2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

This may be our freshest episode yet: This movie was released this very month on NBC’s Peacock network. With a cast of stars, a blockbuster writer/director, and a unique setting – a “conversion camp” for teens – there is a lot to unpack with this unique and timely take on the summer camp slasher.

Also, FYI, it’s pronounced, “They Slash Them”. Cute, eh?

They/Them (2022)

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we’re going pretty modern today after doing a whole bunch of older films. This is 2022. I actually, I believe this movie came out on August 5th. Believe it or not. So this is fresh off the boat as it were. And Craig, you chose this movie. This is, They/Them. A horror movie that premiered on the peacock network, which I believe is NBC’s streaming service.

Yep. I don’t think this made it to the theaters. My understanding. No, it didn’t. So it’s just a, it’s a tell made for television movie, but, uh, the pedigree is quite interesting. Um, the director and writer of the film is John Logan. Uh, this is the first movie he’s directed, but, uh, he got his, uh, start in Hollywood as a screenwriter with the story for any given Sunday, went on to do Gladiator , uh, The Last Samurai, The Aviator, uh, Hugo, Skyfall, Specter.

I mean, this guy, uh, he’s gonna be well off for, uh, quite a while. Um, based on his residuals from all of these films that he’s written. That are big time Hollywood blockbusters, but this movie’s a little different. I actually, I thought the title was quite cute. Yeah. They slash them. This movie deals with a, um, Like basically what you would call a, a conversion camp Uhhuh for people who are, uh, transgendered gay and, uh, they slash them.

It’s a slasher movie or, yeah, I would say it’s supposed to be a slasher movie. Yeah. 

Craig: yeah. I think they kind of forgot. Like 

Todd: yeah. Tell like the ad and like, oh shoot. And they were like, 

Craig: oh shit. Some people need to die. Yeah. wait, wait, wait. This is a horror movie. And, and that’s, that’s not an outright criticism, but.

First of all. I don’t think that this was made specifically for a streaming service. I have a feeling that they premiered it on a streaming service because they didn’t anticipate that it would have the kind of widespread appeal that would be worth putting it in theaters. I don’t think that they thought that they would get the return on it if they put it in theater.

So it went straight to streaming. It’s probably fair. Yeah, because it, it feels like a theatrical release it’s well made. It’s got a, I would say a couple, but at least one big name attached, you know, Kevin bacon plays a, a very, very prominent role and he’s a, he’s an Aless star, you know, and oh, a hundred percent.

Yeah. Yeah. And, um, Like you said, the guy who directed it, John Logan is our first time director, but he he’s very established as a writer has written some, you know, big blockbuster hits. So, um, I think that it’s got the talent behind it where I think this movie goes wrong a little bit and, and I don’t wanna be.

Terribly critical of it because I really appreciate the, what, what I see as the effort is it didn’t strike quite the right balance. And I don’t know that. Would necessarily be possible to strike the right strike the right balance. Because I think John Logan is an openly gay man in Hollywood, and I think that he had really good intentions, um, in terms of social commentary mm-hmm , but I, I don’t know that it necessarily struck the right balance between social commentary.

And a horror movie. Yeah. And I think that that’s really hard to do like social commentary and horror is not uncommon at all. It happens all the time. We’ve done a ton of movies that have commented on everything from like nuclear warfare to, and other environmental issues, racism, lots and lots of, yeah. Of those, you know, and I think that maybe.

The one movie that has done the best at striking that balance is Jordan peels get out recently. Yeah. Yeah, there was great. It, it did strike that balance. This one, I think is a little bit heavy on the social commentary and a little light on the horror, but I’m reluctant to even say that because. The social commentary I think is important.

And I appreciate the message of the film, but yeah, I’m not, I’m not sure it quite struck the right balance. I still liked it. I liked the movie. I enjoyed it, but I also know that there are going to be a lot of people out there who are going to thumb their nose at it and, you know, call it woke as though that’s.

A criticism and, you know, say that it’s, you know, it’s too political or. It’s too, you know, it’s shoving the message down your throat or whatever. I know that there are gonna be those people out there and you and I try not to get preachy or overly political or anything, but I’m just gonna say outright that I am going to be unapologetically.

Supportive of the message and, and narrative of this movie. So if that’s something listener that, uh, you are not in support of, and that. Is going to, you know, irritate you, you may as well turn it off because I’m not gonna apologize for my, uh, enthusiastic support of the message of the movie. Sure. 

Todd: I mean, same here.

I’m a hundred percent in support of the message of the film too. And I appreciate the effort and the, the, the courage and whatever it takes, you know, in this day and age to, to get a movie like this, May with some big name stars and put out there. It’s certainly a little easier now than it used to be, but still it’s, you know, this, these are topics that are still very controversial, very political.

We’re arguing about these in my opinion, way too much. But when it comes to art, this is always an issue, right? Movies and our, our first and foremost entertainment, it tends to be sadly enough. It tends to be when, when you try too hard to get a message across, sometimes the entertainment value gets lost.

Right. A little bit mm-hmm for whatever reason. And I, I don’t, I don’t think it’s just because of people’s personal hangups, you know, I don’t think it’s simply because I might be personally. Fronted by the message they’re trying to do, or I might disagree. And then that distracts me and keeps me from enjoying the movie.

Now, I, I really mean that just sort of like getting a good entertaining movie out of a film that also was trying very, very hard to like hammer home a message is tricky and difficult. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just comes across. Uh, you know, like trying too hard, you know, Uhhuh or you get more message than substance, or you get more message than entertainment.

Quite frankly, nobody wants to just be lectured for an hour and a half. And I, I don’t think this movie does that, but it gets close. Yeah. It’s definitely veering into that territory. And. That’s basically because it kind of, isn’t a horror movie for the majority of the run time. See, but 

Craig: the thing is, I think it is, but not in the way that we typically think.

Todd: I know what you’re gonna say. I know exactly what you’re gonna say, and I’m gonna agree with you, but go on. Yeah. 

Craig: Mm-hmm, , I’m just gonna say that, you know, like in here somewhere is the standard camper, slasher movie. But that’s not, what is the most horrifying about this movie? Right. What’s the most horrifying about this movie is that these kinds of conversion camps, maybe not to the extreme that is suggested here, but, but they exist.

And. People send their children there to be converted and, and, and changed and to challenge and, and, and potentially try to change something essential to their identity. And that is horrific to me. Yes. And, and I, and I think a lot of the stuff that we see in here. Is, um, real, I, I, I think that the way that these.

Young people are talked to. I think it happens. And, and a lot of it, a lot of it’s direct and a lot of it is passive aggressive. The passive aggressive stuff was the stuff that sickened me the most. Kevin Bacon’s character, Owen Whistler is the proprietor of this camp and he starts. He introduces himself and he welcomes these young people to this camp.

I can’t make you straight. I don’t wanna make you straight gay people are Akay with me. If you’re happy, the way you are then more power to you. And I know what you’re thinking, you hear the words, gay conversion camped, and you start to imagine all kinds of homophobic bullshit. Well, that is not what we’re about.

But I’m guessing 

Todd: that some of you are here 

Craig: because in some way you’re not happy. Maybe you don’t fit in. People make fun of you. Maybe you wanna find some new kind of peace, a new way of thinking about yourself. Well, you give us this week and we might be able to help. And if not, just enjoy the sunshine and work on your 10.

Ah, and it’s bullshit. Yeah, it’s, it’s a boldface lie. And though he claims to be supportive of who they are. Um, he’s passive aggressive. One of the main characters is named Jordan and they’re a transgender non-binary. Um, person and they, their pronouns are they them, but Kevin bacon constantly and I believe fully intentionally misgenders them.

Mm-hmm and you know, claims E every time he does it, and somebody calls me, he’s like, oh, sorry, my mistake. No, it’s not a mistake. You’re doing it on purpose. And, uh, there’s another trans character, a trans woman. Particular trans woman, her name is Alexandra. She’s just AB stunningly, stunningly. Beautiful. Um, she doesn’t initially reveal that she’s a trans woman and when he finds out, he’s all pissed off about it.

And he angrily and intentionally misgenders and dead names, her and these things. happen every day. God. Yeah. Yeah. I’m getting emotional about it. That’s what I think is horrific about it. And I think that that’s what the writer director kind of wanted to expose. He, he talked about, you know, you can’t find a, because this movie is so new, there’s not a whole lot of information out there about it in terms of like trivia and whatnot.

But John Logan talked about how growing up representation of. Uh, the LGBTQ plus community in horror was never particularly flattering. Yeah. You know, it was, um, generally, you know, flamboyant and over the top and gay people were either victims, killers or the joke and that’s. True. And having grown up in the eighties and watch that, you know, I just didn’t question it because that’s just how gay people were portrayed in movies.

And it didn’t particularly bother me, but in hindsight, looking back, it’s not, it’s not fair and it’s not equal representation. And I, and that’s the thing that I appreciated the most about this movie was that. It brings all of these young people together and it does feel like fair representation. You’ve got a variety of different types of queer people and they’re unique and they’re individual and, uh, they’re three dimensional.

Yeah. On that front, I think the movie’s really successful. 

Todd: Yeah, that’s one thing I really will say for it. Like there’s not stereotyping going on here. These feel like real people and there’s, there’s not a caricature aspect to it. All these people feel like very real, very down to earth people, which is, uh, you know, in service to reality.

mm-hmm yes, honestly. Yeah. I mean, it’s just, it’s great. And so for that, I, you know, I was, I was kind of on the edge waiting for some of that to happen for some reason. But it didn’t, and, and that was good. Uh, and I agree with you also, like Kevin Bacon’s character, of course we know what we’re getting into.

We know that this movie’s a horror movie, so bad things are gonna happen. So immediately distrustful of all of the things that he’s saying in the very beginning, which I thought was a delicious, you know, speech. Oh yeah. It’s really good. It’s really good. And this is the kind of double talk that people do all the time, Uhhuh and they don’t just do it about gender.

They do it about race. Yeah. They do it a about a lot of things, but they’ll stand there. Oh, you know? No, I, I, you know, I, you can be who you are and I love everybody and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at the end, okay. Boys cabins are over here. Girls cabins are over there. Right, right, right. It just starts to walk away.

It’s almost hilarious when that’s done yet. It’s not done in a comical manner, you know, it’s kind of a deadpan sort of mm-hmm humor. I, I would say right immediately, like you said, our transgendered, uh, main character here, I would say Jordan is immediately offended by and, you know, confronts him about it.

And then he’s all like, I’m sorry. You’re right. Maybe we do need a, we do need a cabin. Non-binary right. Mm-hmm but, uh, for now, can you please just maybe go to the, the boys’ cabin, if that’s uncomfortable for you, then we can talk mm-hmm it sounds fairly reasonable, I suppose. You know, considering everybody knows they’re coming to this camp to be turned, you know, straight.

Right. And also for the most part, I kind of like that, everyone know sort of like, I mean, I would imagine God, if I were not straight and I was sent to a camp like this against my will, my parents, I mean, You know, you gotta do it, I guess, in their circumstances anyway, like they’re sort of forced to go, but they’re not like kicking and screaming and crying about it.

They’re just like, all right. You know, let’s just fucking get this over with. Well, and they, they 

Craig: take the, the, I, I appreciate that film. They, it stride. They do, but I, I appreciate that the filmmakers take. A moment to address the reasons why the people are there. Now, before, before that we’re introduced to the staff and there’s not very many of them.

So just really quick. There’s of course, uh, Owen Whistler, it’s Whistler camp. Um, Owen is Kevin bacon. He’s the main guy. Um, his wife is the psychologist, uh, for the camp she’s played by Carrie Preston, who I recognize she’s a character actress. She. R small roles and lots and lots of things. Uh, I recognized her as one of the funny singing twins from my best friend’s wedding, but she’s in lots of things.

Um, and then there’s Molly, who is the camp nurse played by Anna Clumsky, who I love. I mean, you know, breakout role in my girl when she was just a little girl. And then she took a long break from acting to get her education. And then she came back and she’s been incredibly successful, uh, since. Zane, uh, played by Boone.

Plat is the athletic director and he’s this big hulking, you know, kind of creepy guy and his wife, Sarah who’s the activities director. Owen says that Zane is a former camper. And uses him as kind of an example of how this, you know, look, it can work, you know, look at him straight as can be. I have a feeling that Sarah was probably a former camper too, based on things that happened later.

Oh, for sure. In the movie. Yeah. And then there’s uh, BZA the handyman. And duke the dog. He’s cute. Okay. So that’s the staff and, and they collect all their cell phones and computers and medications and stuff, and say how this is gonna be a safe space. And the only rule here is respect. We’re all gonna respect each other, whatever.

Once they get all the, the cabin stuff sorted out, which you’ve already talked about, then they have kind of a circle where they meet. and, and all of our main characters there’s, I don’t know, five or six central campers who we get to know. I kind of feel bad cuz there are other campers too, who just are always hanging out in the background.

and, and I ki I wanted to know more about them, but that’s okay. It’s already kind of a, a big cast. Um, but what I liked about, you know, they take the time to explain why they’re there. Some of them. Have bargained with their parents like Jordan, they made a deal with their parents that if they came to camp for a week, then they would be allowed to emancipate themselves, uh, legally, Toby.

Is a black, young gay man. He made a deal with his parents that if he came to the camp, that they would send him to New York city to go see some big Broadway show. I don’t know but like, so some of them, some of them bargained with their parents for something. Um, but some of them want to be there and. To change.

Yeah. Like Stu is, well, he’s an athlete, he’s a swimmer and he’s, he’s big and masculine. And he talks about how he’s got this whole path laid out for him that he’s an athlete and he’s gonna go to college on an athletic scholarship and he’s supposed to join. Daisy had something to say about it, sorry. And he’s going to join his dad’s fraternity.

And he just doesn’t know how that’s gonna work because he’s so uncomfortable. Like when he is in the locker room, he doesn’t know where to look because he is gay. Uh, and he doesn’t wanna be. Kim is a pretty blonde girl and she is gay, but closeted and she just desperately wants to fit in. Being gay makes that impossible in her mind.

So I just, I, I appreciated the fact that they were there for different reasons and I appreciated the fact that some of them were there because they really hoped it would work. I can only imagine that that’s probably true. You know, there are lots of young gay people. Feel like their lives would be better and easier if they weren’t queer and, and, and that’s sad, but I think that it’s a reality and I appreciated that.

Reflected that here a again, it just, it seems thoughtful. You know, it seems like they were very careful right. In their portrayal of these young queer people to try to be as honest as they could about that experience and to show a variety of experiences because not all gay people are the same and not all queer people.

Are the same or have the same experiences. Sure. Anyway, there there’s the whole group of ’em there. And another thing that I liked is I think that they were also very careful about representation in the performers. The two trans characters are portrayed by trans actors. I don’t know if all of the actors identify as the same way as their character, but it seems like they did take into consider.

Fair representation in casting too. Which again, mm-hmm I respect and appreciate 

Todd: a a hundred percent agreed on all. It’s easy to get all this stuff out because they’re at this camp, there’s like a circle, you know, kind of like with counseling or with, or maybe your first day at camp, your get to know kind of thing or yeah, everybody just goes around and basically is supposed to talk about themselves and why they’re there and what they want to get out of it.

And there’s more, that’s spilled out, you know, in more natural. As characters talk with each other throughout it Uhhuh, but it’s pretty quick that you get the majority of exactly what you said, you know, right there. And, and of course, Kevin Bacon’s character, you can tell is trying very hard to come across as a very nice, very understanding, accepting counselor type person.

But you can also sort of tell this as a trained response, you know, like he has well oiled his approach to this, to ease the kids into a sense of. And then as the movie goes on, we realize that, you know, the, the camp is not gonna be like that. And we kind of have to assume the camp isn’t gonna be like that, cuz it’s a gay conversion therapy camp.

Right. So I mean, it, it has that goal and they’re not known for being right. You know, gracious and, and accepting. And so I feel like there’s a better, smarter, more sophisticated horror movie in here that really just. Can just be more or less realistic about the kinds of things and the psychological manipulation and, uh, little digs and little hurts and little pains that I imagine I’ve never been to one of these camps, but I can only imagine that that has to happen.

Right. And, and there’s some of that in this movie, but it kind of. Pops in outta left field. I think, I don’t feel like it’s eased into as much as it sort of could be because as soon as we get sort of smarmy Kevin bacon being nice and everybody kind of getting to know each other and everything seems like it could be fairly copacetic in a way.

I don’t remember which happens first. I don’t remember if the walk into the woods, uh, in the middle of the night happens first, or if it’s one of the characters is sitting in front of Kevin Bacon’s character’s wife co. And chorus just very direct and just basically very psychologically manipulative to this person.

It’s horrible. 

Craig: It’s absolutely horrible. She’s talking to Jordan trans non-binary. She talks about how like, Didn’t fit in with the rest of your family. Cause they had been, they, when they had ’em out in the woods, the woods was first, they took ’em out in the woods. That’s handcuffed them together in pairs and just left them there overnight.

And I really think they said it was to kind of build trust between them or something. It’s not, it was just to get them away from the camp so they could Snoop through their stuff, which they did. Yeah. That’s exactly what it was. Cora in Jordan’s stuff. Found a picture. Of them when they were young and, and still being treated as a girl.

And, and they’re from a military family. So Cora talks about how she was from a military military family too. And she just couldn’t fit in. I know cuz no matter what you do, you’ll never be good enough or straight enough or man enough or woman enough. It’s like, you’re nothing. to them. You’re not even a freak.

You’re nothing. So what do you do? You try to make yourself special, so they’ll see you. So they’ll notice you. So they’ll love you become a honey. That’s not gonna work. This thing you invented, it’s a fake, they’re never gonna love you. No one is not. Unless you drop this nonsense and admit what you are, a scared, lonely, ugly little.

and she says it all with a smile on her face and then just says, okay, well that’s enough for today and, and sends them off. 

Todd: It’s super creepy. And also, like I thought I was a little disappointed at this point in the movie, you know, because it took this turn so quickly. I, I just sort of felt like the movie was setting up us up for this sort of slow burn of slow sophisticated sort of psychological tortures that you know, were not so bold and bald.

I don’t know, maybe pulling a person away from everybody else and talking to them individually is secretive or whatever. But I, I, I think I was just expecting it to be a little more clever cleverly malicious, and it just turns out no, she’s just gonna, like, I presume pull each one of them in there and call them dykes and things.

Well, right. And just 

Craig: she’s playing to their insecurities on purpose, uh, yeah. To, to try to break them down and. I, I just she’s the 

Todd: bad cop, right? He’s the good cop. She’s the bad cop, I guess. Right. But 

Craig: she does it all with a smile on her face in a very gentle tone. You know, she hides behind. Her medical license, which I don’t even know if I believe that this woman is really a psychologist anyway, you know, that would call into question all kinds of ethical things.

I don’t know if I even buy that, but she does it under the guise of trying to help them, of trying to help them to realize who they are and what they’ve done and why they’ve made this choice. And they, they, she keeps emphasizing that too. That it’s a choice you’ve made this choice to be this person when I think.

Most intelligent, modern people understand that identity is not a choice in, in that way. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s just part of who a person is. And yes, young people sometimes struggle to find their identity, but to, to write it off as a choice and as a bad choice as a mistake is, is so. Uh, it it’s passive aggressive.

It’s hateful it’s mean it’s judgemental and, uh, clueless and, and clueless and, and queer kids face it all the time. They face from the outside. They face from the inside, you know, uh, some of these people, their own parents, their own families, um, feel this way. And. Them feel as though they have made bad choices and, and are a mistake.

And I, the other thing, you know, Jordan is painted of, of all of these kids as being one of the most secure in their identity. Mm-hmm , but this even impacts them. It, it, it hurts them. And I, I’m glad that the movie shows that, you know, even, even the toughest of people of kids can still be hurt when.

Intentionally broken down like that. And one of the next, you know, things that we see is they’re laying in their bed and they’re crying Alexandra, the other trans character, you know, asks. If they’re okay. And, and, and they basically say, no, they’re not. And, and they, they talk a little bit and Alexandra, you know, is, is, is very, very supportive.

She too seems very, very confident in her identity. Yeah. And it gets a little cheesy, she starts quoting a pink song and then they break out and there’s like a musical number. Yeah. As much as much. As much as I like the movie and as much as I kind of get what they were going for, you know, it’s, it’s a comradery thing, you know it and nothing against pink.

I like pink. But the, the lyrics in, especially in this context are a little. Cheesy. , they’re a little cute on the 

Todd: nose, you know, a little too on the nose. 

Craig: I mean, it’s cute. It’s cute to see them all up and singing and dancing together, but a little much could, it 

Todd: could have been war. It could have been. Could have been born this way, you know, I suppose it could words

Craig: but it’s ju it’s it’s, it’s all, it’s almost there. 

Todd: Yeah. So I thought that was, uh, that was disappointing, you know, I thought that was disappointing too, but whatever. Okay. It just 

Craig: me roll my eyes a little bit. Like I get the intense of it and I do appreciate that. And I do, you know, uh, I I’m so glad that young people today do have.

A community when I was in high school that didn’t exist. I’m sure that I went to school with other gay people, but we didn’t talk about it. Mm-hmm it would’ve been dangerous to talk about it. You know, I, I, I very narrowly avoided some physical abuse on more than one occasion. And, and that was when I was still very much in the closet.

And today, you know, I work in a high school and, and there is a community not only of queer kids. Of their allies and, uh, they have a lot more freedom, not, not to say that there’s not still risk involved because there certainly is, but they have a lot more freedom to really be who they are. And they’ve got a support system in place, not only with one another, but with, uh, teachers and faculty and staff.

Um, so, and, and I, and I appreciate that, you know, that’s, I think. These, uh, conversion camps. And I haven’t done a ton of research into these. I know that they exist. I know what they’re about. Um, but I think that in some sense, they backfire a little bit because you bring all these young people together and they’re bound to form bonds with one another and they’re bound to form a community.

And, and when you have a community. Like that there’s strength in that. Yeah. So they, they may be able to break some people and I’m sure that they do, even in the movie, you see that just being amongst other young people, there’s one character, Kim, she’s very pretty and feminine. Um, and she’s one of the ones who’s there because she doesn’t want to be different.

She doesn’t want to be gay, but once she is surrounded by a community of other people, Like her, it empowers her and molds her to embrace who she is. Uh, and that’s cool. 

Todd: and I was also gonna say, as I was watching this movie and thinking about it, it’s also like, like any other summer camp, you know, whatever it is, you get a bunch of, you know, young kids like this together.

They’re also gonna try to hook up . 

Craig: Oh, heck yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

Todd: You know, I, I did, I had several summer camps. Right. I. What for what was sort of not first and foremost of my mind, but at least, you know, second or third down on the list of all of us was you. Who’s the Q one here, you know, who can we, so like in, in that way, it’s sort of backfires too.

And, and they, and this is what happens also at this camp, of course, they’re bonding, they’re getting closed and they they’re starting, they develop a few attachments for each other. And I was a little surprised in the, as how the movie portrayed anyway, at the degree of freedom and lack of supervision.

They seemed to have. Yeah. And I felt like, especially for something like this, some, a gay conversion camp as insidious as this one is, and as much as they’re actually kind of using that to, to catch the kids in a few ways still there was still a, a distinct lack of supervision. I do not think you would find sure.

In, in one of these for real 

Craig: well, it, I mean, to be fair, it’s a really small staff. Yeah. One, three people, four people. Yeah, like five of them in total, including the, the owner. Um, and, and the staff are all pretty horrible except for the nurse, Molly. Who’s new. This is her first year there. And Anna Clumsky is just very charming and endearing.

Period, but you know, there are little things like, um, Alexandra goes to her and says, I know that we had to turn in our medications, but I need my pills. And at first she claims that they’re antidepressants as misguided as they may be about some things. I can’t just ignore protocol. It’s not so loft.

Alright, estradiol. It’s an estrogen hormone.

I made a deal with my parents. I know you come here or they throw you out. It’s. It’s not that at all. When I turned 18, I thought there was nothing they could do to stop me, but I was wrong. I have a younger brother and he was the world to me. And I mean the world to, and they said that if I did not come to this place, that they would never let me see him again.

And, and so Molly. Does give her her medicines and just says, well, this will just be our little secret. At some point, Jordan sneaks out of his cabin in the middle of the night and snoops around in the main office and finds pictures of former campers who have clearly been. Horribly abused physically. 

Todd: Yeah.

You know, I just, I just thought all this came on quite suddenly and really out of left field. I, I wasn’t really sure why he was snooping around and going through drawers or something. There didn’t seem to be any clear motivation for it. And then what, like, this camp is gonna have these like carefully printed photos of, of, of child abuse and stuff, just in a desk somewhere.

Like what, what does he pull it out every now and then, and kind of look at the flip through them wistfully, you know, like, yeah. And then, you know, Molly comes in, uh, it was Molly, right. Who comes in and interrupts him. Right. Or they, they says, did you know this was going. and, uh, Molly says, uh, no, I dunno.

She’s a little coy about it, but she’s sort of like, not really. I mean, it’s, it’s just a lot to happen within like five minutes. Right? It’s, it’s a, it’s a major escalation in a way that I thought was really kind of, um, wedged into the movie almost because I was expecting some different kind of build. I was accepting other little sort of hints that something were, things were not off just because this was a conversion camp, but this was maybe like, you know, a psycho conversion camp, you know, And yet it’s just, it’s like they just decide to go into Snoop around and find these conveniently placed photos.

Well, I, 

Craig: I, I think that they’re just. Naturally very suspicious. They think that there’s something insidious going on. And, and of, of course there is. Um, but Molly also, you know, she kind of acts like she maybe kind of had some idea that something like this might be going on, but like she didn’t know the extent of it, but she.

Warren Jordan. Alexandra said you helped her with her pills. Now you have to help all of us do what protect us from what, from this

I’ll do what I can.

Jordan, be careful. This could get a lot worse and he doesn’t like you. Well, he has no idea who he’s hunting this time. Oh God. And then the next day they separate the boys and the girls, boys and girls mm-hmm 

Todd: right. Which they’re quite, I mean, they’re quite like, like, I guess they’re used to it. So they’re just sort of like roll their eyes at it.

Right. 

Craig: Well, but that’s the thing. Uh, Owen, supposedly, you know, he’s he told Jordan go with the boys and then if you don’t feel comfortable, we can talk about it or whatever, but he forces. Alexandra to participate with the boys. Mm-hmm and she is quite clearly not a boy. Like yeah. she is very clearly a woman and, you know, they won’t allow her to wear.

Um, girls clothes that’s right. And she has, yeah, she has to borrow, uh, clothes from the boys. And I like Jordan wears a dress and protest after that, which I thought was cute and funny but they separate them and they say that today they’re going to focus on traditional gender roles. Yeah. And it’s so gross.

Like it is just absolutely disgusting. It is. Yeah. The, the bull. Stereotypical gender roles like, uh, Sarah, the activities director, like 

Todd: you , it’s, it’s really comical actually. And the way that she says it’s funny. Today, we’re 

Craig: gonna be exploring traditional gender roles by behaving in a certain way, by learning to recognize and accept modes of societal behaviors, perhaps will come to appreciate the emotional value in reinforcing these behaviors, even finding comfort and a sense of community within them.

So ladies. Let’s 

Todd: make a pie and I’m like, but, um, Ching oh, oh God, it 

Craig: gets even worse. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. And 

Todd: what are the men doing? They’re going hunting, right? They’re all gonna have guns. And at first they’re, you know, shooting targets and it turns out that Jordan is actually quite good at shooting Uhhuh and, uh, has like a little mini competition between.

Jordan and, uh, that, that got Zane, right. And then, uh, Kevin Bacon’s character, uh, comes out and says, okay, now, you know, shooting targets is all well and good and gives us long speech about our, how we evolved and how men evolved differently from women and men were traditionally hunters and had to provide for the family and hunt and blah, blah, blah.

But they didn’t shoot targets. You know, they had to hunt flesh to eat and bring back and all that. How, which one of you has the balls to, to hunt flesh. He calls out Toby. There’s been this dog that we were introduced to in the very beginning that one of the characters, it’s a hound dog. And one of the characters kind of makes a comment like, yeah, that dog is clearly sick.

I can tell, by the way it’s walking, it’s very old and it’s sick. And of course this comes to play now where, uh, Kevin bacon says, you see the, the dog over there, he has cancer, put him out of his misery and then. Uh, Zane is over there with a sledgehammer and, uh, 

Craig: yeah, he says, if you don’t shoot him, if you don’t shoot the dog, then Zane’s going to.

Smash his legs with the sledgehammer, and then he’ll be in pain and he’ll be scared, but he won’t be able to run cuz his legs will be broken. Like it’s just sadistic. It’s just, it’s it’s horrible. 

Todd: It gets so sadistic. And, and, and I guess again, this was kind of disappointing to me about the movie is that I felt like there could have been a little bit more psychological.

And to me, the horror honestly, was a little too much on the nose and it veered away again, look, it doesn’t have to be all about the psychological horrors of a gay conversion camp, but I mean, here we are. And you were exploring that territory. What do these kids, I mean, if all these kids get outta here fine and they go home, like.

There are gonna be lawsuits out the wa you know, with the stuff that’s going on at this camp. And I can’t imagine, like, it would be that bold and straight, you know, I just can’t 

Craig: imagine. I can believe it. I know, but the people who send their kids to these camps. They don’t care. They don’t care. Yeah. You know, and, and I don’t think that they would ever, you know, outright say that they would intentionally put their kids in harm’s way, but they know what’s going on.

We’ve all heard the horror stories, not just about these kinds of camps, but even camps where they send, you know, quote. Delinquent, you know, like, yeah, like these scare them straight kind of camps. People know what’s going on there and it ISK up. 

Todd: But it is. But I mean, is it that, I mean, I, I imagine it’s just this sort of intense counseling, like, like the baking, the pie and the things like that, but don’t you think that even the most hard in person, if they learned that their kid was forced to shoot a dog, you 

Craig: know, to make.

I don’t know. Yeah. Because I, you know, I’ve heard about these places and you know, like even, um, not that I’m holding her up to any kind of. You know, level of esteem or anything, but like Paris Hilton was sent to one of these types of places and, you know, they, they do practice like isolation and, um, all kind drew, Barry words, stuff, kinda crazy type stuff thing, right?

Yeah. They try to break them. They, they break them down so they can rebuild them the way that they want. So I imagine these things do happen. I don’t know. I knew what was going to happen in this moment. I knew that Toby wouldn’t be able to shoot the dog. And I knew that Jordan would do it. Mm-hmm to, to prevent somebody else from having to, or to prevent the dog from being tortured.

And, and, and they do. 

Todd: And then Jordan AINS the goin at Owen for a a minute or so. That was an interesting moment. Owen, they have a bit of a stare down there. Uh, I liked that moment actually. I thought that was kind 

Craig: of cool. Another thing that it’s only explored briefly, but, um, these types of camps, I think put.

Children in really dangerous positions because they provide opportunities for predators. Mm, Sarah, the activities director, after all the girls make their pies, she sends them all away except for Kim. And then she blatantly. Hits on her. Oh yeah. A and you know, it’s, it’s very sexual in nature. And I imagine that that kind of abuse, uh, is not uncommon in these types of places as well, because it’s hypocritical.

Todd: And yet the whole time I was also wondering, is this a setup? You know, I don’t think so testing her. No, I don’t think it was, but, uh, at that moment in the movie, I. Skeptical of everything that was going on. I thought everything was manipulation. And I thought, Hmm, is this woman setting her up somehow? You know, like, is she coming onto her so that she can like punish her later for succumbing to it it’s 

Craig: possible, but I it’s, it’s not really, I don’t.

So spoiler, I, I don’t think, uh, we learn later because she like, remember she’s married to Zane who we know was a. Camper. I assume that she was too, because we see them later, they steal the kids’ phones and hack into them. And we see the two of them laying in bed in their underwear, scrolling through these kids’ pictures and looking at their sexy selfies.

And they each pick, uh, like an underwear shot of one of the campers. And then they start to have sex staring like Zane is staring. Uh, an underwear shot of stew, I think. And, and she is staring at a picture of, of Kim. Yeah, it’s gross. And then they get killed. Like we just, as the, the movie makers have forgotten that this.

Is a slasher movie. we, we know this, we know this because there is the first kill. There’s always the first kill in the slasher movie. And there is in this one too, a woman gets killed on the road, outside of the camp by a masked killer. And this masked killer kind of shows up and just in the background every once in a while, but it’s really not until the last third of the movie.

that the killer really shows 

Todd: up. Oh God. Yeah. Like the last 20 minutes. Really? It is so late in the movie that, like you said, you’re forgetting, you’re watching a slasher and that doesn’t happen until after some other ho horrifying things happen. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, one good thing is, you know, Kim is very upset after having been hit on by Sarah.

But it also kind of opens her up to be intimate with, uh, Veronica. They’ve kind of been flirting. They uh they have sex on 

Todd: the dock. Yeah. Right out in the middle of the open . 

Craig: Yeah. Which is a little, I don’t know. I mean, it’s, it’s kind of a hot sex scene, but at the same time, it’s just kind of nice to see Kim finally accept who she is and, and yeah.

And enjoy herself and enjoy herself and release her inhibitions. And then, you know, yes, they do have sex out there on the dock and it’s sexy and all that stuff, but they have a connection, you know, it’s not like it’s a. It’s just a, a fling, you know, they they’re connected, but now at this point they’ve seen enough, Alexandra and Jordan have seen enough and they’re gonna get out of there and they tell Toby that they’re gonna go.

And Toby’s like, they’re they say, we’re gonna steal the bus. We’re gonna get up real Royal early in the morning and steal the bus and go. And Toby’s like, well, what about the others? What about St? Because he and Stu have also kind of been. A little flirty. And so they decide, okay, well, we’ll wake everybody up and tell them what we’re doing and give them the choice.

And if they wanna go, they can go, but they don’t have to, they can do whatever they want. Then we see St who we know is a swimmer swimming in the lake. He’s gorgeous. I mean, he’s just, you know, a fine figure of a man, but he is joined by Gabriel, who we haven’t mentioned. Gabriel is kind of this androgynous, uh, character.

you know, has, has been there, you know, all along, we just haven’t mentioned him and Gabriel kind of seduces stew and they make out in the lake a little bit and then they move to this creepy ass tool shed that we’ve seen before and have sex, and I’m not gonna get into it because there’s. A, we don’t have time for a lesson and B

Todd: I also know what you’re gonna 

Craig: say. B um, it would be a little bit too graphic perhaps for our audience, but it bothers me. The director of this movie is an openly gay man. They never get gay sex right in movies. No, this, 

Todd: this would not be able to happen this movie. No, 

Craig: no, it doesn’t work 

Todd: that way. I was thinking it.

The whole time , from what I understand, 

Craig: it really doesn’t work that way in straight sex either. Um, but especi, well, some maybe sometimes if, again, 

Todd: depends on the person, but let’s not get too 

Craig: graphic about it, but right. You gay sex. It doesn’t just happen like that. Other things need to happen first. right.

Todd: You have to prep. You have to prep a little bit. 

Craig: that’s exactly right. But anyway, believe it at that. Uh, okay, so they have sex, but it’s a trap. Apparently Gabriel has been in on it all the time. He’s a plant. He is a plant and he’s there forbidden fruit and he’s there to tempt the guys. And if the guys give into it, um, then they get the real conversion therapy, which.

Clockwork orange, like torture therapy. Yeah. Where they, they strap stew down in this chair. They hook up these electrical wires to his chest, and then they show him images of hot guys and electrocute him Uhhuh and it’s terrible. And it leaves terrible burns on his chest. And apparently you, they nearly kill him.

So they take him to Molly. The. And she is done. She’s like, I’m done. This is ridiculous. I’m gonna call the cops and Kevin Bacon’s like, do whatever you want. Like I’m on the city council or whatever. He’s like, I’m, you know, totally reputable around here. Nobody’s gonna listen to you, which again, scary in and of itself.

Cuz those types of politics do happen all the time. But then the slasher just starts killing. Not everybody but kills, uh, Zane and kills Sarah while they’re in bed together, uh, has already killed BZA the creepy handyman, because he was watching the girl shower on surveillance cameras. Um, and then. Jordan, I think, or somebody stumbles upon all these bodies.

So everybody knows that there’s a killer out there. Cora goes to get some rifles, she gets killed. This all happens so fast. Like, yeah, like they remembered that they needed to have a slasher movie in the last. 15 minutes and Jordan, um, well they send Alexandra off with all the extra campers, the ones whose names, we don’t know, they send her, they, she says I’m, I’m walking out of here.

Um, and they send the other campers with her and then Jordan goes to get the guns finds Cora’s dead body in the closet. And then is hiding in the closet when the main guy, what’s his name? Owen. uh, comes in and Owen is confronted by the killer. And here’s where it’s the big reveal. The killer is Molly, the nurse.

And at this moment, right before the UN masking, I’m thinking, who can it be? Mm-hmm like, it’s surely somebody we know. But I never for a second thought that it would be her. Yeah, me neither because she’s so nice. Uh, but it turns out she was a former camper. She was terribly abused and she has come back to exact her revenge.

And there’s a showdown where like, Jordan, she’s gonna kill Owen, but then Jordan comes out and he. I don’t remember exactly how it goes down, but Molly tries to convince Jordan to kill Owen, um, and says, you know, we can, we can end this. We can, uh, shut down this camp and then we can just keep going. We can go to all the other camps and make sure that nobody ever does this again.

And it’s supposed to be this cathartic moment where Jordan realizes that they. Have to do this. They can make their own decisions and, you know, be the person that they want to be, which is not a killer. But, uh, Molly is still able to first IAL Owen on a rhino horn, cuz there’s heads of animals mounted all over this cabin.

Um, and then, uh, she slits his throat and then the cops show up and that’s pretty much it. Right? 

Todd: Yeah. That’s it. There’s nothing. Nothing more to be said, really? They have kind of a little, little, everybody kind of has their little moment and, uh, they’re gonna kind of walk off into the sunset and that’s basically 

Craig: walk off into the sunset.

You know, they, they all promise that they’re gonna live their best lives. Like Kim is gonna come out to her parents. And it’s all, maybe it’s a 

Todd: little too sappy. I think it’s a little 

Craig: trite. It is. It is trite 

Todd: and yeah. Trite is the 

Craig: word. Yeah. I, I, I do wanna say that I really. Enjoyed Anna Clumsky performance.

Oh yeah. She seemed like a broken person, not a bad person. Somebody who had been driven, you know, had been driven to this. Yeah. Due to the abuse that she had suffered at this camp. And she talks about that. She talks about how, uh, she had been broken by them. And, and again, I think that that not. People who go to these types of camps or any kind of behavior or a version type camp or whatever.

I, I think that people can be scarred psychologically, um, and have to live with those wounds for the rest of their lives. Uh, again, not that they’re all gonna turn into masked killers, but I do think that it’s a good allegory for the way that these people can be. Broken and, uh, you know, so that, you know, like, like you said, they’re all gonna walk off into the sunset cue pink 

Todd: again, come on, please.

Why? I mean, look at the end of the day, I, you know, it’s not a bad movie as a horror movie. It’s not that great, honestly, but we’ve seen so much worse. I, I was a little disappointed. I thought the movie had more promise than it delivered. It wasn’t very well reviewed. Uh, I, I didn’t get a chance to read why I didn’t, I don’t know if you did, did you get to read why people didn’t care for it too much?

Craig: Well, I mean, for the reasons that we’ve said that, you know, it’s a little uneven, it’s a little unbalanced. Um, some felt that it was a little preachy, which I don’t think, but I can understand how somebody. I, I don’t think it’s an unfair argument. I think maybe the reason that I’m reluctant to call it preachy is because that has a negative connotation.

I, I do think that there’s an intentional message, but I agree with and support the message. So it doesn’t come across as preachy to me, I think it’s an important message. And, and I think that this is a good movie for queer kids, you know, to yeah. To see. You know, maybe somebody like them represented in film in an honest and, and fair way.

And to not just be a gag or a victim or a killer, you know, like the, the other, when I think, uh, transgender horror movie, I think of sleepaway camp and. You know, I, I like that movie. I think it’s a great cult classic movie, but it equates being transgender with being mentally unbalanced and, and that’s yeah, that’s often how being queer is portrayed in these types of movie or it’s portrayed as the joke.

You know, there’s the funny gay sidekick, which again, I’m not personally offended by, but I can understand how that would be tiresome for some people. 

Todd: What was the slasher movie that we watched at Halloween? It was the other very overtly queer film. What was it? Uh, Helland Helland. Yes. When I think of Helland, actually I think hell Ben was better than this movie.

Honestly, it 

Craig: was a more direct, scary movie. And again, I think that it was fair in its representation. I mean, this, these were, it was fair 

Todd: and, and also casual, more casual in its representation right now. 

Craig: The main characters, the main characters just happen to be gay, you know, like 

Todd: that. Exactly. And so like everything kind of like, you know, their characterizations were quite natural and natural surroundings and context.

But of course, you know, if that movie had happened at a conversion camp, it probably would’ve been slightly different. Yeah. Because the context is different. So the characters are gonna be talking about it more and they’re forced to confront it themselves. And you know that that’s gotta co play out on screen.

So, I mean, I’ll give it that kind of allowance, but I, I still felt like perhaps the movie was just a little too and you’re right. Preachy. Isn’t the right word. Just maybe some, sometimes it was just a little too on the nose. It felt like maybe it was trying a little too hard at times. Fair enough, but you know, uh, there aren’t enough movies out there trying to do any of this stuff.

So, and it was, it was sensitive and it was fair and it was honest in its representation. I felt, I thought so. So yeah, it had had all that going for it. Despite the fact that I, I was like, oh, come on pink, just back off just a little bit. in service to reality. , you know? Yeah. Not that I require a lot of reality out of my horror movies, 

Craig: you know?

Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree. You know, I liked the movie overall, um, but it was a little bit li it was a little bit light on. The horror conventions. Yeah. And the horror conventions were very typical. I mean, it’s just a, a masked killer at, at a, at a summer camp, you know, 

Todd: and, and electrical torture in the creepy ass cabin.

yeah. You know, even the, even the creepy ass cabin, I, I kind of rolled my eyes at, I was like, real, like, they’ve got this one cabin. On the property that just stands there and looks like, you know, the whole family from Texas chainsaw massacre could be residing inside of it. I, I would’ve expected their torture chamber to be a little more hidden than that, but, you know, right.

Whatever, not unlocked so that you could just stumble into it. And for. Find chains and hooks and things hanging around, which is exactly, um, what that cabin is like, you know, yeah. I would thought if they, I thought they were trying to make a joke at first when they stumbled into that cabin. But no, I mean, it was a serious thing.

Craig: I think that the movie will be polarizing for horror fans. I think that there will be those of us who appreciate what they were trying to do, even if it wasn’t a bullseye. But then I think that there will be others who feel that it wasn’t horror enough that it was too focused on messaging and, and some of the horror elements were.

I thought it was good. I thought the performances were good. Um, I really, really liked the young cast. Um, they were endearing it, their, their performances. Respectful and real and honest. And I liked that. Uh, is it great? No, but I think it was good and I’m glad to have seen it and I might even watch it again at some point.

Who knows. 

Todd: Well, thank you again for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share with the friend. Please let us know of any other. Films you would like us to do in the future. You can just leave us a message on our webpage. Two guys, red 40 n.com or, uh, shoot us a tweet on Twitter or our Facebook page.

Just search for two guys in a chainsaw podcast, and you’ll find any of those there. Also, if you’re a fan of the podcast, please consider supporting us on Patreon. You can just go to patreon.com/chainsaw podcast until next time I am 

Craig: Todd and I’m Craig 

Todd: with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

TWO films in a ROW featuring a mutant kitten? It’s either a crazy coincidence, or it’s Stuart Gordon’s horror cult-classic, Re-Animator.

A modern take on the Frankenstein story with the darkest of comedy, this campy classic of the horror canon stands up remarkably well today.

Re-Animator (1985)

Episode 309, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, it was my week to pick the movie and, uh, just sort of out of the blue, I chose 1985’s Re-Animator, a pretty famous horror movie directed by Stewart Gordon. The reason I picked it was just because it’s, I think one of the more notorious, I suppose, horror movies, it’s a franchise.

There are at least three. I think there’s three mm-hmm and, uh, we just hadn’t done it. And this was one that had always been on the shelves in the horror section. In fact, my understanding is, although it, it did okay in the theater and it was actually surprisingly well reviewed at the time by the critics.

It, it wasn’t like a smashing success, but it apparently found huge success on home video release. Some of that may be due to the fact that what they released in the theater was an R rated version. And what come came out in home video was a little closer to. The movie that they wanted. Um, I think had almost an extra 15 minutes in it, which was the, the one that pretty much everybody ended up seeing , which, which has all the gore effects and all the, the shocking scenes and things intact.

So. I, uh, remember seeing this as a kid and, uh, being pretty impressed with it. So I just thought, yeah, let’s, let’s watch free animator. I really had not seen it since I was a kid. I hadn’t seen any of the other movies in the franchise. Uh, it was a fun movie. It was a bit notorious. Uh, but it wasn’t something I was terribly interested in continuing to, you know, see, Ooh, what happens in part two?

What happens in part three? So I kind of stopped there. How about you, Craig? Uh, what’s your history with Re-Animator? 

Craig: I remember seeing it on the shelves all the time and I don’t remember specifically why I never. Picked it up. I don’t know the box art is I, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but it’s a little silly looking.

It, it it’s, uh, yeah, it’s kind of schlocky looking. And so I think that probably as a kid, I assumed that it was intentionally schlocky and, and maybe that’s why I wasn’t really drawn to it. So I didn’t see it until I was in college graduate school, actually. We’ve been doing this for so long now that when you recommended that we do this, I was 100% sure that we had already done it.

I was positive that we had already done it and I’m, I’m Googling us. And Re-Animator and I’m like, I know it’s there. It’s gotta be there. We have surely done this movie, but we had, it’s crazy. Right?

Todd: it’s so true. I’m honestly not sure why either. Like, uh, again, it’s just one of those movies. I think every horror fan knows of it. Uhhuh, even if you haven’t seen it. I think it’s just one of those that gets brought up every now and then and talked about, but not like on the same level as most other horror franchises, it.

The lower rent one. Yeah. 

Craig: But at the same time, I also think that it’s very much considered like a camp classic. And I think that it deserves that recognition and there’s a lot of really good stuff going on here. There really is like the cinematography is good. The effects are, are cool. Um, it’s an interesting dark.

But also darkly comedic story. It pushes some boundaries. Um, almost to the point of making me a little bit uncomfortable in some places which mm-hmm , which is, is good. Uh, I think, but, but I, I also don’t think that it crosses the line into being entirely distasteful. It’s weird because. Can’t be and silly and, and you could almost call it so bad.

It’s good. Except for that, it’s really not bad. It’s just, uh, no, it’s just different and odd, but also fun. And, and definitely like, I feel like if you are a horror fan, you’re obligated to see it. And, and I don’t think, I, I don’t think that you’re gonna be disappointed. It may not be your cup of tea, but I think that if you appreciate the genre, you’re gonna appreciate the movie and.

They were doing here. And there’s a lot of interesting stuff to talk about, you know, like, yes, gosh, the, so it it’s directed by Stewart Gordon who we’ve done a couple of his movies. We’ve done dolls, which was a favorite of mine. When I was a kid, we did castle freak, which neither of us loved, but it was fun to talk about.

We haven’t done castle for, we haven’t yet. Craig, which 1:00 AM I thinking of? Haven’t which 1:00 AM I thinking of, of with the, the guy in the. Palace in the basements 

Todd: oh, oh no. You’re thinking of that’s that Canadian one. He didn’t have anything to do. Ghost something, I don’t remember.

Craig: don’t, I don’t know what it was.

I always think of that as castle free. Okay. So we haven’t done Castle Freak yet, but I’m familiar with the, the title. See, I told you, I can’t remember. Six years, 300 plus episodes. I have no idea. I completely 

Todd: understand 

Craig: but, okay. So we’re familiar with Stewart Gordon. It’s also, um, produced by Brian Yuzna. Yeah.

Who by the way directed both sequels, but, uh, Brian Yuzna did Society, which remains one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen. Mm-hmm he also did one of the Silent Night, Deadly Nights. I think part three. 

Todd: or four. Four, The Initiation also 

Craig: very bizarre, very bizarre. So it comes already from, you know, kind of this pedigree of these kind of weird out there, movies done by these guys who do these weird out there things.

And so even that, you know, is. Tempting enough for me to be 

Todd: interested, you know, it’s true, right. There are these little camps of people, right? You have like the, the sort of a Wes Craven in Sean Cunninghams and, you know, sort of their circle of people who were doing The Hills Have Eyes and the slasher movies and Friday the 13th.

And then you kind of have this camp of like Sam Raimi and like, His group, you know, we’ve talked about this, how you see that, like, even though like directors of some movies will end up acting in other people’s movies or they’ll produce each other’s movies and stuff like that. And then over here you have empire pictures and, uh, full moon pictures.

It’s. And, uh, Brian Yuzna and, uh, Stuart Gordon, and, um, the guy who did, uh, I think like Return of the Living Dead and, and the, that seemed to be like another camp, you know, this, these, these all kind of like very successful production houses or production teams are just, like we’ve said, like people who just kind of seemed to know each other and encourage each other and work on each other’s projects.

And this definitely comes from that side. And. I’m getting a greater appreciation for this camp. yeah. Yeah. As we do this podcast, because some of them, I used to laugh because a lot of the full moon pictures or empire pictures, uh, that are produced they’re, they’re pretty, I don’t wanna say bad that’s well, some of 

Craig: them are, some of them are bad.

Todd: They’re bad. Um, but a lot of them are, are, they’re almost all low budget. They’re almost all the acting can, can vary as far as quality goes, but you, the concepts, they’re just a couple steps beyond pure exploitation that get you beyond exploitation and sort of into, wow. This is kind of interesting and unique and original realm.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like we did, like dolls is an interesting movie. Uh, even that silent night, deadly night initiation was an interesting movie. Yeah. Society was a really weird movie, but my goodness, you know, How fun. Oh gosh. Yeah. It was 

Craig: super original and interesting 

Todd: Uhhuh puppet master series and all that.

So it’s like, there is this camp here that I’m kind of like, and I, I saw a lot of what I liked a, about these kinds of movies in re animator. And I think re animator is definitely up at the top of the pack. Yeah. As far as. Production value as far as acting sincerity, even special effects, particularly for the time are quite impressive.

I’ve read that the producer, uh, I can’t remember the owner of, uh, full moon pictures. It’s Charles band. Isn’t it? Charles band. Yes, that’s right. He didn’t even like this movie when he produced it. Although apparently his production house was only going to distribute the movie. And then after they started seeing dailies, they decided to get a little more involved in the production of it and help them out a little bit more in that.

um, Richard band, his brother composed the music. He’s composed the music for a ton of these films. I think we’re gonna have a lot of fun talking about it. I really enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. And it wasn’t, as you know, the movie calls itself, a horror comedy in a lot of places. It’s not, if you say, Hey, we’re gonna sit down and watch this horror comedy.

You’re gonna have an expectation that this movie is not. Meat. It is not a laugh out loud, a lot of silly stuff happening. It’s darkly comic. Yeah. It’s not a so bad. It’s funny movie. It’s very clearly intentionally darkly comic. And I think that it, it just reaches a certain level of sophistication there where there’s that layer there for you.

If you enjoy that kind of thing and you’re looking for it, you definitely get it. And so there are scenes where on their face as we describe them, you’re gonna think, oh my God, this is terrible. There’s a layer to those scenes that plays out that I was laughing yeah. In the movie. Yeah. A movie that can kind of touch all these little places and hit all these buttons for you simultaneously, uh, is impressive.

Ultimately, I, I really enjoyed watching this again. 

Craig: Yeah. It was an interesting watch. I think that a lot of the comedy comes from the intensity of Jeffrey Combs performance. Uh, Herbert west, who is kind of, I don’t know if he’s the main character, but he’s, he’s a central character for sure. And, and we can talk more about him in a second, but the inspiration for the movie, Stewart Gordon was just talking with some friends, um, about his frustration, that there were so many vampire movies, particularly Dracula movies and Dracula knockoffs.

He thought that it would be interesting to, you know, break out of that and see something different, like, uh, more Frankenstein inspired movies. And one of his friends said, well, have you read this story? Herbert west ReAnimator by HP Lovecraft and, uh, Gordon. Was familiar with Lovecraft’s work, but not that particular story, which had been out of print for a long time.

So he went to the library and he read it and he was inspired by it. And that’s where the idea for this movie came from. But he initially conceived it as a stage play a completely straight. You know, no humor involved, uh, stage play. And then that evolved into a television pilot, a 30 minute television pilot.

And then I think he wrote like something like 13 or 19 episodes of this television show. 

Todd: Yeah. With a, with a couple co-writers. Yeah. And it was also told like, you know, half hour is not saleable, like, like make it an hour. So 13 hours. This, I guess, you know, presumably for season one. Right? Right. If not, it is the kind of thing that I suppose could, especially nowadays would make.

An interesting television series. It could, 

Craig: it could, I think, but, but I, I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but eventually, you know, it continued to evolve and it became a feature film. 

Todd: Well, there’s more of a market for horror on television now than there used to be 

Craig: that that’s right. Yeah. And so this is, uh, what it became and, um, the story they had in initially intended to try to remain really faithful to Lovecraft’s story, which by the way, I haven’t read, I, I have read some of Lovecraft’s stuff, but I’ve not read this, so I can’t speak to, you know, how faithful it is, but they eventually deviated, uh, from the story a little bit from my understanding is that this, uh, movie kind of.

Adapts the first half of Lovecraft story. And then the second movie bride of ReAnimator kind of adapts the second half of the story, or at least elements of it. And then the third movie is called beyond ReAnimator because it goes beyond the story that Lovecraft told in his original. I’ve not seen any of the eat well, any either of the sequels I’ve, I’ve read about them and they sound kind of interesting, but, um, I haven’t seen them yet, but here we are with this movie, it opens, uh, at Zurich university and there’s this big commotion.

There’s like screaming behind a door and security guards in a nurse are frantically knocking at the door. And calling the name, um, of this doctor, you know, the Dr. Gruber, Hans Gruber. And when they finally burst in, they see young medical student, Herbert west played by Jeffrey Combs grappling with. this Dr.

Gruber, who is like freaking out and he’s got like his face, like his eyeballs and the veins in his face are like pulsating and his eyes like burst and blood sprays all over the nurse. The nurse says you killed him. And he very seriously and very sweaty says, no, I did not. I gave him life.

This, this was Jeffrey Combs, one of his first major roles. He took it. He said because he needed the work and he never expected that it would have a wide audience. Anyway, ironically, this is. Absolutely 100% the defining role of his career. Yeah, he has played it again in both of the sequels and most of his other work has been in horror, playing characters much like this one, he plays it very serious, very over the top and he just has this lunatic intensity.

In every scene. 

Todd: yeah, but you know what? This it’s actually. I mean, when you say over the top yes. I mean, he he’s playing it very sincerely and he’s very playing it very hardcore, but it’s not a. Like a parody, you know what I mean? It’s not a silly, crazy campy. I, I think mad scientist in this case, med student, you know, who’s dead serious about his work and believes that he’s gonna be reanimating the dead and, you know, nobody understands my genius kind of thing, the way that he played it.

And I was quite impressed by it. I think I, I, in my life have known at. Three or four people, very antisocial like him. I mean, they’re not reanimating the dead, but they’re people who are just a little off, a little narcissistic, maybe somewhere on a particular spectrum, but, you know, I don’t really know how to describe this, but there are just people who, who don’t get feelings.

Who don’t really care about others. Yeah. Like they’re just lacking a little bit of this, this humanity, and usually they’re obsessed with something, right. They’re obsessed with a collection or they’re obsessed with a particular hobby or they’re obsessed with their work. And even though he’s a Dick yeah, he is.

He comes across from the get go in this movie as like within five seconds of meeting him. He’s the kind of guy, you know, he’s a Dick at the same. I’ve known people like this. you know what I 

Craig: mean? Yeah. I don’t know that I’ve, I don’t know that I’ve known people like this, but he does. I mean, like you said, he just plays it in such a sincere way.

You, you, you could say he’s a Dick and I would, I would say he’s a Dick, but you could also argue that he’s just completely straightforward. Like he doesn. He tells it like it is, you know, or at least the way that he sees it. So if, if he has a criticism of something or someone, he will just say it directly to their face, um, he’ll 

Todd: say it.

And if you, and if you don’t like it, you know, doesn’t really care or he just doesn’t get why not everybody else sees the world the way he does. He doesn’t get, Hey, he just told you something straight. Like you should agree with him. And if you don’t, well, you know, that’s your problem. And there were times in the movie.

He could have veered into this sort of caricature and he didn’t. And I was really impressed with that restraint, as silly as the whole concept of the movie is. And as silly as the movie does get, you know, it made his character more believable to me. I could relate to him, even though ultimately he’s not a likable character for, for the most part.

Yeah. I 

Craig: don’t think I could relate to him, but I do really like Jeffrey Combs performance. In fact, I believe that this movie rests on his shoulders. I, I don’t think, I don’t think that this movie would be as well remembered if it weren’t for his performance. Um, I could be wrong. Um, maybe another actor could have done.

Differently or similarly, and, you know, with similar results, I don’t know, but Jeffrey Combs is, um, unique. He has a unique style, um, at least as he works in this film and I like, you know, he pops up in things, particularly in horror movies and I’m always happy to see him 

Todd: seller dweller. Right. He was the cartoonist, he had a very brief cameo role 

Craig: in the beginning.

Yes, yes. Yeah. I liked him in that. I just, I just watch. Uh, uh, the house on haunted hill from the, the early OS I think, oh yeah, it’s not a good movie, but he’s in it. and he plays, he plays a, a crazy doctor in that. I forgot that. So after that opening scene, um, then we get the opening credits, which the, the visuals of the opening credits, I really liked.

It’s all, um, like illustrations out of medical textbooks. Mm done in like fluorescent colors and changing colors and, and the, the illustrations kind of swirl around. It’s a, it’s, it’s a great visual. I really enjoyed it. I also really liked the score, but the film is, is somewhat heavily criticized for borrowing heavily from the score of psycho.

Yeah. Yeah, you can, it it’s, you know, blatant on its face. they’ve outright accused him of plagiarizing. The score is very fitting for the movie. In addition to kind of sounding like psycho. It also reminded me a lot of this score of troll, which I love. And also, I don’t know if you’re familiar with this movie or not, but the movie death becomes her with Goldie Han and Merril 

Todd: street.

Oh, I love that one. 

Craig: Me too, very similar score, very, very similar and, and shockingly, a very similar movie about a serum that Reen animat the dead. So maybe that was intentional on the makers of that movie’s 

Todd: part, but that’s a very interesting point. When that score first came on, I was like, wait a second.

This is the freaking score to psycho. How did they pull that off? Did they get permission to use it? Whatever. Um, and you’re right. It is to say it’s borrowed is a very, uh, generous Uhhuh, you know, or inspired by it. It’s a blatant ripoff. And I think Richard bands even admitted. He said, yeah, I took the score from psycho because I thought it was fitting because the character is a bit Norman Baty, but then I, you know, added my own touch and flare to it.

I. What composer does that? That is you’ve got giant balls. oh, I’m just gonna take the score from psycho and add my own flare to it and put it the opening credits and a motif throughout the whole film, 

Craig: but it works O honestly, I very much enjoyed the score. I liked it throughout and, and I thought that it really set a good tone and atmosphere.

Throughout I, and it, and it varies mm-hmm depending on what type of action is happening, but I really liked it. We jump into the main story, which takes place at scat to medical school in Aham Massachusetts it’s Arkham , um, is a common set. Piece for HP Lovecraft stuff. And this is where we meet our main characters.

We’ve got a young, good looking doctor, resident. I believe Dan Kane played by Bruce Abbott and we see him. It ends up kind of being significant. I guess the first time we meet him, he’s frantically performing CPR on this heavy woman and he’s unable to revive her, the supervising. Doctor tells him, you know, sometimes you just have to let people go or whatever, which it it’s a bookend.

It comes back at the end of the movie. Yeah. Um, interesting piece of trivia, Bruce Abbott, who plays the doctor said that he was really, really intense in, in this CPR scene. And he believes that he actually broke like three ribs of the. Who he was, oh, God. Working on here. Also this woman, this heavy set woman who he’s working on, who, you know, her shirt is ripped open.

So her boobs are just flopping around. Apparently I don’t even know what this means, but apparently she was a dildo enthusiast, like,

and so she like hid dildos all around the set. That’s hilarious. Oh my gosh. Um, and I wish that I. Friend who was a dildo enthusiast, just so I could like tell people that like, oh, this is my friend, she’s a dildo enthusiast. 

Todd: we should have consulted a dildo enthusiast to give us a little more insight into this.

Uh, you know, maybe go frame by frame through the movie and point some things out to us. I, I have to say at this. One thing I really respected about this movie was the casual nudity Uhhuh. There’s a lot of nudity in this movie a lot, but it’s, it’s not normal. Like it’s not like normal for horror movies, nudity.

It’s like normal for life nudity. For the most part, this guy’s got her chest open. They got doctors standing around and she’s not like this absolutely gorgeous, perfect body person. Yeah. This isn’t supposed to be a titillating exploitative scene with the nudity. Everywhere else through the movie, when we get reanimated corpses and things like that, it’s like, yeah, they don’t even, they don’t even put like fake underwear or whatever.

No, these bodies are gonna be nude. And so when they leap up and start running around, they’re nude and I was like, you know, I really appreciate this. It serves the story. It’s very honest, true to 

Craig: life. Yeah. I agree with you, especially with the corpses and stuff, because, you know, Corps. Dressed, you know, they, they are, are naked.

I, I thought that it was a little strange for whatever reason, especially since initially they released this unrated, um, that they clearly went out of their way with angles to never show penis like true women. Full frontal. Great, no problem. Men. It was always shot in such a way that the legs were, you know, just at such an angle that no penis and which, whatever that’s fine.

I don’t care. I’ve seen enough Dick in my life that I don’t need to see it in a movie, but, but it was just interesting to me that. They kind of went out of their way to hide that. But yeah, other than that, there is a lot the, the other main characters, um, there’s the Dean of the university Dean Halsey who introduces Dr.

Dan to their new student resident, who is, uh, Herbert west Jeffrey Combs, um, who we’ve already met. And then. One of the professors at the medical school is Dr. Carl Hill played by an actor, a tall gaunt actor named David Gail. Um, I think that this part was originally written for Christopher Lee. I think one of the FA one of the famous, you know, horror icons, he turned it down and he’s a brain doctor, Herbert west immediately insults him to his face.

I know your work, Dr. Hill quite. your theory on the location of the wheel. And the brain is interesting though, derivative of Dr. Gruber’s research in the early seventies. So derivative, in fact that in Europe it’s considered plagiarized and your support of the 12 minute limit on the life of the brain stem after death, six to 12 minutes, Mr.

Uh, west Herbert west, frankly, Dr. Uh, hill. Your work on brain death is outdated. That’s just the kind of guy he is. Yeah. Um, and then there’s also, uh, Dan’s girlfriend, Megan played by a very young, beautiful, fresh faced. Barbara Crampton. Yeah. Uh, who is an icon? An absolute icon of the horror world. And she’s young and gorgeous here.

Um, she’s of a certain age and gorgeous now and still, uh, working all of the time. She’s a huge star in the world of horror and it’s really, she’s. She’s good. She’s fun in this movie. She’s pretty, she’s not afraid to. TIS out she’s fully nude towards the end of the movie. Yeah. She’s, she’s stripped completely nude and she’s, she’s talked about it.

Uh, she’s talked about doing nudity in her films and she just said, you know, if it serves the story, if it serves the film, I’ll do it. I don’t care. The quote that I read was. Sh from an interview that she did sometime post 2000. Um, and she said, I would still do it now. She’s like, you know, I don’t know when I’m, you know, a withered old grandmother maybe I’ll feel differently, but maybe not.

you know, like newly just doesn’t bother her. And she, again, she’s a beautiful woman. Um, I also think that she’s a representation of a healthy body, you know, like she’s not real thin. She looks like a healthy young woman. Mm-hmm and I just, I have a lot of admiration for her just because of all of the work that she’s done and, and how she’s represented herself and, and maintained such a.

Impressive 

Todd: career. She has even today, right? Mm-hmm and, and this is one of her very first film roles. I think she was on days of our lives, just up until the year before this movie came out and she had a couple film roles, uh, one movie body, double one movie called fraternity vacation, and then this one, and then I think the very next year we saw her in one of my all-time favorite movies, chopping malls.

Mm-hmm mm-hmm and she hasn’t really. The horror genre since except she’s dipped back and forth into soap operas, uh, a little bit every now and then like in the nineties, I think she was back in a couple of those. It’s 

Craig: not surprising at all. You know, I feel like the horror world in the daytime soap world, they, they cross paths all the time.

but she not only is she Dan’s girlfriend, but she’s also Dean Halsey. Daughter Dan and, and Megan, we find out that they’re a couple and then immediately there’s a, a quick sex scene between the two of them. Then, uh, Herbert west responds to not an advertisement, but like a bulletin board post that Dan had made looking for a roommate.

So west moves in with Dan, he’s all excited about the house because it’s got a basement that he can like set up a lab in . I don’t know, you know, a lot of things happen. I don’t know how much of it’s consequential, like one of the scenes, one of the scenes that I thought was really funny as I don’t really don’t understand was that we see Dan and west in Dr.

Hill’s class and hill is like demonstrating how to open ahead for brain surgery. And west is just sitting there in the class. Strangely snapping pencils in half, like, yeah. like with a real intensity in his face. I’m like, what are you 

Todd: doing? It’s so weird. I wondered for a while, if it was a very, like an outdated reference to something, you know what I mean?

Like is this. The way that people used to tease their professors or interrupt them in the middle of a speech by loudly snapping a pencil or something, but it, it irritates the hell out of him. And I think probably the, the most consequential thing that we have going on here is this dynamic as being set up where Dan Kane and Megan.

Are dating and she’s the Dean’s daughter and that’s problematic because, you know, he possibly could be accused, I suppose, of, of getting Korean favor with the Dean, which maybe would be a big deal. And it would ruin his career. If it’s found out that they’re sleeping together, the Dean would be angry. If, if, I mean, he knows that they’re sleep.

He knows that they’re dating. I guess he does. He would doesn’t know they’re sleeping together. 

Craig: Okay. That was, that was so. So hilarious to me, like it was so funny. He like, Dan is a med student and you know, it’s not like they’re 16, you know, these are people in their twenties. Yeah. And yeah, the dad, the Dean knows they’re dating, but it would be like a huge, huge deal.

If he found out they were also ING, like yes. Come 

Todd: on. What? Come on. Of course they are. , you’re a doctor, you know how these things work of a university, especially. 

Craig: Well, and then there’s also a, a weird dynamic at one point Dr. Hill. Who’s just kind of creepy. Anyway, he has dinner with, um, the Dean and Megan, and he’s super creepy towards Megan.

It’s disgusting 

Todd: up to this. My sympathies were with Dr. Hill. I thought Dr. Hill seemed fairly normal, dude. He’s a professor. He is very distinguished. He’s well respected. He’s got this, like, uh, they mentioned something about his amazing new laser surgery tool. That’s gonna revolutionize brain science or whatever, and he’s getting grants for the university and he’s really chummy with the Dean.

and then west comes in. He’s super douchy to him and yeah, you sympathize with hill, not with west up to this point. And then they have this lovely little, ah, I call it like, like little eighties, fancy dinner for rich people, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I love these scenes in movies from this era where it’s, it’s like in their home, they’re sitting down and they have a white table cloth and linen napkins and all the fine China is out.

And they’re drinking wine from crystal goblets and pouring Brandy from, 

Craig: I mean, and they’re dressed. For the occasion, 

Todd: like they’re dressed in suits, you know? And, uh, and they’re, and they’re like lit candles on the table. Right. You know, like, did anybody ever really do this? I don’t know, but that’s how it’s portrayed in movies all the time.

And this is a real pivotal scene and it’s also a very baffling scene. I was shocked that U didn’t direct this because this is, these are the kinds of scenes. Sometimes we get in the movies 

Craig: that he’s involved with, it felt very society. Sure. 

Todd: Yeah. It just, things suddenly take a turn for the surreal, both in the cinematography and, and I liked that it really puts you off.

Uh, you know, it’s, it’s just a very weird psychological effect. They’re all sitting and chatting hill is actually kind of putting the screws a little bit to the Dean saying you. I heard, you know, I know that your daughter is dating this guy. Do you really think that’s appropriate? And they, he kind of mentions west, you know, Wes just moved in with this guy.

And I think the two of them are working on something that’s kind of bad news. And then the daughter comes in, I think, oh, she’s sitting there, but, uh, Kane Dan comes in to pick, to pick her up. And they all shake hands and things. And, uh, hill was like, oh no, you should stay, you know, have a couple drinks with us.

And they’re like, no, we really need to get going. And then he practically commands them. No, stay like, have a drink. And they all kinda look around and there’s some awkwardness and he’s like, okay, we’ll have a drink. And then he starts grilling Dan on west. You know, I hear the west is staying at your house and blah, blah, blah, blah.

they leave. And as soon as they leave hill starts asking Dean Halsey, he’s like, so, you know, I don’t think it’s appropriate that your daughter be, you know, dating this guy. Do you realize what it would do for your reputation and for his reputation you need to get rid. And while he’s saying these things, the camera now suddenly we’ve almost like from Dean’s perspective.

So hill is now suddenly like the backdrop disappears. It’s almost like he’s in a black. With this spooky kind of, backlighting staring straight into the camera and very dead pan. Eventually you realize it’s like, he’s hypnotizing him. He’s got this sort of hypnotic aspect to him where he’s delivering his lines very slow and very deliberate.

And then it goes back to Dean Halsey and. He’s entranced. It just gets, gets right to him. And then the fire, like it starts to focus on the fire and then suddenly we see the light, the fire on them. It gets very surreal and almost dreamlike and weird right here. 

Craig: Yeah. It, it was, it was initially a subplot that ended up getting dropped that he does have the ability to like Jedi mind trick people, like, but it 

Todd: wasn’t totally dropped.

I mean, well, there are 

Craig: several times through the. You see him do it once with, um, west, you know, it, it could in the scene with west later, it could just be kind of seen as intimidation, but it, that that’s out of character for west west is not yeah. Easily intimidated. Yes. Um, so if, if you know that it was initially intended as, um, A subplot that he could mind control people.

It makes a lot more sense. Otherwise you’re like why all of a sudden, why now is west, who has been defiant? Why all of a sudden is he submissive? And it also explains other things too. Like the fact that, uh, in the end, there’s, there’s a whole gang. Reanimated corpses and west can apparently puppeteer all of them at the same time.

Yeah. Um, well, I, 

Todd: I felt it was sort of still in there. I, I, because cuz then, you know, the, the later scene with west where he’s talking to him in Wests is also seemingly entrance. It’s shot very much the same way. And that was the point. And when I was, I realized, oh, this isn’t just weirdness. He has some kind of special mental power.

I didn’t think it was supernatural. I thought, oh, well this is a brain surgeon. He’s clearly studied how to, you know, maybe somehow hypnotize people or whatever and do it. And I dunno, it was an interesting and unique element that kind of came outta nowhere. And, uh, I, I liked it, but just like society and just like some of the things I like about some of these other films is it’s way outta left field.

And it, the movie becomes very surreal during these moments and it kind of puts you on edge a little bit. And I really like 

Craig: that bit. Well, it is, I, I mean, it definitely is still there. It’s just that it’s never commented on or explained, so, yeah, that’s right. You just kind of have to. Figure it out for yourself, I guess.

But 

Todd: also what happens during the scene is suddenly you realize things are more complicated than you thought, right? Because up to this point, I don’t know how you felt. I felt if hill as a sympathetic character and after this scene, I was like, God, he’s a douche bag too. Well, I 

Craig: thought he was a douche bag anyway, but it, it wasn’t so much, you know, the, the mind control thing that.

Freaked me out. It was the creepy gross, disgusting toast that he does to Megan. Well, then one last toast. Hmm. 

Todd: To Megan, my esteemed colleagues capable. 

Craig: Beautiful. Loving daughter, the obsession 

Todd: of all will fall under her spell, like 

Craig: Ew, gross. and he says that right in front of her dad and her boyfriend, like, Ugh.

Yeah. And Ugh, gross. And he clearly is obsessed with her, which comes in, uh, to play later. But, um, basically Dan finds out about West’s work with reanimating corpses because west. He kills Dan’s cat. He, he claims that he found it dead, but that seems highly improbable. Uh, Megan finds the cat in like West’s dorm fridge in his room, which is also a funny scene because west is incensed that anybody would have the audacity to come into his room, even though.

He’s got his roommate’s cat in the cat cat and his refrigerator. And then there’s a great scene where it’s the middle of the night. And Dan hears a terrible noise from this cell, and it sounds like a possessed cat or a cat screaming or something. And he goes down to this cellar to find west being attacked by this cat.

I can’t believe is this two weeks in a row that we’ve. A genetically enhanced evil cat. Like you go six years, six years with no genetically enhanced evil cats and then two in a row. . 

Todd: Oh, and, and I did, I think, uh, for uninvited, I did say this is the very first horror movie that we’ve done with a genetically enhanced mutant caps.

no, I, I didn’t realize there was another one right around the corner. 

right 

Craig: around the corner. And so he’s re. This cat and they fight it. And it’s hilarious cuz they’re obviously fighting a 

Todd: toy. It’s so funny. Well, it’s just to it’s well shot too, actually, you know, it’s not well when he comes down the stairs, like he kind of knocks a light.

It’s like, you know, it’s like your typical dark basement. That’s lit by one swinging light. And so the light starts swinging around. And so I think part of what actually makes this seem work and feel more intense due to their low budget is just the fact that that light. Coming in and out at regular intervals, it’s almost St.

Strobing, right? Yeah. So that also sorts helps to hide the fact that they’re running around the basement. Absolutely destroying it with bats and things just to get to this cat. And then when the cat finally does leap back out at, uh, Dan, he catches the cat. And throws it against the wall. yeah. And smacks the wall and falls down.

And I mean, I just thought it was hilarious. I’m sorry. it is hilarious. I’m laughing so 

Craig: hard. It’s gross. Um, this is, it’s a bloody movie. It’s a violent movie. This they, Dan kills the cat and then west is like, I can reanimate. Things. And he tells him the whole thing and Dan’s like, I don’t believe you. He is like, okay, well watch this.

So he injects the cat again with this serum. He’s got this serum that is quite literally glow stick liquid. So it it’s this, you know, Lucent glowing. Yeah, it looks great. Um, he injects it into the cat. The cat is mangled beyond repair, but it comes back to life anyway. So it’s just this man. Puppet bloody cat, like riving around on the table and it’s disgusting.

It looks fake, but it it’s gross. Megan comes in and sees it. Don’t expect it to tango. It has a broken back

noise. Birth is always painful.

Todd: This is where, you know, the dark comedy of this comes in the fight with the cat is funny. Although it shouldn’t be right. It’s like, oh, cruelty to animals, whatever he reanimate this dead mangled cat, which must be absolutely horrible for the cat. But it still looks kind of funny. And when, and of course, Megan comes in, she’s already distraught about her cat being dead.

And she comes in right at the moment where she can see her mostly mangled, cat. Yeah. Like meowing and stuff. Mm-hmm I’m sorry. I laughed at that too. I thought it was, 

Craig: it was funny’s it funny? And, and west wants Dan to like, be his assistant and he he’s like, you know, we’ll, we’ll be fam we can. Death, you know, you’ll be famous and live lifetimes because he’s convinced that, you know, uh, eventually as of right now, he’s just been experimenting on animals and they come back and they’re violent, but he thinks if he can, um, reanimate a human corpse, not long after it.

Dies that, uh, it will ha it will retain its consciousness and memories and those things, and he thinks they can be famous. But Dan, I guess isn’t ready to do that. So instead he rats on west to Halsey, which totally backfires because Halsey resends Dan. Scholarship money and he kicks west out of school. So I guess at this point, Dan feels like he has no other choice, but to try to work with west, because what else are they gonna do?

Yeah. They’re both kicked outta school or whatever. So they sneak into the morgue and that’s when things get really 

Todd: fun west kind of convinces him, right. That like, look, this is our, your only option. Like we know we can do this and we can turn Halsey around if we can just prove to. You know that we can do it.

So we’ve gotta go. And I guess he thinks that if they just carry this little tape recorder around, you know, like scientists do in movies, where they record their notes in real time into tape recorder, that if they do that, while they’re trying to reanimate a corpse in the morgue and are successful, then that’s the proof they need to show to the Dean.

This is when all hell breaks loose though, 

Craig: because, uh, it’s fun though. Like they go, they go to the Morgan. They’re like looking at different bodies and looking at cause of death and seeing which one would be the most viable. Uh, and they end up finding this guy who had only died a couple of hours before and he seemed otherwise healthy.

This guy is actually. Arnold Schwartz Neer’s long time body double no way. Yeah. Yeah. Body doubled for Schwartz. Naer in multiple movies and he looks like him. I mean, he’s huge. Yeah. That would not be the person that I would choose to reanimate. And obviously it’s a big mistake because he comes to this guy comes back to life and he’s violent and he’s like throwing them all around Halsey.

And Megan are there looking for Dan, um, and Halsey comes in and the huge naked reanimated corpse. Kills him. And then, uh, west takes down the corpse like uses like a bone SAR or something cuts all the way through his chest. And, and so the corpse is dead again, but now Halsey’s also dead. But since he only died moments before west injects him with the serum, thinking that he’ll, you know, come back fully aware and all that stuff.

And he does come back. And he seems maybe a little bit more aware than the other guy had, but he’s still crazy and, and whacked out and violent Howard in the corner and yeah, mm-hmm and Megan comes in and sees him and, and they say that, you know, west west explains, he came in and he was acting all crazy.

And now he’s, you know, I don’t know, he explains it away somehow. I, I, I’m not sure exactly. You know, Megan’s distraught obviously, but Dr. Hill the brain doctor can, you know, assures her. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll, I’ll take good care of your dad. And, um, if you need anything, if you’re lonely, like again, totally creeping on her.

Disgusting. 

Todd: He’s trying his hypnotic act on it basically. And, uh, and it almost works except, uh, well, I love that Dr. Hill has an office that also has a padded room right next to it. Yeah. with a window in there. How convenient. Yeah. A one way mirror. I, I read also in the trivia that that pad room was so poorly constructed that, uh, the actor playing her dad couldn’t really bounce around the walls cuz he tried it once and it knocked a wall down Uhhuh

But yeah, he bangs his kind of forehead on the glass. And so, you know, Dr. Hill’s like, I’m gonna take control of the situation. I’m gonna take care of your dad. You just trust me. And if there’s anything you need, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In the meantime, uh, he decides he is going to investigate Halsy. Uh, and so he pulls Halsy into his lab, I guess, autopsy room.

I mean, he’s not dead. And, uh, he’s done all these scans and things on him. He said he has, uh, uh, Megan sign, a release form so that he can do exploratory surgery on him under the guise of fixing his brain. But what he instead does is once he realizes this guy should be dead, but he’s. um, he decides he needs to make the patient docile so that he for further study.

And so he uses his little laser tool to basically lobotomize him through the forehead. 

Craig: Yeah. But he also immediately goes to West’s basement lab and is like, I know what you’re doing. You have to tell me your secrets and he Jedi mind tricks west. So west gives him his notes and he’s looking through the notes.

He’s like, oh my God, this is genius. I’m gonna be famous. And while he is got his back turn west hits him with a shovel. And then decapitates him with the shovel mm-hmm and then, and then immediately thinks, you know what, I’ve never tried this serum just on different parts before . So he injects it into the head.

Andy injects it into the torso, both of which reanimate separately and for whatever reason, West does kind of retain some of his consciousness. Cuz he can talk. He talks weird. Like he talks slow and low, but he can talk. You mean hill hill? You mean? Yeah, that’s what I mean. Sorry hill. Yeah. He talks low and slow, but he can talk and he can also like remotely control his torso.

And so then the rest of it is hilarious because he hill is like walking around, carrying his own head, like. Bowling bag and wearing like a, like a CPR dummy head on his shoulders. oh, it’s really, really funny. And goes back. He goes back to the lab where then he like hypnotizes the Dean. Halsy like through the mirror.

That was a weird scene. Mm-hmm but it was cool. And then he sends Halsy to abduct Megan, which he does yeah, his own daughter. Halsy abducts his own daughter Blas her on the autopsy table right next to Hills. Head, which is like leering lasciviously at her, um, Halsy strips his own daughter completely nude.

Mm-hmm ties her down to this table so that hill can molest her. And it’s, it’s weird. I, I assume that this is the part that you were talking about, where it’s so absurd and so like uncomfortable, but at the same time, hilarious. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s one of them. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, this is a severed head that is raping this girl, as she’s tied down by her own father.

I mean, he’s obviously like, not in control of himself, right. He couldn’t have done that otherwise, but still it’s, it’s very disturbing. And then he has his body pick up his head and it’s just like, she wa actually this what’s really funny is when she wakes up and she looks left and she. Starts, she looks down, sees that she’s naked.

She starts screaming. She looks left. She sees this blooded head of the doctor, just like, eh, right next to her screaming looks up and sees this weird looking man standing over her kicks the guy which knocks the fat off dummy head off of them. Screams some more. I mean, it’s. It’s so hilarious, even though you shouldn’t be laughing at this girl in her actual situation.

Craig: Oh, right. Because it is gross. Like he, he’s definitely molest. Like he, he Fonds her breasts through the body and then through the body and then the body picks up the head and he. Kisses her and licks her face and then like sucks at her breast, which I mean this in the context of the movie, it’s gross, but I’m also just kind of thinking of like, these actors really had to do this, and this is really.

Intimate in a gross way. And then the, the, the body moves the head down between her legs. His tongue is out Uhhuh. It’s really pretty darn graphic. But I feel like at this point west and Dan bust in right before, like, like seemingly right before the body was gonna thrust. The head, right. You know, between her legs into her lady area.

Todd: Oh yeah. It was very, it was right in the neck of 

Craig: time. And I guess like, apparently this actor, uh, was really troubled, uh, uh, Performing this scene. Yeah. Um, very, very uncomfortable performing the scene. Um, and I guess his wife was, uh, troubled by it too, because when she saw it, she jumped up and left the screening and then divorced him.

Like like, surely there’s more to it, but, uh, seemingly this was like the straw that broke the camel’s back and she literally divorced him cuz she was so disgusted. Uh, but Dan and west show up and, and, you know, are, was saving the day or whatever. And west is confronting hill again, insulting him and says something.

It’s the greatest light in the movie. You’ll never get credit for my discovery. Who’s going to believe a talking head, get a job in a side show.

and he just says it with such since sincerity it’s it’s. Uh, it’s laugh out loud, funny. Um, but west is like, I have a plan and he’s like, so do I. And then all of the other corpses in the morgue, spring to reanimated life and begin to attack. Dan and west, and then there’s a whole big fight scene that goes on for a long time with all these naked people.

Mm-hmm um, 

Todd: right. And then it gets into like bizarro territory where I think, uh, at one point west says something, I guess this was his plan. He said something like, I, I never tried overdose. And he jams two of these needles into the back of one of the core. I think it was, um, it’s Hill’s body, his body falls down and.

It just decides to reanimate all of the organs in his body. yeah, because his chest bursts open and these intestines start flying out, wrapping themselves around, uh, west. That’s how west dies. 

Craig: Well it’s left. I mean, cuz he comes back for the sequels, but yeah, we don’t know if he’s dead, but that’s the last we see of him.

Right. He a as um, you know, Megan and Dan are fighting off corpses too, but they kind of get free and are running out. Meanwhile like chemical smoke is filling the room. Um, and west screams at Dan my notes take my notes and he throws and he throws his notes and Dan. Takes them. Um, but that’s the last we see of him.

Yeah. He’s presumably dead, but we don’t actually see him die, which in horror movies, you know, means he’s, he’s probably coming back at some point, but he doesn’t come back in this movie. They run away, but they’re pursued by a couple more corpses. One of which gets a hold of Megan and starts throttling her and Dan.

Get the corpse off. So he runs down the hall and breaks the glass and, and gets the fire acts and comes back and, and chops up the corpse and gets it off of Megan. But it’s, it’s too late. Um, she’s, she’s dead. He, he races her to. the emergency room and puts her, you know, on a, a gurney and tries to give her CPR again, here we are right back where we 

Todd: started, same people and everything, doctors 

Craig: surrounding her mm-hmm and he’s trying to resuscitate her.

They try to, you know, shock her. Um, but she’s dead and, uh, all the other doctors walk away and he. Has, uh, West’s bag and he pulls out the serum, um, and he says, I love you and injects her. And then it cuts to black and we just hear her scream. So apparently she has been reanimated, but that’s the end. And then of course the sequel is, uh, bride of ReAnimator and they wanted Barbara Crampton to.

Come back, uh, and play the bride, but it was a small role. And her agent, uh, basically told her that it was beneath her, uh, to take such a, a small role. So she didn’t come back. So they cast somebody else, a different woman. Um, and in the story, they. Set out to build a perfect woman using different parts of different women and they use Megan’s heart.

Um, so she’s still there, but it doesn’t look like her. Ah, and then in the third one, um, which came out in the two thousands, sometime west is in prison. And I think like a prison doctor convinces him to. Continue his experiments or something. And then there were other planned sequels. Like there was a planned sequel where either west or Dan, I don’t remember.

One of them was gonna be called to the white house to reanimate. The dead president or vice president of the United States, that was gonna be house of REM. And then there was another one too that was gonna have west lose his memory and have to start his experiments all over again. And, but those never, um, came to fruition.

But this one, again, I can’t really give any kind of, um, critique on the sequels cuz I haven’t seen them. And I’m, I don’t know that I’m necessarily gonna race. To see them maybe someday. Yeah. If, if I come upon them, but, uh, I’m pretty much satisfied with this one on its own. And it’s not my favorite movie. I don’t feel compelled to watch it over and over again.

But. I do have a lot of appreciation for it. There’s really a lot of good stuff going on. The effects are good. It’s really bloody. It’s a super bloody movie practical effects that don’t always look real, but it looks like they took a lot of care with, uh, the acting is good. Uh, I really like Jeffrey Combs performance.

Um, it’s, it’s unique. Um, it’s a little. Over the top, in my opinion, but in a good way, I, I think that it serves the story well, love Barbara Crampton. So there’s a lot of things to li it’s, it’s a, it’s an original take, even though it’s inspired clearly inspired by the story of Frankenstein. It’s, it’s a original take.

It’s a unique movie. It’s different than other things that were going on at the time. And there’s really not been anything that I’ve seen. That has been a lot. Like, it, it, it, it kind of stands. On its own. Um, so I would definitely recommend it to, uh, any horror enthusiast who hasn’t seen it and I’d be willing to bet that any real fan of horror would like me at least appreciate a lot of things about it.

If not out some, I think a lot of people would just outright love it. Oh 

Todd: yeah. I, I mean, I echo everything that you said. I thought it was a really interesting take on the Frankenstein story. It kind of hits very similar beats. It goes a little above and beyond modernizes. And, uh, also adds a lot of blood and gore and fun effects.

You know, sometimes it looks cheap and, and silly, but it’s the eighties . Yeah. You know, and it’s a lower, lower budget movie. Uh, it’s got a little bit of camp in it, but I was surprised actually at the lack of camp, like overt camp. I expected it to come across more campy than it really does. And I think, again, part of that is due to the filmmakers involved.

Like we’ve talked about before with like again, in this, in this wheelhouse, like troll society, those kinds of things. They, they do get some of these movies are quite campy, but also there’s just another layer there. There’s just this real surreal, very original quality to ’em that we end up really enjoying and even big budget, horror movies or Hollywood movies in general.

Can’t always do that. So. I, I can see why the movie is memorable, not just because of that shocking scene with Barbara Crampton. Um, but I am actually happy to hear that, that scene wasn’t traumatic for her. yeah, me too. You know, and everybody seemed to walk away with good feelings about, about the movie and about their participation in it.

So, um, yeah, it’s, it’s ended up with a life on its own on home video. Um, and, uh, it’s well regarded right now, even Roger Ebert. Can you believe. Gave this movie, like three out of four stars when he originally reviewed it. And he even said something like, you know, I, I can’t even explain why I just walked out of the movie theater feeling like totally satisfied and uplifted when I was in a room full of people, you know, wildly yelling at the screen.

yeah, I get that. Yeah, I totally 

Craig: get that. So it’s also, uh, right now, as of you. This recording it’s it’s, uh, easily accessible. It’s streaming in lots of places. It’s streaming for free on tuby it’s on shutter and I think several other places as well. So if you haven’t seen it, you should be able to find it pretty easily.

Todd: Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this one, please share it with the friend. You can find us online, Google two guys in the chainsaw podcast. Find our Facebook page, our Twitter feed our Patreon, uh, page. If you’d like to become a patron of the show and, uh, have access to some, uh, extra things.

So we have some minisodes out there. Uh, we’ve talked about, uh, a lot of random things about the horror video games, about the little more in depth about the, a slasher movie month that we did last month. All these things you can find. If you become a patron. Of our podcast. We really thank all of our patrons as well as our regular listeners for all of your support.

Thank you so much and spread the love. Until next time, I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Looking for a “so bad it’s good” movie? This obscure 80’s flick – which is streaming on Tubi at this moment – is an absolute gem. Enjoy!

Uninvited (1988)

Episode 308, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, uh, this week you picked the movie for us. Yep. After our month of, uh, fun doing 1981 slashers, you went a little deeper into the era and, uh, picked a non slasher from 1987 or 1988. I’m not sure. It’s kind of listed two different ways online.

Mm-hmm IMDB says 1987. So we’re gonna go with that. And it is the killer mutant cat movie, Uninvited. Everyone’s favorite killer mutant cat movie. This is, uh, this is another first for the podcast. Right? When, when was the last killer mutant cat movie? We did. I don’t think have, so my God, mark this date. It’s great. Uh, and. Said to you before we started recording, I just cannot wait to talk about this movie because I’m just gonna wanna throw this right out there.

I, I enjoyed every single minute of this film. 

Craig: um, yeah, I kind love this movie. I, 

Todd: this might be my new favorite. It’s bad. It’s good movie. This, I might even enjoy this movie more than Blood Rage, or The Mutilator. I kind of feel like this is the top of my top five. Now how in the world, I I’d never heard of this before.

Where, where did you find it? Because you also, when you sent me the message saying, this is what we’re watching this week, by the way, don’t read anything about it. If you can help it just go in completely blind. And I’m so glad I did. Um, although I’m not sure would’ve made a huge difference anyway, but it was just nice to be surprised by the kind of movie I was in for.

where did you, where did you hear about it? How you seen it 

Craig: before? No, no, I’d never even heard of it before. Big surprise. After the month of slashers, which don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed, I really did. We even talked about it on at least one of ’em. They just like, they were fine as far as slashers went, but they weren’t bad enough to be so bad.

They’re good. Yeah. And so I just, I really, I wanted to do something fun and so I, I just did a, a Google search of. So bad. It’s good horror movies and Mo most of them, like I came across to, I don’t know, a bunch of lists more than I even looked at it, but I looked at three or four different lists, and most of them we’ve already done like terror vision and the deadly spawn and, and those, all of those were really fun movies to talk about.

Uh, and this was one of the few movies on one of those lists. It was only on one that not only had we not seen or talked about, but that I had never even heard of. Yeah. And it just sounded. Too good to be true. And it was everything I hoped it would be 

Todd: yes.

I have to, I have to say two things. Number one. Isn’t it great that you can Google things like this and Amelia get responses. Uhhuh I also, um, while I was watching this movie, one of the actresses in it who plays Suzanne Sherry Shaddock Uhhuh I could have sworn, oh God, I, I sh I probably recognize her from something.

I looked her up on IMDB and I didn’t really find much of anything that she’s been in outside of this, which surprised me. So then I Googled. People who look like Sherry Shaddock, thinking that, oh, she has kind of a Christina Applegate look, maybe that’s where I’m kind of, you know, getting it from or whatever like that.

And that works. And then number two, I’m a little disappointed to hear that off of this list of so bad. It’s good horror movies. We might have already exhausted the best of them. Yeah. Oh, according to the internet that that’s not, that’s not gonna bode well for the future of our podcast. I know, 

Craig: I, I sure will still be able to find more, but, um, gosh, I just, I can’t believe that I had never heard of this movie before and then it was just like, it it’s, it’s just got everything that you want.

Like it’s completely a 100% eighties aesthetic. Mm-hmm 

Todd: oh, in all the right 

Craig: ways. It, it, it’s a direct to video film, which you can kind of tell for a variety of reasons, the score, I really enjoyed the score. 

Todd: Like oh, yes. I enjoyed how over the top bad the score was yeah. And it was 

Craig: just persistent, like all the time.

Sometimes it kind of sounded like the shining, like they’re doing that thing with like, you know, just like three notes repeated over and over again, but it’s yeah. It, it, it seems completely synthetic, but it plays all the time. It’s so 

Todd: enthusiastic. yeah. You’re 

Craig: right. Beautiful people who are terrible actors.

Um, the corniest dialogue. You can imagine. And just the premise, like, honestly, I, I told Alan I’m like, I think you might wanna watch this movie with me this week because , it’s about an evil mutant. Cat that lives in the throat of a regular cat comes out and kills people when it gets mad and it’s poisonous

Todd: and, and by the way, when it’s done killing others and somehow shape shifting, like getting bigger and smaller in ways that I’m not sure, uh, crawls carefully back into the cat’s mouth 

Craig: oh God. And the, the effects are terrible and 

Todd: oh man, deliciously 

Craig: terrible. The cat, like I said, I told him I’m like, anytime the cat is on screen.

And, and sometimes even not like, just to suggest that the cat is around, you just are constantly hearing me, me me. and it’s. And it’s the same two meows. Just on a loop. Yes. And my favorite part about the movie is that the cat, like not the mutant cat that comes out of the cat , but the actual cat itself is adorable.

And like, it’s like, you’re supposed to be like minused by it and people are supposed to be minused by it, but it’s just this beautiful orange house cat. Yeah. That is in, that is in no way menacing at all. No, it’s a beautiful cat. That’s like, not in any way, scary or aggressive or anything. Like they just shoot the cat and then they shoot people like being scared of.

Oh, my God. It’s hilarious. 

Todd: And, and the cat becomes even cuter when the mutant cat’s crawling out of its mouth, because it’s like a, a stop it’s like a cat you might get from like a toy store. 

Craig: It’s like a, yeah. It’s like a puppet. Like, just like, it kind looks like the Xenomorph like, when it pops out somebody’s chest, it looks like that.

Of course. Except except it’s coming out of the mouth of a stuffed, like, like you said, like a cat that you would buy at Walmart and like cut its mouth open and then just push like this other puppet through it. Oh. And I don’t, it, it all, it reminded me like a, like a pop or so, you know, like it just like, it just kind of like the, like the inside of the puppet, just kind of inverts and comes out and it’s an alien cat.

You never see it. Like it’s always in super, super close up. and then when the mutant, it, it’s hard to even explain because at sometimes it seems like the mutant cat like comes all the way out of the regular cat, but really it’s almost more like the regular cat just kind of turns inside out. do you think 

Todd: so?

I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not sure about that. You’re right. That it’s not clear because when it starts out and the movie starts out in like a research laboratory with two guys talking. Oh, we need to cut this thing open and see what’s growing inside of it. Right. 

Craig: Well, and yeah. And you know that you’re in for a treat when the very first thing you see is amazing movies present.

Yes. Like, like that’s the production company, amazing movies. It’s like, oh man, we’re in for something amazing.

put on, 

Todd: tell you folks, you got something to see. And so they pull, you know, they’re, they’ve got a bunch of animals, like research animals in there and they pull this adorable looking cat out you’re right. And, and they put it on the table and they pull out an scary looking needle and the cat escapes and runs down the hallway code red, it’s escaped.

They get on the phone and have this awkward phone conversation. It’s like put on the radiation suits and things. We’re at we’re at radiation level five or whatever. And then I guess they also put on radiation suits because they hint at their own presence in the next scene, which is. A bunch of guys in radiation suits and carrying a cat carrier 

Craig: radiation suits that look like something that you would buy at spirit Halloween.

Oh yeah. They’re like these CRA these ridiculous hazmat suits like made out of aluminum foil. Oh boy. Down 

Todd: the staircase. They corner the. And then the cat jumps on is, did we get the cat jumping out at this point? The, no, the, the, yeah, 

Craig: the evil cat comes out. That’s what I keep calling. Like the evil cat comes out of its mouth.

The whole thing. It, it, it reminded me, it looks like a reject from the set of goos or, or troll or something. Yeah. Um, it is just very, very clearly a puppet that either somebody has its hand up the ass or they’re just throwing it at people. Mm-hmm, , there’s nothing real looking about it. It doesn’t look real.

It doesn’t move in a realistic fashion. It is cheap. It is a cheap toy puppet cat. And it’s hilarious. 

Todd: It almost looks like a joke. You know, like the filmmakers are in on the joke, cuz they almost, at times later in the movie seem to revel. In the fact that this puppet looks so bad, like there are closeups on this thing or wide shots on this thing that should not linger as long as they do.

You can practically see the arm of the guy operating it right. But yet they do like, not just like that, but the it’s like the cat pops out, like shakes around and dances a little bit, you know, next to the furniture or something. Like if you’re playing with your three year old or something, you might like pop a little puppet out and kind of shake it around and then pull it back.

Craig: I read, yeah. I, I read a review that said that the cat, like when it attacks, looks like a carpet remnant, like in bad shape and it, it, it does, it just kind looks like a, like your, your childhood stuffed animal that you’ve had for 30 years and have slept with for every night, you know, like it’s just, yeah.

Ratty and nasty and, oh my God. And so funny and, and the little evil cat on the inside is. So funny, looking like laugh out loud. Funny the second you see it. Yeah. Cause it doesn’t really move. It just, it just . I swear. I, I imagine that somebody has the little evil part on a stick and like they just push it out, like yeah.

And, and move it around a little bit 

Todd: at first. I wasn’t sure it, it, I, I thought it was almost like an alien ripoff where this little inner mouth or inner cat kind of comes outta the cat’s mouth, but it also has arms Uhhuh like that claw at the face of this guy. And then it kind, I guess, sucks back in and escapes some more.

And the guys on the stairway are like, oh crap. You know, it got away. And then we get another shot back to those guys who are back in their normal clothes. And I thought, oh, okay. Well, the dudes in the hazmat suit were different people. Right that they sent after the cat. But then the guy, I think it’s the director.

I think one of the two is the director. He says the building’s secure now, Paul, no matter what happens, we cat let that cat out of here. Dr. Gray. You saw what just happened at that stairwell? Just shut up about that. Yeah. Oh God. 

Craig: That’s lot. The dialogue is so funny and the acting is hilarious, so bad. 

Todd: It’s terrible.

But it also begs the question. All right. Why was the cat suddenly radioactive? Like they weren’t wearing hazmat suits in the office when they were gonna inject the cat. But as soon as it left the office, suddenly it’s a 

Craig: radioactive threat and they never explain what’s going on. Like why is there a little evil cat inside this other cat?

No, that for sure, like the, the, the, the scientists are like baffled. That’s what they’re trying to figure out. They’re like trying to figure out what is inside this cat. So like, I guess. It’s the suggestion is that they don’t know, like they didn’t put it in there. They didn’t like, how did that little monitoring it?

No. And, and when the cat comes out and kills all the people in the stairwell, like you don’t actually see anything, you just see blood splatter all over. Yeah. The walls. And then the next time you see the cat, you see a shadow. Silhouette of it. And you see the, like all, no Nosferatu, like, and you see the evil cat coming out of its throat and it kills the, the scientist played by the writer and director Gradon Clark, and then it escapes and, and just runs down the 

Todd: street.

Oh. And then it just appears everywhere. Something, the cat is concept, wherever is in boxes that, you know, we never saw it get into. And, but again, it’s 

Craig: just a cat, like yeah, this is a, it’s not scary. So like any, it’s not even as scary as like, you know, cat scares that we see in every horror movie. It’s just like, people will open up a trash Canor, they’ll come around a corner and there’s a beautiful cat, like, hello, like right.

Todd: And the cat’s really not doing anything unless somebody pisses it off. Right. Uhhuh. Right. Like, so most of the time the cat’s just running around and eating food and. You know, it, it, it finds a, a bowl of food I guess, and, uh, and eats from the bowl. And then there’s this random guy who, uh, you know, is like patting ads.

Oh, I’ll get you more. And a dude, Rob, uh, mugs him and robs into his car, his truck and takes off. And so the cat decides he’s gonna get revenge on the on the one, the guy who just fed him, hops in the back of this, you know, pickup going to a random place. You know, it’s just, it’s just so random, right? The, he hops in the back of this pickup.

These guys are driving down the road, ha ha ha ha drinking their beer. And then suddenly the cat puppet, the evil cat puppet breaks through the window. You can see the dude’s arm as the public breaks through the window and just grabs at this guy’s face. And then we see a different model car in slow motion, rolling down.

Uh, hell, you know, it missed the bridge and it, I thought, oh, it’s gonna explode at the bottom. It didn’t do that. I, that part disappointed. 

Craig: No, just drill down. I, and I, I think they just, I think they stole that footage from another movie. It must be right. It’s still a red pickup truck, but it’s a completely different model.

And, and you’re right. Like, oh, just, just this random person who we never know who he is. Just this random mechanic is nice to the cat, but then gets beat up. So the cat, you know, exacts revenge for the nice random stranger who gave him food. Mm-hmm oh, it’s so funny. And, and then we meet our main characters.

I suggest Suzanne and Bobby are these, I 

Todd: love this scene 

Craig: so much to be fair, hot eighties valley girls in bikinis and skimpy like T. Coverups creatively 

Todd: constructed cut up. T-shirts I, I spent a good portion of the scene, just trying to figure out the physics of how these t-shirts were cut and slashed so that they still stayed on them, but were very revealing in all these spots.

It, it took me a while to figure out it was almost like, um, like an Esher painting kind of deal with 

Craig: them. Yeah. They, 

Todd: they fun to figured it. You know, I, I had to rewind and pause a few times, you know, go for slow motion. I get what you’re getting at for science, for science. 

Craig: And these are, you know, these are your pretty, pretty standard, beautiful buck, sum, eighties girls.

And, and to reiterate, they are very beautiful and they spend most of the movie in very small bikinis. So if you’re into that, There’s you know, one check mark on the list, Suzanne and Bobby. And it seems like they are just trying to like, they’re on spring break, but they don’t have any money. So they’re just trying to like, hang out at hotels and use the pools and the, yeah, I don’t know.

Um, but they go in, they go into this hotel and security immediately tries to throw them out, but they’re, they’re saved by this rich guy named Walter Graham hotel personnel get a little sensitive during spring break week. Yeah. Girls don’t have a 

Todd: room, do 

Craig: you? No. Yes, no. It’s okay. I understand. I’ve been there.

I might be able to help you with a place to stay. I was just about to go and have some dinner. Why don’t you join me? And we can talk about it. I don’t think that would really well. It’s just something to eat, Suzanne. Yeah, it’s a good restaurant. Just something to eat. Suzanne knows strings attached. Well, I just don’t think we’re dressed for dinner.

It’ll be alright. Trust me. 

Todd: They do. He’s like super creepy, like the middle aged old man. 

Craig: And he’s kind of like Bernie from weekend at Bernie’s like super, just slimy and, you know, obviously uses his money to, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s funny. It’s so it’s so eighties, you know? Yeah. And, and that’s, he is he’s he’s the corrupt, I don’t know if he’s a corrupt businessman or if he’s got like mob ties, nothing is ever clear.

You just know that he’s, you know, a shady guy and his business associate his very serious business. Associate approaches him and like chastises him for like scamming on these girls or whatever. And the business associate’s name is Mike Harvey played by George Kennedy. Yes. George Kennedy. Is a good actor, but I have a feeling that this man would do anything for a check.

Like because he’s in a lot of stuff, he’s in a lot of stuff. Um, we’ve done several movies that he’s been in. I don’t remember if we’ve done the original creep show, but he was in that he’s in, uh, two creep show two that’s right. Creep 

Todd: show two. Yeah. That’s the one he’s in and 

Craig: we did that. Yep. And he was in the naked gun movies.

He’s been in a fantastic bazillion things and he’s good. He’s a good actor. 

Todd: He’s the best actor in this whole movie. 

Craig: Oh, for sure. Oh yes. Oh my gosh. And by a mile, uh, he, the, the movie was shot on a $200,000 budget and the like 75,000 do I don’t remember a huge, huge percentage of that went to paying him and the guy that plays Walter Graham, who I don’t know.

Him from anything, he was all 

Todd: over TV in the eighties, like very much a TV actor, like at, at a time in film and TV history, where there wasn’t much crossover between the two. So if somebody was gonna appear in a, in a made for, you know, video, uh, movie, it was most likely gonna be filled with soap stars and, you know, TV actors and things like that.

He was Mike Briggs in Airwolf. I don’t know if you ever saw that, but, uh, no, no, well not, he didn’t do much outside of television in this time. 

Craig: Yeah. They’re like a trio of these older, you know, bad guys. And the third one is clue, go lagger or go lagger and he did a lot of TV too, but I didn’t, I didn’t know him from much of anything either, but he was in return of the living dead.

Yeah. He was in the last picture show. So he’s in some Disney movies. Yeah. Yeah. He’s been in a bunch of stuff. The bulk of their budget went to paying these three guys, which is funny because they’re. Aside from Walter, the other two really? Aren’t in it all that much. No, but Mike, the business associate is like, we have to be serious.

We have to, you know, get this money offshore or something. I don’t know. Yeah. Again, it’s all 

Todd: very vague stuff about money and shit. 

Craig: Right. You never, you really never know what’s going on with the cat. And it’s just suggested that these guys are in some way involved in criminal activity and they’ve got a bunch of money and they’ve gotta get out out of the country.

Yeah. And so Walter invites the girls. To meet them on the yacht later for a party, they invite this guy named Darrell onto the yacht, this younger guy, and Walter shows him these three, like briefcases suitcases. Each of them have a million dollars cash in it, but then they like, they kill Darrell for some reason, reason.

Well, , 

Todd: this is the best scene. It, the scene makes no sense. It is so all over the place and weird it’s like you said, they’re talking with him, like he’s a business associate and he’s gonna help them out. Cuz I guess he’s an accountant. They’re saying highly written, vague stuff about money and laundering and offshore stuff and ha ha ha ha.

And sort of patting him on the back. Then they hand him these three briefcase full of like a million dollars each, which is like, they’re paying him off. But then. Like you said it suddenly turns and they say, but you wouldn’t cheat us, would you? And he’s like, oh no, I, I, I never would tell anybody about it.

And then they start looking at him funny, like, oh yeah, really? So I guess then it was all over Rouse, like an elaborate RO, like they really suspect him. And the whole time, like this dialogue is so insane, there are lines like they’re just sitting there and Graham says, I love to look at a fire. Don’t you

And he’s like, yeah, it sure looks nice. and then, then, you know, it’s nighttime now. Right. And so they go outside and, and they’re outside suddenly and they’ve got, ’em kind of up against. Pole, I guess, on the edge of the deck. And there’s a, mm-hmm, a pool. And he’s like, Hey, you know, um, fire up the hot tub or whatever, whatever.

And so the three of them are there with him. It’s called blackmail. You’ve heard the term. Of course, 

Craig: Mike, you’re getting ahead of my story. Anyway, you see the point is that I learned about blackmail a long time ago. What I learned was never put yourself in a position where some idiot can blackmail you, where someone has power over you

Yeah, 

Todd: that dialogue’s terrible. They pull a gun on him, but instead of shooting him, 

Craig: he’s standing right on the edge of the boat. They could’ve just shot him. And he would’ve fallen right in the ocean. Shot him, kicked him into the 

Todd: water. Yeah. Yeah, no. Albert grabs him, drowns him and we get a very long elaborate drowning sequence where he is holding him under water.

There’s even a camera shot up at him and stuff. and then when they’re done, I thought something was happen. Albert is very distressed. Yeah. It’s like, like out of breath, he looks weird. Shaking, shaking, he’s shaking, or like, what’s wrong, Albert? He’s like, I don’t know. I’m just, I feel weird. I’m out of breath.

And I thought, where is the cat around? Is this another one of those? The poisonous cat things like what’s going on? This is significant. No, it’s not significant at all. Just later Albert is fine. And when I looked in like the, uh, I don’t know, it was the trivia or something like that. They said that it was this actor’s idea that after he finished drowning this guy, he should be 

Craig: out of breath.

Right. And then. Never referenced again. The movie just feels like it’s slapped together. Yeah. Like there, there are major continuity things. Like there’s, there’s one point where the two girls meet up with three guys at the marina for the first time, right? Yeah. They don’t, they don’t know these guys at all.

Um, it’s Corey who’s played by Rob Estes who is still doing lots and lots of TV. All of these people worked a lot in the eighties, mostly in TV, some movies mm-hmm but some of them are still working. I mean, these people have lengthy. They’re not. Actors and most of the things they do that, you know, they, they pop up, you know, in one or two episodes of something.

Yeah. Rob Estes, who plays Corey has actually had a pretty impressive career and is still working. He’s doing hallmark movies and is still doing TV. Um, and then there’s Lance who, uh, I recognized, I think he was. Was he in Christine? He, I, I know he was in something that we have done before. He was also in a movie called the heavenly kid, which I remember watching when I was a kid.

I know he was in something. I think he played a bully or something in some movie that we’ve done. Well, 

Todd: prison break and criminal minds and stuff more recently. Yeah. Yeah. So like you 

Craig: said, he’s still working. Yeah. There’s the two of them. And then there’s like, they’re like the cool ones. And then there’s supposedly kind of nerdy friend just because he’s smart is named Martin.

The three of them, the girls run into them at the marina and invite them to come on the yacht with them, which I thought that’s, that’s dumb. Some old rich guy asks you to come on a yacht. He’s not gonna want three young guys coming along, which he doesn’t. 

Todd: Not to mention all of this happens over the course of five minutes.

They, they have this, you know? Yeah. Typical eighties. Like these guys are talking and joking and then they look over and they’re these two hot girls that are slowly walking their way and they meet eyes and the girls are like, can I sit down here? And like within five minutes, this girl has her hand on Lance’s pants and is making some sexual comments and they’re inviting him on this yellow.

Oh yeah. 

Craig: On his pants. Like he’s run, she’s running her hand up his inner thigh within seconds. I don’t 

Todd: even know if they know each other’s names at this point. Did they? Yeah. Barely introduced each other. 

Craig: What I was getting at was the continuity. There’s this, they all end up on the boat. We’ll get there in a second.

But there’s one scene where Walter is like ogling the girls from a deck like there, the girls are down like, uh, in the hot tub and Walter’s up like staring at them. Mm-hmm and then it cuts away to a scene in a different part of the boat that Walter is also in. Yeah, and then it cuts, it cuts back and he’s still there staring at them like it’s true.

I, in theory, in theory, he, you know, like he could have walked away to have this other scene and then walked back, but it’s just cut together. So in such a sloppy way, it’s, it’s really dumb. They also find the cat randomly, randomly, and Suzanne’s like, I love this cat. I’m gonna 

Todd: keep it. The last time we saw this cat is it was rolling over the edge of a random bridge in the back of this pickup.

This time, it is in a box on the dock Uhhuh of this Marin. In a box that it presumably couldn’t get out of, much less into it’s just so random, 

Craig: right? Yeah. Because that’s how they find it. They, they hear it. Me, me so they, so they open. So they open the box and there’s just this cute cat, like, hello. 

Todd: oh, I want it.

Craig: Walter and har Mike meet the girls and the guys on shore for whatever reason, the guys. And the girl and the cat all like ferry out to the yacht, as soon as they get their Walters, like, uh, we don’t need these other guys around and I hate cats. They need to go back. But then all of a sudden they get word that like, I don’t know, the coast guard or somebody is gonna be inspecting their boat.

And so like, we have to leave right now. And one of the girls is like, well, since you, your boat doesn’t have a crew will be your crew. Oh my God. And Walter’s like, okay. and so they’re gonna be these random strangers are gonna be the boat crew, 

Todd: by the way. The captain of the ship is a woman who is 

Craig: far too young to be a boat captain far, 

Todd: too young and far too underdressed.

And Walter is hitting on her the entire time and saying all these kinds of things about, like, he says this random stuff about how this is, was her father’s boat. And now Walter has it. And he’s sort of dangling the boat almost like a, like a, basically like a Dick kind of dangling the fact that he has the boat.

And I don’t know, implying that she can’t leave and all that stuff. And she’s bitching about how she doesn’t have a crew to run the boat. So these four, these three guys are now their new ad hoc crew. And, uh, Mike jumps in and he’s pissed off, but then he’s like, all right, well, I’m gonna start assigning duties.

I don’t like you. I 

Craig: don’t like punk kids that think the world owe in the living. You’re the cook, you’re the busboy and the dishwasher. You’re the 

Todd: maid. These were the people that they couldn’t leave the marina without. Was a right but like, is there like a, a full scale restaurant running on this boat?

they’ve gotta manage that. They just have to get staffed before they can pull out of the marina, you know, with these six people on board. It, it makes no sense, but they’re like, okay, alright. And this is when I re, when I finally learned that the girls had already been to the party on the boat. 

Craig: Yes. The party on the boat had happened and they had been there.

We just hadn’t seen it. We didn’t see it. The other thing, I, I can’t believe we failed to mention this when they find the cat. All of a sudden it is wearing a collar, like an ID collar from the lab that it has never been wearing before. Yeah. and, and so they’re like, this is weird. It looks like it’s like a lab cat.

Hmm and then they take it off and throw it away. Like the cat specifically put on this, I, this ID collar, right. To warn. Yeah. And then they just take it off so that they can mention it later. It is, it was never, ever wearing a collar before that scene. And it just wears it for like the 10 seconds until they take it off.

You mentioned the captain, her name is Rachel. She’s played by Tony Hudson. I recognized her too. And I looked her up. The only credit that I really recognized is she was in a movie called just one of the guys, which I watched a lot when I 

Todd: was a kid. Oh yeah. That was on cable. A. For some reason, a 

Craig: lot. Yeah.

Yeah. And I remember her, uh, in that, and I don’t remember her being terrible in that movie, but man, she is one of the most dead pan actors I have ever seen in my life. She’s so bad. 

Todd: It was it’s like which board level of acting. Yeah. 

Craig: When things start getting bad, like she cannot bring herself to force any emotion at all.

she just speaks her line in the most dead pain. Like she has no emotion in her face. Nothing. She’s a beautiful woman. Don’t get me wrong, but she was not into this role.

that’s true. Okay. So they’re so they’re all there and we’ve Walter doesn’t like cats and then the young people turn on music and dance. the dancing, the dancing in this movie. Is worth the price of admission. It really is. It really is. You could watch the movie just to watch these guys dance. 

Todd: They’re just bopping around like, like , oh my 

Craig: God.

Especially Corey. Oh, all of them. But especially Corey there, I, I can’t do it justice in words. Yeah. You just have to see it, but like, it is the most ridiculous. You can’t imagine that they were taking this seriously. Right. And yet it seems as though 

Todd: they were, it’s very earnest. It’s earnestly played, which makes it so much funnier Uhhuh and you know, I was not a young adult in the eighties.

I was a kid. And so I never, you know, I don’t remember what it was like to not have other forms of entertainment, you know, by the time I was a young adult and I mean, we did, we had dances and stuff, things like that. But like, as far as like a little party that you would put together, by the time I was in college, we didn’t walk over to the stereo in the room, flip it on and just start dancing in front of it.

You know, , but it’s kind of funny how, in a lot of these movies, that’s basically what happens like all the Friday, the 13th movies, you know, all that stuff. Maybe it, I just, maybe that actually did happen and I was unaware, but it looks silly in this movie and they’re dancing, amidst the remnants of, uh, this party that this wild party that it hap apparently went on before, which is like trays of fruit and cake and things like that.

Just kind of all scattered amongst this room. And in the meantime, the cat’s just running around the ship below 

Craig: deck. Yeah, 

Todd: yeah. Below deck it’s swipes, I guess the, the little inner cat swipes at, uh, some electrical cables for which, which doesn’t seem to give any discernible effect, which surprised me a little bit.

I thought that until later until much later. Yeah. So I was glad that had a payoff. And then Albert is just sort of nervously mucking around in the. Captains. What do you call that? The, the 

Craig: deck, I don’t know. 

Todd: He’s just messing around in there. Like he’s supposed to steer the ship or something, but he’s getting all confused and the captain comes over and he grabs a lever and starts pulling it and he’s like, wait, what are you doing?

And he’s just like, it’s like, he’s not there and he’s not even drunk 

Craig: yet. Well, he’s just inept. And the only reason I guess he’s helping out is because they have no other crew. So it’s not like he knows what he’s doing or anything. Yeah. But that’s, that’s, you know, after the kids have been given assignments, the boys are like doing their work.

Like they’re doing dishes or something for kids five seconds and they’re, they’re complaining about it. So to make them feel better, their girls open their tops. The girls like start making out with them. It’s 

Todd: so hilarious. Well, I sure 

Craig: do feel sorry for you boys. Having to work so hard in this very hot kitchen.

I don’t know how you can stand it. It’s really hot.

It is so 

Todd: hot in here. Hey, land’s getting a little warm in here. 

Craig: Yeah.

You see what getting mixed up with us? Wasn’t such a bad idea. After all, all your hard work will have its rewards and promise. 

Todd: Well, the camera slowly pans down their shirts as they’re unbuttoning their shirt button by button. And the surprising thing is they do a pretty amazing job of covering up boobs in this movie.

Um, it was very clear that girls were not, did not wanna show anything. Uh, and this is the kind of movie where you totally expect to see at least one pair. 

Craig: And, and, and on the Blueray, I guess there’s an alternate cut. That’s only a couple of minutes longer, but there is, uh, Suzanne fully exposes her breast.

Oh, really? Alternate cut. Oh, but you don’t, you don’t see, I like they open their shirts, but they leave them just open enough so that you can see their breasts, but not their nipples. Yeah. Well, 

Todd: if you don’t see the nipple, you don’t see the breast, you know, that’s, that’s the rule. , 

Craig: that’s the rule, but these, these women are not.

You know, this was clearly written by a man. You know, these, these women are not portrayed in a realistic or no, frankly, flattering way at all. No, like they they’re, they’re just not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with this, but they’re, they’re just using their sexuality. Like that’s the only tool at their design.

Oh yeah. 

Todd: cause, cause the next thing after this, because earlier they, they overcame some of, um, Graham’s objections. He was like, you guys need to get to work. You guys aren’t working. They said, oh, don’t worry. We’re gonna throw a party. And you’re honor later tonight, you know, just go easy on us now we’ll make it up to you with our party later.

Which if you think that turning on the stereo and dancing around in front of it, uh, isn’t a wild enough party. You should try playing back. Gamon yeah. Or, um, sitting on a sofa, eating a banana

I just love the way this was posed. Mr. Graham is sitting. Eating a banana and telling stories and getting more and more drunk and they’re all just kind of posed around him. And then they kind of start dancing too. They dance more. 

Craig: It’s just so fun. I, oh, it’s so hilarious. And then Rachel, who’s kind of flirting with, um, Martin, the nerdy one, they’re kind of flirting, but, um, she eventually leaves to go to relieve Albert who is now drunk and Albert stumbles away looking for more of his wine and he finds it.

But like the cat is sitting on it innocently inside a box inside a box again, once again. Yeah. And so Albert gets his wine, opens it up, takes a drink of it and spits it on the cat, like for like why, what is wrong with you? Mm-hmm . And so, so then the evil cat comes out and kills him and there’s like a weird bladder effect under his neck.

And like blood is. You know, spraying out and then he falls overboard screaming. The henchman guy, Mike, the next day realizes that Albert went over, but they don’t wanna tell anybody because they don’t wanna turn around, um, to go back and get him. Rachel and Martin eventually realize that Albert fell overboard to the boat by the way, is having problems now.

So this, this is to justify that scene that we saw before, where the evil cat got scared and cut some wires down below. Mm. The boat is overheating. Rachel wants to turn around to go back to look for Albert, but the two bad guys convince her that he can’t swim anyway. So he’s definitely dead. And Walter also bribes her and says, if you keep going, when we get where we’re going, I’m gonna come into all this money.

I’ll sign the boat over to you. So she reluctantly decides to keep going. Yeah. And then Martin comes into like the captain’s quarters where Rachel is and uses a sext as a microscope. what, oh, to examine a piece of Albert’s clothes. And I had, I did not understand what was going on here. Like they find there’s a piece, apparently a piece of Albert’s clothes got torn and left behind and he looks, and he shows her and she’s like, what is that?

And he’s like, it’s blood cells. And I was like, so what you saw blood all over the 

Todd: deck? Like he says, It’s more than usual, right? Something like that. 

Craig: Like, like more than usual blood cells. Right. And they’re still active and alive even though they’re, I don’t 

Todd: know. It’s like, it’s so weird. I, again, it’s supposed to be kind of this clever scene because he’s such a, Martin’s such a smart guy.

Right? So he comes in, do you have a Sexton? Yeah. Uh, do you have this? Yeah. And she happens to hand it to him. She’s like, do you have some water? Yeah. She happens to have a glass of water there to D it on there, puts all this together, says all this about it. And all I was thinking was why in the first place did he think there was anything suspicious about the blood on the shirt?

Right. This blood is there’s so many cells in here it’s more active. Like how did you know that before? Yeah. You confirmed it with the Sexton, whatever. 

Craig: No, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s stupid. Just for background purposes. You know, the cat is present in this scene because it’s screaming

but, but Walter gets rapy with 

Todd: Bobby who’s in skimpy exercise clothes, just sort. Exercising to nothing. He 

Craig: kind of right. I don’t know what she’s doing. Like a Jane Fonda style, small 

Todd: Jane. I love that he references Jane Fonda, cuz this is totally from this era. I think you’re better than Jane Fonda. Right?

The, the cat ominously watches, Walter hitting on Bobby. And then he basically pulls her down into the sofa and she’s first of all, she’s kind of taking it because she has been more or less, I would say leading him on right. She’s been intentionally. Yeah. Intentionally leading him on to get what she wants.

But now of course it’s too much. And so, you know, he he’s got her down on the sofa and then suddenly Lance jumps in he’s like, what are you doing? And he runs over and uh, they have a little bit of a fight and then Mike shows up with a gun and he shoots 

Craig: him, shoots 

Todd: him. Yeah. For come on. Right. Anyway, it escalate quickly.

He shoots him in the arm and then Corey jumps it’s like a dog pile of people slowly coming into the room, 

Craig: Uhhuh and then Mike fights Corey off. But then the evil cat shoots out from under the couch and bites out Mike’s Achilles heel. Yeah. And then Mike just starts randomly shooting all around with the cat 

Todd: puppet, popping out, taunting him.

yeah. . 

Craig: And then Rachel comes around the corner and sees what’s going on and. Oh, my God.

like she couldn’t possibly be more bored by 

Todd: what’s going on. And then, then they just look at Mike’s wound. Mr. Graham. And, uh, was it Albert at this point? No, Albert’s dead. Mr. Graham. And one of the guys, I think it might be Corey. They’re just sitting there. Mike’s wound is not just like bloody. It is bleeding profusely and they’re just standing there holding it, talking about it.

Craig: Yeah. And he’s also like riving in pain. Yes. And then like his veins start like pulsating and throbbing. Like they were really proud of these bladder effects that they were doing. I don’t know why, because they really don’t look very good, but they’re, it’s like, okay, we know how to do one effect. So , we’re really gonna lean into it.

And his heart is racing. And like at some point it looks like his heart is literally about to beat out of his 

Todd: chest. Oh my God. They all lean over. It’s one of those classic, almost hilarious things where it’s one head on top of another, all peering down towards the camera, looking at his, his heart. I guess I thought something was gonna burst.

It looked like alien. 

Craig: I did too. I thought it was gonna explode. 

Todd: I thought blood was gonna explode five, five inches above his chest. It blows up like a balloon two or three times goes down. They’re all like inches away from it, looking at it in anticip. And then the next scene is them UN, unceremoniously dropping his body over the back of the ship.

I’m like what? Yeah. 

Craig: and okay. Oh, well, and then, and that was interesting, Rachel, who is still oddly calm, tries to call for help, but Walter shoots the radio because he just wants to get where he wants to go. He doesn’t want any delay. He threatens to shoot Rachel and she’s like, well, you wouldn’t shoot me.

I’m the only one who knows how to drive the boat. And so he is like, well, then I. Suzanne and I’ll keep shooting other people until you do what I say. And so she grabs a fire extinguisher and shoots him and Suzanne gets the gun and immediately just points it at Walter’s Dick. And then somehow I don’t even, this just comes out of nowhere.

Like there just, I guess, All of them conferring and, and you this whole scene. Oh, oh. As near as I can tell the cat that bit. Mr. Harvey is highly poisonous. how poisonous came 

Todd: now. How is that 

Craig: possible? I found a piece of blood stain shirt this morning. Oh, Rachel. And I took a pretty good look on the blood.

Oh. And it was mutating, like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard about. Oh, and the cat’s got rabies. 

Todd: Oh 

Craig: God. Oh, I’ve seen rabies. I know what it does with the blood. This was a mutation. It’s definitely not look, Bob Bobby says she saw the cat while I was running from her. Tell Martin what you told me. Well, it all happened really fast.

I don’t know. It didn’t look like the cat, but it had to be, I don’t know. His face was distorted or something. I don’t know. I mean, it sounds crazy. I don’t know. Did it look like a normal cat to you before Suzanne? Of course. It’s just a cat. Oh, God, help me, Martin, could this have anything to do with that laboratory tag that cat was wearing?

What are you talking about? Shut up, Graham. You know, you have been a major disappointment to me. Suzanne may be on something. There’s a great deal of experimentation on lab animals. Maybe somehow this cat system has got some type of, uh, experimental chemical in it. You’ve really just gotta put in some of this dialogue.

Oh yeah, it’s just too good. But Martin says the cat that bit Harvey is highly poisonous once. And then Suzanne and then Suzanne says, Martin, could this have anything to do with that laboratory tag? The cat was wearing no, probably not.

just two totally random coincidence. And the dialogue is so 

Todd: funny and she reconfirms it. You mean they actually poisoned that poor cat and now it’s dangerous to all of. And Martin’s like, yeah, Martin, deduces an awful lot about what’s going on. I mean, he’s pretty much spot on the nose remarkably. So after his little sextant experiment and 

Craig: somehow he also knows that the not all the, not only is the cat poisonous, but if it comes into contact with any food, then that food is also poisonous.

Yeah. So now they’re in trouble because the boat is not running. They, they have limited food and water. Rachel, at some point tells Martin her whole life story, which I remember nothing about. So it must not have been very important. 

Todd: They lock Graham up in his room. 

Craig: Yeah, they, they lock him up and he’s trying to schmooze Corey for reasons.

I don’t know, like maybe he thinks Corey will help him or something. Oh, 

Todd: he shows Corey Rolex and Corey’s impressed by the Rolex. And he is like, ah, that’s all right, I’ll give it to you. I’ve got plenty. Then he walks over to a pair of double doors that looks like a closet door and opens it up. And there is a wall safe, a giant wall safe behind those two double doors.

Uh, he opens it up and pulls out money, opens up one of the things and like hands it to Corey and says, oh yeah, this is nothing. There’s plenty more of where that came from. If you help me get back. And the way I say it, it sounds like, okay, this makes sense. You know, it’s a typical movie villain type thing he’s trying to en entice the kid who is the most enticing by money with money.

Yeah. Yeah. But the way this plays out, it’s so cartoonish, like if you’re gonna have a wall safe, you would not put it in the most obvious. Like you, it looks like a closet. You would open this up and be shocked to find a wall safe behind there. And it’s huge. It, everything about this scene is so cartoony and silly.

It’s like a 12 year old wrote 

Craig: this. Oh, oh yeah. Everything is, and, and at this point they’ve got the food all locked up because they’re rationing it. But also because they don’t want the cats to get it. Cause it’ll contaminate it. And somebody says that cat’s gonna get awful hungry. Corey scares the topless, Suzanne she’s topless for no reason.

And then they make out for 10 seconds and then that’s. It. And then Bobby is making out with Lance who says two or three times, just so we’re clear that he can’t feel his arm. He, when he, when he was shot, he got shot in the shoulder. He, but he says two or three times that he, he, it doesn’t hurt anymore. He can’t feel it at all.

And they make out for a little bit. And anytime anybody makes out in this movie, it’s like, they intentionally put microphones right up to their mouths. So that it sounds like so gross. It’s disgusting. Um, but then he, like, she pulls away from him a little bit and he says, even though I lost feeling in my arm, it doesn’t seem to have affected other parts of my body but she like, so I guess that entices her to like pull the blanket back to so that they both see that the evil cat is eating his hand.

Right. And you had briefly mentioned it before, but it’s so funny. Like when the evil cat. when you see it coming out of the real cat puppet, it’s tiny. Like it’s just a little tiny thing, but then sometimes when it’s fully. It’s like a full size cat. Yeah. It’s as big as 

Todd: a cat. It’s huge. It changes size all the time.

Craig: and it’s, it’s eaten off like a couple of his fingers. Uh, it, but he didn’t know cuz his arm was numb apparently. Right. He immediately jumps up, runs to the boat, deck screaming. I’m poisoned. I’m already dead. I’ve got the poison in my blood and he’s trying to jump overboard and she is trying to stop him, but he goes overboard and she falls with him and then Corey and Martin dive in after them.

But you but Bobby and uh, Lance are gone. Yeah, like the fall, I guess, from the deck killed them. they’re gone. Uh, now they’re in trouble. They’re out of. Water. They’re out of fresh water. They’re almost out of food. Suzanne is losing it, which is 

Todd: hilarious. You suddenly losing it. And it’s so funny Uhhuh, and she’s not bad at losing it except it’s switched off and on like a switch.

Yeah. So it just doesn’t come across as real at 

Craig: all. Oh, it’s so funny. And she just 

Todd: be like, we’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die. We’re all at the die. And then the response is we’re not gonna die, Suzanne. We’re going to survive. 

Craig: I know Corey and Walter, go on a cat hunt. Corey, 

Todd: Corey, don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.

Mr. Graham, as Corey is walking around like a waiter with a plate of tuna and a fork. Yes. Carefully with his, for carefully laying pieces of tuna randomly around the, uh, engine room or whatever. And it’s been two. By the 

Craig: way. Yeah. It’s been two days. Yeah. They they’ve been stranded for two days, 

Todd: two days. And they’re already out of food.

When I remember their party scene, seeing so much ridiculous food out, I guess the, is the notion that the cat just ran around and poisoned all the food or they, they just can’t trust any of it. Yeah. 

Craig: Like it’s explained very briefly, like somehow the cat got into the food or something and so they can’t eat any of the food, but Corey’s traps don’t work.

The cat is not taking the bait. Like it knows that the food is poisoned or something. So he’s going around looking at all of these bait traps and the evil cat attacks him and he starts shooting at it. But he shoots something that causes an explosion, like a steam explosion. Yeah. That I, I couldn’t tell if the steam killed him or if the cat killed him.

I wasn’t. While he was engulfed in the steam. I don’t know, but he’s dead. I wasn’t 

Todd: sure either, but he shot a lot of. Stuff up in that engine room. And every one of it did something like, you know, it spray something in his face, it would start something sparking. And one of them was a hole in the hall, 

Craig: right.

Todd: Which starts to get water in. And then immediately following this scene was my, maybe one of my favorite shots of the whole movie, which is for no good reason at all. They decided they needed a close up of the cat puppet crawling back into the cat’s mouth Uhhuh and you just see the fake cat kind of just a close up of his mouth on it side.

It already looks like a stuffed animal and then this little cat going in there, opening up his mouth and starting to crawl back in, it looks hilarious. And then the cat’s eye lights. Oh, I didn’t even notice that. Yeah. I just couldn’t make any of that out. One 

Craig: of my favorite scenes is Suzanne at this point is completely loony tunes.

And Rachel, like in a scuffle or something drops the keys and Suzanne gets ’em and goes and gets into the locked food pantry. And she’s talking to herself and the cats in there and she’s like scared for a second. And then she’s like, you won’t hurt me. You’re just a nice kitty. And she’s eating the food.

And she’s like, I knew it. I knew they were, it wasn’t really poison. They were just hoarding it for herself, but it is really poison and hurt. Throat starts throbbing and blood starts shooting out right. And then she dies and then there’s a storm and it is very clearly a toy boat and they literally filmed this in the director’s swimming pool and it looks like it , it looks like a toy boat in a swimming pool and the boat is sinking and they’re trying to get on the lifeboat.

Walter goes back for his money. For some reason, there are only three suitcases, but he can only carry two at a time apparently. So he brings the two out, throws him in the boat and then he goes back for the other one, but the evil cat is there. And it’s, this is just an excellent example of like, it’s just a cat mm-hmm and it.

Sitting behind the suitcase. It’s not menacing nothing, but like he has to pretend like he’s scared of it. And when he goes for the money, the evil cat comes out and drowns him, leaks on him, like scratches his yeah. And drowns him cuz the boat is sinking. Uh, Martin finds him, Rachel and Martin get into the, the lifeboat and launch it.

And oh, this just looks so funny. Like when you see, like when you see in a movie they’re filming a bad movie in the movie, this is what it looks like. Ah, yes. You can just imagine in your head. The two guys on either side of the boat, like rocking two by fours to make, and then somebody else like standing out, you know, just off camera, like splashing water.

Yeah. And these, these two people just kind of sitting in the boat, pretending that they’re scared and it’s hilarious. Oh, this sea soy yacht is bonkers. It is so funny. It’s so funny. 

Todd: They have this moment. It also, it changes tone quite quickly. Right. They’ve just escaped. They’re freaking out. And then suddenly he’s like, but look, I’ve got the money.

And suddenly the music changes to this happy music. And now they’re rejoicing and hugging each other that they have like a million bucks. Right? what everybody died. You might die too. You’re out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a storm in this boat. And now it’s like everything. The tone is like, everything’s gonna be fine.

I, I really expected it to fade to black at that point. And then, yeah. Oh no, look, the cat puppet. And there are just no words to describe it. There are no words to describe. Sure. The seed looks, they look and you see the cat puppet crawl over the side of the boat and then it’s like, somebody throws it from off here.

onto him. No. And so he’s battling this puppet and he tosses it back over the boat. And they’re like, oh, woo. We saved the music turns good. And then he looks to the left. He goes, Nope, it’s not over yet. the cat. The,

Craig: you just, and they’re like, they’re like, we’re the only thing floating. It’s just gonna keep coming back. So they, one of them thinks to throw one of the suitcases in, but she she’s like, wait, dump all the money in here. And she like has a duffle bag. And so they dump all the money in the duffle bag and throw the suitcase over and they’re like, look, it’s climbing on.

And you see this ratty looking puppet. sitting on this 

Todd: suitcase bobbing on this thing in a swimming pool. It is, oh God. So 

Craig: hilarious. Oh, it is really hilarious. Like you can’t, I just , I can’t imagine that they didn’t know how silly and stupid, but they had to know, but they, but they play it a hundred percent straight, so straight.

Oh. And then they’re back on land. The authorities don’t believe them, but they don’t care because they have the money and it looks like they’re just gonna live happily ever after. Um, and then it cuts to an end where we see a beach and we see the, uh, suitcase has clearly landed on the beach and a little kid on the beach finds an entirely.

Different cat, a black 

Todd: cat it could not look more different. It’s bigger. It has short hair and 

Craig: it is black. it’s an entirely different cat. Does it look anything like the real cat? And he picks up the cat and he is like, look daddy or something. And it, the camera freezes on him then does a quick close up and then that’s the end.

Oh, this was, there’s an alternate ending. That’s even worse. And you can watch it on YouTube. It’s very similar. It’s very similar. Except instead of it ending on the beach, you see a dock and this little kid is carrying a suitcase and he runs up to his dad and says, daddy, daddy, look what I found. And it’s, it sounds like an adult doing a kid’s voice.

And then the dad is like, well, let’s see what’s in this suitcase. And he opens it up. And the evil cat like pops out oh, it’s hilarious. Wow. This movie I ended up, I didn’t know, like I knew nothing about it. I read the synopsis. I, I read that it was like wonderfully bad, but you know, I went in very skeptical thinking, you know, this is gonna be hit or miss.

Like it, it could either be really fun or it could be. You know, it could feel, it could be an annoying waste of time. It was not at all. It was no, so much fun. It was so much fun. Yeah. It’s so bad. It’s so ridiculously bad. That it’s absolutely hilarious. Like I was, I watching it by myself as I usually do, and I was just laughing out loud throughout.

Oh yeah. It’s so funny. The, the effects are terrible. The acting is bad and just the, the best kind of way it, it was, it was exactly what I was hoping it would be. And I’m so glad that I found it. I didn’t know. Apparently the RIF tracks guys have done 

Todd: this. Oh, I’d love to see that. I’d 

Craig: or hear that. Yeah.

Yeah. To hear it. That that’d be great. Um, another podcast that you and I are both fans of, how did this get made has, has done this? I, I didn’t know any of that. This is the first time that I’d ever even. Heard of this movie and it was just such a fun surprise. It was exactly what I was hoping it would be and it was so much fun to watch and fun to talk about.

Cause it’s so silly and to, it would be so fun to sit and watch and goof on with friends. It would just be, Ugh, it would be amazing. 

Todd: Uh, you know what I, yes, I, like I said before, this has just topped my list. I think of so bad. It’s good movies. I, I have not laughed out loud at a movie in a while. And this I did multiple times through this.

It was so much fun and it made me want to go back and find all the other direct, the directors, other movies. great. And Clark directed this and he’s done about, mm, 21 looks like 21 movies. And before this, in the seventies, he did a movie called Satan’s cheerleaders. And listen to this. The janitor at a local high school is actually the scout for a Cove of Satanists on the lookout for a Virgin to sacrifice one day he kidnapped the cheerleading squad to use for their rituals.

However, unbeknownst to the devil worshipers, one of the cheerleaders is actually a witch and has plans for own for the Satanists. Doesn’t that sound great? 

Craig: Yeah, it really does. 

Todd: he, he did want this other one is just a comedy that I from 1983 called joysticks when a top local businessman and his two bumbling nephews, try to shut down the town’s only video arcade, arcade employees, and patrons fight back 1983.

That sounds awesome. and do you remember Lomba the forbidden dance? Yes. Dirty dancing, knock off. Guess who directed that 

Craig: one? that’s funny. Yeah. I mean, obviously, obviously this movie got terrible reviews as it should, but you know, when it came out, the, the reviews were terrible as they should have been.

It’s a terrible movie, but I think that today, people look back, some people look back at it as, as what it is and how you should look at it. You know, it’s fun. It’s stupid. It’s it’s bad, but it’s funny. And if you go into it, With that in mind. It’s just, it’s just great fun loyal listeners. I cannot recommend this movie enough.

Mm-hmm like, you need to 

Todd: watch this movie it’s playing on tuby 

Craig: right now. Right? As of the time of this recording, it is free on tuby. Yes. Yes. 

Todd: Oh, unin not the uninvited it’s called uninvited 1987 or 1988, depending on where you see it listed straight to video deserved to run in the theaters. My.

Well, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Uh, also if you enjoyed our podcast, please consider supporting us on Patreon, become a patron of our podcast and get all kinds of goodies. We do multiple mini SOS every month where we go outside the bounds of talking about a single movie and talk about other things.

Horror movies, horror books, uh, horror series of video games, personal stuff about ourselves. Uh, we have a 90 minute interview there with loyal listener, Heather who dives deep into the behind the scenes details of our podcast, all this kind of stuff you can access. Please consider going to our Patreon pages, patreon.com/chainsaw podcast.

And let us know what you thought of this episode and a future of ideas for movies that we can do on this podcast. We need more so bad. It’s good movies. 

Craig: Absolutely. Until 

Todd: next time. I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Going along with the early 80’s trend of event-themed horror movies – Prom Night, Fall Break, Black Christmas, Happy Birthday To You, April Fool’s Day, Graduation Day, New Year’s Evil and the like – these folks were the first to capitalize on every college student’s common end-of-year nightmare: test time. Enjoy the last of our series of 1981 slashers this month!

Final Exam (1981)

Episode 307, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, with today’s movie, we finally wrap up our month of 1981 slasher films. Uh, and this one is called, Final Exam. An R rated movie by writer, director, Jimmy Houston. And, uh, this one’s been on my list a bit, not because I’d heard anything terribly notable about it, but because like all of the movies we’re doing this month, their slasher films that seem to be kind of on the fringe of what seem to be a pretty interesting year for horror, with a lot of, uh, slasher movies coming out.

And a lot of other horror movies coming out. It just seemed like at this point we were heading into the early eighties from some interesting horror with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and stuff in the late seventies and Halloween and Black Christmas. And that just kind of kicked off a whole frenzy of money, making exploitation opportunities.

And so, you know, 1981, at least as I was looking through, seemed to be kind of a, an interesting year. And that’s why we’re doing these as you would’ve heard after listening to the other episodes. And, uh, also check out our minisode about it. If you are a Patron, we are gonna talk in a little more detail about just the year in general, in horror and movies, that we’ve covered movies that we’d like to cover later.

And just what was going on at that time. So this is final exam. Like I said, uh, this was more on the fringes. It was one where I noticed the poster of it when I was clicking through lists of movies and slasher movies that I hadn’t seen. And, uh, it’s always kind of been the back of my mind just because I figured, oh, it’s just like all these other ones, right.

Fall Break, Final Exam, Prom Night. Where, where the movies just look for some kind of teenage time holidays like Black Christmas or April Fool’s Day or things like that. I guess by now they had a lot less to pick from. And so “final exam” is the subject to this one. And I had never seen it before this time around.

Craig: How about you? Yep. I’d seen it, uh, recently, you know, this year, I think again, just, uh, scrolling through streaming services came upon it and just put it on to have. Something on in the background, but I do remember more about this one than most of those movies that I just kind of put on in the background.

Um, I’m not really sure why. I think there were some, a at least a couple of interesting characters that drew me in a little bit, but yes, I had seen it before, but I had watched it not thinking that we would necessarily ever talk about it. So. Didn’t pay super close attention. So I was interested in going back and watching again and here we are.

Todd: and here we are ready about ready to talk about this. I mean, otherwise, very typical to the point of cliche. I, in some ways slasher movie, I think it has a couple distinctive things about it, but ultimately yeah. You know, it’s pretty obviously inspired . By Halloween and Friday the 13th and those that came before it and Jim Houston himself, the writer of director has done almost nothing really, uh, before or after this directed a few movies before it and a couple after it, but I don’t even think they were horror movies.

And yeah, I, I guess I read that, uh, even on the DVD rerelease of this film, they ended up getting a lot of the original actors back to record a commentary track and. Jimmy Houston was not there. so, huh, that’s weird. Odd, right? For the writer director, that’s a pretty notable absence. from a DVD commentary track.

Pretty much all the actors in this movie also were more or less plucked from obscurity. I think most of them. We’re flown in from LA to shoot in South Carolina here. And many of them were just picked up based on people seeing them in stage productions and stuff. 

Craig: A lot of them were just his friends. Yeah.

The crew, especially. And, and, and students maybe. Well, yeah, and, and the, the crew pops up as extras and they, you know, Plucked extras from wherever 

Todd: they could. I was gonna say, as you’re scrolling through the credits, you can see the same name popping up several times. Like, oh, this person was an actor and also a key grip, you know, this person, right.

It’s it’s, it’s pretty 

Craig: obvious. Yeah. Okay. So this movie is interesting because. The director wanted to, and he wrote it to, he wanted to deviate from the slasher formula a little bit by focusing more on the characters. Yeah. Which arguably he does. , but what that results in is basically nothing. This is an hour and a half movie.

Nothing happens for the first hour. Yeah. 

Todd: it is noticeably absence of any slashing or even any nudity for that, for that matter. It’s, 

Craig: it’s almost. Kind of like a teen and, and I hesitate to even say teen, cuz they’re in college. They’re probably in their late teens or early twenties, but it’s like a teen college movie except.

Not funny.

it’s just like, it’s like, hi, it’s just, it’s like hijinks, like yeah. Fraternity high jinx and, and getting to know these characters to some extent and, and to be fair, there are a couple of interesting characters. I don’t know if interesting is really the word. I don’t even know if likable is really the word, but they’re the main girl.

Courtney is kind of interesting, you know, like she’s not stereotypically gorgeous. I mean, she’s a pretty girl, but uh, they kind of make a point how she’s not stereotypical stereotypically beautiful as compared to her rich blonde roommate. Yeah. But she’s likable and then there’s a kid like the nerdy.

Whose name is radish and he is like the most interesting, super cute and charming. Yeah. Yeah. And interesting, like intelligent and has varied interests and is genuinely like. Nice. And he seemed cool. Like, I would wanna be friends with him even though he’s cast in like the nerd role, like, you know, getting pushed around by the big jocks and stuff like that.

Yeah. The rest of the characters are basically just stereotypes. Mm-hmm the girls, you know, like, so there’s the, the slutty roommate, Linda Lee, Lisa, Lisa. Who’s the, you know, kind of the blonde bimbo who has like a whole monologue about the importance of being attractive and flirting, because you can get anything you want in life by doing that.

The important thing to know is how to get what you want. That’s what’ll help you later on not grades. You have a good grades. Can’t hurt. Neither can good times. I’d rather know how to flirt one thinks for sure. You’ll never catch me studying chemistry. no, while there’s a hand teaching. Watch. Hi, excuse me.

Could one of you give me a hand? Sure. and like, she, she talks about it and then she demonstrates it and sadly, she’s probably right. You know, she’s a very. Beautiful woman who, you know, can kind of get men to do whatever she wants them to do. And again, very stereotypically she’s sleeping with the chemistry professor.

So she doesn’t really have to study or do anything for that class, you know, beyond that. It’s not like she’s unfriendly, you know, like, yeah, she’s nice, you know? Yeah. Use what you got, whatever. That’s 

Todd: fine. They. Kind of are 

Craig: well, the frat guys, the two main frat guys, mark and wild man. Like I can’t believe I’m gonna have to say that several 

Todd: times.

Wild big goes by several names in here anyway. So you could pick me God, 

Craig: they, they are the epitome of the kind of guys that I really have a. Distaste for, yeah, just like these guys that think they’re like alpha males because of their status and, and wild man’s case, this, the fact that he’s, you know, a huge guy and, and can, you know, easily bully and overpower other people, which he does.

And they, they just act like oaths, like, yeah, the, you know, the kind of guys who think it’s cool and funny to just behave really badly and, and treat people, people 

Todd: badly books out of their hands and stuff, but they. Necessarily really cruel about it. You know, it’s just like goofy frat high jinx by dumb dumb guys.

I mean, like you said before, just stereotypical frat boy characters that we’ve seen and like all these movies really, but not as mean spirited as sometimes we can see them. I think, yeah. Yeah. 

Craig: They’re not, I don’t remember what movie we did recently. It was a Halloween movie. They’re not like those rapey guys.

Yeah. Yeah. From, from whatever, God, they’re not like that. But you know, these are the kind of guys that I’ve encountered and, you know, are, are more than happy to call me a fag. And push me around, you know, like, so I just have, I just have distaste for, for this kind of character. I’m sure there are lovely young men in real life.

I don’t know whatever right. But that’s it. And so the first hour is just kind of college, high jinx kind stuff. And then. It gets to the killings and then it is entirely formulaic. It’s just, they do the whole formula in the last half hour. Yeah. And so as soon as people start getting killed, it’s just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And it follows the formula pretty much. Exactly. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t really know what to make of it, cuz it’s not poorly made. No, it’s not the, you know, the, the, the cinematography is okay. The ACT’s good is fine. The score is, is okay. 

Todd: I think the writing’s pretty, pretty bad. The dialogue is so written.

It’s trying to be funny and it’s trying to be cute, but it just comes across. Kind of childish in a way dumb. And I think that that shows it’s. So I wasn’t really sure whether to fault the performance of the actors, which I thought was a little unconvincing, especially earlier on in the movie when we’re supposed to be getting to know them like real people, or if it’s just the things coming out of their mouths are.

Are just silly, but the movie reminded me a little bit of maybe a student film. I was getting shades of the dorm, that drip blood. You remember when we did that 

Craig: one? Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: I remember it. That was shot on a college campus. It’s all seems to be all friends who got together who were all like literally college students, probably all involved in the theater or film department.

And yeah. Sounds like this wasn’t too far off from that. And so I got similar vibe. Except that movie. I remember being a little more on the, a little edgier. It was bloodier. It had some pretty graphic, gruesome moments. This movie also distinguishes itself by having almost no gore at all. Right. Most of the killings happen either in shadow or off screen.

There’s clearly like no budget for special effects for this. Right. You know, at one point a guy gets strangled by some wire. All you it’s just like blood coming out of his mouth. Uh, and then stabbings, which just sort of happen either off camera or in the shadow, which are not even very convincing. It looks like the guy doing the stabbing is trying really hard, not to actually stab anything.

just to sort of robotic up and down motion that doesn’t give the impression that you’re, you’re forcefully plunging a knife into anything nor. Having to like exert any effort as, as to pulling it out of something, you know, it’s just up, down, up, down, up, down. 

Craig: Well, according to him, he was wielding a real knife, so could have something to, with it.

He had to use caution. I don’t know the other thing that makes this movie stand out from the other slashers. And I, and I. I really think that this was intentional. And I feel like there’s even commentary on it in the movie. Was that this killer, first of all, he’s not masked, which does go yeah. Against the formula.

You know, a lot, a lot of slashers in the eighties wore some kind of mask that was kind of the formula. But even if they didn’t wear the mask, sometimes the camera was the mask mm-hmm because you would never. Face, but you would see from their perspective. Yeah. A lot. And there’s a little tiny bit of POV stuff going on here, but not a lot that you see the killer.

Yeah. You see his face right from the very beginning. And then when in the, there’s a kill scene in the very beginning to set it up. And then an hour later when he reappears, he kind of lingers in the shadows a little bit, but there are many, many times where you very clearly see his face. So he’s not a. In that way, but he has no backstory.

He has no clear motivation. He’s just a random killer. Yeah. But again, like I said, I, I feel like that’s what they were going for because there is a scene where the main girl, Courtney and radish talk and radish talks about how there are killers all around us all the time. And people just kill people for random reasons.

And you never really know why, and you never really know who it’s gonna. Don’t you for lock your door? What could happen to me? Famous. Last words. Why are you so apprehensive? When are you going to realize that the whole world isn’t made of psychopath skulking about, but they are out there. They do exist.

People are killed every day for no reason at all. Perfect strangers wake up in the morning and decide. Hmm. I think it’s a good day to snuff somebody. And there are people who eat our restaurants with us, use our highways and vote for the president, which probably explains something about him too. I’m not paranoid.

I’m just facing unhappy facts. So will you please stop it? Because I don’t think it’s cute. Like 

Todd: some people might. 

Craig: And so I, I think that that’s kind of the point that they were trying to make, you know, like we don’t need to know this guy’s motivation. We don’t need to know his back story. He’s just a killer, like, yeah, that’s it.

And, and when he dies at the end, Any mystery dies with him. We don’t have any idea who this guy is like. Yeah. 

Todd: And, and that was so against formula to be distracting. I thought, you know, maybe just because we’re so programmed and. Also maybe for a good reason, we, we wanna know, right? Like we wanna know some motivation.

Yeah. We wanna be thrown a bone somewhere. And so even when the killer’s face first started to become obvious, I thought this is like a poorly made movie where they didn’t do a good enough job obscuring his face. And then when we saw his face again and again, I thought, oh, well, All right. Well, I, now I’m gonna look for this guy.

Maybe he’s one of the other characters, you know, with just like his beard shaved or something, you know, like I’m just trying to figure out he’s gotta be somebody there’s gotta be some mystery here, some big reveal. And there isn’t, as you said, and I, I think just that was nagging at me the whole time.

That I found it distracting and I, I can’t really say it was a good thing either. I guess, trying to be slightly innovative and go against formula sometimes ends up working against you. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with having this random killer. And like you said, there is. There’s some lines in there that make it clear that that’s probably what he was going for.

And we know that the director was intentionally trying to do something different here. 

Craig: I think it’s an interesting idea because I think that the rationale behind it is true, you know? Well, there are just crazy people who kill people, you know, there, they’re not always motivated by anything other than our, maybe their own psychosis or violent tendencies, 

Todd: but for a movie.

It’s a lazy idea. 

Craig: well, I just think it’s not. Yeah, I guess I J I, I, I. What you mean? And I don’t disagree. I just feel like maybe it could have been executed in a more interesting way. Right. But you’re right. It, it takes, it takes something away when there’s no connection when there’s no reason for him to be killing these people other than he’s, he just wants to, he, well, that’s, 

Todd: I Don.

That’s the other thing you look for as well, right? Is like what, who is he targeting? Right. And why, especially earlier in the movie, the movie opens with a kill scene. There is a kill scene at the very beginning. Yeah. There’s a couple making out in a car with the most hilarious dialogue. I think it was this scene.

That made me think. Well, I, I think I’m gonna enjoy this movie as is so bad. It’s good movie. Yeah, because it’s this couple making out in a car, uh, and , and the girl keeps going, no, no, not here. You know, I don’t want to do this here. And he, he gets kind of pissy at her and he says, I, 

Craig: all of a sudden, the car’s not good enough anymore.

Is that it? No. Well, look, I, I can’t afford another motel room. We’ve spent all my money on 

Todd: beer. 

Craig: Well, you were happy enough to drink your share.

I just don’t like it. I don’t feel right. Could we at least put the top up? Do I ever deny 

Todd: you anything? Mm-hmm and I’m like, well, yeah, you denied her. You just denied her a motel stay. it’s it’s pretty silly. And, uh, It’s such a long scene. It is. Oh, I, I hear something. Oh, who knows what it is? Oh, let’s get in the back.

Okay. I hear something again. Oh yeah. Don’t worry about it. Oh, the car’s moving. Oh, that kind of pisses me off. Oh, can you just take me somewhere else? No. Why isn’t the car? Good enough. And like, oh my God. Just get to it already. Finally, I guess a body flops down on the car. Um, You know doesn’t mean anything.

We don’t, it’s just a face that appears in the windshield. Yeah. I, 

Craig: I, I, I, I’m still confused as to what that was. I didn’t know if it was a body or if it was the killer, like peering at them. I, I, I’m still uncertain, it looked like a body, but if it was, we don’t have any idea who it was. Not that it matters.

We don’t really know who these kids are. We just know they’re random kids. Mm-hmm I did, you know, I thought it was funny. It’s a convertible, a soft top convertible. So the killer, like, you know, slashes through the top of it then finally the guy’s like, let’s get outta here. 

Todd: finally he’s willing and trumps 

Craig: in the front seat right underneath him.

Ends up getting. Yeah, I think he starts to move the car, but he ends up getting, you know, pulled up out and stabbed or gets his throat SL or something with a 

Todd: very, very long Dolly in on her screaming and screaming and screaming, doing nothing else in the backseat. But watching this and screaming, I, I. I felt for this actress, I felt I could just be there on the set with her as she was probably doing, you know, 10, 15 takes of this.

All right. We just need you to scream nonstop, you know, for like 30 seconds at a time. right. And 

Craig: you don’t even see her get killed. No, the news, this is on a different college campus. We then immediately jump to another college campus where it’s like, The last day of the semester, it’s just like some lingering students.

Like, um, some of them, I, I guess most of the students are already done with their exams and have already left. So this is like the last day of exams and just a, a few students, um, Are lingering. And the news spreads. I, I think it’s radish who tells the other characters that there was a murder on this other campus, which I guess is just in like an adjacent town.

Oh yeah. Um, or something it’s so much. And he says they were both. It is, it’s a lot of walking and talking. He says, um, that there were, that a couple, two kids were killed, so we know she died, but we don’t even see it on. Camera. I don’t know. It’s just, yeah. Missed opportunities left and right. It truly seems like it 

Todd: really is.

And you know, again, it’s very typical, right? Well, first of all, it goes back to the 1950s. You know, if it wasn’t a horror movie, it was just. Sci-fi movie of a couple making out in a car. And there’s a comment that, you know, crashed nearby in the woods that they have to investigate, get attacked by aliens.

So it, it definitely starts out for a guy, a guy who’s trying to do something different. He starts straight off the bat with the most cliche thing you could think of. And then it jumps again into more cliche as you’re on the college campus. And it’s. But it’s excessive walking and talking and it’s shot.

Well, yeah, I was actually kind of impressed at how a lot of this was done in one take and would, you know, would move from one couple to the next or another couple would kind of pass by the camera while another couple Uhhuh was coming towards the camera. You know, that, that requires a lot of coordination.

It requires some pretty good acting skill to not flub your lines and all that stuff. But, but the dialogue is just so hilarious. And of course they start talking about the final exams. Oh, well, why do I even need to study C. Oh, what was that guy’s name? Mark talking to, uh, Janet or Courtney. And I love Courtney’s response.

Well, that is a problem with 

Craig: education. They do keep trying to teach you all that stuff for 

Todd: while. Okay. Yes. It’s trying to fill it with dialogue. It is anyway, it establishes that we’re on a college campus and there are college people who are doing college things. And one of those things is taking the final exam.

The framework of the movie and that’s really about, oh, and then, you know, let’s radish pop in as the nerdy guy who then gives us all the information, a dump of, you know, AJ here are those killers on the other day. Ha ha. And then the offi guy who comes running by and knocks wild man. You know, knocks rashes books out of his hand and turns around, 

Craig: you know, and yeah.

And they all, like, they’re all like, um, goofy, old, wild, like that’s, that’s not funny. Like no people, isn’t funny. They all thought it was hilarious though. Well, even radish, like all, you know, old wild man again, and sometime later in the movie, they like break into his room. And push him around, like pick him up by his shirt and stuff.

And after they leave, he just kinda rolls his eyes and shakes his head. Like all those silly guys, like, no, it’s not funny. And it’s so weird. I mean, it’s a movie, so whatever get over it. But you know, there’s, there’s only supposedly this handful of students left, but they all know each other and are best friends, even though.

They don’t really seem to have a whole lot in common. Like when I first saw Courtney and mark walking and talking together, I thought, oh, okay, here’s our couple, you know? Yeah. Like this is gonna be like our final couple. Like she’s obviously the final girl. He’s gonna be the nice guy that tries to help her probably will get killed, but you never know.

Um, no, but he’s not, he’s one of the douche bags. He’s like the he’s the leader of the douche bags. and it what’s so strange about it is like at first they’re I don’t know, their behavior seems, you know, fairly innocent. They’re just kind of douchy by the end they’re like these drug dealers it goes into extreme.

You’re willing. Break an inner to, and, and destroy property to steal drugs so they can sell them on campus, which is 

Todd: like an idea they just come 

Craig: up with. But they’re all they’re. Yeah, but, but they’re all best friends and they’re all sleeping with one another and, uh, it’s weird. 

Todd: Yeah. And it’s it’s well, and I guess they keep saying over and over again.

Oh, there’s hard. Hardly anyone around anywhere. It’s hardly anyone here, like, I guess some of the final exams are running a little late or something, and most everybody’s left and it’s just, like, you’ve said this group of people, but there’s still going to the cafeteria and the cafeteria is still full of people and 

Craig: running and fully stocked.

Right. Fully stock. Well, what I thought, you know, my assumption. Having been to college with, you know, the college that I went to. So I assume most colleges are on an alternating schedule. So you have classes Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and, and classes Tuesday, Thursday. So on Thursday, a lot of people are gonna be done with their exams if they don’t have Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes.

So they would be gone. So that, that made sense to me. It 

Todd: could happen. Yeah. It just doesn’t really, it could happen, but lay out on the screen in a convincing. Uh, 

Craig: I mean, it looks like a small school anyway, and there’s still a lot of people around mm-hmm when it’s convenient for there to be a lot of people around.

But then when it’s not, then there’s nobody around. Like, 

Todd: just these people all hang out, know each other. Yeah. 

Craig: right later in the movie, when. There’s peril, which again, I guess, you know, maybe the it’s nighttime, maybe the exams are done, and these are just like the last lingering people. But when Courtney, who is the final girl ends up, you know, running around, she’s like banging on every door.

There’s nobody around. She can’t. ROS anybody. It it’s just, you know, the, this last group of like six kids that we’ve been following are the only people who are still there just so that they can get picked off. Yeah. I wish there was more interesting stuff to talk about, I guess the only other kind of interesting thing, but again, it bothers me and I think that it bothers me only because I’m coming from a modern perspective, like apparently.

Okay. So. We see, I, in my notes, I kept calling it a creep van. We, we, we see this creep van like creeping, you know, through campus and we see POV shots, you know, from the interior of the van, 

Todd: it comes up to every building on campus. At some point it’s kind of funny. It keeps 

Craig: cutting to it. Yeah. And there’s ominous music and you know, it feels very much like Halloween, like, you know, Michael Myers stalking around in his car or whatever, as it turns out, there are actually two creep fans and right.

At some point. like there, the, the chemistry final is going on and this one creep van, we see that there are multiple people in it in ski masks with, with machine guns. Mm-hmm and they jump out of the van and start shooting people. And you see people getting shot and going down. Yes. Yes. And like there’s carnage everywhere.

Meanwhile, in the exam room, the, the, um, Oh, oh God, I don’t remember what you call. ’em the, the monitors, the people who are like watching to make sure people aren’t cheating. They’re distracted. So mark, like fake scores, his own. Test and puts an 82 on it, which is the score that he has to get to pass.

Otherwise he’s gonna get kicked outta school or whatever, and he takes it and he puts it on the bottom of the graded thing. So like he takes advantage of this as it turns out that was the plan. This is a distraction, but it looks like a full on terrorist attack. Yes. And that’s what it’s meant to look like.

As it turns out it’s a prank, it’s a, a prank put on by the fraternity, I guess, to. Distract from or delay the exams. And when it’s over, everybody just kind of walks away and laughs like . 

Todd: That was funny. That was hilarious. What? Oh, what’s even funnier is when the sheriff comes out with his attitude and pulls up in his car and is like, so wish one of you wise guys came out.

And called me about a shooting going on, 

Craig: on campus. Yeah. He’s not really all that pissed off about the prank. No, he’s pissed off that he, that he was bothered by it. That somebody that, because radish called the police as you should, when you witness a terrorist attack. But that, yeah, when the, when the guy shows up.

He’s not particularly concerned about the prank. He’s more concerned about the fact that radish bothered him by calling him. He does kind of like ask who was responsible and, and radish gives him the license plate. Number of the van. He calls it in and it’s titled, uh, to wild man’s dad. So he kind of gives wild man a little bit of a hard time, a little bit.

basically, he just says like, you know, watch your back ear on my radar. That’s it? Yeah. But it’s enough to piss wild man. And mark off that that radish would even give. The license plate number radish didn’t even know, like, no, he didn’t know it was wild man’s van, you know, he was just trying to do the right thing.

The reason, this whole thing. Bothers me is because today those boys would be in federal prison. Yeah. like you don’t just fake terrorist 

Todd: attacks. Well, even 40 years ago because they’re talking on the camera because there’s the test, the actual test. And there’s some very, very cringy teacher dialogue there.

Nevermind.

Craig: Well, I’d love to go on talking like this. But I must warn you your quiz. Isn’t getting any shorter and your examination, Carrie, this they’ll let us add it to me. I should remind you you’re on the modified honor system, I’ll be leaving the room and the grading assistant will be watching you. And, um, they are both frustrated, Nazis, and if they observe any cheating, they have been instructed to alert a highly skilled sniper that I’ve placed in Nick Williams tower.

He was a gun bearer for the Eagle scout down in Texas. You mean Charles Whitman? One of my favorites and he’s anxious to bag a few 

Todd: students on his own. I mean, he makes a reference to an actual historical. Can, you know, at the time the biggest mass shooting event that had ever happened in America, you know, almost just in a blase and then they get in a little bit of a discussion about it and it’s in pretty bad taste I thought.

And so, you know, it’s kind of in a way sort of foreshadowed, but then when you talk about missed opportunities, I thought, okay, well now these guys are suitably pissed at radish. And so there’s going to be a thing where they. You know, like a prank gone wrong or a prank that puts them into peril where they’re, you know, trying to get back at radish, there’s like one scene or whatever, where they kind of rough ’em up a little bit and they just sort of let ’em go.

Yeah, that really goes nowhere either. So all this stuff kind of happens, but it’s just filler material that I guess we’re supposed to get to know these people better, but it’s kind of dumb and it’s very unrealistic and it’s a little cringy, like the dialogue and stuff. Uh, I think there are meant to be jokes here.

There are lines that you can tell are supposed to be funny, but they don’t come across. You know, the dope jokes, just don’t land. I remember, uh, reading on Wikipedia and scrolling down through some of the critical reception. I, I just had to laugh at what all movie said, which was quote, a hybrid of frat boy comedy and slash or thriller exploitation, which features no slashing, no humor and fails to exploit anything.

That’s. That was right on the nose in a sentence how this movie feels, especially during the first hour. Um, you’re so waiting for a kill and it’s just these hijinks and this weirdness and, and bizarre weirdness like a fake terrorist attack. 

Craig: Well, and, and like some stuff that’s funny that I laughed out loud at, but that I didn’t think was intentional.

Like when RA, when radish calls the. What he says into the phone is it’s happening. The psychopaths are here. right. And he, and he says something. He says something like that. Again, later when he actually. Finds a body. He calls the police again and he, he says something similar. I don’t remember. 

Todd: Yeah. Can’t, it’s, it’s a really long scene too.

Well, well, even when they’re in taking the test, right, you can hear gunfire and screaming, like machine gun. And people scream. Ah, and in inside the tester, meanwhile, they’re all kind of looking up half interested going, huh? I wonder what’s going on outside there? Like what use this? Yeah. It’s 

Craig: it’s it’s when, so when radish finds a body later, he, he calls the.

Police? No. Before he calls the police, he says to himself, it’s happening. It’s happening here. Call the police. Like he tells himself to call . 

Todd: There’s a lot of talking to themselves happening in this movie as well. 

Craig: Yeah. And again, I mean, I, I really did like. This, this guy, I liked this character and he gets killed eventually, which surprised me because yeah, me too.

He was, he was the most likable character and he was kind of the character. He was the one, like I said, he and Courtney have a conversation about, um, I mean, it’s, it’s a one sided conversation, but radish talks about. There are psychopaths all around and there are killers all around. He seems to be the one who’s kind of aware.

Like I, I read somewhere and we talk about, I feel like we mention him far too often on the podcast, but the character of Randy from scream. Right. Um, I read that was, was partially inspired by this guy, which I can see because yeah. You know, kind of the goofy nerdy one, but the one who is kind of aware. You know stuff, but I liked him and, uh, I was surprised when he was killed and, and very UN unceremoniously.

Uh, yeah. And it’s too, like, it, it’s sad because it’s obvious from the beginning. that he has a crush on Courtney mm-hmm um, and they keep ha they keep having these interactions throughout and they’re sweet. Yeah. Flirtatious interactions. Like, it doesn’t seem like she’s interested in him, but it seems like she takes him seriously as a person.

You know, she like, she likes him and appreciates him. 

Todd: It seems like she could be, but just not at this moment, she could be. Yeah. Mm-hmm 

Craig: because he’s because he’s really. Uh, really nice to her. And at one point, you know, very soon before he gets killed, they kind of have a heart to heart. And for no reason other than he’s just, he just thinks that there are random killers in the world.

He tells her to lock her door, cuz he’s worried about her. He just, for her safety or whatever, you know, that’s sweet and nice or whatever. She’s kind of. Um, lamenting she’s jealous of her roommate, Lisa, who can get whatever she wants because of her good looks and stuff. And, you know, she talks about, she’s like, I’m not mad at Lisa.

I like her, you know, it’s not like I don’t like her. It’s just, it doesn’t seem fair that she doesn’t have to work for anything that she gets whatever she wants. And he said, well, you know, That that’s really not how it works. You know, there will be a price that she has to pay, you know, at some point, um, you know, but she’s just utilizing what she has, but you have things that you can utilize to.

And he actually, he leaves, he, he leaves, uh, the room and tells her to lock the door and she does, but apparently there’s two doors. To their dorm room. So he just walks down to the other one. She opens it and he’s like, I just wanted to tell you, um, that you have, uh, a pretty face two, um, even prettier than Lisa, then he just walks away and like talks to himself in the hallway.

Like that was a really stupid thing to do. but it seemed like, you know, there was kind of something budding between them. Mm-hmm and then. He goes off to like, of course, because he’s the only nerd on campus. He’s like the manager of the football team or whatever. So he has to go like do athletic equipment inventory in the middle of the night.

Yeah. In the middle of the night, on the last day of the semester, he goes and he finds a dead body. And his first thought after trying to call the police who don’t believe. Because they’ve already been fooled once by the whole terrorist thing, so they totally write him off. So he hangs up the phone and is like, fine.

I’m gonna have to take action myself. And then he says, Courtney, and he sprints back to her room. He’s flying well. And like, he’s nice. You know, he’s concerned about her. It’s heroic. I’m expecting them, you know, him to kind of be her shining night, you know, and. He, he frantically knocks on her door. It’s like Courtney, Courtney.

Um, and then the killer just punches his hand through the door and grabs him and pulls him through. And the next thing, the next time we see him, he’s just dead hanging there in the door. Yeah. Again, missed opportunity. You know this if fine, we get the final girl. Running around, we get the third act, body dump where, you know, we see all these bodies or whatever, but I just think it could have been a lot more interesting if they had been there together, at least for a while.

Yeah. If he had had more opportunity because he’s been portrayed as this kind of, you know, the, the, the writer director. Came up with the word with the name radish, because it sounds like nebbish, which is a, um, a Yiddish word, which means a person, especially a man who is regarded as pitifully and effectual Tim or submissive, you know, they they’ve set him up to be like that, right.

To be that guy. It, what a great opportunity. It would’ve been then to let him have a moment. Heroism. Yeah. That he’s deprived of that, which I just felt like. It was a disappointment. 

Todd: Yeah. There’s this level of care, you know, put into the writing of the movie, you know, aside from just giving us a lot of scenes to show these people talking, interacting, it really doesn’t end up amounting to anything terribly satisfying.

Right? As far as character development goes, the stereotypes just kind of remain stereotypes. There are a lot of missed opportunities with certain things and the killer himself. Just can be anywhere magically he wants, which is yep. Typical for these movies, but maybe even more obvious here that it’s just to the point where it gets kind of ridiculous to the point where I thought maybe they were trying to be funny, but honestly, the tone of the movie doesn’t really support that.

I mean, there’s one. Where the killer chases was it Gary? I don’t remember. We’ve got Janet and Gary, Gary’s a pledge of this fraternity. And so yeah, he keeps popping in every now and then. And the, what are those guys? Mark and, and wild man are sending him to do things oh, sending him in to steal the, the test papers or whatever from the professor’s office.

So I guess they’re gonna take more exams tomorrow or something. I don’t know. Uh, and, and. There are stalking scenes there that are kind of cool, but again, don’t end up amounting to anything because we’re still not an hour into the movie yet. and I thought there were some effective stalking scenes actually, and the music was quite good.

See, 

Craig: and I thought the stalking scenes were stupid. Like I felt like they were. I thought they were going for a Mike Myers vibe. Yeah. But like, in my, in my notes, you know, every once in a while I just have creeper bee creeping, like , he’s like, he’s just hanging out in the background. Well, there’s just seems, and, and he seems to be particularly interested in Courtney.

Like he’s following her around and watching her. Why. No, no 

Todd: reason. No. And that’s why I said earlier, like it was so confusing that, that, uh, he seems to be interested in Courtney. So I’m like, oh, okay. Like there’s no. And then there’s a time when he seems to be interested in Lisa, but no, and, and then I realized, now this killer’s not really interested in anybody in particular, they just gotta get him in the background of a bunch of scenes, right.

To give us a bunch of jump scares and supposedly build. You’re right. They were going for that Mike Myers in the shadows. He’s there in one second. And then as soon as the camera whips back, he’s not, but because there was really no payoff ever for it, it was just maddening. But, um, this guy, Gary, right? Uh, the oh, pledge.

Oh, I love the fraternity. Yeah, guys, I’ll do the things that you want me to. And there’s this thing where he’s pinning Janet. And we ne even though we really never see much, but I think one introductory scene of him and Janet being affectionate or emotional. Yeah. Everything else is just him getting taken advantage of by these other two dudes, he goes to steal that paper.

And when he, and you know, and there’s again, killer in the background, but nothing comes of it because when he comes downstairs, the fraternity guys are there to. And they grab ’em and they take ’em out. It’s magically daytime again, and they tie ’em to a tree. In the middle of campus and just cover him in shaving cream and frosting or whatever dump stuff on him, literally strip him down to his underwear and then kudos to this actor.

They pour like a huge bucket of ice into his shorts. Mm-hmm . And I thought, holy shit, that, uh, that didn’t look comfortable for anybody. No. Right. And then they just leave him there and everybody just walks off. Ha ha ha ha funny guys. And in the meantime, Janet, doesn’t give a shit. She’s gone back to the room to talk a little bit more with Courtney about, oh, he pinned me all this stuff.

Oh, I don’t know if I’d like him. Oh, if he likes me. Oh, you, you there’s this long. Then we finally get back to him and I’m like, oh my God, he’s still tied to that tree. 

Craig: yeah. And, and, and it’s like nighttime now, but his underwear is still full of ice. That. This must have been magic ice. 

Todd: It, it makes no sense, but you know, again, in the middle of the tree tied to this tree in the middle of the, of the, of the quad, even the local, I don’t know what he was like, the security guard on campus or whatever.

We see a little bit Milton pops by and you think he’s gonna cut him loose and he doesn’t. Yeah. And then Janet’s finally. Uh, you know what, I guess I like him after all, I guess I’m gonna have to go down and free him. And so she goes down and, uh, this is our first kill, right 

Craig: aside from the opening scene.

Yeah. Okay. So now we are an hour into the movie and Gary is tied to the tree. And apparently this is a tradition thing. Like if you’re, if the fraternity brothers find out that a pledge has given their pledge pin to a girl, This is what they do. They tie them to a tree and then the girl has to come and, and let ’em go, but you’re right.

Like, like you said, like Janet’s not, she doesn’t particularly care. She’s like, I don’t even know if I wanna participate in this. It’s so childish. okay. I guess I’ll go, right? Yeah. So we see her. You know, slowly making her way there. And then we see him and he hears something. And then from it’s a huge tree.

Like the trunk is enormous. Oh, massive. Um, so, you know, easily, somebody could be concealed behind it and, and somebody cuts the ropes from behind and he thinks it’s her, but he’s like calling for her and she’s not there. And he is like, well, if it’s not, if it’s not her, who is it? And then apparently. From the time that he cut the ropes until a few seconds later, the killer scaled the tree crawled out on a branch so that he could then jump down right on top of Gary and stab him multiple times.

Yeah. But again, off, off screen, like you see, you see the killer and you see the knife going up and down. Um, but you don’t actually see the stab. Happen, but, but you’re right. That’s when they start and from then on it’s just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like every scene is somebody else getting killed? The next one is Janet mm-hmm

She shows up at the tree boyfriend’s not there. So she thinks that she sees. Well, she’s like following a trail of his clothes or something, which lead her up to a rooftop where the lights go out for a second, which scares her. So she runs, but then the killer just reaches out from behind a corner of a building and grabs her and pulls her off screen.

And presumably kills 

Todd: her. We never see her body. Do we? We never see her again. 

Craig: The jocks both get killed. Most of the, uh, Killings are with this, you know, I, I would say at least 12 inch, you know, butcher knife that he carries around with them all the time. The first jock wild man goes to the gym to steal pills so that they can sell them.

And, uh, while he’s there, the killer shows. The killer kills the lights in the gym, but wild man being an athlete, who’s in the gym all the time knows where the lights are. So he turns them on and the killer’s just standing there in the middle of the basketball court. This was the only sequence that I thought was a little bit interesting.

And in a different movie, mm-hmm, , would’ve been better. It would’ve been better because he doesn’t run away screaming. He he’s a huge. The, this wild man guy is, is huge. And the killer is huge too, but you know, wild man, rather than fleeing, he runs straight at him. Like he’s gonna take 

Todd: him out. And this guy just kicks the crap out of him.

Yeah. 

Craig: He breaks his arm. Immediately, and then just beats the crap out of him and then ends up killing him in a weight machine. Like he, he pulls the weights out and he takes, I don’t, I don’t lift. So I don’t know what these machines are called. I I’ve used them Nautilus machines. Yeah. Like a Nautilus machine.

And he, the, the, the wire that the weights are suspended from, he pulls it out and wraps it around the wild man’s neck and then release. The weights. So it pulls ’em back and, and strangles them, which I thought was actually, you know, a fitting. kill for this big, strong jock who probably spends most of his time in that weight room anyway.

Yeah. And it looks okay. I, I read that there was, uh, a scary moment. Something went wrong when they were filming this. And, uh, the, the actor who played wild man really got strangled, um, by, by the machine and, uh, passed. Yeah. The other actor, the actor who played the killer realized that something was wrong and got him out that he was already unconscious.

Um, so that’s kind of scary, like that’s scarier than anything in the movie. yeah, it truly is. And then he, and then he kills the other jock, you know, he, he just chases him around and stabs him. Everybody kind of 

comes 

Craig: to the. Yeah, everybody comes to the 

Todd: gym. The other jock, this is where I thought it kind of got silly is because the other jock ends up running to a boiler room and locks himself in there.

And, and again, it’s like this killer can be anywhere at once. He he’s stumbling around the boiler room. The killer we know is locked outside the door. So he’s just going deeper into the boiler room and he comes to two doors that say danger do not enter. He pulls open one and it’s just like a closet, but has an.

Door at the end of it. And he walks slowly through it. And the killer jumps out of a barrel that was sitting there the entire time to stab him. Wow. That was hilarious. I, I thought, I thought it was, I thought, is this movie trying to be a comedy? You know, because this, 

Craig: this, if it was, it didn’t work because it wasn’t funny.

Todd: No, no, it wasn’t funny. It was just a head scratch. 

Craig: Yeah. And, and then radish goes to the gym and, and gets killed in the way that I already said. And then Lisa is waiting for the professor to come find her in the art studio for one last fling or whatever. She just gets very UN unceremoniously stabbed.

Like, yeah, we see her, we see her waiting there all night long, and then the killer just shows up and stabs her. And that’s it. The. 

Todd: I am so surprised you haven’t said anything special about the actress who plays Lisa? 

Craig: I didn’t look at any of them because I didn’t recognize any of 

Todd: them. Deanna Robbins looks like from 1984 to 1985.

She was in 59 episodes of days of our lives. Well, 

Craig: they all were, I don’t know. 

Todd: That’s your thing though, man. That’s your thing. I 

Craig: know. I know, but I’m telling you, I didn’t, I, I didn’t even write down any of their names because I didn’t recognize any of them. 

Todd: I think one of our patrons suggested that we do a mini, so for them about days of our lives, uh, and soap opera.

Uh, connections because you’re like the expert on them. 

Craig: It sounds, it sounds like a good idea. I have a feeling it would end up being really boring. yeah, I’m looking now. Yeah. I, I don’t even recognize her character’s name. Of course. I would’ve only been five when her run ended. this was before 

Todd: your. Yeah, your days of our lives, but, 

Craig: uh, so she gets killed and then the killer chases Courtney around for a while chases are all over campus.

Oh God. Um, there’s a part where she, like, she locks him in a cooler, but then he just pops out of a different door. Like. A diff 

Todd: like a different cooler. I don’t, I didn’t understand that bit, but okay. Either this, this cooler’s really large and needs three doors that are right next, next to each other, right?

No, 

Craig: it didn’t make any sense 

Todd: or was a different cooler entirely. None of that made sense, but it’s just hilarious how she goes from building to building. She’ll get outside and run around just to go to another building to go. And run up the stairs or lock herself into some place that the killer can get into.

So then she can run out. I, I feel like it, I was getting a nice little tour of the campus through this and all the locations we have been to before. Yeah. But without the typical, oh, she discovers all the bodies along the way. Right. Which is what I was, what was waiting to happen and, and didn’t, and so that was another missed opportunity.

I. But maybe he was just trying to be different, I guess, but she ends up where we started. She actually started out in the top of the tower of. Like kind of clock tower building or whatever on campus. And she decides the safest place for her to be is to go all the way to the top of that clock tower.

Right. And wait for the killer to follow her up the stairs, which he does. Yeah. And then there’s this coach who just. Shows up. We saw him earlier. He had a little bit of banter with the sheriff and said a little something to wild man, and then left and said a little something to one of the other guys, Mitch, the on campus security guard about going hunting or something.

And so I guess that’s his excuse to show up what, what has to be like one or 2:00 AM by now? Just. Parks in front of that building conveniently and yells out, Hey, Mitch, ready for the trip. And then when he doesn’t get an answer, he hears a scuffle inside. So he gets his bow and arrow and goes inside and sees the killer, pursuing this well, sees the killer, I guess, with her at the very top of the tower from down below.

Yeah. And he’s, you know, it’s just like a spiral staircase that goes around this very small sort of atrium. And so he aims his bow and shoots at the killer. This was interesting. Like the killer immediately reaches out and grabs the arrow in the middle of the air. Yeah. And, and I thought like it, to me, it looked like.

The way they did this scene was he had the arrow in his hand. He just swung his hand up really fast. But in the, I M B B it claims that the man who played the killer could actually catch arrows in mid-air was trained to do it and suggested this. I, I, I don’t know. I find that really hard to believe. Maybe, 

Craig: well, he’s a stunt man.

The guy that plays the killer is a stunt man and he’s, uh, trained in martial arts. So I don’t know. Maybe arrows go really fast. I, I, I certainly couldn’t catch one, but whatever. Maybe, 

Todd: maybe there’s a way to throw him slowly. 

Craig: Who knows? Maybe. So the, so he catches the arrow and then he. Stabs the coach with it.

Um, and so then it’s just the final girl, Courtney and the killer at the top of the staircase. And they scuffle briefly the killer steps in some rotten wood and kind of trips and loses his balance and loses his knife over the banister. And she takes advantage by grabbing a random board and wailing on him.

yeah. Wailing on him until he falls over. The ledge and drops, like, I don’t know, six stories or, or something. It it’s far. And, and he’s, you know, down at the bottom, splayed out blood coming out of his head and she goes down and of course it’s a slasher movie, so you gotta get that one last scarin, the, the killer grabs or ankle.

And so she grabs his knife, which is laying nearby and just stabs him repeatedly. Again, we don’t see it. We see the knife going up and down. Um, but we don’t see it actually going into the body. And this part had to be trimmed to keep the movie from getting an X rating, which makes absolutely no sense. No, there is no gore in this movie at all, but apparently in, in the initial cut, she stabbed him 18 times.

And apparently that was just too brutal. So they trimmed it down to. Which I guess made it it’s less brutal. right. Less brutal. And so they got there R rating. 

Todd: That’s six less brutal Craig, you know, there’s, 

Craig: I don’t even know that this movie would get a, I don’t think this movie would even get an R rating today.

I, I would imagine would get a PG 13. There’s no, there’s no nudity. There’s no, I don’t recall. Really any even 

Todd: swearing there’s a quick boob flash when, um, is there. When Lisa’s character is in the art studio and she disrobe and puts on wraps herself up. In a blanket to lure, which she thinks is the teacher, but ends up being the killer.

Yeah. I mean, it’s very 

Craig: brief. Yeah. It’s ultimately very tame, um, by today’s standards. But I would say even by 1981 standards, it was pretty tame and that’s it, you know, after she kills him, she goes out and sits on the stairs, uh, of the clock tower and just sits there and hangs her head and cries and the credits roll and, and it’s over.

Yeah. Uh, yeah. That’s that’s how I feel about it too. Yawn. Like it’s okay. I mean, we we’ve, we’ve certainly seen worse. Um, well, 

Todd: as is so bad. It’s good movie. I was actually chuckling, you know, again at the unintentionally funny bits, because there were, I think more than usual, I thought this movie was loaded with it from the killer popping out of a random.

To the insanely bad dialogue, some of the really terrible acting that was just so bad, it was cute. Oh my man, I, I, there were so many quotable lines from here, you know, that were just so hilariously bad that I enjoyed that aspect. The buildup, even though I got increasingly frustrated at the fact that nothing of significance was happening and that things that I thought were being set up for payoffs never.

Were going anywhere ne never ended up being significant. And like you said, the missed opportunities of the, of, of you could have had something really cool there with radish and a couple of the other characters that, you know, in the hands of a more competent writer. Um, somebody probably could have doctored the script up into something that would’ve been more interesting.

Ultimately it’s just, Ugh. Right. It was okay. It’s one of 

Craig: those, I, I hate to dog on it too much because it’s not awful. It’s just the, it’s not parti. I understand. Why not noteworthy? No, it’s not particularly noteworthy. And so I understand why I, I’ve not often heard it talked about, I, I don’t often see.

Referenced. Um, and I get why it’s just, it’s kind of forgettable. It’s not terrible. Um, and if you, you know, if you’re looking for an 80 slasher that you haven’t seen, whatever, it’s, it’s fine. It’s just, it’s nothing to write home about. 

But 

Todd: if you’re looking for something to goof on with some friends, I think this is pretty high on the.

Craig: I guess I didn’t find it that amusing. There were a couple of times that I laughed out loud because the lines were so silly. Um, mm-hmm my, my favorite thing about the movie was. the character of radish. I liked him. He was an endearing, charming character and, and actor. And you know, he, I lied. I said, I didn’t look up anybody.

That’s not true. I looked up, I looked him up. He’s a very successful producer today. He does mostly, uh, I think like made for TV, like, uh, lifetime, like romance type movies, but yeah, a lot yeah, a lot. And like multiple movies every year. Um, so he has gone on he’s very, very successful, so good for him. Yeah.

good. That’s it good for him? 

Todd: good for him. And there you go. Final exam. Yeah. Good for. Good for the slightly less annoying screech that we got in this movie. right. Right. Well, thanks again for listening. And this does wrap up our theme month of 1981 slasher movies. We hope that you had as much fun listening to it as we did.

Uh, we’ll have force more movies coming your way as always just, uh, give us a shout out online and let us know what you thought. This theme month. These movies. And this podcast, share it with a friend. If you can, you can find us if you just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw podcast, just any one of those places you find us, whether it be a podcast hosting site where you wanna leave us a review or a webpage or Facebook page, where you leave us a comment or Aon page where you can, uh, throw a couple bucks our way every month and get a few, uh, special bonuses.

And just the joy in your heart of supporting us, keeping us going. We appreciate all of you listeners, no matter. And, and we love to interact with you as well. We love until next time. I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Tom Savini says he is most proud of his special effects work in this week’s film. We’ve been wanting to check this one out for a long time, so enjoy our discussion of our third slasher film from 1981 this month.

The Prowler

Episode 306, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw podcast

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

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, here we are on week three of our very specific theme month of 1981. slasher movies cuz 1981 was a pivotal year for slasher movies. Anyway, there’s sure were a lot of them. We’ve done several horror movies in 1981.

If you get on our Patreon, uh, and you become a member, you can visit our mini. So where we talk about exactly why. I’m not gonna pretend we did. It was all me why I thought had this crazy idea of choosing 1981. And, uh, all of the movies that we’ve seen in 1981, as well as the ones we kind of wanna see, uh, and, uh, why it just sort of seemed to be a banner year for slashers, at least a pivotal sort of turning point between between two eras.

So we’ve done two before and this one, uh, is one that I have been wanting to do forever. The Prowler. I don’t know. It’s just, you know, I never saw it growing up. Have you, have you seen this? Nope before or? Nope. Okay. So yeah, I never seen it before, but it, it popped up every now and then on lists, surprisingly, a couple magazines, put it on one of the top 25 or 50 slashers of all time.

Not in like the top 10, but a little lower on the list, but I’d never seen it. I don’t even know if I’d seen it on the shelves in the horror section when I was out there, it’s purely something that the internet delivered to me. Mm-hmm this is a movie that Tom Sini, the. Inevitable special effects artist, you know, who kicked off the Friday, the 13th franchise did incredible work on, um, night of living dead and Dawn of the dead.

And is an, a legend in the special effects industry. Still consider this considers this, some of his best work. In fact, he was the man behind the mask for at least a kill scenes in this movie. Right. Uh, and so, uh, I thought, well, that’s pretty significant. And then the director of it is, um, a guy named Joseph Zeto.

Yeah. Joseph Zeto and you know, , I know when you hear that, right.

Joseph Zeto, uh, he’s has 10 directing credits to his name, the Prowler. He did. He did a horror movie before this called Blood Rage, which sounds kind of interesting. This movie apparently got him enough cred to do Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, which when was, when Tom Savini was invited back into the series, they thought that was gonna be the last, uh, Friday, the 13th movie.

Um, and so they, you know, put their heart and soul into it, Corey Feldman’s in there anyway. Um, and then he goes on from this to do a bunch of like, it’s just total eighties. I love it. Um, Missing In Action Invasion, USA, Red Scorpion, Delta force. Eighties action movies that were also a dime a dozen, just like the horror movies were also was the executive producer for he’s back the man behind the mask.

I’m a big Alice Cooper fan. And Alice Cooper did the, the music video for the theme song of Friday the 13th. So it’s kind of interesting, but uh, now he’s consulting producer for a TV series. He hasn’t really done much since the late eighties, but anyway, this is one of his seminal works. And so we’re reviewing it.

Craig: I assumed you picked this movie. It’s so funny, but I just assumed that you picked this because the director was the director of Blood Rage, which is not a movie. That sounds interesting. It’s like one of your favorite movies 

Todd: no, no, no, Craig you’re mistaken. This is different. This is BloodRage. One word. Blood Rage

two words is the Thanksgiving one. Okay. Bloodrage, one word, which don’t get me wrong. Got me excited when I first saw it, but I thought, no, I would’ve known this in advance. Okay. Bloodrage, one word, is about like a, a guy killing prostitutes. Gotcha. Apparently, maybe we should end up doing it at some point because it’s got kind of Maniac vibes.

It’s like a very underground kind of grimy New York sort of style movie. That might be interesting in its own. Right. But 

Craig: no. Okay. Yeah. Easy mistake I suppose. Um, yeah, but yeah, it’s interesting that you mentioned Maniac because Tom Savini came immediately off Maniac and did this movie. Hmm. And if you see Tom’s name on something, you know, you’re in for a treat because the guy is just a genius when it comes to, uh, practical, special effects.

He’s, he’s just fantastic. And that’s, you know, I was talking about this movie last night and I said, there’s not much notable about it except. The special effects are amazing. Yes. Like these are some of the best practical effects that I’ve ever seen. I was 

Todd: blown away. Yeah. I was not expecting to be blown away. I was also, my stomach was turned a little bit. Yeah, 

Craig: right. Well, I, I read the, you go hand in hand Uhhuh I read somewhere that, um, the director went to a screening and I don’t know if it was an usher or a security guard or, or somebody he told this guy that he was the director and the guy was like, oh man, you really killed those people.

Didn’t you like, that’s how real it looks. It really looks super real, frankly, like to the point where usually when you see practical effects, you can, you, you can see behind the curtain a little bit, you know, you can kind of tell how they did it, 

Todd: little stretchy latex, or like you kind of that, that head looks a little fake, you know, that kind of thing.

Right. And 

Craig: this, there were at least a couple of the kills that I was like, I have no idea how he did that because it looks totally real. Mm-hmm , it’s crazy. Overall. Really? I was underwhelmed with the movie. Yeah. But it’s worth the price of admission just for the special effects of which there are a lot because.

There are quite a few kills and they happen pretty regularly. You don’t have to wait around. There are some scenes that I thought dragged out a little bit, but again again. Yeah, I know, again, it pays off with, uh, the kills that look amazing. It 

Todd: does again, just laying out all the cards on the table. My sort of summary of how I felt about this movie is exactly as yours as a story.

It’s stupid. Mm-hmm, it, it’s not atypical for any slasher movie. We watch. In fact, it’s very much paint by numbers, checks all the boxes. It’s got all of the stuff that you expect from a 80 slasher movie, which I like that nowadays is why I watched them. I kind of wanna see all of the kit and the, you know what, I’m going to expect the formula.

Yeah, sure. But the form. Yeah, the formula. But in this case, there’s a formula. But the numbers don’t add up. Yeah. 

Craig: There’s nothing to it. Like the first of all, they set up a motivation that doesn’t make any sense. Mm-hmm and then they introduce this cast of characters who have no personality at all. Uh, you don’t, you don’t get to know anything about these people other than, you know, just the very most surface that like, she’s the good girl and she’s the kind of bitchy slutty girl.

That’s it. They have no defining personal characteristics at all. I D I didn’t care about them at all. I barely bothered to even write down their names because who cares? Yeah. Who the killer was? I thought was super predictable. Yeah. Within the first 15 minutes, I was like, oh, it’s that guy? . And it 

Todd: was the only one it 

Craig: could have been.

Well, I, if, if it was anybody that we had been introduced to at all, there’s only one person it could have been. And, uh, it, it was then again, the motivation didn’t make any sense as far as timelines are concerned. Yeah. So all you’re right. Like all the pieces are there, but they just don’t fit together.

Todd: Right. Yeah. Motivations don’t make sense. Choices that characters make in the movie are absolutely baffling relationships between people are strange to the point where, when I was done with the movie, I, so I watched it on my computer. I have VLC player. I, I used to play video files and it automatically restarts, like it just loops mm-hmm when the movie’s done.

And I just let it go, cuz I was like, all right, I think I need to rewatch at least the first five, 10 minutes of this movie. Maybe it can fill in some gaps because I had so many questions at the end of the movie. There were, there were just so many gaps in continuity in, in motivation. And I, it did help a little bit watching the first 10 minutes, but it’s because I’d already seen the movie.

So I remembered some names. And so I was listening for names. I don’t know, man. It’s it’s just, it’s not 

Craig: good. Well then you’ll have to fill me in because ultimately I don’t get it. Like, 

Todd: uh, it’s still tenuous, but we’ve seen much worse. We’ve seen way worse. 

Craig: Yeah. It’s. It’s typical. 

Todd: And to its credit, it’s actually well made in a, in a technical sense.

Like that’s true. The cinematography is nice. Yeah. The, 

Craig: the cinematography is better than some of the, even the Friday, the 13th movies. Yeah. 

Todd: It really is. The people are pretty, you know, they’re, they’re nice to look at, you know, the acting is. Fine. There’s nothing terribly wrong with it. It’s pretty typical for the era and the material they were given to work with.

And that, like we said, the kills are insanely brutal and impressive. Uh, so, you know, it’s, it’s, we’ve seen really amateurish shit and this is not amateurish shit. It’s just very poorly written. And maybe that’s the worst thing about it really. Mm-hmm it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Right. So, yeah, I, I, which is a.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s not as bad as I expected it to be because I had never even heard of it. Like to maybe there are people out there who know about this movie, but I had never even heard of it. So for me, it seems to be kind of obscure and usually. The things that are obscure are obscure for a reason.

And yeah, maybe there’s maybe the bad writing is the reason here, but they shopped it around to production companies and one production company made an offer to release it. But, um, the producer of the film, I guess wasn’t satisfied with the offer and decided to just fund the release himself. So they blame that limited release for the reason that it isn’t more well known.

Mm. I don’t know, but I knew nothing about it coming in, but I was looking forward to it, especially when it started, it seemed to kind of have kind of an interesting premise. It started with promise. Yeah. Like it opens, it opens with this news footage from 1945 of the queen, Mary, the ship returning all of these, um, soldiers from world war II.

And they, you know, it talks about. , you know, how all of these men are heroes and will be celebrated by their communities and by their loved ones, et cetera. But then the announcer’s like, except for those who will be getting a dear John letter. Mm . The opening feels like the beginning of an old movie. Like, it feels like this is gonna be a movie made in the 

Todd: forties, you know?

This, they did very, very well. Uh, I mean, first of all, like you said, it’s, it’s not just like an old, it’s like an old news reel, right? That they used to play. Yeah. Our boys are coming back from the war and blah, blah, blah. And it’s very well done. And it’s, it sounds like, and looks like something that would be from that era for 

Craig: some, the psychological victims of war.

It will be a long road back. These men will need time to rebuild the lives. They set aside when uncle Sam called for others, the GIS of the dear John letters, it means starting over replacing what they have 

Todd: lost. It starts out. The subtitle says it’s 1945. It’s got this big, gorgeous house that these college age, I think kids are coming in and having a graduation party.

And it’s a mix obviously, as it would be of soldiers who are coming back summer in uniform. And it’s really well executed. Like the costumes are on point. The hairstyles are on point. The language is on point. There’s a band playing on stage, playing jazz, you know, rag time, big band, time music. And even the announcer and the guy who’s up there, the stuff he’s saying and the way he’s saying it, it sells it a hundred percent.

And I was like, God, like these people knew what they were doing. Like, you know, they 

Craig: didn’t even wanna play. Keep your MI off. My girl, the drummer told 

Todd: me his wife wouldn’t 

Craig: let him in the house. 

Todd: If he ever showed up again where that 

Craig: little brown jug, 

Todd: so let’s cheer him up and everybody swings. We watched some of these low budget films and you know, they try it period.

And you know, it’s just obvious it’s low budget and they, they try it a little bit, but they don’t really know what they were doing. And I feel like these people knew it. Yeah. I felt like the movie could’ve continued that way for who knows how long I would’ve been satisfied. 

Craig: It would’ve been a better movie.

yeah, it would’ve been a better movie if they had stuck to 1945. But even before that, like right after the news footage, then you see, again, it looks almost like hitch cocky and or from that era, um, this letter, and it is a dear John letter from some young woman talking about, uh, I hate to have to say this to you.

I don’t wanna say it. And, and, and like the letter is scrolling so we can read along with it. It’s in black grainy, black and white. Um, and basically this girl is saying, I know I promised I’d wait for you, but I, I can’t wait any longer. I don’t know when you’re gonna be coming back. I’m young. I have to live my life now.

I’m so sorry. And then it’s signed Rosemary, which is supposed to be the setup presumably for the motivation, because then we find out when we, when we’re at this dance, um, it focuses on one young couple and they’re a good looking couple, but the, the guy wants to get out of there and go to the point, you know, to make out or make out point.

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, when they get there, they go to this really cool location, which was, you know, shot on a real location at a church. It’s, it’s a gazebo, um, in the middle of a pond, you know, with a bridge out to it really. Cool place. Yeah. And, and, you know, and it’s lit with like string lights and stuff looks cool.

They go out there, they’re making out a little bit, it’s very tame. Um, but then eventually the power goes out and we see this scary guy lurking, and eventually they are killed with a pitch fork. The guy drives the pitch fork through the both of them as they’re embracing one another. But he, the, the killer who is done up in like full military tactical gear.

So I guess completely unidentifiable, even his face is covered like in net mesh or something, which is 

Todd: weird. Hi, his face is covered in like a, I mean, it’s not modern. Maybe this is the way things were in world war II for like, I don’t know somebody who needs to be supremely camouflaged, Uhhuh, but I had a hard time believing that the killer could even see out of that.

Right. But it’s good. I mean, you know, for that, I mean, it’s supposed to be. Spooky. And so that it’s, it’s pretty spooky. 

Craig: Yeah. Well, and, and at the very last thing, he, the killer lays a rose in the girl’s hand. And I don’t know when it, it it’s, it’s very soon that we find out that this girl was the Rosemary from the letter.

Right. So it, it seems to set it up that the person that killed this couple was I just presumed the guy that she wrote the letter to like, yeah, he was scorned and potentially mm-hmm, damaged from his time in the war. And that’s logical. That makes sense. But then we jump to 19 80, 35 years later, 35 years 

Todd: later, 30, 19 80.

Craig: Yes. And, and they haven’t, and they’re 1980 and it’s the same location. And they’re setting up for a graduation dance again. And we find out from the main character, Pam, um, who, the second you see her? I say this, like every slash year movie, we watch the second, you see her, you know, she’s the final girl and she is, yeah.

She’s the nice, pretty blonde girl played by an actress named Vicky Dawson. She looked familiar to me, but then I looked at her credits and I didn’t recognize anything. Yeah. Um, I don’t know. Maybe 

Todd: she’s just could say that like about everybody in this movie, pretty much 

Craig: super familiar and yeah, I, I, I stopped writing down there.

The names of the actors, because every time I looked, I was like, I there’s nothing. I’ve seen that I can identify them from, I don’t know, maybe a lot of them have done soaps. You know, some of them are still working in film and TV, but one was 

Todd: in reservoir dogs. 

Craig: Yeah. Some of them have done some, some big things.

We find out very early on from her because she casually mentions that she has written an article for their school paper about the reason that they haven’t had this dance for the past 35 years. And it’s because this guy like captain or corporal or something. Clap him 

Todd: chat him. Yeah. Chat major, 

Craig: major.

Chatham has forbidden it for, I don’t know how he had the power to forbid it, but he has, and he’s forbidden it for the past 35 years because it was his daughter, Rosemary who had been murdered that night. Well, apparently he’s wheelchair bounds now and doesn’t have the authority to forbid it anymore. 

Todd: to, to prevent it anymore.

So, so for 35 years, they’ve all been shopping at the bit to have a graduation party in this house. And damnit, now that he’s had his stroke, they can go up against him. And so it’s so stupid. 

Craig: It’s weird. It doesn’t make any sense. And I was really. I was super confused because initially they’re, they’re talking about this, it’s a graduation dance.

I assumed it was high school. Yeah, 

Todd: me too. But I guess 

Craig: it can’t be though. It’s not, I guess it’s college. 

Todd: Look, if it’s high school, some people are robbing the cradle here that, well, see, that’s 

Craig: what I thought was weird because the main girl, Pam is really super flirty with the town deputy and I’m like, I, and I I’m in my mind, I’m like, well, I mean, we’re coming right off the seventies.

I guess high school closer though. High school girls were very much fetishized, you know, back in those days. So maybe that was, is a, a thing, but I think they’re supposed to be more college age. I don’t know who can tell. Yeah. Uh, they, they, you know, the, the way that these movies are cast, these actors could just have easily have been playing high school kids.

Todd: Yeah. The actor who played him, he was a. Decent looking guy again. I thought I knew this guy, Christopher Gaman. I, I was like, oh, I’m gonna look him up. He’s gonna be in at least five other horror movies. And he’s not he’s, he’s been on TV in like the edge of night in 80 to 81 and a TV series called Texas two of things.

I’ve never seen. Hasn’t done anything since 1986, but apparently was a, a producer for soaps. Like as the world turns, he was an executive producer for like the whole series. So another world the same deal. He looks like a guy who would be in soaps, not a guy who would be producing soaps. Right. But he definitely looks older than her.

He’s the deputy of the town. And he’s up there flirting with all the girls. There’re hanging up the thing he flirts with the one girl flirts that the other girl Pam comes up. Oh, I see your eyes are wandering or something like that. Uh, and then you kind of realize they’ve got a little thing going, or probably have had a little thing going.

You know, it’s fairly casual, 

Craig: I guess, because he’s casual. Yeah. , he’s flirting with the other girls too kind of, or the other girls are flirting with him and he’s not well resistant to it. He’s very much open to it. It seems. And, and 

Todd: yeah, and, and we kind of get to go around, we get to meet the rest of the town and there’s just all these little cliches that sort of pop in, but in their own unique way, and it’s very disjointed, right?

Like he goes and, and so he goes, and he sees the sheriff and I don’t remember the Sheriff’s name, but immediately the sheriff tells him, Hey, uh, just to let you know, the state 

Craig: police called about Laura ago, somebody robbed a market up near Columbus, cut some kid up and took his car. They think may be headed this way.

Are you still gonna leave? And I can’t start this summer without fishing now, you know that I never could, besides you’ve been here for two years now, you can handle anything that might come along. 

Todd: You gotta be extra careful. like what? No, this is, should be a big deal. 

Craig: yeah, but, but I’m, but I’m leaving. Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Yeah. And if it’s not just call me and 

Todd: there’s a lot of reassurance going on here like this, I, I actually felt bad for this guy. I’m like it, you know, it was, he was throwing me shades of scream. You remember Dewey from scream? Yeah. Where? Yeah, totally. I just felt like Kevin Williamson took the Dewey character from this guy because he said he watched a ton of 80 slasher movies before he wrote scream, uh, and was inspired to write scream because he thought of how cliche and weird they were.

And I thought he got Dewey from the guy in this because although Dewey was like the brother of, one of the girls in scream in this way, he, it’s not too far off. He’s like no sort of a boyfriend of one of the girls, but he’s still being treated like. Inadequate. This is your big day. You’re gonna be by yourself in charge of the town.

While I go off on my fishing trip. And later on in the movie, Pam herself is like dissing on him, you know? So I, I felt, I felt major Dewey vibes there, and David Arquette did a better job than this guy did with it. but he had better material to work with 

Craig: too. Well. Yeah. I mean, David ake was playing it for the comedy as he does.

And as you know is really good at that. Right, right, right. This guy plays it straight, but it is, I think you may be on to something because they, they are, uh, strikingly similar and then it becomes for. About five minutes, a sorority house movie. where we meet, uh, I guess Pam lives in a sorority house and she’s got all dorms, his friends who we meet.

Yeah. They call it 

Todd: dorms. Is it dorms? They call it the dorms. That’s how I figured it was college. Yeah. But yeah, you’re right. It’s just the girls’ dorm or whatever, I 

Craig: think. Yeah. Yeah. And, and we are introduced to her friends who, again, really have no personalities. Like here, here are my descriptions. Sherry is the short blonde haired friend.

Uh, Lisa is the tall, skinny brunette friend. Like that’s it? Like they don’t have any other personality. Yeah. 

Todd: You I’m not E I couldn’t even keep track of. In the movie really? Uh, 

Craig: no. Well, you don’t have to. I mean, they’re just fodder for 

Todd: the killer, which is typical by the way. 

Craig: Yeah. And, and, and they’re all getting ready for the dance.

I did like this. I did like that. They just get to it. Like, it’s not like there’s this big build up, you know, like it’s the day of the dance. Let’s go to the dance. Yeah. So they’re all getting ready for the dance. Meanwhile, we see that the Prowler is getting ready too. He’s lacing up his boots and he’s getting ready for the dance.

He is at this, like they’re putting on their dresses, he’s lacing up his boots and like sheathing his knives and, and 

Todd: things. And here’s the other weird thing though, right? Like they’re talking about the, the house across the, which just is like across the lawn, basically. Right. Where they’re, they’re in the dorms and then there’s this big, beautiful mansion where major Chatham lives, they’re chatting about how, oh, major cha you know, oh, be careful undressing in front of the window major.

Chatham’s got eyes and like, oh yeah, he’s got eyes. Well then how about this? And the girl exposes their boobs and the major Chatham is indeed in the window across the way. Yeah. Uh, 

Craig: looking at them and he’s clearly on the second floor. And then later in the movie characters go to the house and one of them goes upstairs to look around and says everything up there is all wrapped up in sheets.

I doubt he’s even been up there in since his stroke because he is in a wheelchair and we just saw him up there. 

Todd: exactly. , it’s hilarious. I’ll major chat him. I have so many questions. About major chat with this movie, right? 

Craig: Why? Like, does he, he doesn’t even have any lines. No, he just creeps around and then he just disappears and I have no idea 

Todd: way, never say happened to him.

And, but a whole lot of shit happens in his house for some reason. I still don’t understand. Yeah. Yeah. Well, 

Craig: uh, again, you know, we get right to it. Like most of the girls are ready to go, but Sherry is taking the world’s longest shower. Yeah. And, um, I always appreciate that. So they, so yeah, I mean, and, and you get some nudity.

She, okay. So everybody else is left, but she’s still in the shower and we start getting like killer POV shots. Um, there are a lot of jump scares in this movie. Yeah. To the point where it really kind of becomes annoying, like. Okay, I get it. And actually, this is a good time to say I really liked the score of this movie.

Oh. And I thought that it, it would’ve been a really good score for a movie that for a better movie. Yeah. Or a scarier movie, because there’s so much. Tension and buildup in the score that in this movie only pays off with lame jump scares for the 

Todd: most part or not at all. Like that’s, what’s so maddening.

Sometimes the movie did not deserve this score. Right. But the score happens to provide sometimes oftentimes the only tension in the movie. Yes. I think nobody does more prowling than Pam and her boyfriend Uhhuh. the Prowler doesn’t prowl as much as these two do through scenes where they’re walking way too slowly down the hallway of an otherwise empty house wandering around.

I felt like sometimes the movie was just trying to meet its 90 minute run time. Oh my God. Even with that, it falls short at 89, but still like if it hadn’t had these long ass scenes that are supposed to be tension filled, however. The director, I think at this point or the editor or whoever’s responsible, doesn’t quite understand how to build the tension.

The score is the only thing that keeps it interesting. And nothing 

Craig: happens. Yeah. It’s just Pam and mark. Most of the time, like creeping around a house or even better. It, I feel like this happens at least two or three times. He’ll go to creep around someplace for a really long time and find nothing and, and leave her in the car.

Yes. And, and, and so we just, we just watch him prowling around finding nothing and her sitting in the car for like five minute stretches with nothing, nothing 

Todd: to her, nothing happens. right. But the music is acting like any second. Now some shit’s gonna go down. Right. It’s carrying the whole thing and other, but, but there’s no payoff.

Craig: We do get, you know, AF right after everybody else leaves, she’s still there. You think the Prowler is creeping up on her, but it’s a jump scare. It’s really her boyfriend, Carl. And he’s like, uh, you started without me. And she’s like, well, how fast can you get your clothes off? And he’s like, well, time me. And he goes into the bedroom and starts taking off his clothes.

But the Prowler pops up behind him and stabs him through the top of his head. Oh my God. Down the knife comes all the way out through the bottom and there’s lots of blood and this one looks pretty good. Yeah. I, I, I mean, no, that’s, that’s a lie. It looks really good. But compared to some of the other ones, this one’s almost like you just don’t see enough of it to be able to appreciate it.

Look, there is a lot of 

Todd: blood. I mean, I, I feel like it lingers on him for quite a while. Like on his face, his, his eyes like roll up into his head or 

Craig: something. I didn’t understand that his eyes go completely white. Yeah. I just figured I didn’t get it at all. Well, 

Todd: you know what I was thinking, first of all, this was super brutal and I was shocked that something, this brutal, I, you know what I was thinking of, actually, I was thinking of what was the movie.

I think it was pieces. When they’re on the water bed and the killer stabs this woman through the back of her head and it comes outta her mouth. Oh yeah. And that was pretty shocking cuz you don’t usually see something like that. And that hurts a lot. this guy, you know, he’s getting stabbed through the head, through the brain and it, it, you see the point of it come out his chin and it looks real.

I mean, it looks good to me. It does look good. It lingers on his face. And I think this is a thing about the kills in this movie that make it very different is that they lingered longer. Yes. Than these kills usually linger. And so it really uncomfortably so focused on the suffering. It’s not like stabbed through the head.

I’m dead. It’s like stab through the head. Right. And you can see the life slowly going out of this guy in a very unpleasant way. His eyes are rolling up into his head. I don’t know what happens if you get stabbed in the brain, but probably a bunch of weird shit. You know what I mean? That bothered me a lot.

Craig: yeah, it was gross. But immediately then Sherry is in the shower and, uh, the, the door of the shower is, uh, kind of opaque, foggy. So she sees. A man approaching. She assumes it’s Carl, but it’s not. And then the Prowler opens the door. She screams and he pitch, forks her through the abdomen and lifts her up and you see right up close the pitch fork in her.

And it, I can’t begin to tell you how real it looks. Yeah. Like it looked so real. Yeah. I, I have no idea how he did it. I have no idea. And the lifting. Yeah. And just the way that the, the times of the fork like pressed into her skin, it looked like real skin. It didn’t look like plastic or foam. Yeah. Again, no idea how it was done, but it looked amazing and it did it lingered for a while.

It, it, it cuts away from that back to the dance. And mark comes in looking for Pam, but he gets pulled away by Lisa who apparently is. I guess the slutty friend cause she’s there with a guy too, but she’s totally making the move on mark. And then there’s a, a, a goofy moment where mark finally gets to Pam who is like serving the punch and Lisa seemingly intentionally like bumps into mark, which causes mark to bump into the table and spill.

Punch all over 

Todd: Pam, look, this whole deal with mark at the party is bonkers. Right? He told her he was gonna show up for her. Uh, he shows up at the party, you know, he’s at the front door. And like you said, she’s behind the table. So there’s a distance, but a crowd between them. But he immediately makes eyes with her.

She makes eyes at him. He smiles, he waves his head and he’s sort of trying to make us through the way through the crowd. And then Lisa just jumps in and starts trying to dance with him. And mark suddenly starts dancing with Lisa, not in a way like, oh, okay, maybe this girl’s drunk. I’m gonna tease her. But, but you know, I’m gonna work my way towards pimp.

No, he just gets into it. Mm-hmm like now he’s suddenly in the moment and he’s, and he’s with Lisa. I’m thinking what? And then they come to the table, like you said, and this little thing goes down. And when Pam runs off has some choice words with mark and runs off. Lisa is just standing there. Like she orchestrated the whole thing, like what a bitch of a friend 

Craig: and it right.

And it’s really proud of herself. Right. Well, and this part too, is very reminiscent of scream because in scream, Dewey goes to the teenagers party and just like hangs out there with them. Mm-hmm like this, this was the same kind of thing. Like exactly. The cop shows up in uniform at your party. Yes. Like that’s not fun.

at all. Right. Uh, but, but Pam has to go change. So she goes back to her dorm room where these two people have just been killed and like there’s blood around, but she just overlooks it. Yeah. In fact, the Prowler is still in the bathroom. Yeah. While. In the room, changing her clothes, the Prowler lays a rose on Sherry’s face.

Uh, and you know, I, I thought that this moment was fairly tense because he could come out at any moment, but he doesn’t, but again, it’s just prolonged stuff. Like she’s in there, we see the blood that she doesn’t and then she goes out, but then she realizes she forgot her purse. She has to go back in and you’re like, you keep thinking, eventually this guy’s gonna pop out, but he doesn’t, she just goes back in and gets her purse and comes back out.

And it’s not until she’s going down the stairs that she like hears something and she looks up the staircase behind her and he’s there, you know? Yeah. And his full get up and, and she starts running around. And this scene before you, before I had even thought of. Uh, connections, you know, that you have pointed out this scene is very reminiscent of the Sarah Michelle Giller scene from scream two, where she gets chased around by the killer in the sorority house.

Mm. She eventually gets killed. Pam does not, you know, she, she bangs on a bunch of doors. Nobody’s there, presumably everybody’s at the dance. Um, she’s, you know, banging it like windows to try to get out. And she finally does, but as she’s running away, she gets grabbed by major Chatham. Just 

Todd: randomly. Yeah.

Craig: Who’s just like randomly in the yard. And he hangs on to her for a good 30 seconds. He’s in a wheelchair hugs and tries to get away. Doesn’t say anything. She eventually pulls free and runs backwards because anytime she runs, she runs 

Todd: backwards. Yes. she 

Craig: even walks backwards. Yeah. And she runs into mark.

And then we have one of these scenes where he’s like, okay, you go sit in the car and I’m gonna go look around. And he does, but he doesn’t find anything. And like, he goes up, I think she even says Sherry and Carl are, are still in there. And he goes up and he looks around, but their dorm room door is locked.

So he just doesn’t , 

Todd: he’s trying, he there’s, you can see something going through his head. Uh, am I go, should I, uh, no. It’s like, it’s like a good 30 seconds. Trip through his mind where finally he just like, nah, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna leave. Yeah. Forget it. What I would say, like just lazy filmmaking, even this chase, when she sees him at the top of the stairs, it makes no sense.

We get a shot of her. She’s at the door, she’s rattling the door handle. Then we see another shot of him. He’s at the bottom of the stairs now, but he hasn’t moved. She’s still standing at the door rattling. There’s sort of this POV shot that seems to be coming towards her. Like the killer is basically at her, but.

There’s another shot of him. And he’s still halfway across the room, this very small room. And then she runs away like right past him. Like she has to run within inches of him to get out the way she gets out. And then when she runs out, like you said, she runs outside. This guy should be on her tail. If he cares mm-hmm , this guy holds her for an inordinate amount of time before she gets away.

And then there’s just like nothing. I, it it’s just, just spatially, you know, the geometry of everything, like nothing really clicks and it shows. And so, I don’t know, I just, at this point, I realize I’m not gonna feel suspense from any chasing in this movie because it’s, they’re so poor. This one is so poorly constructed that I can’t really trust it.

You know? So how am I gonna get excited about, oh, this guy’s really on his tail when really, it just seems like, uh, the woman’s just gonna get away if they want her to. 

Craig: Yeah, well, and, and the whole thing just goes on like too long. From the time she meets mark, he tells her to get in the car. Then he goes out and looks around outside first.

And we, we see him looking around, see her in the car, him looking around her in the car, tension, tension, tension, and then he shows back up at the car and he’s like, well, I found some wheelchair tracks and some, uh, boots, uh, footprints, but that’s it. And, uh, she’s like, well, Go check inside. So he does him looking around her, in the car, him looking around her in the car, prowl, prowl, prowl and then he comes back.

Oh, still didn’t find anything. Oh. Oh, okay. Well I’m glad that we spent this last five minutes, like with nothing for you to not find anything. And then he’s like, let’s go check out Chatham’s house and they do, but we never see Chatham again. Never. I have no idea what happened to him. I have no idea what he was doing out there.

I have no idea how . I have no idea. It’s so bizarre. It it’s so weird. What, what was he doing? Why 

Todd: was he grabbing her? We’re never gonna find out cuz the movie provides no answers, but he says, let’s go check out Chatham’s house. They hop in their Jeep and then they drive. I guess across the street, across the street.

and then, and then it’s again, it’s very typical. They go up to Chatham’s house, nobody’s there, but the door is unlocked, so they go inside and then they spend the next 10 minutes prowling around this old disabled man’s empty house. Like they own the 

Craig: place. Well, and the movie shows us that the Prowler is in there.

Mm. So like there, I, I suppose that’s supposed to provide tension, but we just know he’s there. He never shows up or does anything while they look around for. A long time, a long time, this particular set, I guess, uh, was an actual location. It was a museum. And, uh, all of the stuff that was in there was like antique stuff.

So they were on only a very small crew was allowed in there to shoot. And I guess the owners were really kind of nervous. They didn’t be because nothing happens aside from people just walking around, looking around and Pam finds pictures of. Uh, Rosemary Chatham there everywhere. Like there’s a huge picture of her above the fireplace.

There’s a box full of pictures of her, just her there’s a photo album full of pictures of just her like 

Todd: yeah. 

Craig: A yearbook, whoever lived. Yeah. This, this guy major Chatham was obsessed with his own daughter 

Todd: apparently. And, and, and I just cannot get over the fact that chic just with no thought whatsoever is just opening up his desk, pulling out boxes in there.

I mean, they’re supposed to be in peril trying to solve a problem of a Prowler chasing them or whatever, but now she’s just in full investigative mode of this old guy’s house for no good reason. Right. What is she 

Craig: looking for? Oh, 

Todd: it’s so dumb. but again, it checks the boxes, right? In a better movie. There’d be a better motivation here, but in this movie, exactly.

They’re just opening up random shit. This random guy’s 

Craig: house. Well, like these are supposed to be clues to the mystery of right. Who the killer is, but then ultimately it doesn’t make any sense. Yes. Like I don’t know. And like, there’s this whole theme, like in every picture, Rosemary is holding a rose, there’s a rose pressed in the photo album.

We know that the killer is leaving roses. So there, like, who cares? it it’s so like on the nose. Yeah. You know, like, and it doesn’t help. 

Todd: No, she says, she even says something like. She says, uh, something like, or I guess her middle name was Rosemary and yeah. You know, so as soon as mark joins back up with her, she says, oh, but I just found out that his daughter’s name is such and such Rosemary, blah, blah, blah, Rosemary rose.

So definitely the killer must have known that she would go by rose and I’m like, well, if she went by rose and she signed her letters, rose Mary, everybody would know, everybody knows that she went by rose. like what? This isn’t even a thing. And how does that even help? And, and, and how does she make that connection?

How does she know? There’s a connection between what’s happening to her tonight at this party and Rosemary? Yeah. There’s no reason for her to make any connections. Major Chatham grabbed my hand. Let’s go check out the Chatham house. He has this daughter named Rosemary and whatnot, and Rosemary was killed 35 years ago, right?

At this similar party. Didn’t you read my 

Craig: article. 

Todd: They never found 

Craig: out who did it, but it had to be someone in town. Someone who knew 

Todd: that she was called rose and mark, that guy still might be around here. Oh man, I don’t believe this. You’re talking about something that happened over 30 years ago. Pam, the guy who chased you may be the one the state police are looking for right now.

I said, let’s get the hell outta here and go to the dance and see that everyone stays inside. 

Craig: Maybe you should call the sheriff. Thanks. I’m. They decided to go back to the dance, to tell everybody to stay inside, which they do, but Lisa, the slut, um, just misses the announcement. She, she leaves, uh, to go swimming, I guess, in a campus pool nearby.

I don’t know, by the 

Todd: way, this isn’t the first time that Lisa, um, goes swimming in the water in a film, a monk or very few film credits. She was in humanoids from the deep oh, Oh, God, I barely remember that. 

Craig: uh, so, uh, and, and her boyfriend, Paul is drunk and tries to go after her, but is stopped at the door.

So she’s swimming alone. She gets kicked brutally in the face. Um, as she’s coming up out of the pool, like coming up out of the ladder, she gets kicked by the Prowler that looked rough. Yeah. And then she kind of struggles. She struggles in the pool for a while, which at first I thought seemed kind of awkward, but then I was like, you know, what if I got kicked in the face that hard?

Yeah. I would probably be a little bit discombobulated, too true. Um, but she, she. She splashes around for a little while. And then she tries to swim, I guess, to the other side of the pool to try to get out. But the Prowler comes up behind her and slits her throat from behind. And again, it looks amazing. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen somebody’s throat get slit in a movie, but this is up close and slow and it just looks really real.

And there’s deep, lots of blood it’s deep. Yeah. And it’s, it’s lots of blood. And then he pushes her under the water and the wound continues to bleed underwater, which looks really cool. And like air escapes from it. Yeah. So I assume that there was some sort of bladder in there, but it doesn’t look like it.

It just looks like. Her neck and it lingers 

Todd: for so long, like they don’t usually do this. And like you said, about the throat slit, how many times have we seen the throat slit? It’s like a knife drawn across a throat. There’s a little drip of blood, you know, it’s probably squeezed out from behind the knife, whatever Uhhuh , but this is.

Up close. And the knife is halfway through this girl’s throat practically to her spinal cord, which is probably how a real throat sling looks. It looks very realistic. And then it just lingers on this woman bleeding out in the pool for far too long. And that’s, that’s a compliment mm-hmm, , it’s really impressive.

And, and, and I’m just gotta say, like, I’m not a gore hound. I enjoy and appreciate gore effects. And of course, part of the reason we watch these movies is cuz we wanna see something unique and different. We wanna see the, and the kills are the thing, right? It’s like an interesting kale, oh, you tried this cool kill or, oh, you know, like, like they made this look real or whatever, but I, I actually have very strong opinions about violence in movies.

I don’t want violence to be treated as something that’s just, uh, blase and ah, you know, whatever I, I want, I can’t remember which director it is that has this, this mindset that when you, when you do violence in movies, it needs to be real so that people understand that this isn’t a joke. Uh, otherwise you’re, it’s sort of morally repugnant and ironically, so I, I feel like this movie does a better job than most horror movies of making the violence so brutal.

And in your face that it’s uncomfortable. And that’s a good thing. Yeah. I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting that from this movie, I guess is what I’m saying. 

Craig: No, I mean, it’s just, the, the effects are just surprisingly good. Yeah. Uh, uh, Ms. Allison, who apparently is the female chaperone at this college dance, 

Todd: right.

Is a different, is a different time, Craig I mean, think about it. The same college dance has a dude who’s like, like sneaking up to the punch bowl and dumping vodka in like it’s grease. You know what I mean? 

Craig: Yeah. Right. Uhhuh, Ms. Allison goes to check on Lisa and she sees blood in the pool and she ends up getting stabbed through the throat, which again, it is very violent and graphic and, and looks, uh, fantastic, but also 

Todd: a little awkward.

When you think about it, you reach around somebody from behind and you take a knife and then you have to kind of like do kind of a U-turn with your hand and stab directly back into their throat. 

Craig: Yeah, but I don’t remember what I do remember is that I really, there were just some things that now even looking back at my notes, I’m like what the was going on.

Like there are these two random characters, Ben and Sally who Ben wants to make out. And Sally’s like, I am not leaving until they find that Prowler, by the way, who says Prowler, has anybody ever actually used that term? 

Todd: I think, I would say since at least the fifties or sixties, but you know, the maybe early eighties, I was pretty young 

Craig: fact that they keep saying it there’s a Prowler.

There’s a look 

Todd: out for the Prowler. Okay. Grandma

Craig: Uh, but she won’t leave cuz of the Prowler. So he’s like, we don’t have to leave. We can just go down to the basement. That’s what people do. They go down there and make out. And she’s like, okay. So they go down to the basement and we get like the, you know, killer POV shots. So we think, oh the, the Prowler must be there, but no, it just turns out to be the old man chaperone.

Yeah. Who is just watching them make out and that’s it. That’s it. We’re done nothing else happening. We’re done 

Todd: with this couple. Like 

Craig: why is this pervy old man? Just watching them make out in the shadow. So weird 

Todd: and then we never see them again. 

Craig: no, we never see any of them ever again. Uh, Pam and mark put drunk Paul in jail, which is, and it’s like an old, tiny jail cell.

And, and he’s like, you know, taunting them from the jail cell, which was kind of funny. Then there’s a whole part where Mr. Kingsley, the creepy, the creepy shop owner who we’d met earlier shows up in is creepy and tells them that there’s a bunch of kids at the cemetery, which is a lie. I don’t know what is going on because they go to the cemetery.

They go there, mark and Pam go there and there there’s nobody there. 

Todd: This is so hilarious. This old cemetery thing, it feels like somebody was handed the script and is like, can you just keep this going? You know, and had to write in some random shit, because it’s just like mark. He shows up, look, he wasn’t actually creepy.

The first time we saw him, the first time we saw him, he is this jokey jovial guy. And he suddenly shows up SOS. There’s a bunch of kids at the cemetery and you know, that gate’s wide open and he walks away and suddenly mark, it’s very concerned and he turns to Pam and he is like that gate. It’s supposed to be locked.

Yeah, let’s go check it out. So they go to the cemetery. There’s nobody there. But mark spends five minutes, five minutes walking about six feet between two gravestones 

Craig: while she waits in the car again again, and 

Todd: comes across an open grave. Which is interesting, but again, how does this connect to anything?

He looks in the open grave and as any of us would probably do, when we look in an open grave and see a coffin down there, Hey, let me jump down there and open 

Craig: it up. Right. Well, it seems like the coffin has been disturbed. Like I, I think like the lid is slightly a little bit off or something. 

Todd: Yeah. So he wants to open it up, but then, uh, she screams she’s in the car and she sees the face of this janitor or helper guy that was Mr.

Kingsley from the store, from the store named Otto, who we saw a whole hour ago and only an hour ago. Yeah. For 15 

Craig: seconds. 

Todd: It’s like, oh, this is the slow guy. And when we first saw him, I thought, oh, okay, well, this is one of our red herrings. Right. We’re gonna think this guy’s gonna pop up every now and then he’s gonna be the leering dude or whatever.

No. We never see him until now. He looks at, in, at her and goes, she screams that gets his attention. He jumps outta the grave and runs to her to the other side of the car. She’s on the driver’s seat. He’s on the other side. He opens the door. She’s like, I saw, I think I saw somebody, how do, how do I saw him through the, the window?

And he just doesn’t give a shit. He’s just like, oh, I know. Yeah. Okay. But there’s a grave back here. Like, like you gotta check this out and suddenly Otto’s not a thing anymore. They run, they go, Nope. They go to the 

Craig: grave and they, yeah. And they open up the coffin and it’s Lisa’s body in there. Which of course freaks Pam out.

Todd: I don’t know why, why is her body there? 

Craig: I don’t either. The name on the headstone seems to be kind of like rubbed out, but it’s obviously Rosemary’s grave. Yeah. Which they figure out at some point, 

Todd: because there’s a rose carved into the top of the tombstone. And then 

Craig: there is a. Ridiculously long scene where mark tries to call the sheriff, but the big fat guy at the desk of the like camp or whatever says he’s gonna go get him, but doesn’t.

But we had just have to watch while this big fat guy just sits in a chair. Oh. And like slams down the phone and then like slams the door and then sits there for five minutes. Mm, and then slams the door again and it’s like, oh, he is not here. yeah. I swear to God, it was the longest scene and it like just keeps cutting back and forth.

But like they’re both on the phone. Neither of them is saying anything 

Todd: yeah. It’s so long. It’s so long and stupid. And this guy, I mean, you know, uh, he’s, he’s doing his best to be this sort of like, uh, good old boy country guy. He mispronounces crappy. He says, I think he was out there fishing for crappy earlier I was like really?

And I, I read in the, the trivia and, and the only reason I bring this up is because I was thinking it while I was watching the movie. I was like that tomb. looks fake as shit. Yeah. Oh, it looked awful. And apparently the director himself was so embarrassed by how fake the tombstone looked that he was thinking about cutting.

a bit of trimming that scene down for the DVD re release he should have is 

Craig: terrible. And then there’s another completely inconsequential scene where mark tries to drop Pam off at the dance and, and he’s gonna go on investigating on his own, but she’s super offended. So she gets out of the car and stands with her back to him for a good minute, and then just turns around and gets back in the car and they drive off together.

like, why, why did we need to see this? Oh, it, it was, it’s so stupid. 

Todd: It was the makings of what could have been a good scene in a writer in, in the right writer’s hands. I mean, obviously he’s trying to create some tension between the two of them. And so she jumps outta the car and she stands there and she’s gonna go in and he’s like, oh, by the way, I’m gonna drop you off and I’m gonna go on and do this stuff.

And she’s like, what do you mean? What do you mean? And he is like, no, is this too dangerous? I can’t have you do it. And then she turns and looks at him and says, okay, will you just go play sheriff? And then there’s this long, like 15, second shot of him. Just sort of looking puzzled. it’s, it’s uncomfortable.

And I, I felt bad for this man as an actor. And then it goes back to her and she just looks at him, like you said, walks around to the side of the car gets inside. They sit there in silence for a second and then, okay, let’s go. What 

Craig: and where they’re going. I know, I know. It’s so stupid. And where they’re going is back to Chatham’s house.

Yes. I don’t know why, but, but basically what it comes down to is everything from the last time they were at Chatham’s to now could have gotten cut out. And it wouldn’t have made any difference to the plot because they just end up in the exact same spot with no new information. Really? the, the Prowler apparently.

Is there again, like, I guess he just hangs out. Yeah. He’s he’s 

Todd: there he’s been, he knew they were gonna come by. Yeah. 

Craig: They split up in the house again, just like they did before. They’re looking around the same places they looked before. The power goes out. Um, mark gets knocked out by the Prowler. For no good reason, not killed.

I don’t understand that. Like all of a sudden now the Prowler is just knocking people 

Todd: out. This was frustrating. The hell outta me, mark leaves her. He goes upstairs and we are submitted to like three minutes of him walking up each step. Like, I don’t know, like it’s made of jello or something. He’s so slow walking through this very small space and the most interesting thing he could possibly see in this house.

The newest information that he has is on the second landing. There is a door that is slightly a jar and the light is on inside and he stands there just like he stood outside that locked door of those college kids, uh, half an hour ago, debating on whether he is gonna go in. And we’re seeing these shots like, like, you know, implying that the prowlers on the other side of that door, he’s in there.

Yeah. And you just like. Nah, I’m just gonna keep going. what, so that he can go up to the same floor that’s covered, you know, where everything’s covered with white sheets, that he found nothing before. Like why did you walk past the most interesting thing in the house? 

Craig: Well, not, not just walk past it, but stand there and contemplate it for like 30 seconds.

And then, uh, Nah, nevermind. 

Todd: At this point, I thought, well, I guess the sheriff knows more than we do about telling him, okay, mark, you can do it. I know I’m saddling you with a lot. I know this is a lot of responsibility, but I’m gonna try to have some faith in you. He was, he was good to be a little cautious.

Yeah. He 

Craig: gets knocked out the lights, come back on, uh, 

Todd: for how does that happen? How does he control that from the second floor 

Craig: landing? Who knows? Pam is standing looking at that picture over the fireplace. And she happens to glance down and she sees a lock it hanging from in the fireplace. And so she reaches her hand up into the fireplace and feels a round up there for a good 30 seconds.

And I’m thinking there’s gotta be a body up there. Yeah. Which there is. But how did, like, why is she not freaking out? Like, yeah. If I reached up and felt around and there was like a skeleton, I, I think I would recoil, but she doesn’t until it falls down and it’s like a decomposed, it’s an old corpse. It’s decomposed.

Todd: So. explain this 

Craig: to me. It’s Rosemary. Yeah. Apparently the, the Prowler had gone dug up Rosemary, taken her corpse, replaced it with Lisa. I, I don’t know why. And 

Todd: went to major Chatham’s house and shoved it up the fireplace upside down. Yeah. What in the 

Craig: world? I don’t know. I have no idea. It doesn’t make any sense, but she is then confronted by the Prowler who says something like, are you ready for our date, Rosemary?

Is that what he 

Todd: said? I’m ready for our date, Rosemary and, and holds a rose out to her. And then 

he 

Craig: chases her around the house forever. There’s a kind of, I guess, tense moment where she’s hiding under like a cha lounge or something, but he’s like pitch, forking, everything all around her for a long time, but never pitch forks where she is.

And she eventually just runs away and he sees her and chases her some more. Um, and then she seems, you know, like he, they are face to face. She’s got the one broken end of the pitch fork, the fork part that he’s got the other end, which is much longer and he’s menacing her. And then out of nowhere, auto appears with a shotgun and shoots him, oh my God.

And then Otto and Pam share a lingering look that looks like, like. You you’re gonna make out at any time. well, they are now in love and they are going to get married and have a family

Todd: it’s, it’s so embarrassing. Uh, 

Craig: it, it really is. I was like, what, uh, what is happening? The, the, the Prowler is not dead. Um, and he shoots O with the gun that he apparently had on him. And then Pam and the Prowler struggle again, they’re fighting over the gun and she eventually realizes that he’s holding the barrel directly underneath his chin, but while they’re struggling, it’s like his mask is bothering him.

So he takes it off 

Todd: for our benefit. Really it struggle 

Craig: right to reveal. That it’s the sheriff. And I was like, well, obviously, yeah, like that was obvious to me from the beginning. Just nobody else it could have been. And then she, she, she blows his head off, which is a great effect, slow motion. It was a full prosthetic head that, that Savini made using a, you know, a cast of the actors real head and it is slow motion and it looks really, really, really good, but that’s the end of that to wrap it up.

It’s the next day. Oh, it’s immediately the next day. Yes. Yeah. Mark takes Pam back to her dorm. She goes up, the shower is still on and so she, she finds the bodies, Sherry and Carl there, and Carl’s body is hanging and as she’s standing there, his all white eyes open, so he kinda looks like a zombie or something.

Yeah. And he grabs her by the throat and she screams and struggles and gets away. and then in my notes, I have zombie Carl grabs her or does he cause then cuz then after she gets away, she looks back and he is just hanging there. So I guess we’re to presume that that was just in her mind because that’s it that’s the end.

It goes 

Todd: directly to credits once again, checking off the boxes. You gotta have that final jump scare at the end. Like, you know, like the tall man jumping out at you through the mirror in fantasm and Jason jumping out outta the lake. But those end with that, like Jason jumps out, pulls her down and then boom and credits.

Yeah, this is suddenly she looks at him. He’s not doing it anymore long shot of her standing there confused then credits mm-hmm then credits like they couldn’t even get that. Right. 

Craig: Ugh. Here is Mike. Okay. So it was the sheriff all along. Why, right. How is the sheriff connected to any of this? It, the time doesn’t make sense, 

Todd: like, yeah.

He’d have to be at least 60 years old if he was Rosemary’s sperm lover, I 

Craig: guess he could, if he was about 20, when he came back from war and this is 35 later, 35 years later, he would be about 55. I guess that guy could have been maybe I guess that’s what we’re, I guess that’s what we’re led to believe.

Right. But it’s, it’s so 

Todd: loose. Well, and it begs of the obvious question aside from, oh, now they’re able to do the party again after 35 years. Why is he now compelled to go on a murderous rampage of random teenagers? 

Craig: Yeah. Who are in no way connected. Yeah, right. Like if, if, if he were a sperm lover, it would make sense that he would take revenge on the, the girl and the guy, but then that’s it, you know, spur him or whatever.

Right. It doesn’t make sense that he would just randomly kill a bunch of teenagers who have absolutely no connection to anything other than the fact that they’re going to this dance. Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s stupid. It’s not a good movie in terms of the story and that those even just talking about it again and recognizing all of those times where it was so drawn out unnecessarily, it just makes me realize that it really was pretty bad.

But again, I’ll forgive those things because I’m still glad that I saw the movie because I’m glad to have seen the special effects, which really were phenomenal. Yeah. And if you haven’t seen this movie, it is worth watching for that reason alone 

Todd: agreed a hundred percent and the music. And by the way.

Yeah. While we were talking, I looked up Richard Einhorn, who was the composer of this guess who also composed blood rage? The two word title. Oh, 

Craig: funny. I knew it. They’re all 

connected. 

Todd: Yeah. I’m telling you this, this is a magical time. It’s why we’re doing it. Yeah. 1981, the Prowler. Glad I saw it. Hilariously bad movie.

Fun to watch with your friends to make fun of makes absolutely no sense, but uh, technically pretty to watch and amazing kills. And, um, mm-hmm, special effects that best. Some of the stuff I’ve seen now today, it just unbelievably good. Well, thank you so much for listening to another episode, we still have one more 1981 slasher movie coming to you next week.

Please stay tuned for that. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. You can find us online. If you just Google two guys in a chainsaw podcast, you can find our website, provide our Twitter feed. You can find our Facebook page. You can also find our Patreon and any one of those places.

Please leave us a note. Let us know what you like about this episode, what you would like to hear coming up in the future. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. And if you do you get a bunch of goodies, including, uh, a little dive deeper into behind the scenes of what we do here, some of our random thoughts about not just movies, but about horror books, uh, maybe we’ll have some episodes about horror, video games, some stuff about us personally, coming up and a big explanation as to why we are even doing a month of 1981 slash the thing.

Until next time I am Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Linda Blair stars in this ensemble haunted-house-plus-slasher pic about a fraternity initiation prank gone horribly wrong. Silliness abounds, but we do have some interesting ideas and some gorgeous sets and costumes to look at in this second in our month-long series of 1981 slashers.

Hell Night (1981)

Episode 305, 2 Guys & A Chainsaw

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Here, we continue our series of slasher movies made in 1981. It’s a very specific topic we’ve chosen for this month. This one, uh, on the heels of just before Dawn that we did last week is called Hell Night, starring Linda Blair. I think when I was a kid, I was interested in seeing this movie mostly because I had a crush on Linda Blair mm-hmm and, uh, it had been on the video store shelves a lot, has a great image of her on the cover, climbing a gate, boobs, half busting out of her costume with some hands trying to pull her back down in front of a scary house. And it’s all about like a fraternity initiation night, which I’ve always felt is just ripe territory for drama and horror. Then this is what this movie’s about. It’s about a fraternity slash sorority initiation night gone awry.

I saw it. I think when I was a teenager, I remember renting. And watching it. And I think I also remember falling asleep during it and, uh, never getting to figure out if you actually got to see Linda Blair’s boobs in this one. So this time, this time around having watched it, I realized you don’t get to see Linda Blair’s boobs in this one.

She does that a little earlier in, uh, in one or two other movies. So, um, anyway, The small things that we remember, and that seem to matter so much to us. when we’re, when we’re teenagers. Anyway. Uh, yeah, so I don’t remember enjoying it terribly much, but I did wanna revisit it because I thought, uh, it has started Linda Blair.

It does have a bit of a cult following. It certainly was on the video store shelves of every horror section that I ever walked through and I’d forgotten a lot about it. And it takes place in 1981 as a slasher movie. This is Hell Night. Craig, what was your history with the movie?

Craig: So going into this, I couldn’t remember if I had seen it or not, and watching it.

I kept thinking. I think I’ve seen this. There were, I don’t know, not even necessarily parts, but like I think that I vaguely remember Linda Blair in this dress that she wears. Mm-hmm, kind of like this period dress. I kind of vaguely remember her in that. And I think the fact that I think that I have seen it, but I don’t remember it doesn’t really bode well for the film mm-hmm because we were supposed to do this a couple of days ago.

And it’s been a couple of days since I’ve seen it. And I almost don’t remember seeing it again.

Todd: right. Is 

Craig: that not memorable? It 

Todd: really is. It’s quite sad. Uh, And it could be, you know, it’s got this great Gothic look to it. The director is Tom Des Simone, who I believe, uh, got his start in the business, editing together. Children’s films then got into the adult film world and did mostly gay porn, I think.

And then this, I believe is. First mainstream directing role. And, uh, he did this at the behest of Chuck Russell. Now Chuck Russell was a producer on this movie, like we said before with 1981, this was the kind of a golden era for slasher movies. When everybody was especially several producers were realizing what gold mines they could be.

So they were pumping these out like crazy. And so they’re even for some of these lackluster movies, you find a lot of crossover with important. Chuck Russell produced this, but he later, um, just a, about six years later was a writer and director actually, uh, on nightmare Elm street, three dream warriors. Mm.

Yeah, he, he ended up directing the remake of the blob. He did the mask. Huh, eraser, scorpion king. He’s still actually erecting movies. So he went on to produce and direct a lot of horror films and then went very much into mainstream, big time films. Uh, after this it’s interesting. I saw that Frank Dand was a production assistant on this movie, and we all know him from the Shaw redemption and he got his start with some Stephen King pictures.

And then of course he produced the walking dead and oh, you know, he’s, he’s well respected and, and a very good writer and director in the industry. And, uh, supposedly an uncredited. Um, Kevin Costner was a grip on this mm-hmm so it, it does have an interesting cast of characters behind the scenes. Of course, Linda Blair, uh, the star of the Exorcist, the Exorcist part two around this time, she was really trying to break out of her image of a, of a.

Basically, she wanted people to know she was an adult actress capable of doing adult roles. One of the first things she did was pose nude in a, an adult magazine. Yeah. And then he, she just kind of ended up back into be pictures and exploitation roles. She did what Savage streets and some women in prison movie, this movie, um, never quite broke out of that, which is too bad.

She was fun to watch. 

Craig: Yeah, she is. She’s very cute. She’s, she’s very, uh, you know, and we say cute. I mean, even by the time Exorcist two came around, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a young woman. She’s, you know, a, a, a, a beautiful. Woman, you know, I, I, I just don’t feel like at least as far as I know, unless there’s something that I don’t know about, she just never really got a chance to prove herself as much more than what she had already done.

Mm-hmm I, you know, the, the Exorcist was such a huge movie. You know, whether people liked it or, or hated it, you know, it was controversial and, and widely seen. And I think that she just, she couldn’t break away from her connection to that. And so she, you know, she was cast in this type of movie and I I’ve seen a couple of other movies, very similar to this one that she was in.

I really wanna believe that given the chance she could have done a lot more. Yeah. And, and if you see her, if you see her today, she’s still, I mean, you know, she’s a woman of a particular age, but she’s still very beautiful and it would be nice if she had, I don’t know. I just would’ve because I do like her, I like her a lot and she, she does have a very distinctive voice.

Mm-hmm, kind of a girlish voice, but whatever. I mean, that could easily be overlooked if she were given the right part. But. 

Todd: She has a bit of a baby face too. Really? Which she does isn’t bad. I mean, no, no. Especially for this era, you know, it kind of actually fits in quite well with what we were looking for in, in the early to mid eighties, for as far as like, um, you know, female leads and things like that.

What was the style at the time? I would say. And I, and she’s not even a bad actress, honestly. No, I, I think she that’s the thing I don’t 

Craig: think she is. I think, yeah. I think that given the right opportunity, she could have done very well. She, I think has, has not tried to separate herself from the, the legacy of the Exorcist mm-hmm , but I don’t think that she has any interest in any further connection with that.

You know, I, I know that they are prepping for a new trilogy. Um, that’s going to be a continuation of the original film and, uh, Ellen Burston, uh, who played her mother. The original film is attached and in fact has already filmed her part of the movie. But I don’t think that Linda Blair is attached in any way.

And, and on the one hand, I understand, like I understand the, been there done that, been trying to break away from this for so long. I’m not gonna tie myself down to that again. On the other hand, I hope that it’s not a big missed opportunity for her. You know, who? I don’t know. I, all I know about it. That I think the it’s the same people behind the most recent Halloween entries, which, which were successful have been successful.

Who knows if they even approached her? I don’t know. Um, I would be kind of surprised if they didn’t, but as far as I know at this point, she’s not connected and, and you’re right. I was excited to go back and have a look or another look, whatever. Maybe at this again, really solely because of her, because I do like her.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, I, I was gladly anticipating seeing her again. Unfortunately the movie just, there’s just not much to it and there’s just not much to her character. She really is reduced to that, you know, cowering woman, role 

Todd: girl. Yeah. Role. 

Craig: Um, she doesn’t have a lot. Gravitas or, I mean, she’s, she’s constantly just running away.

I mean, that’s all she does running away and cowering and crying and yeah, that’s, that’s kind of all she has to do, which is too bad. I, you know, I think that there was opportunity to give her character some Konas and they just didn’t. 

Todd: Yeah, that’s very disappointing. Uh, you know, she’s not a strong final girl, right?

she’s not. Take things matters into her. I mean, she does, in a sense she’s a damsel and distress. Yeah. And then she ends up being the final girl, but she’s not, it’s not like she’s not the only 

Craig: thing that they give her is that she can work on 

Todd: cars. Yes. She’s a mechanic. I bet you didn’t think I was a mechanic.

Did you? She says to one of the characters and I’m looking at the screen going. Nope, I didn’t. And I kind of don’t believe it either, but whatever. I mean the there’s one other nice thing I would think I would say about, there are two nice things I will say about the movie though. Just overall. Number one, I thought that the, the cinematography could be pretty inventive at times, even though a lot of the movie’s pretty dark and sometimes it’s a little hard to see what’s going on.

It’s not as bad as other films like that. I think there was an inventive use of shadow. There’s some really interesting camera angles in here. If it wasn’t just so darn boring with so much of just. Plotting around. And so even those cool camera angles get kind of, not so cool anymore when they’re just showing you people walking slowly through the garden.

Yeah. People walking slowly up the stairs, people walking slowly through corridors, people sitting around and just having long conversations in the bedroom. Uh, Uhhuh, the other nice thing I liked about the movie. I, I thought the music was nice. It reminded me just a little bit of another movie that where the music was kind of really nice the house on sorority row, somewhat orchestral score at times, which is a little unusual for this time when things get a little more Cy.

Yeah. You know, in our horror movies and I, I looked up the composer. He hasn’t composed, like he’s not credited as a composer on too many movies. He, um, he did the dead pit, a lawnmower man, this movie, a couple others, but he is credited in the music department on Halloween, the fog. uh, deadly games, midnight express.

So, um, I think again, he was in the wheelhouse, which I believe, uh, Chuck Russell also produced Halloween, actually it, and the, the producers of this movie. This is the last film for the production company. I think it’s called compass international pictures. They are still, I believe, uh, even though that that company has dissolved the previous owners of that company, they’re still the owners of the rights to the Halloween franchise.

so they’re still making Halloween movies and they made a handful of horror movies during this time. and this was, uh, one of them. So a lot of the folks kind of in that crew or cast or whatever, uh, kind of bounce between all these movies. So, uh, like I said earlier, it’s just like you, you get the intersection of some, some famous people, some interesting people, some people would go on to do great to things.

A lot of people who wouldn’t as you would kind of expect from this time in 1981, where a lot of people are doing a lot. Horror movies. What I 

Craig: was gonna say was what was interesting to me was that it seemed like the filmmakers, presumably the director wanted to make a Gothe Gothic period piece. Yes. Um, like castle freak or, or cellar dweller or, or something like that.

That’s what they wanted to do. Um, and you know, this is all. In my head, you know, imagining what was happening behind the scenes, but it seemed like the people with the money said, no, Make a fraternity sorority movie mm-hmm and they were like, okay, well fine. But I’m gonna put them all in period costumes and put them in an old Catholic mansion.

Yeah. And have a seller freak. Like you, it just seems like the whole fraternity sorority thing is. To contrivance. Yeah. For them to be able to make this kind of Gothic movie. Oh yeah. Which is fine. You know, I I’ve seen these kinds of movies before and, and they can be fine, but that’s, that’s what it is. You get this really cool location, like a big house or a castle or something.

And it’s got this creepy backstory and there’s some sort of freak dwelling in the sellers or the tunnels under the house that picks people off. And. And that’s it like, yeah, there you go. There’s the movie, the, the whole concept of this being like a sorority fraternity, dual initiation kind of thing. It works.

It just seems a little. Contrived because, you know, like, I guess these, I, I was about to say that I didn’t participate in Greek life at all. That’s not entirely true. I was in, uh, fraternity a theater fraternity. So it wasn’t, you know, 

Todd: one of these like social kind of party, like party kind of. Right. 

Craig: The way that they’re portrayed in movies, it wasn’t like that.

Mm-hmm, not to say that we didn’t have fun parties. We certainly did but it was a different kind of thing. But you know, this is the stereotypical for fraternity sorority kind of thing. And I know that for their initiations, I know they have to be much more careful now because there’s a lot of crackdown on hazing.

As there should be because yeah. You know, young people get hurt and, and worse. So, um, but you know, there, there is still that the whole initiation kind of thing. Um, I know that’s a thing and, and these hell nights I know were once, you know, a big thing mm-hmm , but I never knew them to be like big costume parties.

Todd: Right. You know? Yeah. I sometimes I feel like these movies, I was also participating in Greek life and like you, I was in a mu I was in a music fraternity and we did have some of these elements. We actually did have a Hal night, that kind of thing. And so I, I feel like I got a little taste of it, but sometimes, uh, based on my own experience and kind of what I went through and kind of what I saw my friends go through and hearing them talk about their stuff, the movies, like they don’t quite get it completely.

Right. You know, they make it just a little more bombastic and, and crazy than it. I don’t know, maybe on like very, very fancy and rich campuses where lots of money and history is involved, then they can be this elaborate, you know, sure, sure. I mean, there’s this huge blowout party at the, I mean, where it’s just like, pretty much like.

Everybody you could imagine is CRA packed into every available space in the lawn and inside this giant fraternity house that looks like the Hanon, you know, and, 

Craig: uh, and it looks like fun. Like it like a blast for a costume party. Sure. This huge, you know, like, like you said, I mean, it looks like everybody on campus is there 

Todd: and they’re in the beautiful costumes.

It’s not like they just went down to Walmart the night before and slap a costume together. You know, these are like, I. Linda Blair’s outfit is sort of a, I don’t know, like a little red riding hood type thing, but she also has a really pretty Buch on and, and, and a choker and it it’s, 

Craig: and it’s corseted, you know, like, yeah.

It’s, it’s a costume piece. It’s yeah, she didn’t get this at party city. 

Todd: No, exactly. Even the, even red riding, uh, even I’m sorry, Robin hood, uh, whatever type character, Seth Seth’s charact. He’s pretty decked out with his Robin hood thing and a bow and arrow and everything like that. Those are two of the characters, I guess we, we just get a brief glimpse of each of the characters at the party.

There’s, uh, Seth who’s like the Robin hood. I believe Linda’s character’s name is Marty Uhhuh. Um, and then there’s Peter, who’s the president of the fraternity. Who’s in this big Cape and just, I don’t know, it just looks like a dashing period. Guy, right? Like, yeah. Scott, who’s a pirate who has a parrot on his shoulder?

Well, well, even though later on, he just loses pieces of his costume. He still has that parrot stuck on his shoulder, which I thought was kind of a cute touch. And then later on and a Jeff, Jeff, who is a very nice looking man. And I was curious about Jeff, because I swore I had seen him before. He’s played by an actor named Peter Barton and he was Doug in Friday, the 13th, uh, the final chapter, I think that was part four.

And I apparently had a very long run on the young and the restless up all the way from the, the late eighties to the 2005. I think 

Craig: he’s married to Eileen Davidson, uh, oh, on, uh, days of our lives. And, and she was also in one of those, I don’t remember if it was sorority row or the one where they killed their house mother

Oh 

Todd: yeah, yeah. that was it. I think it was sorority row. And then he, I, when I was looking on IMDB, it looks like he was in this whacka Dood. Um, TV show that lasted maybe one season called the powers of Matthew star. He was Matthew star who was like this alien from another world who gets stuck on earth and exiled to earth or something like that ends up as a high school student.

But the government knows about it. And other people know about, do you know that? I vaguely, 

Craig: no. I vaguely remember hearing about it. I don’t remember. The show at, 

Todd: I feel like I might have seen it once. Cuz I saw pictures of this and I was like, God, this looks familiar. 

Craig: Yeah. There’s him. Okay. So he’s like the nice rich guy.

Mm-hmm Marty. Uh, Linda Blair is like the, the really nice pretty girl from the wrong side of the tracks and Seth. Who I, I thought was really nice looking. He’s this tall blonde guy? Uh, surfer dude, pat. Yeah. He’s like, kinda like the, I don’t even remember if he smokes weed, but he’s kinda like the stoner type then there’s Denise who plays the EA Quiggly role, like right.

The, the. The fun slutty girl. 

Todd: the fun slutty girl who doesn’t, who doesn’t get naked. 

Craig: and she’s played by a, a girl named Suki Goodwin. And I don’t know if the actress was British or if she was trying to do a British accent. For unexplained reasons. I didn’t get that. Um, but I did like her. She was 

Todd: fun. yeah, she was, she was 

Craig: fun.

She seemed like the life of the party. Like if she hadn’t been there, it would’ve been the most boring night ever. 

Todd: I actually think you’re a hundred percent. Right. 

Craig: Cause she brought the booze and the drugs and the sex and everybody else was just kind of like. Hanging out. 

Todd: she goes, I got Quaaludes and Jack Daniels and the guy’s like, well, it sounds like you’ve settled into American life really well.

Craig: yeah. Here’s a funny story at, at 43 years old, I had to Google what Quaaludes were. Oh, wow. Because I’ve heard them, I’ve heard them talked about in movie. Like bazillions of times, but I really didn’t know what they were. So I had to 

Todd: Google it. I think they were, they sounded nice. They were a little before our time.

I think it was like my par our parents’ era. Right. Was the Koy Lu 

Craig: Uhhuh well, like early eighties. I think they were, they were big. Um, mm-hmm but yeah, it’s too bad. They’re illegal. Cuz they sounded nice. relaxing, 

Todd: you know? Well the poor. Like wakes up from a, from like a bed, like just wakes up and has a hard time getting to sleep.

So she pops one and downs it with a sip of Jack Daniels. And I. Holy crap. Okay. This is what you do when you just want to go to just before you go to sleep. Yeah, no, that’s, that’s see. That’s 

Craig: the thing that like, they’re, that’s what they are. They’re like anti-anxiety relaxants. And they used to be, um, prescribed to people, I think for, or I don’t know, maybe not prescribed, I don’t think they were a prescription, but people took, they were like Valium or something.

People took them to relax. And the, uh, other side effect is that they released people’s inhibitions. Arguably. Could be fun in the right context and, and terribly dangerous in the wrong context. Mm. But anyway, so what happens is, so there’s the big, huge party. And then I guess that every year the tradition is they take the new pledges and they force them to spend the night in this big, scary mansion.

It’s this place called Garth Manor and it looks great. Like the exterior. This place. Awesome. It looks amazing. Like it it’s so cool and they shot it and you know, the exterior and the interior were two totally different locations. And, um, I think there were a total of three locations altogether because outside of the house, there’s also like a huge garden with like a hedge maze and all kinds of stuff that you don’t really see a lot of because it’s dark.

But I mean, it looks very elaborate and it it’s. It’s cool. It looks like either. A very impressive Gothic mansion or like a castle. It, it looks fantastic. Um, and the interior looks the same. Like, I, I guess this place just sits uninhabited all the time and it’s full of, you know, like antique furniture and.

Candles, uh, a bazillion candles, loads and stuff, load 

Todd: and loads of lit candles, which I, I think is wild and free wheeling as this fraternity is made out to be in the beginning and maybe even sloppy boy, they are organized when it comes to putting this hell night together. I can’t even imagine the amount of time it took for them to put all those candles and light them all around that, uh, that place as well as wire it up for all the shenanigans that they exactly, 

Craig: you know, they’ve set up all these.

Pranks and gags and scares throughout, which is, is fun, but like seriously, like they just have free reign of this place. Yeah. Like, and they do, and they do this every year and the police know about it and they’re, it’s just fine, like, okay. 

Todd: And I mean, you already said it, this is a castle freak movie. So they, they, they say early later, um, they make mention.

The guys who have wired it up, who later come by to, uh, and, and this would be, um, Peter, the president and Scott, the, the pirate dude, and then some girl named, uh, may just three of them. So I guess it all falls on their shoulders, but they, they happen to mention that they’re O tunnels and stuff all under here.

And he’s like, be careful down there because you can get lost. And also, you know, I’ve got tons of wires and things running through it. You know, Scott is the. Tech wizard or whatever. And I’m thinking, so you, you do this on a regular basis. You have completely wired this up. You’ve been through all those tunnels, wiring it to the point where you have to tell somebody don’t go down there cuz you might.

Trip on ’em or something. And you never ran across the two castle freaks on the premises, right? That’s a little bizarre. Yeah. Hard 

Craig: to believe. Well, and that’s, that’s the big twist. It’s not just one, but two castle freaks, which you don’t really find out until the end, but it doesn’t really matter. Um, but, but I thought the same thing, like why these castle freaks come at them like right away.

Mm-hmm, where they’ve been doing this. Presumably for years it’s a tradition. Why now? Mm doesn’t make any sense, but whatever Peter is, the president of the fraternity may, who is only on screen for maybe three or four minutes, um, is, is the sorority president. I think when they’re taking the pledges up to, and it’s a, like a whole like Trek, like everybody dozens, if not hundreds of people like parade them to this house um, but Peter gives Peter gives the whole backstory and it’s like, Detailed.

Yeah, 

Todd: it’s a long story. First child, she bore Raymond was a boy, a Mongo boy. They called Morris. Now Morris brought great sorrow to the GARS and they immediately said about to have another child. And they were soon cursed with the baby girl, Suzanne, as she was so hideously, deformed, that it was impossible to tell from looking at her, if she was.

Or female after her, father’s immense disgusted. She used to drag herself around the house with the help 

Craig: of her one good leg. now the guards were very fanatical about their privacy. They didn’t want 

Todd: to have to be dependent on anyone else. So they isolated themselves up here. That is why they never put in any modern utilities.

There’s no gas, no electricity and no 

Craig: phone. So again, they tried 

Todd: to have a child. And within the year, the GARS added Margaret, but unfortunately it soon became apparent that poor little Margaret could either hear nor speak nor see, but good old Ray was determined and he decided to have one last go. So Lillian got pregnant again.

And she 

Craig: carried the child for 10 and a half months until finally she 

Todd: delivered a little gork named Andrew. Andrew never spoke a word in his first 14 years. He just made these grunts and groans like the sounds of wild animals. Now, Raymond Garth lived isolated in this house for 14 years with this freak show.

Until he couldn’t stand it anymore. 12 years ago, he 

Craig: assembled the entire family in the parlor. And then he took his 

Todd: dear wife, Lillian, and he strangled her to death. Then he took the Mongo son Morris, and he 

Craig: bashed out what little brains he had with the 

Todd: fireplace poker. Then he took the deformed little Suzanne and he Imped her with the same poker.

Then he took the deaf dumb and blind little Mar. And he slit her throat. And then Raymond, Garth got a rope and hung himself to death. 

Craig: The story is he killed all, but one, but he also throws in detail the detail that. Two of them weren’t found. So it’s planted very early that there could be two of them. And in fact, there are ultimately, it doesn’t matter because you know, they, they get in there, they lock them in, they give them a gun, they, uh, chain and padlock the front gate and say, don’t even try to climb the fence cuz the spikes on the top are super sharp and you’ll cut your nuts off or something.

Well, and um, 

Todd: Peter makes a big show too, of shooting off the lock on the front. Yeah. Which then he’s able to lock back up with a key. Did he just switch locks or something? I’m 

Craig: not, he did, he did. It was like an old, it was an old, tiny lock before. Gotcha. And he, he put a new one on it. It takes a while. Like they go inside, they hang out the, the two Wilder, the two Wilder ones run off together immediately and take off all their clothes to like lounge around in their underwear.

I don’t think, I don’t think they ever actually get around to having sex. Oh my 

Todd: gosh. I. They’re like, it comes to them a couple times. We’re in the bed and the best way I can just describe it is that they’re just like, Rolling around chuckling. yeah, he’s in his underwear. She’s in her underwear. Her underwear are cute.

They’re just kind of slapping each other. It’s endless chuckling. She looks 

Craig: like she’s, um, going to a Rocky horror party. She’s like in like a, a corset and black panties and black stockings with the garter belts, 

Todd: red bra. It’s it’s adorable. Yeah. 

Craig: It’s adorable. She looks super, super cute. And he’s wearing.

Tight little boxer shorts, not boxer briefs, boxer shorts that they clearly stitched the crotch up on because otherwise his Wiener would’ve flopped right out, because they were tight boxer 

Todd: shorts. And you were looking well, obviously, 

Craig: plus I was also think, cuz they like roll around. A lot. And I’m like, those are tight boxer shorts.

He must be wearing like jockeys underneath cuz otherwise yeah. 

Todd: Stuff would be happening. Exactly. But it’s 

Craig: cute. I, I actually think they’re very cute and they’re fun because the other two just like talk like super boring, like someone does their family do. Uh, well what’re super rich. What does your family do?

Well, my dad’s a mechanic. Like it’s boring. 

Todd: Yeah. Not only is it boring. Maybe it’s supposed to be written as a cat and mouse kind of thing between them where he’s expecting or hoping that there will be some sparks or something that happens that night. But she’s just very much like, no, no, you sleep in your own bed and do this and whatever.

And then just sort of out of the blue, they have an more of this boring conversation. No really newer, exciting information is exchanged between them, but she just kind of hops over to his bed and starts kissing him. It’s just so it feels so paint by numbers. It feels so contrived. These are all nice looking people.

They’re all competent enough actors in this beautiful setting and all that, you know? Yeah, they’re fine. It just feels like they, this is stuff they gotta get through. When it comes to, we need to make sure these two have some their own romantic moment as well. 

Craig: And that’s fine. I mean, it’s not like this is atypical.

It’s just that no, you know, the, the Linda Blair and the, her guy, they are the wholesome ones. And then the other two are the wild party one, the goofy ones. That’s fine. It’s just, you know, you separate them into. Couples and the wholesome ones are boring. Um, the other two are cute and fun, but you know, there’s really not a lot to what’s going on.

My favorite part, I think with the, the fun ones is when she asks him like what he likes to do for fun. And he says that he likes to surf. Yes. And then like, he’s, he’s telling her about surfing and he like use. Her body is the surfboard and kind of acts it out. And I thought that was really cute. And I thought so too, they were both like sexy and fun.

Like I, like, I. I was rooting for them, like have a good time, like, do 

Todd: it already. yeah. Don’t just, you don’t need to just walk around and booted each other, ply lighting candles around the room and , and 

Craig: they like, they hear noises because like there are gags and things set up. I don’t even remember, like they hear screaming and, and they find that.

There are speakers set up there and 

Todd: yeah. Be because Peter, 

Craig: there are other silly little gags, like, you know, opening drawers and a snake pops out or stupid stuff like that. There was one part that I had no idea what was happening because there’s one time I think the boys go off. For some reason, Linda Blair gets left alone.

Mm-hmm she see? A ghost. 

Todd: Yeah. Was that 

Craig: supposed to be 

Todd: a real ghost? Oh God, I have no idea because it’s what, it’s the kind of thing that would be really hard to fake. Yeah. By these guys in the fraternity, it it’s like a Pepper’s ghost illusion, you know, or it’s like, you could see through this ghost and I.

I’m I’m still not sure if she was supposed to have seen a real ghost or not there. I think it was supposed 

Craig: to be a real ghost. Oh, it’s so it’s so hokey it, it looks if it is, it was hokey, but it looked like, you know, it looked like Disney’s haunted mansion. That’s what it looked like. Yes. You know, like this, this transparent.

Ghost that, yeah, I know. Can, I know, can be done because I’ve been to Disney’s haunted mansion. I know that those kinds of illusions are possible. I just can’t imagine that these frat guys were able to set up, 

Todd: set that up. Yeah. I mean, it’s these three people, right. That come back. So after they’ve locked them in and then they’re in the house talking and rolling around and chuckling and.

The Peter, the president and Scott, the pirate dude, and may in the leopard outfit all come back and they’re pulling out, you know, they’re wandering the grounds and they’re picking up by the side of a tree, like the little control unit that Scotty has put in there. And, uh, he’s walking around and telling him, be careful, don’t fall down into the tunnels.

Cuz I got all that wired up and he’s flipping switches and it’s locking doors on the inside or making. Come out of a speaker, which actually one of the interesting things I thought about the movie was of course, right away, the people in the house, they know that they’re it’s as part of a prank, right?

They’re not running around actually scared that they really think there’s a ghost. No, I mean, for, for a little bit Linda Blair’s character, when she sees that ghost, you were talking about gets really frightened because, well, how could they fake that? She can’t open the door, but then, uh, once she’s rescued more or less by, uh, Jeff.

He comes in and they go outside and they find the control unit and he, he and her kind of coordinate a little bit and he shows her that when he flips the switch, it can lock the doors. And when he flips the switch again, it unlocks ’em. And so they all just kind of walk around with a bit, with quite a bit of skepticism towards all the sounds and things, and that are happening in the very beginning.

And, and that’s kind of nice, you know, that’s a nice. But then not a lot happens, you know, it’s just like, it just, God, the movie was an hour in and I was like, it sh shouldn’t it be done by now? And it wasn’t and then it’s an hour and a half and I’m like, oh, okay. This movie should almost be done. It’s like, oh no, they’re like 20 more minutes to go.

And it’s just a lot. It ends up, I think being a lot of watching these guys outside flip switches and things, and these people inside having boring talk with each other and then. When there is something spooky or is something bad that’s happening. They spent about five minutes walking quietly down, you know, a 12 foot hallway with a candle in front of them.

Like a haunted mansion movie tends to be mm-hmm . And so it it’s, it’s very much in keeping, like you said, with what they were going for, which is a sort of. House on haunted hill Gothic, haunted house movie crossed with a modern slasher movie, I think. But God does. Does it get boring for a while? 

Craig: Yeah, I was gonna say people do start getting picked off, but it, it, when they do it, it happens pretty quickly and it’s wow.

The extra characters first. Yeah. Like may walks around the corner. Outside and gets grabbed and, uh, dragged down into the tunnels. And then she gets her head chopped off, 

Todd: right? Yeah. Pretty, pretty quickly. There’s there’s not a lot of blood in this movie, but I thought that effect, uh, where it’s gotta pinned against the wall and you see the ax come to her head and just for a split second, you see the rest of her body drop.

it’s just enough to be pretty jolting. 

Craig: Yeah. It’s it’s very quick. You see her head get cut off. There’s a little bit of blood, but it cuts away right away. Mm-hmm and then, uh, Scott, the pirate guy climbs up onto the roof to set up some kind of trap and he gets killed up there. I don’t even remember what 

Todd: happens to him.

Well, the monster picks him up. And a lot of the kills are kind of like this, that, you know, there’s, they seem to be setting up quite a bit of tension. It’s all kind of through POV camera work and stuff like that. But then suddenly the monster just like, ah, and grabs him and immediately twists his neck around and he’s dead.

Yeah. 

Craig: Turns his head like 180 degrees all the way around. So he’s. And then the president Peter gets like, where is everybody in the hedge maze? 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. He goes looking for may, can’t find her, he goes looking for Scott. Can’t find him runs up to the roof. 

Craig: Well, he, I think he does find Scott. I think he find, well, he does cranks 

Todd: my body.

He cranks the crank, which is supposed to be, I guess, a dummy that Scott was gonna hang outside the window. But when he pulls it up, it’s actually Scott himself. So yeah. Then he goes downstairs into the hedge MAs, which I didn’t realize the grounds had a hedge ma it would’ve been nice for them to establish that early on, or at least make a comment about it when he is giving this long spiel, because you don’t ever see a hedge maze, but it became pretty clear.

Suddenly when he’s, you know, kind of lost in these hedges that, oh, there’s a hedge maze. The site, so right. Um, yeah, he gets, he gets, uh, stabbed through, uh, the stomach, I guess, through the, one of the hedges by a guy. And I think it was at this point that I realized there are definitely two people here because you know, they don’t show the guy’s faces very clearly or very quickly.

It’s a lot of silhouette or it’s a lot of really fast movement or maybe just their arms, but one of them is clearly hairier than the other 

Craig: yeah. Yeah. That’s. One 

Todd: of, them’s almost a little bald and one of them’s a little hairy. And so at this point I was like, oh, there are definitely two people, especially here in the hedge MAs where now of course they do this in horror movies all the time where a monster is immediately somewhere, he could not possibly have had enough time to be.

Right. But, you know, Scott kind of turns and looks and he sees a guy dart by. And then when he flips back around toward the camera, you know, a hand comes out and grabs him. I said, okay, there are definitely two guys here. So later on that twist, um, I think it was foretold. Pretty early on. One of these guys was pretty hairy, almost like a Wolfman.

And the other one was clearly a little more bald. And almost when you did see a flash of his face, almost looked a little bit more like a vampire. 

Craig: Um, yeah, almost like, um, The guy from Salem’s lot, a little bit. Yeah. Like kinda, uh, kind of without context mm-hmm . Yeah. Right. And, and so then we’re left with the people inside before Peter gets killed.

He does a funny mirror scare with, um, the fun girl, Denise, which she like doesn’t even realize it’s a scare, I guess, cuz of the Quaalude. It’s pretty. She like, uh, he, he appears behind the mirror in like this gross mask and she sees it and she’s like, whoa, those Quaaludes are terrible for my skin. I thought that was hilarious.

Todd: yeah, but 

Craig: then she, she is in bed with, uh, Seth and he gets up to go to the. and when he comes back, he lays down and she’s completely under the covers or so he thinks, but he pulls the covers back and it’s just. Maze severed head. Uh, so he freaks out and goes running and alerts the other two, Marty and Jeff, and they’re all running around and freaking out.

They don’t know where Denise is because 

Todd: she’s just missing. Yeah. The, the Seth grabs the gun, he 

Craig: grabs the gun and he just, he wants to get out of there. Like the other two are kind of concerned about. Finding Denise. And he’s like, uh, whatever, we’ll send somebody back for 

Todd: her. We need to get out of here.

Yeah. He tries to shoot the lock off the gate. They’re all three at the gate. And, and they realize that the gun they were given just has blanks in it. Yeah. And so there’s this kind of tense scene where he’s going over the top. I mean, when, you know, when you hear the foreshadowing of the, be careful of the top of the gate, it could cut your nuts off or whatever.

I thought. Seth was gonna end up impaling himself on the top there. I didn’t see. And, uh, it doesn’t happen. He leaps over the other side and is like, all right, I’m gonna run and go get help. And he just takes off and every now and then we’re gonna cut back to Seth unsuccessfully, trying to find help, including from the police who just write him off as a.

Oh, yeah. Well, another kid from the fraternity’s been causing trouble all 

Craig: night. One thing that bothered me was like, it was so treacherous to climb over that gate. Wasn’t there anywhere else that they could have climbed over, like, right. surely there was a wall or SU like there had to be some other way.

Todd: Yeah. Well, they didn’t look very hard, right. The other thing, like, come on 

Craig: they just kept running back and it’s locked. And we have seen that the key for the, the padlock is dangling from Peter’s dead finger in the mm-hmm in the hedge maze. So it’s just a matter of time before somebody finds that. But yeah.

Um, so yeah, so then it’s, uh, Marty and, um, Jeff just kinda. Hanging out and 

Todd: being creeping around long ass, walk back to the house, long ass, walk back up the stairs of the house. They end up in the same room that they’re going to return to three or four times, um, which is the room they spent most of their time in talking.

I think they find, uh, Scott, they do find Scott hanging. right, because as they creep through the house, they hear like a tick, tick, tick, tick kind of noise, which they follow to a storage room and they see the tick noise is, uh, Scott’s kind of swaying outside the window to the storage room and his parrot is tapping the, the window.

So. They know that Scott’s dead, but anyway, they just go back to their room and they 

Craig: sit around. I, I thought one of the only cool scenes in the movie is they’re barricaded in this room. Um, they’ve got like, you know, a chair up under the doorknob to the door. Uh, and so they think, and, and. He’s got some kind of weapon.

I don’t remember what he had pitched for. Well, he had, 

Todd: oh, that’s right. He had gone, he had gone back out once they were up in that room, he looks down, he says, oh, I see a light in the garden. And then he says, I’m, let’s split. I’m gonna go. No, no, no, don’t leave me here. No, you stay here. Everything’s fine. You stay here.

He loves to do this right. It’s classic horror movie anyway. And so he goes down and he investigates in the hedge mix. That’s when he finds the body. Uh, and he finds the flashlight, uh, as well as, uh, a pitch fork. Down there he finds, uh, I think that’s when he finds, um, uh, uh, Peter’s body. Right. And he takes the key from his hand and everything like that.

So, 

Craig: no, he doesn’t have the key cuz she finds it later. The part that I liked was when they were barricaded in the room and the camera is obviously facing them. Um, and they’re just talking, I don’t even know what they’re talking about, but behind them, you see. The rug, the carpet start to rise up. Like there’s clearly somebody under it.

And. Just rising up like a ghost and it took me, it it’s dark. Uh, I mean, they’re holding like candles or torches or something, so they’re lit, but behind them it’s dark. So it took me a second to even notice that it was happening. And then when I did, um, I was like, oh, that’s cool. It was very quiet and slow and creepy.

And they think that they’re. They think that they’re alone and barricaded in there and perfectly fine. And then this thing rises up and I, I, I think it ends up grabbing her or, or something. Um, There’s there’s a tussle. And, um, they hit this figure, which is still under the carpet. They hit it with something and it falls to the ground.

He 

Todd: stabs it with his pitch fork. 

Craig: That’s right. And, but then when they go to they, they, they throw the carpet aside and there’s no body there, but there’s a trap door. And he says, well, we’ve gotta follow. We, I don’t know what his justification is. We’ve gotta follow him or, or something. And of course she doesn’t want to, again, that’s, I I’m bothered by her character because she’s such a woo.

Like she’s really just kind of, yeah. He has to drag her around. She’s constantly crying and. Whining and the, in this 

Todd: particular circumstance, he’s still trying to tell her to stay there. He’s like you stay here, I’ll go by myself and I’m thinking, what, why would you do, why do you think that’s a good idea?

You just established the fact this room, isn’t safe there, crazy trapped doors into it that you didn’t know about. Why were, are you gonna continue insist she’s safe back there by herself. And like you said, she’s crying and she’s whining. Like, no, I wanna go after you too. So she ends up following him down there anyway, and it is a long slog through this passageway.

And I just felt like a lot of this stuff was just filler to pat out the time 

Craig: unnecessarily, cuz it was too long anyway. Um, right. Well, and I think that they just wanted this underground tunnel sequence. I, I read, I don’t know the director, I think, um, was inspired by the chase and terror train. You know, that, that.

Confined kind of, uh, chase mm-hmm and so they, they filmed this. I, I really, I think, you know, it seems like they’re running through this elaborate tunnel system. It was really just like two corridors that they just had them running through repeatedly shooting them from different angles. The guy is following them and, and we do finally see him and he.

You know, like kind of a typical castle freak he’s kind of bat. Like he spends a lot of time underground or whatever. Uh, he’s got like a Texas chainsaw style dinner scene set 

Todd: up. Yes. what 

Craig: a rip off Denise’s corpse and then several other clearly very old decomposed corpses. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be other victims or members of his family or what.

But he chases them around. They eventually get out and then Seth, uh, comes back, like you said, he goes to the cops, but the cops don’t believe him. And since the cops don’t believe him, he steals like an assault rifle out of the evidence room.

Todd: those cops, this is the most ineffective cops in the world. These cops, 

Craig: oh, I know. And, and then he, he uses the gun to force some guy out of his car. He steals the car, he comes back, drives 

Todd: up to the gate. How does 

Craig: he get in? I don’t remember how he gets in. 

Todd: It’s ridiculous. He drives up to the gate. And the first thing I was, I was thinking was, okay, well, please do not subject me to another long drawn out sequence of him slowly making his way up to the house.

Yeah. But the second thing I was thinking was, oh, okay. Well, the first thing he’s gonna do is use that rifle to shoot the lock. Or just drive the car through the gate. It’s not his car anywhere. Yeah, he, he doesn’t do either. He, he just looks at the house slowly, starts to walk around the premises and he finds a spot where the bar is bent back.

And that’s how he gets in. I’m like, what, what, why are you doing these things? None of it makes sense. And 

Craig: so then he has a confrontation. With what turns out to be the other one? Um, mm-hmm, the hairy one and they kind of. Fight, I guess, 

Todd: but that’s a decent fight scene. It might be the best fight scene of the whole movie is, is on the stairwell when they’re kind of tumbling down, he’s trying to crawl back up, but he keeps pulling him back.

He can’t, he could barely reach the gun. He can’t get the gun. Finally grabs the gun, swings around and as the monster leaps at him, it’s. It’s classic. Right. He swings the gun around, shoots it at him. And it’s enough to propel this guy over the edge and down into a pond in the garden Uhhuh. And then when he goes down and checks on him, you know, first he looks down the body there and then he goes down to check on.

And once again, as I expected the body, wasn’t there. But just as soon as you notice that suddenly there’s another scare where the guy leaps out from under the water towards him. But, but he manages to blast him in the face and to his. He pokes at the body. He pulls it out of the, he drags it out of the water.

sits it down there, like looks at it a little bit longer, pokes at it some more before he starts to head back to the house. I thought, oh, you know, this cliche is the rest of this was the, the end of it is about what you ought to do. right, right. To in all these movies that we see, and 

Craig: then he runs inside and he is all excited.

He’s like, I got him, I got him. And he’s standing downstairs like in, uh, the foyer or whatever. And they are up on the landing, the other two. And as he’s celebrating, he’s grabbed. Yeah. And dragged. Yeah. And, and, and dragged to where neither we, nor they can see him. And you can kind of hear a little bit of a struggle and then you hear a gunshot and then there’s silence.

They call for him and he doesn’t respond. And then the gun like slides across the floor. Where they can see it. Yes. 

Todd: This is, this is genius. I actually thought this was the best seat of the movie. the gun just slides across the floor and they’re up at the top. They’re like, what the hell do we do? The gun is just sitting there like BA Uhhuh

Yeah. Right. And it’s. It’s cast in this light, a across the floor from the open doorway. It’s really well lit this little bit. And Linda Blair is like, I’m gonna go get the gun. And he’s like, what are you doing? She’s like, no, I’m gonna go get the gun. So slowly walks down the stairs toward the gun. And as the camera follows her from above and kind of comes down, you see her on one side in the dark, you see the gun.

Like there’s salvation, you know, lit almost from like a beam of light from heaven, God like light on the side where it’s right sitting right there and you just know right. That this is a bad idea, but, uh, she of course goes to grab the gun and he reaches out for her instead and grabs her. And so there’s, there’s a bit of a fight there.

I don’t remember how all that. Turns out. I don’t 

Craig: either. I don’t know. He, he chases them back upstairs. I feel like to that same room that they always go to. Yes. And yes. Uh, they , they try to go out the window. Uh, he gets her out, but he doesn’t quite get out and he gets grabbed, um, and dragged back in and thrown out the window.

And frankly, I was surprised. I thought they would both make it. Um, even when he. Thrown out the window. I thought, well, he’s gonna be injured, but she’s gonna find him later and he’s gonna be alive. Um, but no, she does find him later and he’s dead, but she’s up on the roof. Like, you know, I don’t know, like a cat, like.

Curring along the rooftop. Yeah. And, uh, she ends up, she goes down a ladder. She gets, uh, grabbed and dragged through a window and runs away again. And then it’s the classic final girl finds all the bodies scene. Yeah. So, so she, so she runs around and sees all the bodies, but the last one she sees is Peter’s and she notice.

That the gate key is hanging from his finger. So she takes it and she runs to the gate. And I just thought that this part was so funny, like as, as, uh, I don’t know, dangerous as everything has been till now, it seems like in this moment, she’s kind of got all the time in the world. Um, yeah. she runs to the gate and like she’s hurrying with the key, but the guy never shows up.

Um, no, In fact, she, she gets it open and she even has the time and the presence of mind to relock it, which I thought was yes, smart mm-hmm and she gets in the car that Seth had left right there by the gate. Um, initially it won’t start, but don’t forget she’s a mechanic. So she hot wires it, um, and accidentally, I guess, backs into the gate, which.

Breaks it and, and, and flips it so that it’s now horizontal and parallel to the, uh, ground, ground. Um, and she starts to drive away, but it turns out that the remaining killer is on the roof and he like breaks the windshield and is trying to like grab her and choke her through the windshield. But she. I don’t remember if she backs or drives the car towards the gate.

And because it’s now parallel to the ground, those spikes, um, are perfectly poised, um, to stab him. And he is Imped. On the gate. Uh, and then I feel like it cuts to black and it fades back in and it’s the next morning. And she’s either asleep or passed out at the wheel mm-hmm but she wakes up, she gets out of the car.

The giant killer is still there, dead and paled on the gate. And she just walks away. yep. 

Todd: Freeze frame the end there go the credits. Yep. Yep. I thought we might be in, in, in for like one final scare or some kind of twist at the end, but, uh, no, it just seems, I don’t know why they had that final scene. I guess they had to show the Dawn and of a new day and I guess her okay.

Yeah. I mean, it’s just, it’s a rather, I think kind of unremarkable little movie. Where a lot of it is just really slow, you know? I mean, it’s, we’ve, we’ve seen much worse. Oh, definitely. It had its moments, but it was all so paint by numbers and so predictable, uh, that I just, uh, I kind of, I was on autopilot watching it, you know, , to be honest and a little disappointed to see that, you know, this wasn’t like a great vehicle for Linda Blair either.

Um, and any of these other people really, and none of them. Really went on to do. I mean, uh, Vincent van Patton was the blonde hunky guy who was the surfer type dude. And he’s, he’s like Dick van Patton’s son. And, uh, what a couple, couple weeks ago we watched monkey shines. Right. And Joyce van Patton was in that.

She was the mother and I think he’s her aunt. So, I mean, he comes from Hollywood royalty anyway or whatever. So he’s been in a few things since then. I already mentioned, uh, Jeff’s character. Uh, you know, he’s been in some TV and things, but not. Anybody else. So it, it wasn’t like a huge launching pad for anybody’s career.

it? It didn’t get great reviews when it came out, it made money, just like all these slasher movies made money when they came out. Um, I hear it has a bit of a cult status, but I’m maybe just to make fun of it and call it silly aside from that. Like, I, I don’t know. I, I mean, I definitely would never sit through it again.

No, could I recommend it? I mean, just maybe if you’re. looking for a Halloween movie to have on the background. Other than that, no, it’s, it’s really lacking a lot of tension and it’s lacking a lot of payoff lacking twist. , you know, 

Craig: Yeah. There’s nothing notable about it. Aside from the fact that Linda Blair is in it, that, that that’s pretty much, it it’s the only reason 

Todd: we’re talking about it today.

Really Uhhuh you would be 

Craig: honestly, I think that I probably have seen it before. Um, but I didn’t really remember anything about it. And 10 years from now, I’ll be able to say the same thing. Yeah. like, yeah. I think I’ve seen it. I don’t remember anything about it cuz there’s just really nothing notable about 

Todd: it.

This will be one of these, like, I don’t know, like 50 podcast episodes from now. We’ll be saying something like in the midst of our conversation, did we ever do hell night? I can’t remember.

well, thank you for joining us on the second of our series of, uh, 1981 slasher films. We’ve got two more coming up for you this month. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with the friend. You can find us online. If you just Google two guys in a chainsaw podcast where you’ll find our website, you’ll find our Twitter.

You’ll find our Facebook page, leave us a note in any one of those places. If, uh, you are interested in supporting our show, look for our Patreon page at patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. We do post minisodes there several a month. And including this month, we have a mini. So for you, that’s, uh, where we just talk a little bit more in general, about poor in that year of 1981 in the slasher movies, and just a little bit more background, why we decided to do this film for a theme month this month. So until next time I am Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Time for another highly-specific theme month: 1981 Slasher Films!

We start off the series with a film that has been touted by some as “one of the long forgotten slashers of the 80’s”. Is it? Well, it’s certainly been forgotten. But let’s dive deep to see if it’s worth rediscovering, and find out what happens when a bunch of kids camp in the woods in the midst of a bunch of backwater yokels….

Just Before Dawn (1981)

Episode #304, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: And I’m Craig. 

Todd: Well, it has been a while, Craig, since we’ve done a theme month, I dunno. We have like a whole bunch of ideas for theme months floating out there. Yeah. Ideas that our patrons have given us ideas we’ve had literally for years mm-hmm but um, I was out looking at things research.

I dunno. I went down some rabbit hole on IMD. and I think it was related to one of the actors that we had seen in one of our other movies. And I’d booked marked this movie called Just Until Dawn. That was directed by a guy named Jeff Lieberman, Uhhuh . And earlier on in our podcast, one of the first episodes we did was a movie called Satan’s little helper.

Oh yeah. He wrote and directed. And I remember thinking, yeah, I remembered you particularly well, you recommended it because you really liked it. Uhhuh . We thought it was quirky. We thought it was kind of fun. It was an odd little movie I got to looking. And this movie just before Dawn from 1981 popped up directed by and.

Co-written by Jeff Lieberman and all of the reviews that I had seen online talked about how this is kind of like a hidden gem, kind of an underappreciated slasher from the era of the slashers. And, uh, I got interested in it. I thought, well, we should see this. So I acquired the movie and then I was just looking around and I was like 1981.

Wow. That was a year. For slashers. And I just looked at a list of slashers from 1981 and not only were there like four or five movies that I’ve had in my mind for us to do, but also a bunch of movies we’ve already done that we, that we really enjoyed. Like, for example, my bloody Valentine, 1981, Friday, the 13th part 2 19 81 evil speak the burning.

These are just slasher movies that we’ve done, student bodies, uh, which is a comedy and mm-hmm graduation day. Even a couple that we didn’t care for, like home sweet home with the body by Jake guy. oh yeah. remember. Remember that stupid one. Yeah, don’t go into the woods, which. I still terrible maintained to this day is one of the worst, most boring, horrible movies we’ve ever seen.

and then like, even if you go beyond slashers, there’s like galaxy of TA or we did dead and buried and we did cannibal PHX, which we didn’t really like. No, and there’s a list of them, the evil dead, 1981, an American werewolf in London, the Halloween. Wow. Like huge movies, Halloween two. It just seems like this was almost the crest of an earlier phase of the slasher before it was started to kind of peak around that time.

Maybe a couple years later with some of the more nightmare Elm street and Friday the 13th movies. And then about mid to late eighties, just kind of dropped off until we got the scream series in the nineties to sort of revive it in an ironic way. But I thought, why don’t we pay tribute to this year, 1981.

With a month of movies, because there were at least four other films that I also wanted to see you said, 

Craig: okay. Yeah. Why, why not? 

Todd: I’m not, I, this as random as any other decision that we make, right. and you’re always game for everything until we actually do it. And then you blame me for it later, which is fair.

So I, I, I listed out about four movies that I thought we could do this month. And you said, let’s do it. And, uh, we talked a little bit more in detail about the movies and things on a special mini so that we did for our patrons on the Patreon page. Um, so we’re not gonna go into all the background and kind of talk about our reminisce of those movies.

I listed off as well as some of the other movies from this era. If you want to access that, uh, please become a patron, go to patreon.com. Subscribe to our page anyway. We kicked it off with this movie just before Don George Kennedy’s in it. Right. 

Craig: I know he’s, 

Todd: he’s such a iconic actor. He was one of the, the old man in the old wooden head episode of creep show too.

He looks about the same. And so I thought, okay, well, this should be really interest. And the reviews I was reading from people online were all kind of along the same lines. Oh, this is like a must see for slasher fans from this era. And this is sort of a hidden gem and I don’t really wanna show my cards right off the bat, but I thought it was boring as

Craig: It was okay. 

Todd: Like, I don’t know. An hour and a half of this. Well, 

Craig: first of all, where you find these movies is kind of a, don’t ask, don’t tell a kind of situation for me. I, I, I don’t wanna know I don’t wanna be implicated in any of that. Um, I just click on the link that you send me. But I think that we ended up watching the longest cut that is available of this movie, which is about an hour 45.

Um, I think that the theatrical cut is, uh, just one 30 and, you know, I appreciate seeing directors cuts and whatnot. I don’t think that they’re always necessary. And I think that this is one of those instances where it’s really not necessary. You can, you can tell easily. What bits of the movie were restored because the film quality is terrible.

Yeah. Um, just, just really, really bad. And in my opinion, didn’t really add anything except for maybe a little bit of plot clarity, but that’s not really even all that necessary. It’s there are a couple very, very small, unique things about the movie other than. it’s a bunch of kids go into the woods and get picked off by a Woodland killer.

Like that. That’s it. that? That’s all she wrote 

Todd: folks. Well, it’s a, there’s a minor twist in there. Um, yeah, that, that’s what I’m 

Craig: saying. There, there. There, there is the, the minor twist, which is projected a hundred miles away mm-hmm and then there is a kill at the very end that I thought was really awesome.

One. Mm. Other than that, it draws a lot of comparisons to the Hills have eyes and the Texas chainsaw mask are only. It’s taking these suburbanite, presumably white folks and throwing them into an environment that they are unprepared for. And then just, you know, getting them picked off by the locals. Yeah.

I mean, it’s, it’s a very, very simple formula. There’s nothing wrong with that. 

Todd: No, there’s nothing wrong with that. And we’ve seen decent movies, you know, that did this. Right. Um, and this. It’s not, don’t go into the woods. That’s for sure. In fact, it’s not that bad. No, I would certainly say that when it started out, I was kind of into it because I thought that especially early on some of the cinematography was rather inspired and I thought impressive for such a low budget film right off the bat, you know, it shows.

Pictures of these beautiful mountains. I think it’s in Oregon is where it was shot. And there’s like some interesting cinematography where the camera takes us in through a hole in the roof of what looks like a cabin, but it ends up being like this church, this very simple church out in the middle, literally in the middle of the woods.

And two guys drinking inside there. And. One’s looking at the other and they’re raising their glass to God and they’re kind of making jokes and all this stuff. And one guy sees somebody looking in that hole as he raises his glass. And then immediately it cuts to these kids driving down. The highway in a camper, this is like the setup to so many movies we’ve 

Craig: seen.

Yeah. And, and I, I, I will give it credit. There were the cinematography, like you said, there’s some beautiful nature cinematography. I mean, it is a, a beautiful setting. The, the, the mountain setting is, is very beautiful. Um, and there were some really creepy moments, you know, one of those drunk hunters looking up to the roof and just seeing this.

Big menacing, weird looking guy, looking down on them. And then it cuts away while he tries to get his friend’s attention. And by the time he gets his friend’s attention, that guy is gone. Like that was kind of spooky. Like I was like, Ugh. who is that freak? And there a couple of other places in the movie where I’ve.

Found it to be genuinely kind of creepy and you know, you say, oh, okay, well, you know, they see this guy and then it cuts away. No, there’s like a whole action set piece where the guy who saw the creepy guy in the roof goes outside, like presumably to look around and they’re and their truck mysteriously.

Down the hill hits a tree and explodes, and then the guy that’s still in the church gets brutally killed, brutally 

Todd: killed. Oh, I jumped ahead in my notes 

Craig: with the machete through the Wiener. 

Todd: yeah. And that was that wasn’t bad, actually. You know, you see the machete come out. His butt, his butt

there’s some blood, there’s a maniacal laugh. And that dude takes his, his orange hat and puts it on and stands in the doorway so that his drunk friend, who’s quite a ways away in, deeper into the woods can see him. And he kind of runs off you’re right. I, I think I jumped ahead to my notes. 

Craig: I kind of like, I I’d never really, I don’t know.

I’ve probably seen it before, but I don’t know that there was ever stab in the yeah, like, like through the crotch out the butt. Um, and of course, you know, in varying releases and varying parts of the world, that was one of the first things that got cut. Um, but uh, I thought, damn what a terrible way to go, cuz then you.

Not only would that just be a nightmare? Like, like that’s the worst, you know, like I’d almost, I’d almost rather take it in the eye than in the Wiener. and then you’re just gonna have to like, like slowly bleed to death with a big knife in your Wiener. That’d be horrible. 

Todd: Would be, I don’t even know what that would feel like.

Cuz that’s gotta go through bone to get out the back, right. Oh, oh geez. Oh, terrible. So, okay, so you’re right. So it kind of starts off with a bit of a bang and the truck explodes when it hits the tree and all that stuff, cuz cars are supposed to do in movies. And then there’re just these five, five friends driving down a camper down the road.

I mean, again, this is. It’s a typical opening for a slasher film. Yeah. And there are these great shots of the road. And by the way, I want this camper. It is yeah, big. It’s nice. It’s got loads of windows and that windshield like pretty much wraps around the front and the sides. My God, you, they must have felt like champions riding down for the wisdom.

That thing it was really, really nice. as a guy who went around in a much shitier camper with his family growing up , but we are introduced to these friends. There’s Warren who’s guy, who’s Dr. Drinking and driving down the road, 

Craig: but he’s kind of the hunky one mm-hmm and kind of like, he’s kind of established as like the Eagle scout.

Like that’s what they keep calling him. Like he’s the one that knows about camping and stuff. 

Todd: and also he’s one of the more. Successful actors in this, in this production. I mean, he’s, um, his name is Greg Henry. Um, he has like 178 credits to his name. He’s still working today. He’s he was in. Guardians of the galaxy Jason born.

Oh, wow. Loads of TV, ER, and, and Gilmore girls and 24 star Trek enterprise. Just you name a TV show. I think this guy’s been in at least one episode of it, uh, you know, all the way back to like. Murder. She wrote it. Wasn’t the first thing he’s done, but it’s one of the first things that he did everything before that was either a TV movie or a TV series.

And there were just about a half a dozen of them. His career exploded after this. And I would say he’s one of the strongest actors in here. 

Craig: I think he’s fine. I mean, they’re not given a whole lot to do. Um, I didn’t, I didn’t look any of them up because I didn’t recognize anybody. I just assumed you just assumed they were nobody’s.

Yeah. 

Todd: No, actually quite a few of ’em have gone on, well, obviously George Kennedy, who will get to in a second. Right. But he’s the, I, I know him. Sure. Yeah. He’s the dude who warns 

Craig: them all. He’s yeah. He’s the local who warns them not to go up there. I mean, it’s paint by numbers. I mean, if you were teaching a class on slasher movies, you could use this as an example of the formula.

I mean, it just follows it to 

Todd: a T, which is charming, you know? I mean, we kinda like that too, when things do sort of follow. Formula. And we can talk about it. We can laugh at it, but we also know what to expect. 

Craig: Yeah. But I, I, there are ti you know, there are times when we do, we watch these things and like, we get excited when they meet mm-hmm the, the local who we know is going to be the one to warn them off.

Cause it’s 

Todd: usually like, Played up, you know, and right. And like it’s really suspenseful. 

Craig: Well, or they go over the top with the camp, you know, it’s a very tongue in cheek. We know what we’re doing, kind of thing. Mm-hmm um, and this is just played very straightforward, which is totally fair. This is early, you know, like, yeah.

As we talked about before, you know, it’s not like this is, you know, the first slasher, obviously with Halloween and Friday the 13th and, and even. We talked about in the mini. So the Diallo genre really kind of was a precursor to these things. So it’s not like we had never seen these before, but they were new enough that the formula was still kind of fresh.

Mm-hmm . Today. It, it it’s, it’s so established that we see it in parody. We see it in spoof, you know, we, we expect it. Um, so I don’t know. Had I seen this movie when it first came out, maybe these things wouldn’t have stood out to me. I also think that this movie had it gotten studio backing. It could have potentially done just as well as any of the others.

You know, it’s not. Any better or worse necessarily than those early Friday, the 13th movies, it just didn’t have the same kind of backing and 

Todd: support. I think that’s true to an extent. And apparently universal was interested in distributing this, but they eventually pulled out and it did get some distribution and some regional movie theaters across the country and stuff.

And apparently it. The reviews were kind to it. I think not overly kind raving about it, but they initially weren’t terribly bad. And I think part of that is O to the fact that. It’s played rather sincerely. And it’s not really played with heightened suspense. The one thing I will say, the movie really has going for it.

And it hearkens even back to the scene where we’re talking about, you know, where they encounter this old man. I, they, you know, they, they, they hit a deer. Or they think they hit a deer pull over and go back and look for it. They run up on this house where, like you said, the dude from creep show . His name is Roy, uh, is, uh, he’s got a white horse and he’s gardening potted plants in his house and he warns them.

I guess you’re looking to find your way out of here. No, sir. We’re doing just fine. We’re going up the mountain to do some camping. only a fool would do that. Well, we got five of ’em in. But there’s no campsite up there, especially with ladies along. Oh, we 

Craig: don’t have to worry with a big, strong forest ranger to protect this.

Do we? 

Todd: Yeah. Well, I can’t let you go up, sir. Hold on, hold on a second. I see the boy, here’s a land bear and we’re going up to look 

Craig: over the back 40. That 

Todd: de don’t mean nothing. That mountain can’t. Well, you know, he is the warning guy, but it’s not, like we said, it’s not really heightened. He’s just sort of, matter-of-factly telling him this and is kind of like, well, I mean, it’s kind of your funeral and they’re kind of like, ah, that’s okay, we’re gonna go anyway.

There’s no musical cues. There’s nothing like that. And I think the whole movie is kind of like this, the music is rather sparse. There isn’t a lot of intensity. It almost feels like in some ways a documentary crew following these people around the woods, kinda. There’s a lot of. Them hiking and through beautiful environments under waterfall.

Yeah. Swimming and water, but it’s like a good 40 or 45 minutes after that first kill that we really see anything well, like another kill or any, any action. Really? Like actually I think most of the kills happen in the last 20 or 30 minutes of the movie really it’s 

Craig: late and it takes its time, but you know, it really does.

The reason that they’re going there is apparently, uh, Warren’s dad has bought some property on the mountain and I guess they’re just kind of going to scope it out, which they tell Roy, but then he says, okay, well, where are you gonna be? So when you don’t come back, at least I know we’re a look for you and they tell him a place, but it’s not where they’re really going.

Which, which they comment on later. Ultimately it doesn’t really make all that big a difference, but like, oh yeah, I guess that was stupid. We should have told him really where we were gonna be, but, uh, as they’re headed up after they cross Roy and they’re headed up, then they come across the other drunk hunter who is still wandering around the mountain and still drunk and still drinking.

And, uh, he says that there are, there’s a demon after him and it’s gonna kill him. And he begs them to take him down the mountain and, and they very kind of callously leave him there. Like, yeah, this guy clearly. 

Todd: Needs help in some way, 

Craig: right? Maybe he’s just drunk, but still needs help, but they just toss a couple sandwiches out the window and keep going.

But, um, then as the hunter looks on and as they drive away, the killer jumps out of the woods onto the back of the 

Todd: camper, completely unnoticed by the people inside the camper. 

Craig: Completely Unno. Because one of the girls, Megan, the brunette of the two girls, the other is Connie. She’s the good girl. I mean like the second you see her, you know, she’s the final girl and she is.

Mm. And, and Megan is, uh, you know, the Wilder curly haired brunette one. But like she has just right before this guy jumps onto the camper, she has just adjusted the rear view mirror to do her makeup and Warren who’s. Driving’s like, Hey, I need that for driving. And, and she’s like, why there’s no traffic up here.

So like he does, he can’t even see it in the rear view mirror. I mean, they’re a. Kind of clever things going on there, but just seeing this guy kind of crawling around in the, on the back with this huge back window, but none of them noticing, and there’s another gag where when they do finally park one of the other guys, Daniel who’s like the nerdy photographer one, he forgets his sunglasses on the camper and has to go back on to get him.

And when he goes back on to get him, you see the killer lower the upper half of his body down to look in the window, but Daniel doesn’t see him. There were little moments like that, that I thought were creepy, but they didn’t like blow me away. It’s not, I was like, Ooh, this is so scary. Like they, yeah, they were just moments of okay.

Todd: yeah, exactly. That’s the best way to put it. They were moments of okay. and, and I mean, part of the problem is. Well once of, first of all, I, I don’t mind that there are no musical cues, but it was, it was very definitely missing. And I think it would’ve added something to the movie. If there had been a little bit of that, 

Craig: I agree with you, but I did kind of appreciate the sound design because there’s a lot of nature sound.

Hmm. That’s true. And, uh, There there’s lots of, you know, the sounds of the forest, which is a lot of like insects and crickets and things. Um, but anytime anybody is about to appear from out of the woods, the insect sounds quiet or go away entirely, which is smart. Well, you know, somewhat true to life mm-hmm and it’s very subtle.

And to I’d be lying if I said, I really even noticed I read about it, but then when I was thinking about it, I was like, oh yeah, that, that did happen. In fact, I read about it while I was still watching the movie because I put this off until the very last minute. So I was watching and researching at the same time.

So I, so I read that bit. Fun fact. And then I was watching, I was like, oh yeah. they did do that. that’s 

Todd: hilarious. Well, while they’re walking through, I just, again, I kind of fell in love with it cuz it’s still early enough in the movie and there’s a little bit of the drama with the guy kind of poking around the, the trees and they’re they look around, they see something in the bushes, but it kind of disappears and it’s this dude.

Um, but it like the setting was just gorgeous and I thought I wanna be on this camping. Because they’re hiking at just these insane scenes they’re walking under on, on these rocks, underneath a waterfall. Um, yeah. And then they set up a camp in just this random, beautiful area. You know, it’s not like a proper campsite and 

Craig: built camp fire, but it definitely looked like somewhere where you could go.

Mm-hmm like when they. The waterfall. It very much looks like a natural place that has been, oh God, I don’t know what the 

Todd: accommodated for. Yeah. For people like groomed and yeah. For people, 

Craig: of course. Right, right. It, I mean, and it doesn’t take away from its beauty. It’s a very beautiful waterfall. But especially when they’re walking down underneath it, it looks very much kind of like a manmade trail there.

Yeah. And, and when they’re. To their camp, it looks like they’re walking on trails. It doesn’t look like they’re just, traing through the woods. 

Todd: It’s like a national park, state park or state park type atmosphere. Well, while they’re at the camp and they set it up and it’s nighttime Warren and Jonathan run back off to get 

Craig: stuff.

I, yeah, I didn’t get that. Like, why didn’t they just bring it’s so weird. Did, did they go back to the camper? 

Todd: I’m pretty sure they went back to the 

Craig: camper. They went back to get like the booze or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like why didn’t they, 

Todd: why just bring it, why with them and it kind of kills and they do this multiple times and it just sort of kills.

Well, first of all, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. And the second of all, like. You wanna get this impression that they’ve hiked like all morning or all afternoon out to this place, deep in the woods. But if these guys can just run back to the camper and be back in a couple hours, doesn’t feel the same way.

And like you said, they just go to get booze and they come back with a couple bottles of wine and the girls, the guy says. This is all, we got someone broke into the camper and stole the rest of the food as though it worked no big deal. right. I’m like, what don’t you think you’d be a little more upset?

Well, 

Craig: and the hunter guy already told him that told them that he was being pursued by demons. Like now. Yeah, that sounds crazy. But that. On top of somebody breaking into your camper. You’re clearly not alone out there. 

Todd: And they’re just like, ah, oh, well this is all we have. Cuz somebody broke into it for some food, whatever it, it provides a, a reason for them to kind of be spooked.

And who is it? Why aren’t they back yet? You know, kind of suspense. And then the guys leap out of the bushes, you know, to surprise them. And it’s again, very typical stuff. And then it’s morning. So when the movie is. Just before Dawn. I expected the movie to take place overnight. Yeah. Right. And the movie actually takes place over like multiple nights.

So. that was the first surprise. And Connie’s upset because of, you know, the, she kept seeing things across the night, bothered her and the talk about the demon and she was frightened and did nothing while Melanie right. Actually grabbed a knife and kind of went out to look. And so she’s talking with Warren and I liked this little bit of relationship.

This is what I, I was trying to say earlier is. I felt that the, there was a bit of realism to this movie. Yeah. Like these are just normal people who are out camping and their dialogue seemed pretty genuine. And I thought their acting was just fine and everything was just not as dramatic as it tends to be, which.

Which I found again, it was, it made it give it a little bit of a documentary, feels a little refreshing, whether it was intentional or, or not, or however it did, it does have this. I was thinking, well, they’re doing a really great job of setting this up for the tension that’s going to come because, you know, whatever killer comes out and starts really stabbing and.

Picking people off, it’s gonna be in stark contrast, you know, to the reality and everything of this. But you know, they go hiking some more. They hear the sounds of a woman singing and, and they find this young girl who looks like she’s got some makeup smeared under her eyes, and she’s scared by them. And they call out to her, but she just sort of runs off into the woods and they Warren comments like, uh, or somebody comments to Warren.

Isn’t this, are we still on your dad’s property? And he is like, yeah. So what are these people doing out here? And then they go across an awesome rope bridge. Yeah. It’s one of those where it’s like a single rope across, but then two ropes as road rails. Yeah. Right. And again, like in a better movie. , it was a little better structure.

This would be your moment to sort of set up the danger. Yeah. That they’re going to have to later come to you’d be be going across this rope bridge, but it would be a bit of a struggle. It might be a little dangerous. Maybe somebody slips or something’s coming loose or whatever. And so that when we revisit the rope bridge later, it’s been established at, on its own.

This rope bridge is treacherous, but you know, they just go across. And it’s pretty. It is. 

Craig: I would’ve been too scared to do it, but I, I saw a, uh, I think it was French, a, a foreign horror film that was very much like this with people hiking in the mountains. And mm-hmm um, there was a, a great big, uh, It actually wasn’t a rope bridge.

It was cable because it was so big mm-hmm um, and, and they were being pursued by like inbred backwards people. So this reminded me of that, obviously this came first, but that the rope bridge seemed very treacherous and I don’t know how. they filmed that I, I kind of just assumed that they just had the actors do it and seems like it again, you know, there, there is, they go over it.

You know, I, I think that Warren and Connie, uh, go over it first and then everybody else kind of goes at the same time, which is dumb, cuz they’re throwing each other off. And somebody almost falls in, but, uh, manages to pull themselves back up. And like, I guess there there’s a part later in the movie, there’s a part where one of the characters, uh, one of the guys, uh, John ends up back on that rope bridge and it ends up.

Getting cut and, and he holds onto it and he tries to climb up and I read that, uh, he did that stunt himself and it was actually very dangerous because that particular waterfall was notorious for people going over it and falling to their death. Yeah. Like, 

Todd: yeah. I just pretty nuts, 

Craig: nuts. I don’t, I don’t.

Stands the hubris of filmmakers sometimes. And I guess, you know, you gotta have balls to, you know, do something interesting to watch, but I, 

Todd: gosh, maybe he had a safety harness or something on him that we couldn’t see or whatever, but he, I hope so. He’s holding onto that bridge when he gets cut. And I mean, there’s a very clear shot of him swinging and hitting that rock and slipping down and everything.

I mean, it’s, I was very impressed with that stunt. When that happened, because it was very clear, the actor was doing it and it did not look. About along the lines of like the Exorcist too, which had a bigger budget and more experienced people on it. Or I 

Craig: know that always makes me, I know, I always think of that with that, with her standing at that ledge.

Oh God. Which we came to find out was real and just infuriated both of us, cuz that’s so risky, but you know, we know. There’s some booted figure. Following them, they go swimming. The mountain girl is watching them. There is a cool part where John and Megan who are a couple are swimming and she’s topless.

So you get a little bit of boobies mm-hmm in there and there’s swimming and. Fooling around and he’s messing around with her. Like he pretends to drown at some point, which really isn’t funny. Um, but, uh, don’t do that guys. It’s not funny at all. Mm-hmm and so when he goes underwater again, she thinks that he’s just messing around.

And again, we see the. The camera is, is on her. It’s kind of a wide shot that it’s on her, but we see kind of far in the background, the killer waiting into the water behind her. And again, I just thought that this was a really creepy shot. I don’t know how realistic it is that nobody would’ve seen him.

Yeah. But just her being oblivious to it, as we can clearly see him approaching. And then she thinks that her boyfriend is messing around with her again, as these. Come up and start kind of groping at her. You know, we can see that they’re clearly not her boyfriend’s hand. They’re kind of smeared and dirt.

They’re really big. They’re much larger than her boyfriend’s hands are. And then, so these hands are groping at her and then she turns and sees her boyfriend cl you know, crawling up on the shore. So she freaks out and gets out. But you know, they just write it off. Oh, it must have been a fish or 

Todd: something.

You’re overreacting and stuff. Yeah. I mean, like you said, it’s a little unrealistic that this guy maned to make it there and slip into the water without them knowing, and then make it all the way over to her standard water. And then what is he trying to do cop a feel? I think he doesn’t surface. And she’s freaking out for a while and they’re all looking at 

Craig: her.

What is it, honey? Come on, come here. Hey, come on, get outside

there.

I was in the water and I hand and I saw you on the, so the hand wasn’t you. Oh, no, it was me, Jonathan. There’s someone 

Todd: in that. What you down, honey, come on, let’s get some coffee. She runs out of the water and like, where did he go? You know, did he, is he a fish? Can he really stay under there that long? ? You know, it just, I mean, it was a cool set piece, but it really stretched the boundaries of.

Believability to a point where I was on like, uh, okay. And by now, also, by the way, we’re 45 in minutes into the movie now. So we are mm-hmm, halfway through. And except for that kill in the beginning, a little bit of creeping around, we haven’t really actually seen anything significant happen yet. 

Craig: Not really the, the drunk hunter now stumbles upon Roy’s property and tells him about the mountain man.

And I, Roy just kind of takes it with the grain us all. Okay. Well, I guess we better go check on those kids. Um, and then it’s nighttime again. And, uh, Megan. I don’t know, I have in my notes, Megan, in a fool at dinner, , you know, she’s just, she’s joking around dancing. Right. And then everybody’s dancing and then somebody shoots their boombox and these mountain people come out of the woods and it’s.

A, a father, a mother, and the girl that they have already seen who her name, she gets a name, her name’s Mary cat mm-hmm . But they, the, the mountain people are the dad’s like, you need to get off this land before you’re raised the devil . And like, he just says that twice. And then they turn around and leave.

Yeah. You know, you. Said something about the title? Not really making sense, because you would think that this would be, you know, like peril through the night, you know? Yeah. Like leading up until Dawn. Well, I guess it went through several different titles because it also went through heavy, heavy rewrites, like initially.

These mountain people were supposed to be some sort of like religious sect. Um, and they were all in on it together. And it wa you know, like there were these weird, like snake handling religious ceremonies that they forced these people to, or end endure and stuff. But I guess that the director just found that to be very distasteful.

And, and so God, that would’ve been more 

Todd: interesting, it would’ve been more interesting. 

Craig: He would. That it would’ve been more interesting, but they, they just, uh, rewrote it and got rid of all those elements. And so it went through a couple of title changes too, and they just landed on this one. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but 

Todd: whatever.

Well, I, you know, I was actually getting and part of why, like I said, even for the first bit of the movie, I was still kind of into it, even though I thought the pacing was a little slow. It reminded me a lot of deliverance. Yeah. The writer director actually said inspired him, uh, for this movie. and to the point where I think one of the earlier titles of the movie was gonna be like survivor or something like that.

Oh, funny. Which is hilarious. And it did like have the pacing of deliverance because I would say that, and I’ve, I’ve both read the book and watched the movie. And the thing that’s kind of interesting about deliverance is that it does have this very. Natural feel of these people out on this little adventure, camping in the woods.

Craig: Oh yeah. That’s a fun buddy movie for the first 45 minutes. 

Todd: Yeah. And then suddenly it get, takes a very dark turn when they realize they’re in over their heads and they’re encroaching upon the mountain people’s land and these guys come out and then pretty soon they’re fighting for their life. Yeah. And it’s much like this movie.

From, even from that point on when they’re fighting for their life, it’s not like it’s a constant chasing. The enemy is unseen for a lot of it. Like they’re getting like guns shot at them from places where they can’t see it’s quite suspense. It really gives you that notion that they are really in over their heads.

They have no control over the territory. They’re always in the, on the disadvantaged low ground. And they’re these set pieces like interesting things happen. They fall in the water, they’re fighting against the current while these guys are shooting at them. And, and this movie, it felt like it was going for that flavor, but felt very, very short, you know, because there was no like.

Except for that kill at the very beginning of the movie, which has nothing to do with these kids. Mm-hmm there isn’t that instigating incident for a very long time that suddenly makes them realize, oh my God, like we’re in 

Craig: peril. Yeah. We still haven’t even gotten to it. I, I mean, the net. The next morning, like Connie wants to leave.

She thinks there’s something weird going on, but they just blow that off. And then some of, uh, the other girl Megan’s makeup has gone missing or something . So, um, John goes to look for it and he find, apparently Mary KA, the mountain girl stole some of it. Cuz she’s got like makeup smeared on her face now mm-hmm

But, but he starts talking to her and she kisses him and runs. And he kind of not chases as in like menacing, but like gives chase, follows 

Todd: her, it kind of flirty sort of 

Craig: thing. Yeah. It’s well, I mean, he’s got a girlfriend I’m like, what are you doing? Are you gonna bang the mountain girl in the woods? And then just like, pretend nothing thing happened.

And, and, and they get, they get to the rope bridge and she acts like she sees something that freaks her out and kind of hides in the, the brush line. And he thinks that she’s just scared of the bridge. And he is like, no, come on. It’s cool. You know, look just go across it. And, uh, he starts to go across. And as he gets to the end, we see this big killer.

It’s the same killer we’ve been seeing on the whole time. He’s this big guy. He’s, he’s a fat guy. Balding, uh, looks, you know, I don’t know what dorky PC word, I don’t know what the PC word is to use slow, you know? Uh, mm-hmm, simple. Yeah, right? Yeah. But he’s just kind of standing there menacingly. So, uh, John turns around and starts going back the other way, but he, this is the part where the killer cuts the bridge and, and he, and he eventually is able to climb back up the rope.

But as he gets up to the top, mind you, this is on the other side mm-hmm but we just see, we see his. Getting to the top, but at the top we see this boot that just pushes him back in and he falls, um, to his death. Mm-hmm uh, it’s a good stunt. Well, yeah, that the stunt is good. It, it does look good and it is scary.

I’m, I’m terrified of Heights. Uh, and so that kind of thing makes me very nervous. You. Find me anywhere near that bridge. in the best of circumstances. Absolutely not. But then Dan finds the old church and Megan joins him there and Warren catches a fish, like who cares? Uh, and then, so then John’s. Body washes down the river to Warren and Connie and he is dead.

And I think Connie says he was murdered. Wasn’t he? Like, I don’t know, like, like 

Todd: he washed 

Craig: down the, the river, you don’t know. And Warren’s like, nah, he probably just fell off the bridge. 

Todd: and that’s the extent he, he makes it like a small attempted CPR and then, then they move on these people. 

Craig: I. This isn’t, this isn’t unique, right?

This is not unique to this movie, but it always, it just throws me that in movies. Yeah. You know, these people come across their dead friends. They’re like, oh no. And then that’s it like back at the campsite. Moving on. Oh God. Dan and Megan are at the church. They’re approached by the killer in a gag like Dan doesn’t have his glasses on and he’s the only one who sees the killer approaching.

And he apparently mistakes this big fat balded guy for his young attract. Brother . And so this, the killer just walks right up to him and, and stabs Dan in the gut, very UN unceremoniously and he’s dead. Yeah. Megan runs into the church where she stumbles upon the dead hunter from the opening scene. And then the big twist is revealed.

She sees the one, the killer outside. Messing with Daniel’s camera, but then she turns around and he’s also standing right in front of her because they’re twins. Yeah. It’s twin killers. And I said earlier that it was totally projected, but then we didn’t talk about it at all. As they’re writing, like through this rural area or whatever, they see these two little twin girls and one of them says, I wonder why there’s so many twins around here.

Todd: I know like, like. Were they riding down the road and there were just pairs of twins standing down the road every half mile waving it’s like seeing dead armadillos by the side of the road in Texas or something like that. Well, deer there surely are a lot of twins out yeah. And, and also it’s. It’s not even a consequential reveal because no, there’s never any moment in this movie where we were like, what, how good the killer have been there?

And there, you know, 

Craig: well, how could he have been on both sides of the rope bridge, but like that could have been anybody on the other side. It, we, it was just 

Todd: a, I was con. I was confused by the camera work. Yeah. I, I wasn’t sure, you know, if they were actually two, it, well, it could 

Craig: have, well, because they show like, as soon as the one guy cuts the bridge, they show him really quick runoff.

Like, so I suppose maybe he could have like run other side 

Todd: round. I mean, that was kind of what I assumed, right. Was, oh, he ran around to the other side or it’s just, you know, kind of dumb filmmaking where now the killer. Immediately somewhere where he needs to be. Yeah. You know, like 

Craig: Jason or, I mean, we know that there’s other people out there.

It could have just as easily been the dad that we saw before, who knows mm-hmm , that’s true. And who amongst these mountain people are killers. 

Todd: And then Warren and Connie go back to the campsite and they’re calling for everyone and they kind of go back to the church and prowl around there. And then the old man pops back out with his rifle and his.

With the little girl watching from inside, 

Craig: you keep calling her a little girl. I think she’s about their age. She’s about the same age. Yeah, you’re 

Todd: probably right. You’re probably right. And he’s a, and, and they ask him, what did you mean by raising the devil and they’ll hold man says. Uh, I don’t know nothing about that.

I told you to SDU to ska do. 

Craig: He says that several times 

Todd: he says that a lot and then they just leave again, like they, and go back to 

Craig: camp and just hang out, 

Todd: like, okay. They just kinda walk away from these two. Like, what are we supposed to think about this old man? Who’s always got his rifle with him out there with his daughter and wife.

Like, are we, are they supposed to be menacing? Are we supposed to think they’re in on it? He doesn’t do anything except tell him to SDU and then they just gotta walk off. I don’t know. 

Craig: Did you read the Wikipedia 

Todd: page? I did. Um, did you, 

Craig: did you read the plot synopsis because there were details in the plot synopsis that were not in the movie?

Todd: Oh, no, I didn’t. Read the plots synopsis I skipped right over. What did they say in there? Say 

Craig: it says that like, in this part it’s revealed that the, these two twins were born of the dad. What? The dad had a wife and they had these twins. And then also a daughter and then the twins killed the God. I don’t remember, but it had, it was all about inbreeding.

It, it, something that was never mentioned really here at all, or, or maybe the twins were a result. I, I, I think that the daughter that we see is supposed to be like her mother is also her sister. Oh, none of this happens in the movie. I have no idea where they got this from in the plots. Unless there is another cut of the movie that we didn’t see.

I, I don’t know, 

Todd: but a shorter cut of the movie that is not the, the 15 minutes longer cut that we have that somehow chose to cut out this very important information. And actually, I wouldn’t say it’s very important. I mean, it would be backstory, but again, it’s not like that would be a big revelation cuz who care.

Roy. 

Craig: Right. Well, Roy does eventually Roy, the forest, uh, ranger or whatever, um, shows up and visits the Logan cabin and asks them about the campers. And they’re like, we’ve not seen anybody. And when he walks away, he, God, he says something like keep breeding in the same family for long. Something’s bound to snap.

So like it’s suggested mm-hmm , but we don’t get, you know, that kind of detail, but huh. Mar Mary KA does admit that they, she knows where the campers are and she, uh, chases him into the woods and offers to take him to the camp, which, you know, again, Connie and. Warren are just hanging out. Like, yeah. I mean, I, I guess they’re waiting for Daniel and Melanie, I guess, even though Connie, she’s like, they’re dead and he’s like, no, they’re not dead.

They’ll show up. Um, 

Todd: yeah. And then forget about our friend. Who’s actually dead. , 

Craig: who’s actually dead. I mean, whatever he, who cares. Um, but then the killer does, uh, approach them and, and shows himself and, and chases. Them? No, he goes off first. For some reason he has to go 

Todd: and he takes his whistle. and he’s like, in case I get lost, you listen for it.

The reason 

Craig: that he leaves is because, uh, John had the keys to the camper. Yeah. So he has to go back to John’s body to get the keys to the camper. So they’re split up, which is, and he leaves 

Todd: her there. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, you just stay here in case anybody comes back as important as somebody’s here. I’m like, no, it’s not.

They know where the camp is. They can hang out there and wait for you. Why would you leave this girl by herself? Go fire. But he takes a whistle. And in case he gets lost, she’s supposed to listen for it. It becomes a motif in the, the score at times. I, I thought this was, again, it was just kind of showed how this, this director, I just don’t think he’s at least at this time in his career, very good at building suspense and pacing things out and framing stuff.

Warren walks up on the banks of the river with his lantern that he has. And it’s kind of a day for night scene. Yeah. He sweeps the lantern over. In a really cool shot. Like we see as he sweeps the lantern to his left, it illuminates the tree that is just behind him to his left. And is it Jonathan? No. Is, uh, it is, no, it is it’s.

John is leaned up against the tree with his. Sunglasses on. And I think we’re, I mean, we can obviously see he’s 

Craig: dead. Well, I mean, that’s, that’s not where they left him, but this scene would’ve been a lot scarier and more effective. If we didn’t already know he was dead. Exactly. He’s been dead for a long time and they’ve already found his body.

I mean, I, I, granted it is a cool shot. It’s a cool revelation as he moves 

Todd: the first time, it’s a cool shot, but then he does this two more times. Yeah, he, he sweeps it over again and we see it again, back there, and then he sweeps it to the right again. I’m like, dude, are you gonna look around or are you just standing in one place sweeping the Lanter left and right.

Then he sweeps it again. And finally he turns around and he sees him and I’m like, man, that just sucked. All of the tension and energy completely out of that scene. Mm-hmm 

Craig: well, then I don’t know. I don’t know if I missed something, but I Connie hears the whistle in the woods and she thinks it’s her boyfriend, but it’s not.

It’s the killer. How did the killer get the 

Todd: whistle? I don’t know. Do you have his own whistle or something? I 

Craig: don’t know, whatever he chases her. She climbs a tree, like, like she’s, I don’t know, running away from a bear. I don’t know. She climbs a tree and he starts hacking at it with his machete. Warren meets up with Roy and Mary KA in the woods.

The killer does chop down her 

Todd: tree, which was another kind of impressive stunt because it, I mean, Got her arms around this tree and in one shot, that whole thing falls down with her on it. When they hit the ground, you know, she jumps up and runs away from it. I mean, it’s, it’s the actress. I was like, God, that also looked like a very dangerous stunt.

It 

Craig: did, it was shot kind of from afar so that easily could have been a stunt person. I don’t know if it was, but it could have been. It could a been the killer then is just like tormenting Connie with the whistle. Like it’s so 

Todd: dumb. Yeah. He’s like lumbering after her almost slapping her with his, with his knife every now and then when he gets close it’s so it’s not at all menacing.

It’s not, 

Craig: no, it’s, it’s not menacing at all. And then out of nowhere, it’s. The last minute, Roy just shoots him dead. Yeah. And then, and then Roy tells, he’s like to Warren and Connie, he’s like, okay, well you better get outta here. And, and then I don’t understand this at all. He tells them to leave and then they’re just back at camp by themselves.

And she puts on a full face of. Yeah, why I know 

Todd: I was waiting for fuck. I was waiting for there to be some significance to this. Like she crawls out of the tent and it’s kind of behind him and he stands up and he says, Connie, are you alright? And, and he says, oh, it looks like you printed yourself up. You got your makeup on.

And she’s like, well, you never know who you might run into up. and then that’s it

Craig: but the, yeah, it makes absolutely no sense. First of all, why are you still there? Get the outta there. Secondly, what are you doing? Yeah. Uh, but the, the other twins shows up and stabs Warren non fatally, and then he lays there like a pussy for the next five. 

Todd: Yeah, just looking in horror, clearly able to do something, but does absolutely nothing to, uh, 

Craig: meanwhile Connie jumps on the guy, like a fricking spider monkey and it’s like, like pounding on him and, and fighting him.

And he, like, I think is trying to squeeze her to death to the, to the extent that like blood starts coming out of her mouth. And Warren is just laying there watching, like doing nothing. He does not seem really disabled at all. Now, granted, he got stabbed a little bit, but it did not seem to be like a fatal blow.

Like he just kind of got cut mm-hmm . Um, but he is just laying there watching, and then this, she, she somehow gets turned around, so she’s facing him and she takes her hand and shoves her arm. 

Todd: She. It’s his mouth , 

Craig: uh, like elbow, elbow deep into his mouth and, uh, and, and, and chokes him to death. And that looked badass.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. I guess it did. I, I mean, I, I think I read that Jeff Lieberman wanted a kill that he had never seen before. And that’s what he came up with is somebody. Choking somebody with their arm down their throat. And. It did look good. I guess it would do the job if you could actually physically make that happen.

right. That might be a little different, but yeah, she chokes him to death and then, uh, that’s that’s the end, right? It goes to six in the woods, 

Craig: Mary KA, the forest girl, like runs out and looks at them and then turns her out and runs away. Mm-hmm and then Warren falls to his knees in front of Connie and Wes

And then it cuts to the credits over the sun or sunset. And, and that’s the end, you know, I don’t know, as I was watching this, I just kept thinking it’s, it’s really not that bad. Like, as, as far as slashers of this era go, it’s kind of AP, you know, it’s, it’s not particularly distinctive in any way really.

Mm-hmm I mean, There’s kind of the twin twist, I guess. Um, but other than that, it’s just a backwards killer in the woods, killing a bunch of white kids. I, I, I’m not, I’m not gonna be too hard on it because it’s fairly competent when compared to the other ones that we still are talking about 30, 40, about how bad they are.

So yeah, well, some of ’em, but some of them not, I mean, oh yeah, like Friday the 13th or something like that, I. Said over and over again. I am a fan of the Friday, the 13th franchise. I think they’re fun movies. I don’t think they’re particularly good 

Todd: movies. No, but they’re fun. They’re more fun than this movie because at least, you know, if the acting is silly and the plots are the same and it’s the same thing over and over again, at least there is suspense.

Like whoever is directing those from episode to episode, if I’m not mistaken, every single one of them does a decent, competent job of building some suspense. And here, like not only. Is it really hard for me to feel anything for these people, because the killers just come outta nowhere, all of a sudden with no real buildup or motivation yeah.

Or motivation. And when they are on the screen, they just seem like goofy jokey, big guys who are. Like almost clownish. Yeah. Just, 

Craig: just randomly killing people for fun. Yeah. It’s 

Todd: like, it seems like you could just trip ’em up, you know, and they’d fall down and not be able to get up of their own accord, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it’s just, it’s just silly. And even in the, when they’re in pursuit, like we said, when he’s, when she falls out of the tree and he’s going after, it’s almost laughably, not menacing at all. And so I think that colors, the movie a little. I don’t know. I just, I was, and maybe, you know, if you’re gonna go see this, don’t see that hour and 48 minute version, please see, like the hour and a half version.

There’s a reason why almost, uh, 20 minutes of it were cut and maybe that would’ve helped with the pacing a little bit. but just, you know, I don’t know. It just had all these elements in there, but a lot of them didn’t make sense. The motivations of the characters popping in and out didn’t make sense. I, I really thought the realism there for a while seemed kind of good until everything kind of goes off the rails when they’re not having believable reactions.

So they’re friends getting killed and they’re just hanging around the woods a little more. So I, I’m not gonna be as kind. I’m not gonna be as kind to it, but I’m certainly not gonna say it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. And I did think there was some inspired cinematography in here. I did like the setting and that’s about it.

Yeah. And stabbing in the Wiener. 

Craig: I wouldn’t warn people away from it. If you wanna see it, watch it, whatever. It’s fine. But you’re, I also wouldn’t like recommend it. You’re really not missing anything. it’s 

Todd: not like a long. You know, gem of the slasher era. Like we’ve had a few of those that we were pleasantly surprised at.

This is I was hoping this would be one of them, but it’s definitely not. But anyway, hopefully in, uh, episodes to come, we will get some, uh, three other films from 1981. That will be a little bit. Better. Maybe we’ll find some hidden gems in there, stick around and listen, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend.

You can find us online. If you just Google two guys in a chainsaw podcast, find our website, find our Patriot page and become a patron. If you’re interested under Twitter page and our Facebook page, just leave us a comment. Any one of those places, let us know what you thought about this one and, uh, anything that, uh, you would like us to do in the future until next time.

I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Once again it’s time to pay tribute to another dearly departed, the ubiquitous 90’s villain and occasional villain, Ray Liotta. Although he had a memorable turn as one of Hannibal Lector’s victims, we thought he got much more screen-time in the twisty 2003 thriller, Identity.

Having not seen this one for a while, we were happy to discover that this remains a fun, tight (not to mention star-studded) spectacle today. R.I.P Ray Liotta, and thanks for the years of pleasure you’ve brought us.

Identity (2003)

Episode 303, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: and I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, it comes several times a year when. Famous is actor dies and we decide to pay tribute by digging up a horror movie. He or she did. And, uh, reviewing it last month, Ray Liotta died in his sleep while filming a movie down in the Dominican Republic.

I don’t think a cause of death has either been determined or released yet. Yeah, but, uh, he was sadly only 67 years old and I grew. Really enjoying watching Ray Liotta, I think, uh, my first, I, I mean, I saw a field of dreams. He was Shoeless Shoe Jackson and field of dreams. I remember seeing him there. And of course, uh, he was in good fellas in 1990, which was a, a great role.

But, um, I remember him the most from a 19, I think 1992. Thriller called Unlawful Entry. Mm-hmm did you ever see that one? Mm-hmm yep. Where he’s the cop that, oh God, he is terrifying in that movie. Yeah, it is so good. And he always had this way of playing these, these nice guys with this sort of dark edge to them.

Right. Even though he had a variety of roles throughout his career, pretty successfully, didn’t get too pigeonholed into one particular kind of role, but there was this stretch in the 90’s where he was that creepy bad guy. right. Or he was the guy you thought was really nice and charming at first and then turned out to be the bad guy.

Yeah. So we, we dug out a movie of his, uh, from 1990 called Identity, uh, a movie that I saw a while back and. Absolutely loved. I, it was so twisty. It was so fun. And it’s chalk full of stars. It’s been decades since I saw, I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen it since the nineties, uh, until until yesterday. How about you, Craig?

When did you first see this movie? You said it came 

Craig: out in 1990. I’m pretty sure it was 2003. Oh God. 

Todd: You’re right. 2003. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I know I didn’t see it in the theater, but I do remember seeing trailers for it and, uh, The lead in the movie is John QSAC and this was kind of, you know, John Q Sack’s heyday too.

Yeah. And I remember the trailer just looking, you know, mysterious and suspenseful and good people in it. Of course, I already said John QSAC Ray Otis, second built Amanda Pete fairly early in her career. Alfred Molina. Yeah. clay Deval. I I’m, I’m just going. The cast list, but there are, you know, John C McGinley, Jake Busey, Rebecca DeMornay, you know, these were pretty big names.

Um, maybe not, I don’t know if you know John QSAC, I guess, and Reta probably pretty a list at this point. Um, but tons and tons of recognizable. People. And so I was intrigued and I, I remember liking it. And, uh, I remember at the time it being very twisty and not really knowing what was going on mm-hmm and I, I don’t think that I have ever watched it since, but even watching it this time, having not seen it in 20.

Um, I remembered what the twist was and if you go into it, knowing what the twist is, it’s actually projected mm-hmm, pretty heavily in hindsight. It doesn’t really seem like it should have been that difficult to figure out. Uh, yeah, it’s true, but still an enjoyable movie. Good performances. Well made well shot and.

Suspenseful and keeps you 

Todd: guessing. I don’t remember this being a movie that that was like major headlines. I mean, I’m sure it came to the theater, but I don’t remember it getting a huge buzz or huge reaction. I just remember, uh, people, it seemed to be one of those films that got a better life on video maybe.

And I had actually, because of that always assumed that it was. Straight to video movie, which doesn’t make a lot of sense for a production, just chalk full of all of these stars and the director of the movie. Uh, James Mangold. I mean, gosh, I mean, before this, he did Colan girl interrupted Kate Leopold after identity.

He did walk the line that Johnny Cash biopic three, 10 Yuma night and day. Logan and the Wolverine and now he’s finishing up post production having directed and co-produced Indiana Jones five. Yeah. So, uh, he’s very accomplished. The movies is quite good. The writer of identity is the same guy who wrote and directed Jack Frost.

and I don’t mean the Michael Keaton Jack Frost. Right? I mean the one we’ve done straight to video, the one that we’ve done that. . Yeah, it’s very goofy. I, I love that episode by the way. I, I enjoyed watching that movie anyway. I did too. It was fun, but yeah, he wrote this movie and it’s very twisty. It’s very intricately plotted.

It’s just one of those. Keep you guessing thrillers. Like what in the world is going on? And it just revolves around all of this, uh, activity that happens as these different characters come to converge on a hotel, out in the middle of Nevada in the middle of the night, just before that happens, we get a credit sequence over a psychiatrist who is, uh, or psychologist.

I never know which is which right, but he’s, he’s listening to some tapes clearly of one of his patients. And then he gets a phone call calling him. To, uh, the judges chambers in the middle of the night, again, because his patient is about to be executed, but his request for a stay of execution has been granted.

And, um, so they’re going to sort of like discuss it out with the judge and the lawyers and everybody else involved in the case, uh, to see if they will allow him to, 

Craig: because I, some new evidence has been discovered like this is very last minute. Like he was scheduled to be executed tonight. Um, but there’s been some new.

Submitted. That won’t necessarily clear him and, and all of this is vague. Yeah. You don’t really know. Right. And you kind of hear things in like, like you said, over the credits sequence, we’re seeing like, um, news clippings and files and things. And, and we kind of hear the doctor who I think’s name is mall.

And he’s talking presumably to his patient and talking about his patient. And he says something like his mother was a prostitute. He was a child found in a local motel. And then you hear him ask, do you understand why you are talking with me now? Yeah, he is supposed to be good with headaches. I, I need something more than aspirin.

You know what I mean? You remember the murders?

I remember that Columbia is the capital of South Carolina.

I remember that there had been, you know, Six murders, uh, at an apartment complex. And that’s, that’s it like, it’s all just kind of very vague. I mean, and, and if you’re not really listening, those things will just kind of roll past, but ultimately even those little details. Suggest kind of what is going on the, the movie.

And I remembered this, uh, it, it starts out with you hear somebody quietly reciting a verse of a poem. Wow. Um, and as, and as soon as I heard it, I remembered it. Like, I, I, I paused the, uh, movie and, and typed it down from memory that’s, you know, 20 years ago that I saw it. And for some reason, yeah, it is stuck with it is stuck with me, me too, as I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today. I wish I wish he’d go away. just,

just so creepy. It is so creepy and it’s just one little verse, uh, of a poem and it, a character in the movie claims to have, have written it, which isn’t true. It was, uh, preexisting poem, but, um, it is spooky and sets a, a good kind of mysterious atmosphere, which is appropriate because this is a mystery, but part of what’s kind of jarring about it is that it cuts between these two stories.

And for much of the movie, I would say a good three quarters of the movie. I mean, really nothing is confirmed until the last 15 minutes, but I think you kind of start to pick up on what’s going on before that, but immediately, you know, after that very brief segment about this murderer and his stay of execution, then we cut to this entirely different story, which is set in the desert of Nevada or California.

I don’t remember. Um, I know that it was shot in Lancaster, uh, in the desert in Lancaster, California, which I’ve, uh, visited it’s it’s very near Los Angeles. Um, and it is beautiful, uh, desert out there, much of it. I think the majority of it was shot on a sound stage. It was the same, an elaborate set on a sound stage, this motel that they erected.

And it was the same sound stage that the Emerald city. From wizard, Oz was shot on . 

Todd: It it’d have to be pretty big. It seems like they constructed a whole motel. Yeah. Uh, here on the sound stage, cuz uh, the whole movie pretty much takes place at night in the middle of a 

Craig: rainstorm. So Uhhuh and it’s raining the whole time heavy.

I would think that that would just be miserable to be wet for. Weeks and weeks filming. And I, I, I guess , the actors were pretty regularly sick. Like , they just kinda kept passing colds back and forth because they were in these wet conditions all the time. Oh man. But it’s, it’s very atmospheric, almost even a little dreamlike, which is fitting ultimately,

but we have this whole almost annoyingly large. Cast of characters, like, yeah, I was trying to keep, I was trying to keep track of everybody who was there and I knew it was an ensemble piece, but they just kept showing up. I’m like, oh my God. Like, all right, that’s enough. , 

Todd: let’s get to it only annoying for guys who are trying to keep track of names and things for a podcast.

Yeah. 

Craig: True. But even, even if not, it’s still quite a few characters. Um, that’s. To keep track of, and it’s also a lot of characters to build intrigue for. Um, yeah, they have to be spread pretty thin because there’s so many of them and it’s only an hour and a half 

Todd: movie. It’s true. But you know what, one thing I think that’s really a strength of this movie is it gets into the intrigue pretty quickly.

And by the, I would say by the time 10 or 15 minutes are finished, you kind of feel like everybody’s got a little dark secret. Yeah. Everybody’s a little shady, there’s something going on, you know, you don’t quite know with each person what might be going on, but you get, just get a sense that nobody’s right.

Right. And I think the movie it’s, it’s a function of the writing obviously, and the plotting, but it’s really clever. And I think that really, if you didn’t have that element, if the movie had taken too long to build up the intrigue and the suspense, I think it would’ve worn hard on me and I. Another thing you have to do, right.

Is to introduce all these characters in an interesting way, Uhhuh and you know, before we realize anything SHA is going on, I think once again, a really great device is employed here where the, the events leading up to this night where they all converge are kind of told in a reverse chronological order, Uhhuh out of sequence.

Right. And. Yeah. And I, I thought that was so cool. You know, there’s this man in a hotel room, just sitting there, it’s, you know, raining outside. He’s watching like wheel of fortune on TV and there’s a bang, bang bang on the door. And this guy burst in holding a woman in his arms and he’s like, she’s bleeding, she’s bleeding quick, you know, can do you have a phone?

And then there’s like a freeze frame. That was an, that was an interesting choice too. I’ve never seen this before where there’s like a, like a two second freeze. Of just the frame mm-hmm and that’s what leads us into the flashback. Mm-hmm not like a flash to white, not like a sh kind of sound effect or a cross fade.

Just that was odd. It was very jarring anyway. Yeah. And that leads us into a quick little flashback of this guy, nervously driving down the road in the middle of the day or in the evening, he’s got his wife in the front seat. This guy’s name is George mm-hmm and his wife’s name is Alice. And they have a little boy in the back seat named Tim.

you get the sense right away that this guy’s a little, a little mousey, a little, um, nervous. Yeah. They, they seem to be lost or something. Oh yeah. They get a flat tire. They get a flat tire by the sign of the road. And when he comes down to, uh, check out what was causing the flat tire, he sees that it’s a woman’s.

Extremely sharp, high heeled shoe. Yeah. In the meantime, it’s starting to rain outside and Timmy’s inside looking at the window and his mom is on the road side of the car. Kind of like smiling at him under an umbrella, kind of puts her hand up against the window and then suddenly boom gets completely wiped out.

I think before she, he gets wiped out, though, we see where the stiletto came from. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, it, it keeps, it cuts back and forth to these different characters, kind of just connecting. And it’s not even like it’s connections between the characters. It’s just kind of showing how this, this series, they’re all connected through this series of events.

Mm-hmm the mom gets hit, you know, obviously we already knew she was gonna be injured. So when she was standing there at night in the rain, on the side of the road, I’m like lady. You are gonna get wiped out like you, right. You seem like a nice lady, but maybe don’t stand in the middle of the road, you know?

Yeah. At, at night in a rainstorm. Yeah. The, it, it turns out that the shoe had flown out of the luggage of another character. Amanda Pete’s character, whose name is Paris. Her backstory is nebulous as are all of them. Like mm-hmm we just see her. With a middle aged man. She’s got him chained up in a bed, but like in a sexy way, but it kind of seems like maybe she’s conning him, like she’s gonna Rob him or something, which we don’t really see 

Todd: happen.

Well, She takes his, um, he, she lights , she’s got a pile of whipped cream on his chest. Does this really happen in real life? I’m not sure. I guess everyone has their kinks, but, um, yeah, he’s got like a pile of whipped cream on his chest, I guess she’s like gonna eat it off of his chest or something and, and just a couple candles in there and she sings happy birthday to him and uses like his lighter, I guess it’s like a Zippo or something.

Yeah. But. It’s like gold, gold plated. And as she turns around, uh, and is going for something else, you can see her slip it into her purse. So, right. I think we do kind of see. Her Rob him a 

Craig: little bit. And then later you do see she’s got like a little, uh, case, a little leather case in her luggage. That’s got stacks of money in it and stuff.

So maybe this is what she does again, that’s that thing, like everybody’s a little shady, like mm-hmm, , everybody’s kind of hiding something in their luggage or being fishy about their past. And it’s, it’s not everybody, you know, the family, George and Alice and Timmy, they seem. Fine. Yeah. I mean just, yeah, have found themselves in this situation, but really everybody else, you wonder what’s really going on with them.

Mm-hmm but anyway, she gets hit turns out that, uh, John QSAC character ed is the person who hit her. He is a driver for a famous or somewhat famous. Actress named, um, Caroline played by Rebecca Deney. I almost didn’t recognize her. 

Todd: Um, I didn’t either. I honestly didn’t even recognize her until I saw the credits.

I, I, I, 

Craig: I think it’s just because she has dark hair and I’m used to seeing her with blonde hair. Yeah. That’s probably it. And she’s also, I don’t know if she’s just patted or what, but she, her breasts are really emphasized, so it looks like she’s got these great big. Knockers . I mean, she’s, she’s, she’s beautiful.

I mean, she looks great, but yeah, and I, I was also kind of surprised her role is, is pretty small. She’s the first one to get picked off mm-hmm we then see, you know, through different character perspectives, through Ed’s perspective and through Paris’s respective, we see that the road is washed out. Uh, phone lines are down.

Paris’s car breaks down. Ed ends up picking her up. She tells him the road’s flooded, but he tries to cross it anyway. And so then his car is stranded. They end up getting picked up by a young couple. Jenny played by clay, a Duval who. Uh, was pretty big, uh, in the nineties, kind of started out in teen roles.

Um, but is, is very much still working. You, you don’t know at first what their relationship is, but it turns out they’re newlyweds with a lot of tension between them. Uh mm-hmm his, his name is Lou. And so everybody begins, converging at this motel. Um, eventually. A police officer, officer Rhode played by Reta shows up mm-hmm in a very classic Reta.

Role. Yeah, he on several occasions played this kind of brooding dark cop, and that’s exactly what he is here. Uh, Reta by all accounts is a, was, uh, a family man. He described himself as a homebody. Yeah. Said that in his real life, he had never, ever been in a physical. Altercation, but he’s just got an air about it.

Yeah, he, he is charming. He’s handsome, but he’s also got kind of a rugged look, but at the same time, he’s got these beautiful, like piercing blue eyes. He does. And so he’s just one of those characters who he has a presence about him that works really well for. Certain characters and he’s a good actor. He, he studied acting.

Um, he was still in acting classes when he lobbied for and got, you know, one of his most notable roles in, in good fellas. And mm-hmm um, I, I think that he took the craft very seriously, even though he, he was not a method actor, you know, when asked what he learned about himself from playing the different characters that he’d played, he said nothing.

You know, like , um, that’s, that’s not what he’s in it for his, uh, theory on acting is really. What mine is too. And I think it just comes from an imaginative childhood. In my experience, you know, I grew up just playing, pretend with my sister all the time. We would just make up characters and scenarios and play them out.

And that’s what he says about acting, you know, it’s just pretending mm-hmm . It’s trying to figure out, you know, who your character is, but not personalizing it to yourself. Uh, he said that he thinks that actors who try to put too much of themselves into their roles end up being a little bit flat as, as actors, you know, it’s, it’s always just.

Some version of them. So, you know, uh, this is a guy who was thoughtful about the roles that he selected. He was offered a lot of roles in the same vein, big roles. He was offered Tony soprano and the Sopranos turned it down. Uh, Tim Burton offered him Batman. He turned it down. Um, so he was selective and he did wanna do a variety of, of things.

Uh, he did some things for the money. He did a family movie called Dumbo. For the money. He voiced a character in grand theft, auto grant, theft auto, uh, square pants, movie . Yeah. And, and yeah, I, I respect that too. You know, we’ve talked about other actors like that, like Michael Kane did jaws for, so we could have a vacation in Hawaii and build a nice house.

That that’s serious. Good for you. It’s a job. 

Todd: That’s I was just gonna say that people don’t realize acting’s a job, you know, Uhhuh, you do it to make money and you do it. And you know, how many of us can do something that fun , you know, to make money. So you, you could have some fun with it to have different roles.

I don’t know why people think, you know, This, of course we have later learned that, um, poor Bruce Willis is not in the best of health, but right, right. You know, he and Nicholas cage maybe is a better example, has just been doing a string of just goofy movies. Right. Just off the wall stuff. I mean, a guy who we typically think of is like national treasure and, uh, You know, con air and, and the rock, you know, this A-list action star.

And everybody says, oh, look at how far he’s fallen. What is he thinking? Taking all these silly roles direct to video. And I’m like, what, what do you mean? He’s an actor. This is what he does. He acts he’s like, why does he always have to. You know, sit around and twiddle his thumbs until someone calls him up for a, another Oscar shot type role, you know?

Right. Forget it. Right. Well, 

Craig: and just because, yeah, just because a movie is, you know, off the wall or different doesn’t NEC doesn’t just mean it’s bad. I’ve seen, yeah. Some of Nick Cage’s most recent stuff and yeah, it’s weird and bizarre, but it’s interesting. And would probably be really interesting to work on and, and Reta.

Did you know some other stuff too? I, I remember he was in a movie. I don’t know if it was late nineties, early two thousands, but a, a, a movie called Karina Karina, which was a, a period piece that he did with, uh, I think it was set in the sixties. Um, he played a widowed father, um, of a young girl and, and he was kind of struggling to support his small family and, and, you know, take care of his daughter.

And he ended up hiring a housekeeper. Uh, played by Whoopi Goldberg and of course set against the backdrop of the sixties. Um, there was you. Racial stuff to, to deal with. If I remember correctly, they, his character would be Goldberg’s character formed a tight relationship that I think maybe even got romantic.

I don’t remember. Um, but it was, you know, it was a very soft piece. Mm. Nothing like he had done before. There was a cute movie. I remember, uh, liking it. He just seemed like an all around good guy. And on, you know, I look at TMZ every day and, and they. Do celebrity death announcements. And when I scrolled down and saw radio to dead at 67, It kind of, I don’t know.

I’m not, I’m not like a Reta super fan, but he’s just been kind of, so ubiquitous. Yeah. In my life he’s always been around. He’s always been there, 

Todd: like Rob Lowe kind of right. I mean, well, he just 

Craig: always, you always see him in stuff. I always put them in the same category. I, I think the most recent thing that I, I mean, He, he does several projects a year.

Um, one of the things that I remember him from most recently was he played himself in an episode of modern family and he played himself very humbly the characters in, uh, the show. Were going on like a celebrity homes tour and they thought they were at Barbara Streisand’s house. And it turns out that the star map was just really dated and she didn’t live there anymore.

And Ray lived there. And so they were all really disappointed that they couldn’t meet Barbara Streisand. It was just Ray Yoda. that’s hilarious. But he. But like, he felt bad for them. And so he like took them to Barbara Streisand’s house and , that is so funny and, and helped them talk to her through her driveway and her calm.

Uh, it, it was cute, you know, and he was playing himself in a very humble way. And I just got the sense that that was really the kind of guy he was. And so when I saw that he had passed away, I. Sad. Mm-hmm , he’s not a young man, but by today’s standards, he’s not an old man either. And yeah, I guess, you know, He goes the way we kind of all hope to go or at least I, the way I hope to go.

Yeah. In my sleep, you know, I hopefully he didn’t suffer, you know, again, I don’t think any cause of death has been released, but he was working mm-hmm . You know, so I, if he was struggling with something behind the scenes, he was doing it with dignity. Um, I’m sure that we’ll find out, maybe even before this episode airs, uh, his cause of death will be revealed, but sad to see him go.

But nice to kind of go back and look at him in one of his, uh, kind of classic type. Of roles here and he plays it well. Yeah, I really enjoy his performance here, much like the other characters, um, to some extent he’s flat, but that flatness kind of comes with the fact that you have to keep him a mystery.

You can’t lay out his character. It has to be revealed over time, revealed over time. And, and, and even ultimately in the end, you still have to kind. Question, you know, mm-hmm, nothing is ever really certain that’s. Right. But he, he shows up and he is transporting a prisoner. Robert Maine played by Jake Busey.

Jake Busey is Gary Buse. He’s son, right? Yes he is. Yeah. And I remember he looks a lot like 

Todd: Starship, troopers, Starship, troopers. He does. Yeah. He’s got that smile. He’s got kind of an evil smile about him. 

Craig: Uhhuh he’s a menacing guy too. Um, I’ve always kind of liked him. Um, he, he always kind of plays. Kind of a badass Uhhuh.

he’s a, he’s a big guy. Reta is like five, 11 and a half. Um, and I think Jake Busey is even taller than that. He’s a big guy. And of course, you know, here he’s a, uh, a convict in chains. So very menacing. The other thing that struck me as funny was this guy, Larry, who is the guy who’s running the motel. He’s having a good night.

he is this, this, this roadside motel in the middle of nowhere. And in a matter of about 20 minutes is completely booked 

Todd: that’s right. Does it happen every time it rains? He, he might have just got in the perfect spot. 

Craig: ultimately, you know, in the grand scheme of the movie, that kind of adds to the surreal.

Nature of it. Yeah. Again, which is fitting, you know, I I’m dancing around the twist, but there is a twist. This is not just some happenstance. These people are all here for a reason. It’s not an easily explained logical reason. Um, But, but ultimately it makes sense. It, it 

Todd: also is a little bit of shades of Agather Christie, right?

Oh, 

Craig: absolutely. They even reference it. 

Todd: Mm-hmm , it’s like everybody coming together, like, and then where they were, none, everybody comes together to an old mansion or something like that. This is just the old motel and they’re just stuck there. Uh, and then people eventually, well, Eventually people start dying, Jenny and, uh, Lou go back to their room.

Uh, and they’re little things, again, that kind of happen that eventually kind of turn out to be important. She looks at the room number and says, oh, six, well, at least we got a good number. And then as they slam the door, like the six kind of comes loose and it swivels down to make a nine. So Ray Leo’s there with the prisoner.

He goes into his room and he chains the guy to the toilet. Somebody asks about Timmy and uh, oh, John QSAC a character starts sewing. The wound cuz they can’t get to a hospital cuz there’s no way like everything’s blocked one way and the other way, 

Craig: so phones are down police radio, isn’t working mm-hmm they’re they’re completely alone.

Todd: Exactly. So he plays a nurse to, uh, the mother Alice. Um, she’s just knocked out basically and sews up her neck and he asks if Tim’s gonna be okay. 

Craig: Hey is the uh, little boy. Is he alright? I, I, he hasn’t said a word since the accident. I don’t know if he’s no, no, he, he didn’t talk much ever since then.

I’m a stepfather. His father two years ago, he, he left little temper 

Todd: problem. He witnessed some murders or something. His dad’s now in jail. And he hasn’t really spoken since then. And I’m actually his stepfather. 

Craig: This is when everybody, th there’s like a montage of shade, like, yeah, this is. Like Rhode the cop kind of OGLs Paris at the vending machine.

He’s being creepy on her. Yeah, 

Todd: she does for dinner. 

Craig: Huh? That don’t seem right. You got a better idea. I worked messing the service. Maybe the Don is open. I could whip something up. We got changed for a dollar. I

dunno. There you go.

You got a name?

Paris, Paris, huh? I get it. Never been. Well, you ain’t going tonight. 

Todd: Yeah. Right. It 

Craig: walks off. And that’s when we saw she has that small case of cash. Um, Larry seems to be shady, kind of hiding something. We see that, uh, Rhodes shirt has what I thought was cuz he is wearing a jacket, but at some point he takes it off.

Um, when he is alone in his room and we see that the, the shirt under his jacket has what I thought was a bullet hole. 

Todd: In, it looks like a hole with blood around it. Mm-hmm yeah. The, the manager’s hiding the stuff QSAC has taken some pills for something and the prisoner’s trying to work his way free. It looks like he’s about to do 

Craig: it.

Right. And Caroline, the actress, I, I really wish Rebecca DeSay got more screen time because I really like her, uh, a lot. Oh yeah. Uh, as an actress, but she just kind of plays your typical bitchy starlet, uh, in this. And she wanders out of her room looking for cell bars. She it’s. Course. So she tears down this shower curtain is like walking around under the shower curtain, and then she is murdered by an unseen hand.

Um, and that’s at a half an hour in, so of this hour and a half movie the whole first half hour. Is introducing all of these characters. 

Todd: And I didn’t think it was slow either. I mean, I thought it was kind of interesting. You’re clearly building up for something there’s clearly gonna be a payoff for everything that happened.

Right. So 

Craig: I had the patience for it. It, it only felt slow to me because it took me 45 minutes to watch the first half hour because I kept oh. Pausing to write down everybody’s character name and the actor name. Yeah. So I will, you know, after that, it seems to move. Pretty quickly, like ed finds her severed head in the dryer and they also find her room key in there, which, but it’s not hers.

No, it says it’s it’s number nine. Like she was. It’s the cop’s room key. Ultimately people keep getting picked off and every time somebody gets picked off, they find a key on their body. And it’s basically a countdown, you know, it’s, it’s in 

Todd: sequence, but that’s, that’s a pretty big moment when they realize that.

I mean, that’s pretty creepy. Like how would. All of these keys end up on these bodies in a countdown, especially because some of the people end up dying in what are clearly freak accidents. Right? So it, it, it starts to feel like, wait, wait, is something supernatural happening? And Jenny, at one point even suggests that once she says it’s a countdown, she says, do you think it has to do with the Bo with the, the dead bodies or, and she they’re like, what do you mean the burial ground?

Didn’t you read the, uh, the brochures and in the lobby. This was a, a Indian burial ground around here where the government had pushed all the Indians out here and they star starved and they couldn’t get any water and they died and then they just buried him here. So there’s this hint that maybe there’s something supernatural going on as well.

In the meantime, we keep bouncing back to this meeting. That’s going on in the judges. Chambers. And I think it’s around this point that they’re talking and, uh, they’re talking about how this, um, what’s the name of the guy? Uh, the guy’s name is the, the, um, prisoner, the prisoner Malcolm rivers. He says, Malcolm, you know, he has a dissociate personality disorder.

So there, you know, he has multiple, basically what we would call multiple personalities. And he was like, as you know, State, like we can’t put someone to death. If they were committed a murder that, you know, they were unaware or they were incapable, you know, kind of like the insanity type thing or the, he was mentally disabled and didn’t know what he was doing kind of thing.

And so, right. There’s you, you just get this sense that he’s needs to try to prove that to these guys in this room. And he says, and then one of the guys speaks up and says, well, we can’t do anything until, you know, the client gets here and he says, well, he’s on his. But we can talk about it now. And at that moment, I’m thinking, oh, so the prisoner that Ray Lato was transporting, played by, um, you know, uh, Busey is the guy.

So he’s wrapped up in this, in that he is now this murderer. He has arrived at the hotel. I think that’s sort of our first little red herring that’s thrown at us. Yeah. Um, because as soon as the first woman is killed, they go in and they notice the prisoners escaped. Right. And there’s an odd sequence.

That’s also very telling where he, I think it’s after the second murder he’s running, he takes off acro. Uh, you know, we see a shot of him taken off across the, the street and across a field, the 

Craig: convict. Right. And he 

Todd: sees, you know, he’s, he’s clearly going away from the motel. And he sees in the distance, some lights in another building.

So he goes to that and he goes inside and it’s, it’s like a kitchen, like a, kind of an eating, like a restaurant that has obviously not been used in ages. And, you know, chairs are up on tables and things. It’s a little dusty, but then when he goes to the, he hears a noise outside when he goes to the window, he sees he’s at the motel again, mm-hmm, , it’s just a building as part of the motel.

And he goes, what the hell as he looks? And he sees. Uh, slowly walking, you know, towards the, the door, they all think it’s him. Right. Because obviously he’s escaped. Right. Um, and so when they find the severed head and the second person who dies is, is it 

Craig: Lou? Lou? 

Todd: Yeah. Lou and Jenny. This is when we find out the Lou and Jenny.

Or just married, but she pretended she was pregnant and then she kind of admits, she wasn’t and he gets kind of mad 

Craig: her. She locks herself kind of mad. It’s really volatile. Like it seems like he’s, he’s violent and abusive. Yeah. And she’s screaming. Yeah. She’s screaming. He’s pounding on the door, but then all of a sudden it goes quiet.

Um, and she opens the door and just sees a silhouette of somebody with a knife. So she goes out, uh, Her back window. Meanwhile, everybody else comes to see what all the screaming is about and they go in and they find Lou dead, stabbed to death up against the wall. 

Todd: They find the convict inside that little restaurant or whatever, and they tie him up to a pole in there.

On a chair and he’s just being creepy and weird. Well, 

Craig: right, because the Larry is like hiding something. Like, it seems like he’s hiding something in one of the refrigerators and the sees and he is like, what are you hiding in there? And Larry’s like, oh, nothing. And he is like, it’s all right, Larry, we all have our secrets.

I’m sitting on a big one. Like mm-hmm, , there’s all these, you know, all these suggestions that there are things that we don’t know. And, and yeah, there are, and there are. And they’re, they’re all kind of eventually revealed, but even when some of the little mysteries are revealed, it just blows the mystery up even more.

Todd: Yeah. It’s very tense like that. Yeah. Ed, ed goes and gets some film cameras. Some of those old disposable cameras that we used to have. This is so cute, right? This movie that like cell phones were not . It’s so funny, like earlier in the film, when they pulled this woman over these, this couple over and he’s like, do any of you have a cell phone?

They’re like, no, we don’t. He’s like, we need a cell phone. Are you sure? You don’t have one? They’re like, no, we don’t. I’m thinking nobody in this day and age doesn’t have a cell phone. right. It’s not even a question. You would never be stranded anywhere. The best you could do is no signal, which, you know, obviously the actress had, it’s the same thing with the camera, right.

He had to go and find these disposable cameras. Because he turns out he used to be a cop Uhhuh . So he goes in, he starts taking pictures of the body and, um, a Paris keeps running out when ed who’s quite protective of her is like, what stop? You gotta be with me. You can’t keep running out. I told you not to go out.

And she hangs with him for a while and they chat a little bit. We learn a bit more about him and how he was on the force. And he just, uh, got jaded basically. And there was this moment where he tried to talk this woman off the ledge and he would been trained for this sort of situation. Supposed to tell her all kinds of nice things about who’s gonna miss her and all that.

But then he just kind of like in the, he, in the moment, He couldn’t think of anything positive to tell her she ended up jumping and then he realized that I don’t know he’s jaded and he needed to take a medical leave of absence, which is what he did. And, and she tells this story. I, I think it’s at this point, uh, of where she has these hopes and dreams of going to Florida and, uh, just opening an orange Grove and raising oranges and lemons and lime.

Actually, I think that comes a little later, but it 

Craig: comes later. Right. When, when, because eventually they try to, they think maybe there’s some connection between all of them, which there is, but they don’t figure it out immediately. They, they had left Larry guarding the prisoner, but when they, you know, they’re constantly coming in and out of.

Rooms and seeing other people moving from room to room it’s yeah. It’s kind of hard to keep track of where everybody is and where they’re supposed to be, but they see Larry out, which he’s not supposed to be. He’s left his guard post. And so they go in to make sure that the prisoner’s still there and he is, but he’s dead with a baseball bat, shoved all the way down his throat.

That’s so, and that was weird. It was weird. And I read that somebody, I don’t remember who it was. Somebody on the crew asked to keep that prop, uh, and did, and kept it in a closet in the building where they worked, I assume some sort of film, production building, but a maid found it eventually and it scared it to death.

And so he had to get rid of it or at least, or at least get it out of, uh, the building. Because Larry had been carrying around that bat, they assumed that he killed the convict. So they tie him all up. He’s swearing up and down. He didn’t do it. He’s also shady because he has the actress’s wallet on him, which he claims that.

I mean, we saw that he saw it when she was checking into her room, it was full of cash. So he claims that he only stole it after she was. Which is, you know, perfectly possible, but still shady enough that I would want him tied up to before they tie him up. They’re they’re threatening to, and he grabs Paris and holds a knife to her throat.

She kinda kicks back and they both fall into the. Freezer revealing a frozen dead body. So that’s even more suspicious for him. He runs off, takes off in the truck. The little kid Timmy is in the path of the truck. So his stepdad, George runs to try to knock him out of the way George ends up getting hit by the truck and pin to the wall and is immediately did.

Um, there’s no question about that. Yeah, that’s pretty 

Todd: brutal. Gosh, but then they all end up kind of in this hotel room and they’re all, there’s a whole bunch of, you know, back and forth chatter about who could it be and all this. And that’s, I think at the point where they, they discuss is this some kind of countdown, like with the keys being found on people, it doesn’t make any sense.

Tim goes into the other room to check on his mom and they just kinda let him do. Um, in the meantime, they’re just chatting and, uh, little, little things kind of come out where it turns out that each of the characters, like they, one of them shares a birthday with another one of them went to school near where the other person did.

And one of them grew up in a town where the other person was born and that kind of thing. And then, uh, they go into the room and they realized that the mother is. as, as, uh, ed is closing her eyes and Tim is crying and they lead him out of there. Ed looks down and sees a key is under the bed. Mm-hmm when he pulls it out.

It’s again, it’s the next number down. It’s like room, I don’t know, number, number six or number five or whatever. Mm-hmm and they’re like, this is crazy. How would this room key be on this body? And then they get the idea to go out and. the body of George George, who was hit by the truck in a freak accident.

Right. And sure enough, they pull out of his jacket, a room key it’s it’s five. And they’re like, what in the hell is going on? Because obviously that was an accident. Nobody caused that to happen. 

Craig: So ed tells Paris to take. Tim and Jenny and just drive. He, he she’s like, well, the road’s out. And he’s like, well, if you get to some place where the road is out, just turn around and drive back the other way.

And if the road’s out again, just keep going back and forth until Dawn. Basically, he just wants to get them out of there, which makes sense. Yeah. Not a bad plan in my opinion. Nope. but, but she doesn’t want to leave, but, uh, Jenny and Tim run the car ahead of her. And while she’s still kind of arguing about leaving the car explodes mm-hmm and they, they go and they run and they, uh, put it out with a fire extinguisher, but there are no bodies in it, which they think is really bizarre.

And, and then they start running around to where all of the other bodies were. And all of the bodies are missing and there’s no evidence of blood or violence or anything. It’s just gone. It’s unexplainable. And if you haven’t figured it out at this point, you ha there’s no logical explanation. Yeah. Um, for what’s going on, something bizarre has to be going on and Rhode Larry ed and Jenny are the only one that are left.

And that’s when they realized that they all have the same birthday and they check the IDs from the hotel records, all of them had the same exact birthday. Um, most of them, their last names are states, um, or some, uh, deviation of a state. And then this is kind of where we get the big reveal. Ed is kind of freaking out trying to figure out what’s going on and he recites the poem.

From the beginning of the movie. And as he’s doing that, he starts to hear the voice of the doctor and then he flashes into. That meeting that, hearing that evaluation and the doctor, Dr. Malik is questioning him first. He asks who he is talking to, and then he says, this is a long time since, uh, I’ve talked to you, then he just lays it out.

This is where, and this is about 15 minutes out from the end. Um, and he just lays out precisely what’s going 

Todd: on. Yeah. He, he basically says to him, you know, well, ed is confused, right. And it’s cool. The way this is shot. There’s like a bright light on his. He just looks a little otherworldly and he says to him, 

Craig: did you recognize this man?

No. Well that man Edward is Malcolm rivers. He’s had a very troubled life. He was arrested four years ago and convicted of the murder of six people in a violent line page. Did this detective, please, Edward, listen to me when. With an intense trauma, a child’s mind, may fracture creating disassociated identities.

That’s exactly what happened to Malcolm rivers. He developed a condition that is commonly known as multiple personality syndrome. Why

are you telling me this? Because you knew that was, oh, one of 

Todd: his personalities. You have just been through this treatment to where all of your personalities are forced to confront each other. And, uh, you know, ed is saying, well, I was at a hotel where people are dying and he says, we knew there would be violence in this, you know, that’s, that’s normal, but he’s like, you will be executed, but we can stay the execution.

If you can convince the judge that the last person left, basically, if, as all of his personality slip away is not the killer. Right. Because then that means now that you’re safe and you’re not harm, you’re not gonna harm anybody. It’s such a. Convolute. It is convolute crazy I thing, but it’s fun. It’s super 

Craig: fun.

Yeah. The other thing that I think is interesting is that he’s talking to this guy and he’s not saying you have dissociative personality disorder. He’s saying. Malcolm has personality disorder. Yes. And you are just one of the personalities that he’s manifested mm-hmm , he’s basically telling him you are not real.

And, uh, ed is saying, no, I am real. I live in studio city. I used to be a cop, blah, blah, blah. He’s like, Nope. that’s just made up. Yeah. Look in the mirror. And he looks in the mirror and he sees Malcolm Malcolm, by the way, is played by. Pruitt Taylor, Vince, who is this portly bald guy who I know we have seen in at least one other movie that we’ve covered.

Um, but he’s, uh, easily recognizable cuz he’s got these super, super shifty eyes like his eyes just kind of flicking back and forth. All the time. He, he he’s good at looking unhinged. Um, and, and that’s, that’s what he sees. That’s what, um, ed sees when he looks and the guy says, Edward, I need your help. The killer cannot survive.

And ed kind of pops back in to the motel setting Paris. Meanwhile, Checks the cop car and sees that the radio has been disabled. Now, roads has been telling everybody that he’s been trying the radio periodically and is just not working. We see now that actually the, uh, radio has been completely disabled.

And then, I mean this late in the movie, we get the truth about roads. Which I thought was actually really 

Todd: clever. Yeah. She reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out two files and it turns out that both roads and that other guy are both prisoners. And then again, that freeze frame, and we get a flashback to those two being transported in the back of the car by, uh, an actual police officer.

The roads ends up having some sh taped to his leg, which he then pulls out and through this slit or something, some kind of opening in the back of the, the seat. He managed to stab this guy in the back. They pull the body out and they switch. Uh, well, he basically switches his clothes. That’s why the shirt that he was wearing had a blood stain and a hole in the back of it.

Right. That he covered up with his jacket. So, yeah, he was, they were both prisoners, but he was pretending to be the cop, uh, escorting the prisoner mm-hmm it was pretty, pretty smart, which. So, this is the interesting point. So now we all assume, okay, he must be the killer, right? And at this point, of course, it, it all wraps up quite quickly.

Ed grabs a gun and, um, Paris runs to him and tells him this. And Ed’s kind of like, I know. And at the same time, Leo’s character has a gun 

Craig: Rhode chases around Paris and Larry for a little while he ends up killing Larry. Um, well, 

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, it’s like a Mexican standoff kind of thing. They both shoot each other.

Well, it’s not Mexican standoff. 

Craig: Well, that’s they both shoot each other very that’s well, that’s ed, Larry’s the hotel guy. Oh, you’re talking about the hotel guy, right? Yeah. He kill, he kills him first. Um, and then he really, you know, he’s waving guns at them and threatening to shoot them. He just wants the keys to the truck.

Paris has the keys to the truck, but she doesn’t want to. And eventually she runs away, runs into ed and Ed’s like, I got this and he just starts walking towards roads and they both raise their guns and they both shoot each other. Multiple times. Want me to keys to the truck? Ed

want me to keys to the truck? Stay there, stay there.

And, um, yeah, there’s a brief exchange between them. Like they, they almost embrace. I, I, it’s more really that they’re like falling together, but they almost embrace and they mouth words to each other. And originally there was dialogue, but they muted it out. Um, because they feared that it projected the ending to easily a wise choice.

So I’ll come back to that, right? Yeah. Roads dies. Ed falls to the ground, Paris comes and talks to him and, and she’s like, what did you see? Or something like that. And he says, I saw you in an orange Grove. And we also see, you know, it’s, it’s kind of fading back and forth between him and Malcolm, the dissociated personality guy.

And he’s saying the same thing I saw you in, in orange Grove. And so it seems like, you know, Jenny is the last one standing. The killer is dead. And so in the morning, Jenny is able to drive away in her truck. And, uh, we cut back to. The hearing. Um, and the judge decides that Malcolm’s execution will be stayed and that he will be transferred to a mental hospital because he’s no longer a threat.

The violent personality within him is dead. Jenny arrives at her orange Grove. Um, everything’s beautiful and peaceful. And she goes to dig, you know, in her Grove and she digs. The last key, the number one key and she looks up 

Todd: and Timmy is standing there. Mm-hmm he’s got her 

Craig: to menacingly. Yeah. 

Todd: Menacingly like Damien and the Oman.

Yep. Got an ugly look on his face and yeah. And it turns out that all along Timmy was the killer and it just kind of shows again, a, a little bit of. Nebulous. But again, when you realize this is all happening in the head of a guy in the guy’s imagination, right? This 

Craig: isn’t a real kid. In fact logic, logically, it makes sense.

I mean, if, if he witnessed murders, when he was a kid and his personalities were fractured, when he was a kid, it would probably, you know, He might be the, yeah, that personality, that kind of frozen stunted personality. It makes sense that that would be the violent force, uh, in his mind, the, the flash, the flashbacks that they show are very, very brief, but as, as unbelievable as it is that this kid could.

In this Macia veian way plot all of this out. I believed it, you know, even just, just little things that we saw, like nobody questioned it when he walked into his mom’s room alone. Yeah. Um, we see that he smothered her to death in that moment. Um, he saw the guy who was trying to escape. He saw him get into the truck and started up.

So he ran. Into the path of the truck intentionally 

Todd: so that his dad would jump in there and push him away. Right. Right. He even supposedly led his mother to the window to get hit by the car in the first place, or like kept her there. You know? So again, these things might not really, and I guess. Hotwired a car to blow up cause it shows him walking away from the car exploding in 

Craig: the background.

And I knew that that was, I, I felt that they covered it well by making all of the bodies disappear, but this is a horror movie and anytime somebody dies off screen and you don’t. See them in the aftermath. It should be a major red flag, but yeah, exactly. Anyway, Malcolm Malcolms in the back of the transport vehicle.

There’s a driver and his doctor in the front and he becomes agitated and you hear him start to say, and then it flashes to Tim and Jenny together. They say horrors, don’t get a second chance. um, And then Tim kills Jenny Malcolm busts through the cage of the transport vehicle and kills, uh, Malik. And we just see the van, um, veer off onto the side of the road.

And then we hear the voice of Tim reciting the poem from the beginning again. And that’s it. The end credits. 

Todd: It’s a cool double twist. Uh, yeah, I enjoyed it immensely. I, I. And I’d forgotten the second bit. I remembered the, you know, the bit about this was all happening in his head. I had forgotten that it turned out that Timmy was the killer and it had that, all that Bleecker twist ending.

And I really, really enjoyed that. Yeah. You know, it’s funny too, because it made me think of something else. And when I was watching the movie, I was thinking, well, of course, you know, just because Ray’s character is not who he says, he. Doesn’t immediately make him the killer. Right? Right. Like, like logically that doesn’t fit, but doesn’t that follow the pattern of every single thriller movie you’ve ever seen.

Right. Yeah. It’s always somebody who’s not who they say they are. Who turns out to be the one who’s killing everyone. Well, and 

Craig: if it had been him, it would’ve been too obvious. Yeah. That bit of dialogue that they cut out, um, Reta kind of whispers into John Cusack’s ear. I didn’t do this. And ed says, I know, and then they both die.

Now. I don’t know what ed knew. 

Todd: Well, I think ed. Because ed is a part of, of, uh, oh, okay. That makes sense. I, I think ultimately, cuz again, this is still taking place in this guy’s imagination. Yeah. One guy to some degree. Yeah. He kind of, he kind of knows anyway, but uh, yeah, that’s, that’s also why I gave it a pass to where, you know, Tim could have killed all these people.

It’s it’s all just happening. This guy’s head anyway. So as long as it makes enough logical sense, it could work. Fantastic. Rail theta gets a lot of screen time in this. Yes, we had origin. Considered maybe doing Hannibal because he has a pretty notorious scene in there, but I think it’s a pretty short scene.

He’s kind of a minor character. And so we thought this was a media role of his horror roles. And like you said, he’s done a wide variety of roles, you know, you know, we were talking about him earlier. And, uh, when you just kind of talk about assumptions, I mean, he, he, I always thought he was Italian. I mean, he was, uh, his last name’s Leo.

He played these, you know, gangsters. He’s got this kind of New Jersey. Uh, accent. Yeah, typically. And, uh, when I was reading about him, I was surprised to find out that he was actually an orphan. He was left at an orphanage abandoned by his parents and it was, uh, his adoptive father was Italian. And that’s where he picked up that, that name.

And then, uh, I guess in. 1990 or two thou I guess somewhere in the two thousands, he actually hired a private investigator to track down his birth mother. And he found out he actually is of Scottish descent. And so that explains those, uh, piercing baby blue eyes that he’s got there. I guess but, uh, yeah.

What a great character, like you said, I feel, I feel similarly, like, you know, I didn’t cry tears, but right. I was like, oh, Ray Leo. Yeah. I just, he’s just always been around and I’ve always enjoy. Seeing him in movies and, uh, yeah, it’s just kind of sad that he’s not with us anymore, but once again, if, if I’m gonna find a way to the, the we’re all gonna go sometime.

Uh, going in my sleep would be, would be my top choice. I’m I think 

Craig: so. Yeah. And, and, and I say this all the time, you know, it’s, it’s sad that he’s gone, but, you know, look what he accomplished in his life. Uh, and, and not only in his career, but, um, you know, he, he was a family man. He was married. He, he had a.

Kid. And, um, I think that he was, uh, very well respected in the industry, not only as a performer, which I think that he was very much respected as a performer. Um, but just as a man mm-hmm , um, I think that he was well liked. I think that he was, uh, regarded as being very professional. Somebody that people wanted to work with.

This was a guy who was able to turn down rules, who was able to take the rules that he wanted was able to branch out and not many of. Have those kinds of opportunities and he sees them mm-hmm and I think that, uh, hopefully, you know, I’m, I’m sure that given the choice, he would’ve preferred to have more time with his family, but the life that he did lead was full, um, a good guy and I’m, I’m sure he’ll be missed.

Todd: Well, thank you again for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us online. If you just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw podcast, you’ll find our website. You might find our Patreon page where you can certainly become a member. If you’d like Twitter feed and, uh, you’ll find our webpage two guys.red40net.com, leave us a message. Any one of those places, let us know what you’d like us to do in the future. And, uh, what you thought of this episode as well until next time. I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

This week, we conclude our discussion of the 2-part TV miniseries, Salem’s Lot, based on Stephen King’s novel. This part is much more action-packed than the first, though…well, it’s still a TV movie. Enjoy!

Salem’s Lot: Part 2

Episode 302, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, here we are with our second half of the Stephen King, 1979 TV mini-seriesm Salem’s :ot. If you haven’t already, you might want to go back to our previous episode and listen to the first half, because we did this movie in chunks. It’s a three hour long movie. So we did the first hour and a half.

Was shown on television. And then now we are taking over from right when it was starting to get good for the second half. I, I think that what we kind of concluded from the last episode was that the first half was a little, it took its time. It took us time with exposition and pretty much setting everything up.

And it really wasn’t until. A little over an hour in, if not, arguably the very end of the first episode of Salem’s lot, did we start to really see stuff happened? Right. Scary stuff. I should say. Not that things weren’t going on, but it was just a lot of drama between everybody. And I think where we left off was the.

Kid Danny had been buried in the cemetery and he had been of course bitten by his brother, then the grave Digger. Whose name was mark or David? 

Craig: Mike, I think 

Todd: Mike’s in this. Yeah, it’s all like mark, Mike, David, John, Danny, Susan. These names are really forgettable. There’s normal. 

Craig: That’s the thing about the first movie, like, yeah, it’s a lot of setup because there’s a lot to set up.

Like there are so many characters to meet and though many of them play relatively minor roles. They, they are all a part of the action of what happens. And so it is, it is a lot of setup. And then. Strangely enough, once it gets to the action, it becomes far more focused on the central characters and all of these other characters that, you know, they’ve spent so much time introducing, just becoming.

Vampire feast. 

Todd: Absolutely. Right. It’s it’s so much set up with all these intricate characters and then it just ends up focusing on these same two or three people to start dropping away. One by one. I guess we got to know the victims a little bit. But what happens is this dirt grave Digger, mine gets entranced by the coffin that he’s burying of Danny.

And he leaps in and uncovers the coffin. What little dirt he put on it, opens it up. And of course Danny’s inside there full on vamp, glowing eyes open. I’m never going to get over this glowing eye effect, by the way. It’s very effective. It looks really good. Yeah. Awesome. Then he, he sits up and bites him and that’s how the first half ends where we pick up on the second half, we start off a little kind of focusing a little bit more on the boy it’s mark, right?

Yeah, it is. He’s taking it very well, but his two friends are completely dead. Well kind 

Craig: of, I mean, but his parents are worried about him because I don’t know, he’s not reacting much at all. Which concerns, especially. His mom. But his dad’s like, you know, he’s just like that, you know, he never really shows his emotion, but they are concerned and you know, the guy.

Or the dad tries to talk to him. And this kid is I’m really into like monsters and horror and magic. And the dad is like, why are you so interested in all this stuff? And he’s like, I don’t know. I just always have been that’s who I am. And the dad picks up a, a set of handcuffs and he’s like can you get out of these?

And he’s like, yeah, sure, no problem. Put them on me. And the dad does. And he, you know, pops right out of them and then he’s got some ropes sitting right there. He’s like here, tie me up.

And the dad’s like, yeah, like maybe another time. And the kid’s like, no, seriously, I can get out any night. And dad’s like, okay. But that, I mean, it plays in, in a very small way later, but a funny little set. 

Todd: I like that scene though. Honestly, it was nice to have the scene at the beginning of the movie because it speaks to me.

I was that kid, you know, I was, you were too, I’m sure I was into hope, monsters and horror and magic as well. Very much into magic growing up. My parents certainly didn’t seem very disturbed by it, even though. Teachers you know, I would write stories with Freddy Krueger in them, gory stories and stuff. I would write stories.

I’d show my parents that had killings and blood and stuff in them. And they really surprisingly weren’t terribly alarmed by it. They would be like, yeah, maybe you want to tone back on this a little. And, you know, there was even one time, I think when the teacher did, I think it was my third grade teacher had a meeting with my mom and dad just saying like the subject matter, what he writes when he has these creative writing assignments at school always tends towards the dark and my parents’ reaction to it.

I’m really proud of them was just like, okay. And then they came home and said to me, yeah, you might want to tone that down a little bit when you’re at school that freaks teachers out. Yeah. It freaks people out. But at the same time, my dad was writing horror movies for me, even though he didn’t enjoy them, particularly I read Stephen King books and all this kind of stuff that I would get from the library quite openly.

And they never expressed any concern. But I do think that there are a number of parents who do worry about their. Maybe just overall, when we talk about horror and I think we’ve brought up the subject before people who aren’t into horror, sometimes don’t get it. They don’t get it. They don’t, they’re like there must be something wrong with you.

There must be some really deep, dark part of you or some, something about your nature must be messed up that you enjoy these kinds of things. And my reaction to them is just like this kid. It’s like, I don’t know why I’ve just always been into it. Like I can’t. Even explain the appeal. I’ve just always been into it and that’s just been my thing.

And it does appeal to me, but I couldn’t for the life of you. Tell me why. And I like that. The second part of the movie of this mini series that people are watching on television, the whole nation confronts us a little bit. I don’t know if it was a big intention, but I mean, the. It’s a good five minutes of, at least of the movie.

You 

Craig: see characters like this pop up in horror movies all the time. If I were to rack my brain, I’m sure I could come up with a million examples, but like the, the monster squad, you know, 

Todd: Oh, also real quick. Hello, Mary Lou prom night, too. Doesn’t that have a guy who was really obsessed with horror in it.

Okay. 

Craig: I don’t remember that movie very well, but you, you see it all the time. And the last time we talked, I talked about how Stephen King often writes about teachers and writers because that’s who he is. And I have a feeling that the reason that these characters pop up in these movies so often is because they are a reflection of the people who are making these movies, because obviously the people who make these movies.

Love these movies, you know, why, why would you build a career in this field in particular now? I’m sure there are a lot of people who have careers. They don’t love, but in this field in particular, why would you choose this kind of material? If it wasn’t something that you loved? And I, and I imagine that probably I don’t know, Stephen King writers, directors, actors who are drawn to this genre probably feel much the same way that we do in the way that this kid does.

I don’t know. I can’t tell you exactly why, you know, I I’ve talked before how it’s kind of like riding a roller coaster. It’s scary, but it’s fun because. Triggers endorphins and, you know, kind of a chemical thing, like you kind of get to you kind of get to live vicariously through these characters in these dangerous scenarios, in the comfort of your own home, knowing that you are entirely 100% safe.

You still get to experience that rush through the characters. And, and maybe that’s not it at all. I don’t know, but I, I don’t think I’m a sick person, you know, I don’t, I I’ve never, I’ve never even been like in a fistfight, like I don’t. Have any inclination towards violence or anything like that. And I think that most people don’t but it is a misconception.

I’ve talked about how my mom, she doesn’t get a leader. My dad was into it still is. And I imagine that that’s kind of. How I got into it, but my dad’s also into lake fishing, which I could care less about. So it’s not 

Todd: quite the opposite it’s drilling for like 30 seconds. Maybe if you’re lucky. 

Craig: I, you know, I enjoy fishing with my dad because I enjoy being with my dad and I do enjoy being outdoors.

And I particularly, I love the water and I love being on the water. But I’m more content to just let him fish and I’ll just sit there and read a book and enjoy the invite. You know, like it just doesn’t do anything for me and that’s fine, but you know, he’s our little avatar in this movie, plus he’s young, he’s young.

And I think that you and I, and probably many other people look back on this age. Very fondly where, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re coming out of childhood, but you’re still clinging to some of those childish things in this case. And I know that we still do. I know you still do, especially, but like, you know, the kids into making models and he’s got all this horror memorabilia around.

And I think that it’s a kind of a poignant question. At one point, his dad says, when are you going to grow out of this? And he says, I don’t know, Someday, I guess, and to some extent we do, and to some extent we don’t, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I know I’ve, I’ve been to your house.

I seen I’ve seen your collections and stuff and, and I think that’s really cool. And I, and I think it’s cool that you’ve got, you know, all these comics and the complete DVD set of tales from the crib. You, you don’t. Grow out of that entirely. And I’m glad that we don’t, ah, we wouldn’t have been doing this for 500 years if we did, 

Todd: we’re wants to talk.

Right. That’s necessarily a childish pursuit. It’s just something we started pursuing when we were children. And I doubt that, you know, people grow up absolutely having nothing to do with horror. And then like by their mid forties are suddenly enthralled by it. You know? I don’t think. Probably doesn’t usually work that way.

But another nice thing about having a character like this in the movie is it allows you to skip over a whole bunch of stuff. You’ve already got that character who totally gets it. He knows all the vampire rules, you know, you don’t need to convince him very hard about the existence of vampires, you know?

And so he does become a key element in the second half, whereas. Almost completely absent from the first half of the movie. 

Craig: That’s true. And that’s something that’s different from the book. Mark is a key character throughout the entirety of the book, as I remember, and as I remember, Susan plays a much larger role in the book and the priest, I don’t even remember what the priest’s name is, but he.

Is relegated to virtually nothing. 

Todd: Yeah. You don’t even see him until the second half. 

Craig: And I don’t know what his name is. Right. But like in, he was pivotal in, in the book and I guess his character pops up in some of the. King’s work. I think that he’s in one of the books, at least from the dark tower series, which, you know, just generally speaking is another thing that I like about king Stephen King has really built his own universe.

And there are crossovers within that universe and, and they’re often very, very small, but for those of us who are devoted fans, they’re, they’re really fun. Little Easter eggs. Like Dick Halleran from the shining shows up for just one chapter in it. And there are just other little references. And now the King’s son, Joe Hill Stablish himself as a very talented writer.

I’m a huge fan. If you haven’t read Joe Hill stuff, Todd and you listeners. It’s great. It’s not entirely dissimilar from his dad. He does horror, but it’s more I would, I would say it’s kind of more in the line of fantasy horror. He does short stories. It does novels, everything I’ve read of his. I really like, and he and his dad had done some crossovers, but one of the benefits of.

Being Stephen King’s son, it’s really easy to license his properties. So 

Todd: one would hope. Right? 

Craig: Right. So in Joe Hill’s work, there’s often a lot of call backs and connections to his dad’s work and, and that’s fun too. I can’t recommend him enough. He’s one of my favorite authors of the moment. And I’ve read almost everything that he.

Todd: That’s cool. Well, yeah, dad just talks to him and he’s, you know? Okay. And then the police have done some research. You know, they just, almost some of this almost feels like quickly filling us in on the facts from the first movie in case we forgot. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: Time passed between the first, was it two nights, two subsequent nights?

Was it one week? 

Craig: No, I mean, it was, it was right away because yeah, those reports come back. Like the, the Constable had ordered reports on Stryker, Barlow and Ben and they all come back with no information, nothing that we didn’t already know. Really but then we see Ben and his teacher friend Burke at dinner.

Having kind of casual conversation, but then Mike, the grave Digger like collapses on their table. They have him sit down and he’s out of it. And he says, he’s sick. He’s got visible puncture wounds on his neck. And he says, He doesn’t know what happened. He woke up in the cemetery, like he must’ve slept there all night that he doesn’t remember all he remembers as he heard singing and seeing bright, scary eyes.

And he says, I remember a dream there, there was somebody out there and I let them in. And this becomes a motif as we see more and more. Townspeople, most of whom we know on some level in this same state, dazed and confused, and they talk about having strange dreams and they talk about people visiting them in the night.

Often, people that we already know are dead. Like for example, Mrs. Glick, Danny’s mom passes out at some point and says, you know, Danny’s been visiting me at night and several other people say the same thing. What gets me. And what I remember is that this happens really fast from this point on like all of a sudden.

Everybody is getting turned. And Ben even explains that like he’s talking to Susan at one point, Susan has been gone. She went for a job interview at Boston and has been gone for several days, but she comes back as all these weird things are happening. In fact, like. Ben gets attacked by her.

Ex-boyfriend just because he’s a jealous butthole. But then gets put in the hospital. And when he comes out of the hospital, Susan greets him and she’s like, dad called me. Oh, it was just a little luck. No, you’re okay. There’s more been Ned Tebbetts died last 

Todd: night. 

Craig: They found him dead this morning and town jail that examined him.

Pernicious anemia. Boy, that’s only Ned had high blood pressure and Dan, his mother died this afternoon. Same symptoms. I think. So. What does your father say? He wants to talk to you and Jason Burke. Jason Berg. He’s here. Ben here in the hospital. Intensive care. What. 

Todd: Hi to attack 

Craig: and there’s a baby that’s dead.

And like their bodies missing from the morgue and your teacher had a target attack and he’s in the ICU. Like it’s just happens all at once. And as they kind of start to figure it out, because Burke had invited Mike to stay at his house since he wasn’t feeling well. And Burke had noticed the puncture marks and in the night he had heard like he called.

Been in the morning, he says, come over by the way, if you’ve got a crucifix, bring it with you. So Ben comes over and Berks, like I swear, I heard him talking to somebody in the night. I heard him let somebody in, so let’s go check on him. And so then they go check on. And he’s dead. And the window is open and Burke said, I, I closed and locked the window.

I’m absolutely a hundred percent sure of it. And so they, but, but the puncture wounds are gone, which I don’t really understand. 

Todd: No, I don’t get that. 

Craig: I’m guessing it’s because he’s now been turned full vampire. So like they have restorative properties or, or something that could be, but then he disappears from the Morgan.

He shows up and tries to lure Burke out. And he’s really scary. The, the mic, the empire is really scary, but I guess because Burke kind of suspects what’s going on, he’s able to resist. More than the previous people who didn’t really know what was going on. And he doesn’t look in his eyes and he holds up a cross and using the cross forces, vampire Mick out through the window, but this just keeps happening, but whole Ned gets attacked in jail at some point, mark.

Is sitting with his parents and the priest. I think it’s because they are so concerned about his fascination with magic and monsters. Oh, and it’s also because Danny visited mark to try to get him to come out. 

Todd: Danny visited mark, and that was creepy. But mark had his, his crucifix snapped off of his little model he was working on and was like a modeling, 

Craig: like a cemetery.

You know, 

Todd: he’s too smart for this, but also you’re wondering, cause he’s still, these vampires can trans people, but it seems like if you kinda know, if you more or less kind of know, or suspect what might be going on, then you have an ability to resist this. If you don’t stare too deeply at their, at their eyes, who goes with Ben to see the priest before this?

Oh, it’s been in her dad at some point after Ned surprises band and beats him up. And then Ben talks to the. In the hospital, right? 

Craig: Because the doctor is also Susan’s 

Todd: dad. Yeah. He and the teacher approached the doctor after they’re running with Mike. And of course the doctor doesn’t quite believe him.

Ned surprises. Ben beats him up. Ben goes to the hospital and, and talks to the doctor. He still doesn’t really believe him, but he asks for a crucifix anyway. And he’s like, yeah, I guess we can make that work. In the meantime, Jason, Jason. His teacher, he’s reading up on vampires and that’s when he goes upstairs and has his encounter with Mike, but he ends up succumbing to a sudden heart attack.

Is that something that Mike made happen you think, or do you think he was just shocked by the 

Craig: whole affair that I think he was just shocked by the whole affair. We had seen him he had been struggling seemingly with heart pains in the night. And then, and then after. The grave Digger died and came back and confronted him.

He had heart pains again, and apparently had heart attack. He’s an older guy. So I assume it was just natural. That 

Todd: makes sense. Well, net ends up in jail. We just see another quick scene where he’s laying in his jail cell, in his jail cell mysteriously opens and he sits up and this is the first time I think.

Right that we get to see full on Barlow, the evil vampire. 

Craig: I think you’re right. It’s just like a quick face shot. Very rat like blue. Yeah. He’s bald a very prominent things, but they’re not like 

Todd: his they’re like his front two T 

Craig: they’re not his canines. Yeah. They’re they’re like his front two or they’re closer together than you typically.

I would 

Todd: expect of a vamp. It’s very much like Nosferatu. Yeah, I think, I 

Craig: think, but I feel like the first time we get a really good look at him is when mark is meeting with his parents and, and the priest, because he has seen Danny and he’s told his parents. And, and they think that there’s something wrong with them.

So so they call in the priest and out of nowhere and for reasons unclear to me, the whole house starts to shake and then both Stryker and Barlow show up just seemingly out of nowhere. 

Todd: It’s an odd scene, right? Because there’s no, like, are they just on their rounds? 

Craig: Yeah. No, it seems like they’re targeting them for a reason, I guess the priest, but why like the priest isn’t onto them, you know, like, yeah.

I have no idea what’s going on, but, but they show up and, and we see at this point, you know, we’ve seen striker a million times. He’s just a regular guy, but now we see a Barlow and, you know, not only does he look strange in his physicality and his face, but he dresses like Nosferatu. He’s dressed like a bat, like in a Cape and all black and he bashes Mark’s parents.

He batches their heads together and kills them. Yeah, that’s true to the book too. I don’t remember if that’s exactly how they died in the book, but a mark is left an orphan and it’s a weird scene. It ends with what kind of Barlow is holding. Mark, like in a chokehold and striker says to the priest, what would you give for this miserable boy?

What do you ask? What would you give to reprieve him this night to save him for another 

night? 

Craig: What do you want the master wants you throw away your cross, face, the 

Todd: master, your faith against his faith. Could you 

Craig: do that? Is your faith.

And trust him to let the boy go. They let mark go. And mark leaves. But these, like, I, he killed my parents and he’s, he looks at Barlow. He’s like, I’m going to kill you. And then he runs away. And then there’s this weird interaction between the priest and, and, and Barlow that I don’t know. I ultimately, I don’t even know what happened.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure either. I guess we’re just supposed to believe the priest died, 

Craig: I guess like, like they just kind of look at each other and Barlow like starts to approach him and the priest is holding up the cross, but it doesn’t really seem to be having much of an effect, which I don’t understand.

Cause I feel like the cross works every other time. 

Todd: Well, he says it doesn’t work against the master. That’s what that’s what Sorry. Stryker’s striker says, yeah, it doesn’t work that your cross won’t work against the master and, and Barlow grabs the cross and kind of bends that I guess, and tosses it down on the ground.

And I think that’s where the scene ends is with the cross on the ground and then cut to something or cut to commercial probably. And then we’re done. So like, I guess the priest is out of the picture and his parents are dead and You know, mark is allowed to run away by the way. Did you notice in the scene just before this, when Ben and the doctor were meeting with whoever it was, we’re meeting with the priest that shot of the cast of the church on the outside that they, it had like a huge pendulum attached to a clock.

Wasn’t that bizarre? 

Craig: It was weird. I’ve never seen anything like. 

Todd: It was clearly animated on there. I mean, there was, I D I thought maybe for some reason that was going to have some significance later, because it was such an odd thing. Why they went through the trouble of putting that in the movie for like two seconds.

Craig: Right. Apropos of nothing. I don’t know. At this point, Ben has convinced Dr. Norton to examine Mrs. Glick Danny’s mom. Cause she has died. And it’s funny cause like the doctor, I mean, he’s going to do it. And like he looks at her and it’s, and he’s basically like, she’s the same as the other ones I’ve looked at.

Like she’s not showing any signs of rigor, mortis, even though she is dead, she doesn’t have a pulse and he leaves today. Get something. I don’t know, but Ben is sitting there and he makes a cross out of tongue depressors, which I thought was kind of hilarious. 

Todd: Right? Yeah. And he starts reciting, you know, Bible verses.

Yeah. 

Craig: And, and he, and he says there are no atheists in foxholes, which is a phrase that I’ve heard before. And I can only imagine is true. You know, when, when, when you’re in that big trouble belief, nobody’s. You start praying just in case

Todd: and sure enough, the body starts moving under the sheet and he kind of stands up and then the body sits up and it’s Mark’s mother has turned and she just sits there and she almost looks confused. Really. Which I would imagine would be how you would initially wake up as a new vampire. Yeah. 

Craig: It’s it’s it’s Dan it’s Danny’s mom.

I don’t know. I don’t know if Mark’s parents get turned or not. We don’t, we don’t see that’s true. But yeah, I mean, when we had seen her before, when she had been in that kind of insensible state, and she had said that Danny had come to her and had told her that they could be together forever. And so when she wakes up, she’s kind of calling.

And she does seem a little confused, but when she sees Ben, then she’s like, oh, I’m a vampire.

Todd: But thank God Ben made that cross because he just approaches her. And bill runs into the room at the same time, thankfully. So he can see this go down and then he approaches her and puts that presses that cross against her forehead, which burns it as you would suspect. 

Craig: Yeah. Evil ed 

Todd: style just disappeared.

Like it just fades out in a really cheap effect, 

Craig: which I, I guess the cross. 

Todd: Yeah, I guess I don’t understand that bit so you can kill them with the cross by touching them. I don’t know, because she just disappears. Literally just dissolves away. It’s not a pile of Ash or anything. After that a bend runs to Susan tells her, you gotta leave town.

Susan never does leave town. 

Craig: No, she says she right. He says, you know, by sundown, get your mom and as many other people as you can. To 

Todd: go and he and bill are going to stay behind. I’m going to stay behind with your dad and help him fight. We’re going to fight the vampires together. And Ben goes to the police station.

This is the point where it’s just like, they’re just a couple more scenes to make you realize that pretty much everybody in town it’s good. It’s money. You know, he goes to the police station, the policeman’s called in sick for the first time ever. And his on-duty cop there. Isn’t looking so well, but he’s complaining about visions that he had the night before.

It’s like, oh shit, And he runs out and 

Craig: Susan goes to his room, the room that Ben’s been renting and the landlady is, is clearly, you know, mid turn and talks about having dreams of her ex-husband visiting for some 

Todd: dumb, I sorta feel, yeah. Know why she just decides to go to the house. Like 

Craig: I know that this happened in the book too, and I can only imagine.

That there was a reason, but in the movie it just seems like she’s just an idiot. Like not only just, just to go, but to go by herself. Like, what was her plan? What was her objective? Like? Did she just want to look at the house? Like 

Todd: I don’t, I don’t, she wasn’t, I’m going to stay like, as she goes, she steps out, it looks like she’s going to approach it.

Maybe thinks better. And then she sees some movement in the grass and And you know, everything’s kind of elevated. So she looks up and sees on the hill where the house is that boom, there’s mark with two stakes in his hand running towards the house. So he’s going to go and take care of business and fulfill his promise of killing the vampires, which is cool.

And being marked with, as a magician and whatnot and escape artist, he has a lock picking set, which I thought was awesome. And he picks a lot quite quickly into the Seller and goes in and she follows a man, but when she goes in there, like he’s gone, he’s runway ahead. And so now there’s just a lot of creeping around the house and, you know, she leaves the seller and goes up into the main house and the house is impressive.

Craig: I really 

Todd: liked this huge. Yeah, the beautiful, and even the detail of just it’s a house that has absolutely been neglected for 20 years and nobody’s done anything to fix it up. Right. So. Crap dust in the air there’s dust in the air, which was a really nice effect. 

Craig: Well, there’s mold and Moss, like growing up the walls, everything.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And there’s tons like the entire like decorative motif is taxidermy. 

Todd: Same degree to the point where at one point mark opens a drawer and it’s just full of glass eyes that you would use in the, in the animals for the taxidermy. It’s nuts. 

Craig: Another really cool touch that I really liked was there is a lot of taxidermy and there are heads of deer or other animals with antlers on the walls.

But within those antlers, Are the corpses of other animals like dogs and in, in various forms of decay, like some that look like they’ve been killed only recently and some that are like all bone and I wasn’t really sure what to make of that. I’m like, it looks amazing. It looks super creepy. And I love it, but I didn’t know if that was supposed to suggest that like they were Barlow or, or somebody was feeding off of these dogs.

I’m not sure, but. 

Todd: It’s hard to pick apart like a backstory, you know, to kind of fit why there’s so much taxidermy around here and dead animals. It would have been nice to have had a line or two in the movie that might’ve foreshadowed this, or kind of explained it a little bit, but presumably it was the previous inhabitant, right?

Certainly Barlow and M and Straker didn’t have enough time to do or inclination to do all this 

Craig: stuff. One would think, but then there’s all, you know, in the first movie, The caretaker, the cemetery guy had a dog and it was killed presumably by Stryker. Never, we, we don’t know why. Hm. And I read something that like, if you look closely the dog is, is near or underneath a tombstone that is maybe Hubie.

Is it mantle? Is that the mantle house? Is that what it’s called? Whatever Morrison. Yeah. So, so maybe it was some sort of sacrifice. I don’t know. It’s never explained, but dead dog, dead dogs. I don’t know, but the house looks cool and they’re both in there and they’re just kind of snooping around separately and the whole, like, again, the whole, like Mark’s a kid, so I’ll give him a pass, you know, for being impulsive and not terribly bright, you know, he thinks he’s avenging his parents.

I get that. Susan’s a grown ass adult and has been. Presented as being intelligent, but not here. 

Todd: Right. But 

Craig: no, no. And like, she’s not even discreet, like she’s just walking around in this huge, huge house, like mark, like, well, okay. Or the 

Todd: vampires,

someone else’s house. Come on. And then. Ben and bill show up. Well, yeah, but 

Craig: first they they’re, they’re, they’re separated at first and then they find each other, but as soon as they find each other, they have. Noise in the house and Mark’s like, they’re here. And so mark goes into a room where he heard noise and Susan is outside and he’s not responding to her.

So she goes in there and she sees that mark has been knocked out by Stryker and Straker leads her away. I got the impression that he was kind of able to in trance her as well and just leads her away. And then Stryker ties up mark and a chair. And he’s like, what have you done with Susan? And he says I, I.

Took her to what she came here for. I took her to meet the man. She came here to meet and then like the, the Constable is leaving town and been like, choose his ass, like the old towns in trouble. And you’re leaving. He’s like, yep. I’m getting out of here. But he gives Ben a gun. And then it cuts back up to mark in the house.

And he frees himself from the knots, which we knew he could do. Cause he told us earlier. And then that’s when Ben and, and, and bill they talk about the fact that, you know, Susan has not shown up to get her mother out of town. And so they go to the church, they collect holy water and then they head up to the.

And I guess this is, you know, the, the finale 

Todd: now they call it, they go through the trouble. Collecting the holy water is the holy water every year. 

Craig: No, in fact, he drops it and breaks it like right at a pivotal moment, right. At a pivotal 

Todd: moment. That’s right. Idiot. So, so they go into the house and there’s more creeping around, you know, they run into mark, Mark’s trying to leave, but then mark kind of comes back in and anyway, there’s just a lot more creeping around.

And bill goes up the stairs and this time, which I just swear that we never saw it when she went up the stairs. We had a shot in that direction. Anyway, this time when he goes up the stairs he turns and looks to the right and the hallway ends in just a wall with it just has antlers sticking out of it every which way.

And so then there’s a door creeps, open and shots and there’s no ice. And so he slowly goes to this door. Striker is behind the door. He opens it and just starts walking very deliberately towards him. Bill does nothing, but back away, maybe two small steps. And Stryker with this sort of superhuman strength grabs him by the shoulders, lifts him off his feet and walks him straight into those antlers.

Just completely impales them. This is the other scene that I remember as a kid, as a kid. I remembered it as the vampire doing this, but actually it’s Stryker. And as a kid, this shocked the hell out of me. It’s pretty graphic 

Craig: for network television. It 

Todd: is, and it kind of comes out of nowhere now. I mean, sadly, you know, while he’s like kind of hanging there and we see that shot, which is pretty graphic, like already, like the fake prop antlers are kind of bending a little bit.

It loses a little bit of its luster the longer the screen lingers on it, but it’s a cool thing. And I, this was a change from the book. As I remember in the book instead of this happening, he actually falls through the floor and gets eaten up by rats. 

Craig: Oh, I don’t remember that. Yeah. 

Todd: And so then striker very slowly grabs a post and comes down the stairs towards Ben and mark.

And Ben just opens fire on him a bunch of times. And at first it doesn’t seem to affect him, but then he slows down and he falls and dies. Yeah, you’re on the stair. 

Craig: It’s a little bit anticlimactic. Yeah, it’s a anti-climactic for his character, but at the same time, I kind of don’t get it because in fright night, the, the main vampires familiar also had superhuman stress.

And was hard to kill, but ultimately didn’t it turn out. He was like some other kind of demon or something like he wasn’t human either. I had assumed that Straker was human, but he’s able with no trouble at all to pick up a grown man into the air. And then he endures a whole pistol worth of rounds.

Before, finally falling down and dying. So he dies, you know? Yeah. He had talked about how he and Barlow had been partners for a very long time. So I don’t know if it’s just Barlow’s influence or what it is, but maybe he’s got some supernatural abilities maybe including long life. I don’t know.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter because. 

Todd: He’s dead. He’s dead. It’s really anticlimactic. I really was disappointed. And that 

Craig: really is kind of anti-climate 

Todd: it’s true. The ending is a bit of a disappointment because after this happens, then sun’s going down soon. We need to go find these vampires. So they go into the basement, the basement stairs have been knocked away, so they kind of fall and mark injures his foot, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

And then they poke around very slowly around there a little bit. And they find a, basically a compartment break. That’s when he broke, when he drops his holy water, while he’s trying to break the the padlock off of it. And when he opens it up, they look inside and there’s the big, long coffin and a whole pile of vampires.

Just, just sleeping every which way in there. I imagine in the book. Cause I don’t remember it very well, but I imagine the book there must’ve been like a half a town’s worth full of vampires in there or something. Right. I think the movie is supposed to give the impression, the towns over run, but it doesn’t give a good job of it because we’ve only seen a dozen or so characters.

And though we see them get picked off and the cops leave town, you know, there’s no sense there’s no grant shot or anything of, of an empty town or of, of, of anything like that. It’s just those. 12 or so characters that we saw previously who were there, you know, it’s just sort of a limitation of the, of the budget, right?

Craig: If I do remember the book correctly, it quite literally was virtually everybody in town had been turned like this. This was now a town. Vampires, 

Todd: but you’d never know it from the movie really. Right. You could imply it sort of, but 

Craig: I know that in one of Stephen King’s short story collections, there is a continuation.

It’s not really a continuation because it doesn’t follow the same figures, but Jerusalem’s lot is still known as a town. Of vampires and people stay away from it. And of course, in, in the story, some dummy doesn’t stay away from it. And that’s why it’s a scary story. 

Todd: That’s what makes it a scary, otherwise, that would be an interesting story.

Wouldn’t it? Although the vampires are going to the supermarket, meet each other for coffee at the coffee shop a little bit of less drama there. Yeah. So then they pull out the coffin and they open it up and he’s in. And they’re like, oh, the sun’s going down. The sun’s going down, but no, it’s the vampire wakes up, but he isn’t able to do much.

He kind of reaches out, but by now, Ben already has a stake up against him. Mark runs towards him to help or something. And he’s like, no, stay away. And he like flings him. The room almost with a superhuman strength of his own and Ben wax himself against a table and sits there with his back to the opening where all of these vampires in there, by the way, are waking up and crawling ominously towards him.

I think 

Craig: that was my favorite shot because they’re crawling out of the dark and not only they crawling out of the dark, but the focus, the camera focus is on. Mark. So they’re there, they’re crawling out of the dark, but they’re also in fuzzy focus and we can recognize them. These are people that we know they’re like cats that like they’re creeping up really slowly, 

Todd: an idiot bends back as totally to them.

Craig: Yeah. Mar I mean, mark eventually like at the last moment, I don’t know if he hears something or. But he turns around and, and closes the door and is able to lock them in there. So disaster averted and right. And just think talking about it and thinking about it, like in the moment, I, I wasn’t thinking about it as much, but it really is very anticlimactic.

And I don’t remember the book feeling that way. I felt like there was a lot of build to a climax in the book and here. He quite literally just pulls the coffin out, opens it and steaks them. Like, that’s it like there’s no, you know, Barlow’s supposed to be this presumably centuries old master certain.

Yeah. He, he didn’t seem very hard to take out like. Find him pull his coffin out, staken, call it a day. 

Todd: And that’s basically what they do. They run out of there and they like the whole house on fire. And then they ended up in a car and driving away and mark says to Ben, what are we going to do now? And Ben’s basically like, we’re going to drive them again.

The implication that there are many, many. In the town will drive them out of their hiding places will purify Salem’s lot. And the others will be on the run. The others, of course, also, including Susan. Right? Well, that was 

Craig: something we haven’t seen her. And I thought that was really kind of strange. And again, I don’t remember how it plays out in the book.

Where did she go? She just disappears and we don’t know what happened. Sure her. I mean, ultimately we kind of do, but the whole time, like when he’s setting the house on fire, like he looks up and he’s like, I’m sorry, Susan. Like, I guess presumably she’s in there, but it just, she, she feels like an afterthought.

Really in the whole movie, she feels kind of like an afterthought. She’s she’s not important. She doesn’t do 

Todd: anything. She’s always there. You’re right. She just doesn’t do anything. It’s so sad. Really. And then we come back to what we saw in the very beginning of the first episode, which was two years later in Mexico when they’re at that church.

And they had just filled their vials with holy water and it lights up and says, and they say, oh, they’re near or something like that. And I guess. What else? What are they going? Or do they, I 

Craig: dunno, they go, they go to Luke Skywalker’s house on tattooing.

Todd: Oh my God. You’re right. 

Craig: Yeah. So they, they, they go to this kind of like Adobe place where they’re staying, I guess. And mark like stays in the living room. Just standing there. And Ben walks into the bedroom where there’s just like a small bed or a cot or something. And Susan is laying there in all white looking, very, very beautiful, like she’s posing for a painting or something, but her eyes are closed, closed.

And as he approaches, she’s like, I’ve been looking for you for so long. It was so hard to find you. Found you and we can be together. We can be together forever. That’s his promise. And she opens her eyes and she’s a vampire and it kind of seems like, you know, she’s in chanting him and he’s coming closer and like, they’re going to kiss and it looks like she’s, you know, preparing to bite him.

But you know, we see him raise his stake up behind him and he steaks. 

Todd: It’s smart, I guess, to try to end this on a sad, emotional kind of tragic scene. 

Craig: I don’t remember exactly how it happened. I don’t think that this is how it happened, but I do know that Susan was turned in the book. So she was, she was lost.

Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t remember how it ended, frankly. I do remember that it was that frame, you know, where they, they did come back and it seems, and then, so Ben tells mark, like there will be more of. And, and so, you know, we’re left thinking that they are just going to be 

Todd: devoting their lives. Yeah.

They’re like the van housings of the Stephen King world, you know? Yeah. So it’s Again, a very anticlimactic I’m with you on that a hundred percent. I was so disappointed in the ending. I was just how easy it was. I mean, it just like, oh, okay. Now we’ve all finally figured out they’re vampires and they’re up at the, at the house, let’s all go to the house and stake them and then they do.

Craig: Yeah. W w and, and it’s unfortunate because, you know, we talked yesterday or last time we talked about how, you know, there was so much setup and I, I assured you that the second part was better. And I do think that. Better. There’s, there’s more action. There are more scares in there. You know, I think there’s a lot of stuff going on here that is really spooky.

The vampires are scary. They’re scary looking. They’re a menacing presence. Just the notion that this is spreading so fast and, and Ben describes it, you know, he’s like, it’s, you know, first there’s one, then there’s two, then it’s two times two. Then it’s four times four, like 

Todd: exponentially. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s a disease.

I mean, it’s just spreading like a disease. And, and that idea in and of itself is, is frightening. And so I enjoyed the second movie. The ending is just, it’s a little lackluster like it at the end, I was like, oh, how stupid I hated it. But. It was a little lackluster, which is, which is too bad because overall, I think that this is a pretty good movie for a made for TV movie from 1979, not bad.

It’s pretty good. No, it’s not bad at all. And, and it’s, it’s atmospheric and it’s, it’s pretty faithful to the source material, which I also enjoyed. It’s not amazing. Love it. I, I wouldn’t cite it as one of my favorite movies though. There are, you know, film directors out there who do, but it’s a good story.

It was remade in the nineties again, as a made for TV mini series, Rob Lowe start has been, and I don’t know who else was in it, but I’m sure lots of notable people, because that was the 

Todd: trend. Turn to Salem’s lot. Or was that a true 

Craig: remake? This was a true remake. There was a, another movie called return to Salem’s law.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it. I do know that this mini series was so successful that they consider. Extending it to like a Sierra series. And it just didn’t happen. But yeah, th th there was returned to Salem’s lot. Then there was the, the made for TV remake that, you know, follows the original story.

And that there’s a new remake in the works right now. I mean, it looks like it may be done directed by. Yeah, directed by Gary Doberman. Who also wrote the screenplay, not a lot of super recognizable names. Aside from Alfre. Woodard is in it playing a character. I don’t remember, I’m looking at the IMDV page.

And one of the things that I really like about it is that it’s far more diverse than this movie. I don’t think there’s a single person of color in this entire movie. 

Todd: Oh. Not even a slightly like in the background or something 

Craig: in there. Yeah. So it’s, it’s nice to see a wider variety of. People 

Todd: far from a lack of diversity, the the town policemen has never heard the word chow before.

Apparently I loved that little scene was so cute. Bye. Ciao, Constable 

Craig: ciao. Ciao. That’s a familiar Italian 

Todd: expression. Meaning 

Craig: goodbye. I didn’t know you were Italian. I’m not the word is while you learn something you’ll ever be.

Well, you learn some more every day. Yeah. So I don’t know. I mean, that’s, I, I don’t have a whole lot more to say about it. It’s fine. I’m glad that we got around to doing it. I think it’s worth talking about, I think it’s worth seeing it’s not going to knock your socks. But especially if you’re a Stephen King fan or if like us, you were a fan of these event, many series from the, you know, especially like the eighties and nineties, it’s what you would expect it to be.

And it’s nostalgic. And I overall, I enjoyed it and I would 

Todd: say too, if you’re looking for something with a mixed crowd, or like, like maybe watch with your family, if you have younger kids, Some of the imagery in here would be pretty frightening for a kid who’s a little too young. She might have to deal with some nightmares, but ultimately it’s pretty tame as far as it’s not graphically showing anything.

And it is well paced so, or slow, slowly paced, I should say. So. Yeah, it, it would be a good option perhaps to a watch with. With a family sure. As it is so well, thank you again for listening to our episode. If you enjoyed it, please share with a friend. You can find us just by searching two guys and a chainsaw podcast where we have our Facebook page or Twitter feed website, too guys.

Don’t read 40 nine.com. Just leave us a comment. Any one of those places, we also have a page. Paige patrion.com/chainsaw podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please consider supporting us over there. And we have some freebies for you. An exclusive interview, some mini sites that we put out a couple of times a month, and also access to the edited versions of our recordings, as well as some influence over what movies we’re going to do next, we just take our requests and we fold them over there to decide which one we’re going to do next until next time I am Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

This week begins our long-overdue discussion of an iconic TV mini-series, Salem’s Lot. Based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name (only his second novel) and of course the second film created based on one of his works since Carrie, it’s also his only vampire novel to-date. They got Toby Hooper to direct it, fresh off of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There’s a lot to unpack and discuss here, and we had a joy doing it.

Salem’s Lot: Part 1

Episode 301, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

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

Craig: And I’m Craig

Todd: Since Craig and I both have quite a bit of time this week, eh, we decided to tackle something a little bit longer than we usually do. You know, how we feel about long movies. We don’t often have a lot of patience for them, this movie, however, uh, is a film that we have been intending to do for a while.

But. Years, right. The movie is called Salem’s Lot. It’s the 1979 TV mini series version. And I guess there’s a remake in the works coming up this year. Yeah. Produced by James Wan. So it just so happens to be an apropos time. But also we’ve just been wanting to do it for a while. I’ll tell you this movie had an impression on me as a child.

I don’t remember. When I would have seen it. I don’t remember if this is something I rented or if this is something that was shown again on television. I certainly didn’t see it when it came out. When I was one year old, it’s a made for television movie directed by Toby Hooper. And, uh, it went through quite a few drafts.

I think Warner brothers had acquired the rights to Stephen King’s novel to make a movie version. And they went through a number of screenwriters. Nothing was really clicking. They even went through Larry Cohen and we like Larry Cohen and. Does interesting stuff. But at the end of the day, they decided, you know what, maybe in order to do the novel justice, like most of Stephen King’s novels, we should, uh, go for something longer and make it a mini series.

I think George Romero was actually originally tapped to do it. I think he was mostly turned off by the fact that it would be television and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do anything gross and cool. So, so Toby Hooper of all people took up the task, basically, I think on the strength of his Texas chainsaw massacre, which was only about five years before this went into production that came out.

Up and coming or director, I guess he hadn’t done Poltergeist yet. The screenplay was written by Paul Monash, a guy who wrote quite a bit for television and movies. He was uncredited as a writer on touch of evil or sin. Wells is 1958 moon. Movie and a lot of, a lot of TV episodes and things like that, but he made a lot of changes to the Stephen King novel, uh, in order to shorten it, consolidate characters, simplify the story.

Some of the changes were quite drastic. However, Stephen King, who often doesn’t like most of the adaptations of his novel actually really liked this one and approved of the changes. So again, I saw it when I was a kid. I remembered it really creeping me out. I didn’t, I remembered two or three. Scenes from the movie.

And other than that, I didn’t remember much of anything. So I was really happy to come and revisit this now. And what we’re doing today is we’re just talking about the first part of it. We’re talking about what was shown on television the first day, which was a, of an hour and a half. And mostly set up really.

Uh, and then we’ll come back again with another episode and we’ll talk about the second half, which I think will be a lot more exciting, really. So, anyway, how about you, Craig? Had you you’ve seen this 

Craig: before, right? Yeah, I’ve seen it, but it came out the year I was born. So not then. And, uh, I don’t think that I saw it when I was a kid.

I think that I rented this when I was in graduate school. I watched it, there are multiple versions of the film. This is the first made for television mini series adaptation of a Stephen King novel. And it’s only the second film adaptation of his sting, a Stephen King novel, uh, the first being Carrie. And then this was the second.

This was also his second. I think I saw the movie at some point in graduate school. It really didn’t make a big impression on me. There are the iconic scenes of. Child vampires floating outside of windows. I did remember that. I see that, you know, when I’m looking at like iconic scenes and scary scene type lists and stuff, um, so it’s been present in my mind.

Um, I also, uh, read the novel and I, and I think I read the novel even later than. Even after I saw the movie. 

Todd: Yeah, me too. And it’s a good 

Craig: book. It is good. It’s interesting. You know, it’s only, King’s second published novel, you know, I don’t know what else he was working on, but it is his second published novel.

Different it’s quite different than, uh, his other books. First of all, I don’t recall him ever writing a, another vampire novel. Now I, I think vampires feature, uh, in the dark tower series a little bit. I remember, um, reading a short story of his, that was in the dark tower universe. I think. Uh, featured vampires or some kind of vampire, but, um, he was inspired to write this novel when he assigned his class.

Cause cause king was a teacher before he was a famous novelist. That’s why teachers and writers feature so prominently as main characters in his books, you know, he writes what he knows, but he assigned his class Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Uh, and, and that just got him thinking. What if Dracula came to America,

that’s kind of basically what the story is. You know, there, there is a central vampire Kurt Barlow whose role is dramatically diminished in. Film in the novel, the Barlow character is a central character and he’s portrayed very differently. First of all, the movie is, or excuse me, the novel is written very much like Dracula.

I think it’s at least in. In epistolary form. So through, you know, a series of letters and journal injuries. And, and if I remember it’s been a super long time, 

Todd: I don’t remember it very well because it has been a long time for me to, but it does also kind of jumble up around a little bit in time, right? 

Craig: Yes.

And, and there’s, there’s far more focus, which, you know, this is typical of Stephen King. Uh, I he’s one of my favorite authors. A lot of his novels are epic. You know, this I think is like a 400 page novel and, and that’s super long. Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s, that’s fairly typical of him. Some of his novels are significantly longer than.

But there, there are lots of things going on. You know, there, there’s a big cast of characters in both the novel and the movie, but especially the novel. And there there’s lots of backstory, you know, a lot of the novel and a lot of this movie focus around this house. Do you remember what the name of the house 

Todd: is?

It’s the Marston house. Yeah, the 

Craig: Marston house. And, uh, in the book, there’s a lot of backstory, a lot of history about this house. And it’s suggested in the movie that this house has been the center of a lot of really dark and, and terrible things. And characters speculate that, uh, maybe there’s something about this house that draw.

Evil people to it because lots of bad things have happened here. There is a story of a guy named Hubie Marsden who like potentially, maybe abducted and killed a lot of young boys in the area. And, uh, I think his wife or mother killed herself and all of that is explored a lot more. In the novel. And of course, you know, even if you are condensing a Stephen King novel to three hours, you’re still going to have to cut out a lot of stuff.

So that’s, that’s one of the things that was a big change. Another thing that’s a big change is the portrayal of the head vampire in the novel Barlow, the. Vampire is very much like Dracula he’s suave, he’s genteel. He can appear as both a young man and like an elderly Arista, aristocrat, uh, and he appeared.

You know, heavily in the novel in the movie, you barely see him at all. He gets 90 seconds of screen time in the entire three hour run. He doesn’t speak and he is portrayed much more along the lines of count or LOC Nosferatu. Type vampire he’s he’s blue. He’s got, you know, really, really prominent things.

He’s bat like in appearance. And he just pops up every once in a while. And if I remember correctly, not even in today, The second movie. It, the second part, is he, even in this 

Todd: first? No, there is his hand is in this first part. I 

Craig: went ahead and watched the whole thing. So I’m ahead of the game 

Todd: way ahead of the game.

You know, I, now I feel like a slacker. I thought we had a commitment. I thought we had a packed Craig. It 

Craig: was. Yeah. I told you, I don’t have time to watch this whole thing. 

Todd: All the people who have time to watch this movie. Well, I guess it both you and me, except I’m stuck at home in quarantine, in China, this, you know, for the foreseeable future.

So if anybody could afford to sit down and watch a three hour movie, it’s certainly me, I dutifully turned it off and right at the moment where you told me it ended, I told justice.

Well 

Craig: kind of, I’m kind of stuck in quarantine in my classroom. I, your classroom. I still like anyway. Yeah. So lots of differences between the movie and the book, but like you said, ultimately, Stephen King. Happy with the way that it turned out. He was skeptical about the way that his vampire was portrayed, but when he actually saw it on screen, he gave it his approval.

Um, there are different versions of the movie. As you said, it aired in the United States as a two-part mini series three hours long. It was then edited down to about, I think about 120 minutes for theatrical release in Europe. And Stephen King actually prefers. Oh, does 

Todd: he? Well, didn’t that version also have some additional scenes of, of more violence, uh, for it that couldn’t be shown on TV.

Yeah. 

Craig: They intentionally shot. They intentionally shot alternate scenes throughout the production, knowing that they. We’re going to also release a feature film version. There is a feature film version that, uh, features just a tiny, tiny bit more gore and a little bit there. Some Fred Willard is in this movie and there’s a scene of his, um, that had a change that I think would have made it far more menacing.

But again, it’s TV in the seventies. So. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean, it’s still impressive for TV in the seventies. I’ll say so far in the first hour and a half. I mean, and then 

Craig: the second half is better by the way. 

Todd: Okay, good. Well, I mean, the thing about it is, and I think. Probably, I don’t know, it was a different time.

We’ve already talked about how films were a little different than two, and there was more time for exposition and the, you know, there was just a different style and also television, a TV movie was an event, a mini. It was a huge event. And then a mini series, you know, based on a well-known property with a well-known author or something like that is basically must see TV.

And it’s only going to come on once. So your audience is probably going to sit through it just so they can talk about it the next day with their friends, even if they’re not initially captivated by it. So I think this movie could definitely afford to honestly, kind of do a, a film version of Stephen King.

Emo, which is take your time with the characters, give them, flesh them out, give them backstories, like before you really start throwing them into situations. And there’s a definite point in this movie where suddenly everything comes, it starts to come to a head. It starts to pay off what you’ve seen. We have all these different characters in a way.

It was actually reminded me a lot of needful things, which also started out as a television mini series. It’s got a similar flavor to it. Um, I think this right wasn’t Salem’s lot. The first book that he did was set in castle rock is his sort of fictional universe where. 

Craig: It’s set in Salem’s lot,

but I mean, I don’t remember if castle rock is, is 

Todd: mentioned. He mentioned, I think 

Craig: it’s definitely 

Todd: nearby. Yeah. And, um, Bangor is also mentioned in there and, um, you know, obviously Salem’s lot, but this movie much like is castle rock novels sets up a whole town full of. Yeah, and all of their relationships.

And there’s more to the story than just the horror at hand. There is jealousy and revenge and intrigue between people in the town and unfinished business. And that all gets in the way also of the main story, which makes his novels feel more. And I like that about them. These people are not just people that exist to service this plot, but these people have had interesting lives and have their own plots, you know, that they’re living and then this, something gets thrown in there, um, which brings everything to a head.

And, and so I like that about his writing, even though a lot of times I don’t have the patience for. Well, 

Craig: you know, he has his critics. Um, he is kind of long-winded. I never find him boring. I’m intrigued novels, like Salem’s lot and like needful things and some of his other novels work well in a mini. Form, because there are so many characters and these characters have their own compelling story.

Everything is interwoven and comes back together, uh, at some point, but like you said, you’re focusing on a whole town. The same thing is true of needful things, which was also, I think, a mini series initially, starring Bonnie Bedelia, who is also in this. Oh, that’s right. There have been a couple of others.

Uh, I think, well, one other Tommy knockers, I read Tommy knockers was one of the first Stephen King novels that I read and I read it in seventh grade and I was far too young to be reading 

Todd: that’s about when I read it to. I, I swear to you. I was seventh or eighth grade. Yeah, I loved 

Craig: it. But I think part of the reason that I loved it, cause it was all the sex and it intrigued me know 

Todd: there’s a lot of sex in that book.

And I’ll tell you another thing. It’s a bit, it’s a pretty bleak book. And the other thing about it is. I, you know, it was probably to date in, you know, in the seventh grade, when I went on kind of a Stephen King reading rampage, it was the book I could put down. I got about halfway through it and I, and I never picked it back up until, you know, I don’t know, like two months later, and then I would write.

Five or six more chapters and then I would put it down and getting through the book finally was a bit of a slog for me. I don’t, I don’t know if I would have that same problem now as an adult who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I 

Craig: haven’t read it since seventh grade, so I have no idea. I remembered 

Todd: seeing the mini series.

I don’t remember that much about it. I do remember obviously a truncated a lot from the novel needful things is something that I read not long before we did the movie. So just a couple of years. Um, I read meat, needful things, and I really enjoyed it. And it was very similarly long and very similarly, but there was a, you know, uh, the, the main character who comes to town, who’s starting to create mischief comes in at the beginning and he kind of starts creating 

Craig: mischief and owns a curiosity shop.

I mean, there are lots of, 

Todd: there are lots of parallels to the Salem’s 

Craig: life. Yeah. All of the ones that you just mentioned. It, which of course is a classic TV mini series from our childhood. All of those movies, I think work really well in miniseries form because they are all about events that affect an entire community of a whole group.

Todd: So everybody can relate to something about this. Yeah. 

Craig: And these were big deals, big, big deals, events when we were kids. And, uh, it’s just, you just don’t see it anymore, you know, because cable television just isn’t. Was watching television, right? Yeah. It’s I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s on its way out, but I have a feeling that we’ll probably start seeing, you know, either remakes or original content, uh, based on Stephen King’s work in long form in the form of limited series, because those are very popular right now.

And. I’m glad I love them. I, we all love them. Right. So I have a feeling we’ll be seeing them again. I mean, 

Todd: think about it, Craig. I think we might get some comments. Like here we are. We complain about something being too long, but we of course loved these limited series breaking bad. How many hours did I sink into that movie?

I absolutely loved it. I guess it’s just, maybe we’re trained differently and also. It’s episodic, right? Like you can stop it. You can, each one is little ends on a cliffhanger, ends with some kind of some sort of resolution within the episode, right? Yeah. Whereas long movies, just like you’ve got to sit through the whole thing.

You can’t it’s stopping. It’s awkward. 

Craig: Yeah. I, I saw a meme somewhere that was like, do you want to watch a 10 hour movie? No. Are you crazy? Well, what if we broke it up into one hour segments that then you could just. In succession all at one time. Okay. Sign me up, 

Todd: binge, watch it on yet.

It is not too far removed from this era. I mean, well, I mean, it’s maybe 10 years, it’s at least 10 years later, but. The story and the mini series are almost two self-contained stories, right? The first half of it, when it finishes, the kids think they fought the evil. The second half of it is the kids as adults who are coming back because they didn’t quite finish the job.

And that’s how the novel. And that worked well for a two-part mini series. This one, though, it, it just stops in the middle of the story basically. Right. 

Craig: And it, and it really just stops when things start getting good. I mean, yeah. This movie is, um, a lot of. And I didn’t find it boring. You know, I was interested in, in getting to know the characters and I, I knew, like I could tell, all right, it’s setting everything up and we’ll get to the exciting stuff later.

Like I felt that that suggested promise from the filmmakers, like we’re going to get. Well, I promise we will. 

Todd: Here’s a little clue. Here’s a little, here’s a little clue. Here’s a little bit of suspense, but wait, wait, wait for it. Wait for it. If you see this as a drama, then now if you, if you sit down to like, okay, I’m just going to sit down and watch this typical TV movie drama or some lifetime thing or whatever in the beginning, then you can just sit down and have the patience for all this.

If you’re looking for wham, bam, blood and action. Vampires at the very beginning, you’re going to be waiting at least an hour before you see anything that’s going to be remotely 

Craig: spooky. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it was fine. And. Uh, you’ll see. Um, the second, the second part of the movie is much more, um, action, heavy.

There’s a lot, it moves more quickly. There’s a lot going on. Um, I don’t know that I would necessarily say it’s scary. I would say that this, uh, the, the whole movie more than anything, and this is kind of true of Dracula too. Um, is more atmospheric and spooky and suspenseful as opposed to in your face.

Scary. I was so surprised in high school. Of course we grew up Dracula and Frankenstein were kind of the iconic monsters before. Our era of monsters starting coming in before Freddy and Jason and all of them, Dracula and Frankenstein were, you know, the monsters. And I read both of those books in high school, just on my own.

I wasn’t assigned them for a class, but I read them both in high school. And I was so surprised. They’re they’re not, they’re not like in your face horror. They are character 

Todd: studies. Especially Dracula. Dracula’s kind of boring. 

Craig: Well, Frankenstein kind of is too. And really Frankenstein ends up being more.

You feel sympathy. Towards the monster. Yes. More than anything. The monster is the victim, the antihero. In fact, I found myself rooting for the monster. Like he wants revenge and he deserves it, you know? And, and I think that, you know, king was very much inspired by Dracula and that’s where we get this story, which we should probably.

Get into, start to talk about, yeah. The, uh, the movie opens the same way that the novel did and watching the movie reminded me, you know, I, I remembered these things about the novel. I remembered that there’s kind of a frame story where it starts out in the movie. It’s in Guatemala, in the book it’s in Mexico, whatever it doesn’t matter.

Um, and we see two of what will become our main characters. Of course, we didn’t know nothing about. Right now, but Ben is a man, an adult man. He’s played by David soul. Who I, gosh, I can’t remember what he was from. He was from a really famous seventies TV show. 

Todd: You mean I’m Starsky and Hutch? I think so.

Yeah. He was Hutchin, Starsky and Hutch. 

Craig: Yeah. That’s, that’s what I was thinking of. And mark a younger boy, teenager, probably adolescent played by a kid named lands. Kerwin don’t know anything about him. He’s finding the movie, whatever we see them. They are in a church and they’re collecting holy water in a little vial.

And then the vial starts glowing and Ben says they found us again and it fades to a full moon. Over a spooky house and the title Salem’s lot. Now that the title of the book is Salem’s lot with an apostrophe before the S the first S of Salem, because really in the book, the name of the town is Jerusalem’s lot.

They just. Simplify it for the movie. It’s just Salem’s lot. And it, and we jumped there and it tells us that it’s two years earlier and we catch up with Ben, our main character again, and he approaches this spooky house. It kind of looks like, um, Norman Bates, his house just a little bit smaller. And it’s a top, a top of hill.

And I read that, uh, This house is actually a facade that they built around an existing house on the top of a hill. And they ended up spending a hundred thousand dollars to build this facade around this existing house, which in 1979, they easily could have built. They could have constructed a real. 

Todd: Crazy right.

For that amount of money, but my God, yeah. That could have been a house for somebody 

Craig: and they spent a hundred thousand dollars on the exterior and then they spent like $30,000 or something like that for their, their interior studio sets. But yeah. So, okay. So what, you know, what, what do we say? I mean, there’s, there’s a whole cast of characters goes into town.

He goes immediately to a realtor who is a. Larry Crockett played by Fred Willard who passed away just a couple of years ago and, uh, was just such a brilliant and, um, uh, just one of the most hilarious. Men in television and film, he was great in 

Todd: comedy, but he could do drama. I mean, you know, you could do anything.

Yeah. 

Craig: And, and, and just, it just seemed like the coolest, nicest guy. Um, and he plays kind of a scuzzy realtor in this. He’s got, uh, an assistant or a secretary or something. Bonnie, boom, boom, 

Todd: Bonnie. I mean, it’s the Mo the movie is full of stars. I mean, anybody, you know, from you would recognize all these people from television and movies as these TV events usually were jam packed full of stars.

That’s just part of their draw, but yeah, Bonnie is a very recognizable, comedic actress who was all over television at the time. What I also like about this movie is how the script is smart in that I think that. It does skip over a lot of unnecessary, even though there is a lot of exposition, there are a couple lines that work just as well.

I love this scene. It’s not in the beginning, but it’s a little later where you just meet Bonnie and Fred and whatever. And then Bonnie does go home to her husband and he seems like a, uh, Well, he’s one of Stephen King’s typical drunk, abusive husbands, but she’s nice to him and everything like that. And then the next scene we see with her in the real estate office, there’s some business going on and a Crocket has to leave.

We’ll be right back, 

Craig: please. Don’t say that someday. You’ll forget. All right, honey.

I forgot that. 

Todd: And just from that line where we otherwise have still have not seen anything romantic between the two of them, we know, oh, these two are having an affair. 

Craig: You know, that is so typical of Stephen King. There’s almost soap opera. Drama in his, uh, everybody’s 

Todd: sleeping with somebody else or beating somebody else or their parents, or are terrible to them or their husbands are terrible.

That men always 

Craig: such drama. Yeah. Um, what’s his name? Ben. He asks, he says, I need a place to live. He’s talking to the realtor and he, I need a place to live. Um, and Crockett’s like, all, there’s not really anything available right now. And he’s like, well, what about that? The big house on the hill. Oh, the Marston place.

Well, no, it just got sold. Um, so Ben is very interested in this house. It, as it turns out, he’s a writer, he’s from Salem’s lot, but he left when he was very young and he went off and he found success. Um, as a writer, he was, he was married, but he’s a widower 

Todd: and he also doesn’t admit it to everyone. Right.

Which I thought was interesting at first. You don’t think he’s from there later, after he checks into this boarding. He runs across this woman, who’s laying down in the park and it’s just a very chance meeting where he’s just walking down the street. It’s so it’s super chance. 

Craig: It was actually kind of weird because like, it almost seemed like they were familiar, but then it becomes apparent that they’re meeting for the first time.

Like, it was just like, did he just see a woman in the park? And he’s like, I’m going to shoot my shot. Yeah, and it, and it just so happens that she’s reading one of his books, you know? Okay. Whatever, 

Todd: that’s half of the reason why he stopped and sat down with her. If I had written a book and my face was on the back of it, and I saw some hot chick reading it, I would I’d milked that for all it was worth.

That’s true. It’s 

Craig: true. And that hot chick is a Susan. What’s your name? Susan Norton. I teach art at Holly elementary. My father’s a doctor. You know, the reason that I, um, actually took your book out of the library is because I read your other one title. I don’t remember going to have some dinner. Now you got a boyfriend.

Um, well, not exactly. It says here you’re married. No children is still married. Still. No children. Uh, she died. I got no children. I’ve got some memories, some of them good. Some of them not. 

Todd: You didn’t answer my 

Craig: questions. She’s played by Bonnie Bedelia, who I remember that name from when we were young. I feel like Bonnie Bedelia had a moment in the eighties and nineties.

She is very beautiful. I think that, uh, the thing that I remember her most from is she played Bruce Willis, his estranged wife in the diehard series. Great movies, but. That 

Todd: was probably her most famous one. Um, but then she was in like presumed innocent with Harrison Ford. Like you said, she was a need full things.

You’re right. It’s just like she had her moment is like, she was the chick of the hour for like a year or two. Right. Where like, this is the wife of the action star, or this is the love interest of the action star or something like that. Right. Yeah. I mean, she’s still been working since then. It’s just like a lot of different, random stuff.

And I, I like her. 

Craig: She’s pretty and she’s charming and, uh, She’s she’s fine. She, she doesn’t play as much a role in the movie as she does in the book. She’s, she’s more just kind of the love interest who’s around. Um, for, for most of the movie, she, she has a little bit more to do in the second half, but not much, but anyway.

Okay. So then that connection is made. She’s the teacher, 

Todd: she asks him, are you from around here? And he says, no, like he dilute, he lies to her until. That he’s not. So it’s a little confusing at first. It’s not till later as things kind of unfold that he meets up with old friends that you realize, oh no, this guy actually does have a history in the town.

And you kind of wonder why didn’t he tell this chick he was interested in about it. I, I don’t, I’m still not 

Craig: sure. No, I don’t think that there’s any good reason for him to conceal that. I am. I don’t know either. Maybe it’s maybe there’s something in the book. I don’t know. But, uh, so, okay. So they meet whatever he’s still creeping like at the Marston place and, and the people who bought the Marston place are these two men who are business partners.

There was one point where. Okay. So the guy who’s there, who’s, who’s setting stuff up. They’ve bought the house and they also bought, I think what the realtor said had been like a doctor’s office or something, but they’ve converted it to an antique store. And, but there’s only one of them there so far and his name is striker 

Todd: actually, but yeah.

Close enough. Yeah. It’s so close to the, uh, the curtains guy, right? Remember straighter. 

Craig: Yes, I do. How could I forget? But he’s there. Um, and he’s getting every set up and he is like this typical little. Middle-aged like probably fifties kind of gentleman, tightly wound, British gentleman, right. He wears a 

Todd: hat and a suit everywhere.

He goes always 

Craig: like, he’s always just dressed, you know, to the nines. And, um, he tells the sheriff or. The Constable, cause this is a small 

Todd: town. Apparently I don’t understand the Constable bit. I thought constables were only in England. I never once in the U S heard anybody refer to anybody. Else’s a 

Craig: continental now it’s new England, Maine.

Nancy. I don’t know. Um, 

Todd: fair enough. Yeah. 

Craig: My partner full name is court court with a K we’d been working together in London and Hamburg. This is our retirement modest, comfortable. We’re hoping to build a reputation for ourselves in this area, perhaps throughout new England. Do you think that’s possible and customer anything’s possible?

How do you like that old 

Todd: house 

Craig: needs work, but we 

Todd: have. 

Craig: I was kind of almost getting kind of like a, we’re a couple vibe too, but. Two older middle-aged gentlemen moved to a small new England town to open an antique store.

Todd: That is transparent.

Uh, is it, is it implied in the book? I don’t 

Craig: remember. Uh, I have no idea. I don’t remember at all. Uh, what I, what I do know is that as it turns out, basically, Stryker is, um, Barlow’s familiar, you know, he’s his human associate that lays the groundwork takes care of things. Um, as necessary in the human world, he keeps talking about how, you know, they’re going to open the store as soon as Barlow arrives, but every time anybody asks him, when Barley’s gonna show up, he’s like, no, no, no, 

Todd: he’s on his way and gets here.

You’re going to love him. And he’s going to love you. You’re going to, you’re just going to love 

Craig: him. And he’s the love 

Todd: you, but you know what you mentioned, it’s very similar to fright night and fright night was apparently this movie was cited as a inspiration for fright night. 

Craig: There’s a similar character in Dracula to Ren Ren 

Todd: renminbi.

Yeah. But he’s very, he’s kind of different though. He’s crazy. Well, um, and we can’t forget to mention that I’m strike Straker is played by James Mason. Who’s just a, uh, a veteran of the silver screen, particularly in the forties and fifties, he was captain Nemo and 20,000 leagues under the sea. He was a north by Northwest, you know, one of the he’s the lead in journey to the center of the earth.

I mean, um, this guy, you know, by this time as a letter, Have a film and I guess he jumped at the chance to play this role, which was rather different from roles he’d played in the past. Just sort of a personification of evil role. And he died not long after this. Actually. I think he died just a few years after this and this movie came out.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t know that, but he’s, he’s quite good. Um, as far as acting is concerned, he’s probably the most talented. Eh, of the bunch. That’s not to say that anybody else’s bad, you know, it does. I have to say I was a little bit surprised, you know, I really liked Toby Hooper, you know, of course, uh, uh, Texas chainsaw is, is a classic.

I, and I know we’ve debated, you know, What really was going on behind the scenes of poultry guys, but I love Poulter guys. And, um, Toby Hooper has done some other, you know, really interesting movies like Funhouse and, and some other really cool stuff. This just doesn’t really seem like there’s anything special, you know?

Like it doesn’t feel like in this movie, right? Like, oh yeah, man. It’s classic Toby Hooper. No, I mean, it kind of feels like it’d be. 

Todd: Really even in the second half, huh? 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, and I’m sure that much of that has to do with the limitations of television. You know, the movie does have a rating it’s rated PG and rightfully so because there’s next to no.

Violence or gore. Everything is implied. And basically, you know, God, there’s a whole cast of characters, there’s stuff going on, but, um, not much, 

Todd: really. No, you’re right. It’s it’s, it’s set up. It’s like you said, it’s, it’s almost purely set up, um, connected by the small thread of this new guy in town setting up.

The dealership, this guy, Ben who’s clearly, for reasons we don’t quite know yet intrigued by the house and by him, it seems like this is his purpose for coming. Cause it’s like his first stop when he’s there. And he looks over at the house from across the suite and sweat. Coming from his brow and everything like that.

He clearly has some kind of history with his house. Once we finally learn that he, um, used to live in this town, you know, it’s just a bunch of business, right. This, guy’s got to get a bunch of antiques picked up from the dock. And so, um, you know, Stryker. Yeah. So striker, um, gets the, um, Larry, the realtor to arrange it.

Cause he’s arranging everything for him. And Larry talks to the guy in town. Who’s the shipper dude who happens to be the husband of Bonnie. And he talks to the caretaker because he needs hands to lift all the stuff and bring it into the truck. And it turns out he’s really not even playing to do. No, it’s a setup.

Can you find anybody else? And the other duty finds is this guy named Ned who’s like basically been stalking. Susan is like a, sort of a jilted lover. Who’s obsessed with her. And he creeps at her from across the way. And so it’s like, we learn about all these little relationships, but at the end of the day, the only thing that happens in this first half is these guys get in this truck and they go across town to the dock to pick up this giant crate at the same time.

Larry Bonnie’s husband. Who’s supposed to be with them, has gone off through the cemetery with, uh, where he, you know, picked them up, uh, with his six pack of beer and then, uh, goes on and hangs out outside the house because he has the suspicions that Bonnie is having the affair with this, with this. And I feel like this is the point at which everything’s starting to come to a head now that everything’s kind of been laid out.

There’s another scene where Ben meets up with his old, um, high school teacher. Um, and they talk about, it’s just an exposition to talk a little bit more about the history of the town and the house and the house. And it turns out that Ben, um, I guess there was some killing there. You know, there’s been people who’ve taken the house who turned out to kill their, kill their families, and then gone insane.

I went up to 

Craig: once. On a dare. You know how kids are? I was sweating, scared. I sneaked around, got into the house. What did you say?

Ghost everything, every 

Todd: sound, 

Craig: every shadow. I’m not sure what I saw. I think I saw QB Marston. Hanging by his neck, his face green, his eyes puffed, shut his hands, living guesting. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me at me and I took off and I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I’ve never forgotten that.

That was something, a feeling of Jason, do you believe a thing? Can be inherently evil. I don’t think that he literally saw the man hanging. I think what he’s suggesting is like he saw the ghost of the guy and it, and it’s haunted him ever since. And he really just had in his, he has in his mind that maybe the.

Is evil and that it draws evil people to it. So he’s very, very curious about Straker and Barlow, you know, what are they up to at the same time? He’s a little bit curious as to why he feels so drawn to it. And at some point he says that he thinks that maybe. His arrival was a catalyst for the strange things that are beginning to happen in town.

The strange things are, well, first of all, there’s a scene where Kalie Bonnie’s husband, uh, catches her. In her affair and, you know, points a shotgun at both her and, uh, Crocket. And, um, this was one of the scenes that was altered because he takes Crockett into the living room, you know, Fred Willard and silk red boxers shorts.

Todd: This is exactly how you would dress in a TV movie. If you’re having an affair, he person, he bursts and he hears noises from the bedroom he burst in. They’re both just sitting up in bed, switching. Each of them have on very, not revealing, but silk pants. 

Craig: So he takes him out to the living room and he, and he, he points a shotgun at his head and he makes him hold the barrel.

I mean, it’s, you know, he’s threatening him. He’s pretty intimidating. It is intense. It’s more intense there. Apparently there is a version now, I don’t know if this is a version that was ever released people online claim to have seen it. What I’ve read about the versions that you can get your hand on it.

It’s, it’s not there in what we saw. He forces him to hold the barrel of the shotgun right up to his face, which is intimidating enough. But apparently they shot a take where he forced Fred Willard to put the shotgun in his mouth. And that. You know, aside from the sexual implications, it’s, it’s, it’s just so brutal, intimate and intrusive and brutal and, and, and scary.

And I kind of wish that it was in there. I just feel like it would have amped up the intensity of the scene. Um, but, but whatever, but he lets him go. But as soon as Fred Willard runs out of the house, we just see him confronted by. Uh, a dark figure. And because this is a made for TV movie, the commercial breaks are clear.

Like you can totally tell when it’s going to commercial by nature of the format. This happens a lot, like something very creepy happening. Cut to black. Um, so, so you don’t know exactly what happens. Um, but the next time we see him, he has been placed in a car near the lake, um, still in his shorts. Um, and he’s dead and Ben and Susan, who’ve been smooching at the lake, find him, and then people start dying and he dies.

Um, The kids we met, we met mark. I mentioned mark. Mark was in this first scene, like the prologue scene. He’s a kid he’s working on a pageant. That’s like a history of the town and he’s got these two friends. They’re brothers, 

Todd: Danny. And was it Robbie, Danny, and Richie or Robbie or something like that? You know, the 

Craig: geo Robbie, something like that.

Um, he’s got these two friends and they come over to his house to rehearse, uh, for the play, but on their walk home at night through the woods, Danny, the older one. Um, goes ahead and we see the younger one, Ricky or Ralphy Ralphy get overtaken by a shadowy figure. We, you know, we have no idea who it is. We find out soon though, because Danny stumbles home and is like, I don’t know, kind of beat up and like, doesn’t know what’s going on.

Um, but we see Straker carrying Ralphie into the cellar of the house wrap up. Trash bags. Yeah, it’s really. Yeah. And that’s something that surprised me about this movie in, I I’m sure it’s faithful to the book, but children are the first victims now. I don’t know if they were intentionally targeting children.

It kind of seems 

Todd: like it. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, because they, 

Craig: they get Ralphy. Now, w we said that they had sent the Straker. Through Crockett had sent those guys to pick up a delivery and the delivery that they pick up is this huge crate. And, uh, you know, they, they comment about how like it’s like emanating cold

Todd: It’s just get it delivered

Craig: and it makes them very uncomfortable and very unnerved. They, they deliver it. Nonetheless they’re there, they, they kind of hear something or like it moves around. So they’re so freaked out that they don’t even finish. They’re supposed to like lock it up and whatever, they don’t even do that. They just get the heck out of there.

Um, and when, when Straker comes home with the little boy’s body, it’s obvious that the crate has. Bust out of something from the inside is bust out of it. And then the iconic scene of the movie is when little Ralphie, um, shows up floating full vampire makeup in this fog, outside his brother Danny’s window.

Todd: It’s straight out of almost the idea anyway is just straight out of, you know, horror of Dracula. I mean, he’s gotten this one. Full on, um, door in his bedroom that leads straight outside and it’s all window. And just this fog appears behind it. And I thought this scene was so effective. This is one of the great, oh, and it’s spooky as hell.

It’s one of the two scenes I do remember from being from a kid. Um, and it is even for TV is pretty green, but for TV. 

Craig: It is scary. I mean, cause he, he scratches at the window 

Todd: like floating and just this other worldly way. And in the way that they did, this was two ways. They, first of all, they didn’t put them on wires because they were like wires.

You can always see. So they put them on a, like a boom crane from behind so that he would float. He looks like. To be honest, you know, he’s got these yellowish, almost glowing eyes, these fangs, and the, his hand is a little claw, like, and he’s scratching at the window and he’s got this smile on his face. The other technique they used was they filmed this in reverse.

So they reversed the film so that it would have kind of an unnatural look to his movement. And it is so. Scary. I mean, it really, I was getting chills. It was very scary. And of course, just like, like we saw horror of Dracula, you know, a little while ago, the, her, his brother doesn’t seem to mind any of this.

He kind of slowly gets up out of bed and walks towards him, opens that window. And his brother just floats into the room towards it is so. Chilling and then commercial 

Craig: break. And I think that this is very much inspired by the lore of Dracula, because like these vampires seem to have the power to enthrall people.

Like if you look into their eyes, you will become entranced and, and you’ll kind of submit to their will. Um, and. I don’t remember if it’s in this part of the second part, but character’s figure this out. So don’t look them in the eyes also just, you know, the vampire look, uh, reminded me a lot of, um, the lost boys.

It it’s a very classic vampire look. It looks really good. It’s very scary. Right. Yeah. And just the fact that it’s a kid, I think that there’s just something very unnerving about that. And he’s a small kid, I mean, in real life, he was only a few months younger than the kid who played his older brother, but he was significantly smaller.

Um, and th th there’s just something spooky about that plus the fact that they’re brothers, you know, and so without, even though. Thrall thing, you know, your missing brother shows up and they’re floating and they look scary, but you know, I get to see the, I can see the inclination right. To let him in. So he does.

And, and then, you know, Danny starts acting weird. Uh Susan’s dad is the town doctor. He examines Danny. He says, you know, it’s really weird. You know, I can’t really diagnose anything. The closest I can come to is he seems like. Like severely anemic, um, which makes sense. Strange things are beginning to happen.

And it all kind of culminates at Danny’s funeral because he dies. They put him in the hospital and his brother visits him again. And after that second visit, he died. The 

Todd: second visits, almost creepier than the first. I mean, you, it’s almost the same thing. So you’re like, okay, we’ve seen this before. And as he floats into the hospital room, he’s smiling and then lifts up and sort of towers over him for a moment.

He’s looking down at him and he just seems like adult, he seems other world. That was, I mean, it was, I was at one, two punch for me. First scene was number one. This scene was number two. I thought these were the two creepiest I’m looking forward to the second half because I remember one more creepy scene from the second half, but this my God scary.

I 

Craig: mean the whole vampire thing is very intimate. And I feel like in this scene that played very well. Like Danny, Danny just stands there and submits as his younger brother. Hello. Over him, you know, clearly in a position of power. And eventually Danny just turns his head to one side and his brother comes in very 

Todd: slow and 

Craig: deliberately slow and deliberate, almost centrally and begins to well bites him and begins to suck his blood and then commercial.

And then we pick up at Danny’s funeral, which is during the day. They have the funeral, the mom faints from grief. The last thing that happens is we see, I think his name’s Mike, it doesn’t matter that he works at the cemetery. He was like the groundskeeper at the cemetery who was one of the guys that pay.

The delivery. He is burying Danny, but then all and he’s alone. And then all of a sudden, the wind starts to blow really powerfully and clouds cover the sun and it seems like the sun must be setting. And, uh, it almost seems as though somehow Mike become. Entranced. He stands kind of Dolly at the foot of the grave and just looks into it for a long time.

And then, and then jumps down in there, sweeps the dirt off of it and opens it. And Danny is in their eyes wide open and glow. Not moving that eyes wide open and glowing, and they just look at each other for a minute until then Danny jumps up and bites him. And that’s it. That’s the end, right? 

Todd: Yeah, that’s it.

That’s the end of the first half, the first, uh, episode that’s as far as I got. But it’s 

Craig: exciting. It’s an exciting cliffhanger because you now, you, now we know now shit is going to get real. 

Todd: It took us an hour and a half to get there, but now we know 

Craig: that it does, it does get exciting and the stakes get very, very high, not just for our main characters, but for the whole town.

Um, and I remember that about the book and, and it’s true of the movie too. And I really liked that this isn’t an isolated. Thing. This is something that is going to impact the entire. Community and it’s going to happen fast and cool things. 

Todd: Really. , 

Craig: it’s fun. I’m excited for you. The second half is a fun watch in the back.

I stayed. I stayed at work late to finish it. 

Todd: You worked late. Is that what you’re saying? Craig, you work late diminishes. You 

Craig: could technically say that. 

Todd: Let’s go with that. Yeah. Well, I’m looking forward to seeing the second half and finally being able to, you know, draw some, some big conclusions about the whole movie.

Yeah. It’s fun. 

Craig: And I am looking forward to talking about it and I feel like we can give more evaluation once we’ve seen the movie in its entirety first half good reasonable setup. I really wasn’t bored, even though it’s not super, super exciting. I think it’s, it’s a nice, uh, set up for. 

Todd: Well much like the first half of this mini series, we’re going to end you on a cliffhanger.

Please stay tuned for part two of our review of Salem’s lot coming to you very soon. I’m tell Ben, you can check out our past episodes at our website. Two guys that read fortinets.com. You can find us online and chat with us just by Googling, uh, two guys into chainsaw podcast, where you can find our webpage to leave us a comment on our Twitter feed to send us a little tweet, or we also have a Facebook page and you can find us there as well.

Patreon going on right now, if you’d like to support us, uh, patrion.com/chainsaw podcast gets you a whole bunch of nippy little features as well as many sows that we’re putting out at least a couple of months. And we also thank our patrons as well. The ones who are supporting us and allowing us to do some more things with this podcast until next time I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.