2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

This homage to B-Movie sci-fi films of the 50s becomes the very definition of a “creature feature”: An entire film centered gratuitously around a big, ugly monster and little else. Back when this rare and gritty low-budget gore-fest beckoned from the video store shelves, neither of us had a chance to see it. Thank you, Internet.

Episode 180, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Today’s movie is one that I’ve been wanting to see for quite some time. This movie shouted at me from the video store shelves, but only from certain video stores. It wasn’t one you saw up there all the time. This was one of those in a big box. You know what I’m talking about, Craig? Yeah. Like

Craig:  What do you mean?

Todd:  The I Spit on Your Grave size box.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know what you’re talking about.

Clip:  You know,

Todd:  the one that sort of screams like this this movie is maybe a little illicit or a little different from the others. Maybe produced and put out by a a smaller company. Maybe not so mainstream, and maybe it’s gonna be a little more dangerous than what you normally watch. Yeah? It, it had a a big three headed kind of alien with about a billion teeth on the cover, and it was called Return of the Deadly Spawn and just covered in gore. Absolutely blood on the floor, limbs everywhere, right on the front cover. Didn’t even try to appeal to anything but the basest of instincts. And so, I’ve been wanting to watch this movie for a very long time, and I just kinda stumbled across it and said, let’s do it since this is what we do. So the movie is called, The Deadly Spawn from 1983.  How about you, Craig? You talk to me about this. I I assume you have you’ve never even heard of this before in your life, have you?

Craig:  No. I don’t think so. I don’t know. I mean, the, box art was maybe vaguely Oh, god. Familiar. But I don’t know. I mean, the monster on the box art and in the movie itself kinda looks like three wieners with teeth. Yeah.

Todd:  Wait. Three giant wieners with teeth. Right? It’s like

Craig:  So I don’t I don’t know if I recognize

Todd:  Is this, like, your best and worst nightmares combined?

Craig:  That’s good. I don’t know if I recognize the box art or if that’s just vaguely familiar for some other reason. I don’t know.

Todd:  Dude.

Craig:  But that’s but yeah. I mean, that’s that’s it. No. I I hadn’t seen it. I don’t remember reading anything about it. You know, after I watched it, I, read some stuff about it, and I read that they made it kind of banking on the notion or hope that marketed as Return of the Aliens Deadly Spawn.

Todd:  Yeah. Right?

Craig:  Or something like that?

Todd:  Kinda try to pass it off as a sequel to Alien in some small

Craig:  Right. Right. And and you can definitely see some suggestions of that. There’s a big monster, and then it’s got, you know, like, its deadly spawn or whatever. And the deadly spawn kind of look like, the alien I don’t know what you call it. The the the little

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  Toothy thing that shoots out of their mouth. You know? I don’t know if it’s a tongue or whatever it is, but it kinda looks like that. I can see how they would wanna capitalize on that. Alien was a huge film, and, of course, then Aliens, when it eventually came out, was huge too. So good for them for trying to, you know, cash in on that a little bit. Well but but yeah. That I mean, that’s that’s pretty much it. I I didn’t know anything about it.  I went in totally blind. Usually, the first thing I do when we pick what movie we’re gonna do is I I get on IMDB, and I look up who the director is, and I look up some of the performers to see what I know them from. And pretty much 90% of the people who worked on this movie only worked on this movie. Yeah. Like, you know, like, that’s it. They never did anything else ever again.

Todd:  The movie itself was the brainchild of a guy named John Dodds, who was a special effects designer. This was really just I mean, just his way to showcase himself, really. The only movie that he had done before this was a movie called Night Beast, in 1982, the year before. Maybe even worked on it, you know, at the same time he was working on this. And then later, did at least some of the effects for Spookies. Remember Spookies?

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  And yeah. Which really impressed us. And then, you know, past that, he did some work on Poltergeist three, Ghostbusters two. There was a TV series in the late eighties called Monsters. I don’t know if you remember that, but, he did a number of effects for that. So this is first and foremost an effects movie. It’s a movie built around the creature and the idea that we’re gonna show you a monster and a creature and a bunch in this case, a bunch of gore. You know what I mean? It’s total driving fair.  This movie is a % driving movie. And it was, put in the hands of it’s this guy and another guy just kinda got together. We’re gonna produce this movie. We’re gonna do it. We’re gonna have this monster. Let’s find somebody to write and direct it. And they found this guy. Again, only thing he’s ever done.  Douglas McKeeow? McKown? McKown or whatever. He lived in New Jersey. He, basically, is a teacher. High school acting teacher, I think. But he had done some super eight movies and did a lot of, like, little movies and things with his brother growing up. Was really into nineteen fifty style sci fi stuff. And, you know, we’ve done a movie just, last week. Right? There’s nothing out there.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  There was a, an intentional homage towards these nineteen fifties style sci fi movies. And I think this movie just falls squarely in that category. Yeah. I mean, the guy who made this clearly, had all of that in mind when he put it together. From the very beginning, like, when the when the music comes on, it’s got that score with the theremin in it. You know that

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Yeah. Yeah. That

Clip:  all of

Todd:  those movies have.

Craig:  That’s a track kinda deal.

Todd:  Yeah. Exactly. And so, I mean, that kinda clues you in. The other thing that clues you in is it starts out, you know, with a meteor flying through the sky and landing somewhere. Right?

Craig:  Yeah. Against a matte painting, which I also love. I love that.

Clip:  It

Craig:  it’s so old school and, you know, fifties, sixties monster movie. You know, you you just throw this matte painting up on screen and, you know, just have a little just like a little green light just kinda fly down and and fall. Yeah. And and, of course, in in this instance, it’s a couple of, you know, guys camping in a tent who happened to see it, and it’s it’s just so classic. I mean, you’ve seen this scene a million times. Oh, what was that? They run over. Oh, look. It’s a meteor.  I gotta go get the camera.

Todd:  That’s right. And this meteor lands and there’s, like, a big crater and everything’s on fire. When it’s, like, obligatory. Yeah. I don’t know what the science is behind this, but, you know, I guess if meteors come through the atmosphere, they must be really, really hot, and they set the ground on fire around them. Yeah. Because it’s it’s set up exactly like all these movies. Now did you think it was interesting that there were two guys camping out instead of a guy and a girl? Camping out instead of a guy and a girl? I thought that was a unique twist.

Craig:  I don’t know. Why would that be interesting, Todd? I don’t know, Craig. It’s

Todd:  just a little different.

Clip:  From what

Craig:  we normally see. A little a little unexpected. I was. I was a little I was.

Clip:  I was

Todd:  a little surprised.

Craig:  I don’t know. You know, it was the the opening scene, I have to tell you, I I was a little bit worried, after that opening scene because it it seemed like it was gonna be a little bit more low budget than it actually ended up being. Now, it was fairly low budget. Mhmm. But in this opening scene, you know, you don’t see much. Not a lot happens on screen. You just the first guy, like, after

Todd:  It’s such a product of its time, this movie.

Craig:  Yeah. The the first guy, is, you know, still there by the meteor just, like, kind of gets real big eyed, like, oh, no. And, then you see some, like, blood splatter or whatever. Mhmm. And then the, the other guy’s back in in the tent, and he’s like, hey. Hey. Hey. Where are you? What Todd you like, just for, like, fifteen seconds.  Yeah. And then he gets kinda big eyed, and then, you know, there’s off camera action again and and blood splatter, and then you just kinda see his arm come out of the tent, and it’s all bloody, and it falls to the ground, and the blood comes out from underneath it. And the first glimpse that we get of the creature is a silhouette Yeah. In in the tent. And and it’s it’s difficult. I I wasn’t sure. You know, of course, I had seen the box art, but, it was difficult at this point to kind of tell what the creature really was. It looked kind of spidery with, like, kind of spidery legs, but then also, you know, just kind of a big toothy head.  It seemed to me that the suggestion was that it was growing. Like, you know, every time it feeds, it grows a little bit.

Todd:  I think you’re right.

Craig:  You know, it just seems very low budget, and I don’t have any problem with that. That’s fine. And I appreciate when, you know, filmmakers who are on a low budget are innovative with how they are gonna reveal things. But what I will say moving forward is that I was impressed that they do move beyond that. And we actually do get some really cool glimpses of this practical creature. And and and not glimpses. I mean, we see it outright Seriousness. Many, many times.

Todd:  Yeah. Right.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. It doesn’t skimp on the creature at all. I mean, you can tell this movie was built around a creature, and the creature is not disappointing in the slightest. No. No. But it does a really good job of, at least initially, of sort of following the formula of we’re not gonna blow our wad a little early. We’re We’re gonna show you glimpses. We’re gonna show you shadows.  We’re gonna have the hands reaching out. I think that was my one of my favorite parts of this movie was that it seemed like one of their favorite shots to show was a bloody hand Yeah. Reaching out or, like, by their side or whatever. If they’re not gonna show the creature, there’s, like, somehow blood is just coming off of a hand for some reason. And it’s the first bit of it. Actually, structure wise, for a guy’s first screenplay, he it’s almost like he just took one of these movies and just wrote, you know, verbatim what he saw because it follows the beats, that it should. The movie moves. I’m I was quite impressed.  I thought this movie is gonna be really, really lame. And not to say that it’s, you know, wonderful, But, I was really surprised at how the movie moved, how it stayed interesting, how the characters weren’t terrible. And the acting was quite serviceable, actually.

Craig:  You know? Not bad.

Todd:  For what they were given. I mean, it’s not like the lines were fantastic. But at least,

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  Like, the acting wasn’t like you’re gonna laughing at the screen because they they they’re so stupid. You know?

Craig:  Right. Right.

Todd:  And it has a surprise or two in there. It’s definitely a drive in movie, but it was way beyond my expectations. It was way more than I thought it would be. Not to say again that it we’re not at Bone Tomahawk level of production here. But, you know, it was Right. It was a solid solid movie that I actually enjoyed watching. I ended up

Clip:  kinda liking it too. Again, it’s not great. But, you know, for

Craig:  this creature Again, it’s not great. But, you know, for this creature feature kind of movie, it was it was kind of fun. I I have to admit I was a little bit worried in these first twenty minutes or so because after that first camping scene, then the next thing, if I remember correctly, that we see is this scene of this couple waking up in bed. Yeah. And we don’t know who they are, and he’s kinda greasy and I I don’t know.

Todd: 

And and I think it’s like he has obvious makeup on. It’s like I don’t know. It’s like they gave him a 05: 00 shadow with makeup, and they put darts Maybe. I I felt like that was kind of what was going on here. Like, the makeup showed up just a little too much on the screen. But didn’t he look a little too young for the woman he was in bed with?

Craig:  Yeah. I thought so. Yeah. And, ultimately, for who his character was. But who knows? Whatever. But we don’t know who they are. They wake up, and it seems like he’s, like, kind of in a rush. Like, they’ve got plans to do something.  And and the wife, I just wanna stay in bed in my gossamer gown and my perm. He it’s so funny. When he finally gets her out of bed, she gets out, and she’s in this completely sheer, like I don’t know. I don’t believe for a second anybody ever wore something like this to actually sleep in. Right. Maybe to get into bed.

Clip:  Yeah. You take it

Craig:  off at some point. Right? And and a little bit of nudity. Well, I mean, suggested nudity. Nipples through

Todd:  the the gossamer. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the only TNA you’re gonna get in this movie, which was a surprise.

Craig:  True. Yeah. It it was. I just I want I didn’t know who these people were, and I didn’t know what’s going on. And he says, oh, the the hot water’s broken again. I’m gonna have to go down and fix it. And she’s like, oh, does that mean we can stay home? And he’s like, no. Get up.  So she does. Whatever. And he goes down into the basement.

Todd:  Which is flooded, and it’s raining outside.

Craig:  Yes. Yes. It’s it’s been raining, a lot. And, he goes down there, and it’s flooded. And I was I’m still a little confused by this because I feel like he looked down at the drain and it looked like blood was going down the drain. Yeah. And I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but then he’s immediately dispatched. And, again

Todd:  In shadow.

Craig:  We get it in silhouette. Yeah. And I was like, oh, man. Is that all we’re ever gonna get is this silhouette? But, no, it’s not because, you know, now another of their favorite things to do is to splatter blood on a wall. Everywhere. Or or on a light bulb. Like, just you’re you know something’s happening because blood’s flying around, but that’s what you see.

Todd:  They this movie is awash in blood. Like, there is so much blood in this movie. There’s more blood than could possibly come from all of the actors, all of the characters in this movie combined. There’s blood

Craig:  everywhere. Yeah.

Todd:  It’s insane.

Craig:  And so he gets killed, and then the wife looks around, and I don’t know. She you know, there’s a cat, and she writes a note on a board, and she’s just kinda tooting around. And, but, eventually, she goes down to investigate, and it it’s it’s kind of a little bit of a slow burn. Eventually, she sees the blood going down the drain too, and she sees the blood splatter on the wall. And I love this gag, though. The hand gag?

Todd:  Yeah. The hand that touches her on the shoulder, and she turns around, and it’s it’s jutting out from the creature’s mouth. Yeah. That was fantastic.

Craig:  Right. But that’s when I was like, oh, thank Todd. Because then you get

Todd:  Full on.

Craig:  The shot of the creature. Yeah. And it’s it reminds me a little bit of, Audrey two from, Little Shop of Horrors. A little bit, but a little bit fleshier and toothier. Like, it just has these rows of teeth.

Todd:  Like, a billion teeth.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And and they’re all wet and dripping all of the time. Yeah.

Craig:  This

Todd:  thing This thing should be dehydrated by the end of the movie as much Yeah. Water, slime is pouring out of its mouth and off of its teeth. It’s not disappointing at all.

Craig:  No. At one point, when some of our other characters discover one of the little ones, they suggest that it might be like a lamprey. And and that really is mostly what it looks like, you know, like those those sucker fish that that have those rows and rows of teeth that, like, cling on to sharks and

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  You know, eat their leftovers or whatever. That’s that’s kinda what it looks like. But we we get to see it here. It kills her in a very gruesome fashion. It it rips her face off.

Todd:  Yeah. Close-up.

Craig:  Yeah. Close-up. And it’s all practical, and you can tell, and it’s done with dummies and makeup and and prosthetics. And, it looks really good. And I was like, oh, okay. Good.

Clip:  Mhmm.

Craig:  This is the kind of movie it’s gonna be. And then she’s done, and then the very next scene is another alarm goes off and another ugly couple wakes up in bed. And I’m like, come on. Another ugly couple. This last scene just took ten minutes. Are we just gonna watch a series of these ugly people waking up in bed and getting eaten by this thing?

Todd:  That’s exactly what was going through my mind too. And then and then the funniest thing was this other ugly couple wakes up and they walk they get up and they walk through it, and you realize it’s the same freaking house. It’s the same house. How many people live in this house? How many Yeah. How many ugly couples live here? It it it turns out and they’re even uglier than the first two.

Craig:  They were.

Todd:  It turns out that they’re like the I guess, they’re the aunt and the uncle who are staying over, the ones who got dispatched. Right?

Craig:  So they wake up in the morning and and so she sees the note that the lady had written, and it was something like we’re we’re gonna be gone all day, but an electrician’s gonna be here, so somebody needs to be here or whatever. And then we also see these two young men wake up. And I say young men. One of them is probably, what, like, 12? Mhmm. And the other one I think we’re supposed to believe is, like, I don’t know, 19. He’s in college, I guess, because he’s a science major.

Todd:  Oh, gosh.

Craig:  But we we see we see them wake up. And I I actually thought that it was pretty bold as far as the writing went that I would have expected it to be the visiting aunt and uncle that got dispatched right away. Nope.

Todd:  Right.

Craig:  Mom and dad are dead in the basement from the get go Yep. And just nobody has any idea.

Todd:  It’s nuts. And, I mean, you’ve got already four four deaths right in the beginning. And they’re gory, and they’re bloody, and you just full on see the creature. It’s a great way to start out a movie. I mean, it’s fantastic. And so you got these four people. And I guess the uncle I don’t get his name, but he’s like a psychiatrist, I guess.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  And they have their typical dinner table conversation, and pretty soon, two more kids come down. There’s a younger kid named, Charlie Yeah. And an older kid named Pete. So Charlie is what? I don’t know. 12? Yeah.

Craig:  I would guess.

Todd:  And Pete, like you said, is is like the college age kid. And they come downstairs, and they have some chatter. But it’s set up pretty early on that Charlie is really into horror and sci fi movies. And I and I bet he’s just a personification of the director. When you when you go on and you read his profile, it seems like that’s him. And so his room is filled with, posters, classic posters, really.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  Lots of posters. Movies you’d recognize if you’re into this sort of thing, of the time anyway, of sci fi and horror movies. And then he has, like, monster outfits. And he kinda needs to get a life and some friends because Right. All he really does, it seems like all day long, is put on his cape and a and a mask or something and try to run around.

Craig:  Try to scare people.

Todd:  Scaring people. Which which comes into play later, which is quite nice. Exactly.

Craig:  Like, I was gonna as soon as I saw it, like, you know, he he tries to he puts on this big, you know, scary costume, and and tries to scare his aunt, which is totally ineffective. She’s like, oh, that’s cute. But he has flash powder to, you know, make a flash and some smoke for when she walks into his room. And the second I saw that, I was like, oh, that’s gonna come into play later. Like Of course. You you don’t just show us this really close-up of him, like, you know, making this flash powder bomb. Like, that’s obviously gonna come into play later, which, of course, it does. But, and and that’s not uncommon either.  I mean, that’s No. I got we have talked about probably two or three movies where there’s the kid that likes horror movies, and so he kinda, you know, has this special skill set that’s eventually gonna help him Mhmm. You know, defeat the monster. And so it’s it’s cliched and expected, but fine. You know? Like, alright. I get it. I see where we’re going with this.

Todd:  Well, and, interesting bit of trivia, the kid who plays Charlie is the son of a guy named Tim Hildebrandt. And Tim Hildebrandt and his brother Craig Hildebrandt are well known as, illustrators, fantasy illustrators. They Tim Hildebrandt made the, like, the the original Star Wars posters.

Craig:  Oh, wow.

Todd:  Very award winning guy. In fact, later on in the movie, there’s a Todd, or outside the house, clearly a miniature scene. And he did the miniatures for this. And this a lot of this movie that was shot inside the house was actually literally shot in his house. Charlie is his actual son, and that was actually his bedroom.

Craig:  Oh, wow.

Todd:  Yeah. He actually had all this stuff up in there. They had to do very little set dress. Whereas, the rest of the house, they had to move things around and kinda redress it every time they did it, which they said was a huge pain. His bedroom was more or less the way it was. So it’s kinda neat that he got a pretty big role in this movie playing, more or less, maybe the kind of kid he was. Who knows? But, you know, you got a dad who’s a fantasy illustrator, really well known. And, I I like this.  You know, I was actually getting shades of Phantasm a little bit. You remember A little bit. There’s the kid in Phantasm who, at some point, is really clever and kinda Rube Goldberg’s things together and is able to Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah.

Clip:  Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. It was kinda the same thing. There are a lot of call outs, I think, to a lot of horror movies of this time that came just before it. There’s some alien references in there. Yeah. Like I said, there’s some I think there’s a phantasm reference in there. A lot of the blood spraying or at least especially downstairs, they make a huge deal of, like, squirting blood on the light bulb, which seemed to be something that Evil Dead did.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  And some of the shots where, like, downstairs with the monster, which are good shots actually, where the the the single light bulb will be swinging. And, it’ll alternately things will be in shadow and then sort of be revealed and be in shadow and be revealed. It’s it’s it’s clever cinematography Todd though it it really just borrows from a lot of these other movies. It works. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. And it also you know, I I imagine this was unintentional. I imagine it just had to do with, you know, kind of the constraints of what they were working with. But, it reminded me quite a bit of critters, too because most of it is confined to this one house.

Todd:  True.

Craig:  There’s really only one other location and that I assume they probably just shot in somebody else’s house, you know. And it’s it’s not a a big sequence.

Todd:  Yeah. Well, it’s tightly done. Yeah. Because, you know, when the guy before he went downstairs, our first victim in the home, before he went downstairs, I told you it’s raining. He goes outside. He gets the paper. He goes and he picks up the paper. And as he walks inside, the camera pans down just to show you that the basement window is open.  Uh-huh. Like, that’s significant. It’s it’s really good. I mean, it’s really smart. Everything about this movie is pretty textbook smart, I think, as far as the structure, the cinematography, just the way it goes. I mean, formulaic, yes. Yeah. But at least they’ve stuck to the formula, and they did some cool things with it.  You know? A lot of these low budget movies are just really crappy.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And this movie just never I I don’t think it ever really gets Craig. And I was so surprised.

Craig:  Me too. Because I thought

Todd:  I thought it was gonna be really crappy. So the kid, you know, is obsessed with horror and makeup. And again, the woman, you know, they have their dialogue or whatever. They’ve seen that the mom has already left her note that says, hey, we’re going out or whatever. So Right. There’s an explanation why the dad and the mom aren’t there. The woman has to leave the house to go to her mother’s house, who they make they make a point of, oh, it’s my mother’s vegetarian ladies get together.

Craig:  I don’t know why that was so funny to me, and it just cracked me up. And

Clip:  It was.

Craig:  It doesn’t come till later in the movie we’ll get there, but I swear that that scene with the vegetarian

Todd:  lady’s scene in the whole movie. It was the best. It was the best.

Clip:  I can’t wait to talk about it.

Craig:  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We okay. But it’s not till later. Okay.

Todd:  No. What happens first is, you know, part of their dinner table conversation, which is a little weird and a little stilted, is that this uncle, who’s a psychiatrist, is really laying into the young kid about his obsession with horror movies and whatever. And he’s like, I wanna interview you. You would make a fascinating subject for me, you know, your fascination with horror movies or whatever. Can I interview you? And the kid’s like, yeah. Yeah. Whatever. That’s fine.  Mhmm. And so then they go out onto, like, the screened in porch, and they sit down, and they have what I thought turned out to be a slightly creepy dialogue. He’s like interviewing him, and and it’s supposed to be somewhat scientific, you know. Oh, you’re really into horror movies. Oh, you know, explain that a little bit, you know. What kind of monsters do you like? Oh, do you like to dress up? Like monsters? Yeah. You know, I like to dress up and walk around.

Clip:  Are you afraid of the dark?  Not really.  Would you be willing to put on one of your monster costumes and scare me?  Well, I don’t know. Oh,  that’s stupid. How could you scare me if I know about it? Besides, I don’t scare easily. Forget about it. I’ll tell you what, though. I’m gonna be working down here for a while. How about if I come up later and you show me some of your stuff? How would that be? Okay?  K. Great.

Craig:  Exactly. It was really weird. I didn’t the aunt and the uncle were even talking about the kid before. And, like like, the uncle’s, like, making notes about the kid or, like, writing questions down that he’s gonna ask or something, and the aunt’s like, lay off. He’s a cool kid. Like, he’s fine. Leave him alone. And I didn’t get it.  I’m like, what do you think is wrong with this kid? Like, he seems perfectly normal. Okay. Maybe he’s a little quiet. You know? Maybe he’s a little introverted, but it’s not like he’s some kind of freak show. Like Sure. Like, what? Okay. So they’re on vacation now, the aunt and the uncle. And right after this, they’re going or at least he says they’re going to some, like, psychologist convention or something.  And he tells the kid, you know, I I just think that this would be people would be interested in hearing more about you. I think you’re a really interesting kid. I I never really understood what his motivation was.

Todd:  Yeah. It was dumb.

Craig:  Like, leave this kid alone, you weirdo. Yeah. Well, you weirdo with a terrible, horrible comb over. Like, oh my gosh.

Todd:  Ugly man.

Craig:  Okay. So then he interviews the kid, and then he falls asleep in the chair, and that’s it. Like

Todd:  He sets his notes down and he decides, I guess I’m gonna go to sleep. And he puts his head down and just falls asleep in the chair.

Craig:  And then all this shit is going down, you know, all around and, you you know, apparently, he’s just there. There were kind of a lot of those moments because at some point, Charles, the younger boy, he makes his way down to the basement Yes. For for some reason. Oh, it’s because the electrician was coming and he sees through his window the electrician come in. And so he puts on a costume. I think he was gonna go down there and scare the electrician, which I think is kinda hilarious.

Todd:  Yes.

Craig:  But when he gets down there, the fuse box is, like, sparking and the electricity in the house goes out, which everybody else notices, of course, too. And, but then he’s looking around. All of a sudden, he just sees the monster Everything. In all of its glory.

Todd:  Everything. Their monster is there. His mother’s head is there. We get a nice super close-up of his mother’s head where all of the skin like, the monster has these, like, tiny little you know, which you said earlier, it’s spawn. It’s like these tiny little tadpole things with teeth and whatever that scurry quite

Craig:  They’re almost identical to the little things from the movie Slither Yes. The James Gunn movie.

Todd:  Yes. They are. And and they and they’re quite actually, they’re quite good.

Craig:  Oh, they are.

Todd:  They slither around in the floor and and up the walls and around, and they kinda turn out to be more of a threat, because it’s, you know, it’s the monster extending itself out. And so these little creatures, these little tadpoli creatures with nasty teeth are pulling the flesh off of the mom’s face until, you know, it’s just it’s just skeleton underneath. He sees his dad there at the monster’s feet, half eaten up. The floor is, like, you know, five inches of blood. It but the funny thing about this scene is he just stands there and he looks left.

Craig:  He just stands there.

Todd:  He looks up. He looks down. He looks right. It’s, like, ten minutes

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Of this kid. It’s almost a quarter of the movie is this one scene of this kid standing. And I I don’t know. Like, are we supposed to think he’s frozen in terror?

Craig:  I guess. I was really surprised by it too because, initially, when he sees it, it’s kind of like he’s in shock and awe. But then when his mom’s head rolls out of the thing’s mouth, I thought for sure that that would have more of an impact on him. And I guess it kind of does, but it was almost like the emotion that you saw in his face was more anger than fear. Yeah. And I’m like, wow, dude. Like You’ve got a I would be shitting my pants. Like

Todd:  Seriously.

Craig:  And screaming and running. I mean, what it establishes that he figures out very cleverly, I mean, totally unrealistically in my opinion, but that he figures out is that it hunts by sound.

Todd:  Yeah. It can’t see.

Craig:  But it it can hear and and, like, he even tests it. He snaps his fingers and it draws its attention and gets really close to him, so he has to throw his flashlight to divert its attention. And all that was kinda cool, but I just like you, I just thought, how is this kid being so composed? And then just like the uncle sitting in the chair, it cuts away and we get, you know, twenty minutes of scenes with other people, and then it cuts back to him. And I’m like, he’s just standing down there with that thing? Like, what?

Clip:  So Like, I

Todd:  know. It’s unrealistic, and it is it is gratuitous. It is nothing but scene after scene of gore and blood and his limbs and and his mother and his father and the her the electrician and these things scurrying around and all this stuff. And he’s just standing there. Now I read an interview with the director online, and he said that actually this movie was taken away from him later. That the special effects guy and him, the the guy mentioned earlier, John Dodds, they had a major disagreement about how he was filming the scenes with the creature. John Todd, being the producer, just took him off the project. Now he was still credited as the writer and the director, Douglas McCown.  But John Dodds apparently took the movie over, re shot a number of scenes that in included and involved the creature to his liking, and took over the editing. And the director said he said, look. He said, I went to see it when it show when it premiered. And I was really disappointed at how they cut it together. It didn’t fit my my script. He said, especially this particular scene went on so long. He said, it just shouldn’t have been that way. It wasn’t my vision for this to be that way.  Obviously, just want to show off his creature and all these cool effects and things that he did. But he said, you know, later he had a a conversation with the editor, and his editor didn’t even have a shooting script to go from, and he had one. So he’s like, the editor didn’t even wasn’t even provided the script that he had from shooting the movie. So the the editing of this film, you know, sort of the final cut was a bit of a departure from what was originally planned, what the director originally had envisioned, and it seems to have been the special effects guy, John Dodds, who really took over and made it so gratuitous. So that that kind of explains this scene.

Craig:  Yeah. That sounds about right. But Yeah.

Todd:  I mean, honestly, it’s Todd disappointing. I mean, if you came to see a movie with a lot of gore and a lot of blood and a crazy ass creature and really nutso effects, you’re gonna get your eyefuls, you know, with this scene. Right. I mean, it’s worse. I mean, it’s more so than almost any movie we’ve ever seen.

Craig:  Yeah. And I’m being, you know, I I’m being dramatic in my response because really Todd didn’t yeah. It didn’t make a lot of sense that that kid was down there for so long.

Todd:  Or at

Craig:  least it seemed that way in the way that it was edited. Had it been edited in a different way, it probably would have been, you know, four and five minutes, and it wouldn’t have seemed so long. But because it was spaced out over, such a span of time over the movie, it just seemed a little bit long.

Todd:  That’s the biggest problem is that so much else happens. Right. We cut away from the scene. Like, twenty more minutes of the movie comes by, and we cut back to that scene. Right.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  Timeline doesn’t really line up. You’re right.

Craig:  It Exactly. It’s

Todd:  not realistic.

Craig:  Before we move on, which I do want to, but we’ve mentioned them before, but these little, like, tadpole, like, spawn deadly spawn or whatever they are. I was so freaking impressed by that. Yeah. I I I had no idea how they were doing it, and I wondered if they were using some kind of actual marine life because it looked real. You you’re organic.

Todd:  Those little tails were flapping around and they swiggled around the floor. Yeah.

Craig:  And I I read, you know god. It’s just it’s it’s so clever that they just cut, you know, like an s shaped track into the floor and then just from beneath, you know, moved it through that track. But I I really thought that maybe they were using some sort of fish, like they were just dumping fish on the ground because it really looked super organic. It does. I was I was really, really impressed. They did some really good work. And this creature, it’s big, and it seriously, you know, I usually will not apologize for being crude, and I won’t know either. It looks like three dicks.  It looks like a big dick in the middle, two smaller dicks on the side with these big teeth. And it’s wet and oozy, but it just looks great. Like, it it looks so Todd. And and they do such a good job of of, you know, doing close ups on the teeth, you know, so you really get that sense of its danger and power. But then even there are long shot. I mean, not super long, but, you know, they pull back so that you can see it in its entirety. And despite the fact that it’s relatively stationary, even if it were real, it’s so large that you can imagine, especially if it’s down there to, like, hatch its young or whatever. Yeah.  It would hold itself up in a corner or whatever. Yeah. It looks so good. And I guess the guy who made this big creature, I guess he just he built it in his basement. And then when they had to move it to set, like, they couldn’t get it out, and they had to, like, you know, cut one of the dicks off and sew it back on later.

Todd:  You have a very different impression of this creature than I ever did. I just have to say.

Craig:  Oh, don’t lie. You know that’s what it

Todd:  looks like. I was thinking three dicks.

Craig:  But I I just it really was some really fun practical

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Much much much better than I had expected. And, again, this is not an amazing movie, but some really skillful stuff.

Todd:  Well, if you can imagine going to a drive in and watching this movie, it’s like the perfect movie for that. Yeah. It is so gratuitous in this way. This guy, the older kid, Pete, has two friends who come over, Frankie and Ellen, and they both come over and they have this silly dialogue about science and all this stuff because, they have discovered one of these creatures, one of these little tadpole things, but it’s dead. Right. And so they bring it over and they know that he’s interested in science, but he’s more into astronomy.

Craig:  And he’s the very logical one. Like, oh, everything has to be the scientific method. And Yeah.

Todd:  It gets a little stupid. Yeah.

Craig:  Well, I’m just gonna throw this out here. I don’t even know that this is necessarily intentional, but Pete is an asshole. Like, he is such a jerk. Yeah. It’s true. In the beginning, it doesn’t really come across because he kinda sticks up for his little brother, and it seems like he and his little brother, you know, kinda have a good relationship, and he’s polite with his aunt and his uncle. But then he talks to his friend on the phone, and he’s like, oh, make sure you bring Ellen with you or whatever. And he thinks that his friend and Ellen are together, and that doesn’t stop him at all from totally putting the moves on her

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And treating his friend like he’s a moron. That made me so mad. And, like, the movie kind of sets it up that way. Like, Pete wears glasses and, you know, a button down top or whatever, and the friend, whatever hit Frankie, wears overall. So he’s clearly a bumpkin. Yeah. He plays it a little bit more simple too. But, god, Pete is such a dick.  He’s condescending to his friends. He legit sends Frankie out of the room so that he can hit on his girlfriend.

Todd:  That’s right. Like, the scene where that happens is is extremely unconvincing.

Clip:  Are Are you and Frankie going together or not?  Well, we’re going to the movies with you tonight.  You know what I mean. Are you going together? I guess you know, Frankie would rather go to to the movies with somebody else.  What’s that supposed to mean? Well, you  know Kathy Todd?  Yeah.  Yeah. Well, he’d rather take her anywhere than go with us. So you’re not going with  him? No.  You wanna go with me? To the movies?  Pete, I think I have to figure out a few things about you first. I know the real reason you wanna go with me to the movies and it’s not to see the movie. Because if you went to see the movie, you probably faint trying not to use your imagination.

Todd:  And then suddenly, they’re kissing. Again, in this interview that I read with the director, he said one of the things he was really mad about was he had some earlier scenes in the movie that really set up their relationship. So it didn’t seem so jarring that the two of them would finally be lip locked, but those were totally cut out in favor of the monster in the basement. So

Craig:  Gotcha.

Todd:  But yeah. Yeah. I mean, you evaluate the movie on what what what you have and it is Right. Yeah. He totally hits on her. He comes across as a big dick. And but the movie kind of subverts your expectations in a number of ways. And I think one of the ways it subverts it is you kinda get the sense that maybe this is gonna be one of the guys who has some good ideas who is going to take care of the monster.  And it turns out he’s got nothing.

Craig:  He’s worthless.

Todd:  Yeah. He’s totally worthless.

Craig:  He’s absolutely worthless. Yeah. And and okay. So and then the kid is still in the basement. I mean, my Todd. He’s been down there for an hour at this point.

Todd:  During the the vegetarian meeting.

Craig:  Yes. Oh, okay. So that was so funny. Okay. So the aunt gets over to the grandma’s house, which is funny. She walked there in the pouring rain. I I don’t really understand that, but she did. And they have kind of a funny, you know, dialogue Yeah.  Between them. It’s just brief and it’s like

Todd:  I think it’s quite charming. I I

Craig:  It was charming.

Todd:  Between the two of them was extremely natural. Once again Yes. Almost in contrast to the rest of the movie, very natural, very charming, very easygoing, like, this is definitely her mom. This is definitely her daughter.

Clip:  And do you remember Zhu Zhu? Oh, how is she? Very well. Surprisingly healthy for a non vegetarian. She’s bringing her seven Craig black strap molasses bread and two fries. What are we making? I’ll give you a hint. There’s a pot of lentils on hold. Oh, you’re paying stew. And brown rice with green sauce. Great.  What shall I do? I’ll start you with the green sauce.

Todd:  And they’re gonna cook this vegetarian meal for her vegetarian friends. Right. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be funny or something, but, you know, they can’t

Craig:  I think it is supposed to be funny. I I don’t whether it’s supposed to be or not, it’s freaking hilarious. The only other thing that’s going on is back at the house, we have seen that these little, you know, wormy things, which are getting progressively bigger, which I also thought that they did a really good job with as far as continuity went. Like, they they get just a little bit progressively bigger

Todd:  over time. And there’s a dissection.

Craig:  Right. They dissect one and then have talk about science.

Todd:  Very long dissection of where she’s gotta cut it open, and and it it it goes on a little long and blood sprays everywhere. It’s like there’s a lot of close ups on gooey stuff and blood. And, you know, the movie does a really solid job of of putting that in at regular intervals.

Craig:  Yeah. And and you see that these little things are squirming around underneath the carpets and behind the drapes and those kinds of things. So so we get it. You know? They’re out and they’re around. And we also see that they have gone out the cellar window, and we get POV shots to indicate to us that they are also at the grandma’s house. Yeah. The grandma is, you know, chopping up her vegetables or whatever, and she throws some stuff in the garbage disposal. And one of those things comes up out of the drain and is, like, eating her leftovers and drinking the water out of the drain.  It it’s cute and funny. Yeah. But then all of the vegetarian ladies show up, and it’s so silly. Like, they have the most ridiculous vegetarian dishes and

Todd:  Oh, your soy balls.

Craig:  Isn’t yeah. Your your Swedish soy balls. Balls. Oh, god. I wrote that down, Swedish soy balls. And one somebody made another thing that, like, looked like a mouse, like, coming out of some lettuce or something. I don’t know. It looks so silly.  The grandma is like, oh, and I’m making my special green sauce. And they’re like, okay. We see her put everything in the food processor, and I was like, oh my Todd. One of these things is going in the food processor. I know it.

Todd:  It’s broadcast a mile away and that’s what makes it so cool. Like, you know

Craig:  exactly what’s coming. Yes. And of course, she doesn’t see it go in there. So she just goes in and hits, you know, puree or whatever, and and it just starts chopping up these vegetables. But then the next scene we see is, like, she serves it to everybody, and everybody’s like, oh, we love your sauce. And they all take a bite of it, and then they all get this terrible, disgusted look on their face until finally, the grandmother takes a bite too and gets a horrible look on her face. And then it’s just too funny. Oh, I I had no idea how it was gonna play out.  I was waiting, like, on the edge of my seat, like, what is going to happen to all these old bitties in the veggie club? Right. Right. And it it it it paid off in spades. Yeah. I just loved it.

Todd:  It’s true. Yeah. This one of these things comes under the sofa. And I guess, you know, you see it come under the sofa, and then it cuts away to the kid again. He’s still in the basement, like, staring at things. And when it cuts back to the scene, I guess the the daughter is in the kitchen. She hears screaming, and she walks into the into the living room, and all hell has broken loose. Like like, two of the ladies have these things just, like, all over them.  There’s one on one of the kid girl the mother’s face.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And the daughter runs over to yank it off her face and is taking her skin off and she throws it across the room and it hits a picture on the wall, a picture frame, which swings down and they’re, like, five of those things behind the picture frame swinging around.

Craig:  There’s one Everywhere.

Todd:  One on one of their legs is, like, it’s

Craig:  so funny. Women are up on the couch like there’s a mouse on the floor, and everybody’s screaming. And most of them have one of these things, which at this point are probably, I don’t know, a good 10 inches long hanging off of them. And, of course, it’s all practical. So they’ve just got these prosthetic things glued to them, but they’re they’re doing their best to, you know, move around to make it look like there’s movement and and there’s so much blood. And and and it’s just all these old biddies just getting attacked by these things and

Todd:  It’s great.

Craig:  It’s good fun. The aunt, Todd bless her, you know, doing everything that she can to help. And and they finally flee and leave all of these things behind in the room. And and and really, the whole scene is maybe three minutes long, but, oh, it it it was the highlight of the movie for me. It was so funny. Oh. It just paid off just paid off in every way.

Todd:  And they end up most of them they they live. Right? They all just kinda run.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. They all get away. Yeah. They all run out in the Craig, and they all pile into one car. And that’s all the last we see of them until the very end.

Todd:  And at this point, we’re going, like, what about freaking Charlie in the basement?

Craig:  Like Right.

Todd:  It’s still there. And I

Craig:  don’t even remember how he got out of the basement. I just eventually, the brother and Pete and his friends, they’re gonna show the dissected dead one that they found. They’re gonna show it to the uncle because he’s a scientist.

Todd:  Oh, that’s right.

Craig:  And, they go down there and they go to show it to him, and he has been totally eaten and hollowed out by these things.

Todd:  Yeah. And one burst out of his stomach, it looks just like alien. It’s it’s nuts. Yeah.

Craig:  And then it’s just pandemonium from then from there. Yeah. They’re just they’re running around. And I didn’t even you may have to help me out with this because at some point, Charles ends up back upstairs, and they’re being chased not only by these little ones, but also by a big one. Was that the big one from the the basement? Okay. I thought so.

Todd:  Supposed to be. I mean, it’s not clear. I mean, you know, it’s just, like, one minute it’s there, one minute it’s not. We don’t really get a sense of its ability to you know, its locomotion. I think they go into the room, and they barricade themselves in the room for a while. And then Charles wants to come in, but they’re not sure. And they let him in. And then another girl just shows up.

Craig:  Yeah. Kathy.

Todd:  They see her out the window, and they’re like, no. Don’t come in. But she doesn’t hear. And then suddenly, she’s upstairs and in the door and almost gets attacked, but they pull her in.

Craig:  And that was oh my god. Okay. So she’s just this cute girl who shows up for a study session because that’s what they’re all there for. Mhmm. And they’re all like, oh my god. Come in. Come in. She’s like, what? And then she gets attacked from behind by the huge thing, but they’re able to pull her out of her jacket and get her in the room.  And they get her in the room, and they close the door. And it’s just a a a single Craig shot out of her, and she goes, what the fuck was that? At that moment, I

Todd:  thought, finally, a legitimate reaction to this creature.

Craig:  Oh my god. Great. Oh, I laughed out loud. That may be the only time I laughed out loud, but I laughed out loud at that line. It was so funny.

Todd:  A number of them go run end up running up to the attic. And somehow, I think it’s Ellen stays behind. And now the creature starts busting through the door into that room and he gets her and rips her head off.

Craig:  And throws her out the window.

Todd:  And throws her body out the window. I was absolutely not expecting this from the beginning. I mean, you would thought that she she would be the final girl.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And if you go to IMDB and you read the trivia, it says that she had some other commitments or whatever, all these other acting jobs that this woman Yeah. Never acted anything else has to do, and so she couldn’t stay, so they wrote her out of it. But, actually, the director is quite adamant. And remember, he’s the guy who wrote it. He said, from the beginning, I wrote her in there to die there and that way because I wanted to subvert expectations. Everybody thought she’d be the final girl, and I wanted to kill her off. So I I don’t honestly see how they could have filmed this movie and just written her out of it unless they were filming it in sequence. Because it’s pretty important that she dies because Pete goes freaking crazy Yeah.  Once that happens.

Craig:  Like, he’s in total denial. Again, I mean, it was kinda contrived and stupid. It’s the whole science thing. Like, he just can’t wrap his mind around it. He ends up on the roof, and then he ends up in the attic with, Kathy and Frankie. And he’s like, oh, I have Todd find Ellen. She’s in trouble. No, dude.  She’s dead, and you’ve seen her. Like

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  You know this. But he’s like, no. It can’t be happening. It’s not scientifically logical. And, like, at this point, not only not only is he worthless, but he’s also, like Dumb. Drawing the creature up to them.

Todd:  Yeah. Because of the noise.

Craig:  Yeah. And he does. He’s screaming and yelling, so it comes up and it busts in to the, attic where they are. And that’s when Charles comes in and saves the day. Now we skipped one little part before the creature got up there. In an effort to distract the creature, Charles makes some noise. Mhmm. But the way that he makes the noise is he plugs in a radio and turns it up on full blast.  The electricity is out, Todd.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. I mean

Craig:  I don’t understand how this happened. It’s been out for the last

Todd:  hour. Yeah. It’s a big hole in the movie. It doesn’t make any sense. He he he plugs in this this Craig, and he pulls the cord three feet across the kitchen. It you know, it’s it’s trying to be tense. But it yeah. Anyway, the monster ends up eating the radio and whatever.  The running upstairs. Charles runs and then after the monster runs upstairs, Charles has got the radio again, but it’s covered in blood. And this time, he has an extension cord. Then we get sort of our what I call, again, that that phantasm scene where

Clip:  Yeah.

Todd:  The kid decides he’s gonna he’s gonna figure something out. So he goes to his room, and he takes all the stuff that we saw before, his fake head, his flash powder, and all that. And he constructs Bomb. A fake head with a whole bunch of flash powder inside and sticks the end of a wire in there that can plug into a wall and gets his extension Todd, and he goes upstairs. And, I thought that scene was quite good, actually. Oh, no.

Craig:  He did too.

Todd:  Yeah. He goes into the attic. And one of the things that the director actually mentioned in that interview was he was I think he was defending himself after having his movie taken over. He said he was extremely insistent that in this movie, they wouldn’t just show shots of the creature and then shots of people, and shots of the creature and shots of people. That they would get the creature and the people in the same frame as much as possible, so it didn’t look cheap.

Clip:  Right. So it

Todd:  didn’t look like just like everything was shot separately. And he does a really good job of that, actually. Yeah. So the kid sneaks upstairs behind this creature who is starting to come towards the others, and he kinda yells, you know, don’t make a noise, and maybe they sort of get it. So the creature is up there, but he’s sort of facing off with the others. This kid sneaks around the side, sort of around the chimney area, just around the corner from the creature. And he finds a ski pole. And he jabs this head that he’s made onto the ski pole, and he sticks it out.  And this moment, I’m thinking the creature’s not supposed to be able to see. What’s the deal? Right. But then he yells, and the creature swings around and eats the head. And then we get this sort of it’s a little stilted, but it’s fine. Oh, he can’t reach the plug. Mhmm. He’s gotta plug it in, but he can’t quite reach. Then the creature hears the noise, and he kinda comes over.  Eventually, he ends up plugging it in. And for a movie that’s really delivered on all the goods to this point, I was really surprised we didn’t get, like, this huge exploding creature scene.

Clip:  Mhmm.

Todd:  We didn’t get anything except off screen. And then a shot of the kid looking at what ends up being just the creature’s remains on fire.

Craig:  Yeah. And then that’s pretty much it. Now I’ve I’ve read that there are different edits of this movie, so I don’t know how it originally ended. But, what we see next is kind of the aftermath where the townspeople and the police are, like, hunting and and killing these deadly spawn.

Todd:  The theremin music comes back in.

Craig:  Right. And they’re using, like, cattle prods to electrocute them and stuff. And, it it’s kinda fun. You know, it’s kind of a fun scene that they’re rooting these things out. And, like, there are TV crews around or whatever, and the ants shows back up, at the house. And I thought it was hilarious that never once did she mention or show any concern for her husband. But, she was concerned about the boys. Pete is is still, like, totally catatonic.  Charles kind of is too. And so they load Pete into an ambulance. They load Charles and his aunt into a police car. That’s kind of the last, that we see of them. But we see, you know, these cleanup efforts. And the last thing that we see is this cop.

Clip:  How’s it where you are?  Under control. They just pulled a three foot thing out of the bushes.  Three foot, that’s nothing. You see what they got down out  of the attic. Eight feet long. Eight feet here.  I guess they just keep growing.

Craig:  And then there’s, like I don’t even remember how it plays out, but, like, all you just kind of hear, like, ominous sounds and a scream on, the walkie talkie, and it cuts back to that matte painting. It it’s it’s very much like the original unused ending of Little Shop of Horrors where you see that one of the mountains that or hills, I guess, would be a better Yeah. Description, that the the house is set against rises up, and it’s just an enormous one of those creatures, even bigger than the house. And it looks like it’s all done in

Todd:  With miniatures. Yeah. This is the miniature scene that Tim Hildebrandt did. This is what he contributed, the fantasy guy. If you go online, you can actually see a behind the scenes photo of it. In fact, if you go to YouTube and you search for this movie, not only can you find the entire movie somebody’s uploaded there, but also there is a good four minutes of behind the scenes footage that’s kind of fun to watch Cool. To see how they did all these effects. Yeah.  It’s really kind of unique actually for a movie like this.

Craig:  Yeah. I I and that’s it. You know, honestly, I expected this movie to be really bad. And I I suppose if you were being, you know, super critical, you could say that it is a bad movie. But even, you know, just talking to my partner, I said, yeah. I mean, it was kind of a bad movie, but nowhere near as bad as many of the movies that we’ve seen. And, you know, there’s a lot of good stuff

Clip:  going on

Craig:  There is. Yeah. Which which really surprised me especially since so many of these people, the director, all of the primary actors, this was all they ever did. It was far more competent, I think, that it it had any right to be. I was really pleasantly surprised. And and at the end of the day, even though the first twenty minutes, I was very skeptical, at the end of the day, I was, like, that was kind of fun. That’s kind of a fun movie.

Todd:  Honestly, one of the most fun movies we’ve done, I think. I would totally recommend checking it out. If you have a strong stomach, you gotta check it out. It’s super important. It was almost picked up for a theatrical release by Paramount. Mhmm. I’m I’m surprised. Yeah.  Well, I’m not surprised it wasn’t. I mean, this is not a mainstream movie by any ever. This was would never have been a mainstream movie. No. It’s just too gory. It’s too bloody, but definitely serious drive and fare. Like, classic drive and fare that just touches all the right buttons.

Craig:  Yeah. I totally agree. And, I guess, I don’t know if it was a Korean film or if it was just, you know, distributed in Korea, but there was a unofficial sequel called Metamorphosis the Alien Factor and, it was shot on a much larger budget and so even I I don’t have the full story. I don’t know if it was intended as a sequel and then they kinda wanted to distance themselves from the original because the original was lower budget. I don’t know. But, you know, again, if you look at IMDB, it says followed by Metamorphosis, the alien factor. Factor. And I just real quick looked at the cover art for that.  And and you can certainly see the

Todd:  The dick?

Craig:  Well, just one really toothy one. But you, but you can I mean, you can definitely see the influence? Of course, I haven’t seen it, so I can’t really say with any authority. But

Todd:  They cut it down to one dick, but it’s a really, really fierce dick.

Craig:  Yep.

Todd:  I guess so. Well, maybe we’ll maybe we’ll hit that one later. I’m sure it’s

Craig:  We’ll see.

Todd:  We’ll see. My guess is it won’t be nearly as charming as this movie.

Craig:  I I can’t imagine.

Todd:  Yeah. Well, thanks again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on anywhere, really. Just Google us, Two Guys and a Chainsaw. We’re on Facebook. Let us know what you thought of this movie. You can go to YouTube and watch it.  Please do. And also, give us a request. We love to hear from you. We love to hear what you wanna see. We love to watch what you want us to watch for the most part.

Craig:  For the most part.

Todd:  Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Before “Scream” paved the way for a steady stream of self-aware horror movies, there was “There’s Nothing Out There.”

Episode 179, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Craig and I have been doing, some fairly serious, some modern horror movies, and, we decided last week that we needed to throw things back a little bit to some of that cheesy eighty nineties schlock that, you all love so much. So, I had dug up this movie that I had seen a while back. I think I originally saw it on cable. And then, at one point, I wanted to show it to a friend of mine, so I went out and rented it. And, it’s called There’s Nothing Out There, out in 1991. And it has been twenty years probably since I’ve seen this movie. And so, it was really interesting to come back and revisit it. What I remembered it being was not a great film, a pretty low budget, somewhat amateurish effort, but that’s something that had a little bit of heart to it.  And, I enjoyed watching nonetheless and had kind of an interesting twist to it. So I selected for us to watch this week, and we did. And so here we are talking about it. Craig, had you ever heard anything about this movie before?

Craig:  No. Nothing. I had never heard of it. Going in and looking it up and then watching it, nothing. It was completely off my radar.

Todd:  Well, it has a really interesting, history behind it. The director, Rolf Kaniewski, the writer director of this film, has actually is very prolific. He’s written a ton of screenplays. He’s, produced a number of movies, directed a number of movies. A lot of them were, like, straight to video things. He’s bounced in between horror and, like, softcore type stuff for, like, cinematics and things like that, but always working and always always moving. But he pretty much grew up in the industry. His father was an editor.  A film editor had his own independent film editing company. And, actually, fun fact, his father was the editor for Bloodsucking Freaks, which is a pretty notorious horror film from the seventies. And then his mother, an actress on Broadway. So, I mean, he he comes from this background where when he was a kid, even in high school, he knew he wanted to be in film, and he was running around shooting movies on video and stuff like that and writing screenplays. I mean, he wrote the screenplay for this movie, actually, when he was 16, along with a number of others. And then by the time he was graduating from high school, he said he and his parents sort of decided, well, now it’s time for you to make your movie. Have a look at what you’ve written and, what of it looks the best to start out with? What would be your good directorial debut? Looking at the scripts that he had done, this one stood out because it was a horror movie, and horror movies at the time were really big. This would have been 1989.  You know, there was, you know, Jason and Freddie were still in the theaters.

Craig:  Wait. Is that right? I thought it was, like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Just kidding. I was thinking it was earlier. But no, that’s right.  Because it came out, actually, I think, what, 9091,

Todd:  something like that? Yeah. It was finished in ’90, came out in ’91. Yeah. So, it had a bit, you know, a bit of a delay, obviously, in getting it all out there.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  But in the middle of that time, between ’89 and ’91, horror took a bit of a nosedive. Tremors came out and it is a great movie, but it didn’t do too well on in the box office. Clive Barker’s Nightbreed came out, and they they didn’t really know how to market that. And that one was a bit of a failure. You know, in the middle there, the horror market briefly dried up a bit. And the director, Rolfe, says what kind of saved his movie is it’s it’s actually as much comedy as it is anything else. And when he was writing the script, he went out and watched a whole bunch of horror movies. He just went to the video store, he said, and just rented a whole bunch.  And he said that after a while, he just got tired of noticing that they were all pretty much the same, that they all had followed the same cliches and things. Mhmm. So he’s about three or four pages into writing the script, and he said, you know, why don’t I just make this movie kind of about that? And so he put a character in there, which he said is kind of basically me, who’s very self aware, who’s who’s pointing out the fact that this is like a horror movie, that the situation they’re in is like a horror movie. And then flat out, there’s some fourth wall breaking in here, you know, some talking directly about the situations that are that are going on. And all of this predates Scream by about five years. So it it’s really unknown whether Kevin Williamson had seen this when he was writing Scream or this was any influence on him and Wes Craven, but, there are some parallels to be made. It’s a very different kind of movie from Scream.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  But the movie ended up getting sold to, like, HBO. So, basically, just to to video and cable markets after doing some, circuits on the festivals. I even read that he said that Robert Zemeckis saw the movie. Somehow, through a friend of a friend or whatever, he got it in front of Robert Zemeckis who watched it. And he said he wasn’t blown away by it, but he liked it. And he basically told him, well, this proves that you know how to make a movie. So write a script that’s really, really good that everybody wants to do, and then say that you wanna direct it, and then show them this movie to prove that you can direct. So this movie did get him into the business, and he’s been working really, really hard and pretty steadily ever since.  So he is about the only thing to come out of this movie. Most of the other actors and actresses in the film didn’t move on to do anything else.

Craig:  Yeah. I didn’t recognize anybody. I didn’t even bother to write people’s names down because I didn’t think that it would be anybody that anybody would recognize. Mhmm. Gosh. I don’t know. I I don’t wanna be a Debbie Downer, but it it’s, you know, he made it when he was a kid. Yeah.

Todd:  He’s 20. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. And, wrote it when he was even younger than that, and it feels like that to some extent. It does. However, I mean, for being a first effort and and the fact that he was literally a kid when he wrote it and and arguably still a kid when he directed it, it’s not bad. But it it does, definitely have that kind of amateurish feel Yeah. A little bit. And, of course, you know, being his first outing and and him not having, you know, a name to fall back on, it’s low budget and it shows. Yeah.  But, you know, there’s there are some clever things going on. Really, I almost felt like the self referential stuff was I mean, I think it it it’s supposed to be silly. You know, it’s it’s clearly intended to be a comedy. It doesn’t take itself seriously at all. When it comes down to it, it’s a monster movie. Mhmm. The monster is, to to put it nicely, a practical effect. Really, basically, what it looked like to me was some sort of puppet that somebody constructed, and they just kind of shook around.  And and really, like, literally, at some points, somebody off screen was clearly just kinda throwing this puppet at them. Yeah. They

Todd:  they clearly had to get really creative shooting around the puppet. And and, actually, I think they do a better job than many, of these low budget movies do at least of of not exposing it too much on the screen at least Todd Yeah. Toward the end. And he said, actually, when he was writing this and decided to make a monster movie, he purposely chose to make this small creature because anything bigger that gets kind of humanoid, it always just looks like a guy in a rubber suit. He said, especially at the at the level I’m gonna be working. So he thought he’d hedge his bets and get a smaller little tentacled creature going with it. And, I think it was Image Works studio, put that together for him. So, yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting little creature.  And like you said, it’s also one of those that kinda breaks the laws of physics in a way. Just like when we were doing puppet master and some of these other movies, we talk about how you could just kick these puppets across the room. Right. This creature, like, once it’s up on you, like, there’s no wrestling with it. Right? You should be able to just toss it off you. So, there are just moments of that where you’re right. It looks like somebody just chucked the creature through the air. Yeah.  But that’s part of the charm, I think, you know. Honestly, I think it’s part of the charm of the movie.

Craig:  I was just gonna say the same thing. I mean, there there is something charming about that. And there is also something charming about people coming together and putting together something on a shoestring budget, and it looks like they had a good time. But it it it also looks like some college kids

Todd:  Pooled their money together.

Craig:  For scouting. Yeah. I know. I mean, like

Clip:  It is.

Craig:  And and there’s there’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody’s gotta get their start somewhere. And, you know, I I know that in one of your many incarnations that you have been a filmmaker and that you have done virtually the same thing. I mean, maybe not

Todd:  Exactly the same thing. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you pull together your friends and and people who are willing to you know, all of these actors worked on deferred payment. I I don’t know how much, if anything, any of them were paid. It really is more just, a labor of love than anything else. You know, it’s it’s for the love of filmmaking and for the love of these types of movies. And, I I can’t imagine that they expected much to come of it. And and not a whole lot did, and that’s alright.  But, you gotta appreciate it when people take their passions and and really try to do something with them. Because I can sit behind a computer screen all day and and rag on movies, but I’ve never made a movie. Yeah.

Todd:  You know? So Well, you have to start somewhere. Right?

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And, you’re you’re lucky if the thing that you start with, it doesn’t just, you know, sit on nowadays. It doesn’t just sit on your computer and nobody else sees it. You know? I mean Yeah. At least, with this, it was shot on film. It’s been shown on cable, it and it’s been on video. It, later on got picked up by Troma and redistributed as a two DVD box set for,

Craig:  you know,

Todd:  its twentieth anniversary. I don’t know what they filled those two DVDs with.

Craig:  I have no idea.

Todd:  But, you know, I mean, it’s it’s not bad. I mean, it’s it’s bad, but it’s not it’s got some charm to it. That’s what I remembered about it. And so when I went back and watched it again, I really wasn’t if anything, I was a little pleasantly surprised at, how clever I thought it was in some places. They’re like, the cinematography in this movie is really either one direction or the other. Either it’s really bland and boring, especially when it gets Todd, like, fight sequences and things like that. I mean, it’s clear that nobody here is a stuntman, and, they don’t really know how to stage these fight scenes. And so the cuts are really rather jarring and a little confusing to try to kinda hide the fact that they couldn’t really throw this guy across the room into a wall.  You know, stuff like that. But then transitions between scenes, some of the POV photography with that creature going through, very reminiscent of Evil Dead. Uh-huh. It’s surely a reference there. And then these crane shots. Like, there are a lot of these, especially toward the beginning of this movie, these big swooping, which gives the movie at least at first a little bit of a bigger budget feel. And it turns out I was reading that that, this was another one of those deals. Like, there was a guy with a 19 foot Craig, happened to be nearby in the town where they were filming this and allowed them to use it as long as they he could just keep it on their set for a few weeks.  So they just kinda Craig together these resources to get what they could.

Craig:  Well, and then, you know, of course, then there are also some rookie mistakes too. You know, there are I I noticed at least a couple of times, there are scenes where you can see the crew in Oh, reflection. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, whatever happens even in big budget movies. But it’s just one of those things that I’m sure a new filmmaker, you learn from your mistakes. You know, you talked about, breaking the fourth wall and and there is. I I almost wish that it had been a little bit more decisive and whoever is making these decisions, the the director, whomever it was, I wish that it had been a little bit more decisive.  Like, if if you’re gonna break the fourth wall, just do it. Just do it all the time.

Todd:  Make it a thing.

Craig:  Yeah. Like, it it it was a little bit jarring to me. There’s one point at the end where one guy’s running around, running away from the monster, and it’s like he can’t figure out how he’s gonna get away. So he jumps up and swings off of the boom mic.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s like he jumps up and the boom mic is suddenly in the Craig, and he looks at it for a second and swings off of it, and there’s sort of an Indiana Jones type sound effect for it.

Craig:  Yeah. And and, like, that was funny, but it only happens once. You know? I I feel like if you’re gonna do that, go for it. Make that make that a gimmick.

Todd:  It’s a very Mel Brooks thing to do. But you’re right. Like, Mel Brooks has a consistency where he’s gonna do that two or three times. You know? You expect it. Mhmm.

Craig:  In that it only happened once, I don’t know. It it it just felt almost a little bit out of place. But again, I’m I I don’t wanna be too critical because it’s it’s not a masterpiece and and that that’s not what they were going for. So, you know, okay. Cool. So you you had an idea in the moment and you went ahead and decided to play with the boom mic and and fine. You know? Yeah. It it was a funny gag in the moment.  So great. Whatever.

Todd:  Well, I and speaking of good moments, I thought it started off really strong.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I loved that opening scene. That was probably frankly, that was probably my favorite part even though I found it to be kind of confusing and ultimately, like, it it it seems kind of like it like it’s tagged on.

Todd:  It’s like a red herring kinda thing. Yeah. It it it I think it was. I think they shot that later. In fact, I think the original script just opened up with this girl driving down, in a car and just, kind of blanking out and and crashing herself. This gives kind of a reason why she’s crashed. It gives her kind of a daydream or whatever that she spaced out on, which is there’s a girl working in a video a woman working in a video store. Somebody kind of comes in, but she don’t see who it is.  But he’s dressed in black, and she doesn’t really notice him. But then Fangoria’s weekend of horrors gets slapped down on the counter, and she turns around, but she doesn’t see anybody there. And she goes to find the tape, and then an arm reaches out and grabs her. And pretty soon, she’s getting chased for the video store, and she ends up cornered in the horror section. And it’s so cool. Like, first of all, for us, right, we’re totally geeking out. Like, there are all these real covers of real horror movies that are so familiar to us. But it’s also like they’re tormenting her, these covers.  It’ll get shots of of the covers real close-up. Like, she’s turning left. She’s turning right. All she’s seeing are these things, and there’s sound effects and screams and and all that as she’s being backed and backed and backed away. And then the killer, like, starts tossing, like, the tapes at her, like, literally, like, the tape out of the tape. Uh-huh. So she’s covered in tape, like, you’d be covered in, like, a film reel or something and and backs out through a door, which is, I guess, on the Second Floor. I don’t know.  It’s all kind of weird. And and as she falls out, the tape gets caught in the door and kind of hangs her, but then she wakes up and she’s in a car. Driving. Driving. And then, like, crashes into a a tree. But that scene was so awesome.

Craig:  It was. I mean, and and I I knew, you know, watching it, I knew that you and I were gonna feel the same way about it because it’s so nostalgic. I mean, those are exactly the video stores that we grew up with. You know, these local video stores where they just had, you know, the VHS boxes on the shelves, and you would just have to browse the covers, and and you find the one that you want, and you would take it up to the counter, and they would have the the actual videotapes behind the counter or in a room behind the counter, almost like a library, and they would go pull the very generic plastic box with the actual videotape in it and give it to you. It it totally just took me back to my childhood. And the fact that most, if not all, of those videos in in the store were four actual movies

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  From the eighties that we grew up with and loved and

Todd:  And then some of them we’ve done on the

Craig:  show here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a really kind of fun way to to start it out. And I felt like it did a good job of establishing the atmosphere, you know, like Yeah. This is gonna be one of those movies that you would just randomly see on the shelf and know nothing about, but it looks interesting and you pull it off and and you take it home and watch it. And you have no idea what you’re getting into, but, yeah, it it was a lot of fun.  So she she crashes her car and then a weird sucky I didn’t even know what

Todd:  A big green glowing orb comes down from the heavens. And, this is another one of those sweeping camera angles, you know, where it kinda goes through her crash, sweeps up to the sky. This big green orb comes down, and it sweeps across that, and and it goes down into a puddle of mud. And, she looks out her window, and you’re right. These big sucky things. Tentacles come up on the it’s very typical. I mean, it’s a very reminiscent of, like, a fifties b movie at this point.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. Except for a little bit smaller in scale. You know, in those fifties and sixties b movies, this thing would be the size of a car. But here, it’s it’s more the size of, like, a medium sized dog. Yeah.  And and it it it’s hard to describe this thing. I mean, we don’t see it in its entirety right away. We see that it’s kinda got these, like, tentacles with, like, suckers on the end. Ultimately, when it’s revealed, it’s hard to describe. It reminds me of kind of, like, when we were kids, they’re just for a little bit, they would market these toys, like, these monster toys. Like, I feel like they were called, like, Boglins or

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Something like that.

Todd:  You put your fingers through them, and, they’d have these rubbery arms that would bounce around, and you could make it open and close. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s a good way of putting it, actually.

Craig:  That’s exactly what it reminded me of. You know, it’s got kind of a small squat body, almost kinda like a toad or something. It looks

Todd:  like a frog.

Craig:  Long arms.

Todd:  It looks like a frog with a big wide mouth, and a lot of teeth, and then these arms. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s kind of inexplicable how it moves around. Like, it doesn’t even look like it has any legs or anything.

Todd:  At one point, it pulls itself across the kitchen floor with its tentacles as you would expect this thing to do. But by that point, we’ve seen this thing for in POV shots and stuff, like, just literally flying through the air. The thing is a camera. It’s just flying through the air. It’s like sweeping up staircases and, like, flying into doorways. It just Yeah.

Craig:  We never we don’t really see what happens to this girl. She kinda gets attacked. But before we actually see well, her car gets attacked, I guess, is a better way of putting it. And then it cuts to this scene in a high school, in an English class, which is so hilarious to me because the the the kids in the class look older than the teacher.

Todd:  Oh, yeah. I was thinking the same thing. I thought maybe one of them was volunteering to teach the class that day. That’s exactly what it looks like. Typical for these movies.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s very typical. You know, the the teacher can’t get the kids to engage at all, and they’re all just sitting there staring at the clock. And, she’s like, I bet you know when spring break starts, and they’re all like, thirty seconds. And the bell rings, and it’s like, you know, Greece. When the bell rings at the end, they all run out like, yay.

Todd:  I know I know this is exactly how your last day of school was, right, this year? That’s pretty much how it goes. You all stand sit and stare at the clock, and then when the bell rings and everybody springs out of their seats, you roll your eyes.

Craig:  You learn. You learn. You learn, when you get into the teaching profession that the teachers are watching that clock just as closely, if not more so than the students. And the teachers are out of there just as fast and just as excitedly.

Todd:  Yeah. Do they yeah. They need to one in one of these movies show the shot of the back of the school where the teachers are bursting out of the back door. Yeah. Running to their cars in the staff parking lot.

Craig:  Yeah. And, so then we’re introduced to this group of kids that are gonna go off to one of their parents’ cabin in the woods, literally.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And there there are seven of them and, you know, we probably name them as we go along, but it’s just your typical group. You know? You’ve got

Todd:  David the smart one because he

Craig:  had glasses. The the nerd one because he’s got glasses. Janet, the Brazilian foreign exchange student,

Todd:  which I

Craig:  thought was hilarious. Doreen, who’s like the hot blonde. Nick, it’s his parents’ cabin, and he’s kinda it’s like the all American boy. Then there’s Jim, who’s like the hunky one, who is hooked up with Doreen. And Stacy is the only brunette, and she’s with Nick. And then there’s the horror movie guy, Mike.

Todd:  Mike the mouth.

Craig:  Yep. Yep. Exactly. And he’s us. You know, he’s the the goofy guy who makes lots of jokes and knows all of these horror movie references. So they head out there, and the first thing that happens is they pass by that car wreck, and Mike immediately thinks, oh my gosh.

Clip:  Well, this was a fun vacation, Nick. Too bad we have to go home now. Come on. You’re not gonna let a little thing like that scare you, are you? Yeah. Well, not bad. Can we please go home? We’ll take the wheel. Rotate it. Forget, man.  We’ve gone this far. We’re going all the way. You don’t understand. We just went through a warning. Don’t forget, I have rented out every single horror film on video tape and what we just went through is called a warning stage.

Craig:  Come on. None of us girls are scared. Are you?

Clip:  What is this? Peer pressure? Is that what we’re talking about now? Really, Mike. It’s logically stupid for you to be worried by this. Logically stupid? Is that what you said, logically stupid? Is this the person representing brilliance on

Craig:  our time? Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go.

Todd:  Mistake number one.

Craig:  And and these guys show up in these movies all the time. Like, in in the actual film, the, the Cabin in the Woods, you know, there’s one of these guys. And and in Scream, there’s the guy that knows all about the horror movies. And and it’s clever, you know, because they they do know so many references. And the shtick, of course, is that nobody believes them and, oh, stupid Mike, you’re always thinking it’s a horror movie or whatever. When, of course, it’s true. Yeah. They are in a horror movie.  I don’t know. This guy, they all end up getting annoyed with them.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And I think I would have too.

Todd:  Oh, I was annoyed with them. Much. I was annoyed with them by the time they made it to the house. I mean, you know, they’re outside talking about how they’re all gonna go off to this cabin in the woods, and, of course, there are gonna be no adults there, and they’re, like, five bedrooms. And Mike’s like, cabin in the woods. Cabin in the woods. Are you crazy? What’s going on? And but he ends up going. And then it’s like, oh, this

Craig:  is mistake number one.

Todd:  Can you believe it’s mistake number one? And they’re like, okay, Mike. Alright. Shut up. And then they get into the house and they’re like, are you crazy? We’re in the house now. We gotta lock the doors. We gotta close the things. It’s like broad daylight. And and everyone’s looking at him, and I’m thinking, oh my god.  Get get this guy out of here.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Why is he even there? You know? Like but it’s funny because I would have attributed it to really lousy writing. And it’s not great writing, you know, but he’s just he’s just a little too on about this all the time. Uh-huh. I mean, he really is.

Craig:  The whole movie. Yeah.

Todd:  But the fact that all of the other characters in the movie are just as annoyed with him as we are, you know, they’re not just Todd silly Mike or whatever. They’re just like, alright, dude, like, fucking shut up. You know? Right. Yeah. You’re you’re killing our vibe here. It it’s cool. I mean, I was like, okay. Yeah.  I’m I’m with you all on this. Mike is an annoying character and I’m glad we all recognize that. Yeah.

Craig:  And and then, you know, it just it hits all the notes, you know. There are a bunch of horny teenagers, you know, out in the woods by themselves, and so they they start hooking up and

Todd:  I I love the bit where where, you know, one of the things he’s riffing on is, like, now, what are we gonna do? Are we all gonna take walks in the woods? Are we all gonna go skinny dipping or whatever? And then, like, the next scene, this van inexplicably pulls up. Eight guys and ladies leap out of the back of this van. And as the van opens up, there’s, like, smoke pouring out of it. Like, they’ve all been high. They all stripped out and leap into this, this Todd, river pond thing right next to the house and just have a skinny dipping party. And just just just out of nowhere.

Craig:  There’s lots of nudity in the movie.

Todd:  There is.

Clip:  So if if you came to the show

Craig:  for the boobies, you are in luck.

Todd:  And usually, this is the part where all the bad people show up at the movie, and then they join the group and, you know, you just have more people to off.

Craig:  But Right.

Todd:  It’s like they lean out and they’re like, where are you guys? And they’re like, this isn’t the lake of blah blah blah or whatever, and they’re kinda going back and forth. And then they just okay. And they just leave. And they pile in their van and they leave, and we never see them again.

Craig:  They’re like, wait. Isn’t this the camp by the lake? And the guy’s like, no. It’s the house by the pond. And he was like, oh, sorry. We thought it was the camp by the lake. And so they splash around a little more, and then they leave, and they never see them again.

Todd:  That’s so funny.

Craig:  It’s it was I mean, it’s silly, but, yeah, it it was funny.

Todd:  Well and then, like, how many other times in this movie did the did the rest of them ended up skinny dipping? I mean, it’s there’s at least two more scenes of skinny dipping. Mhmm. Like, they can’t stay away from there.

Craig:  Well and and it’s just it’s it’s just silly little stuff. Like, I feel like I can’t really explain the vibe of the movie. You just kinda have to see it. But, like, even when they first get there, I don’t even know what has set, you know, Mike off aside from the car wreck or whatever. But even when they first get there, they’re just they get out of the car and they’re just standing there and he’s going on, oh, I don’t know. We we better be careful. It’s the horror movie or whatever. And the bushes behind him just shake.  It’s even in the credits, somebody’s credited as the bush shaker. Yeah. Like, like, they just shake and he kinda catches it out of the corner of his eye and he kinda looks back and he says something and then he looks back and it shakes again. You know, it’s just these these silly, silly little

Todd:  It’s it’s like he’s Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

Craig:  He is. Exactly. To be fair, these are things that happen in legit horror movies. Mhmm. But when you place them in this context, it just seems so goofy.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And it is, I guess, ultimately.

Todd:  Yeah. I mean, there’s something about it that works, but it doesn’t quite work. Like, I bet the script is smarter than the movie ended up being. You know? Yeah. I think if you had taken the script and put it in the hands of, not all amateur people, it probably would have gotten a little higher caliber of everything out of it. It probably would have come across a little smart. Maybe a little bit of rewriting, of course, especially some of the dialogue. That’s a lot of the dialogue does kinda feel like I was written by an 18 year old Right.  To be completely honest, who’s trying a little too hard. A lot of Mike’s dial a lot of Mike’s jokes and the stuff that he says is completely inappropriate to the situation. Mhmm. Like, what they just finished running from a monster and then they they come back into the room and they shut it off. Or or or my favorite one is when, they’re in the basement. This basement, which I feel like they keep acting like it’s this huge basement, but it’s a room almost the size of a walk in closet. At one point later in the movie, Mike is down in there with Stacy, and they know this creature’s out running around, and he has to leave to go do something inexplicably. So he leaves Stacy down there by herself, and she’s freaking out because there’s a mouse and backing up against an open window.  He ends up coming through the open window. He reaches his hand out and grabs her shoulder, and she goes, ah. And he says,

Clip:  so I’m paying you to stand in front of an open window, or is that your own idea? Yeah. There’s some razor blades in the corner you can play with next. Would you like to do that? Look. Let’s get this window boarded up first. Like,

Todd:  he goes on and on like a person who thinks they’re funny, but then they they’re, like, supremely annoying. And it’s like they their version of humor is just to point out stupid things that other people are doing and say that it’s stupid.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. And and I I agree with you. I think I I have to give Ralph Kanievsky credit because he was a kid when he wrote it. So I’m not expecting any real level of sophistication, but like you said, in somebody else’s hands. Like, you put this in Joss Whedon’s hands or or or somebody else who is a little bit more mature and who has refined their talents a little bit more. It could have been really funny, but some of the writing is just laughably bad. Like, at one point, the hot girl Doreen falls down and somebody says to her, oh, I think you broke your head.  Like, it’s just just just silly lines like that. Todd. I I

Todd:  What was that bit when they’re standing out? It’s when they first get there or whatever, and, one guy looks out and says, hey. What is that? And, the guy who owns it, Nick, says, oh, that’s an Indian sweat lodge. And then and then, somebody else pops into nerd. Oh, it’s the nerd who pops into Steve.

Craig:  Steve, it’s like

Todd:  Is that an ancient Indian sweat lodge?

Craig:  Yeah. Somebody told me the Indians used to use those to the male Indians used to use those to increase their sexual virility. Care if I check it out? Like,

Todd:  sure. Go ahead. And I thought that that would be, like, a part of the movie. Like, that would

Craig:  be deployed later. I thought surely something would go down in the ancient Indian sweat lodge, but, no, they just have one.

Todd:  That’s the last you see of it or hear of it. Yeah.

Craig:  So, you know, as happens in these movies, eventually, they start splitting off from one another. And the first people to go out are David the nerd, Janet the foreign exchange student, who they’re apparently a couple. I read that, initially, she in the script was written as the female nerd counterpart, for David. But when they cast this girl and she was from Brazil, they’re like, okay. We’ll make her the foreign exchange student.

Todd:  We’ll we’ll we’ll work with it. Whatever. I think they cast the girls primarily for their looks. I think most of them were models at the time.

Craig:  Yeah. I mean, it would make sense.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  You know, they’re they’re all buxom young beauties. Gosh. I don’t know. I mean, they they go out and

Todd:  Well and she’s, like, talking about a scene in a horror movie that she saw that basically mim mimics what they’re doing. Oh, and this couple, they go out into the woods all alone and then they start making

Craig:  That was really on the nose. Yeah. Like like, it was okay. Alright. I get it.

Todd:  He gets attacked by the monster. This is the first time we see a little bit more of the monster, and there’s a bit of blood and gore. And she gets her pants ripped off by the monster.

Craig:  Yeah. Like, it it it attacks him and, like, immediately starts to eat him, but real quick, it snatches her skirt off. Mhmm. He like so then she has to run around in her panties just because.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And and then she like, it does it’s it’s eating him, and it doesn’t even chase her. She just runs face first into a tree.

Todd:  And then we don’t see her for a while.

Craig:  No. Yeah. But I knew, you know, she she’s clearly knocked out. And I’m like, oh, well, alright. She’ll be out for a while, but she’ll show back up later.

Todd:  And, of

Craig:  course, she does. Even before that happened, they had dinner. They heard a noise inside. They went inside, and and a pan had just fallen down, but it had this Mhmm. Even, you know, even some of these smaller things like that, you suspend your disbelief when you’re watching these types of movies, but that would give me pause. Like, like, something clearly happened. And the girl who made, the dinner, Stacy, she’s like, well, that’s where all the leftover chicken was. And instead of them being like, oh, that’s weird, they’re like, oh, hearty r.  Well, then that makes sense. I thought that chicken tasted kinda off. And she’s, like, hey.

Todd:  That is, like, the level that we’re working with here, to be quite honest, in in much of this movie.

Craig:  Yeah. The acting is not great.

Todd:  And then Mike is, like, oh, it just proves that we gotta barricade the doors and lock

Clip:  the windows. And I’m thinking, but this means it’s inside.

Todd:  Yeah. You know? Whatever you think it is. And then he’s oh, I know it’s got it’s either gonna be an alien or oh, how about the shower scene? That this girl gets, strips down and steps into the shower and gets wet, but all we see is, like, her face and her stomach for a while. I thought that was kinda kinda weird.

Craig:  I thought it was kinda weird. It’s funny that you describe it the way that you do because I thought it was, like, you know, you see naked girls in showers in these horror movies all the time, but, like, I felt like they made a point of, like, doo doo doo. Okay. I’m washing my vagina now. Washing my hair? Yeah. Like, usually the girls just Todd in the shower and let the water cascade over them, but this she was cleaning up.

Todd:  She left. She she gets this the the shampoo out and lathers up her hair that you don’t usually see. But I just thought it was funny how, like, they were show I thought, oh, this must be the actress who had in her contract that she wasn’t gonna go Todd us for this movie. Nope. Not at all. Just not in this exploitive shower scene where they going to, I guess maybe they just didn’t wanna reveal the goods too soon.

Craig:  Yeah. I I and and at some point, I mean, it’s it’s hard to talk about the plot because, really, through the bulk of this middle part, they realize that there’s a monster. It exposes itself to them and they know. And so they’re really just kind of running around a lot. Yeah. You know, running to different rooms of the house, running outside, running back inside. At some point before the monster is completely revealed, even though I feel like Mike, our main guy, maybe he’s seen it, but

Todd:  Doreen sees it first because she’s making out with Jim, and she looks over and sees these green eyes staring at her, and they zap her.

Craig:  They well, they That’s when

Todd:  we find out the monster has eye lasers.

Craig:  They don’t zap her yet. She does see, the green eyes. But then they end up some this for some reason, they end up in a basement, and a cat falls out of the sky.

Todd:  And Yes. This was my

Craig:  favorite scene. I just thought it

Todd:  was really It’s a cat scare.

Craig:  Yeah. Right. And it was funny because, again, it’s very on the nose. But in this case, it’s funny that it gets called out

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  Because this does happen all the time in these in these movies. Like, literally, a cat falls out of the sky.

Todd:  Yeah. He just looks up, and he’s like

Clip:  Where did it come from? There’s nothing up there but ceiling. I love how these animals just fall out of nowhere right into your hands. And what they do, just hang up there by their claws and wait for people to pass

Craig:  by. Right. But Doreen where? So is I don’t know. Somebody says something like, oh, it’s a cat with beautiful green eyes. And Dorian’s like, oh, I did see something with green eyes. And they’re like, oh, well, they have to be a cat. Okay.

Todd:  Oh, please. These were glowing green eyes that you saw.

Craig:  And and so they’re pissed at Mike at this point. And so they lock him in the basement for the night. Mhmm. And all of this, you know, is in between semi graphic sex scenes. I I don’t even know, you know, how to, you know, chronologically put them in order, but just be aware that every five to ten minutes, you’re going to get a relatively graphic sex scene in the first forty five minutes of this movie.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  Which again, you know, that’s what you get when you have a 16, 18 year old kid writing a horror movie and a 20 year old then that same 20 year old kid producing and and making the horror movie. Heck, yeah.

Todd:  Dude, this must have been, like, his favorite thing ever. Can you imagine?

Craig:  Oh my god. All these beautiful girls. Okay. Well, I think you should probably be naked now.

Todd:  And Yeah. And then halfway through the movie, you’re just gonna spend the rest of the movie in your bikini. Yeah. Because that’s what happens to Stacy. Yeah. And you see other people, like, they come out of water and they put clothes on or they throw jackets on. She’s still running around next to them in her bikini. Uh-huh.  It’s it’s great.

Craig:  The whole last part.

Todd:  And I wasn’t complaining. No. It’s totally Oh,

Craig:  no. She’s she’s really pretty. I her acting

Todd:  By the

Craig:  way Yeah.

Todd:  No. Her acting’s fit is is terrible, but she, is one of the other few people who went on to do something, but not in the acting realm. This is her only movie, but her name is Bonnie Bowers. And I I looked her up, and she was a model at this time. She was on the Howard Stern show. Remember when Howard Stern back in the early nineties, late eighties had, like, a TV show? Yeah. And he’d always bring on women and bikinis Yeah. Just to be there and to joke around with.  She was on there. There’s a clip on YouTube you can find. But now, since this movie, she has been a bass guitarist for a reggae band and apparently very accomplished because she’s got tons of clips up on YouTube. She’s still touring. She’s got her own website and, makes a living putting out albums of reggae.

Craig:  Yeah. I should

Todd:  Quite interesting.

Craig:  I should have looked. Because I I didn’t even click on any of them. You know? I I looked at their cast the cast list online, and I didn’t even click on any of them because most of them didn’t even have a headshot on there. Like

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  So that that She’s

Todd:  one of the few.

Craig:  Yeah. That indicates that they haven’t done much when they don’t even have a headshot on there. And and she was one of the few that did, but I didn’t check her out. But Mike has to the the creature attacks him in the basement, and he breaks a a piece of pipe. So when they wake up in the morning, the water doesn’t work, and the basement is flooded. So Nick, whose parents own the house, he leaves, and takes their only car to go get a plumber. And then he’s gone for a while, and then that’s when the creature attacks. Everybody sees it.  Yes. Doreen gets shot in the eyes with these lasers, which looked I mean, it just it’s funny because it looks bad, but it does I mean, it just looks dumb. And it’s like, pew pew. You know, like

Todd:  Yeah. Literally.

Craig:  Like, these silly green lasers. And, of course, I knew that it had to be something, you know. Like, it’s not like nothing’s gonna come of it. And and apparently, when these people get, hit with the lasers, then they are mind controlled or possessed or something. And so Doreen attacks them eventually, and people start dying. The the hunky one, whatever his name is, Jim, gets attacked by the creature, and it, like, splooges on his face.

Todd:  Nice one. Okay.

Craig:  Well, it does. And then, his face melts off.

Todd:  Yeah. That was just a gratuitous scene to have in there so that you they could do this face melting effect. Because it kept cutting back to that over and over and over again.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Look, his face is melting a little more. Don’t forget, this guy’s face is melting. And Mike is sitting there just staring at it while this creature’s running around downstairs terrorizing everybody else. And then, Doreen, when she gets possessed or whatever and starts going after them, eventually, there’s this whole sequence. Was it before this? Was it was it when he and Jim are fighting? He and Jim have this almost Three Stooges esque kind of battle in the living room because Jim is pissed at Mike for something. Yeah.

Craig:  I don’t remember what it was. I actually thought the fight was not bad, and and I read that they all they did their own stunts. And so for these amateurs to choreograph, it went on for a while, and they were throwing each other around. And I didn’t think it was terrible.

Todd:  Yeah. No. It wasn’t terrible, but some of it didn’t make sense. Like, they jump on this cart, and then this cart flies across the room, and then inexplicably is out on the deck and careens towards the stairwell where it just suddenly stops. You know, I mean, again, it all could make sense, but the way it was shot, just some of it, the physics didn’t quite work.

Craig:  Well, it’s slapsticky. And and I think Well, yeah.

Todd:  But I don’t mean in a way

Craig:  that Right? Don’t didn’t you get that? You I mean, you said Three Stooges.

Todd:  I mean, it’s meant to be slapsticky, but even the Three Stooges, I mean, it makes sense. He swings a board around it whacks his guy.

Craig:  You know?

Todd:  They go into something and you know what I mean. It’s just, and then I think, at this point, in the middle of this, Doreen comes and attacks them both and whatever. And then she ends up face first through a window, the back window, and the pane of glass that hasn’t broken yet slides down on her and decapitates her, which was was one of the more gory shocking scenes in the movie that Oh, yeah.

Craig:  Decapitates her. I mean, it it looks entirely fake. It’s Oh, it does. It’s true. It’s a clear switch out from the actress to a mannequin.

Todd:  You only see the back of her head. So

Craig:  But, again, you know, good. Go for it. Mike comes back at some point. Like, like, they he’s not in the basement when they go to look for him the next day. But then after the attacks start happening, Stacy runs into him outside. And at this point, it’s almost like, told you so, and his dialogue gets even more sticky than it was before. But right when she runs into him, it is pretty funny. There’s there’s some, funny dialogue there.  And the creature tries to attack them, like, from behind a tree, and he, like, ties its arms around the tree. I mean, it’s it’s just goofy.

Todd:  Yeah. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s

Craig:  And then there’s one point where the creature okay. So it killed sexy Jim, and then it went after Stacy. Yeah. It’s just so funny the way that they shot it because part of it is POV from the creature’s perspective and part of it is not. But either way you’re looking at it, it’s very clear that the creature, rather than trying to, like, melt her face off, is trying to get in between her legs. Yeah. And somebody says it says something about how it hasn’t killed any of the girls. And he’s like and somebody says, well, maybe it wants them for some other purpose.  And they’re like, what? And Mike’s like, oh, maybe it wants to reproduce. And Stacy’s like, well, you know what? It did feel like it was trying to

Todd:  that’s some clever writing. That’s why I said moments of brilliance in this movie. The their comic timing was dead on with that one, I think.

Craig:  Yeah. It was pretty funny. And then at some point, Janet comes back. I don’t even remember what happens to her. Does she get killed again?

Todd:  She gets killed in the living room, but not before her shirt is torn open.

Craig:  Well, and and it

Todd:  I thought that was

Craig:  funny too. Tries to mate with her too. Mhmm. I think Doreen kills her, actually, before she’s decapitated.

Todd:  With a bat. That’s right. For the rest of the movie until somebody throws a a rug over her, every now and then, we see her just laying there with her boobs hanging out across the back of the sofa.

Craig:  Yes. Yes. And, and then Nick comes back, and immediately, the creature attacks him. So he throws the cat at it. That was there were so many funny things like that that I just thought were absolutely hilarious. Like Mhmm. You know, the creature attacks and and he looks around and all he sees is the cat. So he grabs the cat and throws the cat at the creature.  I thought that was so funny. The other thing and this is one of those things that it’s so stupid that it’s funny is that Mike’s main weapon against the creature is shaving Craig. Yeah. Because nobody likes a mouthful of shaving cream.

Todd:  That’s the line. Yep.

Craig:  And then he’s, like, armed with, like, multiple cans of shaving cream in these inner pockets of his jacket for the rest of the movie. And he keeps pulling them out and just shooting shaving cream around. Like, even when the creature’s not there, it’s I didn’t know if he was, like, marking territory or, like, oh, the creature most hate shaving Craig, so I’ll spray some right here. And then it will like, what? Like, what is even happening?

Todd:  It kinda boggles the mind. I read, you know, an interview with the director, and he was mentioning this part. And he said that that was kind of an LA thing that, like, when they were kids, they would and you can take, like, and heat up a pin and put it in the the sprayer of the shaving cream to, to open up that hole just a little wider so you can get a nice big spray and get some distance on it. And he said, like, during Halloween or whatever, they would run around and have shaving cream fights or whatever. Oh my gosh. Guess it’s a thing that he then decided, oh, I’ll throw that in the movie where it makes very little sense.

Clip:  It did.

Craig:  It it felt very trauma, which is fine, but it was just really goofy. And then so Nick is back and a bunch of them are dead. I don’t know. And they’re trying to run away, and I feel like they get in the car Mhmm. And Mike says, there are just a few rules. He says, don’t look in its eyes, avoid the green slime. And did I hear right? Did he say, and whatever you do, don’t try to kiss it? Is that what he said?

Todd:  That’s what he said. I didn’t know if he was referring to the reproduction part, and that was supposed to be a funny reference or what. But

Craig:  I didn’t get it at all. Like, wait. What? Okay. But whatever. So they they try to escape in the car, but the creature jumps on the hood and starts shooting lasers at them and

Todd:  Intensely.

Craig:  They end up intensely. Yeah. And they end up driving into the pond. And the plumber has shown up and he gets attacked and killed. So all the young uns get back to the house. And they set up some weird, like, Home Alone trap with mirrors and shaving Craig, and I didn’t really know what they were doing.

Todd:  We get a musical montage, and it’s like, Mike says, alright. Here’s the plan. Collect all the mirrors and all the light bulbs and all the flashlights that you can in the house. And the music kicks on and it’s all these scenes that run around tiny little light bulbs, the light bulb from, like, the refrigerator, the light bulb from the oven, the lights and all the lamps and things. I’m thinking, all these different sized light bulbs from all these different sized sockets, like Yeah. What purpose is this gonna serve? And it doesn’t seem to

Craig:  because I never understood what they did with them. Like, they just ran around and collected these tons of light bulbs. And then did they even do anything with them?

Todd:  She well, she had a handful of regular sized light bulbs, Stacy did. And she’s standing up on a chair on one end of the room. And then Mike is standing up on a chair in another part of the room. And Nick is standing up on a chair in another part of the room. And then they see the creature come in, and it’s all dark. And they’re using the flashlights to, like, like, somehow the creature’s attracted to light or something.

Craig:  They play with it like a cat. Yeah. Like a cat. Yeah.

Todd:  Like a laser pointer with a cat or something. And and they bring it towards a mirror. And I guess the idea was it thinks it’s going towards someone because it can see their reflection, but it’s really just the mirror. And so then it it bashes itself into the mirror, and then they turn on another light and do it. And then I’m thinking, what is she doing with the light bulbs? Right? She’s just throwing them on the ground so that they shatter. And that is the sound, I guess, it’s supposed to attract him to different parts of the room. But, again, there didn’t seem to be a master plan to all this. It was all kinda it’s all kind of bizarre.

Craig:  Didn’t really get it.

Todd:  It does end up in the in the oven.

Craig:  In the oven. And and that made sense to me, kind of. Like, you know, if you just put one mirror in front of the oven, you know, like, Jurassic Park style, you know, like, you know, trick it into thinking you’re there or whatever. And and but that’s what eventually happens. And it so it ends up in the oven, and somebody’s holding it in there. And it’s very tense, like, it might get out or whatever. And at some point, like, it almost gets out, and it grabs Stacy and it shoots lasers in her eyes. So then she’s possessed and she attacks Nick, but somehow they keep it in there long enough that eventually it explodes, which I guess breaks its spell on Stacy.  And, they all take off in the plumber’s van.

Todd:  And then there’s this interesting bit that I thought was supposed to be funny, but I just thought, where they, the the girl who had crashed earlier in the movie Yeah. Flags them down. And they pull her into the into the van. And as they’re driving, they put two and two together who she is. They’re asking these questions. She says, oh, you know, my stomach hurts

Craig:  or whatever. And he’s like, really? Have you had have you had any kinky sex lately? Yeah. And then,

Todd:  like, they look at her eyes. Your eyes are green. She says, yeah. They’ve been green since birth. I was born with green eyes. And then, the next shot is they’ve kicked her out of their van. They can’t make you. The van keeps going.

Craig:  And that’s it. And that’s the end. I actually thought that gag at the end was kinda funny. I I didn’t really anticipate that girl coming back. I mean, we had heard that when they drove by, the cops said that they hadn’t found a Todd yet. So that should’ve been an indication, but, it was kind of a surprise to see her back. And I I did think that it was funny that, they just ultimately just threw her out of the van and Threw

Todd:  her out.

Craig:  Went on without her.

Todd:  We’re messing with this. Yeah.

Craig:  And and then that’s the end, and then there’s a cheesy eighties song over the credits.

Todd:  I actually thought the music in this was kind of nice. I I enjoyed the music. It had this kind of, new wave. I mean, it’s dated.

Craig:  Yo. Sure.

Todd:  But even the score when it wasn’t, you know, a song when the score was going on, I I thought it it was very I it’s not what I expected from a low budget film like this was to have, like, a legitimately legitimate score behind it. You know, it’s not all synth and Yeah. Stuff that you find in these sorts of things. And the title sequence was really impressive too.

Craig:  No. Wasn’t it looked like a screensaver? Oh, come on.

Todd:  This is the eighties.

Craig:  I used to know. And it looks like a screensaver from the eighties, like, on your Commodore 64 or whatever.

Todd:  It’s way better than that. It looked like 02/2001, man. Fancy eighties. It’s

Craig:  a little bit. Like the black hole. Yeah. Kinda. Yeah.

Todd:  Before we had computer generated.

Craig:  That’s true. That’s true. It was a long time ago. The movie even though the movie came out in 1991, it has a very eighties vibe.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  It’s classic eighties garb. Like, at one point, Nick is, like, in slouch socks. Like, it’s it’s it’s very eighties, which, you you know, I love. Well, it’s why

Todd:  we picked it.

Craig:  So that’s fun. You know, overall, for for a first effort, it’s serviceable. I I don’t think that and it’s probably because you saw it a long time ago and you kinda got some nostalgia for it. I I didn’t think it was great. I didn’t love it. I I I certainly wouldn’t watch it again. But and I’ve seen other movies that are kind of similar in nature that I think are better. Like, I think of, like, Basket Case. 

I I think that Basket Case is ultimately a better movie with a similar vibe. But it’s not bad, and it’s cute. It’s a fun little romp. It it is, you know, it’s the kind of thing that you would when you’re 11 year old me and you’re up at 02: 00 in the morning on a Saturday morning slash Sunday night and it it pops up on cable, you know, I would have sat and watched it and and probably have been amused. It it is amusing.

Todd:  The humor would have been a little more tailored to your taste at that point.

Craig:  Well, and and the boobies and, the guys running around in their jocks or their, you know, little tighty whities or whatever. Yeah. I I I could’ve got down with that. But, for the more sophisticated of you out there, I don’t think it’s gonna be something that you’re gonna, you know, rave about. But, you know, it’s it’s it’s just a a little corny movie and, you know, I I had never even heard of it. And it’s so rare for me to have not even heard of one of these movies that we do. So it was fun. I’m glad we did it.  I I didn’t love it, but it was fun.

Todd:  Well, I I know I probably enjoyed a little bit more than you did. But, again, like, it wasn’t just the nostalgia for it. It was going back and not having seen it in so long and Yeah. Kinda knowing that it wasn’t gonna be that great. And sort of being charmed by it in a way that I don’t even think I was charmed by it back then. You know? Maybe because my expectations were already lowered. Maybe. I was only I was punching up, you know, for for this.  But, yeah. I thought I I thought it was fun. And and if you’re gonna go and you’re gonna try to find one of these cheesy eighties horror movies that you can laugh at or live with in the case of this, there are much worse things out there. I mean, this is actually pretty fun. It’s got some heart. The acting’s not great, but it never is.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  The writing’s not fantastic, but it rarely is. It really does have flickers of brilliance in there, I think, of of originality, and that that there’s something to be said for that.

Craig:  And I’m like a broken record. I say this all the time. But, you know, like, you wanna sit around and and goof on a movie. This would be a good one. Or or for a date night where where you’re not really particularly interested in the movie. You know? Like, you just wanna kinda have something on in the background while you eat popcorn and talk and

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Do whatever you do. Is that what you

Todd:  do on date nights?

Clip:  Yep.

Todd:  Nowadays, yes. Alright. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook. Just search for two guys in a chainsaw. Leave us a message there. Let us know what you thought of this movie.  If you have good fond memories of it, you have some cool take on it that we didn’t get, we’d love to hear from you there or on our website, 2guys.red40net.com. Also, you can leave us some requests. We have a small pile of requests requests that we do get Todd, and, we love to hear the movies you want us to watch. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We were told this was a horror movie, although it’s at least 70% straight Western. Which doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy it. On the contrary, the star-studded cast and excellent writing made this a good watch and fine discussion.

Episode 178, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today, we hit another request. This one came through our Facebook page from Addison. Phone Tomahawk from twenty fifteen, starring our, favorite Kurt Russell. You like Kurt Russell, Craig?

Craig:  I do like Kurt Russell. I think what what do the kids say today? He’s a snack.

Todd:  You think you could say that in a more sultry voice? I, I I didn’t quite I don’t think

Craig:  you made your point clear enough. No. I do like Kurt Russell.

Clip:  He’s a he’s a cool guy.

Todd:  Yeah. Me too. I’ve always loved him. Maybe not as much as you, but I’ve always loved him. Alright. So we were very happy to review Boom Tomahawk. I hadn’t actually heard of this one before. It it’s only been, four years since it came out.  Directed by s Craig Zahler. Now s Craig Zahler is also known for doing, puppet master, the littlest reich. Yeah. He did that one after Bone Tomahawk. Usually, those one those ones come first. Yeah. Usually. But I think this guy is actually more prolific than his IMDB page would say.  He’s written, like, over 40 screenplays. He’s several novels that have been published. It just so happens that most of the stuff that he’s written has not, come to fruition in production. A lot of it’s been optioned by a list actors. He likes to joke that most of the a list has passed through a lot of his scripts in Hollywood, but for one reason or another, things just fall through. So he wrote this one with the intention of directing it. He put a team together, wrote this, clearly got a lot of a list actors interested because we have quite a few names in this one.

Craig:  Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Todd:  And, and I really enjoyed watching this movie. It is two hours and twelve minutes, which at first gave me pause.

Craig:  Me too.

Todd:  Craig and I don’t like to watch long movies. But in this case, I thought it really worked because, it was it was almost like sitting down to watch a John Wayne western. It it’s a western, by the way. A western.

Craig:  It definitely is. I would actually say that it’s more of a western than it is a horror movie. I I don’t know. I’m I feel a little bamboozled, Addison.

Todd:  Thanks a lot, Addison.

Craig:  No. I mean, it it certainly has horror elements. But in the first ten minutes and the last twenty minutes of, the movie, beyond that, it’s really more of a western. And it is it is good. And like you, you know, I saw two hours and twelve minutes or whatever it is, and I was like, oh, it’s so long. But I it didn’t feel really that long. But I did read in the trivia. It said something along the lines of the final film is wholly representative of the first draft of the script.  And I thought, yep, kinda seems like it. Like, I I I kinda felt like they could have trimmed it by about a half an hour.

Todd:  Really?

Craig:  And it yeah. I mean, not Well, they could have. Because anything that was going on was, you know, terrible or or super boring, but I didn’t necessarily need big long conversations about the flea circus. Actually, the flea circus was kinda one of the sweeter moments of the movie. But there were there were other, you know, conversations and stuff that went on that I’m like, this would have been a really good deleted scene.

Todd:  Something to go back and look at later.

Craig:  Right. And and and and I’m I’m being harsh. It it wasn’t bad. Nothing in it. Well, there were a couple of cringey acting moments, I thought. Just a couple. Overall, I thought it was it was well done. I thought that it could have been cut a little bit for time, but overall, I understand why it was recommended.  I don’t think it was a bad movie. I think there was a lot of talent that went into this, and so you’ll see as we go through it. I’m not gonna be super critical because I I really did end up enjoying it. And it didn’t feel super long, and it didn’t feel like a waste of my time. So, I’m not gonna give it too much crap for for being a little bit long.

Todd:  Well, I’m just gonna disagree with you just a little bit. I mean, I I understand the points you’re making, and I see what you’re making. But, this would have been a very different film if it had been cut down and trimmed to the bare minimum. Yeah. It would have been very much like many horror films we see, but, you know, actually, this was addressed by the in something I read. I don’t know. I was reading somewhere online about this, and the writer director, s Craig Zahler, said that, there were distributors and and money people who wanted him to do a ninety minute version of this, you know. And he said, I didn’t I wasn’t interested in doing a ninety minute version filled with heavy metal, even though I’m a heavy metal fan.  You know? He he wanted a a western, a western with horror elements, a horror western. And I felt like watching this, I was getting a little bit of an Eli Roth vibe. I’m thinking of maybe the first Hostel where quite a bit of story goes by before you get to the horror elements. And then suddenly, bam, at the end, you know, the last thirty minutes is super brutal and super shocking.

Craig:  That’s true.

Todd:  I felt like that was this movie a little bit. But also, I just I enjoy I don’t know. I just really enjoy westerns Todd. And I felt like this one at its core was so classic western. In fact, some of the characters in here are really throwbacks to particular characters in the John Wayne westerns. I’m thinking specifically of of Rio Bravo, the, character that who’s the guy? Chicory.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. He was great. Richard Jenkins played him. Yeah. He was he’s been oh, he’s been in a bazillion things, but he played the dad in the American remake, Let Me In. He was also in Cabin in the Woods. He was one of the two scientists. Very recognizable.  And and I I liked him a lot.

Todd:  He was good and he was sweet. And he did the the little, flea circus bit that you’re talking about.

Clip:  I’ve been thinking a lot about that flea circus. You were the one that come into Bright Hope. Well, I don’t know what your opinion is, but, my wife said it was all a trick. You know, even when those brothers give us those magnifying glasses and we we saw those fleas pull that little stagecoach right into the depot, roll those cannons, those tiny little cannons onto the battlefield. She said, those fleas are dead. They’re just glued to some mechanical contraption, you know, that, it moves on its own like a a time piece or a wind up. Still, I thought it was real. And I told her, I said, don’t talk so loud.  The the performers will hear you.

Todd:  You know, he really called back, a guy named Walter Brennan, who was almost like a sidekick to John Wayne and probably, like, about a dozen John Wayne movies in the same way that he played this sort of

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  I wanna say sidekick, but, you know, he’s the guy that makes Kurt Russell look really good. Yet, he’s just friendly, and he’s there, and he’s amiable and affable. And he’s there to kinda lighten the mood a little bit, but also to kinda keep everybody else happy and going and kinda push.

Craig:  Mhmm.

Todd:  And and very much like Walter Brennan was in those old western movies who played more of, like, a hic ish character in those. But but but, you know, it was it’s the same kind of feel, and I thought that that buddiness really worked well.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  How Kurt Russell, sometimes you even forget he’s there, and it’s okay. You know? Because he when he is there, he’s a strong, commanding sheriff. It just Mhmm. Again, sort of in the same way that John Wayne was. He didn’t have to be out front and boisterous. He just was a presence when he was on screen that were always reminded you, oh, yeah. This guy’s still in charge.

Craig:  Well, it was it was cute. You know? Like, Kurt Russell, like you said, he plays kinda the hard nosed sheriff. And and that’s not to say that he’s unfeeling or unsympathetic. He’s not, you know. He is a a sympathetic character and and he does have emotion. But it’s almost like Chicory is kind of like the little sympathetic simple angel on his shoulder.

Todd:  Oh, there you go. That’s a good way of putting it.

Craig:  It’s it’s really cute. Chicory is an older guy, you know, Sheriff Hunt, Kurt Russell refers to him very affectionately as old man, you know, most of the time. And

Todd:  And he’s the backup deputy.

Craig:  Yeah. He’s the backup deputy, but he’s so devoted to his duty. You know? And, like, it was really cute. I liked him a lot, and and I liked that dynamic between the two of them. In fact, I thought that the dynamic between all of the characters was really endearing. Even some of the characters who weren’t on their own particularly endearing. I I’m thinking specifically of the character played by Matthew Fox, Brooder.

Todd:  Mhmm. He

Craig:  was kind of a dick.

Todd:  But Yeah. He was.

Craig:  Within the context of this group of guys, he played a part, you know? Like like, they were a a part of a gang, you know? Like, they needed one kind of jerky kind of guy. But but he also served a purpose. He was also really efficient. You know, he was a sharpshooter, and he got stuff done. And and so he served his purpose. I I thought that the chemistry between the characters was really good.

Todd:  Yeah. The balance is really quite Todd, especially that posse that eventually goes out because you have Kurt Russell who’s the law. Mhmm. He’s the one who’s gonna lead the group, but also with a certain sense of right and wrong. Chicory, like you said, is like the angel on his shoulder, and he’s more the moral center of the group, and he’s the one constantly sort of reminding people what’s right.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And it’s interesting because you really, you wonder early on, like, why is this guy here? Like, he’s gonna be the first to go. Alright. Because he’s got a limp, he’s older and all that, but he has a role to play and it’s not physical. It’s to be that guy. And then, like you said

Craig:  But but hold up. He’s not worthless either. You know, like No.

Clip:  No. No. No. No. No.

Craig:  He can pull his own when when this stuff starts to go down.

Todd:  He does, but that’s not immediately obvious, you know, when when they start out. Right? Right. Yeah. And and then, like you said, you’ve got Brooder who is the kind of cold blooded, chip on his shoulder guy, and he’s more of the amoral type. And, you know, that’s sort of an acknowledgment of the whole Man From Nowhere trope that you find. This isn’t a Man From Nowhere movie, but, you know, in restaurants, you have this sense that, in order to get justice in the West, you have to do things that are offensive to the sensibilities of the populace, you know? Yeah. You have to cross the line because the bad guys are willing to cross the line. Right.  So you gotta have somebody who’s willing to cross the line, but, at the end, like, the movie ends up holding them accountable for it. You know? Yeah. In in the man from nowhere trope, the the the guy has to ride off into the sunset. You know? He can’t linger in the town. He can’t be one of them. He ends up, dying in the movie. He’s not the only one, but, he’s one of the first ultimately to go, I think. So yeah.  It’s it’s really interesting. And then you have that dynamic of the guy who shouldn’t be with the group, but he’s obligated to be there. Right? And he’s gonna slow them down, and he’s gonna actually be kind of a problem to at least to their to their end and their goal, but nobody is going to tell them not to be there. And that is the whole reason for their going off is the husband of, a woman named Samantha, Arthur. And so yes. We’ve got Arthur. We have the sheriff. We have Brooder, and we have Chicory who go off on this adventure.  But, of course, a good deal of the movie has to lead up to that.

Craig:  Right. Honestly, you know, this is one of the longer movies that we have reviewed in a while. And I took significantly fewer notes than I usually take because really not all that much happens. You could summarize the plot of this movie in sixty seconds.

Todd:  Like most westerns, by the way.

Craig:  Well, and and that may be, you know, I I I’ve seen some modern westerns. I grew up in a rural area. My family were country folk and they were big into westerns. I never really got into it, so I haven’t seen a lot of them. I’ve seen some more of the modern ones, but and you and I watched Ravenous and reviewed it, and and I really enjoyed that. But I don’t maybe know as many of the tropes as you do when it comes to westerns. But the way that the movie starts out is you’ve got these two guys and they’re they’re they’re bandits. You’ve got Purvis, who’s played by David Arquette, who is also in Ravenous, by the way, and, Buddy, who’s played by Sid Haig, who keeps popping up in all these movies that we review.

Todd:  Just last week.

Craig:  Yeah. I I guess their deal is that they are robbers and with no moral compass. Like, they will just kill people in their sleep and then rob them of whatever they have on them. And that’s where it opens. They have killed these guys, these these sleeping men and

Todd:  And, you know, this is a good way to open this movie with these two guys. Because, of course, these guys are gonna stumble upon the main bad thing, but Right. These guys really lay out for us the danger. Right? Yeah. That these other characters are going to face throughout the whole movie. And that is while you’re on this trek across the Old West, you fall asleep or you go on this Craig. You know, it’s a scary place out there, and there are people just like this who will come up to you in your sleep and just kill you and take your stuff.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And so I thought it was really actually pretty clever to start out this movie with two of these characters getting us on their side and their point of view and even humanizing them in a way. I mean, they’re affable with each other. They’re very nonchalant about what they’re doing.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  I think it’s important because westerns are a little tricky territory to delve into nowadays, because a lot of our westerns in the past were about the Indians. Uh-huh. It’s the white man against the Indians, and the Indians are the bad guy, and they’re savage, and they’re gonna come, and they’re gonna steal your women, and they’re gonna kill people. And so when they’re going out across the West, that’s the danger. Right? These other people. And they’ve been so demonized in film that it’s very clear that the director here has taken great lengths to to not be that kind of movie. And so by having these two white guys be the brigands that are out there, and very nonchalantly, just like the guy next door, having these conversations with each other, doing their thing, except their thing is coming up to people in the middle of their sleep sleep, cutting their throats, you know, shooting them in the head and taking all their stuff and then wandering off to the next thing. I thought it was really smart, you know, to do this.

Craig:  Yeah. And both of these guys I mean, David Arquette and Sid Craig are both I just like them both so much,

Todd:  you know.

Craig:  They’re just real they’re both really charismatic and and they play Todd West vagabonds really well. They make slitting throats and shooting people in the head amusing.

Clip:  There are 16 major veins in the neck, and you have to cut through them all. Alright. 16. My uncle had an acquaintance with a man who used to be a doctor, and that’s what he said.

Craig:  And so I was thinking that they were gonna be around.

Clip:  Do you hear that?  This one’s a gust. That’s a real musical gust. And? It’s ominous. This is not the time for womanly imaginings. Go.

Craig:  And they come across you know, it’s all desert and mountainous, and they come across this area where they start seeing at first animal skulls, like, mounted in rocks and then eventually human skulls and then what appears to be what looks like an Indian burial ground, like a smaller version of what you see in Pet Sematary, you know, like mounded rocks and those types of things. They’re hearing these weird howls and things and eventually, buddy Sid Craig is like, well, if you’re out there, come and get us. And then he just immediately gets shot right in the throat with, an arrow, and he’s dead. And, Purvis, David Arquette, takes off and then it cuts to eleven days later and we are in the lovely small western town of Bright Hope. Looks very clean and new. And this is where, you know, in the next ten minutes we are introduced to all of our characters. And the first one we’re introduced to is somebody you’ve already mentioned, Arthur, who is played by Patrick Wilson who’s been in a bazillion things. Look him up if you don’t know.  He’s been in a million things. What we learn about him is that he’s this young up and coming guy. He tells the sad story about how he was working his way up in this I don’t know what it was. Was it mining? Was it farming?

Todd:  I’m not sure either.

Craig:  I don’t know. I’m not sure what it was, but he was, you know, he was a a low guy on the totem pole, but he had just worked his way up to the point where he was gonna be, like, supervisor or something. But then he he broke his leg.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Now, the the group that he was working with has moved on and has taken with them most of the men of the town. So the town is very sleepy right now. It’s mostly wives and families of this crew or whatever it is that has moved on to do other work. But he’s very disappointed because he’s lost his opportunity or whatever. But luckily, to ease his disappointment, he has a smoking hot wife named Samantha played by Lily Simmons. And she, takes care of him and Hey. Or always the one. But she’s also, like, I don’t know.  She’s

Todd:  The town doctor or at least the doctor that’s available right now.

Craig:  The or a nurse or an aide or something. You know, she’s got medical expertise. And then we go to the town pub where we meet Brooder whose name is very fitting because he’s kind of this broody guy played by Matthew Fox from lost and lots of other things. And there are just so many pop up people in this. Like there’s a piano player in the bar played by James Tolkien, who was the principal in the back to the future movies. Like I recognized him immediately. And then Chicory who is we’ve already talked about, and Sheriff Hunt, the Kurt Russell, and and, you know, as much as this is a western and a horror movie eventually, in these first twenty minutes, I was thinking, is this a comedy? There is quite a bit of humor and Chicory Richard Jenkins is really funny, but in hindsight, it just seems very natural. It doesn’t seem like, oh, hardy har slapstick comedy.  It just seems like this is the kind of guy he

Todd:  is. Yeah.

Craig:  Chicory is just kinda like the the down home folksy kinda guy. Yep. Like, he seems simple. And it almost seems like the sheriff is kind of humoring him

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  By allowing him to be the backup deputy. But in the end, he’s not.

Todd:  He’s pretty deep.

Craig:  Yeah. I mean, he he’s a good guy and he’s been through a lot and he’s actually very capable, you know. Like, as it turns out, he has medical experience from the military. He has military experience. You know, it’s just these very subtle things but that they make a point of showing that, you know, he visits his wife’s grave every day and he brings her flowers and he talks to her. And while it may seem a little bit simple, it’s also just very sweet and very endearing. To me, he was the most endearing character

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  In the whole movie. For sure. And you’re just kind of in love with him by the end. Like, he’s like your grandpa who you would never expect to be so wise and and so experienced and and so capable. And, Richard Jenkins did a really great job with that.

Todd:  I agree.

Craig:  And that’s pretty much it, you know. So we meet all these people and then Purvis shows up in town, which kind of sets up the events that lead to, you know, the journey of the movie.

Todd:  Yeah. He, he basically is seen by Chicory, I think. No. No. No. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.  By Chicory Outside the town burying his bags. And so and then he comes in and has a drink at the bar. And, Chicory comes back and says, you know, sheriff, there’s a mysterious stranger coming to town. And Kurt Russell’s like, alright. Well, I guess we’d better go check it out. And so they go to the bar. And Kurt Russell’s pretty no nonsense. I mean, you know, I think that this really sets him up as a strong, clever guy, his first confrontation with this man.  Because, you know, on the face of it, it’s just a guy who wandered in wanting a drink, but, you know, Chicory has seen the suspicious thing. So he’s gonna push him a little bit, and pretty soon he ends up shooting him in the leg, and, dragging him off to the locker because he suspects something’s something’s weird about him. So he’s taken to the jail, and they call in Arthur’s wife, Samantha, to

Craig:  help him decide. They call they call for the doctor first, but the doctor’s drunk.

Todd:  Oh, right.

Craig:  So then they have to get Samantha, who has just had a very steamy sex scene with her husband. But, apparently, she’s ready to go now.

Todd:  Well and her husband’s pretty laid up. He has, well, in more ways than one.

Craig:  Yeah. Right.

Todd:  But he got injured. His leg, broken. Maybe his shin broken or something Yeah. Yeah. During, you know, his previous thing. And so he’s clearly and it they make very great pains to show the pain that he’s in, with his leg. So she’s tended to his leg, and she’s gonna go and remove the bullet from this other leg. And they call in the regular deputy, who’s a young guy who doesn’t end up being on the screen for too long.

Craig:  Nick. Yeah.

Todd:  They ask Nick to watch her and their their prisoner, who is out from tincture of opium. She’s given him a little spoonful of this stuff in order to, calm him down for their surgery. So, he’s more or less out. And so they decide that they can walk out. There’s a stable hand, who goes out to see some horses and gets immediately slaughtered. And the horses are missing, and so the guy who owns the horses comes in to the sheriff and tells the sheriff, hey, these horses are missing. It’s almost morning time by now, I think.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  And they investigate the horses, and they do see that the horses are missing. They do see that this guy’s been killed. They’re not sure if it’s by an animal or what. And then somebody comes and runs down and says that the whole sheriff’s office is empty.

Craig:  Empty.

Todd:  And they go there, and they find that the girl is missing, and the prisoner is missing.

Clip:  And Yeah.

Todd:  Yep. And then there’s a arrow, stuck in the wall. Kind of a strange arrow. The Kurt Russell

Clip:  Yeah.

Todd:  Picks up the arrow and looks at it and says, you know, I’m not really sure what Indians these these might be, so we’re gonna get our town expert on that, who is a Native American.

Clip:  Mhmm.

Todd:  And so, again, like, this was a really cool part of the movie. And I and, like I said, it was almost a little too obvious how the great pains they were taking to make sure this movie is not too racist. Yeah. What they’re really trying to do is set up from the beginning that the bad guys here are not Indians. And so they all meet up in the bar. It’s just everybody we’ve seen so far pretty much gathers together, and they call in this guy. And, he looks at it, and he knows exactly what this is.

Clip:  Only one group that hunts with this. Who? They don’t have a name. What kind of tribe doesn’t have a name? One that doesn’t have a language. Cave dwellers. You know where they are? I have a general idea. You’ll take us to them? I won’t. Because you’re an Indian? Because I don’t wanna get killed.  You’re afraid

Craig:  of your own kind?

Clip:  They’re not my kind. They’re a spoiled bloodline of inbred animals that Craig beneath their own mothers.  Well, what are they? Troglodytes. What do they look like?  Man like you would not distinguish them from Indians even though there’s something else entirely.

Todd:  Brooder, at some point here, when they decide they’re all gonna ride out and find these guys and rescue Samantha, Brooder says he wants to join the party too because he feels responsible. He’s the one who came to, get Samantha. Plus, I’ve killed more Indians than probably anybody else in this room. And the native American guy turns him and says, well, that’s a

Craig:  a strange brag or something like that. Yeah.

Todd:  There’s there’s a little bit of that back and forth just to let us know. By the way, the bad guys in this are not Native Americans. In fact, that’s all we really see of Native Americans for the rest of this film.

Craig:  I mean I mean, they are, but they’re they’re also other. You know? Like, yes, they are Native Americans, but they’re not your typical you know, they’re bad. You know? Like

Todd:  They’re truce.

Craig:  Just as in, you know, the the guys from the Hills Have Eyes are white guys, but, you know, like, they’re not just representative of Caucasian people. You know what I mean? Like Yeah. Of course. That’s I that’s what I felt like.

Todd:  I mean,

Craig:  that’s basically what it is. I mean Mhmm. They are kind of the hills have eyes kind of Native Americans. They’re cave dwellers and cannibals.

Todd:  But almost from, like, another time. Yeah. Like, they’ve had very little contact with civilization. They’ve got their own entirely own thing going.

Craig:  Yeah. They’re nonverbal. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I wanted to mention we’re also introduced to the sheriff’s wife, Lorna, who’s played by Catherine Morris, who was the lead on the network television show Todd Case Forever. And you hardly see her at all, but I like her. So I wanted to give her a shout out.

Todd:  They have a nice little scene and a couple scenes between him and her. And it’s really nice that this movie takes great pains to show that relationship because it it raises the stakes a little bit about them leaving. And that was another thing that I was really struck with by this movie. I think more so than your stereotypical westerns tend to do, the women are not, like, shoved to the side or or they’re just prostitutes or they’re just kind of receding in the background in this hyper masculine story. The women are actually very much a part of this story, and not just because it’s a go get rescue the princess kinda way. Right. But you’re gonna see all of the women who care about these men. The fact that they’re leaving is a big deal to them, and they’re gonna be back there worrying.

Craig:  Well, and the and the men who are genuinely driven by their feelings for their Yes.

Todd:  Wives. And talk about it a lot Yeah. While they’re out on the trail. This is the subject of half of their conversation. Even, Chicory, who, like you said earlier, is grieving his dead wife, and it shows a scene of him taking the flowers to the grave. He talks about her out in on the road, and that’s just not something you typically see in these westerns, really.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  The women are more or less kind of forgotten. You know? Yes. So I thought that was a really nice touch here as well, and it really made this a little more relatable and just rounded out these characters so well and made you care more. And, you know, I I thought that that was a good reason why the first part of the movie could take so long for me. I was interested in these people. I was interested in their plight. I really got to know them. I really started to care about them.  And through means that I thought were quite interesting, I liked hearing these little stories and these little asides in the same way that kinda watching a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  You know, sometimes the dialogue is part of the enjoyment even though it doesn’t necessarily advance the plot any. It’s still kind of real what they’re doing, and it’s clever, and it’s cute, and it’s fun, and gets you to know these people a little more and care about them a little more.

Craig:  Yeah. I agree. And so everybody meets up in the bar. They talk about, you know, what they’re going to do and ultimately what’s decided. The sheriff says, I’m going to go, and Arthur is going to go because we have to. We have no other choice. Arthur because it’s his wife and the sheriff because he’s the sheriff. He’s the law.  He has to go. But Chicory says, no. I wanna go too. And he says, no, old man. You stay here. You you know, it’s almost kinda like a father son kinda deal. You you feel the connection between these two men. Chicory obviously respects the sheriff because of his authority, but it goes beyond that.  You know, you see that there is genuine affection between these guys, And and Chicory insists, and he is an older guy, but he insists, you know, Nick, the deputy is gone. This is what a backup deputy is for. Eventually, the sheriff concedes. And then Brooder says, I’m going Todd. I’ve killed more Indians than any of you combined, and it was me who took the wife there or whatever, and and so he’s gonna go Todd. So they’re the ones that are gonna go. I love there was this tiny moment that’s totally insignificant, totally could’ve been cut, but I’m glad it wasn’t where the mayor and his wife bar a gin.

Todd:  Another another great example of, of the woman, you know, the woman’s place in this. It’s hilarious.

Craig:  And the mayor’s wife obviously just speaks for him. I don’t think that the mayor had a single line. I don’t think he spoke a single word.

Todd:  Just at the very end when he asked how to spell troglodytes for the teledra. Right. Right. Right. And

Craig:  but, they burst in and the mayor’s wife was played by Sean Young who, Todd bless her, is just a washed up actress, and will just

Todd:  Take anything?

Craig:  Do anything that’s given to her. And her performance is just almost laughable. Like, it’s so silly. My favorite story about Sean Young, it has nothing to do with this movie, and anybody who’s in the movie trivia will probably already know this, but Sean Young was supposed to be in the first Michael Keaton Batman. So Sean Young was cast in that role, but there was a horse riding sequence. And when they were, filming that, she fell off the horse and she broke her leg or something, and and they replaced her with Kim Basinger. When Tim Burton said that he was gonna do a new Batman movie, Sean Young wanted to play Catwoman, and she dressed herself up in complete full Catwoman garb and went to the studio offices where Tim Burton was working Todd to try to lobby for this role. And Tim Burton literally hid under his desk until they were able to get her out of the building.  Yeah. And that’s my favorite Sean Young story. But anyway, she’s funny. And her husband who only has that one line is Jameson Newlander who was Alan Frog from the lost boys. He was the Craig brother who wasn’t Corey Feldman.

Todd:  I did not know that. Oh my gosh.

Craig:  Totally unimportant, but there you go. There’s your trivia for the day.

Todd:  Let’s be kind to Sean Young. She was Rachel in in Blade Runner, and she was quite a quite a powerhouse in that movie. So Oh,

Craig:  she was. Yeah.

Todd:  It was years ago.

Craig:  Early eighties, you know, her star was rising, and then it just fell, and she didn’t take it very well. But anyway alright. So they’re all gonna go out. Now okay. Two things. One, I think that it’s totally stupid that they took this maimed guy along with them. I understand why he would want to go. Arthur? Yeah.  I understand why he would want to go because it was his wife, but I don’t understand why anybody with any sense of logic would allow him to come on this treacherous journey. They barely know where they’re going, and they know the sheriff says that normally, this would be a five day horse ride, but we’re gonna try to do it in three days. And, like, he even makes a big deal of like, we gotta be really careful because we could kill these horses if we’re not careful. Like, it’s gonna be this treacherous journey. So why would they take him? I I I don’t know that I necessarily believe that. You know, ultimately, it’s important to the plot. Whatever.

Todd:  Well, they could have had they could have had a scene where they’re like, no. You can’t go. And he’d be like, it’s my wife. Damn it. And then it’s like, okay. Well, just don’t slow us down. Or, you know, they could have just acknowledged it from the beginning like they did. I feel like he was gonna go no matter what.

Craig:  I know. I get it. I mean, I understand for the purposes of the movie why he went. I just am saying logistically, it doesn’t make any sense.

Todd:  Logistically, it’s a bad idea.

Craig:  Yeah. Secondly, as I was watching the next at least hour of this movie, I kept thinking of that scene from Stand by Me where they’re sitting around the campfire and they’re talking about TV shows. And Will Wheaton says, you know that show Wagon Train? I mean, it’s a really good show, but they never get anywhere. They just keep on wagon training. Like, and that’s, like, seriously, like, at least at least an hour of this movie is just them journey. Sure. And it’s that’s not to say that it’s entirely boring. It’s not.  But, like, it’s just a long, long trek through the desert.

Todd:  But it’s not like stuff doesn’t happen on this trek.

Craig:  Fair. I’m alright. We’re fine.

Todd:  I was actually that. What thank you, Craig. I I was I was actually flashing back to what is not a western, but could very well be considered a western because it had a western style plot, which was our, the seven golden vampires. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, that’s almost the opposite of this movie. In that movie, they trek out, and the trek is made fairly meaningless. Right? It’s like Yeah.  They you don’t really see much of their treacherous journey. They have the vampires jump out at them once, and then, boom, they’re there at the town. Whereas, with this movie, it felt more like a real Western, you know? There this is about how hard it is to trek against the West, how lonely it can be. The journey is half of the problem. Right? And, especially because you got this guy with his leg. And, as had been set up in the very beginning of the movie, it’s not just these troglodytes at the end of the road that they have to worry about. It’s camping up at night. They’re gonna get besought by brigands.  And sure enough, they do. And there’s one really interesting I thought it was a great scene as well. And and this is where it feels very Tarantino esque, because Tarantino does a really good job of putting characters in situations that really show you who they are.

Craig:  Well, and morally ambiguous.

Todd:  Yes. Exactly. Mhmm. And in this one scene, they are waken up, by these two Mexican guys who approach the camp. And they didn’t announce themselves, which you learn pretty early on is is part of the, necessity when you’re out there. Right. But, they start talking and saying, oh, it’s alright, and they throw their gun away. And while Kurt Russell is going through this very typical sort of police procedure of getting them disarmed and having them slowly approach, suddenly, bang, bang, bang, Breuder shoots them both dead.  Mhmm. And he says, what are you doing? Why did you do that? And he said, they are not going to be good news for us in any way, shape, or form. You know? They’re scouts from a party that wants to ambush us. Yep. And Kurt Russell’s sort of like, yeah. Well, I mean, maybe. I kinda know that, but it’s okay. He’s he’s more like, I could have dealt with it.  And furthermore, I would like to have talked with to them. Right.

Craig:  And he’s like, no. And it really, really bothers Chicory.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  Like, so like, they move, you know, they they move to a different camp and don’t light a fire so that they’re less conspicuous or whatever. And while they’re laying there, Chicory is just clearly really upset about it, and he just keeps saying, you shouldn’t have done that. That was wrong. Plus, he’s he saw Chicory saw that one of them was wearing a crucifix, so he assumes that it was a preacher or a priest or something. And these are all religious men. He’s just really, really upset about it, but then they are ambushed. Mhmm. So I I don’t know.  And I I I I feel like the movie doesn’t tell you, but the implication that I got was that maybe and probably Brooder wasn’t wrong.

Todd:  No. Well, Brooder’s the one who gets, yeah, and Brooder’s the one who gets attacked. Who is it who has to shoot the guy off of Brooder or whatever?

Craig:  I don’t remember which one was.

Todd:  Wakes up and suddenly and Brooder’s being stabbed in the shoulder by this guy who’s standing over him. Right? And very reminiscent, actually, the first scene of the very first scene of the movie where a guy’s being held down by another guy and and and, you know, stabbed. So, yeah. So it turns out to be a very viable very real threat. And you’re right. No. I I that’s the conclusion I drew as well. But the problem with this is now all their horses are gone.  And I’m thinking, oh my gosh. Then it’s just they said it’s it’s a two day walk from there. And by this time, Arthur, who throughout the whole movie is kind of annoyingly holding them back, they are basically have a deal with him that, okay, we’re gonna keep walking, and you can he says, don’t worry. He says, I’ll walk while you sleep. They decide they’re gonna sleep during the day instead of the night.

Clip:  Mister O’Dwyer. That valley is at least the two day walk. I’ll try to match your pace. If I fall behind, I’ll catch up when you sleep.  You watch the Craig. There’s one bad fall, you lose that leg.

Todd:  Okay. No skin off our backs. We’re gonna lay out, you know, a path of four stones every now and then, while we go. And, you know, I don’t know, man. Like like, this whole western thing is always pretty fascinating to me. Here, you’ve got this land that stretches out to infinity. One one guy, I think, is it Chicory, who says as they’re riding early on, he says something like, well, I know the world’s supposed to be round, but this part sure don’t look it. Yeah.  Yeah.

Craig:  And then they show the horizon, and

Todd:  I mean,

Craig:  it’s just it’s just flat.

Todd:  I’m sure they have a compass with them, you know, so they know what the general direction they’re going, but I just don’t know how these guys navigate on foot. Let alone

Craig:  Oh, I know.

Todd:  Somebody can follow a trail after them, you know.

Craig:  Oh, I know. I I can’t imagine. I have no idea. I thought the same thing.

Todd:  He’s still kinda catching up with them every now and then as they go, but, his leg is getting worse. And at one point, they look at it, and they say, this this leg is is bad. Like, we’re gonna have to amputate. Chicory, like you said, who had experience doing this during the war, says he can do it. But Arthur Arthur says, no. I don’t want you to amputate my leg. And they’re like, okay. Well, I guess that’s your choice then.  You know, he says, just set it, and we’ll keep going. So

Craig:  They give him some opium, and they set the leg, and they take the rest, and he passes out. And and and Chicory tells him, you’re probably gonna sleep for a long time. And and all of the wild Chicory and the sheriff are, you know, having these asides. Like, is he gonna make it? And Chicory is always just very optimistic. Well, he’s got a shot.

Todd:  Like, probably

Craig:  not, but we’ll see.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And they go off without him. Eventually, they get there. Again, like you said, I can’t imagine. You know? I these people had to adapt to their circumstances, so I’m sure they were just better at this than you or I would be. They didn’t have GPS. They, I don’t know, navigated by the sun or the stars or I I don’t know. But they get there, and they find this valley that they were looking for. And when they get there, they start hearing those creepy howls again.  And, eventually, they get to the cave. And this is where it finally, to me, started to feel a little bit like a horror movie. I mean, it still felt very much like a western, but there were definite horror elements going in here. These people, whoever they are, they communicate non verbally and they communicate with these inhuman shrieks. Like, they’re so loud that it seems impossible that a human being could make this noise. And the men figure out immediately when they start hearing it, oh, these are, you know, they’ve spotted us. These are warnings. They’re communicating that we’re here.  And so they know that they’re there. You know, they get to the spot where there’s all the skulls and the rocks and stuff just like we saw in the beginning, and Brooder goes in first. They get to where they can spot the cave. And just and, like, they’re talking about what they’re gonna do, and then just out of nowhere, they’re ambushed. Mhmm. I I feel like the sheriff gets an arrow in the shoulder. Yep. I don’t remember if Chicory got anything at the oh, yeah.  An arrow shoots his hat off and takes off just a tiny little part of his scalp, like, it just missed him. Brooder doesn’t get shot, but when he goes to reach for his weapon, his arm gets chopped with a bone tomahawk. There you go. Nope. Because they have these they have these bone tomahawks, which are very effective.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And his arm gets about chopped off, and they kill a few of them. Brooder is, you know, significantly wounded and and he says

Clip:  Sublime me with dynamite, and don’t return until I’ve used it. I’m far too vain to ever live as a cripple.

Craig:  He ends up taking another one out. And there are a couple of moments throughout the movie. Like, there’s this moment. There’s one moment after they get ambushed when Brooder’s horse doesn’t get stolen because he says it’s too smart to get stolen by a filthy Mexican. But because they the Mexicans couldn’t steal it, they maim it, and then Breeder has to shoot his horse. And in that moment and in this moment when he realizes he’s going to die, he cries. Yep. There’s also a moment when Patrick Wilson earlier in the movie is saying Craig, and he weeps, you know, thinking about his wife.  Again, I’m not as familiar with the western genre as you are, but I can only imagine that that’s atypical.

Todd:  Yeah. Pretty much is.

Craig:  To show these men showing that kind of emotion, and I appreciated it. I actually thought that Patrick Wilson’s crying scene was a little bit overwrought. But in this moment when Brooder knew that he was going to die, I I believed it. Yeah. You know, he was he was Craig, and and I believed it. And he does. You know? He takes out, you know, the the natives come and, throw a bone tomahawk at him, and it goes right into his head. But in in the meantime, he’s able to take one of them out too.  But ultimately, they end up getting captured with and and very quickly.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  You know, I expected this to be more of a, you know, kind of back and forth kind of thing, but, no. Like, they are just captured very quickly, and they’re taken and they’re put in cages. Samantha is still there, in a cage, and Nick is still there in a cage. Samantha tells them that the drifter has already been eaten, and then we get what is surely the most gruesome moments of the whole movie. Right? I mean, I was I was a little bit shocked.

Todd:  I was really shocked that this movie was gonna go there, you know. And, again, that’s where I felt, again, like, a kind of Eli Roth vibe to it. Yeah. It’s really disgusting. They pull out the deputy, the young deputy, Nick. And, you know, he’s crying and he’s screaming. They strip him down right there in front of the rest of them in the cage. They’re in these cages in the cave.  And, they cut him up, flip him over.

Craig:  Cut him up?

Todd:  Well, they I

Craig:  was gonna I was gonna say, come on. You gotta be more descriptive than me. Alright.

Todd:  So it’s like it’s like a Mortal Kombat fatality, basically. They flip him over. One person’s got each of his legs, and they’re holding him up upside down by the legs. Yeah. And the guy with the tomahawk comes down the middle and starts hacking between his legs until they can pull him apart lengthwise. So, yeah, it’s pretty gross and, really brutal. And this happens in front of all of them.

Craig:  Yeah. And then they’re just, like, snacking on his legs like it’s a chicken leg or something, you know, in front of them. Meanwhile, Arthur has woken up and is making his way there, so we kinda see that. But, they also there are moments between the prisoners now

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  Where they talk and the sheriff and Chicory still have they they took some of the opium with them, in a flask. And they think that they can poison some of the natives. Well, first of all, they ask her, Samantha, how many there are, and she estimates about 12 men. And she says there are also two women, but they’re blind cripples. And we see them later, and it’s so gross and disgusting. Like

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Like, they are obviously just incubators. Like, it’s it’s just

Todd:  Yeah. Their eyes have been put out. They have two a stake in each eye, and then their their limbs have been cut off.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s disgusting.

Todd:  It’s really gross.

Craig:  So they do. I mean, they they play a little trick. Like, they pretend they’re fighting over the whiskey or whatever, and the cannibals take it. And and and a couple of them drink it. And she says, one of them will die. One of them will be out for several days. One of them won’t be affected at all. And she says, so there’s about seven left or five left.  I don’t know. Yeah. Then we get another scene with Arthur who is, like, totally debilitated, but manages to take out, like, five guys.

Todd:  He he turns out to be the most capable after all and really the key to their success here at the end. So it’s pretty good thing that they brought him along.

Craig:  Most capable is not even fair. Like, these guy like, he’s just laying on the ground. These guys just keep running up to him, and he keeps shooting them.

Todd:  Well, he’s smart enough to have himself backed up against, like, a like a like a rock wall or something like that. So at least I suppose. They can only approach from one spot. Plus, you’re right. These guys, they don’t seem that concerned with getting to him because they’re like, oh, he’s shooting at me. Well, I’ll break out my bow and arrow. Oh, he shot my arrow apart. I guess I better walk towards him.  And then as he comes towards him, he’s able to reload his gun in the meantime and shoot him. So Yeah. Yeah. They don’t seem quite as brutal and as quick when they’re with him as they did with the others.

Craig:  Right. Exactly.

Todd:  But the key is that he sees that there’s something in their throat, and I thought this was an interesting touch. Because there is that question, like, how are they making that ungodly noise?

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And he sees that what they’ve done is they’ve taken, like, a piece of bone, almost like a a vertebrae or something, and fashioned it into a kind of whistle.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s like the thing that the velociraptors have Mhmm. In Jurassic Park. Yeah.

Todd:  And put and put it in their necks. So he cuts this out of one of their necks, and then he uses it to trick them. So he he blows through it and makes a that sound, and they jump out of the bushes or start running down the the way, but he’s ready to shoot them as they come. So there’s a little bit he has a little bit more of an advantage than the other guys did have, in this spot. True. But how he manages to crawl his way all the way up to the, cave, which is in the side of a cliff, I’m still kinda wondering how all that went down. Yeah. The movie doesn’t show us that part.

Craig:  No. It doesn’t explain. One of the most heart wrenching moments for me is the cannibals figure out that they have been tricked with this poison. When they had been done with it, they had taken the flask and they had thrown it in the ashes of the fire, the embers, and it was still burning. And they pulled the sheriff out, and they they knock him out

Todd:  Sort of.

Craig:  And then they slice open his abdomen, and they shove that burning hot flask inside him. And they do other things too. And the reason that it was so heart wrenching to me is because when Nick was getting killed, the sheriff had said to him, Nick, the Calvary’s coming. They’ll be here soon. We’re gonna get out of here. And Chicory had said later, is that true? And he said, no. I just made it up. And he why why would you make that up? And he said, because if that were happening to me, that’s what I would wanna hear.  And when the king will start mutilating and, you know, apparently killing him, Chicory does the same thing. He’s like, I’ll avenge your death. I’ll avenge I mean, it sound it probably sounds stupid to those of you out there listening, but you just get the sense that there was really an affection between these men.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And for him to try to comfort him in this most brutal and horrible of moments,

Todd:  You were just sad to see Kurt Russell get hacked up.

Craig:  No. I’ve you know what? He died a a hero. No. And, like, you don’t even see him die because as you said, Arthur somehow gets himself up this cliff wall that the rest of them had to be pulled up on ropes by, but he somehow gets up there and he takes out, you know, a couple of them. And then Kurt Russell takes out the big scary one with tusks. So, you know, all the survivors are there. They know that there are still a couple of the cannibals left, and, Arthur says to the sheriff, are you sheriff, are you gonna make it? And he says, no.

Todd:  Yeah. No. It’s very clear. Are you

Craig:  are you sure? Yes. Backup deputy, I’m giving you this duty. I want you to escort them back home. And I’m gonna stay here, and I’m gonna do my best to take out the remaining ones because they know where our town is. I’m gonna try to take them out. And so they leave him. And and it’s obvious that Chicory doesn’t wanna leave him, but the sheriff insists.

Todd:  And Chicory kinda And they do. Chicory kinda lingers, and and the sheriff says a great line. He says, say goodbye to my wife, and I’ll say hello to yours. Here we are.

Craig:  I almost cried. No. I didn’t, but I almost did. That was a great

Todd:  one. Another really good case of showing without telling as they’re walking away, off into the sunset, basically. Chicory picks up a rock, to hold because

Craig:  Through that graveyard again. Mhmm.

Todd:  So this is because, like, clearly, like, oh, in case they encounter somebody, he’s got something. And then, he hears three or four gunshots, and he kinda looks back, and he tosses the rock away and goes on, which is, you know, a nice little moment to leave us with. I think it zooms in on the rock, and that’s the last shot of the movie.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s the end of the movie. Like, they they they’re confident that the sheriff did what he wanted to do. You know? He took out those because you hear four shots. So

Todd:  Yep.

Craig:  You assume that he probably, got them. And so he did what he set out to do, and and they’re gonna be okay. And yeah. I mean, overall, I liked the movie. I still don’t know that I would qualify it as a horror movie. Definitely, definitely horror elements, gruesome, brutal scenes, but it just didn’t feel like that. It felt more like a western and more like a drama and and that’s okay. You know, like, I I I do like other kinds of movies Todd, and and I did enjoy this movie.  And I I thought there was a lot of really good stuff going on here. I thought there was a lot of talent that went into it. You know, talented actors, beautiful scenery, you know, good cinematography. I I think that in the end, my favorite part of it was Chicory and his relationship with the sheriff. And I feel like well, Chicory and the sheriff, I guess, combined kinda ended up being the heroes of the movie for me. And and, I I really enjoyed that. I I enjoyed the fact that Arthur’s wife, Samantha, was a a tough woman. She wasn’t a damsel in distress.  She yeah. She happened to get captured, but that didn’t change the fact that she was a tough broad. Yeah. And I liked that. There there was a lot going on that I really, really liked. It was a little long, but overall, I thought I thought it was a a quality movie.

Todd:  Well, it was a great ride. And and I at least got to watch this movie when I wasn’t super tired. Like, sometimes I end up watching these late at night Yeah. Kinda fading away. I’m really glad that I watched this movie in the middle of the afternoon. It was the perfect middle of the afternoon movie when you’ve got time and you wanna sit down and have an experience. Because, like you said, the characterizations are just great. The story is great.  It does take its time with it, but it’s very Western, you know, in that way. It has those horror elements at the end. And, and I I also I I loved it. I thought it was great. I’ll be recommending this movie to other people. To sum up my thoughts on it, I’m I’m going back to Addison’s message to us. And she actually said, it may not be a traditional horror movie, but it’s certainly horrifying and a breath of fresh air for both the horror and western genres.

Craig:  Yeah. I think that’s fair.

Todd:  And I can’t think of a better review. Well, thank you, Addison, for your recommendation. We love the movie. If you have a request, you can find us online, either on Facebook, just search for Two Guys and a Chainsaw, and you’ll get our page. You can send us a private message or you can post there, and that’s where we usually get most of our requests from. You can also go to our website, 2guys.red40net.com, and you can find all of our episodes, our past episodes available for streaming and download. You can also leave a comment there as well. Also, by the way, we don’t ask for this usually ever, but, if you enjoyed this podcast, not only could you share it with a friend, but you could go out and review it.  If you don’t like the podcast, please don’t. But go to iTunes or Stitcher or or wherever your favorite wherever you’re getting your podcast from, and let everybody else know what you think of us because I think that probably helps us get out to a wider audience. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t, but that’s just, just my suspicion. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig:  And And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

The Expendables of Horror….what a promising concept, yet lousy execution. We didn’t have a lot of good things to say about this disappointing outing, based on a script from the late Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface). A rousing game of “spot the celebrity” helps to pass the time, even as you consider what a waste it is to assemble so many horror icons for this nonsense.

Episode 177, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Craig:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig.

Todd:  And I’m Todd.

Craig:  And we decided to go with something new this week, at least relatively new.

Todd:  New for us for sure.

Craig:  Yeah. New for us. Yeah. It came out in 2017. I think that it was actually filmed, a little bit before that. Well, of course it was, but came out in 2017.

Todd:  It was actually filmed in 2018 in this remarkable publicity stunt. Yeah.

Craig:  And, the movie is Death House, and this was my suggestion.

Todd:  Thanks, Greg. Thank you so much.

Craig:  And I’ll go ahead and take the credit slash blame for that, right, from the get go. The reason that I was interested in this movie is because I had read about it for a while, in its planning stages and as it was being made and and when it was, finally released. I I I don’t even think it got a theatrical release. I think it was released video on demand.

Todd:  Imagine that.

Craig:  Yeah. But the reason that I was interested in it is because from the very beginning they were kind of calling it The Expendables of Horror. And what they meant by that was that like The Expendables, which pulled together, you know, all of these big macho action stars together, this pulls together a lot of the icons of the horror genre and throws them all in one movie. And with the list of people that you’ve got in this movie, you would think that it just would have to be amazing.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And you would probably be wrong. Yeah. You’re wrong. Yeah. The truth of the matter is, unfortunately, this isn’t really a very good movie. However, I still wanted to take a look at it because there are so many people in this movie that I know and many people that I admire and regardless of the fact that ultimately the movie ends up being pretty disappointing, It’s still for me first of all, to just see some of these people again, you know, some of them I haven’t seen in decades, you know, since since the movies that they are famous for came out and and then, to see them all together, was really kind of a cool thing. And so I’m gonna cling to that. Well because that’s about all there is to cling to.

Todd:  You’re clinging to it just like The Rock was, like, clinging to the edge of that skyscraper in that movie that just came out this year. Yeah. It’s a pretty Right. 10 it’s a you’re really dangling there with, like, a leg missing.

Craig:  I know. I know. I know. Did you know anything about this going in?

Todd:  I I didn’t. You know, you had mentioned it to me a while back and, not a not a long while back, but you had mentioned to me, oh, you know, it’s come up on Netflix. We should check it out. That might have been before you’d seen it, I think. But you said to me, oh, Expendables of Horror. And I thought, that’s gonna be awesome. At least, you know, it’s gonna be watchable. And, I have to say, like, dude, this frickin’ movie, it was a chore.  It was a chore to get through this. It wasn’t a pleasurable experience for most of it. And, I think, for me, it committed the worst cinema movie can commit, which is just to be downright boring.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  The only thing that kept me glancing up at the screen every now and then to see what was going on is to see if somebody that I recognized popped into frame for one of their, you know, quick cameos.

Craig:  And, thankfully, that happens a lot.

Todd:  Through the whole movie, pretty much. Yeah. That’s the only the only thing I won’t say that kept my interest, but at least kept me from turning it off. That and the fact that we had to talk about it. Right.

Craig:  To be honest, watching this movie for this podcast was actually the second time that I had seen it. I watched it when I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t remember it being that bad. But, to be honest, that first time, I may have had a little bit to drink before I watched it.

Todd:  So this is gonna be one of those rare cases where upon second viewing you appreciate the movie even less than the first time.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. And and frankly, if you haven’t seen it and you want to, which I can understand the the draw. I mean, it’s definitely a draw. Well, I don’t know. Just just get a little loose first. Because, when it comes down to it, really watching it the second time, not only I don’t know if I would say it was boring. I mean, the it moves.  There’s stuff going on, but frankly, a lot of the time I didn’t even really understand what was going on. Yeah. By the time it got to the end, I kinda still didn’t really understand what was going on.

Todd:  Even with a second viewing, I’m I guess I don’t feel so stupid then because I completely agree. I didn’t know what was going on most of the time. Yeah. I just found almost incomprehensible. And then by the end, I thought, did I miss something in in the intro, or something that should explain what I’m seeing here? Because it it seems to take I don’t even wanna say it takes a right turn because it gives it too much credit, like there’s some crazy twist or something. It just is all over the place bizarre. Yeah. So help me out here.  Maybe you know a little bit more about the history of this movie. I read a little bit about it, like, a week ago. And didn’t Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, originally write the script for this film?

Craig:  He did. And I think that he finished it maybe around 2015 or something like that.

Todd:  That’s about when he died, isn’t it?

Craig:  When he died. Yeah. Yeah. Then he died. So I I think that it was kind of a dream project for him, and he was getting all kinds of people on board with it. I think one of the first people to really get on board with it was Kane Hodder, who, was arguably the best Jason Voorhees.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  I think he got on board pretty quickly, and they were trying to put stuff together and people were kinda coming on board and then, sadly, Gunnar Hansen died. And, at that point, it kinda went into limbo a little bit. Nobody was really sure what was going to happen with it, but I I I think it was really Kane Hodder who continued to push this and try to get people on board and and finally got it made. You know, when you look at the people who are in it and I’m just gonna run through them. I went through the CAS list, and I I clicked on virtually every single person in there to see what they had been in. And most of them I recognized immediately. Some of them, I needed my memory jogged a little bit, but I hope this isn’t boring. I’m gonna try to do it quickly, but the list is just it’s kind of unbelievable.  Okay. So, you’ve got Bill Mosley, who is in Chainsaw Massacre 2 and who is in all of Rob Zombie’s movies. Tony Todd, who is huge in the genre, mostly known for Candyman. Adrian Barbeau, who was in the fog and tales of Halloween and the thing and Creepshow and Swamp Thing. Kane Hodder, who I already mentioned. Jason, he’s in Hatchet. He’s the Victor Crowley in that. He was in house 2.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  Gunnar Hansen makes an appearance. I have a feeling they probably used stock footage of him. He only

Todd:  It looks like they used, like, maybe, an interview off of YouTube or something.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. Well, you gotta use what you can use when the guy

Todd:  I guess.

Craig:  Passes away, I suppose. Dee Wallace, who I’ve gone on and on about a bazillion times, Critters, Cujo, The Howling, Lords of Salem.

Todd:  Popcorn.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. Barbara Crampton, who we’ve watched a bazillion of her movies, Chopping Mall, You’re Next, Re Animator, Michael Berryman, who was in Hills Have Eyes 1 and 2, the originals, Devil’s Rejects, Lords of Salem, Sid Haig, who we reviewed in Galaxy of Terror and who also is in House of a 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, 3 from Hell, which is coming out soon. Lloyd Kaufman, who is the trauma guy. Right?

Todd:  Yep.

Craig:  Yep. Toxic Avenger, Poultrygeist. Felissa Rose, who was Angela from Sleepaway Camp. Beverly Randolph, who is from Return of the Living Dead, our friend of the podcast, Bill Oberst junior, is in it. Yeah. Sean Whalen, who was Roach from People Under the Stairs, which we have reviewed. Camille Keaton, I think, who is the lead in I Spit on Your Grave. And he wasn’t listed in the cast list, but I’m pretty sure that was Danny Trejo in there early on.

Todd:  Yeah. He was in there for sure. He’s not listed there?

Clip:  He has

Craig:  a big card. Listed on the cast list.

Todd:  Don’t forget Craig Stevens.

Craig:  Who’s that?

Todd:  Slimeball, Bowlarama, Terra Toons, like, a 1,000. Like, I think she has almost 200, credits to her name. Maybe slumber party mask or sorority house mask or something like that.

Craig:  And and so many of these people do have I mean, I was just blown away that some of these people have so many credits. And if you look at them, so many of them have, like, a dozen or more films in production or in preproduction or in post production. Like, these are all people who are working all the time. Mhmm. And all of them work in the genre, but many of them work outside of the genre too, you know, in television, daytime television, mainstream

Clip:  movies,

Craig:  stream movies, Hallmark movies, you know. These these people are people who work all the time, and they pulled them all together. And a lot of them just have little cameos. Blink and you miss them kinda cameos. Mhmm. But to get all of these people together, it’s it’s pretty impressive. The one person who I was really shocked to not see here and the only person that I would have expected to see here that I didn’t is Robert England. Yeah.  Robert England claims that nobody asked him. He he just said, you know, he’d heard about it, but he had never been given a script, which is unfortunate because he’s a cool guy. I bet in $1,000,000 he would have done it.

Todd:  Oh, he sure would have.

Craig:  So, you know, with that list of of people, it it’s just kind of a a dream kind of cast. And then, sadly, the story is just not that great. It’s a

Todd:  dumbass movie, and it’s not competently made. It it just gets laughable. Some of these scenes, you’re just rolling your eyes. This is a movie you could laugh at, you know, with your friends quite a bit. But at times, the scenes just transcend that. They’re so dumb that you you don’t even wanna laugh

Clip:  at them. Like, that’s kinda how I felt a lot of the movie, to be completely honest.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s it’s not intentionally funny. It’s, like, oh, that’s crap. Well, there’s, like, there’s actually very

Clip:  little humor

Todd:  in it, and

Clip:  and that’s a

Todd:  little surprising for a horror movie, honestly. Mhmm. And maybe that’s one of the big failings is that the movie seems to be

Clip:  taking itself way

Todd:  too seriously. And, I don’t know, I guess maybe The Expendables of Horror shouldn’t be taking itself that seriously. You know?

Craig:  Yeah. And with all of these people, you would think that there really would have been room for some self referential comedy. I I mean, there’s a little bit. I mean, like, Phyllis Rose who was in Sleepaway Camp, her character’s name is doctor Angela Freeman. You know, she was Angela from Sleepaway Camp. Okay. Lloyd Kaufman is funny. You know, he’s a he’s a very, very brief moment of humor that’s I appreciated very much

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  Because I needed it.

Todd:  He’s the only one who displayed any kind of anything. I mean, everybody else is playing these very when you think about it, any one of these characters could almost be interchanged with another because there’s nothing distinctive about any of these personalities, except their roles in the film. These guys are the inmates of this crazy prison, these are the doctors, and then these are the 2 agents who’ve been sent there for reasons that aren’t even entirely clear. Right. All the doctors can be interchanged with each other. The two agents don’t really have any personality, and, all of these prisoners, once again, could be interchanged with each other. And they’re trying to give them these quirky personalities, like this guy’s the icicle killer, and these 3 guys think that they’re Satan, or this guy thinks he’s Satan, this guy thinks he created Satan, and this guy thinks he’s Satan’s son, the Antichrist. And these 3 guys in a room, and they’re all talking the same and acting the same and looking the same, and everybody’s so self serious the entire time

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  That it there’s just nothing interesting. In these wackadoodle scenarios that should be in and of themselves interesting the way that they’re played out on screen, they’re not at all.

Craig:  See and and I’m wondering, you know, because so many I don’t know if I wanna say big name, but because so many kind of genre in demand people were in it, I’m wondering if they kind of had to film it very piecemeal.

Todd:  Yeah. I was about to say that.

Craig:  And then just kinda cut and paste everything together because that’s what it felt like. It felt like kind of stand alone scenes that they just kind of cut and paste and and put in an order that the order didn’t really make much difference. Because you’ve got really good actors in here. You know, we’ve spoken with Bill Oberst junior, and he takes his craft very seriously. And and I think that he’s quite a good actor. You know, some of the films that he’s been in have not been the highest of quality, but he is a good actor.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And he’s just not given a whole lot to do and he does the best. He he’s one of those Satan guys. He does, I guess the best that he can with what he has to do, but it just all seems very kind of out of context. It doesn’t really add anything to the story at all.

Clip:  Call mister Deppin, please. Your rationalization that everyone in an insane asylum is necessarily insane is highly insulting. There are people here who are not insane. Those 2 aren’t. Each person is a temple. Please respect that.

Craig:  I have gone on and on and on and on and on about how great I think Dee Wallace is, and I really do. And in this movie, like, she’s just so one note.

Todd:  She’s terrible. Honestly, her even in her scenes, it’s terrible. Like, the even her her acting. And I mean, the line delivery and I I think it has to do with the direction. Uh-huh. I’ve talked before, I think, maybe when we were talking about the Hellraiser episode about how, you know, the way that you direct the actors, the way that you edit and frame the scenes can really kind of ruin a person’s performance or at least expose the flaws that normally we would edit around. And it’s like they took one take of hers that probably wasn’t her best take and stuck it in the movie without any cuts. Yeah.  Yeah. So it lays it kinda bare, and it’s pretty lousy. And I was, I mean, I was kind of, like, my mouth was open during that scene because just like you, I know what an experienced actress she is and what a good actress she is. And to see that performance was just embarrassing. I she’s gotta be feeling betrayed. Yeah.

Craig:  You know? But

Todd:  going going back and watching it, half of these people do, really.

Craig:  Yeah. I know. It it’s unfortunate because I I do like her and and so many of these other people so much, and and it does almost feel like they were bamboozled. You know? Like, I hate to be too hard on it, but I don’t know what else to say. You know? It’s it’s just really kind of stupid. And the whole premise is you’ve got and then okay. So they’ve got all these amazing genre people, and then they make the 2 leads these nobodies who I’ve never heard of before. Yeah.  What’s the point? Like,

Todd:  come on. Maybe they were going for some contrast. Maybe the leads are the everyday people like you and me, and they’re the ones who are supposed to take us through this journey of, all star cast. You know, this this walk down Hollywood Boulevard. Right? This tour of the stars’ homes or something like that. Yeah. Maybe that was what was going through their mind. But but you’re right.  Their performances are pretty lousy Todd. And, they’ve got nothing to show for it. The characters themselves aren’t interesting. They’re they’re supposed to be interesting. There’s some implied backstory between both of them, but does it really come into play once the action starts?

Craig:  Well, and it’s very confusing. Like okay. So it starts out with this scene with Tony Todd. Again, you know, it just seems like they filmed scenes and then they’re like, well, we’ll figure out how to use it later. And like

Todd:  Yeah. Because please explain the scene to me. I do not understand what was happening.

Craig:  It doesn’t make any sense. I think I figured it out. The truth of the matter is I had to go to Wikipedia and read the plot synopsis. And when I read the plot synopsis, I was like, okay. I guess it makes sense, but I didn’t piece it all together. So in the beginning, Tony Todd is in the desert, you know, being creepy Tony Todd. I mean, that’s pretty much it with this drugged girl and he does I don’t know. It seems almost some sort of like voodoo or something where he she’s drugged and he, like, is talking to her all creepy and then he, like, reaches into her abdomen with his hand and is like fishing around in her abdomen and pulls something out.  And it’s like when he pulls it out, like, then her abdomen seals itself back up.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  It’s And we don’t even we don’t see what he pulls out. We do hear because they’re laying on the ground. There’s like a grate in the ground. We hear like this screaming and and stuff from underground, which I assume is supposed to be the prison that we’re gonna be introduced to Maybe. Here pretty soon.

Todd:  Maybe.

Craig:  I think what’s going on here because it it it bookends. Ends. He comes back at the very end, and we see that he’s got another girl. I think that he’s the collector. You know how, like, as it turns out, they use, like, sick and homeless people

Todd:  Right.

Clip:  For, like, victims or whatever? He’s the

Craig:  one who’s who’s grabbing them. I think so. Whatever. I think he’s the

Todd:  one who’s who’s grabbing them? I think so.

Craig:  I guess so. It’s so tenuous. I don’t know. Well and it

Todd:  doesn’t explain the whole scene.

Craig:  I mean, it’s a bizarre scene like you said.

Todd:  He throws her in the ground. She’s like

Craig:  You’re gonna rape and murder me, aren’t you?

Clip:  I don’t sell damaged guns. I used to raise plants.

Todd:  And then there’s, like, a water pump next to him, but when he opens up the water pump, this black stuff comes out, which I thought was blood, but it’s just kinda sludgy. Smears it on her face, tells her to eat it. She doesn’t. And then, like you said, performs this, what I recognize as a psychic surgery. There are all Yeah. Yeah. Charletons in this, South America, mostly, who claim to be able to do this. But it’s all

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  It’s all just palming blood packets and and, you know, little bits of raw chicken. And that so that’s clearly what he’s doing there. To what end, I have no idea. Because then he just kinda wipes her clean and chucks her in the back of the van. So what was that all about?

Craig:  I don’t know. Do you know? I don’t know. I have no idea. It makes absolutely no sense.

Todd:  Yeah. Okay.

Craig:  And then we’re introduced to our, 2 main characters who are these young agents, agent Boone, Toria Boone, who’s played by Courtney Palm, don’t know her from anything, and, agent Novak who’s played by Cody Longo. They’re just hot people.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  That’s that’s pretty much it. And they’re good at being hot. I mean, like, that’s it’s kinda it. Really, you need, like, the cliff notes to know what’s going on because it just doesn’t it’s totally unclear. Like, we we see this scene where agent Boone is with this guy named Sieg, played by Kane Hodder, and he makes her kill a couple of innocent people and then she shoots him in the leg and then he goes to jail. Now what I read was that she was working undercover to get him. And so she had to kill those innocent people Mhmm. In order not to blow her cover with him and then they were able to apprehend him And that’s why she has now been selected to be, like, this, I don’t know, top agent, secret agent,

Todd:  something. I actually did figure that out, not not anywhere close to the scene, but after we saw the story of the other guy. And then they were kinda talking about how they had been sent there together, I thought, oh, okay. So that was, like, her little secret agent story. Although, that scene doesn’t also make any sense because the way I read it was, they’re alone in this room, the 2 of them, with this other this woman and her kid. He turns around and turns on Wagner, like, you know, he’s a Nazi, you know, they played opera during Right.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And and and he’s facing the wall while she shoots this this woman and her kid. Then he turns around, she shoots his leg, and just as quickly, people storm in the the room and and take him away. Right. Well, why did she do that? If he had turned his back and there were people outside ready to storm in and take him away, why didn’t she just shoot him in both knees? You know? Yeah. I didn’t get that at all. I get more the other guy’s story. And we see a flashback a little later on where he’s, like, in Afghanistan or something and he’s embedded with, like, a Taliban or something. And, he has to actually slit someone’s throat in order to not blow his cover.

Craig:  Gotcha.

Clip:  So he

Todd:  has Todd, kinda, perform one of those Taliban executions. Right?

Craig:  Uh-huh. And supposedly, I guess that those are their qualifying moments. Like, that’s what qualified them. For what? I don’t really know because I don’t know what their purpose is. Okay. So they bring them into this prison called the death house and then the next 30 minutes of the movie is them touring slash virtual touring this facility.

Todd:  That’s because it takes 30 minutes to try to explain what this place is. And and it’s not easy to explain. It’s not easy to follow. It’s not easy to understand. No. And it starts out with just them walking into a room and being introduced to, like, 5 or 6 different people. I I love this scene because it was the first moment I laughed out loud at the movie where they’re standing there, and it’s, like, hey, you’re agent so and so. No.  Call me Victor. Victor, I’m agent Botha. Oh, doctor Fletcher. Doctor Fletcher, meet agent Botha. Agent Novak, meet doctor Fletcher. Doctor Fletcher, agent Novak. Doctor Karen Redman is coming in. Oh, this is doctor and the whole scene goes like that.  And I’m like, oh, crap. I’m trying to write these names down. I’m trying to remember them. In the end, it doesn’t matter because you don’t see half these people again.

Craig:  Well, and these things things just happen just seemingly totally out of context. Like, so okay. So I guess this facility, there’s some exposition where they kind of try to explain it. And, supposedly, it’s supposed to be based on Dante’s Inferno, which if that’s it it’s so loose. I mean

Todd:  Isn’t this the second movie that’s supposedly based on Dante’s Inferno that we had to go to IMDB to realize that it was based on I am Dante’s Inferno.

Craig:  The the only thing I mean, it’s so loose. The only thing is just that, like, in the at the bottom level are the most evil people or whatever. That’s the only connection that I can make.

Todd:  In the world.

Craig:  There there are levels and then at the bottom is the worst. Like, that’s the only connection I see. So they’re taking a virtual tour and, like, there’s some exposition. And I think that Adrienne Barbeau, who doesn’t even really appear in the movie, she just does

Clip:  a voice over. The death house established in 1954 under the Eisenhower administration was created in the wake of Operation Paperclip. This facility serves as a federal maximum security prison, medical, psychological and parapsychological research center. There are 9 levels with the first dedicated to prisoner intake and minimum security confinement. The 9th and final level is reserved for the 5 evils, one mile into the earth. Prisoners are confined to virtual environments that recreate environments before confinement to preserve their natural surroundings for study. Each containment cell is fed a chronic gas mixture to keep the prisoners amenable to the virtual illusions around them.

Craig:  They’re like looking around and and they say that they have all these criminals and they’re trying to study the nature of evil. And so to do that, they get these people and they put them in these cells and they drug them and through the use of hallucinogens, they recreate the environments that the killers are familiar with and allow them to recreate the crimes that they committed so that it’s like they’re in their natural environment and they’re trying to study their behaviors to try to see what the nature of evil is so that they can try to eradicate evil or whatever. Yeah. It’s weird. It’s all very convoluted.

Todd:  And and

Clip:  so

Todd:  we hear that, and then

Craig:  we see this scene that comes out of nowhere where agent Boone walks into a room and Danny Trejo murders this woman in her bed. And agent Boone is like, oh, no, mom. And then she shoots Danny Trejo. Now I I was so confused through all of this because at first, I thought that the whole thing was VR. Mhmm. Then I thought, okay. Well, they’ve got the prisoner in there, and they’re allowing him to recreate this stuff. So that part is VR, but the prisoner is really real.  But then it turns out that the victim is also real. Like, they’re they bring in these homeless people. There’s a One of them is Angela from sleepaway camp. And they’ve got all these people standing around and who are just, like, totally in a daze. And they explain how they select these people and then they, you know, put them in costume and in makeup and sometimes even put prosthetics on them to make them look like the victims of these murderers so that they can recreate these scenarios. And the agents are like I like, it’s almost as though the question of the ethicality of this is just

Todd:  Glossed over entirely?

Craig:  They vaguely mention it, but then it’s, like, well, I don’t know. Whatever.

Todd:  Well, it’s an absurd scene. And, you know, this was giving me shades of Independence Day. You remember Independence Day and Brent Spiner’s scene? He’s, like, that doctor, and he’s explaining about the aliens. And he’s kind of a little quirky and a little weird, but he’s also, like, super enthusiastic and jokey about what he does. Yeah. He was channeling that character, and it was a little out of place for this movie. And I guess, like you say, they were trying to be a little comedic about it, maybe trying to make some social statement or whatever, but it just kinda fell flat the moment that he walks over or the woman walks over to each of the girls and says, see? Have a look. And, like, tears their shirts off

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  To expose their boobs

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  Just to prove, I guess, that, see, we have used makeup, and we’ve used genetics and everything to recreate down to the preferences of these killers or their victims or whatever. Well, how does anybody know that? They’re just 2 random people standing here. Okay. I’ll take your word for it because I don’t know what killer they match with and what his preferences were. But I guess, you gotta prove that anyway by tearing their shirts off? And then they just stand there with boobs hanging out for, like, the rest of the scene. I mean, it it’s so bad. It’s so bad.

Craig:  It really, really is. At this point, they’ve been introduced to another doctor, doctor Redmayne, who’s played by Barbara Crampton, who I feel like, out of all the people in this movie, does the best that she can do. Like, I really like Barbara Crampton. She’s at least charming, you know, like, as as she kind of but even she, like, it’s just so poorly written. Like, at one point, they go on a virtual tour and she’s there and she literally says, I love being an avatar. It’s one of the perks of the job. Like, really? This is your writing. I mean, come on.  You got all of these actors and you couldn’t hire a writer that could come up with something better than

Todd:  I love being an avatar. One of the perks of the job.

Craig:  It is confusing because it cuts back and forth because sometimes they are actually touring and sometimes it’s the VR tour.

Todd:  Yeah. And then you think that they’re really there, and you’ve kind of move you’re moving on with the plot, and then suddenly there’s that picture of them sitting there with the VR glasses on. You’re, like, wait wait wait a minute. And we’re not talking, like, this is clever. Like, oh, is it a mirror? No, it’s not. Oh, it’s actually virtual. No, it’s just super confusing for no good reason. Because we’re still just getting a tour of the facility and getting an idea of what’s going on.  And what’s happening in this scene is that Sieg is strapped getting strapped to that Craig. And what she explains to them is that they’re stripping them they’re basically using drugs and things to basically wipe these people’s personalities clean, and then they’re refilling them somehow, using technology, I guess, with, what they say is a moral center or something a moral person. Yeah. What did none of this make sense, Craig? None of this makes sense. On the one hand, they’re trying to investigate the nature of evil by putting these people in their own little Star Trek holodecks and allowing them to recreate their crimes over and over on real people, so that they can study them how. What are they doing? And so then their ultimate goal is eventually to take those people and then just wipe them clean and put moral people in them Todd do what? To release back into the world?

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  What’s the point? I didn’t get it at all.

Craig:  Well, I think that at the end, we’re supposed to realize

Todd:  That it’s all a ruse.

Craig:  Well, that it is kind of a ruse and that really it’s nefarious in nature. But I don’t understand how the characters don’t get that from the beginning. Like, how can any of this be ethically none of it can be ethically justified. Yeah. Okay. So you’re you’re studying the nature of evil by supplying people to be murdered by these like, it just doesn’t it it doesn’t make any kind of sense. They straight up tell them, oh, we take these people and we erase all their memories and then we reprogram them. Next scene, for no reason, the two main characters shower together.

Todd:  Oh, without soap. I just wanna point that out.

Craig:  Right. And and in very cold water

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Because

Todd:  That much is obvious. Yeah.

Craig:  I’ll I’ll just leave it at that. Fine. These these two lead actors, they’re both hot. They they I get it. I don’t mind seeing them in the shower. But justify like, why do they have to take a shower at the same time in the same shower stall? It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Todd:  Like, it’s so that they can have this supposedly clever dialogue about their tattoos, which goes nowhere and isn’t clever at all and gives nothing of substance to the scene.

Craig:  No. And and there’s, like, I feel like there’s supposed to kinda be some sexual tension. Like, they’re both obviously, like, eyeballing each other

Clip:  the

Craig:  whole time. Like, I mean, if you’re gonna bang, just do it. Like, what different you know, like, you’re both naked right there in shower.

Todd:  If you’re setting up I’m

Craig:  just stopping you.

Todd:  Well, yeah. No no more skillful way to set up sexual tension, you know, just like Alfred Hitchcock would have done than to strip 2 people down naked and throw them in a shower a foot away from each other.

Craig:  Well and what I was getting at before is, you know, they had just been told we strip away their memories and then reprogram them with new personalities. And then they get in the shower, and they’re like, do you remember why you got your tattoos? Nope. I don’t remember anything.

Todd:  I know. I thought that was a I thought that was foreshadowing something.

Craig:  It is.

Todd:  Oh, is it?

Craig:  But but it’s so obvious. Like, they literally had just been told we wipe people’s memories and reprogram them. And then they get in the shower and they’re like, do you remember anything from our past? Nope. Do you? Nope. Like, put 2 and 2 together.

Todd:  So okay. I totally missed that, Craig.

Craig:  I don’t care if I spoil anything here because it’s so nonsensical that it doesn’t make any sense at all. When they finally get to the bottom where these supposedly worst most evil people are, the main one played by Bill Moseley explains to them, though even in the explanation it went completely over my head Yeah. And I had to read about it to see what was going on. What is really going on is that these two agents were prisoners in the death house. The Bill Moseley character, his name is Guyger, he says there’s not just one. There’s a bunch of them and you guys were, like, some of the worst of the worst. And they reprogrammed you and now you are what you are because they reprogrammed you or whatever. I watched the movie twice, and I never got that.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Did you get that at all?

Todd:  No. No. That went right over me. And furthermore, now that you explain it to me, I’m even more confused because then why were they brought back there? What was that purpose?

Craig:  I have no idea. I have no idea. When we get to the end, I’ll try to I’ll try, I guess, to kind

Clip:  of

Craig:  explain what I read, but it’s Okay. It’s dumb. And okay. So then, I don’t know. Nothing makes sense. Okay. So there’s a guard outside randomly, and he gets killed by a weird kid randomly. Yeah.  And this weird kid sticks something in his abdomen, and then he goes the they they bring the body back inside. I I don’t know how they think they’re gonna save this guy who’s had his entire abdomen

Todd:  ripped out.

Craig:  But alright. Whatever. And they realize there’s something in there. Thank Todd for Lloyd Kaufman. He’s really funny Yeah. In this movie. He’s kinda like the mad scientist doctor. He’s really funny.  But when he pulls out whatever this thing is, it sends out, like, an electrical pulse that knocks out all the electric in the whole facility. I have no idea who that kid was. Yeah. I have no idea who or what that kid was working for.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah.

Craig:  I have no idea why somebody was trying to disable the facility. No idea.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  I guess it doesn’t really matter. Yeah. They just needed to get the power out.

Todd:  I I have no idea why this kid who had no problem getting that far into the facility couldn’t make his way a little further into the facility if he had to detonate this out. But, more to the point, this electromagnetic pulse thing was so powerful that it was able to wipe out all of the electricity in this entire facility that goes 9 stories underground and spawns out in all these different directions. I would imagine that doing it just outside the entrance or doing it a little further inside wouldn’t make that big of a difference.

Craig:  Well and also, like, when it wipes everything out, the characters are, like, do your cell phones work? And they’re, like, no. But all the batteries and the Flashlights work. Yeah. At at one at one point, I feel like Dee Wallace even says, are the batteries gonna work? Oh, yeah. They do, inexplicably. Yeah. Like

Todd:  Oh, well, this happens when they’re in an elevator as part of their Todd, these 2 agents. Dee Wallace is with them. And Dee Wallace is going through this long explanation, almost as though she herself is bored with it, about Yes. The the power and how the power works at the facility and all this stuff. And she just is completely emotionless, like, completely not concerned in this entire scene, until the point where she actually literally, like, recedes into the background. Like, these 2 agents are trying to figure out how they’re gonna get out, and he decides to go up and try to get out the the trapdoor at the top of the elevator, because we know all elevators have 1. And and she’s literally doing nothing. She’s just standing there looking around, watching watching what they’re going to do.  This woman, who supposedly has all of this encyclopedic knowledge of this facility, has no good ideas and not even trying to volunteer any way for them to get out of this situation.

Craig:  And seems comp like, it’s not as though she’s I don’t know how you would even explain it. Like, it’s just so deadpan. Like, oh, yeah. All the power’s out. If it doesn’t come back on in an hour, everybody’s gonna get out, and then we’re gonna be dead.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Like, It’s just so dead bad. Like, no panic. Nothing. Her entire performance is so flat, and it made me so sad because I love her.

Todd:  I know. It was awful. It really was. So he breaks out. He goes up, the elevator shaft and, instantly so the deal is that now that

Craig:  He climbs it. He’s like, I love you know, just hand over hand climbs the wire the cables.

Todd:  The idea is that once now that all the power is out, this keeps the gas. This this hallucinogenic gas that’s keeping these people drugged or whatever in their own worlds is gonna go away, and they’re gonna wake up, and then it’s very easy for them to break out of their cells, apparently, and go loose. But then, there’s some other gas that, is like the fail safe switch that they can release that will kill absolutely everything in the facility. Mhmm. And so I’m trying to figure out, were they trying to get out of the facility, or were they trying to go to the fail safe to flip it? Because at one point, I thought their goal was to get out. But then, I guess at another point, they decide that they need to go further down or go to some failsafe to trip the I wasn’t entirely clear on that. Because so he goes up, and he comes out, and he has this fight scene with this guy who’s already loose, which you can’t see anything that’s happening because everything’s really dark.

Craig:  And And it’s just I mean, it’s so stereotypical and gratuitous. Like, this guy just keeps going on and on and on about how he wants to rape him. Like Yeah. Like Yeah. Come on. I, like, I I don’t have any problem with that in theory. It just seems so, like, oh, we need to have this mo it’s a

Todd:  prison,

Craig:  and we’ve got a hot guy, so we need to have one of the prisoners want to have sex with him. Yeah.

Todd:  So so they start wandering through basically a haunted house. It’s just these dark corridors with doors off the side of them, and there’s just random intestines and gore on the floor and in the rooms and handprints on the wall. Like, these prisoners were really really busy over the last 10 minutes

Craig:  Yes.

Todd:  Tearing somebody to shreds.

Craig:  Yes. And then, I mean, we had seen them, like, beat and kill the guards and stuff and presumably some of the scientists and stuff Todd. But like you said, it’s just ridiculous carnage. Just body parts everywhere. And then there’s, like, a petite woman in her panties, like, eating the insides of a guy. Like, who is this? What? What kind of facility is this?

Todd:  I know. Like And they just walk up to and go, well, that’s gross. Keep walking.

Craig:  Yeah. Well and then they get to this one room that Dee Wallace is like, oh, I know this room. We’ll hide in here. Just stay close to the door. And they’re like, wait. What else is in here? And she’s like, no. Don’t look. And I am still baffled as to what was going on in this scene.  I have no idea.

Todd:  I don’t either, man. Again, it’s just like a haunted house scene. These odd half decomposed

Craig:  Humanoid. Yeah. Like, skinless.

Todd:  Just wailing and just kind of crouching and standing in the corner, and then one of them picks up what’s supposed to maybe be a baby’s corpse and starts eating it or something? And but there’s a microphone in the room, and it’s Yeah.

Craig:  And one of them is just constantly wailing into the microphone.

Todd:  I was totally I was totally thinking about Return of the Living Dead 2 when the when the zombie gets on, the police, radio. You know, it

Craig:  is like, sad more cops. Yeah. It makes no sense. And, like, I feel like they don’t even the the guy Novak is, like, what are these people? What happened to them? And Dee Wallace is, like, we don’t know.

Todd:  We haven’t been able why how are they still alive? And she says, we haven’t figured that out yet. Like, something like this should that should kinda put a pause on the whole operation. Like, you should really stop and really study what’s what’s going on in this room. That that would be a pretty big contributor to science right there.

Craig:  Todd. I don’t know.

Todd:  Well, in the mean In the meantime and please explain this to me too. In the meantime, now that they’ve kind of subdued all the guards, Kane Hodder’s, character comes running out, and he stands up above them. And I guess he’s supposed to be the worst of them.

Craig:  I guess.

Todd:  He yells down and goes, alright, now, everybody listen up. And he’s got a head in both hands. And suddenly, he gets shot from out of nowhere, and he falls forward to the ground. And I thought, oh, that was a surprise. Mhmm. Oh, okay. Wow. What a what a strange turn of events.  Then, 2 big burly guys come walking out of nowhere. Don’t know who they are. Were they horror actors making a cameo?

Craig:  I didn’t recognize them. I don’t know.

Todd:  I didn’t either. And one of them bends over this guy, plunges into his stomach, and rips out his whole upper intestine and slaps it on the ground. Turns to walk away

Craig:  After he’s already been shot. Did you say that? Yes. Somebody shot him. Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. He’s shot. There’s a big hole in his chest, and then he rips this thing out and throws it down, and he spins around. And then suddenly from behind him, is that all you got? And they turn around and he’s standing right there. Yeah. Woah. I and I was

Craig:  looking No. I have no idea.

Todd:  Was there like a I thought was he like a hologram, or was he like an avatar, or no? But that couldn’t make sense because there was no electricity in the building. What was that?

Craig:  I have no idea. And he goes on to say later, I’m immortal. What why? Like, did something happen that I missed? I I don’t get it. Yeah. But yeah. And and so, like, he’s on this mission to get down to the 5 most evil people or whatever. Like, he follows them or worships them or thinks that they are salvation or something and he’s trying to get down there. He gets one of those Satan guys and takes him down.  It doesn’t make any difference, like, it seems almost pointless to mention any plot points because none of it matters.

Todd:  No. But some of these scenes are absolutely hilarious. Like, this the the 2 agents and Dee Wallace are are walking around now either trying to get out or trying to find the kill switch, not really sure which, and they come into this room that looked like a saw set Uh-huh. And there are these corpses that are kind of tied up in bags hanging from pipes on the ceiling. Now, it was a short it wasn’t a really tall ceiling. Uh-huh. It looked like kind of a meat locker type room. And there’s just, like, a pool of green below them, and this is when we get the revelation.  And I this was so stupid that I wrote it down.

Clip:  The kill switch is a gas that disables the immune systems, allowing your own body’s bacteria to eat you alive, which results in this, no human remains.

Todd:  Like, what science book Okay. Did they pull this out?

Craig:  I couldn’t I and and okay. So, like Yeah. But then Alright. I mean, we knew it was the kill switch. So what difference does it make?

Todd:  It doesn’t make a difference. So then, they hear the sounds. It’s these other people coming towards them. The Kane Hodder crew are coming down the hallway towards them. So their way of hiding is to leap up and grab onto these dummies, like they’re gonna hang from these dummies. Alright. So suddenly, this room where these dummies were just like maybe 4 feet off the floor, we’re supposed to believe that they are hanging from these same pipes, and they’re so high up above these guys walking in the room that they can’t see them.

Craig:  Right? And if they’re that high up there, how did they get up there?

Todd:  Exactly. So we know they’re not that high up there because there was no way for them to leap up and grab it. However, the way that the scene is now shot from above, it looks like they’re, like, 15 feet in the air above this group of people who’ve come in. And they swing their flashlights around and up, and they don’t see them, but Dee Wallace can’t hold on. And she slips. And the scene of her falling is like Cliffhanger. Is like the guy at the end of Die Hard falling. Yeah.

Craig:  It’s like, no. You know, she gets

Todd:  smaller and smaller. You are falling 4 feet tops.

Craig:  Yeah. And then she dies. She dies.

Todd:  From a fall. Okay. So so what is the tension you’ve been building up in the scene? They’re gonna get discovered, and they’re gonna be killed by this group of people. Right?

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  They come in. They look at her on the ground. They swing their flashlights up. They see them up there, and the guy just says, fucking we got somewhere to be.

Craig:  Freedom. Literally

Todd:  says that, turns around, and they all walk out. What?

Craig:  And then the next thing is probably my favorite scene. I have no idea why, but for whatever reason, Boone and Novak decide that the only way out is to go out through the bottom. Like, somehow, they’re going you know, like, these 5 evil people at the bottom, that’s gonna be their escape. I have no idea why. And they’re like, well, how do we get down there? Oh, well, we’re gonna free fall through the elevator shaft, holding on to the elevator cables

Todd:  With our bare hands.

Craig:  With our bare hands and just shooting as we go. So we get this long scene of them just holding on to the wires, like free falling down these stories, shooting shooting. I don’t know what they’re shooting or who they’re shooting at.

Todd:  I don’t know. But there’s this heavy metal soundtrack that suddenly kicks in behind him, and we get these shots down the elevator, these computer generated shots of them flying. And I’m like, okay. This is gonna be good. I wanna see how they’re gonna stop. Like, are they really gonna squeeze this elevator cable with their bare hands? And it just, like, that’s it. Like, they just cut the scene away. And the next scene you see of them, they’re at the bottom.

Craig:  Mhmm. And they go and they find these 5 evil dudes who are supposedly well, they’re not all dudes. There’s a chick too, that supposedly are immortal, I guess. I don’t even understand. They’re like superheroes down at the bottom. Like, they’re just like

Todd:  They have superhero outfits on. They all Yeah. Are wearing these oh, god. They they each have, like, a symbol that’s on their chest that looks looks like it’s made of electricity and stuff. And they’re they’re in these weird sci fi ish type suits.

Craig:  Yeah. And there’s, Geiger, who is Bill Mosley, and he’s like some evil Nazi enthusiast. And Balthoria is the only female and she’s like, the countess of Bathory, whoever, who like to bathe in people’s blood. And Alexei Nila, who is a cannibal and a necromancer and Craig, who’s played by, John Berryman. I think that’s his name. He was a bioweapon, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this matters. It’s a style as a satanist. Right.

Todd:  Expertise in the satanic arts. And and when they were reading their bios at the very beginning of the movie, you just had to laugh because, like, the things that these people did were so over the top ridiculous. Like, this person went in and massacred an entire church and then went down the street to a nursery and gutted all the children in the nursery. Yeah.

Craig:  And and, like, you know, Bill Moseley is a cool and he I like him in this movie. He’s one of the only good performers in this movie. And I am so familiar with him from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the Rob Zombie movies where he always plays, you know, a real dirty kind of gritty character. And here he’s almost gentlemanly.

Todd:  Yeah. True.

Craig:  And I like him in this. But you’ve got him and, you know, these other people who are supposed to be so badass. And then the one chick I’m like, oh, she’s surely somebody. I’m like, she looks kind of familiar to me, and she’s from Days of Our Lives. Like, where did where what she must she must be somebody’s girlfriend.

Todd:  But I don’t know. Was she the most evil character on Days of Our Lives?

Craig:  No. She was sweet. Oh.

Todd:  Comparatively speaking? I don’t know.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  I don’t know.

Todd:  It’s always nice when you could have a horror days of our lives crossover. You know, it’s nice to see that.

Craig:  It happens more than you’d think. So they get down there and they talk to them, and that’s when he explains to them, you know, you’ve been manipulated. You were one of us. In fact, you were like the worst and and it goes into this whole big philosophical thing about the nature of evil. And in order for good to exist, evil has to exist because there has to be, like, a dichotomy and they he says, you know, this this whole system is corrupt. They’re trying to build this new society where technology is the Todd and there is no good and no evil and that goes against, you know, human nature and the laws of nature and all that stuff. So it’s bad, basically is what he says. And so what he says is, we need you so that we can escape so that then you can come hunt us.  Because we need to go out there and be evil so that you can be good and that restores

Todd:  The balance.

Craig:  Natural balance. Yeah. Stupid.

Todd:  And then Kane Hodder’s character bursts in, like like kinda like, hey,

Clip:  me too, guys. What about me?

Craig:  Can I can I join you? You know?

Clip:  I’m evil too. You know? I’m I’m I’m immortal.

Craig:  And they’re like Right. Oh, really?

Todd:  And then they say you were part of our plan all along. Why? Why? I’m sick. You’re, like, shaking my head. What plan what were you planning from down here? I I don’t get it.

Craig:  Right. And what did he do? Like, he didn’t do anything.

Todd:  He he yeah. I don’t know. I I I have no killed the guards?

Craig:  I get it.

Todd:  I Maybe? I don’t know. But but they’re then they just stare at him and, I guess send their chest electricity out towards him, and he burns up and

Craig:  does. Incinerates.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. Uh-huh.

Todd:  And then they, the 2 agents, just leave. Right? I mean Yeah. They just leave. Go out. Suddenly, they’re upstairs and out in the bright sunlight, and they just look at each other and they’re like, well, I guess what are you gonna do? I guess I’m gonna try to find my own way. And she’s like, yeah. Me too.

Craig:  Right. Like, let’s do it together. And, like, I didn’t get it if they meant that they I I I I kind of got the insinuation that they were now gonna go out and hunt those 5 evil people that had escaped or whatever. But then when I read about it online, it said that they were gonna go out and look for their true identities. I don’t know. I have no idea.

Todd:  Oh, god. Setting us up for a sequel or something?

Craig:  No. Real quick. Then there’s the Tony Todd scene at the end where he does the same thing with another girl. It doesn’t matter. But I did read that there is a prequel supposedly in the works. Oh, god. I can’t imagine it yeah. And it’s called, Rise of the Five Evils.  Oh.

Clip:  It’s supposed

Craig:  to be about those 5 evil people from the bottom. I can’t imagine that it will actually end up getting made. I read that this movie grossed, like, $25,000. Like, I can’t imagine that they would ever put together a sequel based on that return.

Todd:  It’s rare that I say this, but I have not watched a movie this bad and this tiresome to watch in quite a while. And we see a lot of bad movies. At least there’s usually something redeeming about it. But when the only redeeming thing about this movie is that you can pick out some people that you recognize, man. That is, No.

Craig:  Yeah. And and I’m telling you. Okay. So if you are really a a horror fan, which Todd and I are, you know, like, we’re we’re totally into this, get drunk and then watch this movie. Because because spot the celebrity is really kind of fun to play Yeah. If you’re not at all concerned about what’s going on. Because what’s going on is completely nonsensical and stupid, and not even worth your time. But it is kinda cool to see some of these people.  I don’t know. We skipped over a couple of things like Sid Craig, who I really enjoy, has a a totally inconsequential scene as an icicle killer. I mean, he literally sits in a chair and delivers a monologue. Yeah. But but I like him nonetheless. And like I said, you know, I think Bill Moseley does a good job. Phyllis Rose, Angela from Sleepaway Camp, she looks good.

Todd:  Yeah. She does.

Craig:  I was impressed. I was like, dang, girl. That movie is old and you be looking good. So it was it was kind of fun, you know, to see these people again. But that’s it. That is the only appeal of this movie.

Todd:  It was actually that Sid Craig scene that made me realize for the first time that that’s probably how they filmed it, like you said, was just, tried to find some scenes that were all separate from each other, where they could get these actors on a green screen. I I really think that’s why they did the whole, they’re kept in their own little, you know, Star Trek holodeck universes, is so that they could have an excuse to put an obvious sort of green screen behind these people. So it’s like, okay, Sid, we’ll go to your house, and we’ll set up a green screen in your living room, and we can film your your your scene here, so you don’t have to come all the way, you know, to LA or something. And they just sort of did that with Danny Trujillo. They did that with Bill Oberst and, you know, the other 2. They never left that room. Right? So No. It’s probably how it was filmed, and probably why it’s so disjointed.  Mhmm. And doesn’t make any sense. Maybe they were when writing the script, you’re trying a little too hard to to make the logistics of getting all these actors in the movie together, and you end up with a script that’s just nothing more than getting a bunch of actors in a movie together.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. It’s too bad. I and it’s dedicated to Gunnar Hansen and, you know, for his sake, you know, I think that this was something that he was something that he was passionate about. For his sake, I I’m glad that it came to fruition. I, you know, it’s unfortunate that it’s kinda Craig, but whatever. He was a a cool guy and it is sad that he’s gone. But anyway, you know, it is what it is.  I I folks, I I Todd texted me yesterday and said, this is what we’re doing for tomorrow. Right? And I was like, yeah. I’m sorry.

Todd:  Good to dance.

Craig:  And and that’s kinda how I feel, you know, talking to you out there, and I guess we suffer for our Craig. Well, thank you for joining us again for another episode of 2 guys in the chainsaw. If you enjoyed this episode, please check us out all over the place. You know, we’re on Facebook, Itunes, Google Play, Stitcher. We’ve got, a website that you can find. Just Google us, 2 guys in the chainsaws out there. Let us know what you thought of this episode. Let us know what you thought of this movie, especially if you have any insight or positive things to say that we neglected.  I would love to hear it because I really wanted to like this, and I was sadly disappointed. And beyond that, we just love hearing from you guys. If you have any recommendations or suggestions of things that we should watch in the future, let us know. But until next time, I’m Craig. And I’m Todd. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

As a movie, The Wicker Man defies description. It doesn’t fit neatly into any genre category, encompassing elements of detective story, mystery, drama, horror, and even musical, all into one incredibly satisfying package. Come with us as we unlock this puzzle of a film and talk about its storied history as Christopher Lee’s most favorite performance of all time.

Episode 176, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week, we decided to do the 1973 film The Wicker Man, not to be confused with the remake in 2006 of Nicolas Cage is The Wicker Man, which I hear was horrible. I never saw it. Did you see that 1, Craig, by the way?

Craig:  Nope. Nope. Never saw it.

Todd:  You just filed the advice of everybody else who saw it and didn’t even bother? Correct. I heard his performance, and that was pretty awful. I have to say, I was really appalled to think that they would even remake this movie. Well, back in 2006, I was anyway. Nowadays, it seems like every movie movie gets remade anyway. But this one this this movie It’s well, well regarded. It’s been well regarded for a long time. Like I said, it was done in 1973.  This is one of, Christopher Lee’s actually, he says it’s his favorite film that he’s that he’s acted in. The lead actor, in this movie, Edward Woodward, says it’s also his favorite film that he’s ever acted in. And the director of this film, Robin Hardy, really hasn’t directed much. He did this, 2 others, and that’s about it. But For a first time director, this movie, comes across really, really well. I don’t know how you feel about it. I think the 1st time I watched it, I was really taken by it. I guess in in our intro here, I really have to say that this movie really relies on a bit of a hook.  And if you have any interest at all in seeing this movie before we start talking about it, you probably should go out and see it first. Anyway, that that’s my history with the movie. That’s what I know about it. How about you, Craig, what’s your history with this film?

Craig:  None. I mean, I I had heard of it. The title was very familiar to me, And I had, you know, seen memes and and other things about the remake, and I you know, I’ve seen Stills and some just, like, super, super brief clips of, Nick Cage, in the remake. But and I kind of Had an inkling of an idea of what it was about, something to do maybe with I I don’t know. I don’t wanna say a Cult. But that’s that’s the best word that I can come up with, you know, some kinda, like, cult activity that somebody, some guy was investigating or or something. But that that’s it. That’s all I knew about it.  And I really knew nothing about the original at all. And you told me not to read anything about it, so I didn’t. And so I was going in blind, really, and, man, it’s a weird movie.

Todd:  It really is, isn’t it?

Craig:  I yeah. I I don’t know. I kinda don’t know what to make of. I you know, in the end, when all is said and done, It all pretty much makes sense. And even though, you know, throughout the course of the movie, you’re trying Along with the main character who’s an investigator, a police investigator, you’re kinda trying to put together what’s going on, but The things that are going on are so bizarre that it’s kind of hard to make anything of it until you get to the end, and then things are laid out pretty Neatly. And and, ultimately, it it really does make sense, but, just tons of really bizarre Imagery throughout. And I think that what makes it so bizarre is that it’s presented in such a way as though like, oh, yeah. This is just what we do.  Yeah. You know? People screwing in the lawn, like, on in the middle of the night. Like, You know, big orgies and weird fertility ceremonies. Like, yeah. I mean, that’s just that’s how we roll. And, like, you’re like, Okay. And the other thing that really struck me about this is I would Certainly go so far as to call this movie a musical. Like, the music is so integral, it seems, to the ambiance and to the plot that I would go so far as you call it a musical.

Todd:  Yeah. That’s That’s a really good and a lot of people say that. In fact, apparently, about midway through filming, the director himself announced to the cast, by the way, we’re we’re filming a musical, and shocked them a little bit. But the the music is really integral to this film, and it really works in in a very seventies way, I think, as well. Oh, I don’t know. You know, when I think of the seventies, also, I do think of, things a little new agey. Yeah. And this movie fits in well with that and the kind of folk music That was really popular in the late sixties, early seventies.  Right. The free love hippie ish type of stuff definitely has an influence in here, but, really, as the source of what that stuff came from. We’re talking about more ancient Celtic

Craig:  Gaelic. Yeah.

Todd:  Gaelic, Celtic, kind of rituals, kind of music. It actually takes place in a Scottish island that doesn’t well, it’s it’s a fictional Scottish island, of Summerisle. But, actually, you know, up until fairly recently, those islands were a bit inhabited. They’re not anymore. This is the kind of music that they came up with for the movie, and took a lot of great care to do and to be the kind of music that maybe this town, Which is isolated, and, therefore, the people in this town, through a story that’s told a little bit later in the film, are following this ancient religion. It’s it’s a very Mother nature, down to earth kind of religion that’s definitely not Christian. Right. So they put together this music to be this would be maybe the kind of music that this group people would do.  And it’s it has lyrics, and we get some of this music right off the bat during the opening credit scene, through a song that’s really kind of interesting.

Clip:  It was upon a llama’s night when cornwriggs Arbonne beneath the moon’s unclouded lines I held a while To Annie, the time went by with careless heed. Till ‘tween the late

Craig:  What was interesting to me about the music is that it sounds very traditional. Like, it sounds like, You know, the kind of traditional, folk music that one might sing in choir in high Cool. But at the same time, if you listen to the lyrics, they’re really pointed. And Yeah. A lot of the time I can only imagine you know, I can’t imagine that the lyrics that they are singing are traditional lyrics because They’re filthy. Like, it’s it’s it’s so much about sex. And, you know, ultimately, it ends up Basically, being about fertility and rebirth and and that type of stuff, but it’s And it’s not pornographic No. But it’s graphic.  Like, you and it’s just a little bit jarring to, You know, hear young people and sometimes even children singing these lyrics that are Highly, highly suggestive. It makes the very straight laced sergeant Howie, who is our main guy. He’s uneasy about it from the beginning, and I would be too. Like, it’s just but, again, it’s Treated in such a nonchalant way, it’s a weird juxtaposition of these these strange suggestive lyrics, but then presented in almost just like a fun and carefree kind of way. It was unsettling to me. Like, not upsetting, but unsettling.

Todd:  Well, it is it’s unsettling to, maybe even to our own sort of, semi prudish Christian sensibilities. Right? Yeah. Where where we’re okay with violence, but Sex becomes a little uncomfortable. And and this is a very different, you know, society. It’s very uncomfortable in that way and that sex is treated as a very natural, normal part of life. They’re educating their kids about it quite early and, quite frankly, There are rituals around fertility and sex and things like that. And like you said, it’s very nonchalant. And our main actor, sergeant Howie is his name is sent to this island to investigate the disappearance of a girl.  He has been sent an anonymous letter, with a photograph saying that, this child has not been seen, for for a month, I think, month or 2 months. He’s a police officer. And I guess I have to say, especially if you’re gonna go out and see this movie, there are different versions of this film out there. Uh-huh. The original director’s cut of the movie was kind of lost, And it was lost due to the things that happened with these things where the negatives, in the studio get misplaced or accidentally destroyed Much later in history and people were going back and looking for this original version, they could find little bits and pieces of it here and some prints that were made. There was a telecine transfer that they pulled some footage from, and there’ve been a few different versions of this film put together. There’s a really long version. It’s, I think it’s a 113 minutes or something that’s supposed to be that original version, which we don’t think was ever seen in the theaters.  It was definitely not seen, on this side of the, Atlantic. Then when it was put on video, there were some scenes added from the old one. When it was put on DVD, they added some other scenes in but took other scenes out. At some point for one of these later DVD releases, the director put together what he calls the definitive director’s cut. And it’s not the full version he originally cut, but he came out and said, look. We I think this version here is fine. It’s the best of what we have. It gets across my point entirely, and I’m totally satisfied with it.  I’m gonna call this the director’s cut. And I’m pretty sure this 103 minute version is the one that we saw.

Craig:  And I read the description of some of the scenes that were cut. There were quite a few of them, really. None of them really seemed all that integral to me, as far as plot was concerned. Like, For example, I mean, we hear at some point in the movie that sergeant Howie is, engaged to be married. And, I guess there was a scene where you actually saw him with his fiancee at one point. And okay. Fine. Whatever.  I don’t really necessarily think that it was all that important to the plot. So who’s to say? Because I you know, we haven’t seen it in its full glory or whatever, but it seemed to me that the stuff that was cut and and potentially lost as I was reading it, You know, the descriptions of the scenes, I wasn’t thinking, oh, man. I sure wish I had seen that. Like, it it just seemed like longer monologues about apples and, you know, like, the stuff that, I wasn’t particularly all that interested in anyway. But it it starts out pretty typically where you’ve got, you know, this outsider coming in to this environment, and you can tell right away That this is kind of a an odd environment, and he’s very much an outsider, and he’s not wanted there, or at least that’s how it seems From the very beginning, I mean, it seems very clear

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  That these people are not interested, and they don’t even wanna let him come on land. You know, like, he lands in this hydroplane or whatever. They don’t even wanna send out a dinghy to come get him. They’re like, well, we’re gonna have to check with lord Summers Isle or whatever, the guy that, you know, governs the island, and he’s like, no. I’m a police officer. You have to let me on. And so, like, they begrudgingly do. And then he starts asking about this missing girl, and they’re just shady as hell.  Like, you can tell. Like, it it like, There’s no question that they are being entirely evasive and shady, and they’re all like, oh, nope. Never seen her. Don’t know. Don’t know. Nope. By that name around here.

Todd:  And And he says, well, what about the such and such woman who works at the post office? Like, oh, yeah. That woman. Oh, well, she she escaped my mind. But, yeah, that she does have that last name, but it’s not her daughter. And then as he walks away, they’re all kinda looking at each other and smiling.

Craig:  Right. And then he goes to the post office, And he meets this woman who supposedly is the mom of this missing girl, and she’s like, oh, no. I don’t know. Yeah. I have a daughter, but it’s not her. The mother introduces The investigator to her daughter, and they have a weird exchange. And and he’s like

Clip:  Do you know Rowan?  Of course, I do.  You do?  Of course, I do, silly.  Do  you know where she is now?  In the fields. She runs and plays there all day. Is she? Do you think she’ll be coming back for tea? Tea? Hairs don’t have tea, silly.  Hans?  She’s here. Ron’s here. She has a lovely time.

Craig:  It’s so weird. Yeah. And that goes on for a while. Yeah. All of this shady business. Now the thing that kinda got me and and building up to a little bit. Okay. So, eventually, he, like, he asks around and everybody’s shady, and then he goes to get a room at the local inn.  You know, it’s one of those things where everybody’s Partying and having a good time, and then the the second the outsider walks in, it’s just, like, dead silence. Yeah. Like, we weren’t doing anything.

Todd:  Who is this man?

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  Right.

Craig:  So he asks for a room, and he gets introduced To the innkeeper’s daughter, whose name is Willow, she’s played by Britt Eklund, who I recognize I I think I recognize her. I I I don’t know if you know this about me. People are often shocked to hear this about me, but I have never seen a James Bond movie

Clip:  What?

Craig:  Or any of them. Still?

Todd:  Yeah. To this day?

Craig:  Yeah. Never.

Todd:  Oh my god.

Craig:  Never ever. But I think that I’ve seen her in stills. She was a Bond girl, at one point. She’s very beautiful and, you know, the sex kitten kinda girl or whatever.

Todd:  Swedish. Like, big blonde Swedish pulled straight out of Abba or any of the European movies that were popular at this time. It’s a definite look.

Craig:  She’s gorgeous. And, like, she was married to, I think, Peter Cushing for a while. She David Rod Stewart. She got around. They didn’t even use her voice. They they dubbed her. They did a good job. I wouldn’t do even notice, I don’t think, except in some of the singing, scenes, but and that was the first time they sing a song about the the innkeeper’s daughter.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  And it’s just it’s just really lusty. And, like, they’re dancing with her and, like, thrusting their pelvises into her But And

Todd:  she’s laughing, but her her father’s standing right there. He’s going in with the song too. He sings a verse himself.

Craig:  I know. Like, I just thought, Gosh. This is so weird.

Clip:  Her eyelid is lively and strong to the taste. Edge is bruised with discretion. Never move. In case You can have all you’d like if you swear not to waste. The land lord’s daughter. And when  As done a A path that lies between Her left toe. And her right toe.

Craig:  And so he gets his room. Then I didn’t realize this was gonna be significant, but he orders dinner. And he sits down to dinner, and it’s all gross. And he says something to her, Willow, like, it seems like everything that you served me just, like, came out of a can. And she’s like, well, it did. And he’s like, well, where’s all your famous produce? Like, apparently, this island is famous for their apples specifically, but Harvest in general, and I don’t know. She’s evasive about it, but she’s like, I don’t know. You know, be happy with what you get.  Whatever.

Todd:  Most of it was pretty was probably exported is kinda what she says.

Craig:  Yeah. He goes outside, and there’s a freaking orgy on the lawn. And I’m like, what what is happening? I I And, like, I was talking to my partner about it, and I’m like because I watched the first half hour and then I took a break. And and I’m like, you know, this guy walks out there, and there’s this big orgy on the lawn, and he’s like, oh, well, yeah, you kinda see that every day. Like, he barely even reacts to it.

Todd:  You know, this is, Again, another major thrust of the movie. Thrust. Another another major thrust of the movie, as we talked about earlier, is the fact that all of this Sexual stuff is going on quite openly, and he is such a prude. He is a good Catholic boy. You know, earlier when I mentioned that this is the director’s cut that we saw, one of the key scenes that was put back into this movie that I think was a really good choice is that the movie opens up with shots of him in church. Yeah. And he’s singing in church. The pastor who Speaks a few lines is a is a cameo of the director.  And, then he gets up, and it’s clear he’s even, like, a lay reader. He reads, some of the liturgy from the church, And it intercuts some scenes of him getting communion, which I don’t know if it’s going through his mind when he’s doing this, or they’re just trying to impress upon the point. Not only is he Great police officer because he’s stern and he’s insistent and he doesn’t take no for an answer. But he’s also, I think, quite appalled at what he sees, but It’s not like he leaps out and breaks them apart. This, shot of the orgy, which technically is a bunch of people having sex, But it’s all couples. It’s not like they’re all having sex with each other.

Craig:  True.

Todd:  When he steps out there, I think it’s one of those original scenes that kinda got inserted back in. So Whether or not there were some more intense reaction shots, I don’t know. But as he walks out and looks at this going on, he walks by a wall, And he looks in, and he sees that there are more people in the graveyard doing some things. And there’s a naked girl who’s weeping over a tombstone. Mhmm. And he There is a reaction shot there of his face that looks rather upset about it, and he jumps right back into the bar. And he goes upstairs, and he goes to bed. Now, he doesn’t go right to bed.  He sits up there writing. This is a a really cool scene as well where he hears some voices outside the window. And he goes to the window, and he sees down below that our Christopher Lee character, Lord Summerisle is down there with a young man, and he’s calling up to Willow, who’s at the window. And, he very casually They have this exchange that simply suggests, hey. This is a a young boy. I’m gonna send him up to have sex with you as sort of part of a coming of age ritual or something, or maybe it’s a ritual that is part of this preparation for May Day, which is coming in a day or 2. Mhmm. So he sends her into him into the bar.  There’s this song going on, another song that’s that started up that also, sounds like a folk song, but, like you said, it’s very Sexually explicit that’s talking about here’s a here’s a little piece of it.

Clip:  I put my hand on her thigh, And she says, you want to try? I’m

Craig:  It’s like they’re seren Natick or I don’t even know. This event. Like right. Like, they all clearly like, the director And cinematographer make it very clear that everybody knows exactly what’s going on. Like, they’re sitting around in a big circle singing, but they’re all looking up at the ceiling, where right above them, Willow is having sex with this guy loudly. Like Yeah. So they’re all just listening and, like, serenading and singing this song, and it’s just very bizarre. And then the next morning, it’s just like nothing happened.  Like, the police guy goes outside, and Willow’s out there. She’s like, hey. What’s up? You know? Like and they just have a conversation. Like

Todd:  But It’s he’s not.

Craig:  It’s so weird.

Todd:  But he’s pretty I mean, you can tell he’s getting more and more agitated. Right? It’s like he’s holding it in, but he’s getting more and more agitated. Like, he, like, he he hears The sex happening, and he can’t really sleep. He’s sort of tossing and turning through it. In the morning, you’re right. He has this conversation with her. And I think that scene was important. I think that was kind of used to show, like She’s like, hey.  What’s up? And he’s like, well, I’m fine, but just show me where I need to go, and, you know, just to kind of emphasize the casual nature of all of this. Right?

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  And I but I and I’m looking at my notes, and I feel like, you know, I wrote these things down, and I’m looking back at them now, and I’m realizing that they had more relevance than I even understood at the time. Like

Clip:  Mhmm.

Craig:  When, lord Summers isle gives her this boy, he says, you know, this is a sacrifice Suffice to Aphrodite. He says it’s in preparation for tomorrow, which is the day of death and rebirth, which ends up being relevant. And then there’s some snail porn. Like, what the heck? Like, it was so weird.

Todd:  Well, he he recites a poem that’s kind of interesting. It or at least his lines are based on a Walt Whitman poem. I think, kind of damning critique of The Christianity is what it is.

Clip:  I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self contained. They do not awake in the dark and weep for their sins.  But I  do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another, or to his own kind that lived 1000 of years ago. Not one of  them is Respectable.  Gentle nature. Or unhappy. Gentle  nature. All over the air.

Todd:  And that is one of the 1 or 2 moments in this movie where Lord Summer’s Isle is is quite upfront about the fact that they’re very happy with their religion on their island.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And they don’t really need anything else. And that is, the point of conflict. The I think, really, the main point of conflict between them and this Police officer. You know, he is completely a fish out of water. Not only is he a fish out of water, but he’s uncomfortable. And he’s uncomfortable at a deeply personal level that really gets to the heart of his core belief system.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And so as he’s investigating this murder, it’s not just the people’s, evasiveness about this problem that’s frustrating him, But it’s their overall lifestyle. It’s their overall way that they’re living that offends him to the deep to the deepest core. So he’s completely able To believe that these people have what he’s coming to grips with and what we’re seem what we’re starting to believe too, Have just as casually as they are, you know, having all the sex out in the open and doing this stuff, that they’re probably into human sacrifice too, and they don’t think anything of it either.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And that’s what they’re hiding is that this woman got sacrificed, this girl.

Craig:  Ultimately, that that’s the largest impact that this movie had on me and that left me thinking when it was over. Now okay. So the next day, they’re in preparation for May Day. And so these kids are stringing up a maypole.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  And they’re singing a very, you know, carefree song. But, again, the lyrics are very suggestive. And then he goes into a classroom where the teacher is teaching them about the rites and rituals of May Day, and she’s like, okay. Now what does the maypole represent? And 1 girl can’t answer, and the all the rest of the girls are like, penis. And she’s like, that’s right. It’s the penis. And, he’s just absolutely appalled, and, like, he even threatens to report her and and stuff. And he asks them about, the missing girl, and they all say they don’t know her.  And the teacher says something like, if she existed, we would know about her. But then he forcefully takes from her the school roster, and he finds The girl’s name on the roster. And so he chastises the children and the teacher that you’re all liars. You’re all liars. And she takes him outside, and she says, we’re not lying. I said, if she existed, we would acknowledge that. And he’s saying, so if she existed so you’re saying she doesn’t exist, so she’s dead. And the lady says, we don’t use that word here.  You know, when we leave our earthly bodies, we believe that we go back into the land and nature and the spirits of the earth and and all of that stuff. There’s really we don’t acknowledge death. And and she kinda lays it out. You know? I was kinda surprised that she was so forthcoming Once that they had been caught and she says, you know he’s like, well, where is she buried? And and she’s like, well, in the ground. And he’s like, well, you mean, like, in the churchyard? And she says, well, not exactly because the Building that was once used as a church isn’t used as a church anymore, so I don’t know if it technically counts as a churchyard. Basically, what she’s saying is, You know, we don’t practice Christianity here. It’s something else. And that’s what it becomes.  And, eventually, Lord Summerisle kind of lays out the same thing, and we’ll get there. But this has been running through my mind since we started. The biggest impact that this had on me was The idea of religion and how when something is so ingrained In you or me or whomever it might be, anything that’s different or that challenges that becomes So upsetting or or seemingly illogical when, really, why is their religion any better or worse than Christianity.

Todd:  Right.

Craig:  So they celebrate sexuality. So they celebrate nature. So they do things differently than some might expect. Who are you to judge, mister Judge y sergeant Howie. Like, they all seem pretty happy and content in their lives and their practices. So It just it had me questioning that. Like, you know, I think that I identify most with him because I come from, You know, a Judeo Christian background, and and so that seems very normal to me. And what’s going on with them is so out of the realm of normality to me that just like him, I immediately make judgments and say, oh my gosh.  That’s so weird. How could they possibly be doing this? How could they be so, you know, explicit in their discussions of sex and and all of those things? Well, Maybe I’m just a prude too. You know? It’s just a it’s just a difference. You know? It’s it’s who’s to say one is better than the other? It’s just different.

Todd:  Well, it’s true, and especially when you compare it and contrast it with, what the opening scene of the movie, the him giving this liturgy for the, you know, the ritual of communion. And I think it’s no accident that those flashback scenes are filmed in a kind of fantasy, a gauzy way, that The some of these rituals are filmed in in this movie because, you know, well, okay, what is that communion ritual? It’s eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus Christ. You know, a guy who’s not there. I mean, to an outsider, that itself seems Right. Pretty bizarre and pretty weird. And so, yeah, of course, this is all gonna seem weird to him. And like you said, the movie takes great pains to show I think it’s quite skillful in the fact that Here it shows that from from the child level, you know, they’re, quote, unquote, indoctrinating their children. They’re educating their children in their way of life just as we all do.  It’s just very different from what, you know, you and I are familiar with. But, again, it’s the same thing. And that Maypole scene is it’s cute, I think, because it’s this very innocent like, the guy who’s leading the song is almost like the youth pastor this group. Right? Uh-huh. Like, he’s up there. He’s smiling. He’s very clean-cut, and he’s using hand motions while they’re dancing to illustrate what’s essentially kind of a birds and bees cycle of nature kind of song. The tree comes from the earth and from the seed, and then the bee pollinates the flower, and then the man gets in bed with the woman.  And then, you know, the baby is born, and then they go to the ground and a seed comes from the ground. It’s it’s actually, when you break it down, it’s not really disgusting as it is quite natural. You know? It’s just the context that’s that’s that’s Yeah.

Craig:  That’s that’s what I was thinking exactly. I mean, you know, the the whole Sex being kind of this private and maybe even dirty thing is a very puritanical I I don’t wanna say strictly Christian, and and I I identify as Christian, so I’m certainly not trying to insult anyone. But it’s kind of a puritanical notion. You know? Like, So what? You know? Sex is natural, and and reproduction and and birth and the cycle of life, that is very Why are we so prudish about it when it comes to talking about it or or hiding that natural process from children. And I’m not saying that I think that exposing children to that at such a young age, I’m not saying I necessarily think that’s appropriate, but it made me question. It made me question my own beliefs.

Clip:  And

Todd:  Well, Also, you know, you you see both you see all sides of this, really, because there’s this sort of song, but then there’s also that landlord’s daughter song that we heard earlier, which is just this body like, Irish drinking song about how the landlord’s daughter is the town slut.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And and that’s a very different approach. You know? It’s not like they’re sitting around singing about how beautiful Sexes, they’re all, like, grinding up against her and singing all these lyrics about how she’s a slut and ever and she’s laughing and going along with it.

Craig:  Well, I think that the only thing that made me uncomfortable about that seen was the fact that her dad was there and participating. That was weird.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  You know, beyond that, it’s a bar. You know? It’s a Pub. They’re singing a pub song. It’s not like that’s all that much out of the and and okay. So you’ve got a flirty barmaid. Oh, I’ve never heard of that 4. You know? Like, not that big a deal. I think it was just the fact that her dad was and it it it didn’t even seem like it was lascivious.  You know? Like, he was just in on the fun.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Craig:  I don’t know.

Todd:  You’re right. But but it’s all kind of a test in a way for this Howie character.

Craig:  Totally.

Todd:  They’re all really pushing him. Now some of the stuff he’s stumbling across naturally as they’re getting ready for the May stuff. But things like that, they’re really pushing him, and really testing him to kinda see if he is who they assume he is. As the movie goes on, he goes back to the cemetery, And he sees a couple graves there. And there’s a gravekeeper there. And he asks, where is this grave? And he’s, like, oh, yeah. That’s Rowan’s grave. He’s, like, really? He says, yeah.  And we plant this tree like we do on all the grays, and there’s a little something dangling from the tree. And he’s what like, what’s that? And he seems to insinuate that it’s like a piece of skin.

Craig:  I think it was her umbilical cord, was it?

Todd:  Was that it?

Craig:  I think that’s what he said. I think he called it her navel Chord.

Todd:  Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. And Which kinda makes sense because kind of the whole birth and, You know, the cycle of life kind of deal.

Todd:  Yeah. And as he’s walking around this graveyard, he sees a woman who’s sitting there. She’s breastfeeding a baby, and she’s holding an egg in her And and it’s just

Craig:  So random.

Todd:  So random. Right? But you’re getting used to seeing random weird stuff like this in this town. Like I said, it’s all kinda new age y type stuff. And I read in the trivia, apparently, this is actually based on a more ancient rite that this woman was there, hoping for good luck for fertility for another baby.

Craig:  I just assumed that’s what it was. You know? Like, the this woman was she’s breastfeeding a baby, and she’s holding an egg out in her other hand. Like Yeah. We and we’ve seen other kind of ritualistic stuff like this. I don’t know if we’ve seen it yet. I feel like it’s it’s right after this. But then he goes To Lord Summerisle.

Todd:  But wait a second. Before he goes to Lord Summerisle, in the cemetery, he sees some crates, on there, you know, that that Used to hold apples. They’re up on a tombstone, and he gets so frustrated. Again, he’s getting so pissed off by what he sees that he smashes 1 of the crates, And he tears off a couple of boards from it, and he puts it into a cross. And he just lays this cross on top of the grave like This cemetery needs a Christian symbol, and he points it down and he storms out. And that’s when, like you said, yeah, he goes to to see lord Summer. That

Craig:  I’m glad you brought that up because I I do think it’s important. I I mean, he’s so desperately clinging to his faith and his tradition, and I I think that that’s so Important to the themes of of the movie, so I’m glad that you brought it up. But on on his way to see Lord Summerisle, he runs across another ritual, A naked lady circle dance. There’s 1 clothed pregnant woman, then there’s, like, What seemed like a priestess who was also clothed, but then there were, I don’t know, 8 to 10. I don’t think they were really fully nude, but that’s what the indication was.

Todd:  They were meant to be nude, but but they ended up putting them in full body stockings to give the impression of nudity without having so much nudity. I think they were trying to even in this movie, trying to tone that down just a a little bit. So I don’t know. So the rating would be or or maybe for the comfort of the actresses or whatever.

Craig:  Right. Like, I mean, it was certainly suggested that they were nude, but you weren’t seeing the ins and outs So their hoo has basically was what it came down to. But, anyway, they were you know, they’re dancing around a fire, and it you know, it’s kind of intricate Get choreography where they’re, you know, moving around. It’s very ritualistic. I mean, that’s what it looked like. It looked like a ritual, and it looked like a fertility Well, which is ultimately what it was. Mhmm. He witnesses this, and then he goes up to Lord Summerisle.  And it’s one of the first things that, he He brings up, like, how can you condone this? These are young chill he calls them children. They didn’t look like children. They looked maybe like teenagers. I thought they looked older than

Clip:  me.

Todd:  They looked adult to me.

Craig:  He’s like, what? He’s like, it’s a fertility ritual. You know? They they’re they’re praying to the god of Whatever, that they will be fruitful and multiply. And

Clip:  I understand you’re looking for a missing girl. I found her Splendid. In her grave. Your lordship is  a justice of the peace. I need your permission to  exhume her body, have it transported to the mainland for the pathologist’s report. You suspect foul play? I suspect murder. And conspiracy to murder? In that case, you must go ahead. Your lordship seems strangely unconcerned. I’m confident your suspicions are wrong, sergeant. We don’t commit murder up here. We’re a deeply religious people.  Religious with ruined churches. No ministers, no priests, And children dancing naked.

Craig:  Christopher Lee, I think it’s so bizarre that he cites this as one of his best movies. He’s been in so many things, Not even one of. You know? He this is his favorite role that he’s ever done. That being said, I think he plays it really well. Like, it seemed like he really relished this role for whatever reason, and he’s just very dapper and Calm. He reminded me of the guy from, what was that show when we were kids? Fantasy Island? Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. He reminded me of that guy.

Todd:  He even looked a little like him, didn’t he, to another show? Oh, he did this role for free, And and then he went around the country on his own dime to help promote it and did interviews wherever he could. I mean, he was that passionate about this movie.

Craig:  Yeah. Anywhere they would have him. I read that. I thought that was so interesting. Like, literally, you know, he would do local AM TV spots, you know, totally for free to promote this movie. That’s how Intuit he was.

Todd:  Some of that had to be a little selfish, Maybe. Because by this point, he was really in danger of getting typecast for just playing Dracula so many times with the Hammer Horror films and and and those those villainous roles that this was a pretty big departure for him on the screen. I mean, he’s a very accomplished actor. He can certainly do it, but I think he really had to prove it. And he was really hoping this movie would be a big success for that reason too. But like I said, even like you said and Avaya have said, even later in life, he’s looked back and said this is his favorite film, his favorite role.

Craig:  Like I said, he’s very calm. You know, he just Howie, the cop at this point is really agitated. Like, he’s he’s appalled by what’s going on. And lord is just very calm and just, You know, kind of is trying to lay it out for him, and he, you know, he says, on this island, we believe that the old gods aren’t dead. How he says something like, well, what about the true God? And he’s like, oh, the Christian God? Oh, he’s dead. Yeah. Like so we don’t really care. But he just lays it out very plainly and and says, you know, my grandfather came here.

Clip:  You see, his experiments had led him to believe that it was possible to induce here the Successful growth of certain new strains of fruit that he had developed. So with typical mid Victorian zeal, he set to work. Best way of accomplishing this, though it seemed to him, was to rouse the people from their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods. And that as a result of this worship, the Faron Island would virgin and bring forth fruit in great abundance.

Craig:  He says my grandfather Did this for business purposes. My father continued it out of love for the island and the people, and that’s why I continue it as well. And so they’ve got all of these traditions, and he makes it out as though, You know, it it it works. Our island thrives because of our practices and because of our belief, and Yeah. He just Presents it in a very nonchalant way. Seeing him present it in such a casual way And seeing how we respond to it with such disgust, that’s when I started to think, you know what, Howie? Like, Open your mind a little bit.

Clip:  You

Todd:  need to chill out.

Craig:  Like Yeah. You’re So so so it’s not your way. Alright. If it works for them, it works for them. Chill out.

Todd:  It’s really important that by this point in the movie, Howie is coming is starting to come across a little less like a sympathetic character. Uh-huh. There’s still this mystery. Right? But the mystery of the missing girl, at least in my mind, is is starts to really take a back seat To what overall is is going on on this island? You know, what other mysteries do they have? What could we possibly understand about what they do? Not to say that you’re coming and thinking, okay. Yeah. Human sacrifice. Alright. You know, it’s their thing.  So I get it. It’s it’s cool. You know? Not to say that Right. The movie’s trying to give you that feeling, but it it adds to that mystery anyway, this idea that if these people are so cool with all of this, and there seem to be great, wonderful people. You can’t imagine that this group might not also be fine and cool with human sacrifice if it works, and they’ve been doing it for generations and whatever.

Craig:  Well and at this point at this point, that’s only his suspicion. We don’t know

Todd:  He has no proof.

Craig:  That that’s Right. He has no proof, except for that this girl is missing. And there are other, you know, suspicious things. Like, every year, they take a picture of a young, I I assume virgin in front of the harvest, and they, put it in the inn. And The picture from this year is very obviously missing, and and they explained it by saying it fell off the wall and got broken or something, But he’s very interested in finding it. First, he asks permission to exhume the missing girl’s grave because they’ve conceded that she’s dead at this point or not dead because they don’t use that word, but, that she’s no longer living in her corporeal body. And the funny thing is he asks permission right away and is given permission right away.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And and then, like, 10 minutes later, he’s like

Clip:  Lord Summerisle, I am interested in one thing, the law. But I must remind you, sir, But despite everything you’ve said, you are the subject of a Christian country.  Now, sir, If I may  have your permission to exhume the body of Rowan Morrison.  I was under the impression I’d already given it to you.

Todd:  Yeah. That’s his last line to him, which is also really interesting. It’s like how he he’s not really listening to this guy. Yeah. He’s So distracted by the elements that are making him uncomfortable with this island and these people and their culture and stuff in general that he doesn’t really have a clear head about all this. I mean, keep in mind And and this was going through my mind from the very beginning of the movie. He was tipped off to this by an anonymous letter.

Clip:  Right.

Todd:  A photo. And he’s taking this photo and this letter completely at face value. Uh-huh. This guy hasn’t questioned that. And I guess it’s his job as a police officer not to. And after a while, like you said, he’s people are so evasive, and he seems suspicious enough stuff that, you know, that he’s thinking that there’s definitely something behind it. But there’s also that question that kinda needs to be investigated.

Craig:  Like Where did this come from?

Todd:  Where did this come from? Why do I have this photograph of this girl? Why am I even here? And that itself came from a kind of, well, clearly a somewhat unreliable source.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  So he’s not a 100% in the right here with with what he’s doing. He jumps to his conclusions for sure.

Craig:  Well and he’s also pretty I mean, it’s a movie, so whatever. But he’s also pretty foolish in that He continues this entire investigation on his own.

Todd:  Yeah. Like, he’s calling somebody else.

Craig:  As right. As soon as it got that shady, he shoulda had More people there.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  But whatever. He exhumes the body, but there’s no girl in it. It’s Just the body of a rabbit.

Todd:  Which is great because that calls back to what the girl said earlier in the movie, where she called her a rabbit. And now you’re kind of rethinking through all of it. You’re like, could they all have been referring to a like, was the rabbit a class pet and it was on the roster? Like, you know, you’re kind of Trying to go back and and explain and make sense of this, because it does connect in these weird ways. And we’ve seen a lot of this imagery Just peppered and sprinkled throughout the movie. Again, upon rewatching, you probably noticed more of it. But, you know, the woman this who ran the sweet shop, there are tons of these chocolate rabbits and things in the window. Of course, you know, the rabbits and the eggs are all kind of part of fertility and and and that May time.

Craig:  There there was really weird set like, not only a lot of the rabbits, which, you know, is a sign of spring in Christian mythology. Well, it’s not really Christian. I guess it’s more Yeah.

Todd:  It’s pagan.

Craig:  Secular. But, you know, it’s a it’s a a sign of spring, so there’s that. But then she also had, like, tons of, like, babies, like like, giant marzipan babies and baby cakes and

Todd:  Which at one point she’s cutting up, which I thought was a really interesting image.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Later on It

Craig:  was it was weird.

Todd:  Later on, he goes to accuse her of being a terrible mom that, like, says, I know your your girl’s dead. I know you all sacrificed her, and I can’t believe what a horrible mom you are. And she’s looking at him like, sweet lilac, honey, I don’t even know what you’re talking about while she’s Right. Cutting cutting this giant marzipan baby into segments.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  But, yeah, you’re right. He tosses the rabbit down at the foot, and and lord Summers isle is there with a woman. Was she who was she? Was she the teacher?

Craig:  I don’t know who she was, but I got the impression that she was his wife or girlfriend or something.

Todd:  They’re singing another song.

Craig:  Yeah. They are. And in the end, In the climax, they’re together. So I I don’t know. She she doesn’t really do anything. She’s just around, so I wasn’t all that worried about it. But, after he exhumes the body and there’s no body there, he breaks into the photo mart

Todd:  That’s right.

Craig:  And finds the harp the missing harvest pick, with Rowan. And he realizes that Unlike all of the other photographs of the girls with the harvest, in this picture, there is no harvest. And he says to himself, The Crops and Rowan failed, and then he has this revelation. She’s not dead, But they’re going to sacrifice her, like, on May Day or whatever, which is the next day.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  So he goes back To the hotel. And this was my favorite scene just because I kinda couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Willow does, like, Like, a seductive, like, beckoning song and dance in her bedroom, which is just right next door to his. And, like, it totally has this hypnotic effect on him where he’s, like, drawn to her. Like, he almost goes. And, at one point, he’s, like, Totally got his body pressed right up against the wall, and he’s, like, sweating and panting. And I’m like, careful, dude. You’re gonna make a mess.  It’s just so funny. Like, she sings this whole song, and she’s just dancing around the room, totally naked. And I guess she was pregnant at the time. I don’t think anybody would have ever known, but, because she was pregnant at the time, she didn’t wanna be filmed fully nude. So she was only filmed nude from the waist up, and she’s got a very nice waist up. There there were some full shots of her dancing from behind, and that was a body double. And and, again, she and her double, both very beautiful women. But it was just, like, it was just so weird to This raunchy, striptease type, totally nude dance where she’s trying to seduce that.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s not what you’re expecting in this movie. Well, you know, what’s I mean, all the music is is unexpected. And then this whole scene, it’s one of the most famous scenes in the film. And, you know, it’s caused a a a bit of controversy just because of the body double thing. She’s been asked over time to, like, sign Her name on these photos of of her, and she’s like, that’s not me, so I’m not signing my name there. Yeah. I I think Her boyfriend or husband at the time was Rod Stewart, and he actually tried to get the movies not shown because he heard that she was nude in it.  It’s all this stuff. But, But yeah. It’s it’s a cool scene, but it’s it’s kind of I don’t know if I’d call it raunchy. I think it’s kind of a sexy, sexy scene. And she’s singing. And it you know, there’s this music, and it’s just pulsating. It’s like you said. It’s this seductive thing.  It maybe is played a little over the top by the guy. But When you kinda know this guy’s personality, you sort of feel like, okay. He is so he is so, stunted. Repressed. Repressed in all this. I could see him being the kinda guy who’d be, like, pressing his body up against the wall sweaty if nobody else is in

Craig:  the room. Totally. Well yeah. And and she goes in the next morning again just like nothing happened. And and she wakes him up, and she’s like, I thought you’d come see me last night. I was kinda hoping you would. And he’s like, oh, sorry. It’s nothing personal.  I just don’t I just don’t believe in that before marriage. And, you know, in in that moment, I just I was thinking Yeah. I have no idea how old this actor is, He looked like he was probably 40,

Clip:  and

Craig:  I’m like, dude, get married today.

Todd:  One of those scenes that was apparently cut from the from the film and maybe lost to time was a scene Early on, on the main island where they were his coworkers were talking about him and just explicitly talking about what a prude he was and how he was a virgin. And it’s probably good that that was cut out, because it didn’t need to be so on the nose. It’s better for the slow burn to kinda happen for that revelation to be at that moment and for it to be as casual as it is because it turns out to be pretty important that he’s a virgin.

Craig:  Yeah. This all leads into the final act where everything kind of comes together. Well, first of all, he tries to leave because he wants to go and get back up or whatever, But his plane won’t start, and it seems to be suggested that it’s been sabotage. The girl, Willow, had said to him, You really should leave today because you’re not gonna wanna be here for May Day

Todd:  Yeah. With the way with the

Craig:  way that you think about things.

Todd:  Well, e even earlier when he was in, talking to you know, when he tossed the rabbit at the floor and he was in there with Lord Summers isle, and he basically laid out to him, I think this is what’s happening. You sacrificed this girl. You’re gonna sacrifice this girl.

Clip:  Now it is my intention tomorrow to return to the mainland And report my suspicions to the chief constable of the West Highland Constabulary. And I will demand a full inquiry takes place into the affairs of this Heathen Island.  You must, of course, do as you see fit, sergeant. Perhaps it’s just as well that you won’t be here tomorrow To be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations here.

Craig:  Right. Right. So he does try to leave, but he can’t. And so instead, what he and still nobody will be forthcoming with him about the girl, so he says that he’s gonna go search every house. And he does, and that’s kind of an interesting montage.

Todd:  It is.

Craig:  You know? People are messing with him. He’s walking in on naked ladies in the bathtub. It’s it’s just a kind of a a funny scene, but he doesn’t find anything.

Clip:  Yeah.

Craig:  So he decides to take a nap.

Todd:  That was that

Craig:  was the most relatable part of the movie to me.

Todd:  All this detective work is really exhausting.

Craig:  Yeah. I know. He goes back to the hotel, and he tells them he’s like, I’m gonna go lay down for a half an hour. Don’t Bother me. And then he’s laying down, and the innkeeper and Willow loudly whisper outside his door. Oh, he’s asleep. Let’s light the hand of fate or something. I don’t remember what it was.  And and Willow’s like, oh, I don’t know. That’s kinda risky. He could Sleep for days if we do that, and and the guy’s like, oh, that’s even better. So they light something and go away, and he wakes up and it I don’t know if it was supposed to be a real hand. We had seen a corpse in a coffin with its hand cut off before. Yeah. So I don’t know if it was a real hand or if it was just a hand candle or whatever, but it freaks him out. Then he attacks the innkeeper as he’s getting dressed for the May Day celebration, and they had explained or he had read, like, he had done some research about these different traditions.

Todd:  Even this movie is not lacking a a scene of research in a library. I just have to

Craig:  point that out. Library research and get you places.

Todd:  It was important, though, because it really laid out the ancient medieval May Day rituals that this town more or less follows. And it was good to hear him explain it and see those images to be able to understand what we were seeing during this next sequence you’re about to describe.

Craig:  And they weren’t fictitious. Mean, they were kind of a hodgepodge of of, different traditions, but, you know, it’s not like they were just making this up. I mean, these were

Todd:  They’re real.

Craig:  Real traditions.

Clip:  Mhmm.

Craig:  He read how, you know, there were 3 central figures. Everybody dresses up in costumes, and we’ve already seen that. Everybody’s wearing, like, animal masks and stuff, But there are 3 central figures. There’s a horseman. He, leads the procession, and then there’s a lady man portrayed by the leader, and then there’s

Todd:  The fool.

Craig:  Punch the fool. And, when he knocks out The innkeeper, that guy is wearing the punch costume. So he puts on the punch costume. And then there’s this great, Excellent sequence of this mayday processional where Christopher Lee is in share drag, like, ranting down the street. You know, everybody’s in their masks, and it’s this big celebration. And Howie is in the punch costume, and Summer’s aisle is like, come on. You need to dance. You’re the fool.  Act the fool. And so he kind of tries to, but, you know, he’s he’s a little out of place.

Todd:  They don’t know that it’s him or at least they presumably don’t know that it’s him in that outfit. Right. Right.

Craig:  And they proceed through all this thing, and there’s this whole, like, sword ceremony where, it’s supposedly I think that it’s all just a game, but it’s supposedly, like, a game of chance where you have to, like, put your head in this Star of swords that these guys are holding and, supposedly, they’re gonna cut somebody’s head off. Well, it’s all just a ruse. They do cut somebody’s head off, but it Turns out it’s just part of a costume. It’s it’s not real. But then they proceed to the beach, and they bring out the sacrifice. And it’s Rowan, and he’s like, oh my gosh. It’s her. I found her.  And so he runs up in the costume, and he says, don’t be afraid. I’m a police officer. And she says, oh, thank goodness, mister police officer. I’m so scared. Get me out of here.

Clip:  Uh-huh.

Craig:  And so they run off, and she’s like, come this way. I know the way out. And as soon as she said that, I said, it’s a setup. And that was that was the first time that I had thought it. But as soon as she said, oh, mister police officer, thank goodness you’re here. Follow me.

Todd:  You would have thought that this person, if this is such a part of their culture, would have gone along with it. You know, sort of willing sacrifice kind of thing. And so the minute that she seems like she’s in distress, you realize that something’s not right here. But he doesn’t. Right. They run through this cave that she had been standing in and come out the pop out the other side. And at first, it looks like they’re free, but then he looks down and sees that There’s Lord Summerisle, and there’s Willow and, like, 2 or 3 other people all waiting for him. And then pretty soon, the rest of the village comes over the top with their swords that they had in the ritual looking kind of ominous, and the people start to crowd around him.  And lord Summersisle basically lays it all out for him at this point and says, nope. You’re the sacrifice, dummy. You’re the fool, you know, is what he says.

Craig:  And I just thought it was so interesting. He’s like, we, you know, we need a Sacrifice. He’s like, animals work, but not great. He said kids are pretty good, but a certain kind of adult is the best. And he and the guy’s like, I don’t know what you mean. And he says, well, you came here of your own free will. You have the power of the king because he’s a police officer, so he represents the king. You’re a virgin, and you’re a fool.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And the combination of being all of those things makes him the prime candidate to be the sacrifice. Yeah. And so he stripped and bathed and anointed and painted and robed and led off, And he goes off on the you know, like, he’s proselytizing, talking about how he’s gonna hold on to his Faith and he will be resurrected in Jesus, and Summer’s, I was like, oh, good. I’m glad you think that. Well, he’s like Makes this even better.

Todd:  Yeah. Alright. You keep believing that. You’re gonna see Jesus soon, more or less. And it’s it’s really interesting because at this point, you look back on the movie, and you realize He did completely throw himself into this situation.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  Nothing that anybody did to keep him I mean, Maybe they messed with the plane. It’s really kind of unknown. But aside from that, there’s nothing that anybody ever in fact, They were actively discouraging him the entire way, including Lord Summers isle.

Craig:  Right. And even when the plane didn’t work, The boatman said, we could have somebody row you to the mainland. Yeah. It would take forever, but we could. Mhmm. So he did have the opportunity to go, but he didn’t. He stayed. And all of the dialogue here at the end is is is really strong, with him pleading And and calling out to his god and Christopher Lee’s character, again, just remaining very collected and and kinda just explaining what’s going on.  And he says, now off to the wicker man, and they drag him up this big hill where there is literally this giant wicker man. Now I’ve never heard of this in any context outside of these movies, but, apparently, This is something of lore. Whether or not it ever actually existed is up for debate. But, it’s this giant wicker structure. And this one, it looks really cool. Like, into, like, the appendages and different parts of it are built cages that they’ve got animals in that they’re gonna sacrifice also. And then right in the torso in the center is a large cage for him, and they put him in it. And and what they’re going to do and what they do do is, they light it on fire in sacrifice.  And there’s great imagery of It’s standing you know, because they’re sacrificing him to the god of the sun, and there’s great imagery of this thing Burning and then collapsing right in front of the setting sun. Yeah. I just I I I thought it was and and, you know, the animals are Screaming, which I hate, but it was really effective. And he’s weeping and and praying, and then it’s It’s just over. I mean, they Yeah. They sacrifice him, and that’s it.

Todd:  It it ends like a it’s like a Tales From the Crypt story, you know, or Twilight Zone 1. Like, here’s your big twist, and then this guy’s getting it. So, you know, you do feel obviously, you feel bad, and it’s kind of shocking. But the movie does a really good point in making all of this just a little a little tenuous, I think.

Craig:  Oh, yeah.

Todd:  It really works for me. I love This movie. And I’m so glad that you didn’t read anything about it, that you didn’t know anything about this going in, that you hadn’t read any articles about it, because That ending is so important, and I feel like this this this movie is a slow burn, and it’s a journey. And I feel like you gotta go through the whole journey to really appreciate it. And on top of it, it’s just such a uniquely bizarre film. Mhmm. But it works. You know? It it doesn’t fit in a particular genre.  I you know, primarily, it’s kind of a mystery. But because of the ending and the subject matter, it it is a horror film. But like you said, it’s also a musical. It doesn’t really have comedic elements to it, but it’s kind of funny what’s what’s happening with him and how they’re playing with him at times. It it just has a little bit of everything, and the music is really good. It is. The music, it really fits with the film. It was lovingly crafted.  It’s just the kind of movie that’s that’s what I would say about it. It’s a lovingly crafted movie. It happens every once in a while, And, that was why I was so appalled to hear that they remade it. And I’m also appalled to hear that the remake sucked, because I’d hate for somebody to watch that and kind of Get exposed to the bare bones of the story without being able to go back and appreciate this movie, you know, for the 1st time.

Craig:  This is the kind of movie that I can’t imagine why anybody would look at it and think, you know what? We should remake this. Like, it’s it’s such it’s so odd and and unique in its own way. You can’t I mean, what are you gonna do? I mean, either you try to recapture exactly what it already did or you try to update it in some way, which just seems Stupid. Like, it just seems like a foolhardy endeavor. I didn’t love it, but I did really appreciate it because it made me think, And I didn’t expect that going in. And even in the first, you know, 45 minutes, I didn’t anticipate that, but it really did make me think about, you know, belief and faith and what that means. And, you know, I I thought that it was really interesting at the end as he’s pleading Howie says something like, what if this doesn’t work? What if you sacrifice me and you still have a bad harvest next year? Then what? And he says to Summerisle, the only better sacrifice would be you. And I saw A flash of doubt on face.  Whereas before he had seemed so confident, The idea that, potentially, if this didn’t work, that his life might be in danger, I just got the slightest indication that that gave him pause, and, I really liked that.

Todd:  Yeah. You know,

Craig:  I think that that questioning of faith and, You know, comparing one faith to another and feeling so strongly that you are right in your faith and others are inherently wrong because you are right, I I just think that’s a really interesting concept. You know, I watched this a couple days ago, and I’ve really kinda been thinking about it since then. So, when a movie can make me ponder things like that, I think it’s successful.

Todd:  Yeah. It really is. It hits on so many different levels. It’s quite good. Hopefully, if you had any interest in seeing this movie, you didn’t get to the end of this podcast before seeing it. And even if you have, go out and see it anyway. I mean, you can still enjoy it. Yeah.  Alright. Well, thank you so much for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find our Facebook page by just by searching 2 guys and a chainsaw on Facebook. We also have a website out there, 2 guys.red40net.com, where you can find this and All of our past episodes available for downloading or streaming. If you have any ideas for any films you’d like us to do in the future, send us a Quest, we do fulfill those quite frequently, and you can do that either on Facebook or on our comment page on that website. Until next time. I’m Todd.  And

Craig:  I’m Craig.

Todd:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

The movies within a movie make THIS movie a joy to watch. More than anything, we want to attend the horror-sci-fi movie marathon that is the centerpiece of this film. We just don’t want to die in the process.

Episode 175, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. 

Craig:  And I’m Craig. 

Todd:  Today, we are diving into the early nineties, late eighties with a film called Popcorn. This movie, hit the theaters, didn’t make a huge Splash. In fact, it, didn’t really get get seen much at all. Although, I think it did, a little bit of business much, much later on on home video. It does seem to have a bit of a cult following, although it again, not a huge cult following. Almost just a kind of under the radar movie that, I don’t know. After watching it for the very first time, I’m not sure it deserves that under the radar status. I wouldn’t say it’s a fantastic movie, But it does have a certain charm about it that I found compelling, really, despite its shortcomings.   But this was the first time I’d ever seen it, in my life. Wow. How about you, Craig. 

Craig:  Oh, no. I had seen it several times. I think I remember renting it when I was a kid and watching it with my cousins and stuff, and I feel like I have fond memories of it, and and watching it again. I mean, it I’ve seen it since then, you know, in my adulthood, but it’s been a long time. And, watching it again, I understand why I had Fun memories of it. I I think it’s kind of fun. You know, it’s no masterpiece, but, I think that it’s got a really interesting premise, and there’s some Cool stuff going on here. It’s kind of an homage to old school b movie horror.   I like it. I like the central plot line, but I I think that what was most fun for me, are all of the movies within the movie. Those, are are really fun, and I’m sure we’ll talk about them a lot. 

Todd:  Yeah. They’re really well done. These these movies within the movie are the kind of movies that I used to watch a lot as a kid. My dad was A child of the fifties and early sixties, and so he was really big on these black and white b movies, you know, Them and and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and stuff like that. And and our video shelf at home was just full of this stuff, and so it was very accessible to me. It was the kind of thing that I grew up on, really had a passion for, And I still enjoy those kind of movies. They’re they’re usually pretty silly and cheesy, and the acting is bad. And all of that is really highlighted by this film When this group of film students it’s like a film club at the at a Yeah.   Extension of the University of California, Which is a surprisingly ragtag and small film club for the University of California. But, they’re kind of an interesting group of people. There’s a guy in a wheelchair. There’s a a girl who’s working on her script. She’s kind of our central character here. Her name is Maggie Butler, And she is walking around with a handheld tape recorder all the time recording ideas for a script. She has a a kind of boyfriend. Not really.   He pops in and out. He’s interested in her, but she seems to be dead focused on her screenplay. Anyway, it’s it’s just it’s like a small group of people who decide that they’re They’re not gonna get the funding that they need from the school to do what they wanna do, and so their idea is to throw a crazy horror sci by marathon in 1 night at this local rundown theater that’s gonna be torn down in, like, 3 days. And so, they spruce it up, and they do their show. And in the midst of all of this, there is a killer on the loose. 

Craig:  Right. Yeah. I mean I mean, that’s That’s it. You know? And there’s kind of this central mystery thing going on. Maggie, who gosh. I had her name written down, I thought. 

Todd:  Jill Sholin. 

Craig:  Yeah. Okay. I just read because I just finished watching this movie, and so I was just doing some research that She actually was not the original actress that was cast. The original actress that was cast was, another actress of The late eighties, early nineties who I didn’t immediately recognize when I looked at her picture, but when I looked at her filmography, she was the oldest sister in Honey I the kids. Yep. I guess they shot the vast majority of this movie with her. And Then at the very last minute, they replaced her, and I didn’t read anything about why. I I have no idea.   All I know is that This, new actress who came in said that she barely interacted with the cast at all because most of what she did were just, like, close-up reshoot shots. 

Todd:  Yeah. What a shame. Right? 

Craig:  I know. Uh-huh. But yeah. For her. For her. Right. Yeah. I I don’t think that I would’ve noticed.   It it seems pretty seamless. It doesn’t feel cut and pasted together even though it seems like maybe that’s kind of the case. 

Todd:  It might explain a little bit of the weirdness. Like, there’s some scenes, you know, that it’s like this theater’s a madhouse of people coming in. It’s just filled to the brim With folks in all this dress, you know, like, they’re they’re dressed up like aliens or dressed like, like, whatever. It’s in the lobby and in the theater, and people are in there and moving back and forth. But then there are scenes of the same event where there’s absolutely nobody in the lobby but, like, 3 of these people. Yeah. And the front doors are locked, And it’s all quiet outside. And then, like, 2 scenes later, suddenly, the lobby’s chock full of people again, and it’s a mayhem.   I wonder if maybe some of that was, was due to reshoots. They just didn’t bring back all the extras for for those those scenes. 

Craig:  Maybe. I don’t know. You know? I I wanna get back to what you were talking about because that was pretty awesome. But I I just it Starts out with kind of this mystery where Maggie is having these weird dreams, and that’s how well, the very first thing we see are these, like, Strangely realistic face masks, like, floating in some sort of fluid, and and that’s that’s it. Like, it’s totally out of context. That’s all we see. And then we get into Maggie’s dream, and she’s having this weird surreal dream where there’s, like, explosions and, A young girl in white, like, running and some creepy guy, and, like, then his head is, like, on a table, and there’s this big dagger, and there’s fire, and you hear a woman’s voice calling the name Sarah. And then Maggie wakes up, and she dictates it into her little tape recorder.   Apparently, she’s been having these dreams for a while. We see her mother played by One of my favorites, Dee Wallace. Yeah. 

Todd:  We I know that’s why you picked this movie. 

Craig:  Honest to god, I’ve forgotten that she was in it. I really didn’t remember that she was in it. And and when I saw that she was, I was, you know 

Todd:  Oh, you’re just blown away. Oh my god. 

Craig:  Dee Wallace did this? I had no idea. Alright. Believe me. Don’t believe me. 

Clip:  I don’t care. 

Craig:  But Dee Wallace, I mean, she’s she plays a a a minor role in this movie, She looks amazing. My god. I just don’t know that I’ve ever seen her look better, but she looks fantastic. But she is Maggie’s, Let’s just say air quotes mom, and, she gets this weird, you know, kind of phone call with somebody with a raspy voice. You know? I don’t know. I I think the first thing he says is, like, remember who the night circle of hell is reserved for. I don’t even what that means, but whatever. But she’s getting these creepy calls.   Maggie’s having these dreams. So, You know, that’s the initial setup kind of for the mystery. And then what you said, we meet this group of ragtag kids who are aspiring filmmakers, They need the funding, so they’re gonna set up this thing. What’s so funny is Todd me, it it’s Toby’s idea. Toby is Played by Tom Villard, who is so recognizable to me. 

Clip:  Yeah. 

Craig:  He’s this tall kind of lanky guy, And he has this really interesting affect to the way that he talks that is so familiar to me. And I thought, oh my gosh. He must have been in a 1000000 things. And I looked at his page, and he was in quite a bit, but not really a lot that I remembered. Frankly, I think that what I remembered him from Was the 1 episode of The Golden Girls that he was in. I I love The Golden Girls. 

Todd:  Yeah. Well, he was in 1 1 Craig summer. I think I I used to watch that a lot on TV. Yeah. Yeah. He he was in Greece 2 as well. And I don’t know about you guys, but my sisters and I, for some stupid reason, had Grease 2 on, like, a never ending repeat at our house. 

Craig:  It’s such a terrible movie. 

Todd:  It is a terrible movie. 

Craig:  But yeah. I mean, if you’re like us and you grew up in the eighties nineties, you would totally recognize this guy. But it’s his idea to do this, horror marathon, and they’re gonna show these old b movies. Their gimmick is that all of these movies, when they were originally released, were released with some sort of gimmick. And so, like, they’re gonna show Mosquito, which was filmed in projecto vision. Mhmm. And they’re gonna show the stench, which was shot in odoroscope, and They’re gonna show, like, the amazing adventures of the electrical man or something like that that was in Shaka 

Todd:  rama. Yeah. 

Craig:  Yeah. Shaka rama. And, and and so they, you know, they set up all these gags. And and you talked about how, you know, everybody’s in costume and stuff. I just when when it all started, when they get it all going, I just was thinking, oh my god. I wanna go to this so bad. Yeah. I know.   Like, it looked like so much fun. 

Todd:  And all of these things, all of these gimmicks for these movies, these are actual gimmicks that were used, This is stolen directly from William Castle, who was a famous producer of these kinds of films. And, every single movie that he did, he had some gimmick like this to do. It would be something simple like, oh, we’re selling insurance policies if you die of fright during the movie. Or Right. 

Clip:  Right. You have 

Todd:  to sign a waiver. We’re gonna have a nurse on standby if you die of fright. But then He had these movies like, The House on Haunted Hill, which is a great Vincent Price great Vincent Price movie, actually Uh-huh. That used EMURGO technology. And it was very similar to this Mosquito thing where, at a climactic point in the movie, an actual giant plastic skeleton would come come towards the audience on a string or whatever towards them. Chakarama, again, he had a similar thing. I can’t remember what he called Electro something, but it was it was a movie called The Tingler. And he wired up some seats in the theater to buzz during key moments of the movie.   Somebody would be up there with a buzzer thing buzzing them. Every single one of these was actually done by him. So It’s a neat nod to the past, and it’s very realistic and appealing Yeah. That these guys could, like, dig up all of this old equipment and reuse it for this horror marathon. And they do it, with the help of this guy who shows up, who’s this weird dude with a with a goatee older man and, like, a top hat and cane and everything who comes in and says he was an old theater owner, and he has all of this old equipment from his theater that he’s gonna now what was he, like, a friend of 1 of them, or did he just show up mysteriously? Where did he come from? 

Craig:  I I Toby knew him. Somehow, Toby Toby brought him in. Okay. Doctor Malcolm something. I don’t know. But it’s Ray Wilson. Again, this this whole movie is full of familiar faces, especially if you were into horror, at the time, but Even, you know, some of these people were were mainstream, but Ray Wolston, we have talked about before. He was in Galaxy of Terror.   I always Recognize him from the John Malkovich of Mice and Men. He played candy in that. And he shows up just for a minute, really, to kind of explain the history of these old movies and these old movie houses. 

Clip:  We had Theaters in those days, not like these cine, omnimulti, automaplex things today with 29 screens The size of postage stamps, and we had fun. The Valley Who, the giveaways, the bullshit.   I could tell   you stories. The point is we put the butts in the seats where they belong, And they loved it. 

Craig:  They are at the Dreamland Theater, which is supposedly being torn down in 3 weeks, which makes Absolutely no sense to me because it’s beautiful. Like, it’s this gorgeous Todd movie house that doesn’t seem to have anything wrong with it. I can’t imagine why they’re tearing it down. Doctor Malcolm does his spiel and tells them about all the history and stuff. Then there’s a music montage Where they do all of their cleaning and decorating. And the first thing they do is the seats are all all covered in, like, these huge, like, paint drop cloths, and they they pulled them off to reveal these STEAM theater seats. Like, it’s it’s just this amazing theater that they are able to use. They they decorate it, and It’s just everything is so cool.   The most amazing decorations and set pieces and props and effects and and all kinds of things. The theater just looks fantastic when they are done, and they’ve all got these great Costumes, amazing costumes. Mhmm. And they’re all in character. 

Todd:  And they made the costumes, by the way. Like, they they did, like, Like, plaster casts of their faces and Right. Warm them. I mean, it’s just the all all within, I guess, a couple days. I don’t know. Right. 

Craig:  I I mean, they may the the montage makes it seem like they did it all in, like, one day. 

Todd:  Yeah. All all within the course of 1 song. They basically 

Craig:  Right. Oh, but seriously, you know, Then there there’s a scene before the festival actually begins. Oh, they find in in the prop trunk This movie reel. And the tin, the case that it’s in says, caution. Do not open or something like that. But, of course, They open it, and they watch in it watch it, and it’s this weird, surreal, like, messed up art House kind of film. 

Todd:  The Possessor. Well, it turns out to be many of the same images that Maggie was seeing in her dream. It’s a guy. He looks like Jesus. He’s in white robes, and he’s, eventually like, his head, like you said it’s on a platter on a and there’s some close ups on his eyes. And at one point in the film, there is, like, a, like, a slab and some Candelabra, and it looks like kind of a sacrifice scene where he is 

Clip:  Right. 

Todd:  Pulling out a big wavy dagger and is about to stab a woman who’s laid out on this thing. And there’s some sounds and the the the possessor the possessor, some talking and things like that happening in there. And it weirds her out. Everybody else thinks it’s kinda silly. And then, it turns out that the their adviser, The next day, he says, oh, yeah. Yeah. This must be the long lost footage from this well known kind of mythical film called The Possessor. And there was this guy, and his name was, 

Craig:  Lanyard Gates. 

Todd:  Lanyard Gates, who is this crazy filmmaker, And he put together this film and was showing it, to some people and was enacting out, at the same time, the last Scene from the film and having it shot, and he was actually going to kill somebody during this. But something went horribly wrong, And the whole theater burned down, knocked over candelabra or something. The whole theater ends up burning down, and then they thought that the This film had been lost forever, but it, of course, it turned out in his trunk. 

Craig:  Yeah. I I just thought it was funny. Like, the guy, mister Davis, their adviser or whatever tells them that this guy, Lanyard Gates, was, some sort of, like, cult Film guru and led this group that used to drop acid and then make films. Yeah. Which Kinda funny. 

Todd:  Well, we talked about that earlier. I well, no. I guess I guess I guess earlier, we’re talking about that guy who played the old Man in Poltergeist 2. Yeah. They used to drop acid and do plays, not films. 

Craig:  Right. But but similar. Yeah. And somehow, I feel like he made the 1st part of the film and some people saw it and ridiculed him for it, and, like, the Acting out of the final act was like his revenge or something. I don’t know. They he didn’t like to be laughed at. But whatever. Yeah.   I mean, it’s just like, Maggie’s dream, and she she faints because it’s so shocking to her. And the club decides as a group unanimously that it’s too morbid to I mean, it’s somebody suggests maybe we should show it, and and they said, no. It’s it’s too morbid. You know? Nobody wanna wants to watch a movie where some Guy actually murdered his family, and people actually died, so they they shelve it. They decide they’re not gonna do it. But Maggie asks her mom about it, And, her mom obviously you know, she knows She’s super cute. Like Gee yeah. Have you ever heard of Lanyard Gates? What? What? Who? Never in my life. 

Todd:  Lanyard who? 

Craig:  Yeah. Right. Right. I I’ve never heard of him. By the way, I need you to drop out of this festival right now. Yeah. But the the girl, Maggie’s like, you know, no. I can’t.   I’m too much in it. And the mom’s like, okay. Well, I guess I have to trust that you’re, You know, big girl now. You can take care of yourself. But then after Maggie goes to bed, Suzanne, the mom, gets, another call, And it’s that creepy voice again that says, I’m the possessor. I want her. And, you know, Suzanne’s like, no. But he says, well, if you wanna Todd me.   I’m at the theater where you can come and you can bring your little gun like you did last time or whatever. 

Clip:  Okay. 

Craig:  So Suzanne yeah. So Suzanne goes off Todd the theater, and, you know, here’s Dee Wallace with her little purse gun, you know, like, stalking around. And this is really kinda the only part of the movie that I have a serious issue Because she shows up, all the lights on the outside on the marquee pop on. Okay. Fine. But then all of the letters in the marquee shoot off at her. Mhmm. The marquee just magically changes to the possessor.   A ticket automatically pops out of the ticket dispenser, and she takes it, and then the door automatically opens and she walks in. Now, Ultimately, it turns out that this is just some crazy guy 

Clip:  Yeah. 

Craig:  Doing this. Mhmm. So How did he do all that? 

Todd:  It’s pretty it’s pretty incongruous. Yeah. They’re really They’re really playing a trick on you here. The filmmakers are trying to make this seem supernatural during this scene. And by the way, this scene is a great scene on its own. 

Craig:  Yeah. 

Todd:  You’re right that it doesn’t make sense with the continuity of the movie. But as a scene, it’s really compelling and cool, and it’s well Shot, and it’s well lit, and it’s suspenseful, and it’s got great camera angles and stuff. And, you know, it’s your typical she’s an idiot walking right into this trap. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  And there’s There’s the this movie showing on the screen, and she stands there and watches it and all this stuff. Anyway, she ends up, like, disappearing, essentially. Like, we don’t know we don’t see her again until the end. 

Craig:  Well, she hears, like, she hears somebody running of course, it’s all dark around her. She hears somebody running around, and then She sees somebody coming towards her, which, again, I don’t really understand. 

Clip:  Yeah. 

Craig:  She sees somebody coming towards her and she shoots them. And, like, she’s calling him lanyard, so we know that She knows who this guy is. And she shoots him and he falls, but then she, like, backs up against a projection screen And these big arms pop through the screen and pull her away, and then we don’t see her again, like you said, until the end of the movie. I’m still not sure. Like, was The was the thing that she shot supposed to be, like, a rigged up dummy or something? 

Clip:  I don’t 

Craig:  know. I because it didn’t look like it. 

Todd:  It’s all pretty nebulous. It’s just as is the possessor showing up on the marquee miraculously. You know? 

Craig:  Well, in talking to her. Like Yeah. Which, again, if when you know the end of the movie, It doesn’t make any sense, but No. Whatever. I mean, it’s it’s it’s a good spooky scene, so Yeah. Fine. Whatever. And then, Maggie wakes up in the morning, and I was you know, in my mind, even though I’ve seen this before, it’s been so long, I couldn’t remember.   I’m thinking, won’t she think it’s weird that her mom’s not there in the morning? But she wakes up and, like, breakfast This is all prepared for her, and there’s a note from her mom that’s like, tonight’s the night. Good luck. Uh-huh. This is So alright. 

Todd:  How how did that happen? I don’t know. Yeah. Well, the movie has a very scream vibe to it a little bit. 

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. 

Todd:  Like, just the way it starts with her kind of a and and the pacing of the movie is a lot like the pacing of Scream as well. I bet it’s like, Pink Floyd. Right? You know how if you play The Wall no. Right. Yeah. Dark Side of the Moon 

Craig:  Dark Side of the Moon. 

Todd:  Along with The Wizard of Oz? I think if you played Scream along with this movie, and you Todd them at the same time. It’s like they hit the same beats. Yeah. It sure feels like it. You know? 

Craig:  It’s funny. You know, I hadn’t made that connection. And now that you say it, yeah, they’re very much, alike with the backstory and, you know, this killer out or what turns out to be revenge and 

Todd:  And all these teenagers, and they’re all friends. And then it turns out, spoiler alert, that one of their friends is actually the guy. 

Craig:  Right. Right. That leads us into the festival, which we’ve already talked about. But I I can’t say enough. You know? Like, you Say these people are in costumes, we’re not talking about, like, lazy 

Todd:  throw 

Craig:  a sheet over your head costumes. We’re talking about, like, Intricate. Like, somebody took time to put these costumes together, costumes. One of my favorites was the guy who I don’t know. He kinda looks like a mad scientist, but he has a, an extra prosthetic head, like, growing out of his shoulder, and the head can vomit Met on demand. Like, that was awesome. 

Todd:  But with the nice with the nice eighties touch of both him and the head wearing dark shades. Yeah. Like, this movie, it was like everybody who was coming to this thing, like, raided the warehouse down at Paramount or something. Like, they need 

Clip:  do you 

Todd:  know they needed, like, another scene of of a break in at, the props closet at 21st Century Fox or something like that 

Clip:  Yeah. 

Todd:  To to to Explain how everybody got these wonderful, gorgeous, incredible costumes for this It’s 

Craig:  like 

Todd:  this thing. 

Craig:  It’s like Comic Con For, 

Todd:  like Yeah. 

Craig:  5th fifties and sixties b movies. Like, everybody looks like they could have stepped out. Not everybody. Not everybody’s in costume, but a lot of them are, And it looks great. And all of the, members of the club who are sponsoring this, they’re all in costume and playing roles, and it’s so much fun. You know, when I was in college, we did a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The theater department hosted 1, and and we all dressed up as the characters and played the parts and and whatnot, and and that was really fun. And that’s the only, you know, similar experience that I have to this.   But that, Compared to this was totally low budget and lame. Like, this is amazing. I I would buy my ticket for this Todd, if it if it were happening. 

Todd:  It’s okay. 

Craig:  And they’re showing these movies, and they’ve got this great clock that, like, is kind of a a skeleton that’s squeezing a a heart and blood drips out of the heart. And every time the clock screams, that means The next movie’s about to begin, and they start showing these movies. And the first one that they show is, Mosquito. These movies, they show us some fairly extensive footage from these movies. Yeah. And it’s all Original footage. Like, these aren’t real movies. I mean, they all of them are inspired by actual movies from the fifties sixties, or at least I believe they are.   Yep. But, You know, they they shot these for this movie, and they’re so fun. They are. Like, they’re so much fun. 

Todd:  They are because, you know, they’re they’re they’re satire, but they’re still the like, these movies really to satire, these movies doesn’t take A lot. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  You know? You just basically have to make a movie like that, and and you’ve got your satire. And that’s what these films do. So it’s just These these real earnest actors driving down country roads talking about mosquitoes and 

Clip:  What in tarnations could’ve done this, doc? There’s an area drop of blood left in any My sheep. Feeds mace skater. Wait a minute. Look at this large puncture wound in back of her neck. Are you serious? 

Todd:  Giant mosquito attacks the top of this, pickup truck, or was it a convertible? I don’t know. 

Craig:  It was a pickup truck because the mosquito Grabs on well, and just, like, you know, they do all the old school effects where, you know, there’s the shot of the people in the truck where, obviously, they’re in front of a screen and, like, somebody is off the side of the truck, like, you know, pushing a board underneath to make it, you know, shake to look like they’re driving. And then it’s a a a cut completely away from the truck to show the mosquito flying. So there’s no, like, Size perspective or anything. It’s just because the mosquito’s so huge on the screen, we believe that it’s a huge mosquito. And You can clearly see the ropes, and, like, there’s no realism to it at all. I mean, you know, it’s it’s clearly a prop on strings, but then they, you know, make a big noise on the top of the trucks and, bring the some legs down over the top so we know it’s on the Todd. And then they cut to the mosquito, you know, on the top of the truck, but we don’t see the actors anymore. And it’s just, you know, all these movie tricks that they did, and And then the mosquito drills its, I don’t know, sucker, like, down into the Trucking into the farmer guy’s head, like 

Todd:  Stinger, Craig. 

Clip:  It’s called   a stinger. 

Craig:  All its blood out. Mosquitoes don’t sting, Todd. 

Todd:  They don’t? Oh, please. What Todd they do then? 

Craig:  I don’t know. Oh. They’re not bees. Oh. 

Clip:  It’s in 

Craig:  the giant 

Todd:  There’s a difference. 

Craig:  Oh, okay. Well, whatever. Anyway but yeah. I mean, it’s just it’s Yeah. It was just so much and I’m not. You know? Like 

Todd:  You’re not into these Like, I am 

Craig:  not well, it’s not that I’m not into them. It’s just that I’ve not had a lot of exposure. Like, I’ve not sat down and watched them. I appreciate them for what they are. And in in small doses, you know, I’ve watched clips, and and, I’m also a big fan of, Mystery Science Theater 3,000. They do these movies sometimes, so I’ve seen them in that context. But that was another part of Why this was fun? Yeah. Because it’s all happening in this festival atmosphere, so the audience is very much interacting.   They’re yelling at the screens. They’re riffing on it. They’re Yeah. Throwing popcorn, and I don’t know. I mean, it just seemed like a blast. 

Todd:  Yeah. You would wanna be there. Yeah. You wouldn’t wanna be the guy, activating the mosquito. What he, I guess, is their it’s their adviser. Right? Yeah. Who’s the one operating the mosquito by a remote control and eventually swings it down towards the audience on this big wire that goes across the Craig, And it lights up, and it’s actually a really cool prop, and it also has a big stinger. Yeah.   And it so it kinda swings in front of them. But then, above him on the catwalks, even higher catwalks, you see a guy with another remote. And, he takes over, basically. And, turns the mosquito back around, and the mosquito flies up into the flies to stab him. 

Craig:  Mhmm. 

Todd:  And it’s a pretty brutal little scene there where he stabs him right through the chest and, kills him. And then you See from overhead, this big burly figure with a hat on and a coat who drags him away, drags the body away. Now this this same figure showed up to Maggie in the beginning. Maggie was doing tickets in the ticket office. Yeah. There’s a guy who came up and said, one, please. I’m really looking forward to seeing the possessor or something like that. Before she could look up 

Craig:  And he calls her Sarah. 

Todd:  Yeah. That’s oh, yeah. That’s important. He calls her Sarah. And then before she can look up, he disappears. And so While this whole festival is going on, now Maggie is sort of singularly focused on trying to find this guy because she thinks he might be. I guess she says she thinks he might be killing people. Right? She thinks there’s a killer on the loose.   Yeah. Well Even though I don’t think she has any evidence that this could go on. 

Craig:  I don’t know. She kind of figures things out really or at least, like, she gets on the right trail really fast. Like, She’s like, oh my gosh. It must be Lanyard Gates. Oh, well, yeah, I guess it must be if you say so. I mean, like, every everybody thought he was dead, but apparently, you Saw 1 guy, and so it must be him. Well They take him a little 

Todd:  they take her a little too seriously. Yeah. She takes 

Craig:  And he and, like, the guy I mean, we don’t really get to see him in the beginning, but, like, when he goes to grab the ticket, his hands have burn scars. So 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  You know, supposedly, this guy died in a fire, and it comes out later that they never actually found the body. So, sure, it could be him, but she just gets there really fast. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  You know, I was also getting major, major shades of The Phantom of the Opera. I mean, like, that’s Basically, kinda what the story is to a large extent. This mutilated guy kind of haunting this theater and Seeking out, you know, his revenge or or whatever it is that he wants. In this case, you know, in in Phantom of the Opera, it’s You know, he’s going for the girl for romantic purposes. And this one, it’s not for romantic purposes, but he’s still going for the girl and very much A Phantom of the Opera vibe. 

Todd:  Yeah. That’s right. 

Craig:  And I’ve read I think some of the film a couple of the filmmakers, the guys who directed this, Mark Carrier is the guy that’s credited for directing it, but I guess that at some point, he was let go. And another guy named Alan He ended up being uncredited, but I guess he did a lot of the work on it. And I don’t remember which one it was, but one of the or the other of them was either the writer The or the director of a version of Phantom of the Opera starring Robert Englund, which I haven’t seen. 

Todd:  Yeah. I I think you might have it reversed. I thought it was Alan Ormsby who started out directing it, and then, later on, Mark was brought on. 

Craig:  Oh, maybe maybe maybe that’s why Ormsby’s on credit. 

Todd:  Ormsby Ormsby was did write this, and he actually, he’s a good friend, apparently, of Bob Clark’s. He But Yeah. We’ve talked about Barb Clark on here before. 

Craig:  Oh, yeah. 

Todd:  And he worked very closely with Bob Clark on some of their earlier efforts, like, you know, there’s sort of no budget, kinda bargain basement movies that they did, that led to bigger and bigger things. Like, I think the first one they worked on was Children shouldn’t play with dead things. 

Craig:  Yep. Mhmm. 

Todd:  And, actually, Alan Ormsby went on to write Mulan as well. Yeah. At least some of it, not the whole thing. 

Craig:  Some of it. Right. 

Todd:  And so, you know, he’s he’s not bad. I guess he just didn’t cut the mustard. It’s not Really clear. Nothing that I read online says exactly why he was booted out of it. But I guess Bob Clark, at some point, had some hands in this. Like, either he was brought in to direct one of those sequences, or there were some rumors that he came in and he directed portions of the movie himself When Things Were in Trouble. It has a real story history, and I didn’t get to see it. But, apparently, on the DVD version of it, there is a whole featurette that people said goes into honest detail about what happened behind the scenes of this movie.   I wish I wish I had been able to find it before we had this podcast, but I I Sure. I couldn’t find it, but, yeah, it would be really interesting to know. 

Craig:  Well and, you know, after, I agree. You know? It I was getting ready to go on with the plot, but I do wanna say I agree. You know, it does seem like there are lots of stories behind this movie that I just couldn’t find the answers to. 

Clip:  You know, replacing the lead actress so late into the movie, replacing 

Craig:  the director. And I’m so late into the movie, replacing the director. And I have no idea if those 2 things coincided or had anything to do with one another, but, It would be nice to have some so listeners, if you know any of these answers, share them with us. We’re genuinely curious. But, after, mister Davis gets killed, we see the killer make a mister Davis mask. Now having watched this before, I, At this point, kind of felt like the movie gave us a major hint to who the killer was Super early in the movie because when they’re setting up for the, festival I won’t say who just in case you don’t want until we get to the end of the the podcast, but one of the characters is making these plaster masks Mhmm. In that Setup scene. So if you’re paying attention, you know who has the skills to make these masks.   But anyway, so they they make a mask Ask of mister Davis. And then we get the next movie, which is attack of the amazing electrified man, which, you know, is very much in the same vein as Ito, it’s this crazy guy. It’s it’s it’s basically kind of the movie Shocker. 

Todd:  Yeah. Although I felt like it had this weird kind of German expressionistic Silent film vibe to it. It was little like the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari or, like, Metropolis and some of the I mean, There was talking in it. Uh-huh. But then there are points when, you know, there’s just these odd set pieces, and the guy is just walking and Emoting and and you know what I’m talking about? 

Craig:  No. You 

Todd:  don’t even know the movies I’m referencing. What are you talking about? 

Craig:  I’ve heard of them. 

Todd:  It’s a weird mix of this b movie slash, German, yeah, postmodern filmmaking that that Goes even further back. So I thought it was it was the one of the more bizarre of the 3 movies that we saw in that it was hard for me to pinpoint exactly what Kind of what movie they were parodying there? 

Craig:  Yes. And and I I do think that it’s interesting that you say that because all of the movies could have been entirely similar, and that would have been fine. But they do give them somewhat distinctive qualities. And if you’re right that this one does have, You know, a German or whatever sort of influence. It makes sense then that the last movie, The Stench, is kind of a Asian 

Clip:  Over 

Craig:  yeah. Horror film. 

Todd:  It’s like an It’s like an overdubbed monster movie from 

Craig:  Right. Right. 

Clip:  Right. It 

Todd:  it’s hilarious. I wish we had seen more of that one, to be honest. I that was the one I was the most interested in seeing more of, and that was the one we only saw a couple 

Craig:  of years ago. True. This movie is built at least on IMDB. I don’t know how it was marketed, but, it’s built on IMDB as a horror comedy. And I can see that, though, it’s not and I don’t think that it was intended to be a laugh out loud comedy, but there are funny parts And one of them is, you know, Maggie’s pseudo boyfriend shows up at the theater with another girl, but then when he sees that Maggie is there. He goes to kinda try to flirt with her. And when he comes back, some big guy has taken his seat next to this sleazy girl that he’s there with, and There’s an interaction between them where the big guy stands up and knocks Mark out. Like and it’s it’s barely worth even mentioning, except for I want you all out there in the world to know that there are comedic, elements, of this movie too. 

Todd:  Yeah. Beyond a guy getting stabbed with a giant mosquito, 

Craig:  There are other Critics, just everyday Joes. And, somebody said, it it’s kind of amazing that a horror Movie with few to no jump scares, no gore, really, and no boobies Can be as entertaining as this movie is. And and I agree. You know? It’s it’s really not gory. I mean, there’s Some imagery that’s maybe, you know, a little strange, but there not a lot of blood, Certainly no intense violence. No overt sexual stuff going on here. But I did find I was entertained throughout. I was not bored.   I thought it was, a fun romp. And and the little things, I I my fave well, okay. So during the Shocker movie, Maggie is listening to her own tape recorder, and the scary voice comes on and says, your life has been a dream. You are possessed. And she’s like, but then Mhmm. Bud is, Bud is the guy in the wheelchair. And I recognized him 2. And I thought, oh, again, he must have been in a 1000000 things because he’s so recognizable to me.   No. Just a couple of things that I remember. He was in the curse. Did you ever see The Curse of Wil Wheaton from the eighties? 

Todd:  I haven’t seen it, but it’s on my I think it’s on our list. 

Craig:  We’re gonna 

Todd:  do it for 

Craig:  a minute. Todd, I love it. But he plays the older brother in that. He’s like shocking people. And then Tina, who is the blonde kind of sex Pot 1. She’s played by Freddie Simpson. Again, recognized her. Looked her up.   She, played Ellen Sue in League of Their Own, The pretty blonde one from A League of Their Own. Anyway, she goes off and she’s looking for mister Davis, and she finds him. We, of course, know that it’s really the killer in a mister Davis face mask. I also didn’t quite understand this. Is he making latex masks, or is he, like, preserving their faces and wearing their faces? 

Todd:  I think he’s making latex Masks. I’m pretty sure that’s what he’s doing, because he’s pulling them on and off like like makeup. And he’s got his own, obviously. 

Clip:  Yeah. 

Craig:  Yeah. You 

Todd:  know, there’s that one scene. Yeah. Yeah. I’m pretty sure he that’s what he’s doing. 

Craig:  Alright. Makes sense. Anyway, so she, like, Flirts with him and starts making out with him and, like, his it it is. It is latex because when they are making out, like, I don’t know if it sticks to her face or what, but, like, she pulls away from him and, like, it, you know, it’s stuck to her face, and it’s all stringy and sticky, and he kills her. I don’t know how. But then he holds her up like a puppet. He uses her to talk to Maggie and Mark. In the you know? I thought that was really funny. 

Todd:  It’s Funny. It is a little funny when you describe it. It’s pretty disturbing when you see it. And It is. Like like you said, the movie doesn’t have a lot of gore. But the scenes that we’re describing actually do come across as a bit disturbing. Like, even her peeling his face mask kind of away is really pretty upsetting. And even the guy getting stabbed with a mosquito and later on, the mosquito comes in in what I thought was one of the more one of the more shocking scenes in the movie.   Yeah. All of these things, they sound really silly, but without the gore even, it just strikes an interesting balance, I think. Yeah. You know? I mean, it kinda works. Against all odds, it all really worked for me. 

Craig:  Oh, I think it definitely works. I mean, it looks good. It’s It’s done well. It’s it’s shot well. It looks cool. 

Todd:  And 

Craig:  I’m I’m not complaining at all. I I enjoyed You 

Todd:  know, now that we’re talking about it, this movie owes a great debt to an earlier movie too, an earlier Vincent Price movie called The Abominable Doctor Phibes. Have you ever seen that? 

Craig:  No. I know what it is. 

Clip:  Oh, 

Todd:  god. We have to do it on here. Okay? The villain is very reminiscent of the Abominable Fives. But The other aspect of it that’s so interesting is that the method in which they kill people are slightly comic, but also disturbing and also fitting to the plot and what’s going on. This is so vibes. Like, there’s just this dark comedy about it. And, the bit where they kill Bud is, You know, straight out of that as well. Here is bud in a wheelchair, sitting in the box off the box seats or whatever, operating the Shakorama console, Zapping people in their seats, which, by the way, it’s not like a simple buzzer.   It’s not like a simple shock. It’s like mini explosions going off underneath these people’s seats below. It’s it’s And 

Craig:  you let you can it’s so much that you can see the electricity like there’s sparks. 

Todd:  Yeah. It’s it’s pretty dramatic, and it and that would actually be pretty awesome. But as well as probably illegal. Yeah. But, yeah. So, anyway, the killer comes up behind him and, straps him down and puts clamps on his, chair. He’s turning his chair into an electric chair, which is quite clever. But then he slaps a tape recorder In front of him and Pitts play, it’s freaking saw, man. 

Clip:  Well, good. You’ll get a chance out of This watch, Mikhail. The lights will go on the following hour. Red, blue, green oh, what’s that? Green, Reason. Oh, I forget. But the important light is that yellow when it turns on, but so do you. 

Todd:  It’s Saw. It’s even like the same voice. 

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Yeah. 

Todd:  He hits play on it, and he says, now you will be and he basically runs down what’s gonna happen to him that as these lights on the console turn on, once it gets to this certain light, he’s gonna get fried. And so the he runs away, and this this guy you know, Bud is struggling to, like, reach the something on the console to yank it out, but he doesn’t get there in time. It it’s like a total sauce setup. 

Craig:  It is. 

Todd:  If from the tape recorder and everything, I 

Craig:  And the scene was the scene was tense because you see these lights coming on, and you know that when the last one comes on, he’s supposed to get electrocuted. Meanwhile, he’s struggling with his hand which is strapped down to his wheelchair, he’s struggling with his hand to try to unplug the socket or whatever, and and he’s So close. And he’s so close for so long, and you’re just like, come on. You can do it. You can do it. But he can’t to it. And so when the guy on the screen gets electrocuted, he gets electrocuted too. And it probably wasn’t a particularly expensive effects, but I I thought it looks good.   I mean, this is such a drive in movie. You know? I didn’t even consciously do it, but you forgive maybe some little things here because Okay. So maybe the electric maybe the electricity, you know, encasing his body didn’t look particularly authentic, but it looked Fun. Like, it was a a cool looking effect, and I I don’t know. I just I really enjoyed it. But right before he’s electrocuted, I have to give a out Todd my favorite line, and I remember this from when I was a kid. We quoted this all the time, and it’s just in the background. It’s just the crowd riffing on the movie, but somebody in the movie says, kiss Somebody in the audience goes, kiss your what? And I just remember us Saying that all the time, we’re kids.   He’s coming this way. 

Clip:  Kiss me, dick. This is your what? 

Craig:  Apropos of nothing but hilarious. Oh, well. And then Maggie goes to Toby and is like, oh, this is Happening. You know, the bad guy is here, and he’s like, oh, okay. Well, we definitely should call the police, but first, we need to go downstairs and get the lights back on because when there was, you know, the electrocution or whatever, the the power went out. She’s like, first, we have to go downstairs and get the lights back on, and so he takes her down to the basement. 

Todd:  But wait. But wait. While the power is out, the way that they’re entertaining the crowds is they’re bringing some Jamaican band up on stage to play reggae? 

Craig:  Yes. There and we are we missed it at the beginning. Like, when the festival first started, there was just a random rap guy outside the theater too who did this, like, reggae rap. It was pretty amazing. 

Todd:  Apparently, they filmed this in Jamaica, so they must have used, like, local talent to come in and jump into this movie, which is always fun. 

Craig:  I loved it. I loved, the music in this movie. 

Todd:  It’s such a non sequitur, though. I mean, it’s so out of It is. Left field. 

Craig:  Oh my gosh. But the crowd is so into it, and everybody’s dancing and having a great time. Again, wish I was there. But, like, even in the the music montage In the beginning, when they’re setting up the theater Yeah. It’s all set to that oldie. I don’t know who originally did it, but Saturday Night at the Movies. And, It it I mean, it was just the perfect atmosphere for what was going on. The and and then at the end of the movie, as was often the case in these eighties movies, there is, an original song that references, you know, the movie.   It’s oh my gosh. It was Yeah. Good throughout. 

Todd:  It’s a real throwback. It’s quite nice. 

Craig:  Yeah. But, anyway, Toby takes Maggie downstairs where the lights are out and their Flashlight goes out or something, and he disappears. And then for a split second, she sees mister Davis, like, Slide through a door, and then she sees Tina, like, I don’t know, just out of the corner of her eye or something. The stench is playing Upstairs, like you said, we don’t get to see too much of this, which is unfortunate, but I love that gag, like the smell o vision gag where they pump in the odors through fog, through different things in the theater. Love it. And then we get then here it is. It’s the big reveal. All along, It’s been Toby.   Yeah. And the reasoning behind it is that his mother was a member of Lanyard Gates’ cult, and they had been sitting in the front row of the possessor. When all this went down, Gates Did kill Maggie’s mother on stage in front of everybody, but then Maggie’s Aunt Suzanne came in and rescued her, and somehow a candelabra got turned over and the whole place went up in flames. Toby’s mother died in the fire, but he was saved, but he was severely burned over, like, 90% of his body. And so and he’s gone through his whole life, you know, being this monstrous thing that you know, Undergoing these terrible reconstructive surgeries, we see him in his true form. He also shows her. He gives her a demonstration of how he puts on the masks, and he uses, again, just like Scream, like, voice changing technology Gee to change his voice. And so he gives her a little show, you know, of the different masks and things.   But we see him in his natural form, and he’s all burned. And I thought His makeup looked great, and I thought that Tom Villard did an amazing job in this performance. 

Todd:  Fantastic in this movie. I mean, he was compelling. And and these scenes were kinda long and maybe even a little too long. Like, there was a lot of exposition. There’s a lot of him running around throw I mean, he throws on, like, 5 different faces, and and it goes on forever. But gosh darn it. This guy is really good. 

Craig:  And it 

Todd:  was really Fun to watch him get unhinged, you know, and kinda go nuts. 

Clip:  It’s my scarecrow in Oz face. Cute.   You’re crazy. What? It’s just dawned on you? That is great, and I’m the one who’s crazy. You can’t say I lost my sense of humor. Daniel. 

Todd:  You’re right. This is where it really feels very Phantom of the Opera like. His makeup is good, and he’s going crazy. You know, I feel really bad, because Tom Villard, he didn’t live very long. He No. He died a few years after this. And, apparently, you know, this is back in the late eighties, early nineties when AIDS was was huge. Like Yeah.   You had AIDS, and you had a death sentence. And he Yeah. Confessed to the director, I guess, of this film on his 1st day of shooting that he had AIDS, which would have been, probably something that he was keeping hidden 

Craig:  Oh, yeah. At that point. 

Todd:  So it’s really quite tragic. I I would love to this guy could have been the next Tom Hanks. You know? I mean 

Craig:  Oh, gosh. He was really talented. I mean, he was really big. You you say Tom Hanks. I I I’m thinking more along the lines of, like, Jim Carrey. Like, huge Choices. Really bold choices. And Jim Carrey kinda grates at my nerves sometimes.   I think that he’s very talented, but I can’t deal with the whole Ace Ventura energy. But this guy, he makes those big Todd choices, and he really you know, he seems unhinged. Mhmm. He plays it Very well. And, also, just enough sympathetic in ways Even though he is the killer and the villain of the movie, he’s kind of a tragic villain. He’s kind of been a he was a kid when this happened to him, and and it’s something that he’s had to live with. And and ultimately, you know, he’s totally nutso, But what he says is, I want to recreate that night. I wanna finish the movie because if I finish the movie, then none of it happened and everything will be okay.   Now, of course, obviously, that’s not true. You know, that’s entirely delusional. 

Todd:  And she has the best my favorite line in the movie. She looks at him and says, okay. That makes sense. 

Craig:  Yeah. 

Todd:  And cut away. Oh my gosh. That was a brilliant moment. 

Craig:  It was great. It was great. But so, anyway, so that’s what he does. He puts on Possessor, which, you know, the audience, like, what is Craig, and they are back behind the screen. I love these scenes in movies where people are behind the projection screen in a movie theater. It’s just such it’s such a great backdrop, you know, for a scene. Yeah. Just when the movie ends, which is when, you know, the fire would have happened or whatever.   Again, continuity wise, it doesn’t Really make any sense, I don’t think. The projection screen raises, and there he is, and he’s got The whole set’s set up, and he is gonna sacrifice Sarah slash Maggie, and He plays to the audience like, I was going to kill her, but do you really want me Todd, or do you want me to spare the poor virgin? And, of course, then the audience goes wild. They’re like, killer. Killer. 

Todd:  Yeah. They think it’s just part of the show. You know? I mean Right. It’s so smart. Right? He’s gonna kill this woman in of them, and they’re they’re not gonna even realize it. 

Craig:  Right. Oh, and they’re they’re They’re into it. Plotting. And, yeah, they’re totally into it. 

Todd:  Yeah. They’re Egging him on. And, you know, as a viewer, you watch this, and I’m like, jeez. How are they gonna get out of this one because of that fact? You know? There’s nobody’s gonna rush the stage and save her because nobody thinks there’s a problem. And And they’re just feeding on he’s just feeding on their energy, which is making him even worse and worse and worse. It’s it’s really it’s really cool scene, I think. 

Craig:  It is. And and Todd Villard has great energy, and he really is playing the Craig. And he’s big and over the top and and a good performer. I would have been excited. I would have been telling him to kill her. Yeah. Tap her. And and he rolls out, Suzanne, like, in The full body cast with the gun pointed at him.   So, you know, Dee Wallace is just on stage with, you know, tape on her mouth. Doesn’t have anything to do, but there she is. And Mark, the pseudo boyfriend, saves the day. He’s, like, up, I don’t know, near the projection booth or something, and he Takes off his belt, and he uses it to zip line down the cords that the mosquito was on. And when he zip lines down, somehow he activates the mosquito, And the mosquito impales the bad guy, and then he, like, is swinging impaled on the mosquito. And the crowd is 

Todd:  Going nuts. No. It’s so it’s so disturbing. This is this is the most disturbing part of the movie for me. And, I mean, it’s just a movie. But, like, Yeah. This this guy gets impaled, and he’s swinging on this thing. And the crowd doesn’t even know that this that this was a real murder they just watched.   Everything about it is just really twisted Mhmm. As well as funny. Yeah. Yeah. 

Craig:  And and that’s pretty much it. I mean, there’s just a little, you know, end gap where they are all outside with police and ambulances and stuff, but, ultimately, everybody’s okay. I I hate that we never mention there’s 1 character named Cheryl who’s played by Kelly Jo Minter, who I just really like. She was in our very first episode, People Under the Stairs. Yes. She was in that movie. She was also in Nightmare on Elm Street 5. She’s in this movie, and and she’s such a small character, but she’s compelling every time she’s on screen.   She gets an opportunity to kick a little bit of ass at one point. She knocks out the big guy that had knocked out Mark, in a really funny scene. So I just wanted to throw her out there because I I really enjoy her. But overall, I think this is a really fun movie. I just think it’s Super fun. It it it’s not a masterpiece. It’s not great. But even though it pays homage to a lot of other films, I think that it’s unique in its own way.   It’s well acted. You know, I I think as far as cinematography goes, it’s got some really good moments. I think in other moments, it’s, you know, just Semi average, but, the story is fun. It’s never I don’t know. You said you thought there were some parts that dragged a little bit. I really didn’t. I didn’t think that it was boring at all. I was into it.   The villain was great and was, you know, played so well and looked good and and homage to all the the movies of the fifties and sixties. It just had So many things that were appealing to me that I just really enjoyed it, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to horror fans. I just think it’s it’s it’s a really, really fun movie. 

Todd:  Yeah. I did not expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did. I really didn’t, especially because, you know, you don’t hear anything about it. Right? I mean, people this is the kind of movie that really should be one of those little cult classics that people talk about a lot or or look back fondly, and it just never got to that point. 

Clip:  Right. 

Todd:  I it had doesn’t even have a I guess it had a DVD released fairly recently. I wish we had been able to acquire that copy of it, because I’m sure it’s It looks a lot better than what we ended up seeing. What we ended up seeing had almost kind of a grindhouse quality to it. I don’t know if it was a VHS rip or what, but The whole movie itself looked again like a drive in that we were watching. But no. And and then to kind of, Hear all the interesting stories behind it. It sounds like it’s a miracle was made. So it’s it’s just kind of a a nice, fun, little surprise package that I really enjoyed watching as well this week. 

Craig:  Me too. I hope I’m not overselling it because, again, it’s it’s not amazing in terms of quality. It’s just really fun. 

Clip:  Fun. 

Craig:  Those of you out there, I feel like we kind of failed you this week. We didn’t have as much behind the scenes stuff to talk about as we usually do, and that’s disappointing. So, honestly, if if you know any fun facts about this movie, I am genuinely curious. On our Facebook page or or wherever you want Todd, and, let us know if you can give us any insight. 

Todd:  Yeah. Or if you could, like, upload that feature ad if You might have it on here. I don’t wanna, like, you know, encourage this sort of thing, but, YouTube’s a great resource. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook. Just search for 2 guys in a chainsaw. Also on our website, 2 guys.redfortynet.com, where you can peruse all of our back episodes.   We’re coming up, dangerously close to 200 here. 

Clip:  So 

Todd:  if you have some ideas of what we should do for our 200th episode or any episodes coming up, we love getting your requests. Just, shoot us a message on either one of those channels, and we’d get it. We love hearing from you. Until next time. I’m Todd 

Craig:  And I’m Craig. 

Todd:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

We’re twisting our puzzle box to unlock Clive Barker’s directorial debut about a twisted group of people summoning a twisted group of demons to do some seriously twisted things. The movie that started a franchise, and somehow managed to make the name “Pinhead” sound terrifying.

Episode 174, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week we decided to go with a well-known favorite 1987’s Hellraiser by the inimitable Clive Barker. This was Clive Barker’s very first film outing actually. He had never, he’d like kind of directed a couple shorts before this but nothing of consequence so he was really a first time director with this movie. He was upset, actually, that a couple of films that had been made before this of his own material turned out really lousy. One of those is Rawhead Wrecks.

Craig: Have you ever seen that one?

Todd: No, I’ve heard about it though. Oh God, I’ve heard it’s a nightmare. I mean, and not in a good way. I’ve heard it’s a terrible movie. So he decided to take things into his own hands and he wrote and directed Hellraiser and New World Pictures, the company that Roger Corman founded,

Craig: Wait, is that right? Roger Corman did New World?

Todd: Yeah, he did.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Todd: It was a $1,000,000 movie, it made $20,000,000 in the theater, it was a bit of a success, and also propelled, what are we up to, like five or six sequels now?

Craig: Oh no, more than that I think, like eight. Really?

Todd: Oh my gosh. Okay yeah, so the franchise has moved on and like we like to do on this show, we don’t really want to do the sequels so much until we do the originals. So here we are revisiting Hellraiser. Craig, I had seen this movie before. How about you? What’s your history with this film?

Craig: He’s really got a very dark streak and what I’ve heard about Clive Barker is that he’s kind of a interesting guy i didn’t do as much research as i should have so i apologize i hope i’m not disseminating any false information but i’m pretty sure he’s a gay guy yeah

Todd: that’s true

Craig: You

Todd: know, I have a friend who was a producer. He isn’t anymore, he’s a writer now, but he was a producer for a Canadian production company. and they were doing some television series or something about different people and he actually interviewed Clive Barker at his home and he said it was a really trippy experience because uh he came there and he said he had almost like um what do you call it he had a lot of male servants not servants House service? House boys. House boys, yeah, yeah. All around for most of the time. And anyway, when he was interviewing him, now he’s a painter as well.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And when he was interviewing him, he was working on a commission for Disney. Disney had commissioned Clive Barker to like design, it was either a ride or like a whole separate add-on to one of the Disney theme parks. This would have been in the mid 90s or so. If you can imagine Disney commissioning clive that’d be like going to hr giger and say hey you know design the new mickey mouse ride you know right just keep keep the dicks and vaginas to a minimum you know yeah i i have to admit like this kind of thing like you said it’s a little fringe And it’s not really my cup of tea, that the S&M kind of stuff, the hooks and pulleys and metal and the chains and it’s very Saw-esque as well, right?

Craig: It’s

Todd: kind of pre-Saw. It’s not really my thing, but I can appreciate this movie for doing something completely different, like you said, at the time. And even since then, There hasn’t been a lot in this sort of genre. I guess the other thing closest to what I could say would be H.P. Lovecraft, right? This whole idea there’s this other, well, not really, but there’s this other realm of demons that can come through or can be summoned in. I mean, summoning demons from hell isn’t really a new thing, but somehow this movie presents this as more than hell.

Craig: You know, they want this ultimate experience in pain slash pleasure. Again, like you, like, I’m not into it. We wouldn’t have made it if we were. I don’t know. I mean, you know, let your freak flag fly or whatever, but I’ll take my experiences with the pleasure side. Not the pain as pleasure.

Todd: So I don’t know, like, did he die? Is that what it is? Like, you get this experience, but then you pay with your life?

Craig: It’s not until Larry, as he’s moving in a mattress, cuts his hand on an exposed nail and bleeds onto the floor of the attic, that blood is like a life force that starts that withered heart beating again and ultimately kind of starts to revive him slowly. It’s a great scene. Oh,

Todd: it’s amazing.

Craig: It almost looks like the floor is like soaking in or drinking up the blood and you see that heart beating and then you see this monstrous skeletal creature emerge from the floor and it just looks great. I mean, it just it looks so it’s disgusting it’s wet and slimy and bloody and gross and uh it looks really good

Todd: It’s very much turned out to be a special effects film, I think, because the acting’s not bad. The actors are good. The actors themselves are quite good. Larry is played by Andrew Robinson, and he is a veteran, even at this time, a veteran of television, very recognizable. The female is played by Claire Higgins. Ashley Lawrence, who plays Kirstie, who is the daughter I think it’s

Craig: Andrew’s

Todd: Not even medium shots but like we’re in everyone’s face all the time and that can be a problem. Especially when you linger too long and you know you’re moving around inside this house. Now they had to shoot on location because they didn’t have a lot of money so that probably explains a little bit of why you know they couldn’t have a lot of nice great wide and medium shots. But it has an effect on the film that just I don’t think it’s good you know. I think it highlights

Craig: the

Todd: weaknesses of the, it just makes everything a little too melodramatic feeling. Like a soap

Craig: They could move it up and down a little bit, but there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. And I understand what you’re saying about making it a little bit melodramatic, but at the same time I think that that works for this movie because it makes it feel intimate, I guess. Like, you’re always really close to these people. And I do see the melodrama, but it’s a melodramatic story, really. Because not only is there this weird hellish stuff going on, but it’s also a dramatic tale of this twisted love triangle. You find out through flashback from Julia’s perspective, which, by the way, Claire Higgins, no relation.

Todd: You wish.

Craig: We get these scenes semi-graphic scenes of their sexual tryst right before her marriage. In fact, they, I’ll just be PC and say, make love, even though it’s far from that, on her wedding dress.

Todd: That’s right. There’s no better metaphor than that.

Craig: He says that he needs blood. He said that it was Larry’s blood that brought him back to the state that he’s in now and more blood will help him to continue to revive. She has to think about it for about an hour.

Todd: if even

Craig: right laying in bed with her husband she gets up out of bed and goes back up to the attic and tells him that she will help him and she does and and that’s kind of the thrust of the movie but there’s also I don’t remember when he finally reveals it to her but he revealed he says we need to hurry this up we need to get me fixed up because they’re going to be coming for me the Cenobites yeah he says when they realize that I’ve escaped their Prison or their grasp or whatever. They will be coming.

Todd: Yeah, that’s like the second half of the movie Okay, so what she does and is she goes out and she seduces men which is pretty easy for her pretty easy for any woman really seduces men and brings What what I mean by that is men are generally scum that’s

Craig: what all right, that’s fair. Oh

Todd: They come in and they have a very uncomfortable scene. Yeah. You can tell that she’s kind of like doing what she has to do, but she’s not all that excited about it. She’s clearly uncomfortable. Yeah, and probably the first time she’s done something like this. And he, you know, starts to try to make out with her right there. And then… What’s the matter? That’s

Clip: I’m sorry. Let’s go upstairs. Okay.

Craig: I

Todd: think

Craig: it

Todd: plays even better today. I really do, because I think it’s more true and honest, maybe. Although I also feel like he’s trying to make it seem like these guys have it coming a little bit, or at least that guy does.

Clip: Yeah,

Todd: sure. There’s a little bit of build here that, whether it’s intentional or not, it’s kind of smart filmmaking, because the first guy almost seems like he’s got it coming, in a way. I mean, nobody’s got that coming. but uh right but you know he’s pretty aggressive with her so you don’t feel quite as bad you know that she kills him but then the next two guys you know are total victims and so i’m asking you i was thinking about this while i was watching this movie do you think that her character is a villain or a victim

Craig: But that’s okay when

Todd: you when you point it out.

Craig: I know you say this kind of stuff kind of makes you sick to your stomach. And she goes, uh, it’s fine. I’ve seen worse. Like she just totally gets used to it and maybe even relishes in it a little bit. I feel like she feels empowered where she didn’t before, which is gross, but. understandable to some extent, I guess. I mean, I’m not going to feel empowered by going out and killing people, but if she was unsatisfied and felt helpless in her life to wield this kind of power specifically over men, it’s not illogical. I get it.

Todd: It does kind of equalize her relationship with Frank, right? Because in those flashbacks we see Frank as kind of the predator.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: Who’s seducing and bringing her in and she likes it, but she seems a little scared by it, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, at this point now she’s kind of coming up to his level and she’s becoming more violent and she’s becoming more assertive as well. And that just seems to bring them both of them together even more. It gives her maybe more of a motivation, right? For bringing this slimy, gross, kind of mean character back to life, because now maybe she’s in a better position to receive him.

Craig: You know?

Todd: And his proclivities, because they’re becoming her proclivities too. So it’s smart in that way. You’re right. I guess they’re more of a dual villain in this point. But I think earlier in the film, or at least in the flashback modes, you get the sense that she’s a bit of a victim that’s been cajoled and lured into this web.

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d say she’s… You don’t think so? No, because I feel like she’s

Todd: a willing participant. Well, it’s true. You’re right. It’s wrong for me to brush that under the rug. You know, you cheat on your husband and you chose to do it.

Craig: Right? Right. Right. So,

Todd: yeah.

Craig: And she submits, you know, like, I think that that is part of what draws her to him is that he is so aggressive and, you know, in their sex play or whatever you want to call it, like, He pulls out a knife and you know like there’s there’s knife play and it at one point he gets up and says something like It’ll never be enough and she comes up behind him and is like, please please you can do anything anything like

Todd: I will have to say that I still feel like the way it plays out on screen is a little melodramatic, like it’s a little too heavy, too hard, like soap opera-esque, and I thought it was a little cringy in that way. Thematically and everything it all kind of works, but on the screen is a little too much.

Craig: That’s OK. You can feel that way. You didn’t think

Todd: so, though.

Craig: You thought it worked. You thought it was convincing. No, I thought it worked. Yeah, I thought it worked. I’m not denying that it was melodramatic. It was. I’m not denying that it wasn’t a little bit soapy. It was. But it didn’t bother me. It worked for me. It was just kind of this heightened reality that I was able to roll with.

Todd: The world of the movie you bought into it. That’s fine.

Craig: Well and like you said earlier like Andrew Rob Robinson who plays Larry that he’s this veteran he’s been doing I thought that he was one of the most hammy characters of all of them.

Todd: Oh for sure.

Craig: Not like comedically goofy but you know just kind of this goofy guy and not unlikable and not necessarily unrealistic like we’ve been totally ignoring Kirsty because really for the first half of the movie she’s just around like you just know that she exists and she might be important later which she is but he’s with her very much the dad yeah there’s one scene where they have a dinner party and he’s very much the dad dinner party host

Todd: I think the reason

Craig: is they just never got out of his face. I mean, if you zoom in on an actor and you let those shots linger for just a little too long,

Todd: They shot the movie pretty much in sequence and he said that that was the first sequence they shot and he said looking back on it now like I remember like that day I just felt so out of my depth and I knew it was wrong at the time I was shooting it and he said I still look at it on the screen and I still feel like it’s wrong.

Craig: Yeah, and he admits fully, he had no idea what he was doing. And he says that he was so grateful that both the cast and crew were so willing to just put up with his ineptitude because he had no idea. He was just flying by the seat of his pants. From what I read, he said that it was a good experience, but really only because everybody was so patient and kind. Great, you know, like if I were a first-time filmmaker, you’re lucky to find yourself in this situation where people are willing to be patient.

Todd: Yeah, for sure.

Craig: Because I don’t think that the industry is really known for that.

Todd: It must speak well to his character if he’s the kind of guy that people want to be patient with, right?

Craig: Well, and that’s the thing, like I hear such kind of weird freaky things about him, but when I see him in interviews and things, he seems very charismatic. You know, he seems like somebody that I would be very much interested in sitting down and having a beer with. Just one. And nothing more. Not too many. But he, I mean, he seems like a cool guy. You know, whatever his personal interests are, that’s…

Todd: Who are we to judge?

Craig: Right, like you said, consenting adults, you do what you want to do.

Todd: Well, eventually the daughter does get back into the picture, Kirstie, and it’s really only about the second half, and I think the beginning of that is, I mean, she’s in and out, she has this boyfriend, I don’t even know his name. Was

Craig: it even

Todd: uttered in the movie once? I don’t think it was. He was kind of a throwaway character. Yeah. Almost the obligatory boyfriend, you have to have somebody to help you through the end because we can’t just let a woman do it all.

Craig: Right.

Todd: I think the turning point there is that after, you know, mom has been acting really, really weird, Larry goes out to lunch with her at a Chinese restaurant.

Clip: stand in the driveway and see Julia bringing another man in.

Todd: I don’t know how people don’t discover this creepy half-human in the room upstairs where they all seem to be fairly well-trafficked in this house,

Craig: but

Todd: she ends up discovering him too.

Craig: She sees Julia take the guy inside, and then she hears the attack and when she goes to investigate she sees the guy who’s like half-drained he like comes out and begs her for help and then Frank reveals himself and he is super creepy with her like he yeah he has seen her before and he’s like Kirstie like It’s so lascivious and gross. He has gone from mostly skeletal to now just skinless. You can see all of his muscle and all of that, but he still doesn’t have skin.

Todd: And it’s great makeup.

Craig: It really is. But he confronts her and he talks to her. He’s like, oh, everything’s going to be fine now. Uncle Frank is back. But he also, like, pins her up against the wall. And you can tell that it’s lecherous. It’s so gross. But it’s totally in keeping with his character.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And I didn’t even really understand this. Like, did she really not remember what had just happened? Or was she playing it coy with the doctor? I couldn’t tell.

Todd: I don’t know.

Craig: There are scenes like this where if you really want to be picky, you can be like, you can see that this is something on rollers. Somebody is standing behind and pushing. And if you look really hard, you can see that. But I still thought that it was scary. I

Todd: And then, so that’s why there’s so much quick cutting from that to like a closeup of him and then back to her and then back to that.

Craig: So there’s no reason for heightened emotion.

Todd: Right.

Craig: You are the bad boss and you know it and so that’s what he does. You know he basically just stands there. Yeah. There’s very little movement at all and it’s all done through very subtle nuances in his face and especially through his voice and I I just think that it was really powerful. I’m not surprised that people clung to that character as kind of the centerpiece of this movie and ultimately the franchise.

Todd: Yeah, I don’t think we’d ever seen anything quite like that before. It’s a really unique look and he’s lucky he got his voice in that too because the movie originally took place in Britain and then once the studio realized what they had on their hands they needed it to be marketable in the United States and so

Craig: They

Todd: Oh, she goes back. She goes back to the house. And, I mean, Larry’s dead, right? Right. There’s no scene really about his death, is there?

Craig: Well, kinda. I mean, there was an earlier scene in the movie where Frank wanted to kill Larry and Julia said no.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I’ll get you other guys, but you can’t kill him. But then after Kirsty witnesses all this, they both realize what a threat this poses to them from a legal perspective, because she’s going to tell everybody. And so though it’s not stated outright through the performance, you can tell that she concedes that he can kill Larry. And we don’t, you don’t see it. You just see, uh, Julia say to Larry, I don’t even know where to begin, how to tell you this. And then it cuts away. What’s suggested is that she then takes Larry upstairs to Frank, who then not only drains him the way that he’s drained everybody else, but skins him and puts on his skin like a skin suit.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And so when Kirstie comes home, she’s relieved to find that her dad is still alive. Um, even though he’s not, it’s really Frank and Larry’s skin, which I still kind of don’t really understand how she didn’t recognize that anything was wrong because you can see. It’s pretty

Todd: obvious.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it looks like he’s been skinned, you know, like, you know, all around his hairline is all bloody and, but then she figures it out when Frank once again starts getting gross with her and says his catchphrase, come to daddy. And she realizes what’s going on. And then there’s this whole kind of chase thing. through the house eventually Julia gets a hold of Kirstie and Frank goes to stab Kirstie but Kirstie frees herself just in the nick of time and instead he stabs Julia and he drains her pretty

Todd: quickly

Craig: yeah and she says like not me and he’s like oh sorry nothing personal Which, you know, is totally mean, but, you know, she deserves it, so.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: But anyway, she knows that they were up there, so I don’t understand why she didn’t just lead him directly to them, instead runs around and hides in the house for a while.

Todd: Well, not only that, she like runs around and then she just stops and just weeps at the top of the stairs.

Craig: Like,

Todd: that’s how she gets caught, eventually, by Frank, which is so stupid. Yeah,

Craig: it was

Todd: silly.

Craig: There was

Todd: no reason for, he did nothing for her. No,

Craig: nothing. But they eventually escape, all of them. And the film was criticized for the effects in the last part of the movie. There’s a lot of like light, not like lasers.

Todd: Animated.

Craig: Well, I mean, that’s what it was. They ran out of money for effects. And so, Clive Barker and one other guy who worked on the film over a weekend, Hand-animated all of these effects over the film. I didn’t think it looked bad I mean especially for the time the time it looks fine

Todd: most movies do honestly I’m kind of surprised that these two guys just did it over a weekend to be honest with

Craig: you Yeah, I thought it looked fine. But anyway, they escaped I didn’t mention because it’s I I don’t even know what to say about it. But this creepy guy has been following Kirstie around for the whole movie. And at the very end of the movie, the whole house burns down. And then they show Kirstie and her boyfriend in this lot with these fires burning like it’s supposed to be the remains of the house. It doesn’t look like a house is burned down at all.

Todd: Unconvincing.

Craig: Or is it supposed to be the same guy is selling the box to a different guy?

Todd: Yeah, I think it’s the same guy is selling the box to a different guy. Like, this is just going to repeat over and over again. This is what happens. The box ends up in the seller’s hand. And then, yeah, somebody else gets a hold of it.

Craig: After the third one, almost, well, I think all of the sequels, after the third one, they ended up just using shelved scripts that had nothing to do with Hellraiser, and they just injected the cinebites into them. Oh,

Todd: really?

Craig: The studio doesn’t want to lose its rights to the film.

Todd: So they have to keep making them.

Craig: Right. So they have to keep making them in order to maintain their rights. There have been talks for years about a remake or reimagining of the original. Clive Barker has written a script. for a remake slash reimagining of the original and that was in pre-production for a while and then it just fell apart because of studio business. So who knows what will happen? I am certain that the franchise is not dead. It’s going to be around for a while. What direction it goes in, I have no idea, but it’s going to be around.

Todd: Well, I’m kind of surprised, Craig, that I know this before you do, but it was announced just this month, actually, that it is going to be rebooted. Is it? Yeah, David S. Goyer is going to write and produce. Oh, he directed Blade, Trinity He’s the one who wrote Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy,

Craig: the

Todd: Man of Steel movie So he’s a pretty well-respected writer. It’ll be interesting to see something like this in his hands I was surprised to hear you know that Clive Barker is not gonna have a whole lot to do with it I mean, maybe he’ll have something to do with it, but he’s not gonna write it in anything

Craig: I don’t know. I’d be down for it. Happy to see it get more back to its roots because a lot of the sequels really stretch it. This movie, I liked. I would certainly recommend it. If you’re a horror fan and you haven’t seen it, what is wrong with you? But if you haven’t, see it. It’s good. And the source material. Read the novella. The novella’s really good.

Todd: Yeah, I’m actually curious to do that now that you mentioned it. I want to get out and read some of Clive Barker’s stuff. I’ve never read a single thing he’s written.

Craig: But he did another young adult series, Arabot, I think is what it was called. And it was really good. He’s an excellent writer. You definitely need to read some of his stuff.

Todd: You can also find those on our website, chainsawhorror.com. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Craig asked for something “modern” this week, so we dug deep into Netflix for last year’s sleeper “hit” about an old woman in a load of demonic trouble. Even though it’s a found-footage movie, even Todd found a few things to like about it.

Episode 173, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well Craig, last week you had asked for something a little more contemporary. Yep. I guess you were getting tired of the old movies. Yep. So here we are with a new movie, newish movie. It’s about 4 Little over 4 years old. It was released in October of 2014 And it is called The Taking of Deborah Logan. The director is Adam Robitel and Adam just came out with a movie called Escape Room, which apparently made it pretty huge in the States. I don’t know. I’m not there. Do you know Escape Room?

Craig: Yeah, actually, it’s funny. It’s so random because when we finished recording last week, I was like, let’s do something more contemporary. I watch new movies. And I said, I actually just watched this 1 called Escape Room. And then I recommended this movie just because it was the only 1 I could think of off the top of my head that I had seen semi-recently. Not knowing the connection. Yeah, right. And when I was doing the research, I realized that it was the same director as Escape Room. And yeah, like you said, Escape Room did really well here   and there are already talks of a sequel. I think it’s already in the works and I enjoyed it. I thought it was creative and interesting. I didn’t think it was like blow your mind amazing, but I thought it was pretty cool. And so I was interested to see that it was the same guy who did this 1, which I also thought was kind of interesting and cool. I’m interested to see what you thought.

Todd: Apparently this film caught the eye of James Wan, and he tapped him to do Insidious, The Last Key. Yeah. Now, have you seen that 1?

Craig: No, I’ve seen all of them, all of the Insidious movies except that 1.

Todd: Okay, yeah, this movie almost, well, almost kind of disappeared into oblivion. Apparently, The Taking of Deborah Logan did not test well with his test audience and the director said that it was horrible for him as a first-time director to sit down in front of these guys and they were like yeah basically here are all of the reasons why your movie sucks and they didn’t do any marketing for it They didn’t release it to theaters They just did a video on demand and DVD release and it wasn’t until Netflix picked it up that just word-of-mouth like people   were discovering it on Netflix and passing it around and it got some legs and it got really popular and that thankfully, you know, isn’t that cool? In this day and age that this can happen.

Craig: Yeah, that’s where I saw it. And that seems to happen quite a bit. You know, like I said, I like to watch as many horror films as I can, and I like to see the new stuff that’s coming out and you often find stuff that you maybe have never heard of on these platforms like Netflix or Amazon or whatever. And I’ve come across a couple of gems, You know, another movie that we did, Hell House LLC or ILC or whatever it is, I just happened to stumble upon on Amazon and I really enjoyed that. And this   was kind of a similar thing. Like it just popped up on Netflix and I had time and I watched it and I was pleasantly surprised.

Todd: Well, you love these found footage movies and you know I usually try to steer clear of them. So, you know, I really held my breath watching this 1 this week. I just want you to know the pain that I endured. It wasn’t a lot of pain. I actually enjoyed this movie. I wouldn’t say it was my all-time favorite. Sure. By any means, I wouldn’t even say it’s a wonderful film. I thought it was okay. Like it wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t great. It was scary at times, but I did feel like, I just got the sense like   I’d seen most of this before. And I don’t know if it was the found footage aspect of it, like there’s only so much you can do with it, so you end up seeing a lot of the same stuff. A lot of the same buildup in these scenes, you know, just kind of happens over and over again. But there were a few moments in this film, 1 in particular, I think, that was very different from anything I’d seen before. So, you know, it was a mixed bag for me. But overall, I enjoyed it.

Craig: Yeah. I kind of get what you’re saying. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I love found footage movies. I judge them basically on the same merits as I judge any other movie. If it holds my interest and if it’s interesting, then great. I know that the whole shaky cam thing kind of gets to you and I understand why. And found footage movies can be lazy. You know, I think that it can be an excuse to not worry too much about good cinematography. But there are exceptions where I think that they can be interesting   and good. And I think that this is 1 of those. I think that what sets this 1 apart for me is the premise. And I’ll admit that watching it again, I’ve watched it a, no, this is probably the third time I’ve watched it. Wow. I remembered it very fondly. And watching it this time, the first 45 minutes maybe, I thought, oh man, I’ve made a mistake. I’m gonna bore Todd. Because it’s a slow burn, especially in the first 45 minutes. And you know, that’s half the movie. So you’re devoting yourself if you’re gonna get that far   into it and wait for the kind of crazy stuff to start happening?

Todd: Well, I did feel like the movie was stretching a lot. Like even in the middle, even towards the end, I felt like it was really pulling for time. And, you know, there’s, of course, there’s suspense and there’s build and, you know, what we might call a slow burn but then sometimes it feels like it’s just a little too long you know walking down a dark hallway with nothing but a light on your camera it’s suspenseful for a minute or 2 and then when nothing’s really happening okay and then nothing’s really happening and then it turns out   there wasn’t anything, and so then you’re done. Like, you know, like, I felt like there were a number of scenes in this movie that could have been shorter. You know what I mean?

Craig: And I do understand what you’re saying. Ultimately for me, I feel like the setup ends up paying off. The setup is good

Todd: and it’s necessary, I think.

Craig: Yeah. Well, and you have to kind of get through that. The premise is that this is supposed to be what was meant to be a medical documentary about Alzheimer’s disease, Which is a terrible disease that so many people are affected by. I think nearly all of us know someone or love someone who has been affected by this terrible disease. The first 30-40 minutes of it, it’s kind of true to the narrative in that, you know, it really is just following this poor, lovely lady who is suffering from this disease, Debra Logan, and her daughter, Sarah, who   is struggling to not only care for her mother, but deal with all of the financial struggles that come with dealing with somebody who is ill. And I guess if you’re not willing to devote yourself to the first half of the movie that really could be kind of like a medical documentary, then if you don’t have the patience for that, then maybe the payoff is not going to be good enough for you.

Todd: And I’ll tell you, in my case, as I started to watch this, you had prepped me a little bit. You said, oh, this is 1 of those, is it Alzheimer’s? Is she possessed? So I kind of knew what that was about going into it. I was quite taken by the first part of the movie. I was a little too taken by the first part of the movie actually because I thought it rang quite true. I happen to have a relative right now who is going through dementia and it really it really kind of bothered me to   watch this first part of this movie because you know I mean you can easily put your say anybody who knows somebody who has gone through this or is going through this it is an intensely emotional experience where the person that you knew is slowly just falling away in front of you and it’s just really a Complicated mix of emotions and I felt like they they did this justice on the screen You see the stress that Sarah is going through, the daughter. You know, the moments of lucidity that Deborah has, where she knows she has these problems   and she knows that she is forgetting things and is not quite in control, yet she’s also embarrassed by it, yet she’s also frustrated by it, yet in some ways she’s also in denial and angry, you know? It’s an incredibly complex thing. And I thought the filmmakers did a pretty good job of showing you all those different facets and how it works with everybody. There’s a neighbor, his name is Harris, and he’s an older guy about her age I suppose, and they’re kind of buddy-buddy a little bit, and he doesn’t come into the film a whole lot,   but he does play some roles and you see the sympathetic neighbor character who has a kind of relationship with her and is trying to keep his distance a bit but then steps in when he says, you know, like this documentary thing, are you sure it’s wise to bring them in? I mean, your mom’s got enough going on already. Maybe this is exacerbating and making the situation worse So the primary reason for getting and you know how I am with these foul footage movies I always need a reason for the camera Yeah Their reason for keeping the   camera rolling and for even doing this documentary at the sensitive time is about the money, right? Apparently they’re paying this family and a lot of money to be able to jump in and do this documentary. I didn’t feel that was really, it’s a fine enough excuse when you look at the crew and you look at what they’re doing and you see the documentary that they’re putting together, it doesn’t seem like this would be the kind of thing that they’d be paying a lot of money for. No. Okay, I’ll buy it, whatever. For the movie’s sake, I’ll   run with it. Sure,

Craig: sure, yeah. But that’s 1 of the things, okay, so the money thing, yes, I agree. The filmmakers, it’s just this 1 medical student, Mia.

Todd: Oh yeah. By the way, I loved every minute she was on the screen. She’s very attractive.

Craig: She was beautiful. And frankly, she was maybe not on screen enough, but she is, you know, the lead, I guess, investigator or documentarian, whatever you want to call her. And then she’s got a couple of camera guys, but that’s it. That’s the entirety of the crew. So it does make you wonder. It seems like a grad school pro project, you know,

Clip: it really

Craig: does seem like something that they would have a lot of money to throw behind. But you’re right, that is kind of the impetus, you know, that’s why Sarah is doing this, they’re at risk of losing their house. And that’s why initially, they’re doing all this. Now, eventually, I think that Sarah becomes somewhat reliant on them for help and I think that that’s why she ends up keeping them around even though Harris says this may not be conducive to your mother’s health, but she keeps them around. But 1 of the things that I thought they did very   well is that they presented Harris early on as this kind of help mate for Debra and for the family. And you almost wonder, you know, they’re, they’re older and, and so I don’t like think of them as having some kind of lusty affair or whatever, but you wonder what the feelings are between these 2 people and you wonder what their relationship is. But then in the second half of the movie, I thought that they did a really good job of making Harris seem really shady.

Todd: I

Craig: wondered if he knew more than he was letting on or if maybe even He was somehow Involved In the nefarious things that potentially were going on and I thought that they did a good job of that of establishing Character and then building suspense and and doubt

Todd: yeah, and it’s done in a subtle enough way There is a technique that they’re using in this movie that I haven’t seen in many of the found footage films. Maybe I’ve seen 1 or 2 scenes like this before, but this movie had a lot of them. And that is this from really far away zoomed in on somebody’s private conversation shots Where the audio is so low you can barely hear it, so the filmmakers have helpfully subtitled it for us. Uh-huh. Like you might see in a documentary, and there are like 6 or 7 at least shots   like this. And sometimes you’ll see this, you know Like the person with the camera kind of creeps around the corner of a room and they catch a conversation They’re not supposed

Craig: to write

Todd: or something that people wouldn’t normally be playing out for the camera. But here it’s it’s almost overused Like when I talk about sometimes about how the found footage really doesn’t work, about how sometimes these movies would be better as just straight out movies instead of found footage, it’s when you have to continually rely on little devices like this. I felt it was a bit of a weakness of the movie. But that being as it is, still we do have these moments where we’re able to kind of subtly get into the characters where they don’t feel like   they’re on the camera, the camera’s not intruding on their space, And so you’re getting what you would get in a non-found footage movie where you’re just a little scene of some private conversation that maybe not everybody else is supposed to know about. And that is a little more revealing. And this guy is the subject of most of those, right?

Craig: Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, you get these little moments of true honesty and intimacy because they don’t believe the camera’s on them. And that is 1 of the things with found footage. Most of the time the characters know that they’re on camera. So they are guarded as anyone is when you know that you’re on camera. But I also thought that that was 1 of the strengths of the movie. I want to talk about the first half because Even though it is kind of slow, I just found the first half in hindsight really intriguing   because I thought that they did a really good job of presenting what dementia can be like. Now It’s different in every individual case. Some people just get a little bit forgetful and that’s on 1 end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, people are completely out of it and unable to communicate. And it’s devastating in any regard. But in this case, you know, I thought they did a really good job of showing that Deborah could be very much herself. And when she was herself, she’s very prim and proper and concerned about appearance and   there was a really funny scene where when the documentarians first come into her house and the camera guys are kind of touching her stuff And it obviously really bothers her.

Clip: Careful with that, sweetheart. I know. That one’s supposed to be there. Got moved. Were you ever in Germany? No, I have not. It’s always been a regret of mine. Mom, you went to Germany. Remember? Well, that must have been a long time ago. It was. But you were there. You loved it. Remember?

Craig: That comes in later when she slips further into her disease and she starts destroying some of her own things. But you see moments where she’s totally with it, and then there will just be moments where you see that she has slipped away. And I thought that the actress, Jill Larson, did a really good job of that. You know, when she was with it, she was very much with it, and then you would just see in her eyes that she would just kind of go blank, or she would fixate on, you know, just 1 particular space with   her eyes. And you could see her getting confused. You could see her going about her daily business and then just stopping. And it was obvious that she had forgotten what she was doing and she didn’t know what to do next. And I thought that she did a really good job of that. And I also love the character of Sarah who tries, you know, when the camera crew shows up, she tries to play it very cool and she tries to be bubbly and fun and nice with them, but over the course of time you really get to   see her as a character too and you get to see that in some moments she’s weak and needy and in some moments when she has to, she can totally take charge. She’s played by Anne Ramsey, who is a really familiar face. She was on the TV series Mad About You. I always remember her from A League of Their Own, which is where she got her first big break. But she’s very recognizable and I just, I thought that their performances were natural and real. I had such empathy for these characters that it spellbound me to some extent   and I was really invested in what was going to happen to them.

Todd: Yes, I agree with you and you’re right. I think all across the board this movie was very well acted. Jill Larson who plays the mother, she’s a veteran of, I’m sure you didn’t know this at all Craig, but she’s a veteran of soap operas on television. Yeah. I mean obviously she’s quite good. Even that neighbor we were talking about, every single movie you can think of, he’s had a part in somewhere. I mean, he’s a very famous face. And even the smaller characters, they all kind of have their moment. And when they do, it’s pretty real   and powerful. I’m thinking about this crew as weird things start to happen, as stuff starts to happen that’s outside of the realm of the mental illness. Yeah, once we start getting into weird things that are going on, the crew gets more and more spooked there’s a guy on the crew and I think his name is Gavin

Craig: uh-huh right

Todd: who flips out like I would you know and it’s pretty real and you know he is dedicated to the film but not so dedicated to the film that he’s willing to stick around and put himself in potential danger.

Clip: Can we just talk about this? No, there’s nothing

Todd: to talk about.

Clip: Fucking leaving is what I am. What? You start projects like this and you just bounce in the middle of them? It’s just about the window. It’s not about the window, okay? It’s just Fucking icing on top of the shitty fucking cake. What about the switchboard, huh? What about the fucking window opening and closing the bitch levitated onto a counter? Gavin trains pulling out bro. Last call man. You need this paycheck as much as I do Fuck both of you

Todd: That was great like it all just felt very real it all came up quite naturally I thought it showed a pretty good writing. Just the pacing of this stuff out. Even like I said, from a scene to scene basis, the scenes individually, I felt, were a little long. The events as they unfolded and what happened seemed to go very naturally. There wasn’t a lot of, oh come on, how did you get from point A to point B? We do have our moment in this film where they do the investigative research. Yeah. But even that’s fine. And   there’s not too much of it and it’s not like it you know it gives them this huge jump it’s all quite natural. In fact that’s the moment in the movie where I was a little surprised I was like oh it’s it’s gonna be this kind of film. Like I was expecting more of an exorcist type possession deal, but there ends up being a kind of murder mystery that goes into the past and an old connection and maybe my mother and our neighbor and everything were involved in something and covering it up. And that’s when I was   like, whoa, the movie really expanded for me.

Craig: That’s 1 of the things that I really liked about it is that it really felt like it progressed very naturally. And the whole thing with Gavin leaving, like you don’t see that in these types of movies very often. No. You regularly see somebody say, oh no, this is crazy, I’m out of here. And then somebody says, no, come on, stay. And they’re like, all right. And they do. And then they get killed, you know? That’s what always happens. And here, I liked it that when things started getting weird, and we’ll talk about the weird stuff in   a second, but when things start getting weird, he’s like, I’m out. And Mia’s like, no, you have to stay. And he’s like, all right, fine, I will stay, but I want double my salary.

Todd: That’s right. And the other guy’s like, if he’s getting double, I’m getting double too. Right.

Craig: And she says, OK. And then he stays for a little while longer. But then as things get progressively more weird, eventually he’s just like, no, I’m, I’m out, I’m leaving. And he does, and he doesn’t come back. Like that subverted my expectations too. Like I thought, Oh, well he’ll leave, but he’ll come back. Nope. He just got the French out of there. Like that read as very real to me, which I appreciated watching it again. You know, it kind of felt slow in the beginning, but then as things started to amp up, then I appreciated the   slow build. You know, at first, and I think they do a really good job of showing her progression into this disease, but then things just start to get weird and she starts sleepwalking and like snakes start appearing in the house. She seems to indicate that she thinks that somebody’s watching her from outside and at some 0.1 of the camera guys finds a series of paintings that she’s done of this window in her studio and in every painting there’s this shadowy figure that just keeps getting closer and closer and closer to the window.

Todd: That was a great scene by the way.

Craig: Yeah, yeah it was and weird and like you know they will find her sleepwalking at night and at 1 point they find her standing in front of that window. And then she nails the window closed, which they allow her to do because, you know, she’s out of it, what are you gonna do? But then again, she sleepwalks and they find the window open with the nail sticking out and blood on the nails and her nightgown on the ground right outside with blood on it. And then they find her frantically digging in the garden and all this   weird stuff. And we also get backstory on her that her husband had died soon after her, Sarah, her daughter was born. And so she had had to struggle as a single mother, so she had run this switchboard service out of her home.

Todd: That’s so interesting, isn’t it?

Craig: It is. So unique. Because I know that’s real, but like It seems so antiquated. We don’t think about it really was within our parents and grandparents life that those things happened.

Todd: And some of this is shown through like Super 8 movies of when Sarah was younger. And the dates up there like 1976. Now I was born in 78. And I’m thinking, really? Like we were doing switchboards back then? I’m gonna have to go back and investigate that. I thought for sure by the late 70s we were past that, but maybe not in certain areas or maybe in more rural areas that they were still doing that or maybe we were in a transition phase, but that was unique and it’s neat because then all her old switchboard equipment   is upstairs and I’m thinking, that’s gonna come into play pretty soon. And there’s a moment in the movie where everybody’s sleeping and suddenly you hear the phone ring and these guys bolt up and they’re like, what was that? What was that? And I’m thinking, well, yeah, they’re going to ask what was that? Like none of them probably ever heard a phone beside their cell phone ring. And they go over and the phone is ringing in the house. But you know, Sarah jumps up too and she’s like, well, mom’s switchboard equipment hasn’t been working for years. And   it turns out mom had been sleepwalking again. And this was, to me, 1 of the most chilling moments of the movie. Oh, yeah. She’s upstairs. I mean, eventually they find her. And 1 thing that’s kind of funny too, it’s almost a running gag, is that this house seems to have like 3 or 4 different addicts and 1 of the characters even makes a comment about it like how many addicts does this house have? Yeah. It seems like they just like the writers just wanted that creepy addict feeling in a number of scenes. And so they just   threw different addicts and then made it a joke. So she’s up there, but she’s totally naked from the, you know, you’re seeing her from the back and an elderly person Naked kind of screaming and she’s punching things and she’s saying stuff, and you’re not quite sure what she is truck kind of reworking her switchboard like she used to and Finally her head flops down and I have to say like I we were still we were obviously getting into the more supernatural aspect of the movie by this point, but still, it still could be just a person   with Alzheimer’s.

Craig: Right, that’s the thing. It could be, even with the things that are getting progressively weirder, you could still just attribute it to the disease. It’s odd. It certainly is odd, but you could attribute it to the disease. I mean, in that moment, They’re really going for the suspense here, you know, in the search and trying to find her. Like they may be overplaying a little bit, but when they get up there and they do find her, she starts growling and grunting and speaking in what I thought, I thought she was speaking in tongues, but in a,   in a low gravelly demonic type voice. And, and honestly, you know, in that situation, my first thought, if I were Sarah or the camera people or whatever, my first thought would be, oh my gosh, Alzheimer’s is awful. You know, like my first thought wouldn’t be she’s possessed. But like you said, she’s messing around with the switchboard and eventually it like, there’s like kind of an electric explosion, Like it shorts out and there’s this big flash on the screen and it’s probably 1 or 2 frames but you see this demonic face in the explosion. Of course I   don’t think they see it, it just appears in the camera. But we can see it if we don’t blink. And so eventually, it does turn out that there is something weird and supernatural going on here. And that just continues through the second half.

Todd: And the scene that immediately follows this the aftermath of it and again You know we had that I had we were talking about this with the changeling right about how these crazy things will happen And then it’s like okay It’s the next day and nobody’s really talking about it or life just goes on And this movie doesn’t give you those breaks. There is a definite consequence for everything that happens to her. Either they’re taking her to the hospital again, or they’re calling the doctor again, or they’re getting into some fight. What immediately follows this scene is,   moments later, and they’ve got her in bed, and her daughter is laying next to her and she is like just breathing it’s like clearly like this health thing and they’re trying to calm her down and give her water and she’s kind of moaning and the daughter’s kinda crying and there’s just a bit of chaos as They’re trying to get the doctor on board and I’m my heart is just breaking. Yeah. Yeah It’s really sad because it just hits a little too close to home. It’s very powerful It’s very effective filmmaking in that way, but you’re right.   It does turn out that this is all turning into supernatural stuff and the guy who ends up running Gavin is the sound guy and he says I took what she did and I checked the flux capacitor and I modified the audio frequency I think it was to complete gobbledygook what he was saying but you know it’s it’s shorthand for hey I enhanced the footage and here’s here’s what it actually she was saying and it turns out to be something in French And it’s all the stuff about going down to the water and going down to the   river and all, you know whatever and then they do a bit of interesting investigative work where they’re like she kept putting that Jack into a particular spot on the switchboard and they wanted to know who spot was that and so they went to all of her records mysteriously the page that had that record on it was torn out. 1 of them says, well, get me a piece of charcoal and we’ll put a piece of paper down here and we’ll do that rubbing trick so that we can see the impression. And they find out that it’s this   guy’s name, Dee Hardeen. And they do their investigating online. And well, actually, Sarah knows all about the name Dee Hardeen because he was a former physician in town who was wrapped up in this sort of murder case, ritualistic murders of these young girls. There were 4 murders and they were all somehow connected to this cult type scenario that’s involved with the Native American superstition or practice and some tunnel system underneath the town. I mean, it gets pretty far out there, pretty quick, but at the end of the day, this guy disappeared along with the girls or   whatever, and they never could find him, and there was some suspicion, I guess, that he might have killed them, but all this ended up being unsolved.

Craig: Right, and what it boils down to is apparently this ritual was supposed to grant immortality to the person who completed it. And it required the sacrifice of 5 girls who were just reaching puberty, like their first menstruation or whatever. Like, it gets pretty specific about like, they offer the menstrual blood of these young girls to this demon and it’s 5 of them. And if it’s completed, then the person who completed it is granted immortality. And they say that it would make sense that this pediatrician would do this because he had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease   and so it would make sense that he would want to escape that debilitating disease, which then of course, you know, there’s clearly a connection. Deborah has a debilitating disease also. Yeah. But only 4 girls were found.

Clip: I know he didn’t complete the ritual. Maybe he had second thoughts. I don’t know. Despite a massive manhunt spanning 2 borders, De Jardine is never seen again and his whereabouts will become the stuff of legend. Some say that he fled back to Quebec. Others that he killed himself.

Craig: Sarah, the daughter, approaches Deborah when she’s in a semi-lucid state and says, do you know this name, Dehardin, or whatever his name is? And Deborah’s like, yeah, it kind of sounds familiar and Sarah’s like, oh well, he went missing a little while ago, about 30 years ago, was he a client of yours? And she just says he’s not missing he’s dead he’s murdered. So obviously they’re you know everybody’s tied up in this but the people on the outskirts don’t understand how. But that’s why these things are happening,

Todd: apparently. It’s an interesting left turn for the movie to take, you know? It ties together neatly, thematically, as you pointed out. Here we’re talking about these debilitating diseases and the promise of eternal life or being able to overcome them, that kind of thing, and it even continues with these themes all the way up to the very end. But you know up until this moment of the movie we’re dealing with a creepy and realistic portrayal of Alzheimer’s and is it a possession, is it not? And you’re really kind of wrapped up in that. And then it’s like,   oh, cult sacrificing with snakes and ancient Indian practices with some underground things. And it just suddenly becomes like every other horror movie. You know, in that way. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it just was a bit of a shock to me. I’ll have to say that I don’t know if I could have sustained much more of Creepy woman doing creepy things that could be Alzheimer’s or could be possession I was really actually quite glad that the movie threw something more interesting and intriguing into the mix because then you’re questioning oh, well, is this woman   herself that innocent? Right? Right. And that’s when, like you said earlier, like the neighbor starts to get a little implicated in this. Like now you’re wondering, why does he want that documentary crew out of there so quickly? Right. Right. Before it seemed like he was just protecting her, now maybe he’s protecting himself. And they even bring that up too. And so it becomes a bit more of a mystery. And so it seems a little contrived, but I’m willing to go with it because I really enjoyed not having to do an hour and a half of just,   oh, this woman’s possessed.

Craig: Well, yeah, and ultimately the reason that Harris wants to get them out of there is because there is a secret that they are trying to protect, and that comes out a little bit later. I understand whether you wanna call it a criticism or just commentary, whatever, you saying, then it just kind of goes to, oh, okay, well, here’s where we kind of get into your typical horror fare, which is a fair comment. But what I liked about it so much was that the characters, particularly Sarah and Ramsey, the actress, reacted to everything that was going on   in what I viewed as a very realistic way. Like you know she’s already dealing with her mother’s illness. On top of that she’s a lesbian and her mother doesn’t approve of that and so she’s kind of she’s got a girlfriend back at home that she’s trying to shelter from all of this and she’s trying to medicate herself through all of this through alcohol and she’s clinging to the friendship and support of these strangers you know

Todd: yeah it’s true it’s really all she has

Craig: it but ultimately you know she’s the 1 who has to deal with all of this. She’s the 1 who has really no choice but to deal with all of this. And I just felt like she did a really good job of portraying the fact that she loves her mom despite the fact that her mother doesn’t approve of her relationships. And at 1 point she says she tells them after she’s been drinking a while that her mother caught her when she was 10 kissing another young girl, you know, just innocent child, right, innocent children stuff, and that   she got sent away to boarding school because of that. And it seems like she has some resentment because of that, but it doesn’t change the fact that she still is going to be there to take care of her mom. Now we find out much later, maybe there was a different reason for her being sent to boarding school. But she doesn’t know that and I was just, I don’t know, I was so invested in her character because I can only imagine, and God forbid, that I would ever have to imagine my own parent struggling with their mental   health in that way. And regardless of how awful and how weird it gets, you’re in it. You can’t just escape it. You have to deal with it.

Todd: It’s

Craig: true. And she does her best to deal with it as best she can. And she gets scared and frustrated. You know, like when the guy says, oh I enhanced the footage or whatever and he’s like, she’s speaking French and here’s the weird stuff that she’s saying in French and and Sarah’s like, my mom doesn’t speak French.

Todd: And he says, well, I don’t

Craig: care if she speaks French or not. This is French and this is what she’s saying. And eventually Sarah just says, just turn it off. Just turn it off. I can’t listen to it anymore. And there are several moments like that and her dealing with the doctors at 1 point after they talk to Debra about the day Hardeen guy She initially reacts in kind of a benign manner, but then they also show her the footage of her frantically digging and she freaks out and she runs into the bathroom and she vomits soil, earth and earthworms, living earthworms.   And they take her to the doctors and this male doctor who I feel like is somebody new That they’ve brought in she’s been working with this female doctor before that. This male doctor is like

Clip: She’s back in the garden. She just goes up some side

Craig: she puked fucking earthworms

Todd: that was my favorite line like

Craig: like are you kidding me like she’s just done with it like I need some real help I need some real explanation I so felt her fear and her frustration, and that kept me in it.

Todd: No, I’m with you on that. I think this is a horror you can’t escape from. It’s not like just sell the house and leave,

Craig: you know?

Todd: Right, right. It’s not like run out the front door. It’s, no, you are forced to contend and deal with this because this is your mom and this is her illness. You can’t run away from this. And it’s interesting that the documentary, most of the documentary crew don’t run away from this either and that they stick around and film it. Now, at some point when Deborah’s in the hospital now, again, they’re thinking maybe she’s got this multiple personality thing going. And there are a couple times when she just disappears like this is like the worst hospital. I   know. They just cannot keep track of her. Only through like the the security camera footage can we see that she got up and she left. And man they just need to turn the lights on whenever they investigate. Like they never turn the damn lights on, even when they’re walking through a hospital. But they track her down and she has taken a girl, a young girl who has leukemia. And of course, you know, those parents are freaking out. They find her sort of Blair Witch style. Both of them are just staring at a wall for some unknown   reason in a dark room. And they end up pulling them back in. And at 1 point, I don’t know, man, This didn’t really go anywhere, but I thought it was an odd thing to throw in there. There’s a priest who we never saw before. Am I right about this? Who just is talking to Sarah and is like, hey, why don’t you consider exorcism? And she’s like, well, I don’t know, I’ll think about it. And then that’s the end of that too. What was that about? Did I do something there?

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t even remember that.

Todd: You don’t remember that scene? Yeah, it was like a 3 minute scene. It just felt really tacked on. I kind of wondered if it was like the director’s cameo or something like that, because I thought, wow, are we going to go into exorcisms now too? That’s what I would have really lost respect for the movie. But no, like he just disappears and you never see him again.

Craig: Yeah. It’s funny. I honestly don’t even remember that happening. All I remember, and I say all I remember, I just finished watching this like 45 minutes ago. She’s in the hospital and Sarah and Mia and the 1 remaining camera guy are…

Todd: They go to see the anthropologist. Now this was like, oh come on, I was kind of groaning at this 1 too. I was groaning for a couple reasons. First of all, this is such a trope. It is such a trope. I mean, okay, you did your investigating on the internet, that’s fine. Okay, you enhanced the footage and you got that information, that’s fine. But then they go to see the expert who’s sitting in his office who conveniently knows everything about this particular ritual and is able to fill in all the blanks and connect the dots for   them right then and there. And of course it’s all supernatural stuff and you know he seems to completely 100% believe in it too. And so he gives them direct instruction on what they’re supposed to do. But his direct instruction to them is, well this is very similar to what happened in my personal experience with a tribe somewhere else and this woman couldn’t get over the death of her son and there was some spiritual permutation he said he called it spiritual parasites that can possess and anthropomorphize or whatever a person and the way that they dealt he   dealt with it in that situation was this woman just could not Let go of her son’s corpse They burned her son’s corpse and that freed her or the spirit or whatever, right? So it’s like this is what you need to do. The other thing that bothered me about the scene is it just proved that these are the worst documentarians ever. Like whoever is funding this documentary and giving this family so much money is gonna be really upset when they get all this footage back because they walk in there with 1 cameraman and they don’t actually sit   down and do an interview setup. This guy is just like pacing around the room, getting interview of this doctor and the other people. And I don’t know, maybe as a filmmaker, I was just, I felt like this whole notion that they were shooting a documentary kind of fell by the wayside.

Craig: Yeah, it did. But I don’t know, it didn’t really feel weird to me. I felt at this point that they were so invested in it that…

Todd: They were just doing it for fun now?

Craig: It made sense to me that they would keep filming. Like they knew it had gone off the rails, but they were so invested in what they were doing that they kept filming.

Todd: Yeah, but they should stay professional about it, you know? They should hook them up to a mic and sit them down and get a nice, I mean, you’re just, you’re gonna do, aren’t you gonna do an on-camera interview with this guy? Do a fricking on-camera interview for your documentary.

Craig: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I get it. I disagree. I feel like at this point, it’s more about like, holy crap, what is going on? And they are just almost just capturing it out of habit more than anything else. But around this time too, we also get the resolution of the whole Harris thing. Because we see him on the surveillance footage come into Deborah’s room, and I was listening really closely. I think he leaned down to her, and I think that she whispered, kill me. Now, that might not

Todd: be true.

Craig: Did you hear it too?

Todd: Yeah, that’s what I heard.

Craig: Okay, good. Well, then I don’t think I’d ever noticed that before the other times that I’d seen this. But he grabs a pillow and tries to suffocate her and things then are obviously supernatural because the TV starts shaking and like flies off the window and hits him in the head so Deborah is okay. And then he is in critical condition and Sarah lies and says that she’s his daughter and gets in to talk to him for a second and he tells her that she was going to be Desjardins fifth victim but that somehow they found out   about it and she said, oh so you killed him and he says no your mother did She stabbed him with her gardening spade, and then we buried him in the garden. He tells her where they buried him, and so she and the camera crew frantically go looking for him, and it’s all very frantic and takes a while but they eventually find him and having spoken to that guy whoever he was they believed that they need to burn the bones and they try to but they can’t for whatever reason like they they just won’t Well

Todd: they can’t find the body first. Yeah, they end up finding the body in the house.

Craig: Oh do they? Oh that’s right, in the attic. In 1 of the attics.

Todd: Yeah, It’s just in 1 of the attics. That’s why they didn’t find it before. Shoot, it was next to the old comic books, you know. Nobody been up there in years. Yeah, they can’t burn it for some reason. Well, they start the fire and they run out of the house and it’s almost like it’s a giant explosion that throws them back and there’s a face in the window briefly that Mia sees.

Craig: It’s all very chaotic at that moment, yeah. And it’s very shaky cam so you’re only getting just brief glimpses of the things that they’re seeing.

Todd: But then I think they get a phone call and it turns out that her mom’s left the hospital again and this time she’s gotten out even further because she took a big bite out of the security guard’s neck who tried to stop her. So she’s out again.

Craig: And he’s in anaphylactic shock due to snake venom.   Yeah.   So apparently she has snake venom now. And She took that girl again. But Sarah and Mia know where to look for her in those underground caverns that they heard about.

Todd: They do, and they go out with 1 cop, I think, at that point.

Craig: Are they

Todd: with the cop at

Craig: that point? The sheriff, Yeah.

Todd: I was really wondering at what point they were actually going to involve the authorities again. It seems like the authorities get thrust upon them. They never actually call them. But yeah, so they go out and it’s just this big kind of chase sort of deal where they’re going through the woods and it turns out, hey, we’re in the neighborhood where all those killings, those girls were found. And oh, now we’re in this big shed type building which leads down to the underground caverns and the sheriff, the kids killed. The last, I don’t know what, 5 or   8 minutes of the movie is them going around in the dark with just the camera light for light.

Craig: I thought that this finale was really scary. It was. I really liked it. I really thought it was scary. I mean part of it was the shaky cam and that they could only see By the light of it and at some point, you know They had to turn it off because they knew that if Deborah saw the light that she might get away. So some of it’s shot in night vision. And again, I think that it was the reality of the performances. They were, they were all scared. They were scared to death of what they were   gonna encounter and what they were going to find and I felt like that that read very true and so I was scared too. At 1 point they see Debra and the little girl just kind of like you said before just kind of staring off into nothing. The little girl turns around and chants in a very mechanical way.

Clip: Yeah? You hurt? No, it’s nothing. He’s a nice man. Hi, Deb. He’s gonna watch me. Deb, let’s go.

Todd: Jesus Christ.

Clip: We can get back down this

Todd: mountain, okay?

Clip: No sudden movements from anybody. Real slow, Deb. We’re gonna do everything real slow here, okay? He’s gonna watch me and be like, hang on.

Craig: And then eventually Deb runs away with her, and that leads up to what I think is the most shocking moment of the movie. And if you were to Google this movie and do an image search, this would be the image that you would find. And it would be unfortunate if you hadn’t seen the movie, because it’s the most exciting part.

Todd: It is. So if you still want to see this movie and you’re this far along, you should probably stop the podcast, watch the movie before we spoil this bit for you. So, yeah, they just swing their camera around and there is Debra with the little girl. She’s standing over her and she is swallowing her head. Yeah. Like a snake. It’s like the lower part of her jaws come unhinged like a snake does when it’s swallowing something big and it is starting to swallow her. And it is creepy as hell. Yes. The director, apparently the whole movie,   the whole script is basically built around this scene because the director had a bit part in 1 of the X-Men movies and Bryan Singer was directing those X-Men movies. Bryan Singer is a producer of this movie. We’ll forget about that for now. But he was helping him develop that and Bryan Singer had asked him, he said, give me the 5 images you’re gonna show us that I’ve never seen before. And this was the first 1 he thought of was an elderly woman’s jaw becoming unhinged and trying to swallow someone like a snake. He said everything else   from them from in the script kind of got built off of that 1 singular image. I guess that’s where the snake idea came in and all that other stuff. Yeah, It earns it. I think the movie earns that moment because again, everything, you immediately know what’s going, I mean it all relates to the snake cult and the snakes we had seen and the ritual and all that, but it is freaky as hell. And they manage to yank the girl away and they have a lot of chaos with the mom but there are these shots where she   spins around and just opens her mouth and her jaw is just huge. It’s really gross and spooky.

Craig: Right. But then they are able to sedate her. They get her away and they get the little girl away and the little girl is okay and I didn’t even realize that Sarah had been toting around those remains. The body. Yeah. I know, right? But apparently she had just been carrying them around and they burn them and they explode and seemingly the whole ordeal is over. And then you get news footage where they, obviously it’s a sensational story, this kidnapping and the sheriff got killed and it was a big deal. But they show the news footage and   they say that Deborah was deemed too unhealthy to stand trial. And we just get a very brief glimpse of her where she looks awful, but she’s still alive. And then they do an interview with the little girl on her birthday and the little girl has miraculously recovered from her leukemia and the interviewer asks her, well what do you want to do when you grow up? And she’s like, I don’t know. And then he’s like, well you need to make a plan. Yeah and and she looks right into the camera and she’s like, well I kind of   have an idea And that’s just where it lingers. And so you’re left wondering, has she been possessed by whatever this entity or demon is or whatever? I felt like it was a satisfying ending. What I found most effective about that shocking image of Deborah trying to swallow the girl was that it was so fast. You know, it’s Like the light pans to her and you see it for maybe 3 seconds before the chaos happens again. But in those 3 seconds, you get a clear look of what is happening. And it is shocking, it’s disturbing, it’s scary   as heck. I don’t know. I just thought it was really cool ultimately I really enjoyed the movie you know I think that the ending was satisfying but sad yeah but you know what else could it be really I mean you don’t recover from Alzheimer’s, you know? Yeah. Unfortunately, there is no cure yet. Maybe someday there will be. I certainly hope so. But you know, there’s not going to be a happy ending for Debra and Sarah. But I still thought that the ending of the movie was really satisfying. And just ultimately, again, watching the first 30 minutes,   I was like, oh no, it’s kind of slow, it’s kind of boring, Todd’s not gonna like it or whatever. And then after I had gotten through it, I’m like, no, I remember why I like this. And I still do. I think that it was well made. I think it was really well acted. I really want to give mad props to Anne Ramsey as Sarah because I think that she really did a lot to carry the gravitas of this movie. And I would still recommend it. I think it’s a well-made movie.

Todd: Yeah, I completely agree with you. You surprise me all the time with these found footage movies. Every time I say, oh okay, well this 1 actually wasn’t too bad And this I’m gonna have to put in that same category. I still think, quite honestly, it would have worked really well as a non-found footage movie. I think it would have been just great. And maybe even a little stronger that way, but who am I to say? At the end of the day, I agree with you on everything you said. The performances are strong. It’s unique. You know,   it’s a really unique subject matter in a way. Even though there are a lot of little tropes in here, this notion of dealing with all sides, it’s kind of like the fly where we’re kind of adding a horror element to something that’s very real to us that we all have to deal with. It’s really quite sad in real life. It really reaches down and gets you emotionally in a way that your standard horror movie doesn’t always get. That was a good aspect to it as well. I’m looking forward. I should probably go to my sources and   check out Escape Room.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. There’s a movie that I know you hate, would you rather.

Todd: Oh, god.

Craig: And Escape Room remind, didn’t remind me of that exactly. Escape Room really, and I feel like I said this when I talked to you about it before, they could have just called it Saw 8 or Saw 9 or whatever number that they’re after. They could have just called it that.

Todd: Now that I would enjoy actually.

Craig: Well, then I think that you would enjoy it. It’s kind of saw meets cabin in the woods. But I really enjoyed it. And my partner, who I forced to watch horror movies, even though he doesn’t like them, he didn’t hate it either.

Todd: And that’s about as good as you can get from him.

Craig: Yeah, he thought it was alright. So I do think you would enjoy it. So maybe when you can get your hands on it, you should watch it and maybe we can talk about it.

Todd: Yeah, it’s a good idea. Maybe we will. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook, just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw, or you can find us on our website, 2Guys.Red40Net.com, where we have streaming and downloading of all of the episodes. And let us know what movies you’d like to see us cover next. Until next time, I’m Todd, and I’m Craig, with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

When we heard that Hammer’s House of Horror had teamed up with Shaw Bros’ House of Kung Fu on a Dracula martials arts crossover, we had to check it out. Too bad it didn’t really live up to the concept. This was Hammer’s last Dracula film, and it’s easy to see why.

Episode 172, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week we’re doing a film that I found online. I had never heard of it but it sounded like a lot of fun because it is a mashup. Is that what the guys call it these days?

Craig: I guess so.

Todd: A mashup between 2 very, very famous studios, Hammer Horror Studios in England, which did all the Dracula movies and they were basically our house of horror for the 60s and 70s and the Shaw Brothers and the Shaw Brothers are still going going strong but they were especially during the 60s and 70s and 80s Hong Kong’s premiere movie studio doing lots and lots of kung fu films. And so somebody’s bright idea in 1974 at Hammer was, hey because kung fu movies are so popular, why don’t we take 1 of our most popular franchises, Dracula, and go over   there and make a Dracula slash Kung Fu mashup. And that’s the movie we have. It’s called The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Also known by its alternate title in the United States, the 7 brothers and their 1 sister meet Dracula.

Craig: It’s like it’s like 7 brides for 7 brothers except for like 7 evil vampires meet 7 brothers and their sister.

Todd: Or in the case of this film, it’s like 2 brides for 7 brothers. Oh man, where to begin with this movie? This is actually the last in the line of Hammer Dracula films. This started in 1958, I believe, with the horror of Dracula starring the inevitable Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Peter Cushing always playing Van Helsing and Christopher Lee always playing Dracula. Up through this final film where Christopher Lee, I think probably took 1 read of the script, decided, that’s not my cup of tea, and bailed on the production, which is just as well because he   wouldn’t have had much of a role in this anyway. But Peter Cushing decided to stick it out and plays Professor Van Helsing 1 more time. Although I guess it’s debatable whether this is actually the Professor Van Helsing from the earlier movies or not.

Craig: Yeah it’s a little confusing to me. I guess apparently in this movie he’s actually playing a descendant of his earlier character? I don’t know.

Todd: Well, that’s what people say because otherwise it makes no sense because he actually died in 1 of the earlier films. This movie is supposed to take place years after that, But he’s the same dude. I mean he’s professor van Helsing right he references encounters with Dracula So it almost seems like a little bit of a retcon for it to go back and say oh no No, this is just a relative even though it’s certainly not ever referenced in the movie at all. He doesn’t reference another, oh my brother or anything like that, you know, my uncle,   my brother, yada yada yada. There’s none of that. His son’s in this movie, which is interesting. But yeah, that’s it. So anyway, the timeline’s all whacked. I don’t think they ever really cared too much about continuity with these movies anyway. But yeah, there are a lot of problems actually with this movie making sense, which may be why it wasn’t a big hit.

Craig: Maybe 1 of the reasons. I don’t know, I was a little bit disappointed because I’ve actually, sadly, never seen any of these Hammer Dracula films. I’ve definitely seen… Oh my word. Christopher Lee, you know, I’ve seen him in character, in stills, and maybe in some brief clips, but I’ve never actually seen him as Dracula.

Todd: I cannot believe this.

Craig: I know. And anytime you see, you know, lists about, like, who is the best Dracula, he’s always very high on the list, if not at the top of the list. So I was a little bit disappointed. But you’re right, in this movie it wouldn’t have made much difference anyway because Dracula in his true form only appears for the first 5 minutes and then the last 5 minutes.

Todd: Yeah, really tacked on, to be honest. The whole movie’s kind of tacked together

Craig: in a very tacky way. Well, and apparently, as you said, this was the last 1 in the Hammer series, the last Dracula film in the Hammer series, I think there were like 9 of them or something. They did approach Christopher Lee, they wanted him to do it, but he turned it down. And apparently, I guess maybe the 1 before this, they had really had to convince him to come back. And the guy that they cast in this film John Forbes Robinson in the prior movie they had already cast him thinking they weren’t gonna be able to   get Christopher Lee back and at the last minute Christopher Lee decided he would do it, and so they used him. So this guy they used at the last minute. Well, I don’t know, in this film, Christopher Lee just, I read that, yeah, he read the script and He just wasn’t interested.

Todd: John Forbes Robertson is a pretty accomplished British actor. He did a lot of television and a number of movies and we haven’t seen it yet, but there’s a Tobey Hooper film called Life Force. He plays in that. That would have been like About 10 or 11 years after this 1 So, you know, it would be interesting to see I personally think he’s a pretty bad Dracula in here. In fact, he’s even dubbed By another actor. I know he was furious when he found that out

Craig: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean there’s not even really enough to judge him on. I mean, all you can judge him on really is kind of the look. You know, he doesn’t really have much to do, which is unfortunate. It’s a cop-out, really. The whole thing seemed to me that they wanted to make a Kung Fu movie and it’s like they just kind of wanted to tie in a Dracula story as a gimmick, really, more than anything. It could have just not been Dracula. You know, it could have been anybody. It could have been   an independent story about Chinese vampires. The whole Dracula thing just kind of seemed tacked on kind of for name recognition. And, I mean, whatever, that’s fine, but kind of lame, really.

Todd: Yeah. And… It comes across as lame.

Craig: You know, I know that in the 70s especially, maybe the late 60s too. There was a huge market for these kung fu movies. I mean, they were really popular. There was a big audience for them. I kinda don’t get it. I don’t know. I mean, yeah, it’s fun to watch, you know, these choreographed fight sequences and stuff. But when that’s the entire substance of the movie, I found myself just… Tuning out. Yeah. And just waiting in the interim for the fight scenes. Like, ugh, okay, story, story, story. Okay, fight scene.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And the fight scenes were fun. I wouldn’t say they were amazing. They were typical. They’re what I would expect from a 1970s kung fu movie.

Todd: You know, there are a lot of good kung fu movies out there. This is definitely not 1 of them. It all feels a little phoned in to be completely honest. Even the fight scenes themselves, like you said, or… Well, I don’t know, maybe you said it or maybe you were saying something else, but they’re not particularly entertaining Yeah, I don’t think that they’re very dramatic or really that exciting They have all the requisite parts, you know a bunch of people doing a bunch of fancy moves and there’s some nice bit of blood and gore. It’s all   kind of cheap but that’s generally how a lot of these films were. I think the thing that makes any action film, whether it’s kung-fu or action at all, work. And what makes fight scenes fun and interesting and tense is that the stakes. Yeah, yeah. You have to care about the characters. They have to be people that you really want to see the outcome and you’re hoping that this isn’t going to be their demise or this isn’t gonna really set them back. And that’s the thing, you know? And in this movie, it just, it never really establishes   these stakes. At least not convincingly. It just blows through everything so quickly and tries to kind of tack some character into these people, but they’re just too many people.

Craig: Yes. Yes.

Todd: I was even thinking about this like the Ninja Turtle so so Because it’s a little set up that way. I guess we better jump in a little bit and start talking about the plot It starts out 1804 Transylvania. We get a scene with a Chinese guy and probably hiking up the mountain to Castle Dracula. He goes in there, he wakes up Dracula, and basically starts to talk about that he is the king of the vampires in China, something like that, That there are 7 vampires there and they have been beaten back by the community or the   town that they’re in and he’s asking for Dracula’s help to resurrect them and bring them to their full glory. And Dracula’s like, well, you know, normally I don’t leave my castle. Yeah.

Clip: Yet, you can serve me, Khan. As long as you   order me, I can do anything. I have no respect for you.   I need your mortal coil. I need the form of your miserable carcass. I need your vile image. No. I will not tolerate any of this! No! This earth again, freed from these walls, freed from this mausoleum. I will return to your temple, in your image, Ka. I will recall the 7 golden vampires as my own host, tools of my vengeance on mankind. 1

Craig: way or another, within these first 5 minutes, the traditional Dracula that we know turns into this other

Todd: Chinese kung fu guy and… Your typical wuxia kind of long wispy black goatee mustache thing and half bald on top with the long black hair it’s it’s very very stereotypical

Craig: yeah and and from then on Dracula is in that form and he’s always there kind of behind the scenes to kind of like, I don’t know, guide or inspire these 7 Chinese golden vampires, but Like he just doesn’t really have much to do. Like he just kind of hangs out in the temple and like gives them words of encouragement before they go out to fight.

Todd: Like that’s. He’s a cheer, he’s a coach, he’s their coach.

Craig: Yeah, he is. And that’s kind of. Sensei. Yeah, that’s kind of all

Todd: it is. I give this word Japanese movie. Well, and he does that for a hundred years because we fast forward to 1904 in Chungking, which I think is actually like a supposed to be Chongqing, which is what we would call it now. And that is a region and kind of in the southwestern part of China. It’s very mountainous, it’s pretty remote, but it’s known for having really, really spicy food. That’s all I know about it. I’ve never been there.

Craig: Well, it sounds lovely.

Todd: Spicy food and beautiful women. Those are the 2 exports of Chongqing, apparently. Yeah.

Craig: I love me some spicy food, so…

Todd: I love me some beautiful women.

Craig: Yeah, so then it’s 19…oh, whatever it is, 4 or whatever, a hundred years later, and Van Helsing is lecturing… Van Helsing Senior, there’s 2. There’s the older 1 played by Peter Cushing, and then his son who, whatever, I don’t remember, he’s got his own name, Leland. He’s lecturing to these Chinese academics. He’s talking about like this legend, right? The academics are like, you know, they scoff at him like, oh, we don’t believe in this silly traditional lore. We’re academics, la la.

Todd: Give us some credit.

Craig: Yeah. And there’s 1 guy there who approaches him afterwards. You know, like you said, the stakes aren’t that high because you don’t particularly care about the characters. Like this 1 guy that approaches him basically approaches him and says, I’m 1 of 7 brothers and we also have a sister and our ancestors come from the village that you’re talking about and the village has been decimated by these vampires. I don’t even really understand what their purpose is. Do they want to reclaim the village? Do they want to kill the vampires out of vengeance? Is there something else   at stake? I didn’t even really get it. Well, the story, the legend is told in flashback.

Todd: 1 thing this movie does pretty well, and Roger Corman’s films do the same, and Hammer films do the same, is It’s almost like when they’re writing a script, they go through the script and they’re like, okay, every 10 pages there needs to be some blood, some gore, some boobies, whatever going on. And so there’s a good deal of flashback in this movie, even at very odd moments, just to sort of fulfill that requirement. And so while he’s telling the story, it flashes back to the legend. The legend basically is that in this village there was a   farmer who approached this pagoda which is up on the hill overlooking the village and kind of surrounded by a graveyard. At the same time that these 7 vampires that were, you know, Dracula… I don’t know if it’s supposed to be the same moment that Dracula’s finally resurrected them all or something or if it’s just 1 of their regular ceremonies. He went up and sneaks into the pagoda and we got to describe the scene because you see the scene quite a bit. Yeah. Inside this pagoda, around the perimeter of it in the inside, are these sort of   mummified looking gross vampires. Yeah. They have like a golden eyepiece over their eyes and they, from their necks hang these golden medallions that are big. They look like bats. They’re bat shaped. And then I guess the rest of them is kind of hairy. Like sometimes they look like gorillas, but I think it’s probably just what they’re wearing.

Craig: Yeah, like they look like they’ve been buried. I don’t know, they’re like kind of half decomposed. It’s an odd costume, and like I couldn’t tell if it was makeup or a mask because their eyeballs look weird too and the whole time I was thinking how do they see like you know like not not the vampires the actors like

Clip: because it

Craig: looks like their eyes are behind these weird eyeballs. I don’t know. But yeah, anyway, they have some ceremony. And I did like, it’s a cool set piece, You know, it’s inside the pagoda and there are like 7, for lack of a better word, kind of like slabs or almost like medical tables surrounding this big blood pit and All of the slabs are kind of angled so that you can imagine if these women, and there are like 7, I assume, virgins, I don’t know, foregoing by lore, but 7 women in various stages of undress, strapped to these   tables and boobies. It was kind of weird to see boobies in an old movie like this I was a little surprised. Mmm, but whatever they look nice.

Todd: What? You got to see more more of these hammer film

Craig: And it’s some sort of ceremony going on, and I don’t even remember what happened.

Todd: Do you? Well, that’s a good point. No, the ceremony’s going on, and at about the time it’s going to start and Dracula’s overseeing it all, this farmer bursts in and tries to untie 1 of the women. That doesn’t go so well because 1 of the vampires wakes up and runs after him. In the process of the fight, he tears off of its medallion, which starts him smoking from the point where he tore it off, like his life force is leaving him or something. Not enough to kill him right away, but he runs away and then Dracula   guy summons all of the undead armies from the graveyard around so we get a lot of this sort of bursting out of the grave scenes of these Chinese undead coming complete all with their weapons. I guess they were all buried

Craig: with their weapons. Yeah, they look hilarious. The zombies, like they’re all in virtually identical costumes. And again, it’s some sort of mask over their face. Skull looking mask, kind of a half skull thing. But they all look exactly the same and when they move, it’s like they skip.

Todd: Like they skip around. That’s a reference because, you know, and this is not by any means a traditional Chinese vampire movie by far. But there is a tradition of Chinese vampires and they’re like former priests or something. They wear very distinct outfits. They all kind of look the same. They have blue skin and fangs and they hop. Like they literally hop. Almost comically so. And they have these things on their forehead that if you tear them off that’s kind of how they die. So there’s a tradition of this and vampires are hopping. That’s just what it   is over here. And so I thought it was kind of a nice touch that they included that in a more subtle way than in your traditional Chinese vampire movie when they are like literally bouncing like kangaroos all

Clip: over this world. Well it

Craig: was a little jarring to me because I’m not familiar with that tradition. I mean now that you explain it, it makes sense. But I was like, oh weird, skipping zombies, that’s odd. And they all are virtually identical, and I swear that some of them weren’t even actors, they were just like the costume on a stick, right? Didn’t you think so? I think you’re right.

Todd: Yeah, especially in some scenes definitely. Like they just

Craig: put the costume on a broom and like bounced it up and down. I know, it’s funny.

Todd: It’s true, it’s totally true. But you know, there is a sense. Now, this isn’t a frightening movie, but I think odd things like that do have a certain way of kind of unnerving you a little bit. Yeah. And that aspect of it, I think, was 1 of the few things that made these creatures just a little more unnerving than they would have been otherwise. I don’t know, maybe I’m just giving it a little too much credit,

Craig: but that’s how I felt about it. Maybe a little too much, but yeah, I mean, it was something that you noticed, and you’re right, I mean, It’s not scary in any way. I really kind of thought that maybe if I were 8, I would have thought this movie was really cool. Because there’s fighting and boobies and a little bit of blood here and there. I could imagine myself as a child catching this on a Saturday afternoon on cable or something and kind of thinking it was pretty cool. I don’t know, you know, I really tried to   appreciate it for what it was, just because it’s so left field of what I would typically enjoy. But it just, it wasn’t that great. And a big part of it is because these 7 brothers, like, I can’t pronounce any of their names, and I hate to be, you know, that terribly American, Midwestern, ethnocentric guy, but they all kinda look the same,

Todd: and… Well, they’re dressed the same. I mean, they do kinda look the same. I mean, you know, this is why I liken them to the Ninja Turtles.

Craig: Right. Well, that’s the thing, that’s what distinguishes them is their fighting styles. Some of them have knives and some of them have those big, I don’t know, kung fu sticks. I don’t know what Donatello had. You know? And, 1 of them

Todd: has a mace. Yeah, there you go. Shoots a bow and arrow, yeah.

Craig: Yeah, and a bow and arrow. And like they’ve got different things and they’ve got different skills. But because there are so many of them, like I said, there’s kind of the 1 who’s kind of the representative for all of them. But even he doesn’t have much character. The only thing that kind of distinguishes him from apart from the others is that he is their mouthpiece. He’s the

Todd: only 1 who talks. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And he has, I guess what you would call a romance with the 1 Caucasian woman. I think she’s supposed to be from the Netherlands or something, Scandinavian. Vanessa, and she’s like their patron. She’s fascinated with Van Helsing. She meets them at some posh meet and greet at the university after he speaks and she talks to Van Helsing Jr. And he says, you know, my dad is interested in this legend and she’s like, oh, well, I’m a big fan of your dad and I’ve got a bazillion dollars, so.

Clip: I’ll finance the trip to this village on 1 condition   and what is that that   you take me along too I think   a vampire hunt sounds exciting Mrs. Barron it is quite out of the question a woman couldn’t possibly make such a hazardous trip we’ll be going to unknown territory areas that are unmapped and the countryside abounds with robbers and brigands   I know I also have to leave

Craig: And then she ends up kind of, it’s like, I feel like they really try to push that they’re having a romance, but it’s really just kind of like firtive glances and walking off together. Yeah. Like, her and the 1 lead brother. And then Van Helsing Jr. Then also has that same kind of furtive glancing, walking off together, sharing 1 brief kiss romance with the 1 Chinese sister.

Todd: Yeah, it’s this sort of movie idea that if you get men and women together, for any length of time, they’re gonna have to pair up at some point.

Craig: They even comment on it at 1 point, like, you know, the Chinese brother and the Caucasian lady walk off together and Van Helsing Jr. Is like, romance springs up in the oddest places. And then like the Chinese sister walks by and he looks after her and Van Helsing Sr. Is like, yeah, it sure does. Like. It’s so dumb. It’s really silly.

Todd: Well, and it borders on, I don’t know, it’s a little weird too because I got a, I’m really riding the line with this movie in this, in the way that films, especially from this era that are produced and made by Westerners, play up the exoticism of the East,

Craig: you know?

Todd: And Eastern women and their delicate flowers. And then, you know, it tries to do something different here where, I mean, But it’s not trying hard enough and it certainly still commits those sins. Like she’s done up, she’s got her makeup, she looks gorgeous, you know.

Craig: She’s in a beautiful kimono. Yeah, it is very stereotypical and it is very like, oh yeah, like the exotic East. But the thing that I liked about the sister character is even though she was very kind of, and she was very beautiful, the actress who played her was gorgeous. The thing that I liked about her was that she kicked ass. When they would do the fight scenes, the brothers were so kind of indistinguishable from 1 another and she was not Because she was the only woman and she totally held her own in those fight sequences when   they were fighting like the legions or whatever. She was tough. Now Eventually she did get captured and became the damsel in distress, which is a little bit disappointing, but up until that point, you know, she was a tough broad and I

Todd: liked that. That’s true, but then again it gets undercut by these interstitial scenes.

Clip: You’re like a beautiful porcelain kitten. And suddenly you’re a fighting tigress. It’s incredible. It   displeased you? So it amazed me.

Todd: They put a party together to go with these brothers at first they don’t want to go van Helsing is like oh you know what this costs a lot of money these kinds of things But because Vanessa is there and she has loads of money and she’s supposed to be this woman who’s a little fearless in this regard, even though that’s really uneven as well. She really ends up playing the damsel in distress, sitting around doing nothing during these

Craig: fight scenes.

Todd: So it’s like they’re trying to play her up initially as a bit of a strong feminist kind of woman, a little forward thinking. They can’t, it’s like they just can’t bring themselves to actually do it. Yeah, yeah, it’s true. So she had these lines where it’s like, oh, you know, a tough woman who can hold her own, and then all she’s doing is cowering in the corner where everybody else is fighting and becomes the victim 2 or 3 times.

Craig: To be fair though, that’s all the white people in the movie. No, that’s a good point. All the white people in the movie just stand back and watch while the Chinese folks do all the fighting.

Todd: Well, they might wave like a torch around

Craig: or something. That’s something else I was going to say. Like, young Van Helsing will get in there and fight a little bit. But 1 of the things that I was really disappointed and I would be interested to see how he’s portrayed in the other Hammer films, senior Van Helsing in this movie is worthless. Like, absolutely worthless. He can’t fight to save his life. The best thing that he can do is wave a torch around. Like that’s all he can do. And any time.

Todd: It’s funny because, no I was just gonna say it’s funny. They film those scenes like through fire. They’re always a little obscured. Like they’re like, we know this guy is so lame, all he can do is wave this torch around, but maybe if we film it through some fire, nobody’s gonna notice.

Craig: Yeah, like, he’s just constantly, like, getting backed into corners, and it was pretty pathetic. You know, when I think of Van Helsing, I think of, you know, this badass vampire slayer and I get that even within the context of the movie, he’s supposed to be advanced in years. I get it. But it just kind of neuters him as a hero. He’s not really heroic at all. Ultimately, spoiler alert, in the end, he kills Dracula almost by accident and super fast. Like, the climactic final scene between Van Helsing and Dracula lasts about 3 seconds. It’s really, really   lame. But we can get there later. They go off on this expedition and then that’s really kind of all it is. Like okay we’re going to go, okay we’re going, first some bad Chinese guys who are mad that they didn’t get to seduce Vanessa show up and we fight them. Big fight, big fight. Okay well we defeated them And then we move along, move along. Oh, zombies, fight, fight, fight. Like, that’s the bulk of the movie, is this journey to get there. And then they

Todd: have these, so it’s like I said, you know, every 10 pages there’s gotta be a fight or a flashback to a fight or, you know, somebody’s telling a story about the legend or even just in this case of this campfire scene that I was getting to. For no real reason we’re getting flashbacks to, and I don’t know if it was flashbacks, it was supposed to be something that had recently happened, of these vampires leave their pagoda and go down into that town and basically slaughter all the people and drag a bunch of women away so that   they can strap into those tables and, you know, suck their blood. So yeah, that happens, but then, you know, like I was saying earlier, how it really undercuts the bad ass array of this woman. Every single time that we cut to them just chilling, she’s like doing some extremely domestic task. Like she’s the 1 who’s cooking the meal, washing the dishes. And my favorite line in the whole thing is, you know, it’s like Van Helsing’s son, Leyland, is sitting against a tree next to Vanessa and they’re chatting. And at first I thought, well, maybe they’re gonna   have a relationship, a romance, but he’s having these overtly obvious, furtive glances with Megwe, who is washing the dishes and she looks over, and it’s like, teeheeheeheehee. It goes back to washing dishes. It’s so embarrassing, you know?

Clip: Yeah. Back in my country, that is an open invitation to help with the dishes.

Todd: Yeah! Yeah that’s funny. So sure enough he goes over and starts handing her bowls you know and they tee-hee and then Vanessa wanders over to our main actor guy, who is David Chang. Actually, if you watch any Hong Kong films, this guy is super popular. He’s like practically the Tom Cruise of Hong Kong cinema. He’s been in hundreds of movies and he’s super recognizable and he almost always plays the main character. He’s a real good looking guy. He’s very talented and able to fight. He’s still alive. I think his latest thing that he did was back   in 2016 So he’s you know, he’s still kind of going so he then is developing this really Forced love interest romance with her

Craig: Vanessa, right?

Todd: They have this 1 scene him and Vanessa and then later on they’re like laying together in this cave that they camp out in. And all of this is very not very Chinese. Like, you know, it’s pretty, we’re pretty conservative culture and This is clearly very Western written script. You know what I mean?

Craig: Yeah, well, did you say that? The high was it the Sosa Brothers? What did you what did you say? Who was the Shaw Brothers? The Shaw Brothers are Are they Western or are they Chinese?

Todd: Chinese, yeah, from Hong Kong.

Craig: Because this just really felt like a very American idea of what Kung Fu movie would be. And maybe even the Chinese people behind it knew that they were marketing it in a Western market and so they you know they were

Todd: kind of

Craig: giving giving us what they thought we wanted or whatever. But it was, I mean, like, because what you said, the main guy, you can tell, even though his character, you know, he has so little to work with, you can tell that he’s very charismatic and I can only presume a fine actor and you know, fighter, stuntman, whatever he may be, but they’re just tropes, you know? Like all of the Chinese characters are just stereotypes. Which in 2019 just feels a little icky. You just kind of want to, ugh, I look at it and feel like, oh   gosh, those guys deserved better. Make them the real heroes of the story as they should have been because the American or whatever they’re supposed to be, the white actors, really, their characters are so lame. You know, They completely rely on these other people to protect them. And they just feel so disposable, the Chinese characters. So they have a big fight with the zombies and the vampires in this big cave before they even get to the village that they’re trying to get to. And the 7 vampires are there and they’re like zombie minions or whatever their minions   are. And they fight and it’s really kind of a great fight sequence. There’s a lot going on and you know it just kind of cuts from 1 part of the fight to another. Like it’s all going on at the same time but the camera just moves from 1 scene to another and we get to see all of that going down and they end up taking out 3 of the 6 remaining golden vampires with really no casualties on their side at all. But at the end, The main Chinese brother says to Van Helsing, we can’t do this   again. We won’t survive another attack like this. And Van Helsing is like, yeah, you will. It’s fine.

Todd: Trust me on this. Well, you’d think he’d be just a little happier that he killed off 3 of the 6 that they are going after. They haven’t even made it to the village yet and they’ve already accomplished half of their goal. You’d think he’d be a little more pumped up.

Craig: Van Helsing convinces them to continue on and they do continue on and they find the village and like they find, I don’t know, 1 of those gold masks or something and so they realize that the legend is true and so then they get to the village.

Todd: Yeah, apparently they don’t move the bodies or any of the materials there where the farmer was taken out. What, 50, 100 years later?

Craig: Right, but anyway they get back to the village and I don’t even think the village is inhabited anymore, but like they start to fortify it. Like they dig this big trench and they set up these great big spikes and they basically just wait for the vampires and their minions to arrive and fight. Which is what happens, like Dracula blesses them in the name of Satan or something, and they come down.

Todd: More undead arrive. But eventually it

Craig: turns into a big melee. I think all, but like 1 of the brothers ends up getting killed, very kind of unceremoniously. And that just, it just kind of bothered me. Like even, you know, like the sister lives and the main brother lives, but like they barely even acknowledged that the rest of them died.

Todd: Yeah, you know, it’s, this is not the Magnificent 7 or the 7 Samurai. You know, you’re right. They just don’t care. There’s no buildup. There’s no nothing. Some of them die in really lame ways. You get the sense that maybe on a shot by shot basis, they’re really trying. Like I think there’s this 1 scene where a brother’s hand gets cut off.

Craig: 2 of them. It’s the brothers, like 1 of their schtick is like that they grab hands together and like swing around on 1 another and so they they do that and then their hands both get chopped off and they’re laying there like next to each other dying and they like high 5 and then they die yeah

Todd: like what Like they take out a couple vampires, I think in the process, like 1 of them falls into a fire pit with another 1. But again, it’s like, whereas a lot of these vampire scenes, when the vampires get killed, we get these extremely long shots of them crumbling away, which I mean, the special effects are what they are. It looks like kind of latex masks covered in, caked in mud and dirt and makeup that are just slowly deflated and so everything kind of

Craig: Well, and they kind of deteriorate into dust and I’m not really sure how they did it but it seemed like they were really proud of themselves because they really lingered on these shots and like it seemed like some sort of time-lapse photography or maybe there was some of it

Todd: there was some fading going on too where they kind of fade slowly from a scene of this stuff happening to like bones with some rest around them that kind of thing but then you know in this fight scene when they’ve taken out at least 2 more vampires, they don’t really give it all of that drama. Like I think 1 brother just quite literally embraces a vampire and they’re both rolling around and they both fall into a fire pit and that’s it. Like there’s no big deal over the brother’s death, there’s no big deal over the vampire,   you just kind of have to be paying attention to know. If you blinked in that 5 seconds, you might not even notice, oh, 1 of the 6 vampires is dead now, as well as 1 of the brothers.

Craig: Oh, and I totally did, because I was taking notes. And so I would write something and I would look up and I had no idea who was still alive and who was dead. I suppose kind of the pivotal moments of the scene are that 1 of the vampires spies Vanessa, like cowering in the corner, and he runs over to her and he bites her. And I didn’t know what that meant because they play it a little bit loose with the lore and they explain that by saying Van Helsing, Sr. Says,

Clip: My knowledge so far as it goes is limited to the European hemisphere. I had hoped to learn something of the East from the faculty of Chinese history, but as you witnessed, the professors were not forthcoming to say the least of it. They abhor anything that has a holy significance. They fear the word of the Lord. In Europe, the vampire walks in dread of the crucifix. Here, it will be the image of the Lord Buddha.

Craig: Well, I know what European vampires are like, but I don’t know what Chinese vampires are like, so it’s kind of loosey-goosey, you know, who knows? And I actually thought that was kind of clever.

Todd: Yeah, it was clever, except it really never came into play. You know, When the farmer and the legend came back, he tossed the medallion that he had stolen on a statue of a Buddha. When he died, the vampire went to get that medallion, but because it was on a Buddha, he wasn’t able to get it, so he ended up dying. And that’s why these vampires are pissed, is they’re trying to retrieve that last medallion so they could raise him up. But aside from that and the fact that they set up a little Buddha statue at the   entrance to that cave, it made no difference because everybody came in anyway. So there wasn’t any of that And the other thing that I was a little surprised by is I thought this was a big setup. There’s this big deal about this medallion. The whole thing kind of got kicked off by stealing this medallion. We know that if you take the medallion away from them, they’ll die pretty soon. And so I thought part of this tactic because, oh, hey, the legend is true. Van Helsing’s going to turn around and say, all right, guys, go for the   medallions. Yank them off of these guys once they come in. But that doesn’t happen either, you know? The medallions are just swinging around their necks pretty carelessly while they’re engaged in, you know, 20 minutes of kung fu fighting with the brothers and the townspeople. So it didn’t make

Craig: a lot of sense. Well, and there really didn’t seem to be all that much at, as you’ve mentioned, all that much at stake because even in their first battle with the vampires, they kill 3 of them, so there’s only 3 left and for them to have their ultimate power or whatever, there have to be all 7. So like, they pretty much have won after the first battle. Like, I don’t even really know why even bother to kill the rest of them.

Todd: And thanks a lot, Dracula. Like, back us up a little bit here. He does nothing.

Craig: Right. Nothing. Anyway, in the second battle, Vanessa gets bit and then young Van Helsing, the main brother, comes and kills the vampire that bit her, but then she approaches him seductively and smiles to reveal that she has fangs and then she bites him and old Van Helsing yells to him you must destroy her so fortunately there’s a big spike right behind her so he just throws her onto it and she dies. And then I guess because he’s been bitten he realizes that he’s going to be a vampire too, so he in a very samurai fashion throws   himself onto the same spikes so that they are impaled together. Yeah. And that was the only death that I even cared about. I felt I wanted that main guy to kind of end up being the hero. But no, the white people are gonna be the heroes, obviously. Because they’re worthless, but they’re white, so. That’s right. Because what basically happens

Todd: is the last vampire standing manages to snag the previously badass Megwe and toss her onto a horse and gallop back up to the pagoda. What is going on here? Like what is his endgame? I just don’t get it. He straps her down to a table and he’s about to bite into her, but of course the young Van Helsing, Leyland, sees this going on and so he runs up there as well as the man on the white horse, jumps in just in the nick of time and has a bit of a fight with him. But what ends   up happening is in the meantime, this has been enough time for the older Van Helsing to come in and he stabs this creature from the back, in which moment it falls into that big boiling blood vat that was in the middle of the room and becomes nothing. Right. And they all look around and kind of dust themselves off and say, job well done and leave. But Van Helsing stays around the older 1 because something doesn’t feel quite right. And sure enough, as he turns over, he sees Dracula, which is, you know, in the form of this   other guy. He challenges him, you know, don’t be a coward, show me your true form. And then there is a really long, really weird, bad special effect fading again through some bizarre stuff.

Craig: Yeah, at 1 point he looks like a giant turd. It was like a melted candle.

Todd: It was not their best effort to be completely honest. And then he, you know, Van Helsing just stands there while Dracula walks up about 3 inches away from him and then gives him a big smack across the face which sends him flying.

Craig: That was hilarious. Dracula just slaps Van Helsing around like a bitch for a while. It’s so lame.

Todd: It’s so bad. It’s terribly staged. And like you said, suddenly Van Helsing swings around at 1 point and is able to impale him with a spear that was hanging around.

Craig: Yeah, and that special, the transformation special effect goes on for a good 45 seconds. Yeah and then and then the whole the whole fight takes maybe all of a minute and really it’s not a fight at all it’s just Van Helsing getting slapped around until he finally like gets slapped around and falls down near a big pole. So he just turns around with the pole and Dracula pretty much impales himself on it.

Todd: That’s right. Yeah, oh man, it’s pretty bad. And then we get treated to at least a 2 minute long scene of Dracula crumbling into dust.

Craig: Yeah, oh, at least so long. And then I thought, well, maybe then now something else is going to happen. But no, that’s just it at the end. Like it pulls to an exterior shot of the pagoda and you see the title comes up again, the legend of the 7 golden vampires, and then the credits roll. I know. It’s… I don’t know. Have you seen, I’m presuming that you have seen some of these other Hammer Dracula films? Almost all of them, yeah. They surely can’t all be this bad.

Todd: No, they’re not all this bad. Not at all. No, they’re much better films than this 1. This film, bless its heart, it doesn’t really know what it wants to be. I think at its core, it really just wants to be a kung fu movie. But it’s not even a very good kung fu movie. And so, it’s just kind of lame all around. Well, there’s a major continuity error in here. There’s a major problem with this film from the get-go. If in 1804 Dracula is approached and takes the body of this guy and he goes off to   China for a hundred years, Who in the meantime, how was he back at the castle for Van Helsing to go and have, you know, like 6 other movies with him? It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Like, are we to believe that this is how Dracula meets his final demise is in a pagoda in China on that table. Yeah. It’s really bad. They don’t even care. You know, I mean, it’s so obvious they don’t even care. And then, like I said, it’s still a little icky, the stuff between, and They’re not even trying with these relationships either.   Like I feel like that moment where he impales himself and her on that spike was supposed to be a crying moment, like, oh my gosh, like there’s this sacrifice for love kind of thing. But because they just kind of looked at each other and now they’re boyfriend girlfriend, it just doesn’t have that impact. Just the movie is way more interested in the fighting and the fighting is not even that good to take the time to raise the stakes.

Craig: It was okay. I mean, I was I was grateful for the fight scenes because At least it was something to look at But yeah, I mean it wasn’t great. They were all right 1 of the things that I was disappointed about I didn’t read much about the movie but I, you know, I looked at the IMDB page to see who was in it, to see if there was anybody that I would recognize, and I saw Peter Cushing and I’m like, oh, Peter Cushing is, you know, a really well respected actor and I’m sure that he’ll be   really good. And he just felt old and sad. Like, really? Like, I do, I need to go and watch some of the earlier films that he was in to see if it was any different because it really, this movie made his Van Helsing, whichever Van Helsing it’s supposed to be, it made him seem really just kind of pathetic. I mean, he was really more just kind of the academic who tagged along and didn’t really have anything to do. And I feel like maybe they tried to remedy that by putting in his son like, oh, okay, well,   yeah, Peter Cushing’s old, so let’s give him a son who can be kind of the romantic hero. But he was lame too, in a more like cocksure kind of lame guy kind of way. I just you know I hear the name Van Helsing and I’ve seen him portrayed by Hugh Jackman and many other people and you know he’s just kind of this badass vampire killer and in this movie he’s just kind of this sad old guy who nobody really gives any credence to and that was a little bit disappointing to me but this whole movie it   feels like not fan fiction but you know some sort of like alternate universe Dracula Yeah, it doesn’t really feel like the Dracula that I know so it just feels separate from all that So I’m not gonna my my vision of the whole Dracula lore and the Van Helsing lore is not gonna be really Tainted by this movie because it it feels you know like in in the comic books You know there

Todd: are rebooting and changing things yeah

Craig: different universes and stuff like that’s what this feels like It feels like kind of an alternate universe kind of story. And so, whatever, it is what it is. Frankly, I didn’t hate it. We’ve certainly watched worse movies. It was all right. Yeah. I certainly wouldn’t need to see it again but I don’t know it was okay

Todd: well I think you know you got to give him a little credit for trying I mean is it really intriguing idea and on its face it’s just so wacky that it sounds exciting. Like, yeah, Dracula has gone to China and raises up 7 other vampires and they all fight Kung Fu style with 7 brothers, AKA the Magnificent 7 or something like that. It’s just so nuts, right? But it’s just not as entertaining as it should be with that nutty of a premise. Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of a wasted high concept idea, I think.

Craig: Well, and I don’t know as, you know, I don’t know that much, much of anything really at all about the Hammer Dracula films, but knowing that this was the last 1, I can kind of see why. I mean, it kind of feels like a nail in the coffin kind of movie. You know, like, yeah, we’re fresh out of ideas.

Todd: Well, there was going to be a sequel to this 1, too, that was going to take place in India. They called Kali the Devil Bride of Dracula. But I think because this 1 wasn’t a success that that got canceled.

Craig: That sounds more interesting than this 1.

Todd: Actually it does, doesn’t it? There’s a bride in there, there’s a devil that takes place in India. But alas, was never meant to be. No, okay, I am putting the horror of Dracula on our list. We need to watch that soon because you’ve got to have some context. We got to do more of these hammer Dracula films because

Craig: they’re quite… I know. I’m kind of surprised we never have. You know, my dad is the guy that got me into horror movies. And when he guested with us a million years ago, he talked about how these old school monster movies were what he grew up with. And I’ve never seen them. And so we should. We should do some of these old nuggets.

Todd: We’ll remedy that. Yep. This is a nugget that’s been in the fryer a little too long.

Craig: Yeah, true. But yeah. I think maybe I’m ready for something a little bit more contemporary in next week.

Todd: We will do it. All right. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please

Craig: share it with a friend.

Todd: You can find us on Facebook, just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. You can also find us on our website where we have all of our back catalog episodes available for download or streaming. TwoGuys.Red40Net.com. Obviously, we’re also available wherever you can search and find your podcast such as iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, all those places. We love to hear from you. We love to hear what you think. If you happen to have seen this movie, let us know what you think of our assessment of it and leave us a few suggestions for the next movie you’d   like us to do. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

Request time again. On the heels of Mother’s Day, we bring you a movie about what happens when you have a terrible, terrible father. In a way, it just serves to emphasize the importance of good, strong mothers. George C. Scott plays a composer stumbling his way, puzzled, through a haunted house. SUPPOSEDLY based on a true story, but don’t you believe it (says Todd). Thank you, Vincent, for your request!

Episode 171, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well today we tackle another request, this 1 from our listener Vincent, way up in Norway. He requested that we do 1980s The Changeling, a haunted house movie starring George C. Scott that has a bit of a reputation. This had been on my list for a while but I had definitely not seen it before So I was really excited to jump in and see it for this episode. Craig, had you ever seen this movie before?

Craig: No, I’d never even heard of it. I mean, when you said The Changeling, I was thinking about that Angelina Jolie movie that came out sometime in the aughts. Oh, yeah. So no. Yeah. I had no idea what we were getting into. This apparently was filmed in 1979, but wasn’t released until 1980. So we were just mere babes when this came out.

Todd: Yeah, This would have been something I would have imagined would have shown up on television like on Saturday afternoons after all the cartoons during like the Saturday afternoon Schiller movie, right?

Craig: Yeah, it’s what it kind of felt like.

Todd: It really did feel like that. It’s a haunted house movie at the heart of it, right? Yeah. Supposedly based on a true-ish story, the writer, Russell Hunter, stayed in a house in Denver and had these strange things happen to him, more or less exactly what’s in the movie, he said. And so he wrote this movie based around it and this is what we have. I mean, I don’t tend to believe that kind of stuff, to be fair, but it’s a nice idea anyway that this is based on a true story. Interestingly enough for that, it doesn’t   have anything in the beginning or wherever in the movie or in the credits or in the titles or anything that says, hey, this is based on a true story. So it’s not a film that seems to be trying to milk that for what it is, which is interesting.

Craig: Yeah, I had no idea that it was based on a true story or supposedly true story either until I was reading about it just mere minutes ago. I was interested. You know, that kind of, for me, I almost wish that I had known that going in because I felt like it would have added some level of interest that maybe this really happened. And you know, I, for the longest time in my life, was like you and would say things like, I tend not to believe these things. I was super, super skeptical of anybody who ever said   that they had any kind of experience like this until, okay, so the town that I live in, a small town in rural Missouri, it’s a college town, that’s where I met Todd, he lived here for a while too, We’re a university town and there was 1 building Todd you’ll remember well Baldwin Hall. Oh, yeah that people Were all the time saying was haunted and that they had had these, you know unexplainable experiences in And I would always roll my eyes hearing these stories and like, okay, you know, good story, bro, whatever. But then something happened to   me too. And I was told I was alone, I was totally by myself. And this weird, totally unexplained thing happened. And so I’m a believer now. Okay. Like, I swear, like I was so skeptical. I didn’t believe it at all. I would roll my eyes at these types of things. But then something totally weird and unexplainable happened to me while I was all alone in the basement of Baldwin Hall. And so now I give far more credence to people who share ghost stories. So I’m not as big a skeptic as you are perhaps.

Todd: Well, that’s a good story, Craig. Maybe you should make a movie out of it.

Craig: It would be a really short movie.

Todd: I think so, probably. I’ll tell you, my dad and his, well, my dad has a brother and a sister, and they lived in supposedly a very legitimately haunted house in New Jersey growing up. And he tells me story. It was this house way up in the woods overlooking the town. He went to a school, if you can believe this, it was actually called the River Sticks School. Kid, you not. Public elementary school in New Jersey. And this house supposedly was very haunted. Now, you know, this again is the sort of thing I’m extremely skeptical about, except   it comes from my dad. And the family has talked about it very matter of factly for a very long

Craig: time. Well, and your dad seems like a very rational, down to earth guy, you know? He is. Like not somebody to make up that

Todd: kind of thing. No, and all of them really are, you know? But my grandmother, there was a basement in this house and my grandmother hated going into the basement because she always felt like there was somebody watching her. And there was my aunt lived in sort of a studio in the kind of like an attic type studio up above, you know, where like the ceiling is really

Craig: the roof

Todd: kind of thing. And to get into her room, there was a trap door. And once she woke up and would and swore that there was a girl standing by the trap door at the foot of her bed. And then quite regularly to the point where they got used to it, apparently in the downstairs, the doors to the cabinets there would bang, just open and shut and open and shut in this 1 room. And they even did this deal where they put string across the cabinets, you know, because of course you’d walk in the room and nothing   would be there. You know, the, the noises would stop and the cabinets would be there. And, and sure enough the string wasn’t broken in any way. And they said also that the, all of the jars that they had in their fridge like all of the cans and bottles or whatever in their fridge periodically would be completely unscrewed and just sitting on top of the jar the lids would be periodically unscrewed now it’s just the weirdest poltergeist whatever you can kind of imagine so you know I mean they lived in this house for years and put up   with this, I guess, you know, which is also a little credulous. I mean, incredulous. I don’t know. But anyway, this is total family history told as though it is nothing. And so, you know, they said, yeah, you know, we were more fascinated by it than anything at the time. She said, I don’t think anybody except for my grandmother was ever frightened by these odd goings on in this house. And actually that came to me when I was watching this movie. George C. Scott moves into this haunted house and maybe 1 of my biggest criticisms of this   film is that it’s hard for me to get terrified by what’s happening in this house because he doesn’t seem terribly terrified by what’s happening in this house. Like he’s just so rational about it all. He just kind of walks around and these things that, now there were scenes in this movie that gave me chills. And that scene would be over and he’d be staring at whatever, like the wheelchair at the top of the staircase that shouldn’t be there. And then it immediately cuts to a scene of him walking down the street to the library. Like, what?   How did we get from point A to point B? Why was he not running, screaming out of this house? What did he do? Like, take the wheelchair back to the attic? Like, okay, well, we’ll see what happens next, you know? I think that was my biggest criticism if I were to kind of overarch it. There were so many scenes in this, actually I thought the movie was pretty terrifying in a few spots, but at the end of the day it all kind of got neutered by the fact that you never felt like he was in a   lot of danger because he never acted like he was in a lot of danger. And furthermore, the movie was edited in a way that it would just cut away from these scenes of scariness to the next day. And they’re still in the fricking house. Right. You know?

Craig: Well, You know, and I read some critical reviews of the film. And most of them were very positive. And this film was actually pretty critically acclaimed. And it won a bunch of awards, especially in Canada. I guess they found it really good in Canada. The thing is, that was 1 of the criticisms I read, that there really didn’t, there wasn’t enough impending doom, like you didn’t have a fear that something terrible was going to happen and And I agree with that but at the same time Maybe that adds kind of more credibility realism to it if   in fact it is based on a true story. Because, you know, the things that are happening, yeah, they’re spooky, but it’s not like he was afraid for his life, you know? Like, oh, so there’s banging in the house. Well, big deal, there’s banging in, There’s banging in my house that I don’t know where it comes from sometimes. I see where your mind is.

Todd: Bring it up. There’s banging in my house. I know exactly where it’s coming from.

Craig: Bring it out of the gutter, Todd. That 1 little spooky experience that I had, yeah, it was spooky, but it’s not like I felt like I was in danger. It’s not like I never went back there. So, I was in a play. The dressing room, the makeup room was downstairs. That’s where it happened. And I kept going back. It’s

Todd: not like I fled. You keep alluding to this, Craig. You got to tell us what happened. What

Craig: happened? Oh, okay. It’s so silly. Okay, so I was down, it was for a play in college and I just happened to be the only person in the makeup room at the time. And this basement, I mean, it’s an old building and it was spooky. You’ve been down there, you know.

Todd: And. Mm-hmm, it is spooky.

Craig: Not only were the makeup rooms down in this dingy dark basement, but they also were connected to this entire tunnel system that ran under the whole university that nobody even really knew about, except I’m sure like the maintenance people and those of us who had to put our makeup on down in that little spooky basement room. But I was down there by myself and I put on music. I put it on and it turned off and I was like well that was weird and so I started it again And this was in the days of CDs,   so it was a CD. I turned it on again, and it turned off again. And I’m like, what the heck? And so I turned it on again, and not only did it stop again, but the stereo lid popped open, and the CD flew out of the stereo

Todd: Like across the room flew out or

Craig: no like like just popped out and landed on the on the counter But you know why really weird it’s weird,

Todd: but you know I think you’re sticking I think your stereo was just broken. That’s why it kept stopping.

Craig: How does it pop out? You know those in the old days with the CDs, you had to open

Todd: the flip

Craig: top cover, and you had to stick it down on to… It stuck in. It’s not like you just slid it in, like you do if anybody still uses CDs today, like you slide it in and it like sucks it in. No, you had to like pry it on to like these prongs.

Todd: Under tension.

Craig: Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, so that happened.

Todd: I thought you were going to tell me something like, oh, then a ghostly voice came across, saying, don’t play this music.

Craig: No, but other people saw stuff in there too. Like, our friend Ron, who I think we’ve mentioned before who works in that building, has said many times that he’s seen and heard things, people hear like disembodied music playing. Now granted, it was a music hall for a while, so somebody could have been practicing somewhere. But you know, my partner, You’ve mentioned our friend Randy, who also works there. He’s like the building manager there. He’s seen things. My partner worked for Randy. He saw things like unexplained lights going on and off and all kinds of stuff. So   There’s a long history of people telling these stories, but I would literally like scoff at them and like openly like okay And then and then something happened so who knows I don’t know it could have been there could have been a totally rational explanation. The point is, yeah, this guy moves in here and these weird things start happening, and they seem innocuous, you know, safe at first. And to be fair, by the end, the very end, things are raised to the next level a little

Todd: bit. Yeah, they have to be in a movie,

Craig: right? I don’t know, and I guess he’s just, more than anything, curious. He wants to figure out what’s going on. Yeah. And that’s kind of what the movie is. And frankly, like, again, this movie was really well accepted and critically acclaimed. And I just found it a little bit boring. In the very beginning, John is the main character played by George C. Scott, who is an incredible actor. He is on vacation with his family and they have car trouble and so they’re on the side of the road and he goes to a payphone to call for   roadside assistance. And there’s a terrible accident and his wife and daughter are run down on the road. And so he’s kind of recovering slowly from this loss. And there are some, I thought, powerful moments. Like there was 1 moment, it was very brief, where he’s just weeping in his bed. And that sense of loss came across really well. And it seemed like, so he moves, I guess, to kind of get away from past memories or whatever. And I think this is supposed to be set in Toronto. Is that right? Where’s the space needle? It’s

Todd: supposed to be set in Seattle, I think, but it’s filmed in Toronto. Yeah. So there’s a needle there. I guess the needle in the movie is supposed to be Seattle’s, but Toronto has 1 too. Gotcha.

Craig: Okay. All right. So He moves there and he’s looking for a place to live. And I don’t even, he encounters this lady who works for the Historical Society and she’s like, oh, I bet we can find you a place. And she does. She finds him this enormous mansion. Like, here’s this single guy, you know, he’s like, Oh, I think he should stay in this huge historical mansion.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And he says, okay, and he moves in there. And it’s gorgeous. It’s this huge, gorgeous mansion that I would have bet money was an actual landmark, but it wasn’t. It was entirely a facade and set, filmed on sound stages.

Todd: So weird. Yeah. It does

Craig: look totally like a… Yeah, it looks totally real.

Todd: It’s a super elaborate place and it’s, I have to admit, this was even going through my mind as I was watching it. I’m thinking, come on, this 1 single guy is supposed to have this massive mansion to live in And the woman who shows it to him is walking him through the rooms and now he’s a composer. That’s what he does. And she leads him into 1 room and says, this is the music room. This is really why I thought of you in this house. The piano was left here when the society took over just too   much trouble to move, really. It must be in very bad shape. And I looked at him like, it’s just another big room in this giant house with a lot of big rooms. It just happens to have a piano in it. There’s nothing special about this room.

Craig: Well, and to be fair, I mean, apparently, he’s very, very successful. I mean, not, yes, he’s a composer, a famous composer, and I presume that’s where he has amassed the fortune that 1 would need to rent this huge mansion. But he also does guest lecturing at the university in town and stuff

Todd: like that. He should throw a party in this house every now and then, you know? Yeah.

Craig: Oh God, it was a big beautiful house. What a waste. But anyway, I guess the fact that he lost, his sense of loss, his feelings of loss are what draws this spirit to him. You know, it’s almost a 2 hour movie, it’s an hour 45, and it felt a little long. It felt very much like a mystery, but I felt like the mystery was like 75% resolved really early. And so, you know, weird things start happening I don’t even remember like 1 of the first he hears these Banging at first I thought the piano I thought   it was the piano banging, but it wasn’t, I guess. I guess it was like the heat or something that was banging. He calls in some maintenance guy that’s just always around and the guy says, oh, it’s an old house, this stuff happens. Okay, well, fine, whatever. Then we see little things like he’ll be playing the piano and a door will open behind him and he doesn’t even notice. So just, you know, little things here and there. The first kind of big thing that happens is he hears a faucet running and he goes into the kitchen and   yeah, the faucet’s running. He turns it off. Well, he turns that off. He hears that there’s water running elsewhere. So he goes upstairs, a bathtub faucet is running and there’s water in the bathtub. And then at that moment he sees under the water what appears to be a little boy, like under the water. And like you said, it’s so weird. Like he sees it and he’s like, and then it just immediately cuts away and he’s just like walking down the street. Banging is 1 thing, CDs flying out of a CD player is 1 thing. Seeing a   ghostly boy under the water of the bathtub, that would freak me

Todd: out.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: 1 would think. I don’t know, I didn’t actually feel that this movie was poorly paced. I felt like it was pretty much on par with most haunted house movies, especially this era. I thought it actually had a pretty nice build to it. It was a little slow. I think it’s a little slower than what we normally expect nowadays from our haunted house movies. But for the time and for you know what I guess you could consider a classic movie now, 1980, that’s getting back there I guess. I thought it had a nice pacing. 1 of the   nice things it did was it did have something mysterious happening on a fairly regular basis even though those mysterious things more or less were innocuous. They weren’t even to the level necessarily of CD flying across the room. They were definitely like a piano key plays itself, which is scary, but it’s not going to hurt anybody. And you’re right, up until we get this drowning kid’s face in the bathtub, you don’t get a real sense. But then again even that is something that may or may not be in somebody’s head, right? Sure. You’re always watching these kind   of movies and you the character sees something and you’re always weighing it against Did he really see it or did he imagine he saw it? Especially when you’re dealing in this case with a guy with who had some trauma you always wonder is this a psychological thing? Is his own trauma that’s that’s building in and so even that if I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here I could make an excuse for why he might it kind of like house The guy’s undergone trauma and so it might not necessarily… He may be questioning himself in all of this.   You don’t get that sense that he is but it’s an argument that could be made for why he doesn’t run screaming or freak out more when all these things happen. I don’t know, but then again, his character’s just sort of painted that way. He’s very flat, I think, through this

Craig: movie.

Todd: Except for the crying at the 1 moment. That’s about it. And even his grief Isn’t really played up. I feel like it kind of falls by the wayside a little bit Maybe it’s meant to be an undercurrent or an undertone that kind of like flows beneath everything that happens But I never really felt like it was referenced a lot.

Craig: Yeah, I Don’t know. Yeah, I agree with you to an extent, but I just, I think that George C. Scott is such a talented actor that he can kind of get away with some of that subtlety. And there are moments, you know, there’s a moment where he goes riding. He’s got a, I guess it’s his romantic interest. Is her name Claire?

Todd: Is that? Yeah, Claire

Craig: Norman. And at 1 point they go horseback riding and he just has kind of a quiet moment and she’s like what’s matter? He’s like well my daughter who died really loved horses and that’s it that’s as far as it goes but you kind of you know you see a little bit of his pain. There’s a moment where again another kind of haunted moment where he’s kept this like rubber bouncy ball that belonged to his daughter. It’s kind of like the 1 thing that he’s hanging on to. And at 1 point it comes rolling down the stairs   and he takes it and like drives away somewhere and drops it over a bridge. And it’s very subtle, but I feel like you see that this is a moment for him, like I’m letting this go. And then of course he comes back home and it’s back. And that’s just further evidence for

Todd: him. That was chilling. I mean, you know, the whole ball bouncing down the stairs thing, I don’t know how many times we’ve seen that in a haunted house movie. It’s become cliche by now. But I think at the time of this film, it wasn’t quite so cliche. And in fact, it really fits because his daughter, 1 of his earlier memories of her that was earlier established was her tossing this ball at him. And in fact earlier in the movie the ball falls out of some boxes as the helper is bringing the boxes in and that’s what   triggers that memory. So the ball ties in quite nicely. That moment where he throws away the ball and I knew what was coming but still I mean I got chills when that came back down the stairs. I was just so balled and bowled and then boom you know next day.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: This isn’t something you can write off You know you threw that ball away and it is back in the house now, right? Rolling around

Craig: and it’s creepy and I feel like that’s what that’s kind of the last thing that, I don’t know, I mean they do some investigating, at some point he’s outdoors and a window shatters and to trace what window has shattered, because it appears that it’s in this attic room, but he can’t find the room. Eventually he finds it, but the door has been hidden behind these shelves. So he has to tear down these shelves to get up there. And he gets up there, and of course it’s very cobwebby and spooky and haunted looking.

Todd: It’s cobwebby alright. I thought you need to watch out for the spider that’s been making these cobwebs, buddy. Yeah. It’s gotta be 1 massive spider or clan of spiders in there.

Craig: Well at that point I think it was supposed to have been shut up for like almost a hundred years.

Todd: Yeah. They’ve been working hard though over that 100 years. Let’s just put it that way.

Craig: That’s true. And there’s a spooky old fashioned wheelchair in there. It’s kind of evident that it was a child’s room. There are toys, it looked like maybe little army men or something. And there is a music box. And when he plays the melody from the music box, it turns out that it’s the same melody, exactly, precisely the same melody, as a song that he thought that he had composed like the day before. But he records all of his compositions on tape and when he plays the tape and the music box at the same time they are   in perfect unison. So weird spooky things going on. At some point He’s up there and he’s up there with Claire I think and they find a monogrammed notebook that has the initials CSB and it’s dated January 4th 1909 That leads them to do like my favorite thing in these old movies where they have to go like do their library research. On microfil, it’s great. On microfiche, yeah. And he finds out that in 1909, the owner was a doctor with a couple of kids. And the daughter, he finds out that the daughter of the doctor was killed   in a freak accident when she was hit by in the road and he thinks oh man that’s just like what happened to my daughter so maybe that’s the connection and then that kind of gets pushed to the side for the rest of the movie that really doesn’t have anything else to do with it. I can’t remember in sequence when it happens, but eventually he has a vision of a young boy in a bathtub in that room and a man comes in and grabs the boy by his ankles and holds his ankles up in the air so   that the kid is submerged in the water and can’t get out and the kid drowns.

Todd: Okay, now I’ve just got to stop you here because this was a really disturbing scene for me.

Craig: It was. It was hard to watch. It was really sad.

Todd: It even brought back thoughts of burnt offerings where the father almost drowns his son in the pool. And that went on for so long and it was just so visceral. Yeah, this was worse, I think. Well, first of all, because he actually ended up drowning him. And second of all, it was horrible. It was this unfeeling kind of thing where he lifts his legs up. You don’t even see the dad. You see his arms and his body and he lifts this kid’s legs up in the air and just lets the rest of him flounder about inside   the water of his little bathtub until he stops. Oh, God, man, I just couldn’t, I could hardly watch that, honestly.

Craig: Yeah, it was really, I mean, it was disturbing and it was sad You know this this young boy and and especially when you get the context that this is his father doing this to him. And the way that they get that context is they have a seance. I don’t even remember what prompts the seance.

Todd: Oh, he goes to a place with, like, I think it’s at the university or something, and they’re talking about psychics.

Clip: I tell you, off the record, we have coming here many mediums and spiritualists and so and we test them. Now, 99% are the frauds, but the 1%? Astonishing.

Todd: And so he apparently refers this medium to him. He’s trying to get some kind of psychic investigation going on the house, I

Craig: think. Right. And so they have this seance and this medium, you know, calls on whatever spirit is there and then I can’t think of the word for it. That psychic writing. Automatic writing I think is what they

Todd: call it.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, something like that. And that’s what she’s doing. Like she’s just scribbling on notepads and her assistant is like, you know, pulling the papers out whenever she fills up 1 page and she goes on to the next page. And it’s mostly just, you know, like swirls and things. But as she’s communicating, eventually she gets some response and the spirit through her writes things. She says, are you the little girl who died? And the spirit says, no, I’m not. And she asks, who is it?

Todd: It’s

Craig: Joseph. She’s like, what do you want? And he writes John, which are our main character’s name, and help. That’s pretty much it. And then something on the table falls over and knocks the glass over and the glass shatters and that’s it. But John was using the same tape recorder that he uses to record his compositions to record the seance and when he listens to it later He can hear the spirit talking on the tape when the spirit is asked. How did you die? The spirit says my father my room and that I think is when He   ends up having the vision, you know, he he sees the whole thing play out.

Todd: That’s a big criticism I have of the movie too. It’s a vision. He could have had it at any time. Right. It wasn’t necessarily, I guess it was triggered by, I don’t know, who knows what it was triggered by, but I kind of hate that in these kind of movies where the character has a vision. It’s almost like the character has a dream that explains something, you know? And here you’ve got this investigation, he’s figuring things out, that I could kind of wrap myself around, but then it’s so convenient for a guy then to just have   a vision that then furthers the plot as well. And not only that, but gives him really important crucial key information that he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, you know. Now, I thought that that seance scene was very well done. I mean, I thought it was intense too. Seriously, I was kind of on the edge of my seat with it wondering if something bad was gonna happen. And then when he sits there and he plays that tape back afterwards and you hear that voice, once again, I’m thinking, oh my gosh, something bad’s gonna go on. He’s gonna hear   that voice say something really creepy or something’s gonna come behind him or whatever because he plays it back over and over and over again. And gosh, man, we do this so often. You think of other movies, right? Was it sinister where the guy plays the tape back and it says something different the second time?

Craig: You see, yeah, something like that.

Todd: Maybe it was the rock and roll nightmare or something like that, I don’t know. There was the potential for that to happen. It didn’t, but boy, I was waiting for it and I was really thinking. It kept an intensity about the scene. But then again, I’m kind of a little let down that nothing really came of it. Then the next day he’s out walking around and doing his next thing. Right. And the fact that the voice spoke, you’d think they would be building on that, you know, is he going to try to talk to it now?   Is he going to start hearing this voice more often? And none of that really happens either, you know? So it’s odd. I mean, it’s got these neat elements. And it’s got these, I think, really intense scenes, really strong creepiness, but none of it necessarily kind of builds on each other. There’s no build. It’s like, okay, yeah, a bunch of creepy things are happening, that is a build, but it’s not like they’re all building together to create a larger intensity and a cohesive manner. You know what I mean?

Craig: Yeah, I mean, I feel like the purpose is that they’re trying to place the puzzle pieces you know, bit by bit. And they do, you know, I feel like maybe they reveal a little bit too much early on and that ultimately the end game is a little bit, I don’t know, it’s not like it’s not interesting, it is interesting, but I feel like they show their hand a little bit too early. But I will agree with you that those scenes with the seance and the him playing back the recording, yeah, I was very much invested in   those scenes. I was interested. There was tension. I was very interested to see what was going to come of it. But then it just kind of gets back into procedural mystery and there’s nothing wrong with that. And obviously people, you know, enjoy it and enjoyed it at the time. It’s just, to me, it’s like, oh, here’s this kind of really intense, tension scary part. Alright, let’s go do some more research. Like, ugh, can we skip the research? Like, I get it, I get it. Like, that’s what would happen in real life. Like, you would have a   moment and then you would go and do some research, but this is a movie. Like,

Todd: Keep me entertained. Going back, and I think maybe this is the, maybe 1 of the last bits that I thought was super creepy, and it must not have been long after that, because he calls that woman and she comes over, and I guess he’s told her over the phone what he saw and what he’s kind of figured out about this kid being drowned. So she comes in, she’s super distraught, she’s crying. I think about the whole idea of it. She wanders into the other room as she’s crying out into the foot of the staircase. And he’s   in the other room next to her where she just left. And suddenly she turns and she looks and she literally like her face freezes. And she has this absolutely horrifying look on her face. And I was flipping out when I… I mean… Right, what is she seeing? What is she seeing? And it’s like, I don’t know how many seconds went by, but it felt like an eternity for just to see her glassy eyes, nothing coming out of her mouth, staring an absolute horror. And it’s a side view. It’s really, really cleverly framed. And he’s kind of   blurry in the background. He comes towards her like he’s going to comfort. He’s like, what, what, what? And it’s like, frickin’ turn around, frickin’ turn around and look at what she’s looking at so that we can finally see what she’s looking at. And I mean, I was reaching out at the screen at that moment and he turns around and it was not disappointing at all. That wheelchair that they had seen up in the attic covered in cobwebs that belonged to this kid was at the top of the stairwell and it turned towards them. And I about   flipped. Like, you know, like movies don’t really scare me that much anymore, but I about flipped at that. And then it cut away to like the next freaking day. Like what? What? Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, it happens time and time again.

Todd: What did you do with the wheelchair? Did you, you know? I mean, they put it back in the attic. They had to because later on, we see it back in the attic again. Right. You know what I mean. But there gets to a point where he sits there screaming, what do you want, you know, at the end of the house. And I don’t remember how he gets around to this whole deal with the metals and finding that.

Craig: I know. That’s the thing. I kind of lost track of it too. Like they research the kid and they find out that the kid was disabled, but then something about an orphanage and they’re like, oh this poor kid, he was disabled and then he was an orphan, and I’m like, what, what are you talking about? And then somehow they are directed to this place that was on the original estate of the house. And he goes and he looks at all these like- Maps. Yeah, maps. Historical. Atlases or something. And this guy tells them like, oh, okay,   here it is over time. And John is like, well, what’s this little circle right here? And they’re like, well, that’s a well. And it shows up here and it shows up 10 years from then and it shows up 10 years from then. But then they redistributed the property. That got sold off. Yeah, and it got sold off and they built a house there and the well’s not there anymore. And so he goes to this house that just some rando woman lives in and eventually they go to her and they tell her the whole story and at   this point they know about, you know, this boy had been killed, drowned, and they believe, Again, I’m not really sure how they get there, but what they figure out is that the dad, whose name was Carmichael, had a son… Well, he had a son and a daughter. The daughter was killed by the coal cart. The son was physically disabled. And then the mom died. Well, it turns out that all of the wealth in the family came from the mom’s side of the family. And when she died, her dad left all of the money in estate and   property to the son, the disabled son. But he left it in trust and that trust was overseen by the dad. But if the disabled son died before he turned 21, the dad wouldn’t get any of the money. So what he did apparently was he killed his disabled son because he feared that he wouldn’t make it to 21 and then secretly adopted a kid from like a foreign orphanage and then he sent the new kid, the changeling, away to a boarding school or to a hospital or a sanitarium or something in Europe. And it just so happened   that World War I broke out and so it made sense that he wouldn’t bring the kid back and so then after World War I is over he brought the kid back but by that time the kid was 18 and so it was easily explained that he had been cured while he was over in Europe all that time, that kid then inherited all of the family wealth and became a senator. It’s so like, it’s so contrived.

Todd: Like, but. Yeah, it’s rather

Craig: convenient. It’s logical. I mean, it makes logical sense. It’s not so… I don’t have to suspend my disbelief that much to believe that that could have happened. Yeah. So now, apparently John is on this mission to like, he doesn’t even know what he’s doing. He just keeps saying that, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just keep trying to do whatever the Spirit is leading me to do. And the Spirit leads him to this house and he convinces the lady who lives in the house to let them tear up a room in her house to excavate   the well that… I don’t even know how he knew the kid was in the well, but he was. And they find the bones and then there’s this whole thing about a medal. I don’t even know what that medal was all about.

Todd: I have no idea where that medal came from. I don’t know what, did they read it in the newspaper or something, I don’t remember.

Craig: They must have, I don’t know. But it

Todd: was really important to them because they find the body and they call the cops over and the cops dig up the body and then he gets all cagey about why he, which is funny that the cops just end up dropping it. Like this guy came over, chainsawed up the floor of the house, found a hidden well and a body inside and well, I just happened to stumble upon it. Well like you were not renovating the floor, you know. Let’s just put it that way. So anyway, they just let it go, but he’s like I’ve got to   get back there because if without that metal, you know, we don’t have any proof. And so he goes down and basically breaks back into the house, digs through there to look for this metal, can’t find it, and then supernaturally, the metal comes up through the ground and reveals itself, which must have been just like 2 inches. If he just dug just like 1 more scoop of dirt more, he probably would have found this metal.

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: right. And it turns out that the changeling guy, the Senator has his own copy of it.

Craig: I don’t know. Which also doesn’t make sense. I know, I don’t know.

Todd: If this metal proves that the kid is who he is, right, and it’s that important, and then the dad did this swap, wouldn’t the dad have just taken that medal and given it to the new kid? Right. Why would he have buried the old kid with that medal and had an exact copy made for the new kit, right? Right.

Craig: Well, and then, so John, like, tries to confront this Carmichael guy, the senator, with the medal, and the Carmichael guy, like, acts like he, like, he’s trying to act like he doesn’t know what’s going on, but it seems like he kind of does know what’s going on. And then he sends a police goon to threaten John, and we find out that Claire has been fired from the Historical Society without explanation and John has lost the lease to his house and this detective is threatening to come back and tear up the house until they find this metal   And then the detective mysteriously dies in a car accident, which we are meant to believe was caused by the ghost. And then John, again, really with no purpose, like I just don’t even understand. Like He goes to the Carmichael guy and he tells him the whole story. He tells him the whole story of how he was swapped and blah blah blah. And the guy acts like he doesn’t know, but at the same time he says, oh, people have been coming and telling me these wild stories forever. How much do you want for your story? Yeah, he   thinks he’s being blackmailed.

Todd: Like he’s going to buy them off.

Craig: And John’s like, no, I don’t want your money. In fact, here’s everything. Here’s all the evidence. Here’s the metal. Here’s the tape of the seance. Here’s all the files that I found. I’ve done everything I can do like What you haven’t done anything like I don’t know. Yeah, in fact, you’re just kind of like, you know giving this guy his way out The other thing that was bothering me was like this guy’s a senator, he’s obviously already well established, so what if this comes out? He didn’t do anything, you know? Like, he was just a victim   in all of this. Like, What difference is it going to make, really? But apparently it’s really important.

Todd: Well, I think he has some feelings about his father, his quote unquote father, his reputation, I guess, maybe even in death. He’s like, my dad was a good man. He was a very good man. None of this makes sense. He wouldn’t do this kind of thing. And he gets quite upset about it. So maybe that is really, it’s just kind of a family honor thing more than anything else at the end of the day.

Craig: That’s fair. That makes sense. Yeah. And he does. He says that. He’s like, I’m not going to let you destroy his legacy. And I get that, especially you know, if he really, you know, if he was so young that he really doesn’t remember, and that you know, if his father, you know, raised him well and with love, you know, I can understand that that would be upsetting and you wouldn’t want people to know about that. But, whatever. So then John goes back to the house and the spirit is clearly still angry and that’s when he’s like,   what do you want from me?

Todd: And that’s a good question actually, because I really wasn’t sure at this point. I mean, they found the body, he confronted the dude, what did he want? Did we find that out by the end of

Craig: the movie? The only thing, like I feel like the spirit wanted vindication. He wanted the wrong to be righted.

Todd: The truth to come out or something.

Craig: I guess. Ultimately, I don’t really know what that means because what happens is first, before John even gets home, Claire gets there and she sneaks around the house. This was a really interesting scene because I feel like they were trying to kind of give us her perspective because all of a sudden the camera started doing wonky things where like the the rooms were kind of like the camera was tilting. So it kind of gave you this uneasy, I’m on a boat kind of feeling. And I felt like that was kind of what she was like, she   was noticing, oh, something’s weird. And she goes looking for him and she ends up in the attic and then the wheelchair chases her until she falls down the stairs. And then John shows up and he gets her out, but then he goes back in and he starts going up the stairs in this ghostly wind which is apparently like hurricane force, like blows him off the landing. And he crashes down and lands on the floor. And then this part was so surreal and bizarre, and you’re going to have to maybe explain it to me.

Todd: I don’t think I can.

Craig: The old guy, the Carmichael guy, the senator is in his office and he takes the medal that John has given him and he lays it over the painted portrait of his dad and it the portrait and the medal start to shake and he’s scared. Then all of a sudden, he’s in the house. Yeah. And he goes walking up the stairs, and the banister catches fire, and the house catches on fire. And John runs out of the house and he and Claire just get the frick out of there Which I thought was kind of funny Carmichael is   in the house and it’s burning like the staircase falls So, you know, there’s no way he can get out of it and he goes up into the attic and it’s burning, but then the scene cuts and you see that he’s also still in his office where he has a heart attack and dies. So I guess that him being in the house was more kind of a vision type thing, except for John saw him there.

Todd: Yeah, I think it was supposed to be kind of a spirit projection, like here, like Maybe he’s having his heart attack, his spirit is leaving his body and it’s returning to the house. Okay. Maybe. That’s the best I can think. Yeah. But you’re right. It’s a little ambiguous there what’s going on. It’s meant to be creepy. But yeah, at the end of the day, they discover the senator’s body and pack him away in an ambulance and what you see is the entire burned down shell of a house with just that wheelchair still sitting there. And that’s   the image that we’re left with at the end of the movie. And the

Craig: music box. The music box is there too and it pops open and it starts playing that melody. And then the camera zooms out to a wide shot of the rubble and the credits roll.

Todd: Well, you know, speaking of the music box, I thought the music in this movie was fantastic.

Craig: Oh, yeah, yeah, really, really good.

Todd: And the cinematography in this movie was also incredibly good.

Craig: Dated, dated from a 2019 perspective.

Todd: Well, you don’t get Zooms and things at least, which would have been typical here, but you get a lot of dolly shots through the house. It’s really sliding through and moving in and out. Really at times there’s a lot of top down shots on the guy and walking through the house as though the house is very much an imposing force on them. You know, I think we talked about that a little bit in Bird Offerings. No, it was the opposite in Bird Offerings, wasn’t it? Where we were seeing a lot of the ceiling, it sort of   felt oppressive in

Craig: a different way. Yeah, yeah. I guess maybe it’s not so much the cinematography that feels dated. It’s probably just more the film stock, you know, the quality of the picture. You know, it just doesn’t look as clean as digital looks today. But, I mean, you’re right. It was well shot.

Todd: It was. The director didn’t really do a lot. He got a lot of acclaim for this movie. He’s done…well, when I say he hasn’t really done a lot, that’s not really fair. I mean, he’s done things. His name is Peter Medak. He did Species 2, you know. He did a number of movies, did a lot of TV. Actually, he did a number of episodes of the reboot of the Twilight Zone in the 80s. He did an episode of Tales from the Crypt. You know, he’s done like Law

Craig: and Order. He did an episode of, oh gosh,

Todd: there was a horror anthology. Masters of Horror, yeah.

Craig: Yes, The Washingtonians, and it was 1 of my favorite episodes from that whole anthology. It was fantastic, It was so good.

Todd: I’ve never seen that 1.

Craig: Watch it immediately. It was so good.

Todd: Okay. And the writer, you know, I talked about the guy who came up with the story. He didn’t actually write the script, but the story has 2 credits. The story is 2 people, William Gray and a woman named Diana Maddox. And William Gray wrote the Philadelphia experiment. He wrote Prom Night and a few things on TV. Wrote for the TV series RoboCop and a few different things. Not a lot of credits, but a decent number of things that you know are in his background. So that’s kind of interesting. The Changeling was 1 of his first screenplays.   So, you know, I mean, it’s not a bad movie. It really isn’t. It’s not as terrifying as it could have been, frustratingly so, because parts of it, I felt, were some of the scariest things I’ve seen in a while, to be honest. I mean, maybe I was just in the mood for it, you know, tonight, but It really hit all the right nerves for me, but then that catharsis never landed. You get up there and then it just kind of fall flat in the sky. I’m not really going on the adventure with him.

Craig: I’m like,

Todd: He’s very detached as he’s going through it. And that allows me as a viewer to kind of be detached too and not really feel that sense of scariness. And so, you know, it was very much a mixed bag in that way. But no, I think overall it’s quite an accomplished movie. It’s good. I mean compare this to a movie like burnt offerings It’s it’s still up there. Maybe even a little better.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean I didn’t watch it under the best conditions I had to watch it. I watched some of it at work and I chopped it up over, you know, several different viewings.

Todd: You’ve got to stop doing this, Craig. You really get a different perspective on these movies, I think.

Craig: Shhh! Somebody will hear you that I watch these things at work sometimes.

Todd: Oh, I don’t care that you’re slacking off on your job.

Craig: Hey, I have free time sometimes. Anyway, no, so I didn’t watch it under the best conditions. I think that it’s a perfectly competent movie. I think that it’s well-made. It wasn’t engaging and exciting enough for me to really get into it. But I’m in the minority. I mean, it got really good reviews. It was really well received. So if you’re listening and you’re interested in these types of movies and if you’re somebody who likes a diverse style of filmmaking, check it out. It’s certainly worth checking it out. It’s competently acted and well-made. I really don’t have   any Concrete criticisms. I I don’t know. I just it wasn’t really for me

Todd: You know, it stands pretty firmly as a product of its time. Don’t you think? Yeah, yeah Well, thank you again Vincent for your request We really enjoyed it If you have any requests, you can find us on Facebook. Just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. Leave us a note there and let us know what you’d like us to hear. Also let us know what you thought of this podcast. And if you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend. We love to get new listeners. You can find our webpage, 2guys.red40net.com, or you can simply   Google us and you’ll find us wherever you find podcasts posted. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.