, that’s, that’s enough for a horror movie. But that’s not the weird part. No.

Like that’s- 

Todd: It’s not the movie 

Craig: And I don’t even really understand- Ugh … the weird part either. 

Todd: It’s so bizarre. It is so bizarre, and it just happens without any explanation whatsoever, and this must have been what turned off a lot of people reading it. I think the, the brothers who wrote this, that combo really had a hard time getting studios interested in this.

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: U- United Artists finally came around after initially rejecting it because these shock films around 1980, 1979 were be- becoming big, and they’re like, “Well, this is a fricking bizarre, shocking thing, so maybe this will be a big hit.” So that’s why they picked it up, is because it was so strange and bizarre.

But before, just, just years before that, nobody wanted to touch it for that reason, and you can understand why. Ah, I guess we’ll get to it, but right now, like you said, it, it really… I, I think it jumps right in. You know, for a movie that felt a little slow, and certainly not slow because nothing was happening, but just slow to get to the interesting stuff, I thought, it starts off very promising.

Vincent is at his motel. He, uh, walks past his, uh, sister sleeping, so we establish that he’s got that girl, Ida, in there. Mm-hmm. They’ve got a preacher on television that they’re watching who turns out to be Wolfman Jack. 

Clip: Heat of hell, right? You bet. They walked across the sands and they knew they were sinners.

They knew that they didn’t know the word of the book that told them how they should behave, and they would get 

Todd: And that perked my dad’s ears up, because Wolfman Jack is from his era of radio. A very, very famous syndicated radio show out of, was it New York City? I can’t remember exactly. “Well, Wolfman Jack here.”

“Playing all the hits for you tonight.”

He’s been in a few horror movies. God, he was a featured voice in that one that we did that was kind of a musical. It was the made-for-TV one. You remember that? 

Craig: Wasn’t it Midnight, Midnight something? 

Todd: After Midnight? 

Craig: I don’t remember. Oh, God. It was a New Year’s Eve movie, wasn’t it? 

Todd: Yeah, a made-for-TV movie that it went off on all these interesting directions that had all those famous people in it or whatever.

Ah, God. 

Craig: Midnight Madness? 

Todd: No. 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: Yo, man, that’s gonna drive me nuts. It’ll, it’ll come to us by the end of the episode, I’m sure. I’ll b- I’ll be frantically googling it while you’re talking at some point. Yeah, but he’s in it and he is a preacher, and I suppose that in itself is supposed to be funny, ’cause this wildly liberal dude playing a preacher would be hilar- Kind of like Sam Kinison playing a preacher in one of these mo- Oh, oh, was it Ozzy Osbourne plays a televangelist- Yeah, yeah

being interviewed in, uh… Which movie was that? What was that? 

Craig: God, I don’t remember. 

Todd: We’re getting old. The, 

Craig: the Trick or Treat or something like that, I think. Trick or 

Todd: Treat. Yeah, that was it. That was. So anyway, so here we are. He goes out and, uh, we establish then that they’re, they’re very religious and, and then he goes out to the road with his gun and he s- sits off in the bushes and it looks like he’s about to do something, but really he’s just watching the road as a guy and his, a gal on a motorcycle, she’s on a sidecar, lose control.

Now, this was so… For a movie that’s pretty well shot, this was so poorly shot. I have no idea what caused them to lose control. Did you see anything? 

Craig: No, and I don’t know. I assume that he had set a trap because we find out that that’s what he does, but that’s so… It’s so early in the movie that maybe we’re not supposed to know that yet.

Todd: I guess. 

Craig: But I mean, it’s shady nonetheless because- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: the next thing we see, I mean, he walks up to them and they, they seem to be far more injured than they should be. Right. It didn’t really seem like that big of a deal. They 

Todd: just kinda bump into the tree and fall- tumble over. 

Craig: Yeah. They should’ve been…

I think they could’ve walked away from that one, but- Yeah, yeah … he carries her into the house. That was weird, too. It w- I assume they were a couple, but the guy that was riding the motorcycle was old. Yeah. And she looks like she’s supposed to be in her early 20s. You know, f- fairly typical beautiful blonde heroine of the movie.

But the farmer, Vincent, carries her in the house. 

Clip: Ida, come in here. I’m hungry, Vincent. What do you want? Good Lord has chosen to pluck this flower away from the Grim Reaper, and I wanna make good and sure he keeps his hands off her. I need your help. 

Craig: And he, like, tells Ida to- 

Todd: Do her thing? … 

Craig: get her ready or something.

Yeah. I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah. At first I thought- 

Craig: But I guess they’re just gon- they’re gonna keep her. 

Todd: Yeah, she’s the one they’re gonna keep. They’re not gonna make meat out of her. He wants to save her. Who knows why. There’s… It’s weird. He just- 

Craig: Well, ’cause she’s hot. 

Todd: Well, yeah, but he- I think … just kinda says it and leaves her very matter-of-factly and goes off.

There’s not, like, a moment, you know? There’s nothing to really establish that, except for he just drags her in and says that to her and then walks out. And there’s a couple who shows up at the hotel, motel. Well, I think it’s the next day, and he’s sh- br- showing off his meats that are sitting there on the shelf.

He pulls up a box. He’s like, “2.95 for a box of Farmer Vincent’s famous smoked meats. No preservatives, no nothing.” And I was like, “God, get me that box at $2.95.” I 

Craig: know. It was huge. I was thinking the same thing. I was like, “That would be $40 now.” Like… Easily. 

Todd: I would stock up. But you have to 

Craig: knock 

Todd: off a few 

Craig: bucks ‘

Todd: cause it, the…

If, if this, there are no preservatives in this meat and this has been sitting out on the shelf. 

Craig: That’s true. Yeah. No preservatives. 

Todd: And then there are two little girls that are twins. That’s so weird. Yeah. Right? They’re like the twins from The Shining. They’re dressed alike, they’re little, they’re cute, and they both have these identical mirrored Mylar balloons that they’re carrying like a cartoon.

They wander into the shed or processing plant there, and there’s just hogs hanging up in various carcasses and various states of… Again, not refrigerated or anything. There is a cooler in there And then as they’re walking through this creepy moment, someone with a hog’s head jumps up and scares them, and they go running out.

And that’s just kinda it. Like, they run out to Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad are ready to go anyway. The girls get in the car, and Farmer Vincent says, uh, “Don’t worry, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll calm them down.” And he goes over to the car and goes, “Rah!” 

Craig: That was so weird. Like, ’cause they’re freaking out ’cause they just got chased by this hog head person, and so they’re screaming, screaming, and the mom’s like, “I’ve never seen them act like this before.”

And then like, yeah, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll calm them down.” And then he, like, terrifies them into silence. Yeah. And the mom and, and the mom and dad are like, “Okay, thanks, bye.” And they leave. 

Todd: It’s such a strange sequence. And then he drives in his tractor to this vine-covered door, goes inside. We don’t really know what’s inside here yet, and then he puts on an eight-track.

I don’t know what, what was on this eight-track. Is it, was it sound effects that are masking something? I, I never sorted that out. I don’t 

Craig: know. 

Todd: And a cop shows up. Now, Ida jumps this cop, which is supposed to be a jump scare. You, you think he’s, she’s gonna kill him ’cause he kinda wanders on into the room.

Well, ’cause 

Craig: she’s carrying, like… And she’s carrying, like, a butcher knife or something. 

Todd: Yeah. But it, it’s a joke. Is it her brother or his brother? 

Craig: It’s his brother. 

Todd: His brother He’s got a pretty young brother 

Craig: Who is also the sheriff 

Todd: Yeah. I, I think, uh, honestly, like, too young to be this guy’s brother unless his parents just had some- 

Craig: Yeah

Todd: some very distant… You know how that works. It does happen. 

Craig: The… Yeah. I was gonna say, those old farmers, you know, if, if their, if their wives pass, they would often remarry younger women and have more kids. That’s not, that’s not all that uncommon around these parts. 

Todd: Ah, true. Actually, you have a very good point there.

I stand corrected on that one. Yeah, so anyway, this is, um, Bruce. That’s his name. Played by a man named Paul Link, or Linky- 

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know … 

Todd: who was also all over television. He was in Parenthood, which is one of my… I love that movie. I haven’t seen it recently, but the Parenthood from 1989 with, uh, Steve Martin in it.

I remember thinking that was the most hilarious thing. And yeah, and he’s just been all over television, was working all the way up until 2018, and he’s okay. I, I feel like this guy of all of the actors in here is maybe the, the least convincing in his role. 

Craig: I don’t know. I thought he was fine. What conv- I don’t…

And again, I… I mean, it’s not that I wasn’t paying attention, but I was laying in bed. It was late at night. I, so I, I, I may not be as sharp on the details as I sometimes am, but I thought for a while… You were just about to reveal the real big twist, w- as you should. But at this point, Terry has woken up. The sheriff tells…

She’s like, “Where’s my boyfriend?” And Vincent’s like, “Oh, he died.” 

Todd: Right. And, uh, and- … Vincent chimes in and is like, “Yeah, and I already buried him.” Like, what? 

Craig: Yeah. She’s like, “I wanna see him,” and he’s like, “Oh, sorry, I already buried him.” Yeah. And, and she’s like, “How can you do that without anybody’s permission?”

And the sheriff just kinda goes, “Around these parts under certain circumstances, it’s okay.” 

Todd: Oh, he literally says that. Under c- “It’s okay.” 

Craig: It’s okay. 

Todd: And they, and they take her to this makeshift grave and this makeshift cemetery. It’s It’s 

Craig: funny. But from that point she’s just living with them. 

Todd: And she’s cool with it.

Craig: Like, she doesn’t seem to really object. It’s- 

Todd: No … 

Craig: bizarre. She 

Todd: gets over this boyfriend very quickly. They must not have been together very long. Oh, maybe he’s too old for her anyway. 

Craig: Maybe, maybe she’s, maybe she’s a road twitch that… But, but what was weird to me is not o- okay, so she lives there, but going back to the sheriff brother, he’s always hanging around, and he’s always talking about, like, how great the meat is and stuff too.

I thought for the longest time that he was a part of the operation. 

Todd: Yes, me too, and he has no clue. 

Craig: No, I was s- I was shocked later to find out that he didn’t know about it because it seemed like he was in on it all along. 

Todd: Yeah. Seems like he’s… I mean, especially his activity here where he’s like, “Yeah, well, we buried the guy.”

Like, “Sorry, ma’am, it just happens. It’s what we do.” 

Craig: No, so apparently he’s just real dumb, I guess. 

Todd: Yeah. So maybe him playing dumb was just me thinking that he was too simple in his role, honestly. Honestly, I shouldn’t criticize it too much because it’s really the writing that’s silly, you know? This guy’s doing the best he can with the character he’s been given, which is this dumb cop who eventually kind of is trying to woo this girl.

Craig: Yeah, but e- that’s gross too. Yeah. And, and again, that’s like… It’s really weird because it seems like he goes from being as suspicious almost as his brother and his sister, I guess. I guess they’re all siblings Which is weird. Up, like up to a certain point and then it’s like, oh, no, he’s a good guy. But up to that point he’s gross.

Like- Yeah, he’s 

Todd: gross and shady. 

Craig: Yeah. And he at some point invi- ta- invites her out. I don’t remember if he invites her out on a date or if he just out on a drive or what, but they drive to I guess like Lover’s Lane or the equivalent, I don’t know, some like overlook or something. Mm. And there’s a whole bunch of cars here.

This was the only part of the movie that potentially might have made me chuckle. Because he pulls up behind all these cars and he gets on his radio or whatever and, and says, “Hey, this is the sheriff and you’re all committing crimes or breaking the law or something. Get out of here.” And he starts calling out the cars one by one.

And you may as well have had that music behind it, the like… The Benny Hill theme song, yeah. Yeah, the Benny Hill. Yeah, because they, because they all just start to scatter. But my favorite one was one couple, for reasons unexplainable, gets out of the car fully nude- … to just kind of throw their arms up in the air and run around in circles for a second and then get back in the car and leave.

Todd: That’s so dumb. 

Craig: That was hilarious to

me. Hilariously stupid. I was like, “What are you doing?” You’re, uh, fully nude, just get out of the car, like jump around for a few minutes, then get back in. Oh, boy. 

Todd: There’s just a lot of stuff like this like that’s just so simple and basic that I’m thinking, I guess this is their attempt at comedy. 

Craig: Well, and I actually found that funny, but I lost my train of thought.

My train of thought was the whole reason that he evacuates all those people is so that they have a good view of the drive-in. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: They’re gonna watch it from this overlook, which, you know, that’s fine, noth- that’s actually kind of, you know, romantic, good idea, whatever. But as soon as she gets into the movie, he starts like manhandling her.

Yeah. Like… 

Todd: Yeah, like he gets very rapey all of a sudden. 

Craig: Yeah, yeah. And eventually when he does think that she calls for help, she doesn’t actually, it’s a cry over the radio, but when he thinks she cries for help he’s like, “Okay, gosh, sorry,” and he does back off. But before that he’s gross. I mean, he tackles her and- Yeah

and gets on top of her. 

Todd: And then once they find out that there’s a cry for help over the radio she’s just like fine again. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Like this guy who just tried to- jump her is, uh, “No, they’re just cool now.” 

Craig: Yeah, they’re friendly from then on. 

Todd: There’s a lot of this in the movie where people are… It’s not realistic, you know?

And most comedies aren’t, but, you know, it’s especially- Right … it’s not realistic in a way that it almost feels like a teenager wrote this. You know? “All right, now they’re gonna do this, now they’re gonna do that,” but there’s no flow. There’s no, like, sense of where, okay, yeah, but how are their emotions gonna shift to allow this to happen?

And the point is, no, they don’t. It’s just a, it’s just plot. And so I think that was another thing that kinda made me roll my eyes at this movie. Like, it’s like the way that this cop ingratiates himself to her in the first place is she is completely distraught over her boyfriend’s death and crying, and then he g- goes up next to her and he says- 

Clip: What is it, child?

You feel all alone in this world? None of us are ever really alone. You do have someone What do you mean? Why, you have yourself. Think about it. You’ve been blessed, child. Oh, the ways of the Lord are mysterious. The very fact that you’re sitting here with us proves that it was preordained

Yeah I guess you’re right 

Craig: Oh my God. 

Todd: And now she’s h- she’s fine again. This grieving process of this woman was, was instantaneous. Just quick turnaround from grieving her dead boyfriend, who these people buried without her permission, into undying gratitude for this man and willing to go out on a date with him immediately.

There’s just so much plot and not a lot of attention paid to making it make a lot of sense in the real world. 

Craig: Well, and because ultimately it’s all very unimportant. A- and, and- 

Todd: Yeah, that’s true … I 

Craig: mean, there really, there really is no- 

Todd: There’s nothing important in this movie 

Craig: No, we’re not working towards anything.

It’s just a vehicle for this weird scenario, basically. And maybe the reason that she’s not into the sheriff is because he’s too young for her, because she’s apparently only into super old guys because- … pretty soon she starts falling for th- the farmer. 

Todd: Which comes out of nowhere. 

Craig: I don’t know. I mean, it’s, it’s just clunky.

It’s like… It’s, it’s later, I, but… And I don’t even remember what it was, but he, like, rescues her from something or saves her from something. Oh, from drowning, because Ida starts to get jealous and tries to drown her. Yeah Which was also a hilarious scene. But we’re, we’re … The big twist is at some point, it doesn’t matter where, somewhere about a third of the way through the movie, we get introduced to this garden.

And at first it just looks like a regular garden, but then it comes to one particular patch where there is something covered in burlap sacks- 

Todd: Yeah, a bunch 

Craig: of burlap- … moving around. 

Todd: Yeah 

Craig: Moving around. You know, some, uh, some sort of crop- Mm-hmm … planted into the garden. Could be a cabbage. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Could be a tomato plant.

You don’t know, but it’s moving around and making noise. And- And that’s odd … 

Todd: and the inspector who had been coming before to inspect his plant, his hog plant, came back late at night, I guess unannounced, and decided he wanted to poke around the property, which is what brings him into this garden. I think he even climbs over to get in.

And when he lifts up one of these burlap sacks, which is moving around and making noise, he hears a sound from the speakers and he gets clubbed by Vincent from behind. And it turns out that Vincent and Ida are planting their victims into the ground. 

Craig: Alive 

Todd: They’re burying them up to their necks alive.

Ida, I guess she was a nurse or something like that. She knows how to sever their vocal cords so that they can’t do more than just make these, like- Ah … kind of sounds. 

Craig: Uh, oh, it, it, it’s horrible. Mm-hmm. They’re horrible, disgusting sounds. 

Todd: Yep. 

Craig: Ugh, gross. 

Todd: And to what end, I’m not sure. Like, is this their way of aging the meat or something?

See, when I was a kid watching this, I had the impression there was some supernatural thing happening here. You know? Like, they had this special method for doing something with these bodies And that’s why they planted them, like it was a magical ground or they were turning them into creatures or something like that.

That was my recollection. But there really isn’t. It’s just like a way of torturing these guys for a little while. 

Craig: Well, I read a summary somewhere that said they’re fattening them up, and, and may- I… They’re… We do see a- Well, they 

Todd: force feed them, yeah … 

Craig: where they force feed them, right. But I don’t know. It’s just so strange.

Like what? And it’s just- It’s just 

Todd: strange to be strange … 

Craig: if there is an explanation for why, if I missed it because I don’t remember them ever saying, “I know it tenderizes the meat,” or keeps their temperature low or something, y- I- Yeah … I have no idea. It’s just so that it can look like a cabbage patch of zombie heads.

Mm. Because they basically seem like zombies even though they’re not, right? Like, they’re- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: they are still fully aware. Like, they just can’t talk because their vocal cords- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: she does, you know, uh, apparently precision surgery right there in the garden, and sews them back up, and they’re just fine, and they just…

Oh, my God. It’s so weird and stupid. 

Todd: I mean, when you think about it, it’s actually pretty horrifying, if you think about it. I mean, you’re buried up to your neck. You can’t move at all. Oh, 

Craig: yeah. 

Todd: You’re stuck there. It’s just your head. You can’t scream nothing, and you, you can’t move. I mean, how claustrophobic would that feel?

It’s like being buried alive, but you have, uh, air. And they come in every now and then and force feed them. They have to defecate somewhere, so I guess they’re doing that in the ground where they are. I c- they got a lot of cleaning to do after they pull up these weeds. Let’s just put it that way. 

Craig: Gross.

Todd: Yeah, the whole thing when you, when you think about it is super gross, and I would feel like a modern movie would really ki- would really kinda human centipede this, you know? They would really try to play up how sinister and dark this is, and what it’s really doing to these people. But because this movie is just so off the wall and it just feels more cartoonish than anything else.

Craig: Yeah. It does. It feels like a really dark Scooby-Doo episode. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I mean, I can just see the Scooby Gang all buried up to their necks and, oh, gosh. But yeah, it is… It’s, it’s goofy like that and I don’t remember… I thought I remembered it being something, some commentary on meat consumption. I, I almost thought that it was, like, critical of meat consumption, and I don’t know if it’s meant to be or not.

Mm-hmm. I think it’s more just about maybe… And, and to say it’s about anything is- Giving it some credit … a stretch, but yeah. You know, there may be some commentary there on consumerism and whatever. But yeah, it’s just strange. It’s just like… It’s, it’s like a, a nightmare scenario. I mean, and, and to be fair- You know, as you said, if you think about it, it is really nightmarish and it is a great visual.

It looks cool. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But it’s, it’s almost like they had an idea of something that would look cool and they were right and they kinda built a movie around it, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. Yeah, 

Todd: it doesn’t make sense. 

Craig: It just, well, and it just allows for them to play in that cool set piece.

Yeah. That’s it. Like, there’s no purpose to it. It’s just that it can look cool and they can play there. 

Todd: To be honest, aside from the fact that it’s established pretty early on that they’re killing people and he’s grinding them up for meat, we never actually really see him kill anybody. 

Craig: No. 

Todd: We never see him grinding up bodies for meat.

We never see him cackling in delight when somebody’s eating his sausages or whatever like that. Like, we never s- I don’t think we even ever see anybody eating this meat. So- 

Craig: Yeah, I mean, you see him eating, like, meat sticks and stuff. That’s true. But it’s not like they’re gnawing on raw meat or human meat.

Yeah. And I mean, it is in a slaughterhouse, so you, I mean, you see sides of pork- Pork and stuff … and whatnot. And event- well, but eventually he has human torsos. Uh, I mean, they look fake. They’re obviously styrofoam the way they’re moving around, but- Yeah … my point is, you do see some scary imagery, but there’s not, you’re right, there’s not a lot of on-screen violence Or gore, uh, save for kind of the very, very end, which still isn’t really very explicit.

Todd: And so this set piece here is the only thing that serves to give us any real 

Craig: shock? 

Todd: Shock, yeah, I guess. Uh, character stuff with Vincent and Ida allow them to play together, because otherwise this just comes off as a goofy-ish comedy. Because there becomes this whole plot where Terry falls in love with Vincent.

Craig: Yeah. Right. 

Todd: Which comes out of nowhere, but it’s like you said, it’s after he saves her from drowning. And then V- and she tries to kiss him, which was just so- She 

Craig: tries to seduce him … 

Todd: really fast. 

Craig: She throws her… Yeah. 

Todd: It’s so gross. Everything about it was strange. It comes out of nowhere. The- there’s a huge age difference.

You can’t imagine that she’s actually attracted to him. 

Craig: Well, and it feels incestuous too. Yeah. Like, I know that they’re not biologically related, but it definitely felt like a father-daughter kind of relationship up to this point, and then that just makes it even creepier. 

Todd: And then he’s all weird about it because he’s religious and he’s like, “We need to be married first before we can even kiss.”

And so then he goes downtown to the preacher to talk to him about it, and he gets a, an engagement ring for her, and he… There’s a moment where he proposes this to her. I, I mean, this is almost like a whole separate movie with a whole separate tone, and it’s so stupid. It feels so forced and basic, just like a wacky cartoon that we’re watching that’s not even that wacky.

Just kind of, just kind of cringey. 

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I, I, I didn’t love it either, but I thought that it was fairly apropos for the type of movie that it is. It also reminded me a lot of, I, I won’t be able to remember the name of it, but there was a movie where, I don’t know, a couple of couples or something went to an island and there was a weird family that lived there.

And the kids were like grown-ups, but they still acted like kids. 

Todd: American Gothic. 

Craig: Do you remember that ? American Gothic. 

Todd: Yeah, mm-hmm. 

Craig: Yeah. This reminds me a lot of that. I, I mean, even- Oh, yeah … even the box art for this movie, the, the brother and sister, Ida and Vincent, are s- are standing like the, the painting American Gothic.

Todd: It’s true. It’s true. That did it better. That struck a better tone, I thought. 

Craig: Maybe. I think there’s a fair argument there. But again, it’s just take whatever, everyday people, your victims or whatever, put them in this insane environment with, with wacky characters and, and just watch for a little while So I don’t, I don’t know.

I don’t want to accuse you of being overly harsh because everything that you are saying I, I don’t disagree with. I just, I didn’t hate it. 

Todd: Well, I had to keep reminding myself that this is sort of a product of its time, and I think the humor w- is just… Like, nowadays our humor’s just a little bit more, I don’t wanna say sophisticated.

I’m not sure what the word is I’m looking for, but I don’t think we have the patience for this kind of basic humor like this anymore because our movies are, I don’t know, they’re just- they just strike a different tone, and it’s hard to go back to this anymore. It would be like watching Meatballs today.

It works and it’s funny. You can’t say it’s not funny, but it’s just not our style anymore. And I feel like for its time this movie was probably just a bizarre, fun, goofy little spectacle that nobody knew what to do with, and for that, you know, it- it’s, it’s interesting. But now I feel like years later it feels kind, just kinda stupid tonally, and I, I couldn’t really laugh at it.

And it’s so cartoonish that to even call it a dark comedy just feels off because our comedy, our dark comedies nowadays can be so freaking dark that this feels like child’s play in that arena. Do you know what I’m saying? 

Craig: Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I, I mean, I, in a nutshell I feel like you’re saying it’s a product of its time- Yeah

and, and it may not appeal to modern sensibilities. And, and I 100% agree. Like, my high school students would think this was so dumb, and I don’t think they would get why anybody would find it amusing or, or humorous. I think I still am a little bit nostalgic for that. Right. To be fair, dumb humor a lot of the time is a comfort for me because- 

Todd: Mm

Craig: the world feels very serious and heavy a lot of the time- Yeah … right now, and it’s just kind of nice to just to revert back to that 13 or 14-year-old boy who was carefree and could laugh about farts and you 

Todd: know, like- Well, yeah. And I… 100% behind you on that, and I think that’s why I couldn’t hate this movie.

I, I get kinda tired of… Because I think we’ve been getting it since the ’90s, this sort of edgy, self-aware, cynical, you know? It, it… Just everything, from children’s cartoons even. Everything’s with a wink and a nod and edgy and cynical and doesn’t take itself seriously, that I feel like i- i- that was fun for a while.

But now I, I, I want movies that are with heart, you know? I k- I kinda want some movie that even though it’s dumb, it’s just really going in for dumb. Or- 

Craig: Yeah … 

Todd: did you see the Masters of the Universe movie? 

Craig: Not yet. 

Todd: Okay. I’m very biased because I was a huge He-Man fan growing up. And I know that that movie is not doing well in the theaters, but it doesn’t seem to matter because I think Amazon is thrilled because they’ve gotten the audience they were looking for, and it’s gone over really well with that audience.

Craig: Good. 

Todd: And their, their whole business model is very different. You know, they don’t really care so much about box office numbers. They care about getting subscriptions and, and targeting these niche groups with, with products and things like that. So to that level, it was successful. And I’ll tell you as a fan why I thought it was successful and why it worked for me and why I went back to see it a second time Is because it wasn’t poking fun at its subject matter every 10 minutes.

It wasn’t turning to the audience and laughing and winking and going, “Isn’t this silly?” You know, all these men running around. Like, it is silly. The He-Man universe is goofy as hell. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: It’s so stupid. All right, we know that. It’s silly, but we like it anyway. And so it gave us a movie, it played it straight with, uh, still a lot of comedy, still a lot of fun, and still a lot of humor, but it retained the heart of, “This is the story.

This is the universe. We make no apologies for these characters, and we’re not gonna just laugh at them in this sort of meta way.” Like, the Barbie movie did that really well, too. And so I feel like I’m hoping that we’re turning a corner here. And, uh, this is a very roundabout way of saying, “Yes, I agree with you.”

I… This kind of thing is, es- to a certain degree, very comforting because it’s just boldly going in a direction and it’s not trying to be cute and meta and winky and- Uh-huh … which ends up sometimes just feeling, like, cynical and insincere. 

Craig: Yeah. Ah. 

Todd: Okay. Maybe I’ve apologi- maybe I’ve, you know… I haven’t changed my opinion on the movie.

I still found it kinda boring and I was still rolling my eyes at it and whatnot. I get it. But, but still, I, I’m not gonna say I hated it and I’m not gonna discourage people from watching it. 

Craig: Right. I… And honestly, I felt the same way. Like, I wasn’t super enthused about it either. Uh, before we started recording, Alan thought we had already recorded this morning, and he asked how the podcast went.

And I said, “Oh, I, we haven’t done it yet.” I said, “But gosh, I don’t really know what I’m gonna say about this movie.” And here we are, here we are an hour in. But I didn’t love it either, but I mean, it was, you know, something easy to watch. It’s brainless. And the things that we’re picking apart like, “Oh, that’s so stupid,” yeah, they are stupid, but whatever.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: It’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a dumb movie. I don’t think it’s trying to be, trying… I don’t think it’s trying to be anything that it isn’t. You know? It’s- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: it, it… So I, I actually would recommend it ’cause I do think that it’s, though a little bit slow, I do think that it’s pretty well made. Ultimately, the cop, who’s the brother, gets suspicious when he finds out that farmer Vincent and the girl are getting married, and so he starts poking around.

I don’t remember. His 

Todd: jealousy drives him. 

Craig: His jealousy drives him, and I guess at this point he becomes kind of the hero. Yeah. And we find out that he didn’t know what his brother was doing and, gosh, I don’t know. Uh- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: for reasons that I don’t understand, right before the wedding or on the wedding night or something, Ida puts something in the girl’s drink and she passes out.

Now, I thought Ida was trying to poison and kill her- 

Todd: Uh-huh … 

Craig: because it seems like even though Ida and Vincent are brother and sister, it also seems like she’s jealous. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But then she also looks at girly magazines, so I don’t know what’s going on with her. 

Todd: Yeah, she’s an enigma, this Ida character. 

Craig: But the girl just passes out.

Now, I don’t know what they were planning on… And, and Vincent is in on it. He apparently was in on the drugging. I don’t know what that’s about. I don’t know what they were going to do with her. 

Todd: Yeah. But Vincent’s kinda 180 here. Like, was this all an elaborate thing for them to just get her dead too? He seems very sincere and interested in marrying her, but then w- as soon as she drugs the girl, which she seems to do without Vincent’s permission, or was he in on it?

Craig: Well, he doesn’t act surprised when she passes out. 

Todd: No, he doesn’t. And he’s like, “All right, well, go, we’ll go to work on her.” What? Wh- why, why did that come in and out of nowhere? W- were we supposed to believe that this was all an elaborate ploy for him to mess with this girl for a while before they gave her the same fate as everyone else?

It’s just baffling to me. Again, I just feel like it’s a very plot-driven movie, and now they just wanted the plot to go in this direction, so they made this scene so that the plot could go in that direction. 

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. And then, like, there’s other weird stuff going on with the garden, like I don’t even know, like- Oh, 

Todd: man

Craig: and we, I mean, we skipped a bunch. Like, there’s other victims from the road. Like, he traps a whole band, and the lead singer of that band is Cliff from Cheers. Did you notice that’s John Ratzenberger? Oh my God. I didn’t recog- I didn’t recognize him at all. 

Todd: No. 

Craig: Um- I did not … I didn’t, uh, until… I, I didn’t even read about it until after the fact.

Todd: Well, I saw the name come up in the credits, and I was looking for him through the whole movie, and I didn’t think I could find him, and I thought, “Well, he must’ve had, like, a tiny bit role in the background someplace.” 

Craig: He was the lead singer of that band in the van. Oh, interesting. Uh, and then there’s, there’s also a swinger couple who are like…

That was weird. 

Todd: That was charming for me. Again, because it was so dated. Like, I thought if you had seen this movie back in 1980, probably all of this would seem so modern and hilarious to y- hilarious to you. But now if I was watching this with some young person, I would have to decode everything they were talking about.

It, it reminded me of Terror Vision. You remember? Half of the comedy of Terror Vision is about this swinging couple, and they’re, they’re making all these innuendos that don’t make sense today. Like, about how, oh, he’s very Greek and all that, which at the time was slang for homosexual or something. And-

it’s very similar here. Like, they’ve had these innuendos that I think if you were not of the era, you would have you scratching your head and would go right over it. They just seem like they’re bizarre. And then there’s that scene where they they go for no real reason, they cut to the room and she’s dressed up in some leather outfit, and she’s got a whip, and we get a good five minutes of her just running around, I guess, practicing with her whip.

Craig: That was weird.

Todd: And then- 

Craig: You didn’t know what was happening … 

Todd: the woman just whips everything in the room, just completely destroys the room, and then the guy comes out in the w- the weirdest, most sexually unappealing mishmash of costumery you could possibly imagine. 

Craig: Like, and like lingerie. It 

Todd: was strange. With a plastic skirt and all…

I mean, ha ha ha, look at how kinky they are. They’re so kinky that d- they’re just completely over the top. And she starts… He’s like, “Rub me with oil. Rub me with oil.” And she’s pouring oil all over his chest, and he’s just getting off on her, like, rubbing oil into his clavicle. I mean, it it’s just dumb. 

Craig: Well, right, and then Ida and Victor, whatever his name is, come in carrying ropes and stuff, and they’re like, “Yeah, come join us.”

Like, ew. 

Todd: Tie us up. 

Craig: Which they do and then- Yeah … bury them, I guess. Yeah, so there’s a whole garden full of people, but they, you know… I don’t even ultimately know what happens to them. I feel like- Yeah … some of them- 

Todd: They get hypnotized … 

Craig: like, maybe break out? 

Todd: Well, ultimately. Ultimately, what happens to them is that they end up breaking out, and I don’t understand why.

I don’t understand how. One of them gets loose, and I think it’s the, her boyfriend, right? 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: Terry’s boyfriend gets loose somehow and is able to pull himself out, and he more or less digs the others out, and then it becomes kind of a pseudo-zombie movie because they’re stumbling down the streets with the smoke behind them in the dark, gurgling- Gurgle

’cause they can’t make any sounds, and coming after the couple. 

Craig: God, I don’t even remember that. All I remember is that the, Bruce, the sheriff, is trying to rescue her, and they’re in the slaughterhouse and, like, he’s slaughtered some people, and he’s got their torsos, like, hung up on hooks, and he’s putting it in the smoker and stuff.

But Bruce shows up. There’s fighting between Bruce and Ida at some point. Yeah. But then the, the big showdown is this big chainsaw duel between- … Vincent, who’s now wearing that pig head. By the way- Oh, 

Todd: God … 

Craig: it must have been Ida in the pig head the first time, right? I guess so. It had to have been. It had 

Todd: to have been, yeah, ’cause Vincent was out, was in the other place, yeah.

Craig: I was really confused by that. But anyway, so he’s in this big pig head thing, and they have a chainsaw fight. Now To just kind of throw in the pig head thing, I mean, sure, why not? And it looks really good, and I guess that, that image of him kind of standing in the doorway kind of Texas Chainsaw style with the chainsaw up and him in this big pig mask, that image was used on a cover of Fangoria that if you can get your hands on now is worth a lot of money because it was recalled.

Like- Too gory … once it was on, yeah, once it was on the shelves, it was considered too gory, so they recalled it- That’s crazy … and put out a different cover. 

Todd: For Fangoria. 

Craig: I know. Jesus. But I know. It, I know. I– God, it seemed like there was always gory stuff, but maybe not on the cover. I don’t remember. But I agree that that image itself, I feel like I’m familiar with that image more than I am with the movie.

Todd: Well, it’s been copied. It’s a thing. 

Craig: Is– Was- 

Todd: Even like in- Was 

Craig: that- … 

Todd: Saw, right? … 

Craig: Saw? 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah Somebody had a pig head mask in… Oh, what’s that movie? Is it the, not The Stranger. Is it The Strangers? No, they have other masks. 

Craig: No, I- It’s 

Todd: a home- … 

Craig: You’re Next … 

Todd: home invasion movie. Yeah, You’re Next that does that too, and maybe that all came from this movie.

I don’t know. But when you think about the logistics of this It makes no sense. Like, he can’t even- No … see out of that. He’s ju- he literally has a pig’s carcass’s head over his head, right? 

Craig: Yeah, and it’s enormous. If that came off of a real pig, it would be ridiculously heavy. 

Todd: Yeah, and how can he see? 

Craig: He’d be bobbling around.

Todd: Yeah. It’s just like, it’s very impractical, and I can’t imagine it’d be very pleasant to wear either. 

Craig: I don’t know. But they fight. They have a duel with chainsaws, which is fine. I, I guess this was a last-minute rewrite. It wasn’t initially in, and then it became kind of the most iconic scene of the movie.

And it’s fine. They fight, and all the while, Terry, the girl, is on the conveyor belt, like being pulled towards the meat slicer. So it’s a race against time. But, uh, eventually he mortally wounds Vincent with the chainsaw. Like, he, he gets him in the torso, and immediately is concerned, like, “Oh, Vincent.” Like, this guy was just trying to kill you, but okay, whatever.

He swings in on a rope. That was the weirdest thing. Like, so in one scene, he’s in with Vincent, he’s like, “Oh, gosh. Oh, Vincent,” and then the next scene we cut back to her on the conveyor belt, and f- from the back wall he swings in, like I guess on one of the chains for the meat, I don’t know. But like Tarzan swings in just so that he can flip a switch- 

Todd: Yes

Craig: to turn off… Like, why didn’t you just run in there? Like, dramatic.

Right. But he gets in there and he turns the switch off so she’s fine, and then they both go in there and they’re like, “Oh, Vincent, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.” What the… He’s psychotic. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: And then this part was also hilarious because there, it’s, there’s very dramatic music. Uh-huh. And they treat this as the emotional climax of the movie, and they play it 100% straight.

Uh-huh. And it’s so funny. Like, he’s like, “You can have the motel and, and you can have the farm. Just… A- and you can have the garden.” And she’s like, “What garden?” And he’s like, “The secret garden.” And then he doesn’t say anything else about it. And then he’s like, “Oh, oh, and take care of my animals.” And the guy’s like, “Yeah, I’ll, I’ll take care of your animals.”

And he’s like, “My whole life’s been a lie.” And they’re like, “What?” And I, again, straight as an arrow they play this thing. He says with great remorse and, and much emotion, “I used-” artificial preservatives. And then he dies. 

Todd: I chuckled at that. 

Craig: Uh- I 

Todd: did chuckle at that. 

Craig: I chuckled at it too. That- 

Todd: Mm-hmm … 

Craig: in the moment I recognized, oh, this is so funny because they’re playing it so straight.

Like, more than in any other part of the movie, they’re really committing to this with the score and everything. Yeah. And it worked. And, you know, then it’s silly. Like, they walk out together. Now, where I thought that this was going was that as horrified as Terry and Bruce had appeared to be by everything that was going on, I thought that they were gonna take over the operation.

Clip: Hmm. 

Craig: Why I thought that, I don’t know. No. Apparently, apparently that’s not what happens. They walk away from the motel and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, this place is awful. That’s why I ran away when I was little.” What? What are you talking about? He’s like, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it.” And she’s like, “What do you mean what you’re gonna do with it?

Burn it down.” He says, “You mean arson?” And she says, “That’s what I’d do. This place is evil.” Cut to black, the end. Like what? 

Todd: Yeah. Oh my God. 

Craig: Ah. Wrap it up. Yeah, wrap it up. Okay, folks, it’s over. Go home. 

Todd: The horrors of arson. 

Craig: Yeah. And then there’s some great honky-tonk music over the credits that I very much enjoyed.

Todd: Ah. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a goofy movie. It’s goofy. It’s, it’s… I, I wouldn’t go so far to say as it’s good, but I can understand why it has its fans. I would imagine that if you’re somebody who saw this around the time that it came out- Hmm … it may have even kind of been a breath of fresh air. I don’t think that a lot…

I don’t think there were a lot of horror comedies. I mean, they’ve always been around. We’ve done some that predate this, but I don’t think they were as common as they are today. Especially, I mean, this is right around the era that we were heading r- right into the big slasher explosion. And this is, uh, a little different.

It’s quirky. It’s a little slow. It’s too long. Yeah. Way too long. It should’ve been, it should’ve been an hour and 28 minutes instead of an hour and 40 however minutes it was. But I don’t think it’s a waste of time. I, I can see why it has its fans. I can see why it has a cult following. I can see why it has a reputation, and for those reasons, I think it’s worth your time.

But temper your expectations. It’s not great. 

Todd: Yeah, I think this is why I remembered it more fondly than I, than I experienced it this time around, is because I think probably for its time it was a bit of a breath of fresh air. When I saw it, quirky enough and bizarre enough that I was like, “Wow, this is clever in how quirky and bizarre,” and this irreverent comic romp that goes in all these strange directions and changes tone a lot.

But ultimately, like for today’s audience, like you, I’m not gonna say don’t watch it, but I don’t know. I’m not gonna see it again. I’m not that… I would watch Tourist Trap again, you know? I’d watch Terrorvision again. I’d watch Terrorvision 20 times. 

Craig: Maybe. 

Todd: But this, no, it, it just, it was just too dumb for me, and that’s all I have to say, I guess.

Craig: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough I don’t know. I just, uh, the people who talk to us, I feel like some of them would get a kick out of this, but I totally see where you’re coming from. By the way, The Midnight Hour. 

Todd: Thank you. The Midnight Hour. Oh, man. With that fantastic slow-mo scene. 

Craig: Dance sequence. 

Todd: Oh, the dance sequence is great.

Craig: Oh, that, I liked, 

Todd: yeah. But the one with The Smiths song in the, in the cellar with the slow motion with their swinging around and the blood, the wine that’s kinda flowing like blood. 

Craig: God, I don’t remember that part. Oh, 

Todd: such a 

Craig: good scene. It’s a good movie, though. I liked that movie. 

Todd: Yeah, that was a fun movie.

Craig: Check that one out. 

Todd: That was silliness and dumbness that kinda worked. Uh, that was really campy. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah, this one- 

Craig: That one’s more fun. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Watch that one. 

Todd: Watch The Midnight Hour. Skip Motel Hell and go to The Midnight Hour. Didn’t you think it was a little on the nose, too, that they showed the, the sign just before the end credits, they zoomed in on the sign Motel Hello and sparked out the O in very slow and dramatic fashion like we didn’t know this was going on?

Craig: Uh- … I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. 

Todd: Well, thank you guys for listening and, and we hope you enjoyed this show. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Please write us a review on those podcast, uh, review places like Apple Podcast. We love to see those, and that also helps drive more traffic towards our show.

You can look us up, Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast. We’ll get you to our website, our Facebook, and social media pages. We got a Patreon, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Full unedited episodes after we record them are immediately out. That’s our whole phone call, including what we talk about before and after and all those juicy bits that we leave out of the general public eye, if you enjoy it, or their ear, I guess you could say.

If you enjoy this, please consider subscribing, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Only five bucks a month gets you that, gets you our book club, and a whole bunch of other goodies. Until next time, I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We tackle Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 thanks to a patron request, expecting another cheap public-domain cash grab after the poorly reviewed first film, but we’re surprised by the improved budget, production value, and approach.

We discuss how the sequel goes meta by treating the first movie as a film-within-the-film, allowing recasts and retcons, and how the movie leans into extreme, Terrifier-style gore with a huge rave massacre and creative kills.

We break down the updated creature designs—especially Owl as a mastermind and Tigger’s Freddy-inspired vibe—plus Christopher Robin’s added backstory involving a mad scientist, kidnapped children, and Pooh revealed as his brother Billy. We also cover the ending, mid-credits tease of Pooh and Piglet returning, and the franchise’s planned crossover “cinematic universe.”

Episode 495, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m  Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: Well, this actually came as a request from one of our patrons, Jessica. And it’s a good thing she did request this, because I don’t think you and I would have voluntarily done this movie. Who knows? We probably would have gotten to it.

We’ve done a lot of strange things on this. But I think you and I bo- well, I don’t know. I’m just gonna speak for me right now, is I have not been at all interested in this twisted childhood universe of- Mm-hmm … public domain, you know, pre-Disney character childhood favorites like Winnie the Pooh and Bambi and Pinocchio and all that stuff they’re making horror movies of.

Because of the first of these, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, I didn’t watch it, but I saw screenshots from it and I read the reviews and it sounded like it was absolute garbage. That’s what everybody said about it, and sounded like a quick cash grab. And it was produced by a guy who does these just quickie direct-to-video movies for, like, $10,000.

You know, they shoot them in like 5 to 10 days and put them on the shelves. Which, don’t get me wrong, this is a very respectful thing to do. 

Craig: Yeah, 

Todd: sure. It’s fine. It, it makes money and it has an audience, and I actually enjoy a lot of those films. So I’m not knocking the idea that you will take something that’s coming out, make a cheap copy of it, or do something quirky and clever like this, but not put m- many resources into it, you know, and throw it out there not expecting it to do much, but at least hoping to make some money off of it.

That’s fine, but, uh, it’s not typically the kind of thing I want to sit down and watch usually. So I, I didn’t give it this much credit at all. And then to see that they made a sequel of it, I was like, “Oh my God, of course.” You know? Just the, the weirdness of it gave them… I think that movie had $50,000 budget and it grossed over 7 million.

This movie had a $500,000 budget and grossed about 7 million worldwide. So you know, there’s an audience for it. But the first one is not well reviewed. It’s like 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. This one is closer to 50, and I have to say, I was actually surprised. This wasn’t what I was expecting. I guess the more money that went into it and a few talented people came on board to up things quite a bit.

And it wasn’t what I expected, let’s just put it that way. I don’t think it bears much resemblance to the original movie at all. So, you know, thanks Jessica for the request, and I’m looking forward to chatting about this with Craig. This seems like one of those movies you might have had on in the background.

Craig: No, because I could almost repeat verbatim what you just said. The first one really turned me off. Now, I was initially kind of interested when they first announced the first Blood and Honey, and you know, the story was, it was because A.A. Milne’s original characters from the Winnie-the-Pooh, the first Winnie-the-Pooh book had entered public domain, and they were gonna make a horror movie out of it.

And I thought, “Well, that’s really stupid,” but- 

Todd: Could be fun … 

Craig: it could be a lot of fun. Yeah. Right. And so I was kind of excited about it, and, you know, anything that I would see about it, it didn’t sound particularly promising once it was actually in production, and I was seeing stills and the, the guys just looked like any big slasher guy in a relatively inexpensive rubber mask.

Like it- Yeah … it didn’t look good. But I thought I’d give it a chance anyway, and it, you know, it opened in a fairly promising fashion in the same way that this one does with an animated sequence that gives the background. And just for any of you who haven’t seen the films and you’re interested in the background, the first movie, the background is that Christopher Robin didn’t meet, you know, fuzzy stuffed animal type things in the Hundred Acre Woods.

He actually met these, like, human animal hybrids or, like, anthropomorphized animals and, and befriended them and took care of them. But then when he went off to college, he abandoned them and, and there was nobody to feed them, so they starved through a harsh winter and ate Eeyore.

Which traumatized them, and they vowed never to speak again. And in the first movie, Christopher Robin wants… Like, he gets engaged and he wants to take his fiancee to meet his friends in the woods. So- … he, he takes her there and they savagely murder her and, like, I think torture him and stuff. Now, I only know beyond the animated part what happened really, because I started watching it once and I got to where the animals…

Oh, and the animals in that movie also, like, vowed to never speak. So in that movie, the first movie apparently I think, Pooh says one thing maybe, but they really don’t speak ’cause they vowed not to. I got through the animated sequence, which was promising, but then just the first five to 10 minutes after that were so bad that I turned it off and I never went back to it.

And like you, that turned me off from the rest of them. I really had not much interest, even though looking at them from afar, they seemed to be getting better, at least in terms of production quality, probably due to budget. And some of them started sounding interesting. Like, I Had heard some good things about the Bambi one.

I think it’s called, like, Bambi: The Reckoning or something like that. Right. And I had seen a couple of clips from it. It’s, it’s big time CGI, but it looks maybe kind of interesting. And then the next one that’s coming out, Pinocchio Unstrung- 

Todd: Which, a great title by the way … 

Craig: it is really good, has Robert Englund in it.

Todd: It does, really? 

Craig: Yeah. Robert Englund is Jiminy Cricket, and- Another guy, big guy in, in horror is playing Geppetto. I can’t think of him, but he’s… If you look it up right quick, Richard something maybe. You would recognize him immediately because he’s been a menacing, scary guy in a million things that we’ve reviewed.

So- 

Todd: Mm-hmm … 

Craig: I mean, just the attachment of those folks gives me hope that maybe they’re getting better. Okay, that was my perspective going into this. This request came at least a month ago. I have no idea when this will actually get posted, but in our timeline, this request came at least a month ago, and I think we were kind of like subtly putting it off.

And eventually I was like, “We should just, we should just do it.” I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it going in, but I was surprised too. Mm-hmm. It wasn’t what I expected either, and I would say that while I’m not gonna give it a glowing review, I’m glad I saw it. Like, I genuinely am glad I saw it, and it’s not bad.

Todd: Right. Well- 

Craig: I, I didn’t not like it. 

Todd: You did not like it. I mean, production value is great. The gore effects are fine. You know, there’s obviously some CGI supplementals in here. But I could tell that this would appeal, and I think it probably came at the right time. This seems to, I think, appeal to a crowd that The Terrifier would appeal to because it seems like the attempt here is to just keep things very extreme.

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And I guess that’s, that’s really what the writer-director/producer of the whole thing, Rhys Frake-Waterfield, had said outright. He said he wanted to make a sequel to that first one, improve it, get a much bigger budget, and take everything extreme. And at least one of the actors, I think the one who played Tigger in here, said that he took a lot of his inspiration for his character from The Terrifier, as well as Freddy Krueger and somebody else.

So- 

Craig: Yeah … 

Todd: they had that in mind. And, you know, The Terrifier 2 I think had just come out around this time as well. So it shows, I would imagine there’s a lot of crossover between these two audiences. You know, once word gets out about how gory this is and how extreme the killings are, then probably a lot of folks, uh, who liked The Terrifier movies and were kind of on that bandwagon would jump over and want to see this.

And because it delivers on that front, I think. 

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: But also, the acting is good. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Todd: I think the acting’s fine. It’s great. E- even, uh, the guy who plays Christopher Robin, who I guess is reprising his role from the first movie? 

Craig: No. Am I right about that? Okay. So this is… No. This is one of the things that I think is coolest about this movie.

They solve lots of problems from the first movie by making this movie meta. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: In that the first movie is actually a cinematic film of true events that happens to the people in this movie. Does that make sense? 

Todd: Yeah, it’s kind of like Scream and what was that one? S- Stab. 

Craig: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. As though, you know…

S- yes, exactly. So what we saw, the first movie that we saw was a, a filmed, uh, version, a fictionalized account of something that actually happened to the people that we are now being introduced to. So that changes… That, that solves the recast problem- Mm … because the guy in the first movie was just an actor playing the real Christopher Robin who we’re seeing now.

Um- Right … it also allows them to retcon things just by saying, “Oh, well, they changed it for the movie.” So the, the animals now can speak because, you know, the film just added that element of them vowing never to speak or whatever. And they can also justify the change in the appearance of the villains because these are the real villains, and that was just a cheap movie knockoff of them.

Mm. And they do look a lot better in this. I, I- Oh, yeah … I wouldn’t go so far as to say Pooh looks… I don’t know. I still think he could have looked better, but some of the creature design, particularly Owl, I thought was fantastic. Yeah.

Todd: He was a… I’m sorry. He was a producer Scott Chambers. He, he’s an actor too. He’s acted in a lot of movies, but he was a, a producing partner, still is I suppose, a producing partner of, um, of Rhys- uh, Frake-Water- Waterfield for a lot of those other films. So he, he produced the first film and decided to step in- Gotcha

and, uh, and act in this one. I think he does a great job, even though this is certainly not his first acting credit. He’s been in a lot of, uh, these straight to video… And I think that’s why he’s so good. I, I actually thought he was really good in this. If it weren’t for… And this movie really focuses around him.

Craig: I think he’s directing the next one, by the way. 

Todd: Oh, is that right? Okay. I think so. Yeah, they got a third one coming up, and they’ve got two released last year, right? The Bambi one and the Peter Pan. There’s a Peter Pan. 

Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And then the, the Pinocchio one’s coming up, if it hasn’t been released already.

Uh, it’s c- it was coming up this year at, at least. You are right. And they wanna do crossover movies. They wanna take- But I think they’re 

Craig: filming that now … 

Todd: the whole Avengers attitude. Yeah. 

Craig: They’re either filming the crossover one or Blood and Honey 3. I don’t remember. They’re filming one of them now. But yeah, they’re crossing them all over and, like, they’re treating it- They- they’re using the Marvel model- Yeah

where they start out with these individual movies, then they cross them over, bring in even more characters. Like, they’re gonna bring in, like, Mary Poppins and- … Sleeping Beauty, and there are several others. But they’re gonna bring them in in the big Avengers style one so that the, they can then spin them off into a phase two of other Uh, individual movies.

Todd: It’s, it’s so smart because when you think about it from just, even just a purely business but also creative aspect, I mean, this is why we have public domain. Disney themselves took these stories like Pinocchio- Sure … and, and, and Sleeping Beauty, you know, that they didn’t have to pay any rights to, and really owned them in a way.

You know, for childhood, like, when people think of Pinocchio they, they immediately think of Disney. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Todd: It’s just part of the zeitgeist now. And so with these originals falling out of public domain, now somebody else can come over and kinda skirt around everything that Disney has set up. But the Disney part of it is helping to bolster these movies really- Right

because everyone’s so familiar with these stories because they’re… the Disney move- movie versions of them are so beloved for multiple generations now. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: So it makes sense to capitalize on this and do it in the same way the big studios are doing it. W- I just hear the twisted childhood universe and the idea that they’re gonna tie all these together like Marvel did, which we l- really loved.

Then I think, “Oh, you know, actually I kind of am curious just to see how they’re gonna pull this off.” It does in a way wanna nudge me towards them a little bit, especially after seeing this. Yeah. Because, uh, I think they’ll actually might do a pretty good job with it. D- don’t get me wrong, like these are still silly.

You can’t take them seriously, and they don’t take themselves seriously. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: This one is fun, and I’m- Yeah … curious to see how the others go, too. 

Craig: Well, they… It is fun. I enjoyed it. And, you know, I guess the setup for this movie is that i- in the town that the real Christopher Robin lives in, he’s like a pariah because nobody believes him that there are these animal men in the woods that killed all these people.

Mm-hmm. So they think it must have been him even though, I, I don’t know, I guess they couldn’t prove it or something, ’cause he’s not in jail or anything. Like, he’s- 

Todd: Yeah. That’s a little weird. He’s just allowed to roam free, but everybody thinks he’s a murderer. Like, what? 

Craig: Okay. R- right, like a mass murderer.

Right. 

Todd: Not like there was an OJ Simpson trial or anything. 

Craig: But instead they’re just all being real mean to him. Except for his gorgeous girlfriend and his lovely parents. Uh, he’s living with his parents and his little sister, Bunny. 

Clip: Hello. You know Mom has been calling you for ages. She’s getting annoyed.

Hello? She calls me Ella, and my name is Bunny. I mean, you’ve got two names, which is absolutely fine. Nope, just Bunny. And just Ella. Just Bunny.

What are you doing up here then? What’s all this? Before you get mad, I asked Mom and she said it was fine. What was fine? Is that Billy’s teddy- Did you go in Billy’s room and get that? Mom said Billy would’ve wanted me to have it. Okay, Bunny, in future, you really need to ask me before you just go in there and take stuff.

Okay? Why? It’s not your bear. Besides, I’m doing this to protect us. Protect us from what? Girls at school told me you’re crazy ’cause you believe there are scary animal people in the Hundred Acre Wood. 

Todd: Bunny. 

Craig: But the… A- and then the premise of the movie is, I guess, there’s a group of hunters who do believe him because-

they go out into the woods looking for these animals or whatever, and they find them. And one of them, I was surprised by this, ’cause I knew that Pooh and Piglet were in the first one, and I think you see them right in the very beginning. I think that’s part of the reason that I turned it off. I knew they were in the first one, so I knew they were in this one, and I knew they were introducing more characters from the books in this one, too.

But so I was shocked when almost immediately Piglet gets his head blown off. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Oh. By one of the, by one of the hunters. And then Pooh, I think, maybe kills the rest of them, and I think Owl is there, too. I don’t remember if he helps or if he’s just kind of watching in the background. But then Owl, who appears to be, like, the evil mastermind behind all of this- He’s like a leader

which I think is a really clever thing. Like, you know- The wise owl. The wise owl. Like, in the Disney version… I don’t know that I’ve ever actually read the books. I, you know, I, I, I loved the original Winnie-the-Pooh movie, which was actually just three shorts stitched together. I loved that. That, I think that was, like, my favorite Disney movie when I was a kid.

I watched it over and over and over again. And in the Disney version, Owl thinks he’s really wise, but he’s really just kind of doddering and, and goofy. Yeah. But I think it’s clever to take, you know, the wise, old owl approach and make him, like, this sadistic, psychotic mastermind. 

Clip: Look what our lives have become.

Each day we get weaker and weaker. But remember, remember what happened last time. Pooh, it’s time to decide. Either we take the fight to them and perhaps survive,

or we lay down and die 

Craig: You know, we’ve gotta take the fight to them. And so they do, and then that’s the point where before we officially started the show, before we started recording, I said to you, ’cause you said, “I’m, I’m not sure,” something along the lines of, “I’m not sure I’ll remember the details of the plot.”

And I was like, “It really doesn’t matter.” 

Todd: No. It really doesn’t. 

Craig: It really doesn’t matter. I couldn’t tell you much more plot-wise from that point on. It’s just a spectacle of creature and slasher, and it’s fun. 

Todd: It is. 

Craig: It’s really gory. It’s tongue in cheek. But, but it doesn’t pull any punches. In fact, like you said, it, it, it’s, it’s really extreme.

I think the body count in this movie is w- like 45 or something like that. And there is, like, a big terrifier, like, set piece massacre, like mass massacre. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s so terrifier because it also, it’s a rave, right? 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: It’s so silly. I mean, when, when is this movie supposed to have taken place? Because d- are raves even a thing anymore?

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: I don’t, I don’t know. Like, maybe, maybe not. I was a little shocked actually to learn that the original movie They had budgeted so little for it. But then after they had more or less shot it, they had posted some screenshots online and of course they went viral, and of course everybody was talking about it.

And it freaked the producers out because the producers really did not expect this to be a popular film. They thought they were gonna throw this on video like they do the other things, it’ll go to streaming, something like that, and it, it- nobody’s really gonna care about it and it’s, nobody’s gonna pay attention to it.

But it got so much attention that suddenly they were like, “Oh shit, so many people are gonna watch this movie. We need to reshoot this.” So they went out and, like, supposedly one of the actors said they basically reshot the movie three times. But ultimately, over 10 days and with a budget of $50,000, which they said was the mo- the biggest budgeted film that, that Reese Frank Waterfield had ever shot.

And he shot a lot of movies before this, man. We’re talking Dinosaur Hotel, The Legend of Jack and Jill, Easter Bunny Massacre- 

Craig: Oh my gosh … 

Todd: H.P. Lovecraft’s Monster Portal. Like, all these are straight to video, and all of them on budgets of less than $50,000. But of course $50,000 is still nothing compared, compared to every, to even the cheapest low-budget movies.

And so it came out and it just looked awful. Like you said, they had just masks on that they had a company make. And they got so much shit for that original movie that they were thrilled to have the huge budget of a half a million to do this movie. And so they were kind of on cloud nine shooting it and they thought they could do anything.

And apparently Shooting this whole rave scene made them so stressed out for a number of reasons that, that they were, like, vomiting on set and stuff like that. It was just a nightmare for them. 

Craig: Well, I think that they were using… I read something that said they were using maybe real animal parts. Oh, really?

And that it, the, the smell in there was horrible. And it is, I mean, it’s, it’s super gross and, and violent and, you know, regardless of the fact that ultimately you know it’s fake, it still looks gross. 

Todd: Sure. 

Craig: I can only imagine that that would’ve been a stressful scene. You know, I call it a scene, it goes on for a long time.

Todd: Oh, yeah. It’s like a, it’s like a quarter or fifth of the movie. I mean, 

Craig: it’s just long. Yeah, it goes on for a l- And there are tons of people in it. And, and we can go back. I wanna talk about specific things, but I just thought it would n- for this movie, which is, this is uncharacteristic of me, it doesn’t make sense just to go through it scene by scene because it doesn’t matter.

But, like, I- Right … I do wanna, like, I wanna talk about the different creature designs and I, other stuff like that. But so this scene comes late in the movie. I mean, this is, you know, kind of the big climactic scene. It starts out with a great big, huge rave, and then the animals, Owl, Pooh, and Tigger, it’s mostly Pooh and Tigger, I think, in there, but they’re all in there.

They come in and they just immediately start slaughtering people, and one guy gets a pole through the face, you know, the, the doorman or some guy standing right outside the door. And then I think it’s Pooh chases a girl in, and she runs in and she’s screaming and everybody’s looking at her, and then he, he has a bear trap on a chain that he launches at her, and it gets her head and he, like, rips her head off and it explodes-

all over the people in the rave. And then all of the people, a lot of the people from the rave run out, I think, but one or more of them kind of herd a group of them into a smaller space. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And when that happened, I was like, “Oh, they’re herding far too many people in here.” Like, there are still so many people to deal with.

And they just- Yeah. And, but they manage. 

Todd: They deal with them. They deal with them. They take them apart bit by bit. 

Craig: And I mean, they just slaughter them, just absolutely slaughter them in the most violent, gory, bloody, bloody ways. It’s over the top. And you know, I’m not a, I’m not the hugest fan of extreme violence like that.

Even Terrifier is borderline for me. But this is so… It is gross, and it’s as graphic as Terrifier, but it feels more tongue in cheek for some reason, and, and that softens the blow for me a little bit. I actually really enjoyed it. 

Todd: Terrifier, I won’t say Terrifier’s entirely mean-spirited. It’s, you know, there’s a comic aspect to- Art the Clown, but it’s, it’s more mean-spirited than, say, Freddy Krueger and a lot of stuff that we see.

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And, and, and then v- super violent to boot. This is definitely more tongue in cheek. In fact, there’s as- there are shot for shot homages to Freddy Krueger in here. I mean- Oh, yeah … the place kinda looks like a boiler room, and there’s, you know, him dragging his fingers- 

Craig: Tigger, yeah, Tigger drag- ’cause Tigger’s got these great big claws, right?

Todd: Yeah, and then again, the actor who did Tigger himself said that he d- he drew a lot of inspiration from Freddy Krueger for this, and, and he’s a little quippy. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: He seems to talk more than… Except for Al, I suppose. He seems to talk more than the others, at least talks to his victims. 

Craig: Yeah, and he quips.

You’re right. Mm-hmm. 

Todd: This also, because it takes place in what essentially is, like, a warehouse, it just feels very Terrifier because it’s r- again, like you said, it’s nothing more than just him going bit by bit and slaughtering people one at a time more or less. 

Craig: I think my favorite one, well, one of his quips, which it’s so stupid, but it made me smile, is some of the ravers are, like, looking around, and they’re like, “Oh, no, this is a dead end.

Let’s bounce.” And Tigger pops up and goes, “That’s my line.” 

Todd: I did chuckle at that one. 

Craig: And then he shoots his claw all the way, like, through the guy’s back and it comes out of his chest and- 

Todd: Oh, yeah … 

Craig: then he slaughters them all. But I think my favorite kill was there’s one girl, and she’s up on kinda like a catwalk or something, and Tigger comes up underneath her and starts jamming his big, like, blade-like claws up through the, the grated floor beneath her.

And eventually she falls because it, like, gets her foot or whatever, so she falls down in pain. And then he’s, like, s- stabbing up through her body from underneath. And then he gets up on top of her and is just clawing at her like a cat, and the blood is spraying everywhere and… Oh, gosh. It’s- Yeah … it’s super over the top, but I don’t know, funny.

I mean, it’s a guy, you know, like, it’s a cat guy. 

Todd: It’s, it’s cats. 

Craig: A walking, talking cat guy. It 

Todd: really 

Craig: is. It’s funny. You can’t take it seriously. A- and I kinda, I don’t know, I liked that about it. 

Todd: Yeah. That was a nice aspect to it. Watching the whole movie is– It’s interesting because they’re, they’re trying a little bit, and, and I feel like the third Terr- the third Terrifier does this, too, where they’re clearly, you know, the, the first one, it got a lot of criticism.

Apparently, it’s really, really bad, and the producers admit that, and they were like, you know, “I mean, we shot it for 50,000. What do you expect?” But this time around, especially now that they have this cinematic universe they were thinking of managing, they actually put some effort into a little bit of pathos with Christopher Robin.

And I didn’t find that this slowed the movie down too much. 

Craig: No. 

Todd: Sometimes it does. Sometimes this kinda thing feels shoehorned in or you’re like, “Well, this doesn’t even matter.” But actually, it does because there’s a nice through line here. The whole origin story for these characters as opposed to the original movie- 

Craig: Right

Todd: I mean, we can just sum it up here, I think, is that- These, there’s a mad scientist- 

Craig: Mm-hmm … 

Todd: who was doing genetic experiments and hired a janitor from the school to go around and kidnap children. And one of the children he kidnapped was Christopher Robin’s, uh, brother, Billy. And so he has had this traumatic event where he watched his brother be abducted by this guy in this van that he’s been dealing with his whole life.

And he’s got a psychiatrist there, and there’s a couple scenes where he goes under hypnotherapy and is able to reveal some things, which is a nice way to give you some backstory and whatnot. And then he does a little bit of research too and sort of puts the pieces together. I guess he didn’t really know about this geneticist.

I mean, it’s also silly. Right. Like, how could this actually- Yeah … happen and, and nobody knows about it, you know? 

Craig: It’s silly. I feel like isn’t there also… There are also moments of, like, omniscient narration, like we’re being told a story, and it’s like- 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: in the beginning … “And Christopher Robin made friends with Pooh, and”- 

Todd: It’s like the book

Craig: “But Christopher Robin never knew true Pooh nature,” or like he was blind to it, or he blocked it out or, or something like that. Yeah. So, like, it shows them together when they’re kids, and Christopher Robin’s like, I don’t know, skipping through the tulips, and Pooh’s, like, just standing in the background like-

covered in blood. Like “And Christopher Robin was blind to Pooh’s true nature.” Like, okay. 

Todd: It’s funny, but it’s not, like, comically funny, right? Yeah. Like, you would expect this to be eye-rollingly funny, but they do play it straight. 

Craig: Uh-huh. 

Todd: And I think that helps to make the movie work. It, just the material is comic.

It, but they don’t play it that way. He’s really got this trauma. He really does this investigation. He tracks down this guy who gives him more detail, and the detail itself is absurd. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: So he did these genetic experiments on these kids where he was, uh, splicing them with animal genes, so they ended up as these weird animals.

But then they end up getting killed, or what, they die? He killed them. What is it? They- 

Craig: He killed them. 

Todd: He killed them. The, um, the, the scientist or the- 

Craig: The sci- … the janitor? The scient- Well, I don’t know. The scientist- 

Todd: Killed 

Craig: them … either killed them himself or, or made the other guy kill them. I don’t know, but they killed them.

Todd: Right, and then buried 

Craig: them. Because it worked. Like, that’s, that… What he was trying to do, I don’t know if they were getting out of control. I think it was just, like, he realized the horror of what he had done or something, and so he killed them all. Now, remember- 

Todd: Mm-hmm … 

Craig: listener, that these are kidnapped children.

So- … these aren’t just lab creations. These are kids that were kidnapped from their homes and now are, you know, are animal hybrids or whatever. So they kill them, and then they bury them in the Hundred Acre Wood, but they they regenerate and crawl out of their graves. 

Todd: Like zombies. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: So these are actually zombies when you think about it.

Craig: I guess. 

Todd: I suppose, like they originally were gonna go with a supernatural angle for all this and then decided against it. So this still is kinda supernatural though. 

Craig: I, see, and I, I thought, now, and I don’t think it’s explicit either way, but I thought just more it was a result of the genetic tampering.

Like, they could just regenerate for, for whatever reason. But I don’t know. 

Todd: Well, that’s what, uh, that’s what I kind of interpreted too. But it is a bit of like, um, Five Nights at Freddy’s, isn’t it? Sure. It’s, uh, it’s a little similar to the plot of that. I mean, I’m not saying that the one inspired the other, certainly not.

But, um, it’s definitely weird like that movie was weird in its backstory, and you just kinda have to go with it because it doesn’t matter. No, it doesn’t matter. It just, just gives you a reason for these murderous animals to be out there. 

Craig: Well, and it, I mean, it’s, it’s kind to establish pathos and, like, there is, you know, whatever.

I mean, Christopher Robin, I mean, who deserves to be, have their whole family slaughtered? What I was going to say was, yeah, y- y- Christopher Robin is clearly the hero. He didn’t really do anything wrong. He lost his brother and has been haunted by that all this time. So you do feel bad for him and, and though I said the movie is maybe a little bit more tongue in cheek than something like Terrifier, it also doesn’t really pull any punches.

I was kind of surprised when, I think it was Pooh, brutally murdered both of Christopher Robin’s parents- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: and kidnapped his little sister, ’cause his parents were super nice and supportive. They were 

Todd: just lovely people. 

Craig: Yeah. Like, they, you know, they, they took in their pariah son and totally, you know, believed him or, or I don’t know i- whether they believed him or whether they were just coddling him.

But they were super, super nice. Yeah, they, that, that didn’t save them. 

Todd: Well, his mother’s kill was my favorite. I- She’s pulling out the dishwasher at the same time that Pooh comes into the house, and then he just bas- And, and there’s knives knife side up, which I don’t know, when you load the dishwasher, I, I don’t know- No

I always put a knife, the knife with the blade side down. 

Craig: Obviously. Well, if for no other reason than this, like- 

Todd: Right … 

Craig: but they, they so heavily projected this. Like, that was one of the very first- Oh, of course … things you saw in the movie was this huge knife, you know, and sticking up from the dishwasher, and the mom’s like I don’t remember.

She’s like, “Those silly boys never load it right,” and turns it over or whatever. I’m like, “Well, that’s obvious.” Yeah. 

Clip: Yep. 

Craig: It still looked good, though. But it, it was funny, though, that when… I don’t remember what happened. Did he trip her or push her or throw 

Todd: her? Pushed her down into it. Like, just… Well, first he, he sm- smashes her face down into it, and she stands up, and I think this is what you’re saying, right?

Like, the knives are comically… Like, they’re sticking out of her face in all different directions, which doesn’t make any sense. 

Craig: And it’s not just one knife. That was what was comical about it. Yeah. Like, the setup was one big knife. Now it’s, like, five or six knives poking out of her face. Ugh, it was pretty funny.

Todd: But then there’s apparently a knife or two left over down there, because then he pulls her head down and slowly pushes- Oh, yeah … her eyeball down onto another knife, and it’s like, oh, God, like, they really just wanted to keep going with this, you know? Just make it as brutal as possible. And yeah, so we got the n- we got several n- eye injury scenes in this one.

That’s the way to go when you’re, when you wanna cringe, I think. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. A- 

Todd: and yeah, it looked pretty good. I, I liked that bit just ’cause I thought it was a little silly and fun and cringey at the same time. 

Craig: Oh, I liked it, too. I, yeah, it was a… That was a good one. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: I wouldn’t s- you know, I thought all of the kill scenes, you know, all of the violence, it all looked good, and it was creative and interesting, and the aftermath was gross.

Todd: There’s a lot of beheading, a lot of ripping limbs off. 

Craig: A lot of heads, like, blowing up or, like, parts of them getting chopped off or… A lot of head trauma. 

Todd: It’s funny how they would even cut away. Like, when the… So when, when Christopher Robin confronts the janitor and he tells this whole story, he’s also burning all of his evidence, and then he says, you know, “Forgive me.

May God forgive me for what I did,” and he whips out a gun and, and blows his, his head off. And, uh, they didn’t show that, but they showed the aftermath really close up. 

Craig: Uh-huh. 

Todd: So, you know, even when they didn’t show violence on screen, you think, “Okay, well, they’re trying to pull a punch here,” or they’re, or they’re trying to save some money or whatever.

No, they would always be another shot that would show you the aftermath in all of its close-up, bloody gory- Yeah … g- uh, glory, so. 

Craig: Pooh had, like, a, a penchant for just, like, breaking people’s bones, right? Like- 

Todd: Yeah, like that 

Craig: girl that- I feel like there were… I feel like he does it a couple of times. 

Todd: Oh, yeah. 

Craig: He just kind of…

I don’t know. He’ll get a person, I think it was both times girls, but I don’t remember, down on the ground, and then he’ll just, like, stand on their arms or legs and snap them with- Snap 

Todd: them, yeah. 

Craig: Ugh, it’s crazy. It’s really, really violent. 

Todd: It is. 

Craig: So okay, obviously, you know, Christopher Robin, I guess you’re rooting for him or whatever.

He’s the good guy. But, uh, ultimately- 

Todd: He can’t do anything. 

Craig: Well, he can’t really do anything, but you also should feel for the bad guys. I mean, they’re psychotic murderers now, but- They’re victims … ultimately, as it turns out, Winnie-the-Pooh is Christopher Robin’s kidnapped brother, Billy. Yeah. So yeah, psychotic murderer, but also kidnapped child, mutated and left for dead in a grave in the woods.

Todd: Who came back to life. No wonder he’s so pissed, you know? 

Craig: You know, I, to say that it adds depth to the movie would be giving it far too much credit, but at least it kind of gives it an additional layer- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: to the lore, which I don’t know, I thought was interesting and not lazy. So I thought, I, I thought it was good.

Todd: Then Christopher Robin ends up in a, you know, this ends up being a big fight in the woods again. Not a big fight. I guess after they leave the rave, they just go through town and are killing people for a while until they make their way back to where Christopher Robin lives and get his parents and- 

Craig: And steal his sister

Todd: his sister. Steal his sister and take her into the woods, so Christopher chases after them into the woods, right? I don’t remember what happens to his sister. 

Craig: I don’t either. Does 

Todd: she escape? 

Craig: I think, or, or he saves her. I don’t know, maybe it’s in my notes. I have Pooh arrives at the rave or, or he’s been there or whatever, and he, like, burns some ravers up in a furnace, and he saws a girl’s head off.

And then I guess Christopher Robin has been making his way to the rave. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And he’s there, and Pooh confronts him in the rain with a chainsaw. 

Todd: Yes. The chainsaw, which then becomes a flaming chainsaw. 

Craig: I know. And th- well, they have a big fight, like a big fight, and Christopher Robin has a big pole, but Pooh has a chainsaw.

But then, yeah, w- I don’t remember why the chainsaw catches on fire, but it’s hilarious. There’s something about the fire. Oh my God. Because then it stays on fire- … for a while. But just like the e- like, like three quarters of the end of the chain part. But it’s amazing. I mean- I know … you can’t really go wrong with a flaming chainsaw.

Todd: No. And this has gotta be… That seems like something I would find in a video game, but I was trying to remember if I have ever seen this in a movie before. We’ve seen a lot of chainsaws, but a flaming chainsaw? 

Craig: Probably at some point. You think so? I don’t know. Oh, no. Well, or at least a, you know, maybe a guy with a chainsaw and the guy’s on fire.

I don’t know. 

Todd: There’s probably- 

Craig: Sh- of all the movies we’ve seen, surely- One of the Leatherface 

Todd: ones … 

Craig: yeah, I don’t know. Who knows? 

Todd: Yep, so he’s chasing with a flaming chainsaw, and I really grinned at that. I was like, “Oh, this is great.” 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And eventually they’re face to face and he calls him Billy. He’s put two and two together already, I believe.

But they end up kind of at his grave, which I guess is still open. 

Craig: Apparently. 

Todd: Oh, I think this is when he lets the little girl go, and Christopher has an ax. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Right? And I guess just calling him by name really stops Pooh in his tracks, which allows Christopher to swing the ax up towards his head. And as he’s doing that, he says the, the, Pooh says, “Oh, bother.”

Craig: Yeah, that was really funny. 

Todd: And gets hit in the head and split open. I mean, Pooh’s dead now. I was like… And then falls backwards into the grave, and I’m thinking- I thought they were planning sequels to this. Like- 

Craig: Oh, 

Todd: well- … you’ve killed off Piglet … 

Craig: that’s easy. I mean, you can always bring… Yeah, but you can always bring them back.

Todd: Yeah, but they split their heads right open. I mean, one guy got his head blown off. True. The other one got it split open. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I guess they will bring him back. 

Craig: Yeah, I mean, it ends, I mean, it ends right here. It, it ends, you know, happy and Christopher Robin and Bunny, the sister’s name is Bunny, which I thought was gonna be, like, an in thing.

Like, I th- ’cause that’s not her real name. I don’t remember what her real name is, but she wants everybody to call her Bunny. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And she’s also, like, she’s really… I mean, she’s a little girl, but she’s really sweet and, and pretty and blonde and, you know, cute, cute little kid, but she’s also kind of a weirdo.

Like She, she does weird things with Christopher Robin’s old stuffed animals and stuff and I don’t know, she’s kind of weird. So I kind of wondered if they were setting her up to be Rabbit in future films. Mm. But I asked AI and they said no, because apparently after it seems like, you know, the day is won and the, the happy music plays and it fades to black, there’s a mid-credits scene where it goes back to, I don’t know, the lair, I guess, the animal’s lair.

And Owl has a whole big monologue about how… Well, first of all, he’s got Pooh’s body, like, sitting on what looks… I mean, it’s a chair, but it, it’s framed almost like a throne. It’s back lit and, you know, his head’s cleaved open or whatever. And Piglet’s body is there, too. He says something, I don’t know, he has a whole big monologue about how, like, our strength is our friendship or something, and he talks about how he’s going to bring them back and he’s, “We’ll all be back for you, Christopher Robin.”

And then that’s the end. So I guess we are to believe that either Owl is going to do something to bring them back, or I think it would make more sense that as they have done before, they just regenerated and just came back to life. Could be. But, but either way, they are coming back. And, and then the end credits were fun because it was, like, storybook illustrations, simple pencil illustrations of, of future projects.

So you had Pinocchio and Peter Pan and, I don’t know, whoever else we talked about earlier. And that was kind of a fun, you know, preview of what was to come. I, I’m not trying to wrap up because there are still other things that I wanted to talk about, but ultimately when the movie was over, I was like, I was like, “Well, that…”

I, I really, I, I, especially when we’re watching these for the podcast, one of the first things I think about is, I wonder what Todd will think, and I, I didn’t know, but I suspected that you might feel the same way that I was. I, uh, that I did. I didn’t wanna spoil it for you, so all I texted you was, “I watched it.

I was surprised.” That’s, that’s all I said. But ultimately, like, I was surprised, and pleasantly so. You’re right that I probably never would have watched this had it not been requested. God, again, it sounds like I’m wrapping up, and I’m not, because I, I, I, I specifically wanna talk about Owl. But I would go so far as to recommend this to anybody who considers themselves a, any kind of horror fan, like somebody who really likes horror movies.

Todd: Loves Winnie-the-Pooh. 

Craig: Maybe. You know. Yeah, yeah. Like you said, you know, Winnie-The-Pooh, and, and this is true of all of these Public domain properties that they have, it is smart to capitalize on them because there’s going to be at least a curious audience. You know, people who are familiar with the stories from whatever medium, whether it be the original fairy tales or more likely in our generation and, and probably a couple of generations before us and after, are gonna be familiar with the, the Disney versions.

But I would think lots of people our age specifically, but maybe even our parents’ age, would be at least curious to see what’s going on because they’re familiar with the characters, they’re familiar with the property. So, uh, I, I don’t know. If somebody said, “Oh, I love Winnie-the-Pooh,” I wouldn’t immediately say, “Oh, you should watch- Go see Blood and Honey

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.” Little 

Todd: girl. 

Craig: Um, but if they, I also knew that they were a fan of horror, I would say, “Oh, you should check out the second one.” 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: I, I guess it’s not really fair to recommend skipping the first one when I haven’t seen it, but what I saw of it and what I’ve read about it I don’t think that I’ll be going back and watching.

I, I, I considered it. I considered putting it on last night as I was going to bed. I, I felt a- almost an obligation for the podcast- For 

Todd: research purposes … 

Craig: but I couldn’t bring my, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Uh, and I, and I don’t think that I will. But, uh, this one I would go so far as to recommend. 

Todd: I would too, uh, especially if you’re into, uh, extreme violence.

Like I said, I think, uh, fans of the Terrifier franchise, there’s a lot of parallels here. It seems like they’re going for the same vibe. Whereas Terrifier, I believe, especially the first one, is so paper thin on plot and characterization that it’s just nothing but a series of kills. This is really not far off from that.

The only difference is, like I said, that they’re clearly setting up the Christopher Robin character as a, an important element for whatever they have planned for the future. So yeah, no, I really, I really enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, and we’ve seen a lot of movies that I’ve just rolled my eyes at and kept occupied with something else while I’ve got it going and, you know, it just feels like a slog to get through.

This movie really didn’t feel like that. It kept moving- 

Craig: Mm-hmm … 

Todd: and it kept my interest even though it was rather silly. Uh, yeah, so I would, I would also recommend it. What, what do you want to say about Owl? 

Craig: I was just so impressed with that character and the design. It reminded me… I, I read somebody compared it to the Creeper from Jeepers Creepers and- 

Todd: Oh yeah, there’s a little bit of that there

Craig: I don’t, I don’t know. I, I was just so impressed, like the, the mask, the, the layering of the feathers. I don’t know. He, he didn’t even necessarily really look like an owl. It looked almost more like, not a crow, but maybe like a, a vulture or some other kind of, like a, like a carrion bird hunched like that, and, and a great voice.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I can’t even remember it specifically enough to imitate it, but I, I saw some people comparing it to Pinhead It reminded me, ’80s children except for Todd, it reminded me a lot of that really, really scary goblin in, in Legend. Oh, yeah. Kinda the, the, Darkness’ kind of main henchman from, from Legend. It reminded me of that a lot.

I, I’ve already said I liked the characterization, that he’s like this psychopath mastermind who really seems to be not manipulating necessarily, but leading the charge of these others. Like, these others seem to be taking his suggestions. They’re, you know, they’re… He, he seems to be the leader. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Or the brains.

I guess the brains of the- The brains 

Todd: behind the operation, yeah. 

Craig: Right. Uh- ‘

Todd: Cause there’s nobody, like there’s no plan here. There’s nobody, you know, it’s just like, “Let’s go.” 

Craig: You know? Yeah, he basically just sends them in, you know? Yeah. He kind of sends them in as the front line, and he kills some people and, you know, like it’s so gimmicky, but I, I liked that he got one girl, I think it was a girl, down on the ground and stood on her chest and puked acid puke onto her face.

Todd: Acid. That was- I liked 

Craig: it. 

Todd: Yeah. He’s gotta have a thing, right? I guess. I was thinking about birds, you know how they regurgitate food for their young, and maybe this was a loose adaptation of that in a horror movie. Yeah, 

Craig: yeah. Right. I totally thought of it as a bird thing. Uh- Mm-hmm. And it was humorous in an amusing way, not a ha-ha way, but an amusing way, and also gross and, and different and fun.

Everything. I, I… If they made an owl spinoff, which I doubt they will, but if they did- Yeah … I would watch it because I was really intrigued by him as a character, and I loved that he could fly. I loved the flying shots- Yeah … you know, that were not from his perspective, but like tracking with him as he was flying, like through the forest and stuff.

I know this movie had a bigger budget, but even for the limited budget that they had, I thought that stuff like that looked good. It made it look a little bit more expensive than it was, I think. So that’s specifically what I wanted to say about him. Tigger, I, I liked the look of, you know, his claws, like you s- And it was very inspired by and reminiscent of Freddy Krueger, even in the cinematography.

Like you said, it’s in almost like a boiler room setting and lit in the way that those dream sequences in the boiler room were because it’s at a rave, so it can have colored lighting everywhere. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And there are the dragging of the claws, the taunting, you know, the, the verbal quips and taunts, but also just the way that it was shot.

There were a lot of really extreme close-ups on Tigger’s face, as they used to do with Freddy in those earlier films. And, and, you know, he was sadistic, and his mask looked s- looked great. The only complaint that I had about it was that I think that he and Pooh were in almost identical outfits. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And I sometimes had a hard time telling which one was which.

Like, if they were shot kind of from afar, like if it wasn’t in close-up, I was like, “Wait, which one is this?” Pooh was fatter. 

Todd: Right. But their faces also were similar shaped, weren’t 

Craig: they? Yeah. The articulation around the mouth especially was similar in both. And, and those masks did look pretty good, and 100 million times improvement from the cheap masks from the first film.

Yeah. And, and I imagine, you know, these movies are doing well, so I imagine that they will continue to have m- As long as they continue doing well, they’ll still be well-funded, and they’ll probably continue to improve In those areas in terms of the costumes and the prosthetics and those types of things, but yeah.

Honestly, this one has me curious now about the others. 

Todd: Yeah. Me too. 

Craig: I, I think I might watch them. 

Todd: I’m shocked. I’m utterly shocked that this movie w- awakened my curiosity about all of these other ones, because if they do this well with this one, then they’re clearly gonna be putting a little more care into the new ones, and they’re not the cheap cash grab garbage that I imagined they were going to be, especially based on the reviews from the very first film.

So yeah, I’m actually looking forward to it. So Jessica, you, you got us onto something here. Thank you so much for your request. Uh, really, really appreciate it. All of the rest of you as well, if you’re interested in becoming a patron, you can go to patreon.com/chainsawpodcast, and, uh, for just five bucks a month, uh, drop us a line.

Our patrons do give us requests. They vote on the requests that we’re going to do, and they have a direct line to us. We chat back there. We have a book club back there. Uh, we have the unedited phone calls that lead to our episodes that are up there every week for them to watch. Even when, uh, we’re- I’m a little slow on getting a public episode out, our patrons get immediate- almost immediately the recordings after we record them.

So if that interests you, just five bucks a month, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. But you can find us just by searching Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast, and drop us a line anywhere we are, on our website, chainsawhorror.com, on any of our socials. Just let us know what you thought of this, and let us know which of the, what is it?

Childhood, Twisted Childhood Universe movies we should see next. I’m gonna need a little guidance on this. 

Craig: I’m looking forward to some of the ones that are coming up. I’m looking forward to 101 Rabies Bites. 

Todd: That’s one? Oh. 

Craig: That’s one of them supposedly. Um- Oh my God … The Jungle Book Bloodlines. That could be fun.

Alice in Wonderland where Alice is a street walker and- Oh, God … the Mad Hatter is a psychotic guy hunting her down. 

Todd: Alice in Wonderland is too easy. And, and you know what? Alice in Wonderland has been done to death in so- True … many other ways, right? Like, uh, there’s a porn version of at least one or two of those out there.

Oh, I’m 

Craig: sure. 

Todd: But, uh, no, um, uh, 101 Rabies Bites. Jesus. I didn’t, I haven’t seen anything about that. I thought you were making a joke. 

Craig: No, I could, I could… Um, and listen, that, you know, that’s, that’s some AI research right there, so I can’t guarantee that’s true. Oh, 

Todd: okay. 

Craig: But, uh, that’s, that’s what I read. I’m looking 

Todd: it up right now.

That’s what I read. Rabies Bites. That sounds like AI messing with you there. 

Craig: It could be. It could very well be, but I don’t know. 

Todd: Oh, my goodness. Untitled 101 Dalmatians horror film. The twisted… It was revealed, yeah, the Dalmatians have rabies. Yeah. Oh, it’s gonna be like Willard really, isn’t it? Just 101 dogs running around biting people.

I love it. Well, thank you guys so much. Until next time, I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We tackle 2019’s ‘Color Out of Space,’ a Nicolas Cage-led adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s story, inspired by our recent disappointment with ‘The Curse.’

We talk about why Cage is unfairly maligned, how this film captures Lovecraft’s bleak, unknowable cosmic horror, and why the movie’s cinematography and surreal color effects are such a standout.

From the meteor hitting the family farm to the contaminated well water, warped time, and terrifying body-horror transformations, we break down what worked, what felt unnecessary (including some exposition), and why the film still lands as a gorgeous, disturbing ride.

We also compare story vs. movie elements, discuss the ending’s lingering dread, and touch on director Richard Stanley’s comeback and hoped-for Lovecraft trilogy.

Episode 494, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig 

Todd: This week we’re doing a film that came out in 2019. 2019 doesn’t seem like that long ago to me- No … but actually it’s been a while. It’s been, like, seven years, so I guess it’s an older movie, whose standards you’re going by.

But, you know, we’ve always been apologists for Nicolas Cage. Both Craig and I think that he is an unfairly maligned actor. Did you see that interview that I posted to our patrons recently? 

Craig: I don’t think so. 

Todd: So I found an interview with him that The New York Times just did just last month or two, and it was very extensive and, you know, they just talked to him.

I mean, Nicolas Cage, I like the guy. I love his work. I think he’s an actor who does a lot of different interesting things, and he’s not afraid to be crazy, and I think people love to make fun of him. But there comes this tipping point where it’s just the thing you do, right? “Oh, Nicolas Cage, like, he’s this crazy guy, and, and we make fun of him, and he’s not serious,” and all that.

But don’t get me wrong, he’s, he’s eccentric. As an individual, he’s clearly eccentric. He seems to know that. He’s very self-aware, and he takes all these different projects, and he’s just interested in doing different stuff. He wants to stretch himself as an actor and do different things. And he also has his own little shtick, but I have no problem with the guy.

In fact, I really enjoy almost everything I see him in. And I, I… So anyway, I like Nicolas Cage, and I think you were inspired to pick this movie because of a movie we did recently, right? 

Craig: Just a couple weeks ago, I think. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. What was the connection? I can’t rem- 

Craig: We watched The Curse. I don’t rem- the, the ’80s.

Wil Wheaton- 

Todd: Right … 

Craig: the family on the farm. And I think both of us were aware that it was based on a Lovecraft story, but in looking into that movie, we, you know, found specifically that it was based on the Lovecraft story, The Color Out of Space. And we knew that this was another adaptation of the same story.

And, and both of us were left underwhelmed by The Curse. So I thought, while it’s still fresh in mind, why not do 2019’s Color Out of Space and see, you know… We’ll, of course, talk about it on its own merits, but I figured we could draw comparisons to the other one, too. 

Todd: There you go. Yeah. And, and I think that’s, that’s apropos.

Like, like, there’s a lot to talk about as far as comparing these two films. Have you read the original story? 

Craig: I- yesterday I did, after, after I watched this. Yeah, after I watched this, I was, um, curious, and I had time, so I, uh, listened to it and read along at the same time. Have you? You said you might, but I, I know you’ve been really busy.

Todd: God, I wanted to, but I’m traveling through Thailand with my family right now. I’ve been in Japan, I’ve been in Thailand, and it’s me and my parents and Kenji, and we’ve just been so busy that it was- Enough for me to just watch this movie. I actually woke up at 5:00 AM to watch this movie- Ugh … just to make sure that I could see it Yeah

before he woke up and before we got busy with our day, and now it’s evening time and we’re recording this. So, um- Yeah, ’cause I knew if I waited till evening I might not give myself the time. We might be- 

Craig: Sure … 

Todd: stuck in a taxi in Bangkok traffic somewhere, and I’d be freaking out. So I managed to watch this, and I didn’t do any research or anything on it, but, uh, I really enjoyed it a lot.

Craig: Good. 

Todd: I was really glad you picked it. I’m gonna just show all my cards at once. I thought it was a little long 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: But aside from that, like what a well-made movie. And I felt like, not having read the short story, just n- being familiar, I’ve read a few Lovecraft short stories. I was like, “This has to be a far better adaptation of the short story than The Curse ended up being.”

Am I right or wrong about that? 

Craig: No, it is. It’s better. Honestly, in, you know, having seen them both now and then reading the story afterwards, they both kind of draw from the same elements of the story kind of in different ways. Like, there are certainly things that happen, like specific details of the narrative that happen in both movies.

And, and in terms of that, neither of them really deviates a ton from the overall story, but that’s kind of the thing with Lovecraft stories. I’ve, I’ve said… God, it’s probably been years ago, we talked about Lovecraft, and I said that I’m a huge fan of his intellectual property. Reading him is a challenge for me, not because the text is challenging, you know, it’s, it’s relatively common language, but he writes in a really vague manner.

Like, all of his… Not all, but most of the stories that I’ve read are, are told from a first narrator’s perspective, and it sounds very much like folklore, and it kind of sounds like if an old, gosh, I don’t know, you know, some old bearded man telling you some story that his grandpappy told him. And so- 

Todd: It’s very narrated, right?

It’s not 

Craig: like a- It, it’s very narrated, and there’s not a whole lot of detail. Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: you really have to fill in the blanks with your imagination, which is good. I mean, I think that that’s, you know, a, an appropriate technique for storytelling. It’s 

Todd: part of his appeal, I think, honestly. 

Craig: Right. But when I say, like, I’m a fan of his intellectual property, like the whole Cthulhu mythos and that whole universe that he built, you know, the, y- you know, a, a, a whole, you know, communities and, and different cities and towns and universities and-

all of these ancient gods and all of these stories interconnected, like all of that is, is, is great. I, I’m super on board with it. And I really like all of the things that had been influenced by… Like, I love Lovecraftian stuff. Like, I love The Thing and any, you know- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: big Kaiju-type thing and… But all of that is so visual and so fantastic, and when you read it in his stories, it’s suggested.

Like- 

Todd: Yeah, he’s vague there. Well- 

Craig: It’s very, very vague 

Todd: It’s definitely worth talking about. It, it’s a little stodgy too, right? It’s a very old school way of writing, I think. But what you say, it, it’s like a guy imparting a story without giving a lot of detail. Like Stephen King he is not. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Uh, he’s like the opposite.

He’s gonna tell you the general gist of what happened, but your brain is gonna have to fill in the details. And I think that, I think that’s why he’s mined so much for material. 

Craig: Well, and that makes sense. 

Todd: Number one it’s public domain, so it’s free to mine. But yeah, you’re… Number two, you can then take this one story and you can really g- fill in the detail yourself however you want.

And what I really enjoy about him is he’s quite bleak. Almost like Poe in a way, where most of the stories, they don’t end well. Because it, the whole notion is that we are but insignificant nothings in the s- scope of the universe, and there are entities and beings and gods that are far greater to us that, that we’re just like ants to them under their feet.

Like, we’re nothing. Like, we’re just nothing. That that’s a horrifying thing to come face to face with, and you have… There’s nothing you can do about it. Like, if you do come face to face with it… Like, some of this with Lovecraft is that just coming face to face with it, you’ll go insane. 

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: Conceptually, these beings and these gods and everything are just so far removed from how we are in our world and our lives, and they’re so far bigger than us, that when we are faced with them our minds can’t comprehend them.

Our minds break. 

Craig: Right, and they are unfathomable- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: and therefore also indescribable. So 

Todd: Exactly, so he doesn’t bother. 

Craig: Right. He can’t describe it. You can’t describe it. Yeah, exactly. It’s unfathomable. And, and like that relates to this story too. Yes. Like this color out of space is unfathomable. Like, you can’t describe it.

I mean, we can kind of maybe kind of compare it to something, but it’s nothing like that. 

Todd: Yeah. And I think that’s what this movie did really well, is it- You know, it didn’t bother to try to describe everything. It was very visual and it relied a lot on the color, and there were lots of little symptoms of what was happening, but we never really know.

Craig: No. 

Todd: Where did this come from? Why is it there? What are the implications? How does it work? Anything like that. We just know it’s horrible to us, but also, in a way, it’s beautiful. And that’s, I think, the thing that I kinda came away from this movie with, was this sense that… What’s the word I’m looking for?

Just in awe. This is bleak. This is sad. This is horror, what happens to this family, what happens to people. But ultimately, this was nothing against them. 

Craig: No. You know what I mean? No, no, no. 

Todd: This was nothing against them or anybody else. This wasn’t a masked murderer with an agenda going through and killing people.

This wasn’t some entity that came down that wants to take over or whatever. This is just a thing that happened to these people that is far beyond their understanding and who they are and whatever. And for them, it’s horrifying because it destroys them But ultimately, it’s just the universe at work , you know?

Craig: Right. 

Todd: And that’s terrifying. 

Craig: True. Right. A- a- and yes, I don’t think that there’s any malice. I, I think that the movie more so than the story tries to give it some explanation. I mean, we’ll get into what it’s about. It’s about a meteor that falls on a farm and then weird stuff starts happening. 

Right. 

Craig: In the movie, at one point, and I’m getting way ahead of myself, but th- there’s something about they wanted to come here and recreate their own world or something.

Right. I don’t know. I wrote it down in my notes. So I, I think that it’s very much suggested in the movie that it’s some sort of sentient alien presence of some kind. But again, still vague, you know, like nebulous. We don’t really know for sure. In the story, it’s even… They just don’t know. Like Yeah … it came…

A- a- I mean, that’s one of the last lines, and I think they even use it in the movie. Like at the end, somebody says, “It was just a color out of space.” Like, and, and that’s the only way that they can describe it. The other thing that I like about Lovecraft’s stories, and again, it’s been a long time since I’ve read any others, but I feel like they are self-contained.

Like this is something that happened. You know what I mean? Like- Yeah … there, there, there’s a beginning and an end, and we’re actually looking at it y- from like a hi- a historical perspective. We’re looking at something that happened in the past. That’s why it feels like folklore. And I, and that’s cool. And the movie, I think, is good in the storytelling in that way, too.

But I think the thing that I was most impressed with in the movie was just how pretty it was to look at. Like- Hmm … this, I, I thought the cinematography was so great. Like it opens just with these shots from seemingly the floor of this very tall forest. I have no k- idea what type of trees these are, but- Yeah

a really super, super high canopy. It’s 

Todd: almost otherworldly, honestly. 

Craig: Yeah. It’s beautiful. Yeah. And it’s all in gray, and there’s mist and stuff. And, and there’s an opening passage that comes from the opening paragraph of the story that just describes the land and the history and, and suggests that it, you know, there’s lore about it or whatever.

And then I thought that it was- I don’t know. This is one of the only, I guess, issues that I had with the movie is that they then cut to what could look potentially like a period scene where it’s a girl, like, in a cape in a circle of stones and maybe candles. I don’t remember. But she’s, like, chanting and she has a pentagram tattoo on her foot, and she does this whole witchcraft thing.

She eventually says as she’s praying or chanting or whatever that she’s trying to burn the cancer out of her mom. 

Yeah. 

Craig: But it turns out it’s not a period thing because this good-looking guy from the EPA 

Todd: I guess, right? He’s down to do water surveys. 

Craig: And I know, and that was so weird to me because there was a similar thing in The Curse, and this doesn’t come directly from the story.

Todd: Really? 

Craig: W- yeah. 

Todd: Oh, interesting. 

Craig: Yeah. There are a couple of things like that. Another one is that the dad’s name is Nathan and his name is not Nathan in the story. But I wonder if his name in the story is, like, an older version of the name Nathan. I, I, I do think it starts with an N. I don’t remember. But yeah, that was a weird parallel.

But anyway, this guy says, shows up and again, just like in The Curse, basically for no reason says that he’s there to survey the water table for the hydroelectric company or something. And I guess he kind of, he takes the p- Like I said, the story is told from the perspective of a first-person narrator, an outside narrator.

Todd: So he’s like the narrator in a sense? 

Craig: This guy. This guy ends up- Oh, in the story … r- basically being… Yeah. Right. 

Todd: Even though in the movie we don’t really need a narrator, so- 

Craig: Not really … 

Todd: he’s not a central figure. He’s sort of an outsider to everything that’s happening. He’s sort of a glue that kinda comes it, he kinda holds it together.

He’s a, he comes in at the beginning to kinda help us introduce and then he goes away, and then all this stuff happens to this family, and then he comes in at the end. 

Craig: Yeah, and there are other little parts where there’s him and there’s also, uh, well We’ll get to them in just a second. So we get introduced to the whole family.

It’s a mom and dad. The mom’s name is Teresa. I’ll probably just call her mom. The dad’s name is Nathan. That’s Nicolas Cage , who I really like too. I, I really do think that he’s a very, very talented guy, and I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. 

Yeah. 

Craig: And to make those bold choices that he makes, the things that people imitate and make fun of him for, bold choices aren’t easy.

Yeah. 

Craig: Like, he’s not just goofing around. Like, he’s working. He’s making bold choices, and I think that that’s the sign of a, a good actor. Maybe a little bit more theatrical in style than some other film actors, but- 

Todd: He gets a little weird. He makes some weird choices, but so does Johnny Depp. Like, I fucking hated him in, uh, the Willy Wonka movie.

Craig: Yeah, I’m not a big fan of his. You 

Todd: know, you could say he made a bold choice there, but I thought it was stupid, you know? And it, and it degraded that movie for me. 

Craig: Well, that’s fine. I mean, that’s a, that’s a fair criticism. I think you could say that of- … some of Nic Cage’s movies too. I mean, if it’s- 

Todd: Yeah, we were not fans of Wicker Man, the, the remake.

Craig: Yeah, the… Yeah. 

Todd: Well, we thought it was hilarious, but 

Craig: It was fun, and you already said this, but I agree with you. You know, he likes to try new things, and he’s done some stuff recently that he’s almost unrecognizable in, and I’m a big fan too. I like him. 

Todd: What was that one that was big 

Craig: for- I can’t think of it 

Todd: God, what’s the name?

What’s the name? Long Legs. 

Craig: Long Legs. Long Legs. 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. That 

Craig: one was creepy. And he was really creepy. 

Todd: Yeah, and you wouldn’t have known it was him. So he’s a good actor. He is good. So lay off this guy. Come on. 

Craig: I don’t know. I think he certainly has his fans, and I think that, I think that he, uh, that has a fairly good reputation.

I mean, I, I- I hope so … he’s an Academy… I think he’s an Oscar-nominated actor. I mean, he’s- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: he’s also been recognized for the more serious things that he’s done, so he’s doing okay. So there’s, okay, Mom and Dad, and then they have… Lavinia is their daughter. I think she’s the oldest. Then they have another teenage son, Benny, who smokes weed.

Like, that’s his character trait. 

Todd: That’s his thing, yeah. 

Craig: Yeah, and then they’ve got a l- a younger son. I would say he’s what? Like seven maybe? 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And his name is Jack, and he wears big, cute glasses, and he’s super cute, and that’s his character thing. And the things we learn about them is that they get all their water from a well.

They’re raising alpacas for meat. 

Todd: Okay 

Craig: I didn’t- Strange All right. And then at night when everybody’s doing their own thing, the dog senses something weird and starts, like, acting agitated, and, like, there’s kind of a weird pink light every once in a while, and the farm animals are getting agitated, and the electricity flickers, and Mom and Dad are, like, making out, and then all of a sudden this bright, bright, like, pink-violet light floods the house, and there’s a loud noise and a big blast of light, and the little boy, Jack, screams.

And when they go outside to investigate, they find a pink, glowing, m- stinky meteor. 

Todd: Now, am I wrong that he was the only one who actually thought it was stinky? 

Craig: No. 

Todd: Like, he’s really going on and on about how much it smells and how bad it is, and even when later on the, the mayor and the cops come over, they seem completely unam- unplussed, and one of them even says, “Yeah, I don’t really smell anything.”

Craig: Oh, I don’t know. I thought, I thought everybody smelled it. I, I think that he continues to s- wh- when I say he, the dad, continues to smell it longer than other people, but I thought… But I could be wrong. I don’t know. Okay. I don’t remember. But again, up to this point, aside from specific location, pretty much the same as The Curse- It is

including the fact that they swapped the genders of one of the kids. In the story, the family has three boys. It’s, it’s a mom and a dad and three boys. But anyway, so they find it, right? And Jack is acting weird, like he’s kind of in shock, but then he comes around and he says his head hurts. And then the sheriff and the mayor and that guy that I said before, Ward, come to check it out.

Just like with Ward, this sheriff and this mayor kind of have little side stories that don’t matter at all. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Like, I don’t know. I mean, I guess they’re, the movie is still kind of using the narrator framework. Like, Ward is telling us this story- But they didn’t necessarily need that. Like, this all- No

could have just happened to this family on their farm, and we could have just been objective observers. 

Todd: Yeah. I, I feel like in a sense a lot of films feel the need to bring in… Like, Ward comes in at moments to help explain things to us, ’cause he’s the water guy. There, there’s a sense that the water is contaminated- Yeah

at some point by this meteor, especially this well that’s there. But even Ward and, what’s her name again? Lavinia. Don’t they go out into the woods and there’s some rando guy in the woods, who also I feel like could have been excised from this and it would’ve been fine, played by- 

Craig: Tommy Chong. 

Todd: Yeah, from Cheech, from Cheech and Chong.

The, the… And, and, and he was, he was fine. He’s the typical g- kind of hippie dude living out in the woods. Off the grid, right. Off the grid, right, whatever, who’s already a little strange, so you know, whatever. But, but like, he makes tea for them as they come in, and, and they’re like, “Oh, this is a little weird.

This is a little strange.” It could be because this guy’s weird, so he just makes weird tea, but also this Ward happens to be a water expert, so he, he’s the one… I feel like his sole purpose in this whole story is just to tell us that the water that, with, with completely definitively that the water is bad.

We have a water expert telling us that the water is contaminated, and he just pops in every now and then to remind us of that. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: It- And he’s got a thing with Lavinia. 

Craig: Kinda. 

Todd: Kinda, but I mean, it, it, he doesn’t have time to go anywhere. Like, they just- No … met, and, and she’s occupied with being- Messed with.

So like she- 

Craig: Right. ‘Cause a- as soon as the meteor lands, and again, just like in The Curse, they’re kinda like, “Eh, well, that’s weird.” Like Let’s leave it out our business. I, I did… I know, right. I did appreciate that Benny at least said something at like, he’s like, “Should we worry about radiation or, like, an alien virus or anything?”

And they’re like- … “Um, I- probably not.” Things start getting weird right away. Jack, the, the, the kid, is kind of acting off. The mom is acting a little off. Like, she says something to Lavinia that’s kind of out of character. Like, she accuses her of dressing too provocatively or something. That’s really out of character, and it really bothers Lavinia.

And everybody just kind of seems on edge. And yeah, then they, what’s-his-name, when they visit Ezra, the hippie guy, who’s there to give us exposition later about history of this place and aliens and, oh, I don’t know, weird stuff. 

Yeah. 

Craig: But, uh, he, he, what’s-his-name, Ward, tells us there’s something… He says, “There’s something off with the water.”

He looks at it. It’s, it’s, like, dark red. Like like- Clearly 

Todd: off. Like- You don’t need to be a water expert to know that there’s something 

Craig: off with this water. Yeah. It’s, like, filthy dirty. And, and he smells it, and he says, “It doesn’t smell weird, so it must just be, like, rust from the pipes or whatever, so it’s probably okay.”

Now, I was thinking, if it looks like that from rust- … surely that can’t be safe. 

Todd: I wouldn’t wanna drink that. No. It could be filtered, but you should get a Brita on that right away. I- 

Craig: But he, but then he’s like, but he’s like, “But I mean, if you want, I guess I could take a sample and test it- … if you want.” And Ezra’s like, “Well, I guess, if you feel like it.”

So he takes it, and then weird stuff starts happening. There’s, there’s a lightning storm. All of the visual effects are- 

Beautiful … 

Craig: beautiful to look at. The, the lightning is… It looks like lightning, but it also kind of involves these other kind of weird glowy fluorescent colors that it, that came with the comet.

But all of the lightning is striking the place where the comet hit- And somebody says it’s drawing the lightning. 

Yeah. 

Craig: That comes directly from the story and was not in The Curse. It’s funny, you know, I had kind of always wondered why they… If it was an adaptation of the story, why The Curse didn’t use the original title.

Well, it’s because they totally took that part out of the story. Like, aside from the glowing orb that lands, there’s nothing else about lights or colors in that movie. Mm. It’s all about the water. 

Yeah, yeah. 

Craig: So Color Out of Space wouldn’t have made any sense. Uh, and, and obviously the water is a thing here too, but there’s a lot more emphasis on…

Not more emphasis, but more than the other movie on this weird, these weird colors, and it, it ultimately… Again, it’s difficult to describe because it’s supposed to be, but it’s almost like an aura or a sheen. Like- Yeah … like the sheen of oil on water or, or- Mm … that they see sometimes in the trees at night, and it progresses throughout the movie and gets easier to see.

I watched this on a small screen in a bright room, which I do not recommend Turn the lights off for this one ’cause the colors are beautiful and it’s, it’s- Yeah … there’s subtlety in the beginning a- and then it gets more impressive the further on it goes. 

Todd: I think it’s a big screen movie, honestly, and also I like the whole concept.

I suppose this, and, you know, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t know how strongly emphasized it was, I mean, it is the title of the story, but l- this whole idea that this color is there, it reminded me of the fact that we can’t see everything, right? We know there is ultraviolet light around us. There’s essentially a whole world of visuals around us that we don’t see, that we’re walking through every day that, for example, animals can see.

I, I think there’s certain animals that can see ultraviolet light, certainly insects. 

Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And so we’re unaware. You know, we walk around completely unaware of everything that’s around us because our senses are limited, and I, I think, I feel like in a way, th- thematically this movie alludes to that. Maybe the choice of the purple.

You know, this color out of space could’ve been anything, I suppose. I don’t know what it’s described as in the book- in the story, but, uh, in the movie they choose to use purple, and I can’t think that’s a coincidence ’cause it’s, you know, it’s kind of ultraviolet in a way, and that’s the spectrum we can’t see.

And so what I’m saying is I like this concept that there’s this thing that came out of space. It exists in this color that they see that’s unnatural. You know, it’s not a color that they would normally be seeing out in the woods and out and around, and, and, you know, it, it just, it, it ties in with what this is all about, this alien presence that’s a part of our galaxy and a part of our world but is really beyond our understanding, but has always been there and, and is there, and is affecting us in ways that are unfathomable.

You know? 

Craig: You’re right, unfathomable. I just think that that’s so creative on Lovecraft’s part. I mean, any- almost every single time that we try to discuss or represent alien life, we try to contextualize it in something that’s familiar to us. It’s like a humanoid thing, yeah. R- a humanoid thing or something, giant space robots or, or whatever but, but something that we can fathom.

Whereas it really almost seems as likely, if not more likely, that it might be something I mean, th- by the very nature of the word alien, it might be something that is so completely foreign to us that we just couldn’t understand it at all. It might be s- like, something that we’ve never encountered before, and I think that that’s what he’s presenting here.

We don’t really know what this thing is and, and there’s no way to contextualize it in a, a way that we can explain. But like you said, it’s not animal, vegetable, or mineral seemingly, and yet it affects- Everything. It seems to affect biology because all of a sudden, like, strange plants start coming up, just like these…

I- in this movie, there’s these red flowers that paint a very beautiful picture. But these red flowers that pop up everywhere, fuchsia flowers. I don’t know if it’s like Creating new creatures or just modifying? Hmm. Seems like it’s modifying- 

Todd: Maybe modifying. It’s hard 

Craig: to know, 

Todd: but yeah … creatures in 

Craig: nature.

Todd: There’s like a, an insect that crawls out of there that’s looks kind of like a- Out of the 

Craig: well … 

Todd: praying mantis, right? It 

Craig: seems to be centralized in the well at this point also. 

Todd: Yeah. And it’s kinda like a praying mantis, but you know, it gives us close-ups on it and you can tell it’s, it’s off. Like, it’s, it’s got more eyes than it should have.

Well, and 

Craig: we also, we also seemingly see from that insect… It seems like it’s from the insect’s POV or maybe it’s from the light’s POV. I, I, I do think that we do see from the light’s POV in other places because like, like I said, it’s kind of, the light is kind of centralized at the bottom of the well now, and that’s mesmerizing Jack.

Jack just sits and stares at the well all day and, like, whistles to it and shit. Right. But at s- at some point somebody walks over there and looks down and, and we get a POV looking up. But any time it’s, like, from the light’s POV it’s, like, negative exposure. It’s kind of inverse colors, yes. Yeah, inverse colors, and seeing it from the bug’s perspective in those reverse colors.

It’s weird. But it’s affect- so it’s affecting nature also. And but it also seems to affect, like, electricity, and it can turn cars off and on, and it can make the lights flicker, and it can make the internet go down, and it can project beautiful cosmic colors and patterns on computer screens and TV screens.

It’s messing with their phones. Yeah. I don’t know if it ever suggests that it, like, maybe messes with time, too. I, I, I think that the, the Lavinia and the brother, I think he says it messes with time, too. Like, “How long has it been since Dad went out there? How long have we been in here?” So it seems like whatever this thing is can manipulate time, space, electromagnetic stuff.

It can do almost anything seemingly. 

Todd: There’s a point here shortly after this insect pops out, I believe, and the little boy is, has this friend he claims he’s c- talking with inside the well. Like you said, he just kind of is just zero focused on the well at this point. They’re all watching TV or something, and Theresa’s preparing dinner, and she’s cutting a carrot, and she just sort of absentmindedly cuts off two of her fingers.

And she gets rushed to the hospital, but Benny stays behind. He goes out to put the alpacas back in their stables, but he doesn’t return until much later, and I think he says that it seems like time has sort of passed instantaneously for him- 

Mm-hmm … 

Todd: at that moment. Yeah, so yeah, that’s being messed up. And I, I swear there’s another moment, I don’t remember when it is, when it seems like also Lavinia, there’s a time jump for Lavinia as well.

Maybe it’s when she’s out doing a ritual 

Craig: Yeah, she’s standing, she’s doing dishes, and then all, like she closes her eyes for a second, and then she opens them back up, and then- It’s like nighttime … the big farmhouse sink, yeah, and the big farmhouse sink is spilling over and- 

Right 

Craig: And then Ward shows up again to tell them that the water is in fact contaminated.

But they’re all, at this point they’re all- Oh boy. Thank you, boy … acting kind of weird. I think Lavinia just kind of tells him to go away. And Jack is still just sitting there by the well say- giggling like a lunatic and saying he’s playing with his friends. So Wade goes to visit the crazy old Ezra again, and Ezra is hearing voices under the floor, and he says it’s the aliens.

And Wade’s like, “Okay. Well, don’t drink the water,” and he leaves. Like it’s so weird. Like, Wade is so nonchalant about all of this, I swear to God. 

Todd: Wade should be a lot more concerned as this guy who’s this water expert who’s, uh, supposedly you would think as part of his job has a responsibility to make sure that people are not drinking the wa- Like, that something happened.

You know, you gotta identify the problem, but then you also are supposed to inform people, like enforce a solution, bring in outside experts, right? You don’t just, you don’t just say, “Yeah, the water’s bad. All right, see you guys later.” 

Craig: Which is 

Todd: more or less what he does the whole time, 

Craig: right? I know. And there’s clearly something wrong with Lavinia.

Like, she’s sick. Like, there’s so- And, and she’s acting weird, and he literally says, “Okay, try not to drink the water.” Like, oh, boy. Yeah, gosh. And then, okay, so when the mom and dad come back from the hospital, they almost hit what looks like a demon cat, which is Ezra’s cat named G-Spot, which is kinda funny.

And yeah, I don’t know. More… The light comes out of the well. The dog barks and chases it, and then yelps as though it’s in pain. I, I mean, everything’s just acting weird for a long time, and at this point when Mom and Dad get back and they find Jack alone in the driveway, like, they’re both really pissed.

Yeah. And it’s at this point… And, and the alpacas are out again. Like, the alpacas keep escaping and getting out. But, uh, the, it’s at this point that Nic Cage starts flipping out, and it starts at a high level and kind of elevates from there, but it’s pretty upper level from this point on from him. 

Todd: People say that a lot about Nic Cage, about how he’s got, he’s always gotta flip out in a movie.

This movie’s no different. Some people will cynically say that he gets hired for these movies because of it. Like, “We, we need a character who’s just gonna go insane,” and, “Well, Nic Cage is our guy.” But he’s more muted in it. I don’t know. I mean, he does flip out, but I don’t know. I, I felt, I found his performance to be utterly convincing.

He’s just going crazy, but he’s not going insane crazy. He’s… There are moments where he seems a little more lucid. He’s kinda dealing with the situation at hand- Yeah … but then his mind is kind of elsewhere, so that’s present. I, I feel like his performance is great in this, honestly. It’s complex. It feels very natural to me 

Craig: I do too.

I mean, it’s, it’s not meant to be some sort of necessarily natural progression. He’s being influenced by some sort of alien force. Yeah. Like, w- it, it can be the flip of a switch. It doesn’t have to, you know, start subtly and progress. Anything can happen here. And, and you’re right. Th- there are moments where he freaks out, and then he can calm down again for a little while, initially.

And a- as the movie goes on and the stakes get higher and, and things start going bad, those moments of lucidity are fewer and far between until at the end he’s just a loon, but- Right. Um, no, I agree. I think it’s a, I think it’s a great performance. He’s, he’s crazy. But it, it also… You said believable. I don’t know if believable is the word I would use, but, like, menacing.

Like, I- Yeah … I put myself in the place of these teens, who seem to be kind of the only ones who are fully rational still at this point, and they’re concerned about their brother, they’re concerned about their parents, but they’re also concerned about themselves. And ultimately, they know they’ve gotta get out of there ’cause something’s wrong.

They can’t. They can’t. And seeing their dad behave that way, like, I, I thought that his delivery was, was, was good, was really unsettling. 

Todd: I don’t know why, but there were flashes to… What was the name of that movie that was done by the… It’s not Wolf, but it was one of the werewolf movies where they’re also in the woods, and the man transforms over time.

Was it called Wolf? Like, Wolf- 

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t remember. 

Todd: By the, the guy from the Saw movies- Liev Schreiber … and his wife. Yeah, Liev Schreiber and his wife. Oh, Wolf Man. Yeah, Wolf Man. Wolf Man, right? It had shades of that, but in this case, it’s happening to the entire family. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: So everybody’s got their own flavor of going crazy.

You’ve got the little kid who’s, like, seeing things. You’ve got the mother, who’s just kind of out to lunch at this point. You’ve got the father, who’s going nuts. Lavinia seems to be the most lucid, but she’s trying desperately to solve the problem by doing her little rituals in the woods. And so- Uh-huh

she goes back out with a, with a copy of the Necronomicon. She starts mutilating herself, you know? She’s cutting herself and she’s carvi- I don’t know. I guess she got it from the book or whatever, but it’s… That’s disturbing. But what’s basically happening here is a lot of stuff. Like, a lot of this random, like, from almost from character to character- 

Craig: Yeah

Todd: bad things are happening. And I guess for me, this is where the movie slowed down a little bit. And, and I don’t really, I don’t, I can’t really criticize the film for it because I thought it was appropriately played out and appropriately paced, really, to what real life would be. I guess I just got a little impatient, ’cause I was like, “All right, I get it.

I mean, everybody’s being affected by this thing. I don’t see a way out for any of them. I don’t see anybody coming to help them.” And so I’m just sitting and watching all this play out for quite a while. And if I had any criticism of the movie, I thought that could have been tightened up a little bit.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, I get what’s going on. I mean, they’re, it, it’s, they’re trying to show us kind of- I guess as quickly as possible, though it does seem to go on a little bit long, the progress of what’s happening on the farm because things are progressing. Like, those red flowers are popping up all over the place.

There’s the- Alpacas are going nuts and- They’re go- the alpacas are going nuts. The, he does the, you know, he harvests these big, huge, beautiful tomatoes and these big, b- beautiful peaches, but they taste awful. Mm-hmm. Which again, we saw in The Curse in a much more graphic fashion. This is more d- you know, they, they didn’t ex- like explode Evil Dead style all over his face.

They just, they just tasted bad. Was, was 

Todd: that, is that in the story? I wondered. 

Craig: Uh, yeah. What looks like a beautiful harvest is inedible. And the same thing… The, the difference is… Well, for a couple differences. First of all, you said the story potentially would be much slower paced because it takes place over the course of months in the story.

Hmm. In the movie it takes place over a, a few days. The other difference is instead of the farm growing progressively more colorful, like it almost becomes like a, an Oz-type- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: place. In the story, eventually all the color starts to drain from everything. Oh, interesting. Um, and everything, everything kind of crumbles away to just like gray ash, which, which we see, I guess, at the end of the movie, but it’s, it’s, it’s not instantaneous in the story.

It’s, it’s gradual. Right. Same outcome, but gradual. Hmm. But yeah, I mean, I think that’s what they’re showing us is, you know, that this is continuing. And, and you said, you know, we see this family and we see there’s no way out for them. In the back of my mind, and, and the teenagers keep saying this too, is they need to get out.

Like, just leave. Yeah. Like, there’s, there’s something bad here. And I think that as a teenager or as a kid, if I had seen this movie, that’s what I would be thinking. As a grown-up, I realize that that’s easier said than done . You know? Like- Yeah … this is their home, you know? They’re, it’s, it’s their entire l- livelihood.

Like, to just pack up and go i- isn’t as easy as a decision as it might seem. Nonetheless, if all this crazy shit starts going down at my house, I’m getting out. 

Todd: But it, it’s also a bit Tommyknockers like this too, in that the effect of what’s happening to them is affecting their judgment and their ability to leave also, right?

True, true. So I feel like that’s, that’s a factor here that’s implied. There’s the actual practical aspects of the car is not working, and they’re isolated, and their phones are dead, and all that stuff. But then there’s also the fact that they’re constantly distracted by whatever’s happening to them, that they can’t leave.

And so, you know, I, I thought that was effectively done, especially the woman. I mean, she’s gone. The little kid’s gone. The girl’s trying to hold it together. Weirdly, Ward is in and out. He should be in or he should be bringing help. You know, eventually he does, but God, that takes him forever. Jack, right, the, the father, he’s, he’s just going crazy.

So- 

Craig: Nathan’s going crazy. Well, right. Nathan. Sorry, yeah. And, and th- and then this is where things really start to go bonkers. Like, they start seeing the light more and, and, you know, recognizing that it’s something weird. Like, the al- Benny goes out to s- uh, Benny and Jack go out to, like, feed the alpacas or something, but they’re all messed up, like gross and, like- Like the Thing

exposed flesh. Yeah. Yeah. They were like one mass of almost seems- Well, they’re not conjoined yet when they go out there, but the light, like, shines out of there and, like, chases them. And the mom intercepts and grabs Jack, and they, like, huddle down together, and the light beams directly on them. And then from that point forward, they are conjoined together- Ugh

in a grotesque Thing-like thing. And this part was the most disturbing part of the movie because they were clearly, like, miserable. In pain. Yeah. They were- Ugh … in pain and i- you know, they were moaning and crying, and, and they couldn’t talk. But you could just imagine them begging to be put out of their misery.

And at this point, like- What are you gonna do? Nothing. You can’t just take them to the hospital. 

Todd: Ugh, this was horrifying, honestly. Tell me about the story. Does the story have this in it? 

Craig: No. No. Oh. The mom, the mom gets so crazy that they lock her up in the attic. As they do here, they put this thing, the mom Jack thing up in the attic.

In the story, it’s just the mom. She goes so crazy, and they leave her up there, and then it says that it’s unfathomable what she became in there. That’s it. That’s the end. And then one of- Okay … and then one of the other sons goes crazy like that too, and they lock him in the room across the hall. So I think that’s the Jack-mom connection from the story.

And then in the movie, as Benny and Lavinia are trying to leave, they try to leave on the horse, but the horse has sparkle eyes and, and goes crazy and leaves. He thinks he hears the dog crying from the well, so he starts to crawl down in there, and then it all lights up, and the light shoots up and, and gets him.

And later, when Ward and the sheriff come to check things out, the only person still around is the dad downstairs. And they’re like, “How is everything?” And he’s acting totally… He’s like, “Oh, we’ve had some trouble around here, but, uh, I think… I’m glad you’re here.” And they’re like, “Where’s your wife?” And he’s like, “She’s right there,” to an empty chair.

Mm-hmm. And that specific moment does happen in the story too. But this is basically when they discover, you know, the monster upstairs, and it’s like, it’s like a mom spider monster now. 

Oh, God. 

Craig: And it’s… I couldn’t tell if it… I think the dad, as he went crazy, grabbed Lavinia and threw her in there and said, “Here, feed your mother.”

Todd: Yes. Oh my God. This was all so disturbing. You know, it’s, it’s rare. We’ve done so many of these things and we get so jaded. It’s rare for me to watch a movie where I’m truly disturbed, and watching this mother-son conjoined thing happen was so upsetting. And then when the dad throws her in there and says, “Feed your mother,” it’s like, oh my God.

Everything about this was upsetting. And so I give the movie serious props for making this call, for, for changing the story, turning it into this, making it this weird Society-type- 

Craig: Yeah … 

Todd: melding. I mean, the way they describe it is that he is being absorbed back into his mother, which is brilliant bec- you know, she’s his mother.

Like, she gave birth to him, now she’s reabsorbing him. Right. But it looks painful, and they’re miserable, and they will not stop wailing and crying and being upset. And the other two are either so far gone or just, like you said, “What can we do?” They just don’t know what to do. You, you can’t call an ambulance for this sort of thing.

They know everything is wrong, and so you see the inevitable end coming. And then, of course, Nicolas Cage’s character realizes that. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And that adds another dimension to this that it’s also really upsetting God, this movie’s good in this way. Uh- 

Craig: It is. It is. And, and when, when the sheriff and Ward arrive, the dad starts to take them upstairs and he’s saying about how like, “We all stick together now except for Benny.

Benny lives in the well now.” Ugh. And that’s directly from the story too. The, the dad said one of the sons lived in the well now. But that, that whole “we all stick together now,” I felt like that was- Hm … obvious double entendre. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Because I couldn’t tell, but it seemed to me not that the mom was necessarily trying to eat the daughter, but to assimilate with her.

Because also, God, I don’t remember when it happens, if it’s… Maybe it’s later. The sheriff and, and Ward and the dad come in, and I think the dad ends up shooting the mom’s head off, saving the daughter. And then he also shoots… The, the son’s face is like in part of the mom’s body, ugh, crying and stuff, and he shoots that too.

Hm. But I think they were all going to assimilate together. Gosh, I don’t know. At some point, somebody goes out to the barn and all of the alpacas are fused together. They look like a Hydra or something. Like, it’s just all these- Yeah … like long-necked alpaca heads on this one big mass. And I read that the, the guy who made this movie was inspired by John Car- Carpenter.

There’s obvious The Thing references. 

Oh, yeah. 

Craig: But also when you see th- those alpacas, there’s a close-up of one of its eyes and its pupil has started to separate, uh, like it’s separating into two pupils. And I read, I didn’t remember this, but apparently that is what the pupils look like of the eyes of the people in, In the Mouth of Madness- Oh

when they’ve been demonized or whatever. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. So, yeah. We should do that sometime. So, I mean- Yeah, we should. It’s a great movie. But direct references to those, I don’t know. And then they go out and they look for Ezra, leaving L- Lavinia behind, and the dad by themselves I think, right?

Or is the dad- Mm-hmm … dead at this point? I don’t even remember. 

Todd: Not yet. No, Dad, so- 

Craig: This is when they go to Ezra and he’s rambling, or at least at first Ward thinks he’s rambling. Hm. Um, but it really is just a recording of him. And I don’t know if you can put it in or whatever, but if I remember- Exposition

he talks about- It’s exposition about an alien world, or these aliens trying to change our world into what they know and make it more like its own world. 

Yeah. 

Craig: And he says, you know, the, it, it can affect everything because everything that lives drinks the water. And he says, “It’s just a color out of space.”

And then light, light comes out of his head. At some point… Oh, gosh, it, it’s coming up. It, light comes out of his head, so the sheriff and Ward run away. But a tree Grabs the sheriff Hmm. Evil Dead style and- Mm, pulls him up and he’s dead … pulls him up and crushes him. And Ward gets back, I guess, and Lavinia’s eyes are glowing, and like light and patterns burst out of her eyes as he, as Ward is looking into him.

And it’s like he sees the alien planet, and it’s weird. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But I thought it was kinda cool. 

Todd: Yeah. I, I, I don’t know. Honestly, I felt like this whole Ezra bit was almost too on the nose. Uh, my only other criticism of this, criticism of this movie was we didn’t need that explanation. 

Craig: No, not really. 

Todd: I- i- it almost felt a little childish for me to get this direct explanation of these aliens.

I’m like, up until this point, this movie had been sufficiently mysterious and surprising. And again, like we’ve been talking about with the Lovecraftian style, like just everything incomprehensible. So to have a recording from a guy who had kinda sorted it all out and left the recording going for people to find was, felt really dumb.

Like, this bit I almost… I kinda cringed at, honestly. I feel like if you had cut that out, it would’ve felt better for me because I got it. I got what I needed to get, you know? We know this thing came from an alien planet. We don’t know what it is or whatever, but it’s having its effect that it’s gonna have, and that’s enough.

I, I didn’t need to hear… And it didn’t, it didn’t help me at all. It didn’t add anything to the movie for me to hear this little explanation that was delivered through a tape recorder from this guy in the woods. I’m like, “Um, come on. This is so cliche.” You know? 

Craig: Yeah, it’s unnecessary. It’s not necessary. The, the whole, you know, the whole flyby of the alien planet I thought looked cool, so I don’t know.

And I kinda like that convention- That would’ve been fine. 

Todd: No, I liked that bit … 

Craig: and I kinda like that convention in horror movies where somebody just, you know, gets a, a psychic glimpse of- Yeah … an alien world or a hellscape or, or something, so- 

Todd: I liked 

Craig: that … I agree. The exposition was unnecessary. 

Todd: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: But, uh, yeah. So he sees that, and then he snaps back into reality, and then there’s a huge pillar of light that comes out of the well and shoots up into the sky that reminded me very much of the finale of The Gate. And then this is somewhat reminiscent of The Gate, too. I didn’t understand this. I think Lavinia…

No, I don’t even know what happens to Lavinia. I feel like- She kind of just like- … Lavinia disappears to the alien planet or something. 

Todd: She just kind of disintegrates into nothingness, right? Like, gets sucked up into the whole thing. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: She kind of like holds her arms out, looks up at the sky, and then pieces of her just kind of drift away.

Craig: And then Ward goes back into the house and the rest of the family are like dead but sitting in the living room. Yeah. And the dad attacks him, and Ward runs down to the cellar, and then while he’s down in the cellar, the ground starts shaking, and then everything explodes in light. Yeah. And the screen goes bright white And then it cuts back to this desolate

At first I thought it was snow, but it’s not. It’s like ash and dust covering everything. And, you know, it’s just like the rubble of the house, and Ward crawls out of it. And it’s like the nuclear apocalypse. Like, dust is just- Yeah … you know, all in the air, and everything’s covered in dust. And now the house is at the center of a huge crater, which, cut back to present time when Ward is narrating this from, has been turned into a lake, which apparently was a subplot.

Like, apparently that was part of the reason that he was there, and, like, he was doing side things- Oh … with the mayor, that their, their farmland- They were gonna put a, build a dam. Yeah. They were gonna, they were gonna flood out the farm anyway. Oh. But, uh, they cut that. Anyway, it becomes a lake, and the narrator, again, it’s directly from the text of the story, but he says something, “Uh, maybe that water someday will be clean, but all I know is I’ll never drink it.”

And then more, “It was just a color out of space, a message from some other time and place.” Something, I don’t know. 

Yeah. 

Craig: And then he walks away, and a bug flies across the sunset screen, and then that’s the 

Todd: I love… I wanna know how the story ends, because I love this kind of ending where this thing that happened was just buried underneath a reservoir that maybe millions of people enjoy and go by and see and don’t realize that there’s something underneath there that maybe could be awakened later.

Like, oh, God, I love that kind of resolution. But does the story end that way? Is it, is it basically the same? 

Craig: Yeah, I think so, and I think that it does eventually become a lake. I, like, i- the, the, the crater that it creates where everything is dead, everybody just avoids it, and, like, animals get really anxious when they go near it.

Horses don’t wanna go near it. Dogs won’t go near it, stuff like that. So people mostly just avoid it, and they said that it seemed like the parameter continued to expand by a couple of inches every year. 

Todd: Oh, interesting. 

Craig: But then I think it was filled and became a lake, and, and it ends, you know, with the same thing, like, “I would never drink that water.”

Todd: It just- 

Craig: Lore kind of stuff … 

Todd: I like the kind of ending, but with everything that happened in this movie up to this point, it’s hard to believe it could just possibly end there, right? Like- 

Craig: Yeah … 

Todd: how does just flooding this lake with water just suddenly end all of this? You know what I mean? 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Uh, yeah. So- 

Craig: And what happened?

Like, did the, did the light, whatever it was, did it just go away? Did it- Right. That’s my thing. Yeah … go back to its home planet? Did it, is it still there? Like- 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. And, but a- again, I don’t need a definitive answer. That’s fine. 

Todd: No. 

Craig: Um, I, I, again, like I said, just like the story, I kind of like that it’s encapsulated.

Like i-i-it’s, this is the story as we know it, this is the beginning, this is the middle, and this is the end. Like, that, and that’s- Mm-hmm … that’s all we know I think that the movie is as good an adaptation of the story as you could get unless you wanted to make it a period piece, which would make it more authentic to the story, ’cause it should have happened in the 1820s or something like that, I think.

But, you know, I don’t think modernize it takes anything away from the story. I, and I, and I think it’s as good an adaptation as you could get, but there might be another one that goes in a different direction. Eh, and the story, as we’ve said many times, Lovecraft stories are like this. They leave a lot of room for artistic license and for- Yeah

creative license and, and for, you know, the imagination to run wild. And, and I really, I really, really like Lovecraft, Lovecraft adaptations, like Re-Animator, and there are many. But I also like… I love movies and stories that draw from that lore. I think it’s really cool and, and, as you mentioned, you know, Lovecraft is public domain, so people have a lot of freedom.

But so many authors and filmmakers draw directly from this lore. Stephen King has done it. You know, in our book club a long time ago, we read a story called Grandma that was inspired directly by the Cthulhu mythos, and there have been en- you know, endless references to Cthulhu or ancient gods, you know, under the ground, and, and so much of it comes from Lovecraft.

And I love all of that stuff. This one’s different. You don’t get any big kaiju-type monsters. It’s more abstract, but it’s beautiful to look at. I just think it’s a really well-made movie. I agree with you. From the start you said it’s a little bit too long, and I, I agree. I think they could have shaved off 20 minutes and it would have been perfect.

But overall, it’s, it’s a good movie and, and certainly far better than The Curse, which I still enjoy for some reasons, including the practical effects. But this is a much better movie. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean, really, The Curse feels like the ’80s adaptation of a story that is much better told with, you know- 

Craig: Yes … 

Todd: modern- Better effects, right

uh, sensibilities and effects and things like that. Yeah, for sure. The, you know, it was critically well-received. Even now it has an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. It just didn’t do very well at the box office. The budget was somewhere between six to 12 million. Only made a million. The director, Richard Stanley, this was his big comeback.

I, uh, like almost a, over a, almost two decades from this point, he had been fired from The Island of Dr. Moreau. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Uh, there were some issues there with the production pretty early on in the process. He hadn’t done a lot of filming, and so he was like, “Oh,” and he, this was the first movie he made since then, and what a great comeback for him.

I mean, I really think it’s well done. It’s just a shame. He, he said that he wanted this to be the first of a trilogy of Lovecraft adaptations. He was… He has a script for The Dunwich Horror, which he was planning to shoot after this. You know, obviously this was done right just before COVID, so who knows what- if that’s been delayed because of this or because of the reception of this, or maybe he’s still working on it.

We just don’t have that information. But I would like to see more from this director, you know. Yeah. He’s done a few things. He, he, he hasn’t directed anything since then, but Dunwich is supposedly in pre-production according to IMDb. We’ll see if we get it, but, uh, that would be interesting to see because the only, I think the only major adaptation of the Dunwich Horror we’ve, we’ve had is a Roger Corman movie, which I th- I feel like we should do at some point, but I’m curious about.

I read that story a while ago, and I enjoyed it. It takes place at a university, which I always found kind of fascinating. 

Craig: Yeah, I think I’ve read it. 

Todd: And it was interesting because of the university that, the Miskatone University- Miskatonic, 

Craig: yeah … 

Todd: Miskatonic University is, is, it’s half obscured the entire time, so it’s clearly just a little Easter egg for the Lovecraft fans.

But it’s on Ward’s… It’s, it’s basically all that Ward wears through this whole thing is a shirt for Miskatonic. Yeah, I loved it. Like you said, I loved it. I thought it was a l- tad bit long, but honestly, I think it just really depends on how you’re feeling and what your preferences are because I can’t even really knock it too much for that.

Craig: No. 

Todd: I really enjoyed it. I thought it was beautiful, brilliantly done. It really inspires me to read the story, and I mean- 

Craig: It’s a quick read. You can read it in an hour. 

Todd: I should, yeah. And, and, and that’s, you know, it’s tells you something about the movie, I think, if it, if it inspires you to dig a little deeper into the story.

Yeah. Then highly recommend. Highly recommend you see this. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. As you know, as we say all the time, just Google us, Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast. You can find us on Facebook, and you can find us on Instagram.

Let us know what you thought of this. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or one of these sites. If you enjoy what you’re listening to, let us know. Patreon.com/chainsawpodcast that you can go to to, with, for just five bucks a month, get complete unedited episodes and, uh, lots of other goodies that we leave there.

Please check it out and support us in that way. We really appreciate it, but more than anything, we just really appreciate you listening and, and talking to us. If you really wanna talk to us, go to chainsawhorror.com and click on Talk to Us. You can leave us a message and, uh, if you leave us this voice message, you don’t have to install anything on your browser.

You just do it through your browser, and it gets sent right to us, then we will respond to it. We do requests pretty quickly. Uh, chainsawhorror.com is where you find us most directly. Until next time, I am Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We dig into the 1981 slasher Night School, drawn in by Mark Irwin’s cinematography and the film’s giallo-inspired mystery setup.

Shot on location in Boston, it leans on familiar tropes—black gloves, an obscured killer, and a whodunit investigation—but stands out with stylish, restrained beheading set pieces, clever editing, and memorable sound design.

We walk through standout sequences like the aquarium kill and the restaurant “stew” fake-out, debate the soapier relationship drama around Professor Millet and Eleanor, and react to the reveal of the killer and a lengthy motorcycle chase.

By the end, we agree it’s well-made and visually strong, even if watching so many early ’80s slashers back-to-back dulled the impact.

Episode 493, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: This week was my turn to pick. I just can’t get off of these 1981 slasher films. There are just so darn many of them to find, and I’m always finding something new. I think this one I was led to because a couple weeks ago we did another ’81 slasher, and we were really talking about how nice the cinematography was.

And the cinematographer for that one was Mark Irwin. Mark Irwin has done a ton of stuff. He’s worked pretty closely with David Cronenberg. He’s done a lot of these old horror movies that we’ve done. The Brood, Scanner. Well, we haven’t done Scanners yet, I guess. Videodrome- Mm … The Fly, The Blob remake that we loved so much.

Uh, Robocop movies, Robocop 2, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Dumb and Dumber. Like, the list goes on. This guy’s a major cinematographer. He’s done a bunch of horror, and then he kinda went into comedy there in the ’90s, so. Anyway, as I was going through his stuff, I saw this one, Night School, which pops up on my lists every now and then, and I thought, “Oh, that would be kind of fun.”

Another slasher movie. It looks to be somewhat giallo inspired, and it had some pretty nice things that people had said about it. So this is Night School from 1981. Craig, d- have you ever seen this before? 

Craig: Nope. As far as I know, never heard of it. I mean, Night School is a pretty generic title for one of these ’80s horror movies, so- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: maybe I’ve heard it before, I don’t know. But I s- definitely don’t think that I had seen it, so I I really don’t have any history with it at all, so this was my first experience with it. 

Todd: Yeah, mine too. In fact, I don’t even remember seeing it, like, on the shelves or anything like that. I 

Craig: don’t either. 

Todd: But the director is, uh, Ken Hughes.

Ken Hughes is quite prolific. He did Chitty Chitty Bang Bang wrote and directed. 

Craig: That movie scared me when I was a kid. 

Todd: Oh my God. That was my… Yeah, that’s- It should … gateway horror, that movie. 

Craig: The, I… It wasn’t something that we watched in our house, and so s- I don’t know, a teacher showed it to us at school, and, like, I was terrified.

Todd: Oh, man. Yeah, the Child Catcher in that is just- Yeah … scary. I… Someday I’m gonna show that to Kenji, but I w- I… ‘Cause he likes musicals, but I do wonder if it’s gonna give him nightmares, that Child Catcher. But yeah, so Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Night School was actually, this was his very last film before he…

I mean, he didn’t pass away, he just retired. And he passed away in 2001 at the ripe old age of 79. So, uh- 

Clip: Mm. 

Todd: Yeah, what a film to go out on. Just slasher movie that has a few different things in it, but a lot of things the same. I don’t know. Let, l- Do we just dive into it? Do you have any, like, overall thoughts you wanna say?

Craig: No, I guess. I mean, I th- I think that my feelings on this one might be kind of tainted by the fact that we’ve done so many of them in a row. 

Todd: Yeah. Comparing them now, aren’t we? 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And after a while it’s like, okay. They’re all the 

Todd: same. 

Craig: To some extent, and, and that’s fine. I mean, to some extent that’s what I like about them.

I, I kind of know what I’m getting into. I kind of know what to expect. I’m looking for certain tropes and things. But when you watch them back to back to back, and, heh, I don’t know i- if we’re keeping this some kind of big secret, but, like, we did the last, I don’t know, what, seven episodes, like, in a marathon.

Todd: That’s right. We, we have not given ourselves any break between these movies. So you’re right, it feels like we’ve seen six of these. 

Craig: Yeah, like straight back to back. So, uh- Oh, 

Todd: we should take a break. 

Craig: Yeah, maybe so Yeah, so I don’t know. I, I, I guess we just jump into it. There are, you know, as, as you already mentioned, the cinematography is good.

It’s shot w- in Boston, is that right? 

Todd: Yeah, almost entirely on location in Boston. 

Craig: Yeah, and the locations are great, and I think that I read that up until this point, Boston hadn’t really been used as a shooting location much, if at all, like maybe a movie or two before that. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: It is a really cool, you know, ki- you know, the streets look old and, and historic, and it’s all lit very well, and all of that looks great.

It’s just as far as plot is concerned, I’m like, “Yeah, l- l- the last three episodes we did, just, like, kinda listen to those.” It’s 

Todd: kind of the same plot, yeah. 

Craig: Pretty much the same. It really is. Especially since, you know, we’re doing these older ones that s- it’s… As you were saying it a minute ago when you were saying it’s got elements of giallo, it’s giallo inspired.

Well, yeah, we always say that because they all are. Mm-hmm. I mean, even e- even what became the more prototypical ’80s slashers still were inspired by giallo. Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: they didn’t carry over every element, but… So it’s funny, but this one specifically is, you know, uh, uh, many of the same details, the black gloves, the obscured figure.

You don’t know who it is until the end, and it’s a mystery, and there are people investigating the mystery. And so that’s the base- … of it, but we can get into the more details of what’s actually going on in this one. 

Todd: Yeah, there are quite a few characters in here, and I think this one sets it apart from maybe one of the last ones we did where there were, seemed to be a very small cast, so there weren’t a lot of people to be thinking about or to be suspects.

This kicks off at a daycare as it’s letting out, a daycare in the middle of the city, and this woman, Anne Barrens, is just sitting with this little girl, Lisa, on a merry-go-round. One of those classic, classic old-school merry-go-rounds that I probably aren’t… They don’t put in, uh, playgrounds anymore, do they? I think they’re deemed fairly unsafe, but I love them.

We 

Craig: had one at, uh, our elementary school here until recently. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. I haven’t been by in a while. 

Todd: I mean, it’s the kind of thing when you look at it, and I think about it now, man, we would w- you know, we would spin each other around on these things so- till we were almost flying off.

And if somebody, I don’t know, rolled underneath it, that wouldn’t be good. Yeah, they were- Probably not. I, I don’t know how none of us ever got injured on… Well, some of us probably did get injured on these things, but I really miss those old school playground equipment. 

Craig: Especially since, you know, our playgrounds were just on concrete.

Mm. Like, at least now they put down, like, those rubber chips or whatever. 

Todd: That’s true. Well, Anne Behrens is about to get it. She’s a teacher there. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Seems like she’s… And we later learn she’s going to night school to get her teaching certification. 

Craig: Yeah, and that’s the only reference to night school at all throughout the whole rest of the movie.

Todd: More or less, yeah, exactly. Well, it was originally titled Terror Eyes. Terror Eyes, E-Y-E-S. Yeah. Which is… I think Night School’s better, honestly. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That one’s a little too cute for its own good. Yeah, everybody kinda leaves, and she’s just sitting there chilling, and a dude comes up on a motorcycle, and he is wearing a big black motorcycle helmet.

Honestly, it’s like, uh, half of Daft Punk is what w- is what, what this looks like. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: One of those big-ass motorcycle helmets with the visor that’s completely dark and almost goes halfway around the head. And, and, uh, he’s dressed in all black, like a leather, tight leather jacket, all sleeves, and leather gloves, and leather pants.

Just all black. 

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Very scary, actually. I mean, if somebody had approached me like this, I wouldn’t have been as chill as she was at first. And then he just starts spinning her around on the merry-go-round. I thought this was a clever scene. So she’s flying around on the merry-go-round, and as he’s, she’s coming by, he whips out this knife, and it’s unique.

Mm. One of, one of the unique things about this movie is the knife he’s carrying around. It’s c- it’s curved inward a little bit. It, it’s just very, got a very stylistic look to it. And I guess it was modeled after some tribe or something. This kind of ceremonial knife- Mm … known as the kukri. Used as both a tool and a weapon on the Indian subcontinent, and it is the, still the basic utility knife of the Gurkha, sometimes called a Gurkha blade or a Gurkha knife.

Thank you, Wikipedia. And he, uh, as she comes around, he, like, has it in front of her like he’s gonna cut her face with it. He r- raises it up, he raises it up. He’s really taunting her, he’s teasing her. And then as she comes around one last time, he raises it above his head and apparently lops her head right off.

This is a beheading movie. Everybody gets beheaded. 

Clip: Uh-huh. 

Todd: Which reminds me of the poster for this one. There’s a, there’s a report card on it. It says, “A is for apple, B is for bed, C is for coed, D is for dead- … F is for failing to keep your head.” Oh, boy. Night School: A Lesson in Terror. 

Craig: Wow. Maybe that’s why we never saw it.

Todd: That might be. That sounds, that 

Craig: sounds pretty 

Todd: bad. They looked at that and kind of went, “This is stupid.” Yeah. So, uh, he cuts her head off. Then we g- switch over to Judd. Judd and Stevie, his wife, getting ready for a night on the town, and suddenly he gets called away. He’s a police detective. She’s very upset about it.

Do we ever 

Craig: see Stevie again? No. Do we ever… I don’t think we… We never s- I don’t think we do … This poor girl. They’re like… They’re getting ready to have a romantic evening, and he gets called away, and then he’s just gone for weeks. We never see him again. I know, right? And they make such a big deal out of this.

Clip: Oh, Judd, it’s your day off. You promised. I’m sorry, Stevie, but it’s important. Stevie, look, why don’t you just… Honey, honey, honestly, I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to. I know, but- Come on. Let me make it up to you. Why don’t you book a table at The Ragged Glove for about 7:00? I’ll be done by then It’s my job.

Yeah. Well, it’s a lousy job 

Todd: Poor Stevie. That’s- She never sees her husband … hilarious We never see her. Ever again.

It’s so funny. So anyway, he gets called out, and it turns out this is the second killing in a week. Her- the severed head of her was found in a bucket of water far away from the body, and it turns out that the first killing, the body’s head was found in a pond. And so from these two things… Okay, so this guy’s got, like, a goofy sidekick.

Craig: Are you talking about the cop now? 

Todd: Yeah, I’m talking about the cop. The cop’s got a goofy sidekick. His sidekick decides that he- that there’s a pattern, something weird about water. So, uh, Judd decides to go and investigate Wendell College girls school, which is where she was going in the evenings studying to be a teacher.

And they keep talking about his Harvard degree. There is this kind of irritating continuous theme and thread going here of the fact that this guy has a degree and his partner does not, and I think his wife even says something. He even says something about his degree when he’s with his wife, and then later somebody says, “Well, that’s what you get when you got a Harvard degree.”

It’s like, oh my God, okay, so this guy’s educated. We got that. And I guess he’s surrounded by uneducated people who are really, really take issue with that or- 

Craig: I didn’t even notice. You were… No. You were paying much closer attention. 

Todd: You didn’t notice that? Oh, it kept coming up. Well anyway, at the girls school he goes in, and there’s a professor giving an anthropology lesson.

He just goes into the, the class she was taking. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: And as is typical in these movies, this guy’s giving a lecture that’s gonna be somewhat relevant later, but he’s talking about the tribes of Papua New Guinea and their interesting and strange rituals. You know, I took an anthropology class when I was in college, and the teacher had done…

Oh gosh, what was her name? I don’t remember her, her name, but she had done some pretty groundbreaking extensive work in Papua New Guinea. Her big research project in the ’70s, I think, was that she discovered how they used gambling as a form of wealth redistribution in the islands. 

Craig: Interesting. 

Todd: Yeah. We read her book and everything like that.

It’s just so interesting. Every time I think of anthropology, I think of that class, and I think of her, and I think of Papua New Guinea, so- … for that to come up here in this movie was just a personal little, oh, that’s kinda nice for me. 

Craig: I’m glad you enjoyed it. 

Todd: Not for you, but definitely for me. This professor right away comes off as a douche, don’t you think?

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And he’s got a little bit of that Frasier look to him, doesn’t he? God, he looked a lot like Frasier. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Who’s that actor? Kelsey Grammer, right? 

Craig: Uh, yeah, a younger Kelsey Grammer, sure. 

Todd: The professor’s like, “I- look, I didn’t really know her ’cause she’s only been coming here for a couple weeks, but she was really, really good friends with my assistant here, Anne, so you could talk to her.”

And he walks over and he gets really friendly with Anne. 

Craig: It’s Kim. Kim is the- Oh, Kim … is the assistant. Anne is the, Anne is the one who is dead. 

Todd: Ah, 

Craig: yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Todd: yeah. 

Craig: And yet, it, it’s funny ’cause the Professor Millet, I think is his name- Uh-huh … passes Judd off to Kim, and in talking to her, Kim’s like, “Yeah, she had a secret boyfriend.

I think he was older.” And the guy, the cop’s like, “Was he married?” And she’s like, “Mm, I don’t know, something like that.” And then for some reason, Millet thinks it’s a psycho with no motive, and the professor’s like, “Oh, I’m not so sure.” No, the- he, he is the professor. The professor tells the cop… 

Clip: I think you’re dealing with a psychotic killer here, a maniac that strikes without rhyme or reason, without any tangible motive.

He’s gonna be a very hard person for you to find. Oh, we’ll find him Good night. Good night. 

Craig: I was trying to hurry through that because I wanted to get to the diner where there’s also… Millet has an assistant who’s, like, foreign exchange student- Yeah … I guess. Mm-hmm. And she, that girl, the foreign exchange student, kinda gives Kim a weird look or, or something.

Mm-hmm. It, it looked to me like a keep your hands off my man kind of look. 

Todd: Exactly. Yep. 

Craig: But she goes to this diner where there’s this cute waitress, and somehow Millet comes up in their conversation. And the waitress is like, “Is it true what they say about him?” And the f- foreign exchange student is like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She’s like… I don’t remember how she put it but basically she asked, “I- is it true that he’s Professor McFucks’ students?” Like

Todd: Apparently 

Craig: he is. And, and s- and she’s like, “I don’t know.” But what’s hilarious to me is that he totally is, and it seems like he’s banging every young woman that he works with. 

Todd: Yeah. Like 

Craig: all of them. 

Todd: He har- he hardly keeps it a secret either. He’s touching them all and giving them looks and embracing them, and it’s pretty nuts.

This, this exchange student’s name is Eleanor, by the way, and played by Rachel Ward in her very first film role, and she went on to do other things. She’s, uh, still working. 

Craig: She did a couple of big things. Like, I think she was, like, in The Thorn Birds or something 

Todd: and- Mm-hmm. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid with Steve Martin.

I love that one. She did The Final Terror, which is another one I want us to get to eventually. Yeah, she, she’s just did some steady work all the way through up to the early aughts and then took a little bit of a break, and then more recently has done a few voice, voice work bits and stuff. So, uh, yeah, she’s a, she’s a nice, pretty lady.

Craig: She was an Italian model, and the guy who is the lead guy, Judd, was, like, a spaghetti Western star, right? 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: They were both kind of Italian imports or whatever. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, not Italian themselves, but definitely, like, did a lot of movies in, in Italy, yeah. Right. Which makes sense now. You got this- Italian-ish type movie that they’re in now.

Although this is a, I believe, an American production, so. 

Craig: This leads into a weird long section- Yeah … that, that is fine. Like, it’s really s- this, I don’t know, next 10 minutes or so is very suspenseful, but it’s kind of frustrating because there’s really no payoff. Like, it’s all fake-outs. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: This guy from the cafe, he’s…

I don’t know, he’s what? Like, the busboy, I guess. Mm-hmm. Follows Eleanor home, and he’s being totally shady. Like, every time she pauses to turn around to see if he’s there, he, like, ducks into doorways and stuff. Yeah. It… And, you know, then he’s kind of openly following her, and she’s running, and there’s a big dog jump scare that got me.

Uh-huh. I totally jumped. But she gets home safe, undresses in this huge, I don’t know, brownstone. Like, it’s very fancy. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And then she showers. 

Todd: Yep. 

Craig: And as she’s showering, and if… She’s a very beautiful woman. Some guy is trying to get in, and, and first it just seems like he tries to let himself in. He fumbles with, you know, the, the lock, but he can’t get in.

He tries to ring the bell. She can’t hear it. The most interesting thing to me in this scene was the sound. 

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: Were you listening to it? 

Todd: Yes. It was really good. 

Craig: It was really cool. I had my earbuds in, and the way that the scene was set up so that the sound was timed just so that she kept missing the sounds that she should have otherwise been hearing.

Mm-hmm. So, you know, the shower would come on just as the doorbell would start to buzz, and the doorbell would continue to buzz until she starts to hear it and then turn the water off, but then it would stop as soon as the water… And the sound, it was so loud. Yeah. Everything was really, really loud, and I was…

I, I made note of it because that’s not something that- usually stands out. That’s what made the scene for me. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Otherwise, it was just a very pedestrian thing, but with that extra element of the really interesting soundscape, it really stood out. 

Todd: Yeah, I thought that was very, very creative. Another thing that stood out is that, you know, once he sh- surprises her in the shower and she’s like, “Oh my God, what, what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you.” Are you kidding me? Don’t you think that would surprise anybody in the shower, you idiot? 

Craig: Millet, by the way. 

Todd: Millet, that’s it. We’re, 

Craig: we’re led to, we’re led to believe that it’s the killer, but it’s not. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s 

Craig: the professor that she’s seeing. 

Todd: It’s the professor, right, yeah, it’s not that guy.

It’s, and it’s not that guy that was, that was w- going after her. 

Craig: No. 

Todd: So then, like, what the hell are they doing in the shower? 

Craig: Oh my God. What 

Todd: is this? 

Craig: She’s in the shower when he gets there. But then it just cuts to them both in the shower, and I had no idea what was going on, and I still don’t. 

Todd: What, it was, he, he’s, like, smearing…

Was it a pomegranate or was it just- 

Craig: I don’t know … 

Todd: it couldn’t have 

Craig: been. It was some sort of, like, cream or gel. 

Todd: Some red cream or something that he’s smearing over her chest and then over her face as she’s against the wall. But half of it’s getting washed off because they’re in the shower, but oh my God, she’s in ecstasy over this.

Is this, like, their, their anthropology stuff? Like, are they into some particular tribe and they’re- That 

Craig: must be it … 

Todd: they’re, uh, trying to recreate this ritual or something like that? I don’t know, but it was, uh- 

Craig: That has to be it … so bizarre I 

Todd: can’t imagine what. 

Craig: I don’t know. 

Todd: And it wasn’t sexy. No. I thought it was just gross.

Craig: Well no, ’cause it, I mean, it, it’s clearly meant to at least be reminiscent of blood- Sure … and it very much is, and it’s gross, and you just see the- They 

Todd: even show it going down the drain Psycho style. Right, that’s what I was gonna 

Craig: say 

Todd: But she’s- Right, right … she’s not dead. It’s just, it’s not blood at 

Craig: all.

And the whole movie is just water motif after water motif. So you see that bloody water flowing off into the drain, and then it cuts to a turtle tank. And I’m like, “Why are we in a goddamn turtle tank?” 

Todd: Right? 

Craig: What is happening? 

Todd: We’re at an aquarium a- and there’s a scuba diver in there, and there are people looking in at the scuba- There’s a lot of time spent here while that scuba diver is just feeding the fish or something.

I was like, “What is going on?” And then we see that dude with the helmet creeps around the corner and then goes away, and then there’s some close-ups on some sharks. Some turtles. I, this is all actually very pretty. I, I thought the editing- Sure … here was very nice. And it w- Yeah … what a great- 

Craig: It’s a nice aquarium

Todd: yeah, and what a great set piece, too. You know, since we have been watching so many of these back to back, what sets these apart? It’s the creative kills, it’s the cinematography, and it’s interesting set piece instead of just- 

Craig: Yeah, sure … 

Todd: in a campground or in somebody’s house. Like, where can you, where can you murder someone that’s kind of interesting?

And so, you know, this diver gets out of the aquarium, and it looks gorgeous, and walks into her locker and starts stripping down, and it turns out this is Kim, right? 

Craig: I don’t know who this is. 

Todd: I think it was Kim. Well, it looks like Kim. It might not be her. It could be some random person, but I’m pretty sure it was Kim.

And she’s getting stalked by that guy. He’s dragging the knife around and she’s remarkably calm as she hears all of these strange sounds around her. And then she turns and he bursts out of the cabinet at her. Now, how in the world did he get in that cabinet in that room she’s been standing in? 

Craig: I don’t know.

I don’t know. 

Todd: It made no sense at all, but it was a cool scene. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: He leaps out at her, tosses a net over her that’s hanging up there. We get POV shots from his point of view. We get POV shots from her point of view. And it’s brutal because he’s cutting her a lot. There’s a lot of blood, but there’s- 

Craig: Uh-huh.

A- against, like, white subway tile. 

Todd: Yeah. But there’s no detail. Like, we don’t really see the contact. It’s aga- Not really … it’s almost like Psycho style, right? You never see the, the knife hit flesh, but- 

Craig: Right … 

Todd: you definitely see blood. I still found it very brutal. None of these girls really fight back, which I find a little annoying.

They’re- Mm-hmm … they’re very much just crawling against the wall and backing into a corner while the guy k- kills them. So that part gets a little old. But there’s a great snap cut, a- as he takes that final slash at her, to a turtle chomping on something And then a woman who’s looking in that turtle tank screams, and we see their head fall down the water in front of her in the tank.

What a nice little sequence that was. 

Craig: Yeah, it was good. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I don’t think it was Kim, because I think Kim comes back later. I don’t know who this girl… Well, we’ll see when we get to the place where I think that Kim comes back, but- 

Todd: All right … 

Craig: I could not for the life of me figure out who this girl was. A- aside from they say that she was another student of the school, and I could be wrong, but I…

And there’s another girl later who I’m pretty sure is Kim. 

Todd: Oh, okay. 

Craig: But anyway, then I- God, I don’t know. Judd goes to talk to Millet, I think because he’s had connection to, I don’t know, at least one or two of these girls. 

Todd: Yeah. They’ve all been in his class- Um- … or at least two of them have. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And I, I don’t remember what leads up to it, but Millet is still saying it’s gotta be some kind of psychopath or something and, and he’s got the line that I think was the tagline for the movie.

Clip: There’s been another killing. Hmm. That doesn’t seem to surprise you. When man kills for the sake of killing, there’s no reason why he should stop. Do you really believe that man can go out and kill just like that? Why not? You see, animals kill when they’re hungry or when they’re threatened. But man is the only animal who destroys his own kind for the sheer pleasure of it.

Craig: I don’t know. I feel like it’s supposed to be deep, but- 

Todd: But it’s not. No. It’s not deep at all. We’ve heard it before anyway. Didn’t we hear that in The Great, the, what’s that called? I know. The Most Dangerous Game? I’m pretty sure that’s a line that- Maybe … the guy says is, “Man is the only animal who hunts for sport.”

Craig: Could be. 

Todd: But he has a very elaborate office, this guy. His office is as, as big as a living room. Got multiple levels on it, and he has all these artifacts around. It’s just as I would imagine an archeologist’s office should be. And after they’re gone, him and Eleanor have a little lovers spat, and he’s not real nice to her.

I guess he’s just very aloof. He’s very much… And actually, I kinda give him credit for this. He’s very much like, “Well, you know, you should know what you got into with me. You should have figured out by now I’m kinda sleeping around, and I’m sleeping with you, and, like, whatever. Like, what did you expect?”

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And that seems really douchey, but on the other hand, I mean, at least he’s not, like, leading her on. 

Craig: True. 

Todd: I don’t know. I, I, I found this character to be interesting. Even though he’s this aloof professor who seems to be full of himself, and is really hot, and is banging all the girls, and has got this woman here, he just felt a little deeper than normal.

And I really liked that they were doing a serious kind of relationship here. Like, these movies just usually don’t have this substance to them. There’s somebody with a girl, the girl gets killed, or there’s somebody, the girl has a girlfriend. Like, you just know they’re together. This has, like, a whole bit of a, you know, it’s not l- literally a love triangle, ’cause there’s not, like, a specific third person, but there’s some tension between these two.

And, uh, we go back to the restaurant, and that’s where Eleanor has retreated to, and she’s sobbing. And he comes to comfort her and apologize. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And that’s when she tells him she’s three months pregnant, and his reaction is measured. He’s not pissed. He doesn’t run off, but you’re not quite sure how cool he is with it.

But he’s nice enough. 

Craig: Mm. 

Todd: And then he flirts with the waitress, Carol. And she’s like, “Do you have to flirt with every girl in front of you?” Ugh, I just don’t trust this guy. She asked to get married, and he’s like, “Well, we’ll talk about it later.” Mm-hmm. So there’s a lot of drama here. I thought it was interesting.

I don’t know, a little bit better than some of the soap opera crap we’ve been watching in some of the other movies, I think anyway. 

Craig: Yeah, I guess. I mean, I, I s- ugh. Uh, the movie I think wants us to feel that way and, and based on the way that the movie ends, I think that they want him to have kind of like a redemptive arc, I guess.

Mm-hmm. But he’s gross. He’s- Yeah … he’s a, he’s a grosso. He is. And I, you know, I don’t… At this point I don’t know how committed he is to this girl. He’s just saying nice things. I- 

Todd: Yes … 

Craig: who knows? The waitress also says to her, she comes up after Millet leaves and she’s like, “If you believe a word of that-” you’re a dummy.

Yeah. I don’t remember exactly what she says, but, but something along those lines. She 

Todd: really does, yeah. She’s… Carol knows what’s up. 

Craig: Well, and, and Carol has, you know, sh- she’s not being a bitch. She’s, she’s looking out for this girl, basically. Yeah, yeah. I mean, she’s, she’s been nice and kinda looking out for her all along.

Todd: She has. 

Craig: And, and then, okay, see, now I, I’m afraid that I got my names mixed up. You did. Is there a Kathy? Is there a Kathy and a Karen? 

Todd: No, this is Kathy. I, I don’t think there’s a Karen, no. 

Craig: Who is the girl that you said died before? 

Todd: Yeah. The, this is not her. The, uh, this is, um, the girl who died before was, uh, Kim.

Craig: Oh, okay. Too many Ks. All right. Yeah, I screwed up. All right. So Kathy. 

Todd: Yeah. Or 

Craig: whatever her 

Todd: name is. Kathy’s another student. We saw, like, her face earlier. She had also wandered into the, the professor’s, uh, classroom earlier and had been kind of batting eyes at him or something like that. And she’s being comforted by the registrar, who’s this, uh, middle-aged woman.

Craig: I think she’s the headmistress, isn’t she? 

Todd: Is she? I guess. Or 

Craig: something like 

Todd: that. I don’t know. Yeah. I saw the name on her door said registrar, but she could be the- 

Craig: Oh. Oh. Yeah, no, I guess you’re, I guess you’re right then. 

Todd: Uh, she’s b- she’s important. 

Craig: Griffin is her 

Todd: name. Griffin, yeah. And she’s trying to comfort Kathy, who’s upset about the professor’s dalliances, and she’s like…

And she offers for her to stay the night over at her house so that they can talk. And at that moment I was like, “Oh, that’s really nice.” And then the scene goes on for a couple more beats and I’m like, “Oh. Oh, this woman is also a bit of an opportunist.” 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Did I 

Craig: catch that? I thought that… I was- I was surprised by that.

Todd: Uh-huh. 

Craig: This movie came out in 1981. I don’t know. I, I guess some might say that in 1981 it, it might… Today it might not be a good look to have, like, the predatory lesbian in a position of power. Yeah. But I, I just thought for this time I was surprised it was something that they were addressing at all.

Right. And I thought that it was an interesting dynamic that- women aren’t necessarily safe. This poor girl gets taken advantage by two professors or- 

Todd: Yeah, right … 

Craig: university staff. Yeah. 

Todd: In helping her, I’m gonna, I’m gonna take advantage of this opportunity. Like, what a bitch. 

Craig: Yeah. Bad news. 

Todd: So anyway, we’re at the restaurant now.

It’s nighttime and Carol’s closing up, and we know Carol’s gonna get it. We know from the minute this scene starts, oh, we’re at the restaurant. Everybody’s clo- and Carol’s closing up shop. And the minute I realized Carol was gonna get it, I was like, “I know who the killer is. I know exactly who the killer is.”

Craig: Well, I should’ve figured it out at that point, too, but I was just… When we’re following Carol and then, you know, the gloved hand, like, turns the lights out, obviously she’s gonna get it, but I was like, “Why?” Mm-hmm. She’s not one of these co-eds. Like- Mm-hmm … I thought this killer was just killing co-eds. What’s happening?

Mm. So, yes. You, you should be able to put two and two together at this point. 

Todd: And this is a long sequence. She does- At 

Craig: least Carol fights back a little. 

Todd: Yeah, she does. She throws a chair or two at him, tries to throw a table in his way. A, a little bit, but mostly she runs, and she ends up downstairs in an alley, I think, the fire escape or something.

And again, they try to do something a little different with each of these kills, and this was three slow-mo strikes on her. Or maybe it was just the same strike being repeated over and over again for effect. But, uh, it just bothered me that her head was turned in the wrong direction after he cut. 

Craig: Well- 

Todd: Like, he’s cutting to the right and then her head turns to the left.

Craig: I almost feel like you… I had to watch this on my computer, so maybe I just couldn’t see it very well, but I almost didn’t even see any cutting happening. Like, it was- 

Todd: No, you don’t really see it, right? You just see him move his arm down And you hear the slice And 

Craig: she, like, turns her head 

Todd: And she turns her head, and there’s some, there’s just sort of a red streak of blood on her, but, but not even really any makeup of sorts.

That was a little disappointing, you know, that they didn’t really do a lot of makeup work on any of this. But it also made the movie a little classier, I suppose. Like, by the time it was all done, I thought, “This could almost be a movie that would have shown on TV.” 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Maybe cable. 

Craig: Sure. 

Todd: It was bloody and it was violent, but the gore wasn’t so close up and in your face- Mm

and detailed. So I, yeah, I thought maybe they were doing that perhaps so that it could play on TV. 

Craig: I don’t know, but I feel like one of the more interesting scenes is, is the scene that immediately follows her death- Yes. … because the owner comes in in the morning, and there was a struggle. Like, she fought back a little bit, so, like, chair- chairs are knocked off tables and stuff, tables are knocked over and stuff.

And he comes in, he doesn’t know what’s going on, and then a couple of construction workers, I think, come in, you know, wanting their breakfast. And the construction guys, like, clean up while the other guy goes to get some food going, and he pulls a giant vat of beef stew out of the refrigerator. 

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: Now- We know.

Todd: Yeah. Uh-huh. We’re like, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” And he spoons it in the bowls, and he serves the bowls to them. This goes on for so long, but they are teasing us the whole way. Oh, God. The whole way they’re teasing us. We’re like, “Oh- Slurping the stew … just waiting for this,” right? And one guy goes, “Oh my God,” like, “What is this?

Uh, there’s, there’s hair in the stew.” He’s like, “Really? There’s hair in there?” So he goes inside and he tips the stew out into another pot. Gosh, the camera starts to slowly come in, slowly come in, slowly come in on that, and there’s no head in there. 

Craig: I was just waiting for that head 

Todd: to roll out. I know. We were- I was just sure

so punked by this. And then he goes into the walk-in cooler, and so we’re like, “All right. This is where it’s gonna be,” right? And he opens up these different containers of meat, and it’s like, “Uh, no. Uh, no.” Knocks down a, a box from the top shelf, but just some meat falls out. Then there’s a bag behind it, and he grabs it, and as he pulls the bag something rolls out of it, but it’s a melon.

It’s like- Yeah … these guys are so messing with us. I love it. Yeah. I just- 

Craig: It was 

Todd: fun … loved it. And eventually he goes to the sink and, uh, washes his hands or something and starts to drain it. And as he’s draining the sink that has the dishwater in it, it looks odd, and the water slowly comes down, and we can see, like, the top of a hair and just, like, a little tip of a nose, but it’s still really, really cloudy.

And, but we know that’s where the head is- Right … finally, and it sh- shoots to him, and, and he looks shocked, and then cut away. God, I loved this scene so much. I thought- It was good. … it was fantastic. It

Craig: was good. 

Todd: Never have I felt so played. Ugh. All right, anyway, so yeah, now we’re at the apartment of the creepy busboy, Gary, and we haven’t seen him in a while, not since he was chasing after that one girl earlier, and he didn’t show up at work today, and that’s why the police are over at his house, ’cause they think that’s really odd.

His room has girly pictures all over the walls, and on the top of this chest of drawers is a hockey mask quite prominently displayed that I thought must be, like, a little inside joke. 

Craig: Oh, that’s right. 

Todd: But I don’t think so because, um, the original Friday the 13th came out just a year before this. And there was no hockey mask in that.

Craig: Oh, that’s right. 

Todd: So I think it was just a coincidence. 

Craig: That’s funny. 

Todd: Kind of a, like a retroactive Easter egg or something like that. But anyway, he’s got girly pics on the walls, bra in his drawers. The guy just doesn’t seem like the type. He’s pretty slow. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And the detective’s not convinced as well, and he leaves.

I mean, we knew this guy was a red herring from the minute he started stalking that one girl. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: So now they’re back at the professor’s house, and the detective kind of breaks in and looks around his office, and that’s when Eleanor finds him and- 

Craig: Well, he finds these files that show- 

Todd: Oh, yeah … 

Craig: Millet and Eleanor in Papua New Guinea or wherever they were.

Yeah, posing with skulls. Um, 

Todd: um, 

Craig: um, right, with skulls and, and with natives and, and she comes in and she’s like, “What are you doing? You can’t just come in here.” And he’s like, “Well, you can’t just cut people’s heads off.” And

she’s like, “What are you talking about?” He’s talking about how they were studying headhunting or whatever. 

Clip: How can you make a comparison between this kind of butchery and the tradition of Eastern culture? These rituals existed years before this continent was even discovered. The headhunters of New Guinea are not cannibals or savages.

They seriously believe that in taking the heads of the enemies, they are possessing their very life force. And by putting the heads in water? In this way they believe they’re cleansing the evil spirits from the souls of their enemies, leaving only the purity of the spirit. Mm-hmm. How did you know that? I didn’t.

Todd: How did you know? And so that also confirmed for me, yeah, of course. She ends up making a phone call that’s not there, so she heads to the school to find the professor. She overhears some conversation between him and Mrs. Griffin- Griffin … again, talking about how he was leading that other girl on, Carol. And so she storms out.

Then we get a shot of Ms. Griffin in, uh, at home with Carol comforting her. 

Craig: Molesting her. 

Todd: Yeah, molesting. But then she kinda gets into it. 

Craig: Yeah, I mean, I guess she’s into it, but- 

Todd: Not at first … 

uh, 

Craig: yeah, I, I, I even like in the office when Griffin is chewing Millet out, he basically says something, and he’s more crass about it, but he basically says, “You’re not any better than I am,” basically.

Yeah, he 

Todd: does. Mm-hmm. He 

Craig: sa- he says, “We know why you wanna comfort these girls,” or something. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: So, and, and so she’s not, she’s not any better than he is. She’s just as bad. She’s taking advantage of this girl, whether the girl seems into it or not. Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: total imbalance of power 

Todd: here. 100%. No, I am not- Completely 

Craig: inappropriate.

Todd: D- when I said she was getting into it, I was just talking about how the movie portrayed it, but you’re right. No- No. Oh, yeah … like, it’s, it’s still wrong Absolutely. Absolutely … 100%. Well, they all end up over at that house anyway because apparently Gary was… They were staking out Gary’s house, his, his partner, and they followed Gary to Mrs.

Millet’s house. So he’s like, “I got, I got him.” They all converge over at Mrs. Millet’s house. Gary disappears up the fire escape. We don’t see him forever, and then his partner decides he’s gonna go apprehend Gary. 

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: So he leaves. And then like after a while, Judd gets impatient because the, we don’t see these other two, and I don’t know where the hell they w- are.

Where could they possibly be at this time? Gary is supposedly peeping. He’s like a peeping Tom, so I guess he’s looking in the window- 

Craig: Mm-hmm … 

Todd: at, and he is looking in the window at Carol as Mrs. Millet goes downstairs and answers the phone. But then we just don’t see him for a while, and it seems like Carol sees him outside the window, but she doesn’t do anything about it.

Anyway, Judd comes in and I really liked this scene, too. Mrs. Griffin is downstairs answering the phone and the camera view is from the hallway looking through the doorway at her from a bit of a distance. And then she hangs up the phone and turns around and the door starts to slowly close and we see that she sees there was somebody behind the door.

And she tries to get out the door, but the door slams and we hear a struggle and we see the door rattle and m- and move. And then pretty soon the door opens a crack as she thinks, as she, it seems like she’s gonna be able to get out of there, but she’s bloodied. She gets pulled back in and the door slams again.

Then we hear more n- sounds and then we see a kn- the knife come straight through the door. And then whatever, slump down, silence. And then the camera pans down to foot level as the door slowly opens again. We see smears of blood there on the, on the g- on the floor and the, and the killer walks out This is so smart 

Craig: It was really good.

Todd: Yeah. I mean, it, you j- your mind can just fill in the blanks. The sound design is great. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before, but I really liked it. 

Craig: Yeah, I did too. It looked really good. And, and again, there’s, before… So many of these kills are set against a white backdrop. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And, and this one is again too, and you know, it’s, it’s in a brightly lit room, so when you actually do see the blood, I mean, it’s just bright red and- Mm-hmm

it, it, it always sounds weird to say this, but it, it, it paints kind of a beautiful picture. I mean, obviously- Yeah, I know what you mean … gruesome and disgusting, but artistically it look f- in frame, it looks amazing. Like, the colors pop. It looks really good. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Ugh, so good. Well, Kathy wakes up upstairs, and there’s running water suddenly in the bathroom attached to the bedroom, so she goes in and sees the toilet.

Yeah, I would not touch this toilet- 

Craig: No … 

Todd: for the life of me. There’s a little blood coming out of it, and there’s hair coming out of the side of the toilet. And of course, she goes and lifts it up, and again, we don’t see the head. We just sort of see the top for a split second, and she screams, and the music cuts on so hard here, and the prowler is right behind her.

This was genuinely scary, I thought. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And she backs up on the bed, and he hacks at her, and then it cuts away. Oh my God, that was such a good sequence, too. The way that they timed the music and his entrance was just pitch- Perfect. The mu- 

Craig: Yeah, it was really good. It w- and, and it was surprising because it happened so quickly.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And I understand why that girl got killed, but I still felt bad for her. Yeah. Like this poor girl cannot catch a break. 

Todd: No. You’re right, she can’t. 

Craig: This led to one of my favorite .5 seconds of the movie because Judd is there. He’s in this house. 

Todd: Uh-huh. 

Craig: And he goes to, like, run up the stairs, and from the top of the stairs in the darkness, we are to believe that the biker, like, spider monkey jumps onto him.

Todd: Uh-huh. 

Craig: But what really happens is somebody throws a big stuffed doll at him- … right? Because that’s sure what it looked like to me. Uh-huh. 

Todd: And they- 

Craig: Oh, 

Todd: boy … tumble down the stairs, right? 

Craig: Oh, that was really funny. Oh, it was 

Todd: hilarious. 

Craig: But the cyclist gets away. He races off. 

Todd: Yeah, and the detective breaks d- breaks out, finally gets up and tears out the front door to see his partner with Gary’s hands behind his back.

He’s like, “I got him. I got him, buddy.” He’s like, “No, you didn’t. You got the wrong one. It was that dude who just ran out.” And he looks up the street, and pretty soon the dude’s taking off on the bike, and this… Does this begin the big chase sequence? No, not yet. 

Craig: No. No. This is… This just leads up to the very mediocre reveal.

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: The biker just goes home. 

Todd: Biker goes home and takes her helmet off, and it’s her. And I f- I almost feel like it’s so mediocre because the filmmakers are giving us enough credit. 

Craig: I guess. 

Todd: They’re like, “Come on, you- you’ve all, you’ve all sorted this out by now. We’re not gonna pretend like it’s gonna be a big…”

She takes her helmet off and tosses her hair, and then, um, the professor comes downstairs, and they have a confrontation. 

Craig: I wondered for a second if he was in on it, but he wasn’t. 

Todd: No, he wasn’t. Yeah. 

Craig: He didn’t know any of this, and she sa- she does a whole crazy monologue about how she did it for their family and- Mm

you know, she, uh, all of the people that she killed stood in the way of their happiness, and she’d do it again. And if he ever has affairs again, I guess she guess she’ll have to kill them too. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: And, and then she’s like, “All right. I’ll go make dinner.” She’s crazy. She is. And then you hear the sirens coming, and she’s like, “Here come the cops, and if they come in here, they’re gonna kill me, and if I die, the baby dies too.

You don’t want that, do you? Do you? Do you? Do you?” You love me, 

Todd: don’t you? You love me, don’t you? 

Craig: Right? 

Todd: Uh-huh. 

Craig: So then it cuts to outside where the police are gathering, and the biker takes off. 

Todd: I knew this was not her. I- 

Craig: Obviously … 

Todd: knew it when that bike sped out of there. 

Craig: Obviously. There’s no world in which this is going to be her.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. The motorcycle speeds out, but, you know, the g- dressed just the same as always, this biker, and there’s a huge chase scene. Oh my God, this is crazy. This is all through the city. Uh, this is Boston, huh? I thought for a minute this was, uh, San Francisco because of the way the, the roads were so angled and sloped.

But, um, it, it allows for some really great sequences where the bike is coming down the road, but it’s also doing a jump. It’s fun. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: So anyway, big, big chase sequence. And, uh, where are we now? Where are we now? 

Craig: The cops, the cops, you know, like, I, I don’t know, there’s kind of a barricade maybe, and, like, the, the cops and the main cop, Judd, are, like, you know, on their knees, like, with guns pointed and, and, like, they’re shooting at him as he’s coming towards them.

And then he crashes, I guess, into the barricade and, like, flies over and lands, I think, on the hood of another police car or something. Mm-hmm. And they take his helmet off, and it’s, it’s him. It’s- Mm-hmm … the professor. And they say, “Oh, looks like his neck is broken.” But I couldn’t tell if he was dead or not.

It kinda looked- … like his eyes were, like, googling around in his head. 

Todd: Kinda did. 

Craig: It was weird. 

Todd: It kinda did. I think that’s, that’s just a consequence of using a real person for a body. I think I just don’t think he was so skillful at keeping his eyes straight, but we’re supposed to believe he’s dead. And so the cop’s assistant goes, “Well, I guess that wraps up the whole case.”

And the detective goes, “Does it? Does it?” 

Craig: Does 

Todd: it? And walks away. And I’m like, “Okay, cool, so this movie isn’t gonna end quite like that last one we did,” where, you know, the… I was thinking Happy Birthday to Me. So anyway, there’s a funeral. Why we’ve seen no funeral for anyone else, I’m not sure. But anyway, Eleanor is at the funeral, and she walks away down the, the street, and she’s confronted by the detective.

And he says, I love this line. He says, “Miss Ajai, is the ceremony over?” She says, “Yes.” And he says, “I hope so.” And he gets in his car and drives off, and I’m like, he is gonna let her go. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: He knows she’s been doing the killing, but he figures she’s not gonna do it again. What, he’s gonna save her baby? He’s gonna let this dead guy take the heat?

I don’t 

Craig: know. 

Todd: That is so up, but it’s also kinda cool. I was not expecting this. Well, I don’t 

Craig: know. 

Todd: I was not expecting this. 

Craig: I mean, the other guy’s already taken the fall for it. How’s he gonna prove it? I don’t know. 

Todd: I guess, maybe. He just, well, he just says that to her. Hmm. But oh, so good. Is the ceremony over?

Yes, I hope so. Anyway, we’re back to the police office. 

Craig: That was so weird, ’cause I thought that was surely the end. I’m like- Uh-huh … “That, that’s, I, I… Like, that’s a good ending.” 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, it was. 

Craig: But, but then as it’s fading away from that, you hear a phone ringing. I’m like, “Hello?” Why? Why, why is the phone ringing?

I’m 

Todd: like, “Where’s this phone?” 

Craig: Yeah. And now we’re back in the precinct, like you said. 

Todd: And the detective’s wrapping up for the night. I’m like, “Oh, what’s gonna happen?” Then he goes into his car, which is in the parking garage, and I’m like, “Oh my God, is there something…” ‘Cause the, it’s framed up just like there’s gonna be someone in the backseat.

And sure enough, the killer springs up from the backseat, puts his n- arm around the cop’s neck, and I thought it was slicing his throat. Oh. And then suddenly backs off and takes his helmet off, and it’s his buddy. It’s his partner. He’s like, “Oh my God, you scared me.” He’s like, “So who’d you expect, the headhunter?”

Craig: Then they just laugh and laugh. 

Todd: What a crazy ending. Oh my 

Craig: God. That, I, that was a crazy ending. Oh, God. I think I read that they filmed that later and tacked it on. They must have. And I don’t know. Like, that’s something that these days you would probably find in the bonus features, but- Yeah … it was, it was really kind of fun.

Yeah. I mean, it was a silly movie overall. Why not, why not end on a gag? I think it’s kind of fun. 

Todd: I feel like if we hadn’t been just so, like, worn down by so many similar movies, that we might have had a little more fun with this one. I, I really thought they were… Just the kill sequences in this movie were just a cut above, ha, the, the ones we’ve been seeing.

Uh, the cinemat- they were just smart ideas here, and a nice creative ways of presenting this without just going for blood and gore, and let’s just make it super gross, you know? 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: It was very restrained in the blood aspect, actually. I just really liked that, and the ending I thought was really unique.

The drama felt a little more real than… For, for most of these movies, it just seems like filler to get, just to kill time in between the killings, and here I felt like the story made sense. Not that it’s, like, a particularly special story. It’s kind of a revenge-ish type thing, but I don’t know. I really enjoyed it.

Craig: Yeah. I, I, I thought it was all right. I, I, I really think it is just because we’ve seen so many back to back and, like, there was nothing wrong with it. And, and I agree with you that it was well made and well shot, lots of really, some really beautiful frames. Nothing inherently wrong with it. I just, I, I’m at the point where I’m like, “Yep.

Seen it.” 

Todd: We’re gonna have to take a break from these early ’80s slashers. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but, but, you know, for these early ’80s slashers, a- and again, this one has more shades of giallo than some, so especially if you’re into that, I think you’ll totally dig this. I really like that bridge. I like kind of the bridge.

I, I, I like the, the older, you know, Italian ones, and of course I love the traditional American slasher, especially as we get in, moving forward from here. But the bridge ones, I find really interesting. Mm. I, I like seeing both influences. I like seeing the Italian influence and the American influence blended.

And this does that a lot, I think. So if, if you enjoy that kinda thing, it’s better than some other ones that we’ve done, for sure. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with a friend. You can find us online at chainsawhorror.com or just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast, where you’ll find all of our social media channels.

Please reach out to us there. Please write a review to let us know what you thought of this episode or just what you think of our podcast. As long as it’s positive, we’d love to see new reviews going up there on Apple Podcast. The best thing you can do is steer somebody new, uh, that you- some horror fan that you have in your life, uh, that you think would really enjoy our, uh, our podcast.

Or you could also go to our patreon.com/chainsawpodcast patron site for just five bucks a month. Get on board with unedited episodes, getting the episodes just as soon as we finish recording them, but before I’m done editing them and getting them out to the rest of the world. Our book club back there, some extra goodies.

Please check it out. Patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Although we love your support no matter how it comes. Until next time, I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

This week we tackle 1987’s The Curse, an Italian-made, sequels-in-name-only entry starring Wil Wheaton and loosely adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Color Out of Space” with a Reagan-era farming backdrop.

We dig into the film’s infamous behind-the-scenes stories—David Keith’s chaotic directing, Lucio Fulci’s debated influence, and Wheaton’s accounts of mistreatment on set—though we don’t endorse any of it.

Then we break down the movie’s slow build, scattered subplots, and the core story of a meteor contaminating well water, triggering grotesque practical effects and a family’s unsettling transformation. We debate what still works (the gore, the mother’s progression, the score) versus what feels padded or underdeveloped, and we compare it to later adaptations like the 2019 Nicolas Cage film.

Episode 492, 2 Guys and A Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw

I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. Craig, this week it was your turn, and you picked a movie. I’m really happy you picked it because I never saw it before, but I pass by it on the shelves all the time. It has a very iconic cover art. It’s got, like, this big demonic hand coming up through farm fields holding, like, a farmhouse in it with the lightning striking around it and the…

I don’t know, it just looks really freaky, like some demonic forces are taking over some small town, and it has Wil Wheaton in it. This is 1987’s The Curse. We did The Curse Part II, and there’s a Curse Part III and a Curse Part IV. All of them are made from, uh, by Italians, including this one, and none of them are really related to each other.

No. They’re just sequels in name only to capitalize on the apparent success and popularity of the original. 

Craig: Cult success, yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. The first time I had seen it, but I know you have seen this one before, right? 

Craig: Yeah. I grew up watching this. I don’t know which of my memories are real and which ones are constructed, but I seem to remember watching this with my cousins, Nick and Steve, some summer.

We always rented tons of horror movies back in the day when you just said, “Yeah, my dad said it was okay,” and they’d, you know, hand you R-rated movies over the counter or whatever. 

Todd: Those were the days. 

Craig: And our dads really did say… I know. It- those were the days. And our dads really did say it was okay, but it was a different time.

And of course, I was just drawn to horror movies in general, but I was a big fan of Wil Wheaton’s, because this came out just, I think, a year after or a year or so after his big breakout in Stand by Me, which is, remains one of my- 

Todd: Mm … 

Craig: favorite movies, uh, of all time. I, I think it’s a great movie, and I think that he’s fantastic in it.

So, you know, seeing him… And of course, this movie, which was shot on a, a much smaller budget, i- is, is not nearly as good and does not showcase his skills nearly as much, but- … seeing him on, on the box certainly drew me to it. Oh, boy. And, you know, I was a fan of it then, and I know that I’ve seen it since. I think I, you know, pull it out or, or pull it up some, from somewhere every once in a while and, and watch it, but I haven’t seen it in a really long time.

And again, you know, you and I sometimes mention how watching these movies, you know, on our own just for fun is kind of a different experience than watching them for the podcast. Like, we really do try to kind of watch more closely and with a more critical eye and try to look at the different components of it and stuff.

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And so doing that this time- It’s far from perfect. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: There, 

Todd: there’s- Uh, Wil Wheaton himself is not a fan. I don’t even think he… I think he refuses to sign materials related to this movie when he’s at conventions. 

Craig: He does, and the movie is interesting because it’s, it’s an adaptation of- 

Todd: H.P.

Lovecraft … 

Craig: H- H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space, which I haven’t read, but I hear is Lovecraft’s own personal favorite of his short stories. They Americanized the story and, and have some social commentary on the economic stuff that was going on with farmers in, un- in the Reagan area, era at the time.

So it’s inspired by the story, and the key elements of the story are there, but it’s, it, it’s definitely an adaptation. Really, what goes on behind the scenes is kind of more interesting than the movie itself. 

Todd: Hmm. 

Craig: The movie was directed by David Keith, who is an actor. He was in An Officer and a Gentleman, and he was in, like, Major League and, and some other stuff, and he’s continued to work since then.

But the studio that made the movie, and I don’t remember what it was, had signed him on to star in another movie, and when that fell through, they offered him this as his directorial debut. And Wil Wheaton said that he was just awful, that he was… You know, he had a, a big ego, you know, coming off of his acting career.

But he had never directed before, didn’t know what he was doing. Said he was coked out all the time and just chasing skirt all the time, like was not a good director at all. And on top of that, like, Wil Wheaton didn’t even wanna do the movie. He didn’t like the script, you know. Stand by Me had done so well, and he had gotten so much, you know, great critical response, not just the film itself, but him specifically.

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: Um, and, and he didn’t wanna do this dumb horror movie, but his mother… And he doesn’t… You know, in the stuff that I saw, he doesn’t talk extensively about his parents, but they don’t sound great because I guess his mom kind of arranged this meeting with the producers and the filmmakers without his agent present.

And they kind of strong-armed him into taking the movie. His, his parents, I guess, were enticed… Th- they were gonna pay Wheaton $100,000 for the role, which I guess was big for him at the time, even though I also read that he only ended up, he himself only ended up making 15 cents on the dollar for that. 

Todd: Wow.

Craig: So, a big salary for him. They did the outdoor photography on David Keith’s farm. It was initially- … supposed to be, it was initially supposed to be filmed in Los Angeles, but he, Keith, had just bought a big ranch in Tennessee, and he’s like, “No, let’s just shoot it on my ranch.” So they did. So the outdoor stuff was all filmed there, but the, the, all of the interior shots were shot in Rome.

So the whole family was also gonna get a free trip to Rome, and they were gonna give Wil Wheaton’s real-life little sister, Amy Wheaton, a role in the film. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: So that was a real sweet deal according to his parents, and they kind of strong-armed him into signing it And apparently it was just a nightmare from beginning to end.

You know, he- Wil Wheaton says that he and his sister both were both physically and verbally and mentally abused on the set. He says that he was touched inappropriately by two adults in the production and that he didn’t feel protected by any of them. Ironically enough, the person that he felt most protected by was the guy that played the creepy older brother character in the movie-

who he said in real life was very gentle and loving and was really kind of one of the only people who stepped up to protect him and his little sister, Wil and his little sister. 

Todd: Man. 

Craig: And, and not only that, but after… They filmed all of the outdoor photography first in America, but then they sw- moved production to Rome and completely ignored all American child labor laws.

So he and his sister were working 12-hour days with no breaks five days a week, a- again, being physically abused. One of the most shocking things that I read, there’s a scene in the movie, we’ll talk about it when we get there in the plot, but there’s a scene in the movie where the little girl, Wil Wheaton’s little sister, is attacked by chickens and, and that whole thing, reading about how that was done is nightmarish.

But what I found particularly disturbing was that in the aftermath of that, she’s supposed to have scratches on her face, and this was all done in Italy. Rather… The makeup folks, rather than- 

Todd: Applying makeup … 

Craig: applying makeup would cut her with a scalpel- 

Todd: That’s crazy … 

Craig: to make those marks on her face. Now, I can’t imagine how they could have justified that.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I, I, I mean, I imagine they could have said, “Well, you know, scalpels are such fine instruments that it likely won’t scar.” But s- nonetheless, like, where were these kids’ parents? And if they were around, they were shit bag parents. 

Todd: Yeah. Was that not the sequence that was directed by an uncredited Lucio Fulci?

Craig: Well, he’s credited, but he’s only credited for effects and something else. But, like, I guess there’s a lot of debate about how much he actually put into it. Hm. Some people have claimed that really despite what… And by the way, he, he was credited, but with an Anglicized name, as were all of the Italian people who- Hm

worked on this. They Anglicized their names for the credits. But somebody, I don’t know if it was the director or another producer or something, said that Fulci really was the second unit director and that he did, he was really the one calling the shots most of the time And I can only imagine that that’s true because- 

Todd: You got this first-time d- 

Craig: Yeah, you got a first-time director, and particularly the second half of the movie just absolutely reeks of Fulci.

Like- 

Todd: Yeah. It’s true. 

Craig: And, and, and, and a lot of it is the special effects, but even just beyond that, the mood, the pacing, the cinematography, I mean, it, it just absolutely reeks of him. So I have a feeling that David Keith owes a lot more to Fulci than the credits give him credit for. But the reason that I throw all that right out there at the beginning is because I didn’t know any of that until today.

Mm. This was just a movie that I had watched when I was a kid, and something that has been on our list literally probably the entire time that we have been doing this podcast because it is something that I, I liked as a kid. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But I wanted to get that all out of the way just so that people know that in talking about this movie, of course we in no way endorse or approve of any of that in the way that it was made.

And, and I completely 100% Understand why Wil Wheaton doesn’t want really anything to do with it, refuses to sign memorabilia for it, and, and eventually wrote an op-ed about why, you know, he has such distaste for it simply because he’s a great guy. Wil Wheaton is a really cool guy. 

Todd: Yeah, he is. 

Craig: And, you know, he is, is really great about meeting with fans and, you know, he’s a big fan of sci-fi and, and genre films himself.

You know, he’s kind of a fanboy, so he understands fans. I mean, he’s really, really good to fans. And he said that he just wanted to get it all out there because he felt the need, anytime anybody would bring something from The Curse, he felt the need to explain why he wouldn’t sign it. And, and so he just wanted to get it out there to try to have to avoid having to explain it every single time.

Todd: Yeah. Makes 

Craig: sense. So anyway, it’s got an kind of an ugly backstory, but I think that we’ll ki- And we acknowledge that, and of course, we don’t approve or endorse o- of, you know, treating anybody that way, especially children. But we’ll look at it as a movie and, and just acknowledge that ugly stuff. 

Todd: Yeah.

We’ll talk about the artistic merits of this work of art and, uh, while acknowledging that maybe the production of it wasn’t… We’ve had to do this before with Clownhouse and- 

Craig: Right … 

Todd: several other films that, you know, have, uh, unfortunate histories, but, uh, let’s separate that for the purposes of our discussion today and just talk about the movie as a movie, and, uh, that’s what we’re gonna do.

I, I wondered if you have different opinions about this film now as you did when you were a kid. Watching it now fresh with adult eyes, do you feel differently about it? 

Craig: I guess so. I mean, I don’t know how I responded to certain things when I was younger, but the core of the story, the sci-fi part of it, and the special effects part of it, I think still stand up.

I mean, it’s still very B movie, but as a movie it stands up. There’s a lot of fat that could’ve been trimmed, just unnecessary stuff, like stupid stuff like- All of that stuff with the dumb, I don’t know what he is, like the real estate guy- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: Charlie Davidson. 

Todd: What’s the point of any 

Craig: of that? Trying to buy their farm and, you know, like, I don’t know, at some point there’s some talk about, like, there’s like a, a dam is gonna go up and they’re…

Todd: I don’t know. There’s- It doesn’t matter. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. Like, it, this isn’t a Goonies situation where the plot hinges on these people being motivated by the potential of their farm being sold or their land being taken from them, that that motivates them in any way, shape, or form throughout the plot of the movie.

No, it’s just, like, a thing that fills time. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: That this guy’s running around and apparently trying to sell these farmers’ land for them, and that’s it. But it doesn’t matter a whit to the story. That character, that whole bit could be excised from the movie and it would make no difference whatsoever, so it’s really weird that it’s in there.

Craig: It is. A- a- and, and I feel like there are other parts maybe, too, that maybe I’ll remember as we go through in my notes. I don’t know. But other parts that seem to be kind of inserted for comedy that just seemed unnecessary. I, I, I think the movie would’ve been better if it had been more isolated, if it had, it focused, you know, i- if it had stayed on the farm and focused on that family dynamic and…

‘Cause that’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, the, the setup is interesting. I mean, first of all, there’s a, there’s a cold open where cops are racing up to this house and, and they have to, you know, tear this guy out of the house and he’s screaming, “There’s something in the water, the water,” and there’s sores on his face.

And as the cops are driving him down the street you see, you know, all these ways in which water is incorporated into day-to-day life. Like- Mm-hmm … kids are playing in the sprinkler, and somebody’s washing their car, and somebody’s watering their plants and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, he’s looking on in dread or whatever.

And then we cut to Tellico Plains, which is Tennessee, which is literally the place where David Keith’s ranch was- … six months earlier. And we get the title and, you know, we see all this farmland, and it’s… You know, we establish this family. It took me a minute to figure out how this family dynamic worked, but- Right

I think that I put together that the mother is a widow. Francis is the mother. 

Todd: Okay. 

Craig: And she’s a widow, and she had two kids, Zach, Wil Wheaton, and Alice, Amy Wheaton, in her first marriage. 

Todd: Okay. 

Craig: And then her husband died, and she married farmer Nathan, who already had a son of his own, Cyrus. Does that seem right to you?

Todd: I guess so. I, I really didn’t pay too much attention to that, and I realized it didn’t matter too much, I think, to the story. 

Craig: Well, right. I, you know, at, at first I thought that maybe Alice and Zach were, like, the mom’s niece and nephew, and that their parents had died and they had taken them in or something.

Oh, right. But, but I don’t think that that’s the case because they call her Mom. Zach refuses to call Nathan Dad or Pa or whatever. Right. I started just to refer to them as Ma and Pa, so That’s probably how I’ll refer to them moving forward. And later, you know, Alice especially, but both of the younger kids do seem to have genuine concern for Francis.

So I think that is their, their mother. 

Todd: Who is played by Kathleen Jordan Gregory, and this was her first and only role. I’m surprised. 

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. She reminds me of somebody. She reminds me of a very famous character actress who I don’t know her name and I won’t be able to think of anything that you would remember her from.

But… A- and I think in my mind I remembered it being that woman, and so I was kinda surprised to see this person, but- 

Todd: Oh, gotcha … 

Craig: but anyway. And then the guy who plays Nathan or Pa- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: who is he? 

Todd: Claude Akins. 

Craig: He’s the only person that I r- that I really recognize. Yeah. I mean, aside from Wil Wheaton, that I really recognize.

Todd: This guy is a veteran actor, 240 credits on IMDb, died in 1994. But he was just an actor from the beginning of film and television all the way up until he died. I mean, it’s, it’s pretty insane. A lot of Westerns, a lot of stuff. He started acting in 1953 and was all over television. Uh, I mean, I think if you’re our age you would recognize this guy, ’cause he was on- I think so

TV a lot, and he has a very distinct look. But yeah, mostly television, little bit parts here and there and stuff. Yeah, Claude Akins, maybe the most famous person in this movie, especially by the time it, it came out. 

Craig: And then there’s a son. Uh, he’s got a son who, you know, like him is kind of this big stocky guy named Cyrus.

And Cyrus is just… He’s a caricature from the beginning. Like, he’s an oaf. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: He’s a heavy set, you know, goofy looking bully, you know, who wears, like, a football jersey crop top throughout the entire movie. Like- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: he’s doofy. 

Todd: It’s worth mentioning that before this role, uh, this person who is, um… I’m sorry, is Malcolm Danare Or Denare.

Uh, he was in Flashdance, he was in Christine, which we’ve done here. 

Craig: Oh, oh, that’s right. I remember him from Christine. 

Todd: Mm-hmm, Mucci. And he was in National Lampoon’s European Vacation two years before this came out. 

Craig: I remember that, too. 

Todd: Since then he’s been in, like, Popcorn, which we’ve done. He was Bud in Popcorn.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Independence Day, that old Godzilla one that didn’t do too well. Uh, h- he’s still been doing things left and right, but his career’s slowed down considerably since the ’90s. 

Craig: That’s funny, ’cause I hadn’t recognized him from those things, but as soon as you mentioned a couple of those movies, I remember.

I can picture him. 

Todd: And you said he was the one who treated Wheaton really well. 

Craig: Well, yeah, yeah. Was he… You know, Wil Wheaton d- you know, a- and again, I’m, I’m taking this from YouTube videos and, but they’re, they’re citing the op-ed that, uh, Wheaton wrote, so I assume that it’s true. And yeah, so we, we meet the family and, eh, I don’t know.

I mean, uh, the dad seems kind of harsh, but- 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I would say so … and, and it’s all, you know, this is all very rural. It’s all on a farm. This was all very nostalgic to me because this was how… I mean, without the religious fanaticism- 

Todd: Mm-hmm … 

Craig: this, this rural farm life was the way that my mom grew up- 

Todd: Hmm … 

Craig: and the way that my maternal grandparents lived.

And so, like, I would go and spend weekends or in the summer weeks with my mom’s parents, and this was what it was like. It was farm life and it was quaint and it was charming, and there was actually something that was really nice about that. Like, I look back on it now and think, “Wow, what a simpler and nicer time that was.”

But, uh, but my grandpa wore bib o- you know, denim bib overalls with flannel shirts underneath, you know, almost every day. And my, my grandmother wore those, you know, light summer shifts and would cook a full country breakfast every morning and, you know, we would have chores and do the gardening and all that stuff, and it was, it was really cool.

I, I feel kinda privileged that I got to experience that as a kid, ’cause I, I’m not sure that a lot of people did. 

Todd: Hmm. 

Craig: So that part of the movie, even though Nathan, the dad, is, is kind of gruff in the beginning, I mean, he just kind of seems to be kind of no-nonsense business or whatever. 

Todd: That’s a goddamn lie.

Clip: Do not blaspheme the Lord. I don’t care how it started, but it’s stopping now. “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.” Romans 12:10. Now, let’s shake hands and be as brothers 

Craig: However, he doesn’t seem to be a very nice guy and I’m not really sure why he’s married to this woman. You know, there’s the part where we meet Charlie Davidson, the smarmy business guy who’s trying to get Nathan to sell his farm.

Who cares? Mm-hmm. Then we see that the wife is lusting over this hulking, very hairy farmhand. 

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: And after… You, you know, she pretties herself all up. She puts on makeup and brushes her hair all out and she tries to make advances on her husband in bed and he, like, totally rebuffs her. He’s like, “No, it’s improper.

Man oughta be the one making the advances, not the woman 

Todd: Okay, so do it 

Craig: Yeah, and she’s like- Right, exactly 

Todd: Right 

Craig: And so she’s like, “Fine, I’ll go out to that hairy farmhand.” Uh-huh. And so she does. 

Todd: She does. And this is another thing that goes nowhere. Like, it’s so weird that you would set these things up in the script that have potential and then just drop them.

Craig: It goes nowhere in that… Okay, so while she’s out there banging the farmhand, there’s a big storm and then a big meteor, a big glowing meteor lands on the farm and leaves like a big, you know- Oh, my God … trail in its wake. Like, it’s huge. 

Todd: It is massive, but it looks a lot smaller every single time we see it after this.

Craig: Well, because it shrinks, right. But Nath- when everybody runs out when this happens, and Nathan runs out, and when he runs out, he sees Francis and the farmhand coming out of the cottage. Now, we never see the farmhand again. 

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: I guess Nathan must have dismissed him after this. And this does, like this whole subplot of her having an affair with the farmhand does seem completely, like it, it, it seems like it doesn’t matter, except for later when things start to go bad- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: Nathan blames- Nathan gets pissed … her. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: He says, “This is God’s punishment for what you did.” 

Todd: True. “

Craig: He’s punishing us all for what you did.” So there is that little connection there. But yeah, I mean, in the moment, Nathan like gives her a look, and she looks at him, and then they just go look at the meteor, and we never see the farmhand again and life goes on.

Like it- 

Todd: Right, and think- It just 

Craig: seems really weird … 

Todd: think about where you could have taken the story. Think about the interesting drama if you had kept that guy in the picture. Could’ve been cool. It’s just weird that it was dropped. I don’t know. Yeah. What, what, what we mostly get is a, as far as family dynamics go, is this completely overbearing father- 

Craig: Right

Todd: who just is just a taskmaster and very strict and very godly and very, yeah, just kind of your, I mean, textbook movie religious conservative country father is what we have here. 

Craig: Right. Mm-hmm. And like you can imagine the backstory for yourself, but it’s not given to you. And I, I feel like there was so much more opportunity.

This movie… Well, this movie wasn’t remade, but another adaptation of this fil- of, of Lovecraft’s story was made in 2019 with Nicolas Cage. It was title, same, used same title as the story, Color Out of Space. 

Todd: Did you see it? 

Craig: Yes, but I don’t remember anything about it. 

Todd: Not a good sign. 

Craig: No, no, no, no. I, I, I think I remember liking it.

I, I remember it being very psychedelic and, you know, lots and lots of neon color, which it should be because the main story, the, the actual story, though I haven’t read it, is about a meteor, I think, that falls to the Earth, but then- I guess the pollutant, if you wanna call it that, is a light, a light that is on a different frequency than any light that we have or have ever seen before 

Todd: and- 

Craig: Hmm

the light starts to have an impact on the vegetation and the people. 

Todd: That’s cool. 

Craig: Here, a- and, and so, and I, i- if I remember correctly, the family dynamic is explored more, and it may be completely different, but it’s still a farmer. Nicolas Cage is a farmer, and he’s got a family. I remember that much about it.

So I can only imagine that the family dynamic was explored more there. We should watch that movie too so we can compare. 

Todd: Yeah. I’m kinda curious now. I, actually, I pulled up the story. I’m gonna read that tonight before I go to bed. 

Craig: Yeah. There’s also a doctor that lives next door, a doctor of what I don’t really know, but they, they- Yeah.

Todd: Isn’t he like teaching in a school at the time wh- that we meet him? 

Craig: I think he’s an MD, but I’m not, I… But they just treat him as, like, just a general scientist, like he should just know about anything. 

Todd: Someone literally calls him a scientist at one point. “You’re the scientist.” Yeah, like, okay. You’re the 

Craig: scientist.

Todd: He looked more like a doctor. I don’t know. 

Craig: Yeah. Zach runs and gets him, and when he comes back they’re all kinda standing around it, and it looks like a giant glowing potato. Like- But it’s huge. It’s, it’s- It’s round … it’s, it’s taller than a man. 

Todd: Hmm. 

Craig: And the doctor says, “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.

I’m sure this enormous glowing- 

Todd: Orb … 

Craig: thing that feels cold to the touch is nothing to worry about.” He’s like, “Just wait until the experts come and give it the all clear. I’m sure it’s fine.” 

Todd: This is so ridiculous. 

Craig: And, you know, uh, the, the real estate guy, Davidson, convinces him not to call in the EPA. He’s like, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Todd: Right? 

Craig: Be- he doesn’t want the EPA coming in because then that could mess up, you know, the real estate stuff. His land sale. Whatever. Overnight, the meteor shrinks and stops glowing, and the doc, like, chisels into it and goo comes out. But again, Davidson convinces him not to say anything about it. And then in the nighttime it glows and sweats and melts and seeps into the ground, all while Zach is standing there watching this happen as fog rolls all around him.

Todd: It’s 

Craig: so weird. 

Todd: It’s funny. It’s just like- Ugh. Uh, all of this just feels very unrealistic. It’s weird that these people just keep this quiet. It’s weird these people are not more panicked about this. I mean, there’s a crowd of pe- This isn’t a The Blob situation where a guy and his dog are out in the forest, you know, and come across this little meteor and get gooed.

No, this is like a big giant thing that made a big ruckus, and everybody’s crowded around it the next day e- even when the doctor’s poking into it and all that stuff. Where are the experts? Of course somebody would’ve called this in. Of course- 

Craig: Right … 

Todd: this would be a, a thing of major study. And here, it literally gets forgotten.

It’s like it’s not even referenced again. And I thought- 

Craig: Well, it kind of is, but it’s so stupid because, like, I don’t know, it’s almost as though because it melts away, the doctor’s like, “Oh, well, guess it’s fine.” 

Todd: Right? 

Craig: Because he comes the next morning while they’re all sitting around the table having breakfast.

He says, “Good news, it was just airline sewage.” And what, what does the dumb guy say? What does stupid Cyrus say? He’s like, “Airplane doo-doo,” or something like that. Yeah, something kid-like. And they all just laugh. Like, isn’t that funny? 

Todd: Oh my God. 

Craig: Okay. And then you see how Nathan uses a ground well to sustain his farm.

And my grandpa- grandparents used a ground well. Like- 

Todd: Hmm … 

Craig: their, their faucet water came from a well out in their front yard. I’d never seen a well like this where it was just totally exposed. Like, it was ground-level and completely open. Like- Right … that seems unsanitary anyway. The, the wells that I’ve seen have at least been covered so, like, shit isn’t getting in there or whatever, but- 

Todd: Yeah.

Bodies, corpses, whatever. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. So, so we see- So we, so we see the wa- You know, all of this is very mundane, but when played against the, like, ominous score, like, oh, the water’s going everywhere, I mean, it does give the impression that really if you were to consider this scenario, it is frightening because we can’t survive without water.

Todd: Right. It’s just part of everything we do every day, yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. We rely on it for everything. And so, you know, he’s, he’s watering his plants, he’s watering his animals. He’s, he’s got this beautiful orchard. He’s spraying his apples. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s like a whole commercial for the beauty and, and, and value of water that we get here.

Craig: Yeah, right. And I d- I’m not sure how they did all this. I don’t know if they had set dressers dressing the trees or whatever because I read that they filmed this in the dead of winter. And, and I don’t think it often snows in Tennessee, but it gets pretty cold even that far south. So- Hmm … I think they were pretty miserable shooting all of this too.

And then we find out that the Tennessee Valley Authority is in town, and I guess they’re there to check the water because who knows? Who cares? But there’s this guy, Willis, who shows up and is around, and he’s just, like, checking water and stuff. But Ma goes out to the garden, and this is in keeping with the story as I understand it.

She goes out to pick the vegetables, and her- garden looks amazing 

Todd: Mm-hmm. She’s really excited at first. Yeah 

Craig: Yeah, everything’s in full blossom and, you know, the, the vegetables are like, you know, sparkling with dew, and they’re just huge, and they all look fantastic. And she takes them inside to start cleaning them up and processing them, and she smells a cabbage and kinda gets a funky look on her face and puts it down on the cutting board and cuts into it.

And when she cuts into it- 

Todd: Ugh … 

Craig: this is where the fulci begins. 

Todd: Oh, yeah. Good way of putting it. Yeah, it is nasty. 

Craig: It is just nasty, practical goo effect, and it is unnatural colors, like purple and yellow and- 

Todd: Ugh … 

Craig: slimy and oozy and just the grossest, most unappetizing thing you can imagine. 

Todd: Yeah, and then she goes to cut into a tomato, and suddenly it’s The Evil Dead where- 

Craig: Yes

Todd: you just get sprayed in the face with… I… That didn’t even make sense. That was a weird- Of course not … choice. 

Craig: But this is where we’re getting into that, you know, up until now it’s kind of been kind of Americana, slow build- 

Todd: Very 

Craig: slow … kind of suspense kind of thing, and now it takes a hard left into a very Italian sensibility with all of these special effects and gore.

Todd: But it’s weird that I’m… And when you say slow, it’s very slow. Like, this is 30 minutes in, I think, when this happens of a, of an hour and 28-minute movie. Did you not feel that this was a little drawn out? Or maybe you’ve seen this movie so many times that this passes by you, but me, me seeing it for the first time, I just couldn’t help but be like, “I was promised a horror movie.”

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: You know? I, I get this meteor landing and all that. There’s a lot of promise here, but 30 minutes in I’m really waiting for something more than gooey vegetables, you know? 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And then I look at the clock, I’m like, “God, we’re a third of the way through already.” I felt that was one of the issues that I think a modern viewer would, would find with this one, including me.

Craig: Yeah, I think my familiarity with it had something to do with it. I think it may have also helped, yesterday was Alan’s birthday and I started watching this, you know, right before he got off work, and then he got off work so I wanted to hang out with him. So, like, I, you know, probably around this point I paused it and took a break and came back to it later.

And so- 

Todd: Right … 

Craig: I kinda got, like, the 30-minute exposition in one chunk, and then the 50-minute or an hour, whatever, rest of it- And it does kind of feel divided into those two parts. Mm-hmm. It feels like the first 30 minutes exposition and okay, now we’re in it. Let’s, let’s get it going. 

Todd: Yeah. But even then it’s quite slow.

I mean, there, 

Craig: there’s- Even then it be- because there are, like, these interstitial scenes that don’t make any difference. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: Right at this point, there’s, like, a 10-minute scene between the annoying real estate guy and the Tennessee Valley Association guy. Like- Yeah … and the Tennessee Valley Association guy is kind of bumbling.

He’s actually very good-looking, but they’ve got him in these big glasses, and he’s kind of bumbling. And he just says, like, the real estate guy sits down next to him at the diner and is like, “Hey, I just wanted to welcome you to the town,” or whatever. And the Tennessee Valley guy’s like, “Oh, well, I’m kinda new at this, and my work is top secret.”

What? Like- … what top secret work is he doing? We never find out. 

Todd: No. It’s so 

Craig: weird. He’s just hanging around. And so then Charlie’s like, “Well, I’ll drive you around.” And, and then they do. Like, they dri- Like, it’s, like, a little, like… Like, as they’re driving down the road, like, a little buddy moment for a second that goes nowhere.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: It’s just them driving in a car for a second. They don’t even go anywhere. 

Todd: And again, this whole plot of this real estate thing and him bribing the local officials and whatever, I think there was probably… And maybe, maybe if you read the script, you’d have a different impression, or maybe if you made the movie, you were thinking you were really going for this angle, that there’s this alternate aspect to this that there’s some pressure involved where once it becomes obvious there’s clearly something wrong with this land or these people or this water, weird things are happening.

There’s this other force that’s trying to hide it or pres- fix it real fast so that their, it’s, you know, their money’s at stake, their business is at stake, and they don’t want that to go up. I mean, again, this is another aspect where this movie really introduced a thing that could have really added intrigue and interest to the plot, but it doesn’t.

It go, it just, it, they just leave it dangling and don’t incorporate it in. It, it’s so weird that they have these bits except to stretch out the time. 

Craig: Well, and there are also random characters that are so underdeveloped that I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about them. Like Zach is s- wisely stealing water from the doc.

The doc is their neighbor, and he’s stealing water from their hose so it’s not coming from the well, and he’s drinking that and he’s trying to give it to his sister as much as possible. But while he’s doing that, we see his wife do some weird seductive thing where she’s… There’s, it’s such a weird shot where, like, the doctor’s just kind of ho-humming in his bed, like, “Oh, boy, I don’t know what to do,” and then-

the wife’s leg just comes into frame and- Oh, my God … this striptease music comes on. 

Todd: I am telling you, when this happened, I thought that YouTube had started playing an ad. I, I, I was like, “Oh…” And, and then, and then, like, there was a weird transition and the ad was way too short and I was like, “Wait a minute, did I just miss something?”

And I rewound it, you know, a minute and a half and I was like, “No, this was the mo- This was a part of the movie.” It made no sense. 

Craig: No, it didn’t make any sense. Like, how- Well, and I don’t under- Why? The, the doctor seems nice and his wife seems nice, too, except for that she’s, like, in cahoots with the real estate guy.

So is she, like, some sexy vixen who is just seducing the doc to, like, steal his land? Like- 

Clip: I guess. Who knows? 

Craig: The character is so underdeveloped. Like, it’s so undeveloped I have no idea 

Todd: Oh, God. Does it matter? It’s just such a weird s- it’s not even a whole scene. It’s just a cut 

Craig: No, no. And then it comes back to her for a second oiling her leg, and that’s it.

Like, you just see her oi- like, I don’t even think you see her face or anything. It’s just- No … a shot of a- Of a leg … woman oiling her leg, and then it cuts away again. 

Todd: You think this is gonna be important later. Uh, no, it’s nothing. It’s absolutely nothing. It is so out of place. Visually, it doesn’t match the rest of the movie.

Tonally, it doesn’t match the rest of the movie at all. 

Craig: There’s that weird music cue that’s so- Oh, 

Todd: yeah … out of pla- 

Craig: it’s so strange. 

Todd: It’s like somebody else scored it. It’s so bizarre. But- It’s 

Craig: weird. And he, 

Todd: When that’s happening, Wil Wheaton is, uh, his character is filling- 

Craig: Canteen … 

Todd: canteen from the hose. That was interesting.

I thought, “Oh, that’s right,” because of course, like, the city-provided water isn’t gonna be the same- Should 

Craig: be fine, right … 

Todd: yeah, as the well water, and so he’s outside their window doing that. 

Craig: Right. And then we start to see how the water is affecting the farm. The mom is serving it in a pitcher at dinner.

It’s very cloudy. It’s gross. When the little girl says, “It tastes funny,” the guy’s like, the dad’s like, “That’s just the minerals in it. It’s good for you. 

Todd: Eat up. You’re not gonna leave this table till you eat everything on your plate and all those, both those glasses are empty.” 

Craig: Even the food looks disgusting- Yeah.

Yeah … and, like, Cyrus is, like, chowing down on it. It’s, like, slimy, nasty chicken, just looks rotten and gross. Oh, man. It’s so gross. And then Cyrus gets attacked by a horse. The animals are acting weird, and there’s, like, a comic bit where Wil Wheaton drops the barbed wire fence on his butt and, but then he’s, like, leaned over the kitchen table with his ass out so his mom can put iodines on, on it with-

a Q-tip or whatever, but instead she’s playing Connect the Dots. Like, she’s losing it. And she’s getting these big boils on her face, and then there’s another scene with the real estate guy who’s like, “Charlie,” or, uh, “Nathan, you better sell your farm.” And the f- Nathan’s like, “No, I’ve got this huge, beautiful crop of apples.

That’s gonna carry me through.” But then they cut into the apples, and they’re all just full of worms. 

Todd: Yeah. Every single one. 

Craig: Um, so the, the whole crop is destroyed, and that’s then when Alice gets attacked by the chickens. Now, every account that I’ve read said that Fulci definitely directed this scene, and this is one of the ones that Wil Wheaton took most exception with because his sister was nine years old at the time, and they tied these chickens to her wrists and ankles so that they couldn’t get…

And, and, and threw them at her so that she couldn’t get away from them, and they couldn’t get away from her. And, and of course, they were agitated and were really pecking her, so she was really in distress, which is terrible and awful 

Todd: These Italian directors were almost as bad as Hitchcock. 

Craig: Yeah. Right?

Todd: When you, when you hear about the things, and then even later on, you know, they’ve– some of them have spoken up and said, “Yeah, I think I might have gone a bit too far.” Yeah. “I kind of regret this. I kind of regret that.” Like, what a time in the ’70s, man, and ’80s and Oh, God 

Craig: Well, and it’s one… But it’s… God, it’s, it’s never okay 

Todd: No 

Craig: But it’s one thing when you’re working with adults.

It- when you’re working with kids, that’s just, that’s despicable. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: But in the aftermath of it, you see the dead chickens, and their eyes and their mouths are all oozing this pussy goo. All of this stuff is so gross. And, like, I’m not a huge gross-out fan, but I can appreciate it that when that’s what you’re going for and it’s done well, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s really gross.”

The, the doctor is concerned, but Pa says everything is okay. Ma now has big boils on her face and is talking to herself, and is sitting… They’re all sit- it’s very quaint. They’re all sitting in the living rooms. You know, Cyrus is watching TV. I think Amy is playing with something. I don’t remember what Zach is doing.

The dad’s working on bills, and the mom is just sitting and sewing. It looks like she’s mending a stocking or something. But she’s talking to herself in a really creepy way, and then she also starts kind of wincing and, and whining in pain, and they realize that she’s sewing the stocking to her hand. 

Todd: Ugh.

Yeah, gross. Also, her face is a little dist- like, she’s got some gross- 

Craig: Boils … 

Todd: yeah, boils- Like these weird- … or weird things- … disgusting boils … on her cheek, yeah, which again, y- you know, is something that maybe you would pass off as something that would normally happen, and so it could go there for- 

Craig: Except these are so exaggerated.

Like- Well, eventually, yeah … they’re disgusting. Mm-hmm. I mean, even at this point, it’s not like they look like… If anybody I knew had something like that on my, on their face, I would get them to the hospital immediately. Like- Yeah. … there’s something very, very wrong with you. 

Todd: For sure. 

Craig: But again, you know, when she, after she does that, Zach goes to get the doctor again, but the, but Pa won’t let the doctor see her.

He’s like, “We take care of our own business.” But the doctor is concerned enough to take a sample from the well, so he does that. The EPA, or not EPA, the Tennessee Valley Association guy stops by and lets himself in, I guess, to check- Yeah … their water. 

Todd: Walks into their house, yeah. 

Craig: And Ma, who looks even crazier at this point…

I was getting ready to say, that’s one of the things, if I were to cite the best things about the movie, I would say that the progression of her transformation- Hmm … is one of the strongest things. It starts out relatively subtle, but it progresses like crazy. 

Todd: It’s far more subtle than, say, Mausoleum. Yeah, I, I- 

Craig: Yes

100% agree. Absolutely. But she’s still hanging out. I mean, she’s still hanging out with them at breakfast and stuff, but now Cyrus is getting the boils too, and Cyrus and the dad go out to tend the animals, and they find that the cows’ udders are all rotted and, like- Oh, that was so gross … there’s, like, slime.

Oh, it’s so disgusting. And he goes and he walks, the dad walks towards one of the cows, and I don’t remember if it’s laying down or standing up, but it’s got, like- A big flesh wound and there’s like maggots- Mm … writhing in it. And the camera like closes up on it and like the wound is like opening up and maggots are falling out, and then the whole wound explodes.

Todd: All 

Craig: over them. And shoots, yeah, shoots- Oh … gunk and maggots all- So gross … over the dad and Cyrus. It’s so gross. 

Todd: All these things that happen, they’re gross and they’re cool and as we’re running through them, you know, you’re like, “Okay, this is great.” But I have to say they were few and far between. I just felt like there was so much extra padding in between these scenes that I got bored.

You know? I, I got, I got to a point where I was like, “What, what new thing is gonna happen?” And Another disappointing thing about it is that nothing really new happens. What we’re getting is examples of the same thing over and over again. 

Craig: Pretty much. 

Todd: Except for the mother’s transformation, it feels kinda repetitive, and I think that adds to, by this point we’re almost an hour in and I’m like, “God,” like, “Let’s move this along.”

I get it, the water’s contaminated, people are getting infected, it’s making the animals go crazy. I saw like five examples of that, and I’m seeing people go crazy, and the kids aren’t drinking the water. I get that, so they’re the two immune folks. But like then 20 minutes later I expect to see something change.

That was the problem I had with it. I, I gotta admit to you, man, I watched this movie on YouTube on, on one quarter speed, and I was so g- so glad I did. I, I wish I had put it on one and a half speed. 

Craig: Yeah. I get what you’re saying. 

Todd: Be- because of how slow the, all that was, you know? It’s kinda one note. 

Craig: Yeah, that’s true.

I mean, at, at this point things are progressing, but even as they are progressing, there are still cuts away to scenes that we don’t care about. Like, we see the mom continue to progress. She, at one point, Zach is walking around downstairs. I don’t even know why, but he’s like kinda slowly walking around downstairs, and Ma pops up behind him, and she’s like full-out witch now.

Like- 

Todd: Yeah. She really is. Why is she in the same house? Who knows. 

Craig: I- it- it’s weird. And she screams and swings a poker around and barfs all over, and at this point Cyrus is acting crazy and he’s like sitting on top of the stairs like clapping like a little kid saying, “Kill her, Daddy-o. Kill her.” And- … you know, like Pa throws Ma in the cellar and Zach tries to take her some water, but she has like witch claws now.

Like- … big things are happening, but then also we have to cut to the doc who’s at the lab and who’s finding out that, uh, you know, he’s had the water tested and it’s got some previously undiscovered element in it that’s altering the molecular structure of the water. And then he calls the Tennessee Valley Association Willis guy and leaves him a message to meet him at the farm later.

And then there’s a dumb scene between the real estate guy and the doc’s wife where they’re plotting about how they’re gonna get Ma and Pa to sell the farm, and so they go to the farm and- 

Todd: Doesn’t matter. And 

Craig: it doesn’t matter because they don’t even get to Ma and Pa because they, she gets killed by the farm dogs Or at least we presume she does.

We see her get attacked, and then he goes down into the, the real estate guy goes down into the cellar and gets killed by Ma, who’s even more witchy now. There’s one great shot where he’s down there in the cellar, and the camera is pointed at him, and he’s lighting matches, and he strikes a match, and there’s nobody behind him, and it goes out.

And he strikes a match, and witchy mom is standing right behind him. E- e- even more gross and disgusting than the last time we saw her. Match goes out. Strikes the match again, she’s gone. But eventually she finds him and rips his throat out. Zach goes looking for his mom in the cellar again, but she’s not there.

Pa is only in shadow, and he says that they moved Ma upstairs. We see that he’s got boils all over now, and h- once they’re back in the house, he attacks Zach, and Cyrus, who’s all disgusting, covered in boils now with yellow goo s- oozing out of his mouth, confronts Alice in her room and picks her up over his head and throws her on the bed.

But Zach hits him with a bat and… Oh, God. I feel like we’re, you know, we’re setting- 

Todd: Yeah, this is like the last 10 minutes or 15 

Craig: minutes. Yeah. And, and, and they’re obviously completely affected by whatever it is that’s infected them now. They’re not really themselves. But he boards up all the doors and windows.

Zach hides Alice in a closet just to get her out of the way so we don’t have to worry about her for a while. And then the doctor arrives and gets in the house, and there’s smoke coming up from the floorboards. No idea why. 

Todd: Yeah. What is all this about? How does the house suddenly become the poltergeist house?

Craig: I don’t… This is so weird. All of a sudden it becomes poltergeist or Fall of the House of Usher or Amityville or something where it’s like the entire house is affected. It doesn’t make any sense. 

Todd: You’re right. It doesn’t make any sense. You were right earlier when you said, you know, it gets very Italian.

This is, this is part and parcel of the Italian horror movies. 

Craig: Oh, yeah, 100%. 

Todd: Like this big, bombastic, crazy shit. Like this would happen, but it wouldn’t make sense in the continuity of what we’ve seen, seen so far . 

Craig: Yeah. Well, and, and so the… Right, that… There’s big confrontations, like lots of fights. Pa kills the doc, then he goes after Zach.

But Willis, who has shown up, Tennessee Valley Association Willis, shows up and pitchforks Pa. And the walls are shaking and peeling, and windows are breaking. They’re trying to get out. I think they get Alice. Willis gets Alice out, I think. But Cyrus attacks Zach on the way out, but Zach pushes him over a banister and- 

Todd: Yeah

Craig: Willis gets Alice out. But Zach says he has to go back in ’cause he has to get Ma. And Willis runs outside with Alice, and a tree falls on the car. Like you said, like it’s the goddamn Poltergeist house. Like the house itself- … is trying to kill them. It doesn’t make any sense. 

Todd: Trees are uprooting themselves.

None of this ma- We were just talking about contaminated water for an hour- I know … and 15 minutes. Why is suddenly everything getting weirdly supernatural? 

Craig: When Zach finds Ma in the attic, she’s just a gooey blob mostly. She’s just like a skull melting into a gooey blob- … which looks 100% like another Fulci zombie movie, like that melty goo.

Very Fulci to me. Um, you’re more of a… But- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: so and then Zach tries to get out again, but Cyrus grabs him again, but then a beam falls on him. But then Pa’s back, and he tries to block the way out, but Zach pushes him into a beam, and he falls under a beam, too. And then Zach’s just like standing there kinda catatonic, looking through the door as the f- house is falling in.

And Willis, who really has not been a character at all- 

Todd: Yeah … 

Craig: grabs Zach a- and, and carries him down to the truck. And the entire house collapses in on itself into the ground Poltergeist style- … as Zach sits in the car peering out the passenger side window- Oh … stunned. Then we cut back- Yeah … to present day, I suppose, and we see a newscast.

We find out that the guy from the cold open that we saw was Willis, and the newscast explains that he was testing the water in that area and he found some anomaly, and it led to the deaths of these four people or whatever. But don’t worry, he’s fine. Willis is fine. He’s perfectly recuperated, and there’s no more risk of any danger.

Then it pans out from the TV to show that the person watching TV is in a hospital completely wrapped in gauze head to toe, mummy style. And the nurse says, “You hear that, Mr. Willis? Everything’s gonna be just fine.” And it just, like, closes up on his eyes. Then we do a panorama of farmland, and the horizon starts glowing, and we close up on the ground, and it’s shaking and glowing, and the oozy cosmic goo comes up out of the ground- Yeah

suggesting that this will continue. 

Todd: Continue. 

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I really remember liking this movie when I was a kid, and I ha- I think a lot of it probably has to do with two factors. Well, maybe a c- maybe a few. First and foremost, Wil Wheaton, big fan. Again, Stand By Me, one of my favorite movies.

Liked his other movies- Sure … as well. I was never really a Star Trek guy, but, uh, all of the movies he was in in the ’80s and ’90s, big fan. Two, the fact… I don’t think that I knew at the time that he was working with his little sister in real life, but the big brother being protective of the little sister thing was always something that was appealing to me too, ’cause I had a little sister that I felt that way about.

So- Hmm … that part of it was appealing to me. The gross gore effects I still find fun to watch. Yeah. Uh, and I’m sure I did then, too. I watched so many of these types of movies with these corny interstitial scenes that I think that I was more accustomed to it at the time, that I had more patience for it, and potentially I was less mature and-

and, and cynical as I am today, and probably was able to enjoy that part of it a little bit more when I was young. So I, I, I understand why I liked it as a kid. You know, looking at it from, uh, today’s perspective as an old person, it’s not great, but I still think that it’s worth watching for the value of its component parts.

There are parts of it that are stupid and kind of boring to get through, but I think the good parts are worth it, and it is only an hour and a half long. 

Todd: These days, these days that’s a short movie. I have to say, like, I thought it was a bit milk toast. There’s nothing wrong with the story. It’s the slow transformation of a family out in the middle of nowhere into monsters and how they ha- how, how the bro- the boy and the, his sister handle it.

But that’s really all it is. Like, any bit of complication that could’ve been added to the script was literally introduced into the script, but then abandoned before it could become a complicating factor. 

Craig: Sure. I 

Todd: mean, ima- imagine if this, this woman had loyalties to this guy still, and this guy was into her.

Like, there are just so many interesting things you could have done with some of the things that were just dropped, that it’s almost unbelievable. I, I would almost think that somebody came alo- along and just chopped up a script that was better fleshed out than this. Maybe. You know? Who knows. So then watching the movie and having to kind of plow through these scenes that led to nowhere, that didn’t end up becoming consequential, things that were set up that were not paid off, and it’s really just, “Oh, now Dad’s acting weird.

Now the chickens are acting weird. Now the cow’s got these udder issues. Now the vegetables are gross. Now, like, Mom has boils on her face and is lashing out.” Like, okay. I mean, I’ve seen this before. It usually, this is where the story starts. And at this point, we’re almost three-quarters of the way through the movie, and I’ve just seen this slow, steady progression in the direction that I expected it to go.

The water’s contaminated. Everyone’s gonna turn into some monster. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: For that reason, because there weren’t, there wasn’t really much else to really capture my interest, I just felt like, yeah, I mean There’s nothing wrong with it. I just, I could probably recommend other films along these same lines that had a little more intrigue and, and went- felt a little more…

This movie feels very real. You know, it feels almost too normal, really. Yeah. There, there wouldn’t be a lot of intrigue if this shit happened in real life. There’d just be your family around you slowly turning, and it would… That, that’s it, so- 

Craig: Right … 

Todd: you know, there’s nothing wrong with the movie. Just didn’t capt- captivate me like I was hoping.

Craig: Yeah. I, I, I think that the story could be better told for sure. I, I think that there… Even the progression of what the cosmic goo is doing to people I think could have been more interesting if it had been less overt initially. People had started to show signs, you know, changes in temperament. You know, if the mom had, before the boils appeared on her face, if she had started to become more short-tempered or- Mm.

I don’t know. I mean, they, they tr- they try to do a little bit of, of that. I, I can only imagine th- the story is better told in the Ni- the 2019 Nicolas Cage adaptation, which I really am interested in looking at again, ’cause I just watched it on a whim at one point and don’t really remember much about it.

The story was also adapted into a Boris Karloff film at one point under a different title. But I don’t remember what that title was, but you can find that too. Yeah. I mean, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s very ’80s. I imagine if it’s- The score is fun. Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. I love that. They actually… There are two different scores.

They did one for the American release and the one for the, uh, one for the Italian release, and I don’t know if both- … are still available or, or what. But again, it is only an hour and a half long, and it’s y- it’s streaming free on YouTube as of this recording, so, you know, if you got nothing better to do.

But again, if, if, if you choose to opt out, you’re not really missing much. It’s fine. Whatever. 

Todd: All right. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoy this. If you’ve seen this movie, drop us a line. ChainsawHorror.com is our website. We have links there. We have a link where you can leave a voice message for us, or you can just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast and find our Facebook and, uh, Instagram pages.

Leave us messages there as well. Let us know what you thought of this. Recommend us to a friend. Check out our Patreon at Patreon.com/ChainsawPodcast. We’d love to have you on board. Until next time, I’m Todd. 

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We jump back into international horror with Joko Anwar’s 2020 Indonesian folk-horror hit, Impetigore, a Shudder release that earned major festival acclaim and became Indonesia’s Oscar submission.

We talk about how the film’s Jakarta-to-remote-village setup builds atmosphere, the boldness of its dialogue and staging, and the gorgeous candlelit cinematography inspired by shadow puppetry.

Along the way we unpack the twisty mystery, the curse at the heart of the village, and the film’s disturbing violence, including the skinning and the chilling connection between human skin and puppet-making. We also debate the movie’s big exposition dumps, its cultural specificity, and why—subtitles and all—it’s still a compelling, well-made horror story worth seeking out.

Episode 491, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, uh, we go from a request to an international horror film. I don’t think we do enough of these, honestly. There’s a lot of good horror happening outside of the US and, uh, the UK and stuff, and, uh, we tend to focus a little bit on the Western side.

And there are countries out there such as Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, that are well known for being longtime rabid fans of horror movies and have long histories of doing horror movies back to, like, the ’60s and ’70s. I think the last Indonesian horror movie we did, which was also our first Indonesian horror movie we did, was Satan’s Slaves back in 2023 By Joko Anwar, who is one of these directors who snuck into a cinema when he was really, really young, saw a horror movie, was really, really scared by it, and inspired for the rest of his life, wanted to be a director, and specifically wanted to approach cinema from the language of horror.

He was just… And he’s been very successful since then. Satan’s Slaves was a pet project of his. Gosh, I think when we did that, I was actually reporting from Jakarta w- with my, uh, then Indonesian girlfriend, now recently ex-girlfriend. Here we are revisiting this. It, it’s kind of a shame really that Liz is not here to give her perspective on this because, uh, this, this one that we’re doing now, Impetigore, which came two films later for Joko Anwar, is very, very steeped in Indonesian culture.

Satan’s Slaves was a movie that… It was a remake actually of a movie from the ’70s, I believe, or ’80s, that he saw that he really, really loved and, and it was like a pet project for him to finally get that remade. After he had a few successful films under his belt, he was able to do that. This one is a complete original written and directed by him, and it was released in 2020.

Sundance, got very, very good reviews. It was actually a contender. It was Indonesia’s official submission for the Oscars for the international category, and it’s not often a horror movie gets, gets submitted for that. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Uh, it didn’t win, but it got lots of acclaim at other film festivals. It has like a 92% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

It seems like this movie obviously was a big hit in its home country, and wh- where it premiered in the US and Canada, the UK I think, was on Shudder. Following the success of Satan’s Slaves, which was one of their biggest hits, they decided to collaborate with Anwar a bit more and, uh, so Impetigore was released there.

And so I think that’s where most people are gonna be able to see it now. Uh, I’ve got a short list of Joko Anwar movies I want us to do, and so I’m glad we could finally come to this one. I hadn’t seen it before. How about you, Craig? 

Craig: No. I’m sure I had… Y- you know, ’cause I, I pay for Shudder, and I scroll through it periodically, and I’m sure that I saw it there.

As you know, these days I’m not particularly drawn to foreign language films unless there’s a dub, and there’s not for this, I don’t, I don’t think. 

Todd: You had to read. Sorry, the English teacher had to read. 

Craig: Well, to be honest with you, this one, especially in the first half of the movie, less so in the second half, but in the first half of the movie, there’s quite a bit of talking, and it goes by very quickly.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So you really have… You really do have to keep your eyes on the subtitles- More than I typically would like. True. But whatever. I mean, I, I still knew what was going on, a- as much as I was meant to, I think. I also think there may have been a couple wonky translation things. Minor, minor things. But no, I hadn’t watched it before, and, and I’m glad.

You know, this, the podcast gives me motivation to see these movies that I probably wouldn’t just watch on my own. Alan’s certainly not gonna watch- … a subtitled movie abso- with me. Absolutely not. Not a horror movie, anyway. So I’m, I’m glad to have had the opportunity to watch it, and I think it’s, it’s worth watching.

One of the things that I like about these foreign films is I, I think that yes, they’re often steeped in a culture that I’m not particularly familiar with. So I don’t know what is real and what’s entirely fiction, but it is nice to kind of see different parts of the world and, and these stories, at least the foreign films that we’ve done, typically have original plot lines and interesting things going on that you haven’t seen a bazillion times over.

I mean, this movie shares similarities to some things like Wicker Man. I, I felt like it was l- like, it like those folk horror movies. Absolutely. And it may strictly be because it’s foreign, but also there’s focus on the gore. The plot lines are not at all similar, but it also reminded me, ugh, it’s escaped me.

What’s that controversial movie that they skin a girl at the end so that she can have, like, a transcendental experience? 

Todd: Oh, uh, Martyrs. Martyrs. 

Craig: Martyrs, yeah. Shades of that. Shades of lots of things. Yeah. I mean, shades of Hostel 2, if you wanna get right down to it. True. But still, still an original story that I was invested in, and I liked the way that, uh, I liked the pacing of it and the way that it played out.

I, I, I was entertained. 

Todd: Well, you know, I was reading some interviews with some of the, with the director, and one of the things that surprised him was how well it was received internationally because he said, “You know, I, I didn’t shoot this for an international audience. I shot it for an Indonesian audience, and there’s a lot of Indonesian culture in here.”

And so he kinda wondered how that would translate and come across. And sort of like you said, there’s just a lot of common themes here. It is at heart, in a way A typical ghost story in that there’s a ghost, th- they have something that needs to be done in order to banish them or solve the curse or whatever like that, and that, and that kind of happens.

So in that way, it’s very similar. But in other ways, you know, this is very much taking place in Indonesia. You know, the, the two ladies start out this movie in Jakarta as tollbooth operators, and then we end up in a very, very remote village, which is very common. Indonesia, by the way, is a huge country.

It’s made up of tons of islands, and I don’t know if you realize this, many people don’t, it’s the fourth largest country in the world by population. No, I didn’t know that. Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a pretty big country, and it’s got a lot of different languages, a lot of different cultures in it. So it’s a, it’s a really interesting place.

It’s got a very, very rich history and a lot of rich folklore as well, and that’s what he drew from. But also, he’s put in this movie some things that you wouldn’t normally see in Indonesian cinema, like this dialogue at the beginning in the tollbooth between these two ladies. It’s just so casual, really, that, that you wouldn’t normally see that in an Indonesian movie.

And also, there’s a toilet scene later that, where the girls are talking in a toilet and, and all that, and, and again, something that you wouldn’t normally see. And that’s something that the director and the actors talked about, about how… Uh, some of the actors actually said that’s really what compelled them to participate in this movie was they just thought that the script was bold and unique for Indonesia.

But, uh, anyway, yeah, there’s these two girls, uh, who are chatting in a tollbooth. They’re young ladies, they’re in Jakarta, and they’re gossiping back and forth. And I thought this dialogue was very real and very legit. This is just the sort of chatter that anybody would be having late at night with their coworkers.

And I guess they’re talking over their phones because they’re in separate booths. But, uh One of the things they’re talking about, you know, is, “Oh, this creepy guy often visits me in this car,” and this other dude, you know, who drives through with his truck all the time is trying to m- make a pass at me, yada, yada, yada.

Maya and Din. And, uh, Maya ends up saying, “Oh, this creepy car guy’s coming again.” And this guy is creepy. In his car, he pulls up to the toll booth, and he’s just staring at this woman. He gives her his money, and she gives him his ticket or whatever, but then he parks past the booth, gets out of his car, and starts walking to her, which is totally freaking her out.

And I thought this was an interesting scenario. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of scenario in a horror movie because when you think about it, in a toll booth, this is a solitary place, but it’s also kinda busy. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: You know? But it’s busy with people who are busy passing through and in their own cars, and so, uh, what a, what a clever idea to have this creepy guy approaching her in this place where she is vulnerable even though she is sort of surrounded by people, and there will be people coming through.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, it’s late at night, and it seemed like it wasn’t, you know- 

Todd: Super busy … 

Craig: bustling. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it is a public space, but, I mean, you also think about it, she’s basically in an eight-by-four-foot box. There’s- Yeah … there’s nowhere really for her to flee to, and she struggles with getting it…

And, and this guy, I don’t remember if he talks to her- 

Todd: He does … 

Craig: or asks her name or something. 

Todd: He asks if she’s from a particular village and asks who her father is, and then when she sort of says, “M- m- mm, no,” and he walks away, but then when he goes back to his car, he pulls a machete out. 

Craig: Right, and he chases her with it and gets her down on the ground, and he says something like, “We just don’t want what your family left behind.

Take it back.” But then the police show up, and they shoot him. And we cut to l- later, where the, the two women, I think, are now selling clothes, like, I don’t know, they’re vendors or something. They want to open their own clothing store, but they don’t have any money, and this is when Maya starts talking about her parents, and you’re gonna have to refresh my memory.

I watched this last night, and I don’t even remember some of the details. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: She doesn’t know her parents? 

Todd: Right. She was raised by her aunt and uncle and then taken to the city. All she knows is she grew up outside of the city, and they took her to the city when she was, like, five years old or something.

Craig: But what makes her think now about it? I guess just because the guy asked about her dad and the village or something? 

Todd: Specifically, he mentioned her dad, Kidono Wango, or something like that. And she didn’t know w- who this guy was or who her dad was, but then she goes back and she ends up looking through some photos, and she finds this one photo of her aunt and uncle with her as a five-year-old standing in front of this big house.

And on the back it has that name, that Ki Donowongo, and the name of the village on it. 

Craig: I see. I see. 

Todd: Yeah, so now she kinda knows for the first time, because l- you know, she later kind of explains that her aunt and uncle didn’t talk about her parents at all, and didn’t really tell her much about her past, and they’re gone.

So she’s thinking, “Oh, there’s this huge house here. This might be my inheritance. Maybe I can go back to this village and claim this, you know, and have some money So that’s her initial motivation. 

Craig: Right. And y- I mean, that’s, uh, kind of presumptuous. Like, like the, the whole, the whole plan is they’re just gonna show up and I guess- Prove

claim this house and then they can sell it and have money to, you know, for their future and their business and, and whatnot. This was the scene that you were talking about. I, I feel like they’re having this conversation about maybe being able to sell the house while Maya is sitting on the toilet. And at one point I think maybe she got a little bit cut or something by the machete.

She wasn’t badly injured, but there’s a little cut on her leg, and I don’t know if it’s from the machete or if it’s from something else, but there’s a little cut, there’s a little cut on her leg and she pulls something out of it which I can only… Like, it’s like a tiny little scroll, but it almo- it looks like a, like a fortune out of a fortune cookie.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But she can’t read it. I guess it’s not her language or whatever. Right. And she doesn’t seem particularly concerned- Concerned … that she pulled that thing out of her leg. 

Todd: Well, I, I think she seems a little disturbed by it, but like what can she do? You, you forgot that when the guy had her down on the ground with the machete he saw the scar on her leg.

She had a scar there before and he dug into it- Oh, okay … with the machete. So she- Oh, okay … she had been cut there, but you know, it had more or less healed and while she was sitting on the toilet suddenly it started dripping again. So there’s some kind of m- maybe sort of supernatural element here because this was obviously sometime later.

You know, they have their kiosk now. But yeah, you’re right. She pulls this scroll out of her leg. What a weird, weird thing. She takes the picture of it and then somehow she ends up dropping it in the toilet, so she loses the scroll, but, uh, she has a picture of it and it’s in Javanese. It’s in a language that she doesn’t, she doesn’t know, so she can’t really translate it.

It’s crazy. 

Craig: Right. She and her friend both get on a bus to go to this village that they’ve never been to. They don’t know anything about it. 

Todd: Oh, by the way, before you talk about that, isn’t it crazy that toilet scene? I mean, I even thought for a Western movie that was pretty… I mean, number one, you don’t normally see people sitting on the toilet in a movie, and when you do- Yeah

the, it’s usually like not very exposed, but this girl is sitting on the toilet. You can almost see everything. I mean, she’s in a little bit of darkness, but she wipes and everything right in front of us. 

Craig: That was a little bit… It was a little bit shocking because I didn’t realize, you know- It’s, I don’t, I don’t think that it’s all that uncommon to see scenes of women or of people in general talking in the bathroom- Yeah

you know, while somebody’s brushing their teeth. And, and so somebody might be sitting on the toilet just because that’s the seat that’s available. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: I didn’t realize that she was naked from the waist down until she stood up and pulled up her underwear. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And I don’t know. I mean, it didn’t occur to me that that would be pretty brazen in that part of the world.

It, it just didn’t occur to me. But yeah, I, I did notice. 

Todd: I, I thought it was brazen, period. Like, I don’t think, like, I was just like… Anyway, I’m, you know, you’ve seen it all in horror. Yeah. Why not, why not somebody wiping themselves on a toilet?

Craig: Uh, they ri- okay, so they, they get on a bus and f- she runs into, like Russian literature professor, and he’s like, “Oh, I really like languages.” And she’s like, “Oh, well, can you read this?” And he says, “It’s a spell to ward off spirits- Mm-hmm … but it was made by an evil person.” And that’s kind, and that’s kind of the only thing that he says.

And then she sees three creepy girls on the side of the road, and we have no idea what’s going on with that, but of course we find out later. And when they get to the bus stop, the bus doesn’t drop them at the village. The village is so remote that some of the people in the village that they live in don’t even know where it is.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But they do find a driver who’s willing to take them. He makes them pay him quite a bit of money, but he, he takes them there. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: He tells them that he had recently been here because he, for some reason, he brought the village elder back home from a trip or something, and he tells them that the village elder is, is kind of a famous or at least well-known puppet master.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And bec- because they, you know, they get there, they arrive in this village. It’s a really cool location, and we spend the rest of the movie here. 

Todd: Yeah. Actually, part of the reason why this movie took so long to develop, I think it, it was about 10 years from the time he wrote the script to the time he ended up making the movie, was they spent a lot of time looking for the right locations.

Anwar said they spent, like, three months looking for a village that could resemble the village in the script, and they found someone who was hiking in the forest who said that he stumbled upon this village that was just sort of cut off from the modern world. So this is an actual village formed in 1941, made for workers who worked on the plantation for Dutch colonialists, and they just lived there ever since.

And so, um, they went there. They found that it was perfect, but they had to make facilities in order to shoot there. Like, they had to make a path- Sure … so their cars and equipment could go through. They didn’t even have toilets or bathrooms there, so they actually built proper toilets. And then when they were done shooting, they were used by the locals.

So they actually like improved their infrastructure permanently in this village as part of the shoot. It didn’t even cost them a million bucks. 

Craig: Mm. 

Todd: And the big house that they built for the main set, the, the big house that she lives in, and, uh, they left it when they were done shooting, and they supplied books, and the house became a library for the locals.

Oh, wow. So it’s really kinda neat. 

Craig: That’s cool. It is really neat. I mean, it, it looked very authentic. I assumed, I mean, i- i- if nothing else, I assumed that they had built sets in the jungle because it does, I mean, it seems very remote. They’re surrounded by jungle. On their way to meet this puppet master guy Which I wasn’t even entirely sure what that meant.

I just thought, “Well, I, I guess he’s a puppeteer.” Right. And he kind of is, but that’s another cultural thing that comes in later. Again, I know nothing about Indonesian culture, so I don’t know if this is a real thing. I presume it is. But the puppeteering later is really cool. Yeah. So, so I’m excited to talk about it.

But, but they pass the house and they get to his house, and an older woman answers. She’s very stern-looking, she’s got a limp, and she says, “He’s not home. You’ll have to come back tomorrow morning.” And they’re like, “That’s fine.” Dini, I don’t remember how to… Din, Dini, the friend- 

Todd: Dini, yeah. 

Craig: The subtitles are Din, yeah

the friend says, “Should we call the guy?” ‘Cause they have the, the card. The driver gave him his card. And sometimes their cell phones work there. Not usually, but sometimes. But she’s like, “No, no, it would be stupid to go all the way back and it’s expensive. We’ll just stay here.” So they just make themselves at home in that big house.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Well, I guess they figure- Now, a couple of things. F- first of all, like, you know, like, they don’t seem to have any qualms about just making themselves at home there. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: Um, they go in and they figure that it’s been… She moved to the city with her aunt when she was five years old, and she’s 25 years now, so the house has been abandoned for 20 years.

I don’t think so. It doesn’t look like it’s been abandoned for 25 years except in the bathroom, the outside is kind of making its way in, and that’s a really cool set piece. There’s, like, roots and stuff coming out of the walls. 

Todd: Uh-huh. 

Craig: But other than that, it’s mostly furnished. It’s dusty and stuff. It does, however, looks mostly undisturbed- Yeah

which is kind of haunting. It begs the question, why? Why is it… It’s, it’s the nicest, the biggest, nicest house in the village, but nobody’s living there. Yeah. So that’s mysterious. The other thing that I thought was just so funny about them making themselves at home is they’re not even sneaky about it. No.

Like, they’re lighting fires and candles. They’ve, you know, they, they’ve got the house lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And

I guess- But all right, whatever … 

Todd: she figures if anybody comes by and questions them she’ll be like, “Well, it is my house, so, uh…” 

Craig: I guess. But that’s the other thing, too. Like, it never comes up. Like, she’s never… In fact, there’s some mistaken identity that’s key to the plot, but- How… It just seems like such an odd plan to just…

Well, she does say, “Once we establish that it was my parents’, then I’ll come back with a lawyer.” So I guess she does have- 

Todd: Right … 

Craig: a concept of a plan. 

Todd: It’s like a fact-finding mission. What do I need to do to, to claim this house? You know, kind of the beginnings of all this, yeah. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: I thought that the colors and the cinematography in this movie is just gorgeous.

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: It, it is very widescreen, and every bit of the frame is just beautiful. I think it’s kind of amazing, actually, how he can shoot in such darkness. There is there’s no day for night in this. It’s night for night, you know? And there’s so much- Yeah … shadow. A lot is lit. Uh-huh. In fact, he mentions, you know, the puppeteer, and we’ll talk about it later, he’s a shadow puppeteer.

The, he- Joko Anwar mentioned that he used that as a kind of a theme for, uh, the cinematography as well. A lot of the lighting in the movie comes from a single source. 

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: And, uh, you know, these candles they’re using or something like that. And so there’s so much shadow and so much darkness, but there’s so much richness of detail in those shadows.

Just the gradation is just beautiful. And it really takes its time. I really like how this movie establishes atmosphere. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: We get a sense of how the village is laid out. We get a sense of how this house is laid out. Like you said, that bathroom is just really pretty creepy. The camera almost walks us through the house with the ladies.

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: And it’s not the first time it’s gonna do this. At times early on in the movie, there was a lot of s- of, of handheld happening, and it wasn’t the distracting kind of handheld that’s just jittery and shaky. It’s just the slightly floaty sort of handheld that, that felt real for the scene, especially on the bus.