2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

What better way to celebrate mother’s day than with a movie that shows just how far sons can go for their beloved mama? We expected to hate this movie but were pleasantly surprised. Listen as we fall all over each other to offer some guarded and highly qualified opinions for this overlooked – but notorious – classic.

Episode 170, 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, we’re coming up upon another holiday, Mother’s Day. Yay! And you know what that

Craig: means. It means happy Mother’s Day, Todd.

Todd: Happy Mother’s Day. We love them. They gave us life. That’s right. And then we, of course, because we’re big dorks, we love to do themed films, and we’ve gone a few years on this podcast without ever doing the extremely obvious film Mother’s Day. So we’re doing this now. And by the way, this is not the newer remake version, loose remake from what I hear of Mother’s Day. This is the original 1980 film directed by Charles Kaufman who, interesting fact, is the brother of Lloyd Kaufman from Trauma. So we’ve recently done Toxic Avenger so it’s kind of   cool that we’re doing this movie now. It’s not that Charles Kaufman has actually done a lot of stuff, but this movie was in a small way produced by Troma. 1980, we’re still kind of in the early days of Troma. Actually, Charles Kaufman, the writer-director of this film, is listed also as 1 of the 2 writers of Squeeze Play, which was 1 of Troma’s earlier successes, kind of a baseball-themed sex comedy. Then he went off to do this completely wacko movie, which is a little bit notorious, I guess. When it came out, it got banned, I think,   outright in a few countries, especially the UK. They just wouldn’t release it. It had to endure some cuts to be released in places like Germany. I think here, you know, obviously we’re in the United States and it’s pretty liberal and it’s green but it didn’t do very well although apparently in the meantime we hear it has gained a bit of a cult following as most things do in the age of the internet so here we are talking about Mother’s Day from 1980. I’d never seen this film before so this was kind of fun to be able   to watch it. It had been on my list. You know, this is 1 of those that I again had seen the cover art when you’re walking through the aisles of the video store back in the day. It’s kind of a take on Whistler’s mother with a crazy grinning woman, half of her face is a skull. Her 2 boys are standing behind her and the tagline is, I’m so proud of my boys, they never forget their mama. She’s holding a box with a head in it. So you know, I mean, you kind of know before you get   into it what you’re going to expect here And I felt like the movie pretty much delivered exactly what I expected. Yeah Do you have any history with this movie at all Craig?

Craig: Nope, I hadn’t seen it either and Just like you for me. The box art was very familiar It’s it’s 1 of those things and I’ve said this several times on the podcast, but the box art is so familiar that I’m really surprised that I haven’t seen it. Because I must have walked by it on the shelves a hundred times. I like watching as many horror movies as I can, so I’m surprised that I hadn’t seen it, but No, I never had. And going in, because I read a lot of stuff too. I read a lot of   horror websites and those types of things. I’d read about it, and so I kind of had an idea of what it was about, and I knew kind of what type of movie that it was. And when it boils down to it, to a large extent, it’s very much a rape revenge movie along the lines of I Spent on Your Grave or Last House on the Left. And that is not my favorite subgenre of horror films. Agreed. I’ve watched them, both of those that I just mentioned, I’ve watched them. I appreciate them for what they are, but   sexual violence just makes me very uncomfortable, which I assume it does for most people, or at least I would hope that it does.

Todd: It’s gotta be 1 of the most shocking things that you can put up on screen. Probably some of the most notorious horror films are those kind of films, right?

Craig: Yeah. It’s very difficult and very uncomfortable for me to watch. And so having read about this movie, I can’t say that I was super excited about going into it, but that being said, I didn’t find it as disturbing as those other movies that I’ve said. There is some sexual violence, but not nearly as much, and it’s not as gratuitous. It’s still gratuitous, but not as gratuitous as those movies. I don’t know. I think that I found myself enjoying this movie more than I thought that I would. I think that when it comes down to it, I   thought that this movie was more like a very, very dark comedy than those other movies, which were just gratuitously violent. I don’t know, again, maybe we’ll talk about 1 of those movies someday and we can talk about them in more depth. They’re so violent and so nasty that it’s really hard to watch. And there’s at least 1 scene here where there is sexual violence and it’s not easy to watch, but there’s less focus on that. And I think a little bit more of the very dark comedy that kind of pulled me into this more than I   expected it to.

Todd: Yeah, I’m 100% with you on that. You know, the 2 movies you mentioned, I spit on your grave and Last House on the Left, those are pretty brutal. And They’re supposed to be brutal. I would even put the hills have eyes Yeah, and the hills have eyes remake on that where it is so shocking and so gratuitous and so Serious, you know what happens to these women in these films that it just makes you ill and it’s yeah it’s really difficult to watch whereas this movie it didn’t really take itself terribly seriously it’s really obvious throughout   that this film is supposed to be like you said a very very dark comedy and Having reviewed a trauma film in the past. I you can’t really this is not a classic trauma film. No. This is not so wackadoodle out there as most trauma films are. It’s kind of vaguely on the fence of something in the similar ballpark in that it just has a goofiness level to it that, you know, allows you to really not get too worked up over even, you know, sort of the sexual violence aspect of it. Not to downplay that at all,   but, you know, it just didn’t feel, it didn’t hit you at that gut visceral level that as I too was expecting to get. In fact, I would say, and I’ve always said trauma movies I think are better made than people give them credit for, but there’s still an amateurishness about them that is pretty evident on the screen. Whereas in this movie, I actually felt like quite a bit of it was pretty well made. Yeah, there were some nice aspects to the cinematography. There were some clever transitions. It’s clear that the people that went into this movie,   you know, had a modicum of what they were doing. It wasn’t a cheap film like I thought it was going to be. I thought it was gonna be a cheap, drive-in, cash grab kind of movie, and I think, I mean, it kind of is, but at its heart, there’s actually some substance behind it, and it’s not really deep. No, no. And it’s not high art, but there’s art here, you know, I think

Craig: well and it is a cheap movie I mean they shot it for just over a hundred thousand dollars and they shot it on you know actual locations like the house that is the central location of the movie was an actual abandoned house in the woods that actually has, you know, we read about these things online, you know, this house that they shot in and had its own history and that the previous owner of the house, I believe, had been murdered. And in addition to that, before shooting, I think a dead body had been found in the   house. And it’s mostly just shot in this house and in the woods surrounding it. And it is inexpensive in the way that it was filmed. But you’re right. It’s not of low quality. Even the acting, I was surprised by. You know, these folks are playing heightened characters, so it’s over-the-top But it’s not poorly acted in fact. I thought it was pretty well-acted.

Todd: I completely agree with you I don’t honestly like I was especially taken by 1 of the brothers, his name is Ike, and he

Craig: is- Is he the tall 1?

Todd: He’s the 1, yeah, with the weird eye.

Craig: Yeah, I was too, what the heck?

Todd: He was fantastic. Like, yeah. And he comes on the screen and he’s got like a weird eye. It’s kind of clouded over and he has these teeth.

Craig: And he’s wearing like these fake teeth that are gross.

Todd: He’s supposed to be very hillbilly. And at first he comes on the screen. It’s just like so freaking over the top. You’re like, OK, yeah. But the more you watch him, he’s actually quite good at it. And even his character has like kind of a little bit of depth you know for a comedic sort of role and I went and looked him up this guy’s name is Frederick Coffin he died in 2003 but he has quite a few credits to his name. He was in like 99 films under Siege, a ton of TV like LA Law,   Walker, Texas Ranger, MacGyver and stuff. It’s really quite impressive actually and makes sense because he was in Dallas dude. This guy was in 6 episodes of Dallas. We’re all talking 1980s stuff here. But you know he was working right up until he died. He was an identity. That was the last movie he did, which is not a horror movie, but it’s kind of a thriller. You could maybe call it a horror. I don’t know. Mr. I liked that movie, actually.

Craig: 1 of the bits of trivia that I read was that there are 3 young women who are kind of our central characters and they are tormented by this family of a mother and 2 sons. And I read that 1 of the women and 1 of the actors who portrayed the tormentors began kind of a romantic relationship. And I can understand why because the younger, I guess, of the 2, the shorter, the smaller 1, he’s a nice looking young man. And the guy that you were just talking about, take out that contact lens that he’s wearing in   1 eye and take off his fake teeth. I’m sure he was a very attractive young man also. And these young ladies are all attracted to you. I can totally understand where they would hook up. But I guess that this kind of romantic thing started to happen and the director asked them to please postpone their relationship until after the movie had shot because he was afraid that it would affect the relationship on screen. He didn’t think that the young lady would be adequately terrorized by this guy if they were in real life in a romantic relationship. But   I just thought that that was interesting. You know, having done a tiny bit of nothing acting myself, you know, you do, you get put in these circumstances with people where you’re together all the time, and you’re working together, and you’re playing together, and you’re spending so much time together, romantic and sexual things happen.

Todd: Oh, do tell, Craig.

Craig: Oh, come on. You know, college is college. Romantic and sexual things happen all the time. It happens with fans, too. But no, I just thought that was really, I read that before I watched the movie and then I was watching it and I’m like, oh, I can totally see that. These guys, as horrible as they are in the movie, they had, I hate to say it, it’s kind of gross to say, but they kind of had a certain charm about

Todd: them. Yeah, you know? You’re right, like they didn’t come across as all that sinister. I think there were moments, and of course you don’t want to downplay the fact that they’re doing horrible things and they’re supposed to be these backwoods type characters who are, I mean the gist of it is there’s this mother and there are these 2 guys and they’re her sons and what they do is they kidnap women and then they rape and torture them and eventually kill them for the mother’s pleasure. She likes to watch this go on and she encourages it. She’s   even taught them basically how to do it. And that on its face sounds horrible. And of course it’s horrible. But when you watch the movie, it doesn’t seem as horrible as your mind conjures up before you watch it because it’s done so comedically. It’s done with kind of a little bit of satire, a little bit of whatever. It’s not to say they don’t do these things and that’s not terrible, but then you get these long scenes where they’re like goofing around and squirting cheese whiz in their mouths. It’s like if you took the scene from Texas   Chainsaw Massacre where they’re all sitting around the table, this total dysfunctional family, but you made it more of a sitcom. Right. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That’s what you get here. It’s almost a parody or satire of that. And so it feels a little lighter, and somehow that really tampens down the uncomfortable parts of the movie to the extent where I think it actually works against the movie’s favor because I never really felt a strong sense of suspense even when the girls are running for their lives or 1 of them gets killed and they’re kind of going through   the woods and they’re trying to get away from these guys, like, it all just seemed a little goofy and I just couldn’t get that real visceral feeling like, oh my God, I hope they make it. I just was always aware, 100%, that I was watching a movie.

Craig: Sure, yeah, I totally agree with what you’re saying. Now there is 1 scene that is very difficult to watch, but beyond that, it’s more just the bad guy chasing the girls through the woods. It’s not all that disturbing. These guys, even though they’re playing hillbilly kind of and goofy and whatever, I don’t want to call them endearing because they’re violent and horrible, but they’re kind of endearing to a certain extent. I mean, beyond the fact that they are, you know, brutal rapists, and there is 1 scene that’s brutal and uncomfortable to watch. But beyond that, it’s   not like you’re rooting for them. You’re still rooting for the girls, but the guys, you know, They’re interesting characters. They’re not just these nasty violent forces. As in, in The Hills Have Eyes, the villains are just monstrously evil and you’re terrified of them throughout. And they’re just absolutely horrible. And in this movie, it’s not like you wanna grab a beer with these guys, but you kind of, you almost sympathize with them a little bit because ultimately, they’re being manipulated by their mother.

Todd: Yeah, and that’s made very obvious in the film.

Craig: Yeah, and they are a product of their upbringing. Right. You know, like this is the way that she has raised them to be. And so, I don’t know, I guess, I guess I had a little bit of empathy for them, I suppose, a little bit.

Todd: No, I totally understand what you’re saying. And that’s kind of nice, actually. It cuts, again, and you know, we’ve just seen so many films like this, that this, it’s kind of nice to watch a movie where it doesn’t cut so hard you know it’s not so brutal it’s not so nasty right and you’re right the characters of these people is what saved the movie and The other thing that this film does that a lot of movies, and I mean, I would call this an exploitation film. It was made to shock, obviously, but 1 thing that this   exploitation film does that a lot of them don’t even bother to do is it really takes its time in the beginning to set the characters of these girls. Yes. And I was totally shocked by that. I mean, like half an hour of the movie and it’s not the most interesting stuff I’ve seen but it’s certainly more interesting than a lot of stuff I’ve seen does that

Craig: make sense?

Todd: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: Like, oh yeah. It wasn’t

Todd: boring. No, it wasn’t boring. Like these 3 girls, well, first you get a scene that just sets up, I mean, it’s almost obligatory. You gotta show some scene that shows you how dangerous everybody is and what’s going on. There’s a quick scene where there’s a woman who attends this An old woman and the mother

Craig: against self-help. Yeah. Yeah the mother

Todd: in this is played by Beatrice Ponce Now she looks super familiar to me anyway, because she has this, I don’t know, just this aspect to her that’s kind of hard to miss. You know, she looks a lot like Dota Denny, who was in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Mm-hmm. The mother, you know what I’m talking about? Absolutely no relation, but she still has that same look. But she was in Car 54, Where Are You? The like 1960s TV series, and not like I was alive then, but I used to watch a lot of Nick and   Night when I was a kid, and I watched a lot of that, and I remembered her from that totally. So it was weird for me to read in the trivia that she was so excited to play this role that she did it under an assumed name so she wouldn’t get in trouble from the Screen Actors Guild. Like who reads a script like this? You know? And it’s like oh my god I need to play the sadistic mother who cheers on her sons while they’re, you know, raping and killing people and this is clearly just gonna play   in drive.

Clip: Darling, you have made your mother very proud.

Todd: She lends an interesting element to this as well. And again, as satire it really works. She attends a self-help seminar and these 2 total hippie people come home with her. And it’s a really interesting dynamic in that first scene where they’re really playing with you. At first she just volunteers to give them a ride because the girl mentions that they don’t have their car or something like that. And then you get the sense as the car is going along that they want to kill her.

Craig: Yeah, it’s a total bait and switch. Yeah, it’s a bait

Todd: and switch thing. And he’s got like a rope in the back and then the car breaks down and she gets out of the car and goes to the hood and lifts it up. In the meantime, the girl moves to the driver’s seat and it looks like she’s going to step on the gas and I guess restart it somehow and run over the mother but actually she’s just turning on the music. It really plays with you in an interesting way. It was a bit suspenseful even though I kind of figured I knew what was gonna happen. It   was suspenseful. It was clever and it was actually well done. And at the end of it, You know, obviously the mother is psycho.

Craig: The sons show up and they decapitate the guy. They almost rape the girl, but they don’t. But then the mother strangles the girl. And it sets it up in this early scene that this messed up family works together. I thought it was great. I thought that it was a great way to kind of establish what was going on. And then it cuts to this kind of weird montage thing where like we see a slideshow and we hear these 3 girls talking like they’re reminiscing about their college days.

Clip: Oh God, look at your face, Jack! My God, the rubber spider, that 1 was so great. Look at her,

Todd: she’s sleeping

Clip: with her mouth open.

Todd: I had an

Clip: exam the next morning at 9, you know. Oh boy, what a strange spider! I’m not surprised how immature you 2 can

Craig: be. They’re best friends, and their thing is they play tricks on each other and they play pranks on other people But their best friends they’re the rat pack and they’re gonna be the rat pack forever And it’s really quick.

Todd: What’s the opening credits basically?

Craig: Yeah with this photo montage and then it cuts to 10 years later and we catch up with all the girls. Another thing that I liked about this movie was that they gave each of these what ultimately become the victims, they gave all of them really distinct personalities. Trina is the blonde 1, and she ends up being like a rich Beverly Hills socialite. Jackie lives in Chicago, but she’s got like this actor loser boyfriend who steals money from her and stuff and then Abby is kind of the meekest of them all. Abby you know What we see   in her life is that she has to care for her ailing mother, who we only hear. And if I remember correctly, did I read that Charles Kaufman was the voice of the mother?

Todd: Oh, I didn’t catch that.

Craig: I think so. But the mom’s like,

Clip: It’s about time you got home slut. You’re out whoring around with it. All I have to say is I feel the same. Don’t tell me where you’ve been.

Todd: Like, you’re out whoring around.

Craig: That bit was hilarious. But they all have these really distinctive personalities and the premise is that they were great friends in college and they promised each other that they would stay great friends and they would keep getting together. They get together every year and every year it’s a surprise and each 1 of them, like they rotate, so each 1 of them takes a turn planning the trip or whatever. This year is Jackie’s turn and she takes them out into the woods for a camping trip. As I was watching it, I couldn’t wait to talk to you   about the gas station scene.

Clip: Because we have talked so many times about these gas station scenes

Craig: where they stop at a gas station and some creepy gas station attendant tells them, don’t go out there. You’re going to get what you deserve, you liberal Lesbos.

Todd: Les… Les beans, I think is what he calls them. That was hilarious. And I felt like they were directly parodying the gas station scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre here.

Craig: I don’t know where it started, but these gas station scenes, we’ve talked about them a million times.

Todd: Hilarious. It’s hilarious because then the girls come in, like, like, of course, it’s the creepy gas station tent who’s warning them not to go to Deep Barrens, which is where they’re heading. And, you know, she’s shopping. She doesn’t even care. She could care less, like, okay, whatever. She’s picking up an apple and she’s picking up a bunch of beer and whatnot and then the other girls come stumbling in with bags over their heads like they’re all half drunk and they just start knocking over all of the crap in the store and they hustle on out and   then you know like you said he chases after them.

Clip: You get what you deserve and empty burns and lesbians? You won’t be causing no 1 no trouble no more.

Todd: You know it starts out as that kind of scene and it devolves into this total joke. You know? Yeah.

Craig: Which is cool. They get to their destination and they’re just camping. They don’t even have a tent or anything. They’re just sleeping out in sleeping bags. In their underwear? Yeah. And they’re playing gags on 1 another. They’re all sitting around getting stoned and all of a sudden Jackie disappears and she comes back and it looks like she has a knife in her back but really it’s just tucked under her arm. And so like this is, that’s their shtick. Like they, that’s what they do. They goof on 1 another.

Todd: Well, there’s even a flashback to a scene in college when the 1 with the terrible boyfriend comes in and he wants to do her in the middle of the baseball field and she takes off and then they flip on all the lights and come across the intercom and whatnot. I think it was funny that while they were going out to the camping site, they were leaving a literal trail of beer cans behind them. Yeah. Like, evenly spaced, upright. It’s so silly.

Craig: That scene with, okay, so it was Jackie who was dating this douche of a guy and they humiliate him. Now I thought, you know, he gets naked and they turn on all the lights and he runs off. I mean, it’s really just the 3 of them there. It’s not like they publicly exposed him or whatever, but they humiliate him. And I thought that that was going to be important. And I guess that it is Because when it comes back from the flashback scene, they say something like, oh Jackie, you’re so unlucky in love, or like men   always crap on you, or something like that. It led me to believe that Jackie was going to be the final girl.

Todd: Me too.

Craig: Especially since Trina is really kind of vapid. And Trina says in these early things, oh my gosh, Why are we still doing this? Aren’t we getting a little old? I don’t even know if I’m gonna come next year and and They’re like, oh no, God, we have to do this Abby is kind of set up as the 1 like she’s needy like she’s the 1 who has this Mother this demanding mother at home And she just keeps saying how important this is to her. And at 1 point she just thanks them like, thank you. Thank you   so much for always being here for me. And I, you know, I need you, yada yada. But I was convinced. First of all, I thought Trina was going to go first and I thought that Jackie was going to be the final girl and the movie subverted all of that because you know after they’ve had you know their fun lady time, all the while we know that they’re being watched by the brothers. We get some POV shots, we get some things where we see the weeds rustling or whatever. Obviously somebody’s watching them. And eventually the brothers attack   and they tie them all up in their sleeping bags and drag them home to mom. And that’s where the nastiness begins. I don’t know, I’ll let you talk about that.

Todd: Well, I mean they drag them home and they live in this house and it’s this is where the movie starts to feel a little cheap. It’s not like like a movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the house where these people live is this horrible dungeon and it’s got all these bones and all, it’s just really, really sick. It’s like somebody came into this house and just started spray painting stuff everywhere and just threw a bunch of garbage in. It’s like they live in filth and they kind of live in squalor. But they have a weightlifting room.   They have a gym on the second floor. And so they take these girls and they tie, I think it’s Trina gets tied to the machine where you pull your arms together and then Abby gets tied to I don’t know something and then Jackie eventually gets taken away. Mom’s cackling and Mom is encouraging them and they’re grabbing them and they’re messing with them and they take Jackie down outside. It’s funny, actually what I kind of liked about this was that it really kept it up in the air as to what was going to be going on. It   really did unexpected things and that was what was good about the scene anyway. But they sit the mother in a rocking chair on the lawn and they pull her out and they’re like, oh, let’s do the park bench scene.

Craig: Yeah, it’s a role playing thing. Yeah. Which is very different than the other kinds of movies that I’ve seen. The mother has trained them specifically to do these things for her entertainment. Right. And that’s how it plays out. Like it’s gross, but it’s very different than just, oh I found you and now I’m going to beat you up and rape you. Yeah, yeah. It’s weird. It sets itself apart from those other Movies and it’s so weird and in a way it’s so I mean

Todd: comical That it takes a lot of the edge off of it. I think because it’s hard to take the movie seriously. Yeah. You know what I mean? When you’re watching it, like I said earlier, I feel like I’m watching a movie and actors doing something. And so when, you know, this scene where they’ve got her propped up and they’re like, all right, now you’re on a park bench and you’re reading this thing and they shove this thing in front of her and they come around and they they you know leap over and like they’re gonna kill   her but then at the end of the day they lay her down and and it’s like he’s gonna get on top of her and then they switch to a new scene by the end of the whole thing I think she ends up getting raped by 1 of the guys. But even that is done, you see it from the second story window of the house, which is

Craig: a bit of a distance. Where the other girls, at least Trina, can see.

Todd: Yeah, so they’re looking down on it and it sounds really sinister and it is. I mean they’re looking down on what could be their fate and they see their friend, you know, this happened to their friend. But it’s not nearly as gratuitous as it could have been. And I was really surprised by that. That’s kind of how the whole movie is really. And that’s really about it for the rape, right?

Craig: Yeah, yeah. And There’s no minimizing the horror of sexual assault. I mean, that’s, it’s disgusting. But you know, you see something- But we’re comparing.

Todd: Right, right,

Craig: right, right. That’s what I’m saying. You see something like the original Last house on the left. I mean, I was just physically ill watching that movie. Like it was just, even thinking back on it just almost makes me sick. It was so violent and so, It was just awful. It was just awful. And this is awful too. Sexual assault is awful in any form, but there’s less focus on it and the perspective, even the way that it was shot is different. I mean, yes, you see the male actors naked, but as he’s laying on top of   her between her legs, you know, there’s there’s no question what’s happening. But It’s not as gratuitous as some of those other exploitation films, which thank God, because that’s what I was expecting. And it wasn’t as stomach churning here. I mean, it’s still upsetting. You still know what’s happening, but there’s not so much focus on it. So thank you Mother’s Day, because I really didn’t have the stomach for it.

Todd: Yeah, you could tell we were both a little, you know, we were both gearing up for the worst for this film. We don’t really enjoy watching this stuff. And, you know, we review these movies because they’re movies and they’re horror films. And this 1 was mother’s day theme, but we knew what we were getting into, but we were not expecting to, have a comfortable viewing. And this was, this at least subverted our expectations in that way too. So that’s comforting, that’s comforting. You wouldn’t have to cut out much at all for this to be pretty tame,   actually.

Craig: No, You could cut out those 3 to 5 seconds and it would still be suggested, but you wouldn’t have to see it. This happens over the course of several days. And they all go to bed and then the next day when they get up the 2 boys come down for breakfast and it’s comical you know like they’ve got all this silly breakfast food on the table and like 1 of the boys like walks over the table to get to his seat and like steps on a big old platter of donuts and like not only do they   have breakfast food on the table but there’s cat food on the table like do they eat cat food like where are the cats

Todd: Oh,

Clip: I’m feeling so good this morning, I don’t want you to be coming down.

Todd: Uh-uh. Which

Craig: is, you know, gross and uncomfortable, but nonetheless. And so then they just kind of go about their day. And then there’s an exercise montage.

Todd: Yes. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. That exercise slash training montage, right?

Craig: I read. I wouldn’t even have recognized it. I read that they were trying to emulate the Rocky theme during this, but they were doing it in so much as they could and still not get sued for copyright. So if you know that going in and you listen you’re like oh yeah it’s kind of like the Rocky music. But the funny thing that I thought about that scene was like, they can’t possibly do this routine every day because they’re like destroying the house. Like they’re like busting out windows.

Todd: It’s a riot. And it’s also a little boring too. I mean, it’s not, again, I’m not, we seem to be heaping a bit of praise on this movie. It’s still not fantastic filmmaking. No. It’s just a cut, several cuts above you know what we normally see in these kind of films. But you know it’s these antics and it kind of mirrors in a way it’s it’s it’s almost a parallel of what the girls, what we got from the first half of the movie, where the girls are doing all these antics and things with each other. And   I think that’s what humanizes these guys a little bit is because we just sat through about 30 minutes of these 3 girls’ nice relationship where they goofed on each other and they played these pranks and they did this stuff and now we’ve got the brothers almost doing the same thing right and and so yeah it like you said they’re not total monsters but also it really cuts the edge off because it’s hard to take the movie seriously at this point right it’s really devolving into satire but then there’s just this odd bit which is just poor   Filmmaking honestly the 2 girls. I guess they go upstairs and they play around with the little 2 girls Oh, I think Trina is trying to escape by rubbing her rope against a nail on the wall But they get up there first and you think oh god, you know in any other movie like they get punished for this like, okay She’s the next to go but they just sort of like take her ropes off and take the ropes off the other girl and then just Leave and continue to do their stuff. Yes, And these girls are totally   unbound now. And I’m thinking, why are they even still upstairs? So what they do is, like 1 of the girls puts, oh, I think it’s Trina goes into a Sleeping bag. And this

Craig: is 1 of the things that they showed in their earlier montage. They’d done this before. Like somebody had to sneak out of their house or something. Oh yeah, I missed that. So they lowered her out in a sleeping bag. And they do this here. I actually, I don’t know, I feel like you were getting ready to disparage this scene. I actually thought that it was really tense. Like the boys are really like they’re play fighting. It’s like they’re little boys, you know, and in many ways they are because they’ve been coddled by their mother. They’ve been   totally secluded from the rest of the world. And so they fight like kids fight. And they, you know, they’re kinda fighting 1 another, whatever. Meanwhile, they put Trina in a sleeping bag and Abby is lowering her down. And maybe this is what you were getting at. It doesn’t make any sense. They tie her up with this like thin cord and supposedly Abby is single-handedly able to lower her down. Well now that is impossible. But the way that things go down is Abby starts to lower her down and then 1 of the boys trying to evade the   other 1 comes and stands right underneath where the sleeping bag is going down so Abby has to stop. Now the reason that I kind of interrupted you is because I thought this was 1 of the coolest parts of the movie. They do this what I thought was a great special effects shot where they show that the cord is almost literally cutting Abby’s hand off. Like it slices all through her skin, all the way around her hand. And I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that it looked real but it looked real   enough to make me yes like oh my god

Todd: that’s horrible I am absolutely not disparaging the scene I’m disparaging the result of this scene. So anyway, the guy goes away and they lower her down. To what end? She gets out of her sleeping bag, she walks back into the house and back up the stairs to the room.

Craig: I know, I thought the same thing And the only way that I could justify it in my mind was that the door must have been locked from the outside. OK, maybe. So she had to go up and open it from the outside to get Abby out, which she does. And then Abby’s hands are all messed up, so I feel like they kind of try to really quick wrap them up or whatever. And then they go looking for Jackie.

Todd: And it’s way too easy. You know, this is the thing. There’s no suspense here. There should be and maybe they think there is, but these guys are just out playing around, goofing off in the yard. They are freely able to roam around this house, make a ton of noise. Nothing really happens to them. And so it’s really hard to take the movie seriously at this point, but they wander into 1 of the guy’s rooms, I guess, and they open up 1 of the doors in their closets and there’s the body of the woman who we had   seen in the very first scene of the movie and then there’s the head of the guy. And then, I thought this was clever too, there’s a hand that comes out of a chest of drawers. And that’s where Jackie has been stuffed. And she’s barely alive at this point. And that’s pretty heart wrenching. But again, they’re able to pick her up, they’re able to take her all the way down these stairs and out.

Craig: Well, I don’t think they, they don’t get all the way out. They get almost all the way out and then the brothers attack them, but then the mother… Screams. Distracts them, which this was the weirdest part of the movie for me the mother screams and so even though they’re trying to apprehend these girls the mother screams and they both go running to her and She goes off on this thing about oh my god. I saw her it was Queenie. She was in the forest Yeah, and so then we get introduced to this idea of Queenie, which   just comes up and then goes away for a while, and then she talks more about it later. So because the boys have been distracted, the girls get away. They run into the forest, but Jackie is done. Like she’s out of it. She’s unconscious. They’re just dragging her along basically. And there comes a point where they realize they can’t do that anymore and so they lay Jackie down and they like cover her and leaves and Abby says I’ll stay with her, Trina will get help And so Trina goes off and she finds the car that they came   in but the boys have already sabotaged it and so then she runs around and she sees a cop car coming and So she waves it down, but it ends up being 1 of the guys the tall good-looking minus the bad eye and bad teeth 1. And I didn’t even understand that. Like, is he really like the town cop, or do they just have a cop car? I think

Todd: that’s what it’s supposed to be, is that he’s really the… Because why else would he have been out? I mean, none of it makes any sense.

Craig: He’s in uniform, he’s got the cop car. Yeah. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. I mean, all of this, it’s probably like 20 minutes at least where they’re just running around the forest and he’s chasing her And she tricks him and she gets away Meanwhile Jackie dies. She just dies And Abby’s all upset and Trina having escaped the bad guy finds them and then That’s the point where it becomes a revenge Yeah, and and and it’s Abby who has been the meek and mild 1 all along who all of a sudden is now the badass like, we’re   gonna get them for this.

Todd: Well it’s cause she lost her glasses, you know.

Craig: Right. Yeah, right. And so they braid their hair and put on like, bandana headbands.

Todd: Of course.

Craig: And they go back for their revenge.

Todd: They drag Jackie’s body back to the house and prop her up against a tree because they’re like, she needs to see this.

Craig: And I’m racing through this for time, but some of it is really kind of poignant. Like, they, you know, they sit Jackie up.

Clip: Jackie, every way you turned in life, you got shit. Well, now we’ll do the fighting back for you.

Craig: And it’s gross, you know, like, that they’re setting up this wide-eyed corpse to watch this, but honestly, I was feeling like, you know what, that’s right. Let her see you kick their asses. I want her to see that. And then that’s basically what it becomes. And it really is pretty freaking easy for them. They go in and they kind of ambush the boys 1 at a time. How did they kill the first 1? I don’t remember. The younger 1, the shorter 1.

Todd: He got like a hammer to the groin or something and some spiky thing stuck through his eye or something. It was

Craig: really quick. An antenna. An antenna from the car.

Todd: An antenna

Craig: through his throat. And then they shoved a bunch of cloth down his throat and suffocated him. And it happens really fast and as soon as they get in there. And then the other 1, the taller, good-looking 1, they’re trying to drag the other one’s body out, which I don’t really even understand why, but the taller, better-looking 1 like dives through the window and pounces on them, you know, kind of has the advantage over them for a while, but eventually 1 of them pours Geraino down his throat and then they run back in the house and then   the other 1 like smashes a TV on top of his head and his whole head goes through the TV and he’s getting electrocuted.

Todd: And it doesn’t even look real. It’s so silly.

Craig: No. It’s clearly an emptied out television set. Like there’s no mechanism inside of it.

Todd: And the Drano thing even is, this is a classic trauma thing. It’s so classic that they put it in every movie just as a reference but 1 of the earliest quote-unquote special effects that Lloyd Kaufman found out was you could very easily fake foaming at the mouth by putting like Alka-Seltz or something in your mouth and then sipping a bunch of it. And so like they do that in almost every movie and I feel like this has got to be 1 of the first moments, you know, from 1 of the original moments where, you know, they   took some special effect like that. Like, they needed to do the Drano because they knew how to do this effect. It’s so silly how it all goes down, but, you know, it does. And you’re right, it’s way too quick.

Craig: And I skipped an important part because while the tall 1 is out like stalking the girls in the night, the other 1 is at home with the mom and she’s like playing board games with them and she’s like, come on, we’re having fun, you have to stay with me. And they have this talk about Queenie and Queenie apparently was the mom’s sister who was a psycho and tried to kill her The mom is wearing a neck brace through this whole thing and she says oh she broke my neck in the crib And the son’s like well   Grandma said she killed her after that. I think you just tell us that Queenie’s still out there to keep us here. And she’s like, no, I don’t. She’s really here. Swear you’ll stay forever. So we, the audience, of course, don’t know if this is really a story or if she’s just using it to keep the boys around or whatever.

Todd: Yeah, but it does have that effect. And again, this is another 1 of those scenes where I felt like the movie was a little better than it deserved to be because you see a little glimmer in his eye You see this sort of doubt, right? Yeah son of This realization in a way that his mother is manipulating him and has been all these years, right? But they’re not strong enough, you know, or whatever. It’s his mom. It’s his mom. And so, you know.

Craig: Well, and that’s kind of where the empathy comes in. Like, you feel bad for these boys. You know, who knows what they could have been had they not been in this scenario, but this psycho woman has kept them in the woods and trained them to be what they are. And so they’re kind of empathetic in a way.

Todd: Really, it’s true. So anyway, how do they do the mom-off? I forgot.

Craig: Oh, it’s hilarious. I can’t believe you would forget. Okay, so once both the boys are dead and Trina has a scuffle with Ike, he ends up dead. And then the mom is kind of sneaking around trying to get them, but they trick her. Abby tricks her with the same knife gag that Jackie had pulled earlier, but they get the better of her. And Abby grabs an inflatable plastic pillow in the shape of breasts and she shoves 1 of the breasts in her face and she starts talking to her as though it is her own mother. I   actually thought this was really funny. Yeah. Let me go!

Clip: Don’t worry. Your daughter will take care of you. Oh! 0! You stay in bed, and you’ll get your clothes, and make your food and take care of everything. You stay in bed. Why? Because you’re a sick woman! I’ll take care of you. And you’ll never have to worry about anything ever again!

Craig: It’s so funny. And so she suffocates her with this plastic booby pillow. Yeah, it’s weird,

Todd: isn’t it? There’s some symbolism there somehow. I’m not going to try to unpack it, but yeah, sure.

Craig: Oh, I think it’s hilarious. I think it’s kind of obvious. This girl obviously, they didn’t make much of it throughout, except for that Abby was the timid 1 who was so grateful to have her time with her friends and that we just briefly saw that her home life was her just constantly being berated by her bedridden mother. And so now she kind of has the opportunity to take out that animosity on this mother.

Todd: Oh no, I get that part. I’m just talking about the clear plastic inflatable boob that gets shoved in the mother’s mouth. Yeah. Let’s unpack the symbolism there. A little taste of what you know.

Craig: The funny part is my grandparents had a pillow like that. You’re kidding me. It wasn’t plastic and inflatable, but it was pink and fuzzy and boobs. And at some point in college I stole it. Why wouldn’t you? Don’t listen, Grandpa. Because they always wondered where it went. It was me.

Todd: I stole it. Oh man, secrets are coming out tonight.

Craig: No, I don’t know whatever happened to it. It’s long gone.

Todd: Right, right, sure.

Craig: Oh gosh, and I forgot to mention this scene when they set up Jackie to watch. They have like this ritual that they do like rat pack forever and it’s kind of sad that they have to do it without her. It was kind of a touching moment for me. But anyway, at the very end, they bury her, which why? Like, get out of there, get the police. They bury her and then they’re like, but we made it. And Trina’s like, we made it because we’re strong and we’ve always been strong and we were destined to make it.   And Abby’s like, yeah, okay. And so then they turned to walk away And then I knew this was going to happen. Queenie, who the mom has been talking about through the whole thing, who is like this disfigured, horrible, backwoods, naked lady, jumps out and attacks them. And I mean, we don’t even, We just see her jump out. It’s like freeze frame. I totally knew it was going to happen. But that being said, I was satisfied that it did. With all of this talk about Queenie, I would have been disappointed if nothing came of it. And I   thought that it was kind of a funny, funny way to end the movie. Like they’re like, oh we totally deserve to make it. And then this crazy weirdo attacks them from behind the bushes. It was kind

Todd: of funny. It leaves up. Yeah, I agree with you. It’s that gotcha ending that a lot of horror movies just sort of have to have. And it works well actually here. It’s a goofy movie. You could edit it about any way and it would have been fine. Yeah. Yeah, I was really shocked actually. I, like you said, I was prepped for a really horrible experience and it turned out to be kind of fun. Yeah. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve seen by far. No. It wasn’t, but it was way more clever and way better thought out   way better written and even better acted Than a lot of stuff that we see in this realm and for that. I was really pleasantly surprised So I’m not gonna go watch it again But I really yeah, I enjoyed the experience more or less and And I could recommend it if this is your bag. It’s not going to be for everybody. But if you like drive-in fare, you like kind of exploitation films, and even the sort of goofy tongue and cheek stuff you probably enjoy watching this movie.

Craig: Oh gosh I couldn’t agree more like I would recommend this over something like Last House on the Left. Oh yeah. Because it’s not gonna make you feel like you need to go take a shower and throw up afterwards. Like those movies do. I didn’t love it either, but I expected to hate it. And I didn’t hate it. I thought it was alright. I I didn’t think it was a Chore to watch I’m not gonna say that I loved it and like you that I would watch it again But you know, it was it was alright

Todd: it kind of makes me wonder about the remake. I mean, I understand it’s a loose remake.

Craig: It is. And I’ve seen the remake. I really don’t remember anything about it, except for that Rebecca DeMornay plays the mother. And I think Rebecca DeMornay is great. And I remember that it takes it much more seriously. It’s darker. I’m sure it does. Yeah, it’s darker. And the mother is far more calculating and wicked. But it’s similar. The storyline is really, you know, it’s not a Backwoods family. I don’t know. I don’t remember enough about it to really say. And I don’t even remember really how I felt about it. But it is, it takes the same   concept, but it’s loose and it’s darker

Todd: maybe in another year or 2 if we’re still doing this we might dig that 1 up we’ll see

Craig: yeah maybe we’ll see there’s only so many Mother’s Day movies

Todd: I’m only aware of 2 yeah Well happy Mother’s Day to our moms out there and to your moms as well. And any mom out there, happy Mother’s Day.

Craig: And pet moms and non-moms and we appreciate you all.

Todd: Well thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. If you have any requests for us, you can find us on Facebook. Just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw, or you can go to our website, 2guys.red40net.com. Leave us a comment there, give us your request, and let us know what you thought of this film, as well as any other films you want us to cover. Until next time, I’m Todd – and I’m Craig – with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

Special thanks to Phantom Dark Dave for this timely request, around the same time that it has been announced that a potential remake is in the works. Maybe this time it will happen. Regardless, Todd was anxious to subject Craig to another Troma film – one that goes to the heart of the studio, first introducing its most infamous icon.

Episode 169, 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 is kind of a dual purpose that we’re doing the Toxic Avenger today from 1984. First of all, this is a request that’s been in our queue for a little while, ever since we did Poultry Geist from Troma, the infamous Troma Movie Studios. 1 of our regular listeners, Phantom Dark Dave, who has a podcast called Dave’s Pop Culture Podcast, which you should check out. He requested this, and it so happens that just recently it was announced there is a remake in the works. A reboot, if you will, with the original creators involved, Lloyd Kaufman and Michael   Hertz, being producers, and then a guy named Macon Blair who’s going to be writer and director. I don’t really know anything about this guy. He’s done a number of movies though. We did a horror film called Green Room not too long ago. Had you heard about that 1? Nope. Nope. Yeah, me neither. But anyway he’s going to be writer and director and this film is apparently in pre-production. Ah, for years, for decades really, there has been talk of rebooting or remaking this film. There have been several sequels. None of them have been terribly successful. There was   a TV series. It was a cartoon of all things, a crazy cartoon geared towards kids called The Toxic Crusaders that you might remember from the early 90s. And that only went on for about a season. I don’t think it really caught on, but it was sort of an environmentally aware cartoon about kind of like Captain Planet they were trying to mimic, I think, making Toxy this family child friendly kind of superhero who had a bunch of kids around him and they were running around kind of saving the planet more or less from the evil, I don’t   know, it’s like environmental smog monsters or something like that. I never watched it, did you?

Craig: I don’t remember ever watching it, but I do, I mean I can see it in my head. I remember the cartoon version.

Todd: I remember the theme song.

Craig: Oh good.

Todd: Toxic Crusaders, Toxic Crusaders, they’re gross but they still get girls.

Craig: Oh god, I love it when you sing.

Todd: I know you do, that’s why.

Craig: We gotta do, we have to do a musical episode someday

Todd: That’ll be a short episode I Know you’re better singer You just don’t do it as often as I do you need to jump no, it’s true Don’t leave me hanging out here. Do it next time.

Craig: No, fun trivia. Todd and I have sung together on stage before.

Todd: We have indeed and they didn’t boo us off, that I recall. It’s true.

Craig: No, I think we were pretty good.

Todd: I hold fond memories of that of that show But anyway, we’re here not to talk about us but to talk about the toxic Avenger through us and I want to hear about you Craig, what do you know about the Toxic Avenger?

Craig: Oh man, you know, not a lot. I mean, I’ve always, I guess, kind of been aware of it. I’ve seen the box art on the shelves back in the day, and I kind of knew what it was, but I never really… To be frank, there is an audience for trauma movies, and I’m not it. They’re just not my thing. And I’m really a little perplexed. I would really like to talk to somebody who is a big Troma fan and ask them what the big appeal is, because I kind of just don’t get it. I feel like   they’re doing something specific and with a specific purpose in mind, but I just don’t know that I get what the point is of intentionally making these bad movies.

Todd: I love the underlying assumption behind what you said and that is that you’re not talking to a trauma fan now.

Craig: Well no, I mean I know you are and and we’ve, you know, we’ve talked about it and and I kind of get it, I guess. I don’t know. Well, I

Todd: don’t know. This is this is a very, very specific like subgenre of film. It is It is so specific that there’s nobody else making movies like this. Nobody else makes movies like Troma does. And I think part of that is their appeal, is that they’re so different and so unique and so original in their intentional campiness, their mix of extreme humor with extreme violence, with extreme sex, but all of it is done in a way that is, I don’t know, anywhere from competent to passable. And sometimes there are moments of brilliance but people are so obsessed   with the studio and and not quite to the same extent that Roger Corman’s studio has really blossomed and given a start to a lot of really big directors and actors and writers and things that we have now. We talked about that before. Troma has a few. Maybe the most visible 1 right now is James Gunn. James Gunn, who’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Slither.

Craig: He’s huge now. He’s huge. Yeah, oh yeah.

Todd: He got his start with Troma, you know? He wrote Tromeo and Juliet.

Craig: Oh god, I didn’t know that.

Todd: Yeah, wrote Tromeo and Juliet. Oh, his brother’s in it. He has a big part in it. You know, his brother who he puts in a lot of his movies. He wrote several things for the studio. In fact, Lloyd Kaufman’s sort of autobiography slash the best thing we have from him as far as a book, as far as the starting of the studio, all I needed to know I learned from The Toxic Avenger was co-written by James Gunn. I mean, he probably did most of the writing, to be honest. You know, it’s like 1 of those deals.

Craig: Yeah, I mean, James Gunn’s 1 of the biggest guys in Hollywood right now. Oh yeah. So that’s kind of a big

Todd: deal. It is a big deal. So there are a few people like that. Even 1 of the actors in this movie, I mean, he’s not a big name, but you know, he’s gone on and been a very steady working actor in television. So there are a few stories like that, not a lot. But the 1 thing is certain is that this trauma has carved out such a little niche for itself that it somehow is always successful, and I don’t mean wildly successful, but I mean they don’t go bankrupt. Let’s put it that way. They’ve come close,   but they have such a core following that most of their movies are made so cheaply that all the money goes into the distribution and the marketing and, you know, whatever money has to go into. And almost everybody who works on these movies does it for free. And That even goes back to this film. Almost everybody who works on these movies does it for free just because they like trauma so much, they believe in what they do, they wanna say they were involved. And usually they end up doing it over such horrendous conditions. Yeah. Because they’re so   cheap. They’re getting cheese sandwiches on set and

Craig: you know They

Todd: put in big rooms and things like that But they do it they’ll travel from across the world to do it because people are so obsessed with it and and all of this Yet It’s almost like Hollywood doesn’t even know that trauma exists. Like most people don’t, you know? If you’re not into these movies, it’s not even a blip on your radar. How weird is that? Maybe a little bit more now in the internet age when people, you know, you can go down rabbit holes and you can find weird and wacky stuff you weren’t aware of. Maybe   more people are aware of Troma, but for the most of its history, you had to really either seek it out or stumble upon it or find somebody else who was a really big fan to even know what this movie was. And then chances are, I don’t know, 80, 20, 90, 10 that you’re not gonna like

Craig: it. Yeah.

Todd: You know?

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, this movie, I started watching it and the first half maybe or I don’t know, maybe the first half hour is so goofy and like the acting is so hammy like just like ridiculously over-the-top hammy

Clip: look at that fucking guy come up boy Can’t even mop right.

Todd: He’s so stupid. He’s always got that shit-eating grin on

Clip: his face.

Todd: What’s he so happy about?

Clip: I hate that mop boy.

Todd: I think that creep’s coming over here.

Clip: Julie, you, smell something? Ew. Pee-ew.

Todd: What’s that stink? Gee, that’s funny. I don’t smell nothing.

Craig: And it’s clearly a choice, you know? It’s not like it’s just incompetence. It’s not. Like they’ve clearly made the choice to go this far over the top. The main character, Melvin, the guy that plays him in the beginning is just so, so, so ridiculous and hammy over the top. He’s supposed to be this big nerd or whatever. Again, you know, Troma is not afraid of throwing around the derogatory R word to describe its characters and that’s, you know, he’s playing, you know, kind of junior high, the way that people make fun of people with mental handicaps,   like that’s kind of what’s going on. And it was, I don’t know. It’s not even, I wasn’t offended. I’m not easily offended. I wasn’t offended. I understand what’s going on here. They’re not trying to be politically correct. That’s fine. I don’t have any problem with that. But Craig, did you really read

Todd: him as kind of mentally handicapped? I just read him as like super over the top stereotypical like nerd, loser kind of thing. Like straight out of like Mad Magazine, you know what I mean? I never read him as like he actually was like had a problem.

Craig: Well, I wouldn’t say that I did either, except for that other characters call him retarded. And that’s an ugly word that we used to throw around all the time.

Todd: Yeah, for just any.

Craig: I did. Yeah, I did. It was a different time. It’s not like I’m gonna look back and feel terrible about it now. It was just a different time and we’re Luckily, you know a little bit more sensitive to things like that now, but So I don’t know I mean just it was so over the top and I I wish that I could say I found his character endearing, but really he was just kind of annoying. So that first half hour I was kind of rolling my eyes like oh gosh you know so so goofy. Once he   actually turns into the Toxic Avenger I started to enjoy it more. I wouldn’t say that I liked it, but I appreciated it more. And I kind of, you know, there are… It’s so silly to even delve this deep into a movie like this, but you know, I felt like it kind of had something to say about environmentalism and also accepting people for their positive qualities as opposed to just what they look like on the surface. There are little bits and pieces of it that I can appreciate. The Toxic Avenger became a sympathetic character. I liked him.   I liked when he met a blind girl who could appreciate him for who he was and love him for who he was. Even though he’s this quote unquote monster hero, he was taking out the bad guys and I liked that the bad guys were getting their come-up and so there were things to appreciate about it. You know overall was it my cup of tea? Definitely not but it’s not that I couldn’t at least see some heart in it and see that, you know, there are things to appreciate about it. Well, you

Todd: know, I think some of this that you’re talking about really might also get to the heart of why Troma has a certain appeal. All of the 1 thing Troma is is consistent and Troma when we say Troma it’s the movie studio. It’s basically 2 guys. Michael Hertz is more or less behind the scene. He’s taken the director’s chair sometimes with Lloyd Kaufman. Lloyd Kaufman is the front and center guy. He’s like, you know, the Steve Jobs of Tromba. He’s always out there relentlessly promoting his films. He is the by far the face of the movie and   he’s a pretty goofy dude. But if you look into their history, it’s kind of interesting. He graduated like the 60s from Yale with a degree. He was going to be a social worker, basically, and I think his degree was in Chinese studies because he thought maybe China had something at that time, you know, that was worth looking into because they were you know going through a massive upheaval and stuff and he was just very Socially concerned about the world and what’s going on? He even before he dove into the workforce He went I think and joined   the Peace Corps for a while and taught in Chad like, you know a place with no electricity No, nothing or whatever and really got exposed to this sad, sad, you know, side of the world. And he even said at 1 point, even with China and Chinese studies, that was 1 of his biggest disappointments, that what China did ultimately at that time anyway, you know, the Cultural Revolution, everything like that, turned out to be horrible for their people. And it wasn’t this grand, you know, uprising of the lower class that it was supposed to be. And again,   it just became the elites are running everything and everybody else is kind of beaten down. And I think that really shaped his worldview. And if you look at Troma’s films, now they started out doing sex comedies. Lloyd Kaufman himself, such an interesting character, and if you’re all interested in him, you should read his book. I have his book. I have a couple of his books. I’m really just fascinated by the studio and by him but the only reason he got into film after he was a little jaded on this is he had some friends who were   major Hollywood producers and he did some work on some major productions Rocky was edited on trauma’s stuff He did location scouting for Saturday Night Fever was a big reason why they chose the big disco that they that they did it in. And he did some work with Oliver Stone, wrote and produced a couple a movie or 2 with him. And then he started doing these sex comedies because that would pay the bills and they got this sort of surprise hit with a movie called squeeze play which is revolving around baseball and It’s even said that Bob   Clark or at least Lloyd Kaufman says that Bob Clark who we love who did porkies actually visited them and took notes and talked with them a lot while they were doing squeeze play to figure out what they were doing so he could try to mimic it for Porky’s because what they were doing was really working. But you know they just didn’t really get a lot of success and Lloyd Kaufman basically read some article maybe in the New York Times or someplace that said that horror is dead as a genre. So he was like, okay, we’ll do   a horror film. His idea was that they would do this horror film and they would call it health club, health club horror, I think, or health club massacre or something like that. And that was this film. That was the script. So this movie wasn’t really originally intended to be a sort of superhero movie. I imagine that when they got it all together and they looked at it, they thought it is kind of a superhero film and so they call it the Toxic Avenger. But this was meant first and foremost to be a horror movie and you   know when the first screen comes up it says which is a great thing for anybody who’s trying to market a film, warning this film contains scenes of extreme violence. Which is smart, I’m sure it played really well at the driving crowds and things like that. It really made this film notorious at the time. And now we’ve kind of seen it all. But at that time, to see the level of extreme violence in this film, especially played against the utter campiness and sort of silliness, almost a Mel Brooks, like a lowbrow Mel Brooks kind of way. Oh   yeah, definitely. It’s an odd mix, it’s a really jarring mix. And again, especially back in the 80s when this movie came out It was like unlike anything. I think anybody had ever seen really

Craig: well It’s fun. You know I had never even drawn that connection, but it is kind of Mel Brooks like you know It’s it’s over-the-top ridiculous humor and silly silly situations and silly silly jokes. And very stereotypically drawn characters who are kind

Clip: of

Todd: on the note but played up to the hilt, right?

Craig: Yes, yes. And I think that Mel Brooks does it better, but I can definitely see whether it’s an influence or if it’s just a parallel, I don’t know, but I can definitely see that. And there is some charm in some of this, But you know, I saw that thing about the extreme violence and then you say we’ve kind of seen it all and it’s true. I mean there there are a lot of like gruesome effects, which I’m sure we’ll talk about and and they’re they’re played well and and you know for horror fans, it’s fun. But   1 of the things that I kind of, I don’t know, I hesitate to say respect, but I will say it, that I respect about this studio is that they are willing to push boundaries that other studios won’t push. They’re not afraid to point shotguns at babies and they’re not afraid to blow away a seeing-eye dog and run over a kid’s head. And you know, like these things that just, in a big studio movie would be oh no no that’s that’s too much we can’t do that you know these these guys aren’t afraid to go there. Quite   nonchalantly. Yeah you know. Kudos.

Todd: Yeah it’s just another scene in this movie really. It’s not played up. It’s not, you know, it’s just we move on from it. And yeah, you’re right. When I first saw this movie, this is my recollection. Sometimes I question my recollections, But I remember seeing the covers in the video stores and really wanting to see this movie. And my recollection anyway is that my dad was like, all right, we’ll go see it. Now I’m not sure if it was rated at the time or if it was R. I have a really hard time my dad, knowing   my dad being the kind of guy he was, to remember that he would just rent a movie that could be potentially like this without watching it first. But my recollection anyway was that we sat down and we watched it together and I know I was young at the time when I saw it. It was probably late 80s. I wasn’t even maybe even in middle school yet And I remember being pretty shocked by 1 scene in particular, which it turns out, turned out to be 1 of the most notorious scenes in this movie. And that is that,   you know, a couple of the main characters in this film, that 1 of the things that they do is they like to run around and hit people with their cars.

Craig: Yeah, it’s horrible. It’s so sick. Like death race, you know? Like they have a scoring system.

Clip: Yeah. Julie, Julie, the points, the rules, what   are they?

Todd: OK, let me see if I can remember the whole list. Now

Clip: Jews, Womps,

Todd: Niggers, and Chinks. They’re all worth 25 points. But Puerto Ricans? They’re worth 30 points. Now kids under 12? They’re worth double points. And I mean, as a kid, I thought this was absolutely horrible. And then the scene where they drive through and they hit this kid on a bike and he gets bloodied in the road but they see he’s not dead yet so they roll back over him and crush his head and the head crushing is a pretty gruesome bit. It is. Even though it was done very cheaply they just injected a melon with a bunch   of you know red colored K-Rose syrup and stuff and put a wig on it, just the way it’s presented is absolutely convincing. And it’s disturbing. And I think that that casts like a pall a bit over the film, you know, especially for me at that time. Whoa, I’ve never seen this in a movie before. These people are totally horrible people and I can’t believe I just saw that. There’s something to be said for that. It’s an exploitation film, right? But it’s still, there’s something about that that works. Does that make sense?

Craig: Yeah, it does. And there are shocking scenes. And frankly, just out of context, like if you were to see these things completely out of context, it’s primarily, well, no, not primarily, it’s entirely practical effects and for as low budget as these movies are, they really put care into these effects and they look pretty darn convincing. They really are. There’s 1 scene, well, okay, the whole movie is about this nerdy kid who works at a health club and he’s super, super, super, super, super, super nerdy and there are these like, Super, super, super, super jocky guys. Right,   total douchebags, and they’re douchebag girlfriends who are hot, but awful, and they play a prank on him, and he ends up, because Tromaville is the toxic waste dumping capital of the world, they play this prank on him where they’re super, they humiliate him, you know, they get him to dress up in this unitard with a tutu, and they humiliate him in front of everybody and they chase him through this health club and he ends up jumping out a window and falling into this toxic waste. That’s all you need to know. And then he turns into this   mutated big buff guy and then he’s the toxic Avenger and I think that the suggestion is that something from the toxic waste has awakened something in him that drives him then to go after villains, bad people. And so that’s what he does.

Clip: He starts

Craig: going after bad people and killing them, basically. But there are just these scenes where, and that’s in the second half of the movie, it just kind of becomes that. It just kind of becomes him being kind of this anti-hero going around taking care of all the bad guys. And there’s 1 scene in particular where these 3 very weird eclectic thugs break into this Mexican restaurant and they’re robbing the restaurant but that’s almost secondary to the fact that they’re just terrorizing these patrons and 1 guy kind of stands up and tries to be the hero.

Clip: Hey, why don’t you leave her alone? We’ll give you our money if you want money. Hey, look pal, why don’t you just let everyone go and keep me as a hostage, huh?   That’s an idea. Ain’t it, Frank?

Craig: No thanks. And that’s a pretty gory effect. And then there’s a lady with a baby and 1 of the guys taunts her with the shotgun and points the shotgun at the baby. And I read that the actor who played this actually quit the movie. Like after they filmed this scene where he had to point a shotgun at the baby, he was done. Like he’s like, I’m not doing this anymore. And you know, that is, You know, that’s pretty taboo stuff that you’re getting into there. And then there’s a blind girl, this beautiful blonde blind girl. And   first, 1 of the guys starts tormenting her and so the dog starts barking at him and he tells the other guy, take care of this dog and they shoot the dog. And you know, I hate that. I hate violence against animals, but I had read about it in advance So I was prepared and I knew how they did it and it was fine. I wasn’t all that and it’s so over the top gory. You can you can really pretty easily suspend your disbelief and understand that

Todd: the dog’s fine. It’s all right. OK, Craig, the dog’s fine. I know.

Craig: But then again, something else that really disturbs me, and what you mentioned before is what is almost the most shocking about it, is that they just do these things so nonchalantly like oh it’s just no big deal like 1 of the bad guys makes this blind girl stand up and he’s taunting her and talking about how hot she is and he has some terrible punny line.

Clip: You wanna   meet my friend Ben?

Todd: You make everything all right. Just let me introduce you to Ben. Ben Dover!

Craig: And he bends her over the table and is preparing to rape her right there in broad daylight right in front of this entire restaurant full of people and God, it’s just it really disturbed me and like it never gets there. You know, there is the suggestion that he’s undoing his pants and he’s got her bent over and all the people around her acting so shocked. And luckily our hero, the Toxic Avenger, comes in and in a long violent sequence takes all these guys out. But you know, it’s just that approach to these really kind of taboo   situations that it makes them stand out as a studio, you know? I can’t think of many other studios that are doing this. I don’t know if we’ve ever mentioned it before, but fans of the podcast, we have a lost episode, which will remain lost. But we, we, we tried to record a podcast over the movie Street Trash and that’s the only other movie that I can think of that I’ve seen or that we’ve done that did the same sort of stuff. Just really kind of disturbing and the trivia behind this folks is that we tried to   record it and something went wrong. And that has happened to us before, very, very early in the podcast, the same thing happened to us with the Lost Boys, and we were like, darn it, and so we recorded it again. Kind of having the same conversations that we’d had before. We couldn’t

Todd: bring ourselves to do it this time.

Craig: We couldn’t bring ourselves, no. With Street Trash, it was so disturbing and gross that we’re like, nope, can’t do it again.

Todd: We hated the movie, we hated talking about the movie. We didn’t wanna think about the movie anymore. No. And you’re right, like that movie had, it was different though, you know? I think it was more mean-spirited or just more clueless, you

Craig: know Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely

Todd: the nice thing about this and I think this is why this stuff is shocking but you can give it a long wide pass is that they don’t want to make these movies that are just mean-spirited. Even from the beginning, Lloyd Kaufman said when he was writing this horror movie, he wanted to put a lot of humor into it because he didn’t want people to just be scared. He wanted them to laugh. And I think that’s kind of at the core of what they do. Everything is humor. Now it’s extremely low brow, it’s extremely juvenile type humor,   but it’s mixed in there and it kind of has to be, right? Otherwise it does. It would come across as gross and horrible. And I think the reason their movies, and I think I was getting this earlier, but I got a little off track, is that almost every single 1 of these trauma films has this same core social political thrust. And that is that the people who are in charge are in charge, and they’re really bad, and all they do is take advantage of everybody else.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: And the people who are evil are really, really evil in these movies. They’re just amped up to a thousand, right? A thousand percent evil. And so, you know, they just do it that way. There’s nothing subtle about it. And I think that’s probably why these films do appeal to a certain segment of the population who, who worries about this a lot or who can really get behind this message. And this is a kind of a catharsis, right? You can experience this movie and you can kind of feel, yeah, we’re sticking it to the man. Because in   the end, this monster, this Frankenstein is everybody’s hero, right? Right. He overcomes the insanely ridiculously over the top mayor who’s huge and fat and all he does is sit around and get massaged and eat giant sandwiches and make backroom cigar deals that are going to basically kill people. And he gets it at the end too, right? But that’s Tromaville and most of their movies take place in Tromaville and that’s the story of Tromaville is that it’s supremely corrupt and the people have almost no chance and these movies take place in that environment. You know, we had   that same thing with Poultry Geist, right? Where it was the corporation that comes in and doesn’t care about people, doesn’t care that they’re feeding them garbage that could kill them. And so, you know, these bad stuff, bad things happen to them and eventually the day wins out.

Craig: I think that that is what redeems these movies to some extent to me, is that the bad guys, They’re capitalists, they’re greedy, they’re gluttonous and horrible people. And, you know, to be fair, they’re terribly one-note, but, you know, they’re set up as villains. And then the heroes are these underdog guys. In Poultry Geist it was the little geeky fast food worker, and this 1 it’s the little geeky janitor. But they’re the good guys. They want to help people and they want to do the right thing. So to have these kind of underdog hero stories, I think   just about everybody can appreciate that or relate to that on some level. And that is redemptive for me. You know in the end just like you said the people of Tromaville initially you know they’re horrified because this guy he looks like a monster. Ultimately he’s not really that monstrous but he’s very different, you know? But once people see that what he’s doing is for the good of the town and for the good of the people, they get behind him. And when the corrupt mayor and the corrupt police force set out on this mission to kill and   destroy him for their own selfish motives, ultimately the people literally surround him to protect him.

Todd: Yeah, from the military,

Craig: yeah. Yeah, you know, this guy, he’s a good guy. He’s ugly, but he’s not doing anything wrong, and the people appreciate him. And by the end, it becomes a hero story. The town celebrates him and he gets the girl. It’s a happy ending.

Todd: The movie has a happy ending. Yeah, and there’s even a little kernel in there of there’s a scene where he takes out this woman who goes to a laundromat and at first You know this woman shows up at this laundromat She’s this little old lady and she hands her laundry over and she has some conversation with the guy and then for no apparent reason the Toxic Avenger shows up and basically kills this woman by tossing her in the dryer for a while. And you’re like, whoa, what was that about?

Craig: I was really confused. I wrote that down in my notes. He killed this little old lady for no reason because up until now, they’ve even commented on it several times that you know some scientist says oh the toxic waste must have triggered something in him that makes him rage against bad people but only bad people And then you see him kill this little old lady, I’m like, what? I thought he was

Todd: a good guy. And they really withhold this from you, and it’s really pretty smart actually. Like he sits down then, as he comes back in from this, he’s coming back to the home that he’s created with his girlfriend and he sits down.

Craig: In the toxic waste dump. In the toxic

Todd: waste dump. They’ve decorated and everything, there was a whole montage. But he comes down and he sits down and he says, I don’t know what’s coming over me. I’m feeling, you know,

Craig: I’m out of control.

Todd: I’m out of control. And you’re thinking, oh my gosh, maybe he is. Well, it actually turns out that this woman had did was kind of bad, right? She had some sons.

Craig: She was a white slaver.

Todd: White slaver. That’s right. So she’s like the worst. Right. As a slaver in general is bad. So yeah, it turns out that that’s that but it’s interesting that the movie throws that possibility in for just a few minutes, you know, and there’s there’s, there’s some interesting things going on here. I really, what I really like about this movie is, is that it just, it’s fun to watch. I really enjoyed watching this movie, probably more than you did, but it has an energy and a focus that I feel like Troma’s later movies lack. You know, we watch   Poultry Geist. And like you said, Poultry Geist feels like it’s just 1 site gag after another. It’s just a joke a second, which you know, is its own thing. This movie moves, right? This movie starts out, it’s got an energy that I feel like never lets up and it barrels through the plot but it doesn’t overstay its welcome I think anyway and it’s got just an intensity and an energy about it that that just keeps me glued to the screen and that scene that you talked about in the the taco restaurant or the Mexican place or   whatever the Mexican place which is literally the name of the I thought that was a fake name but apparently that was actually the name of the place they filmed it in it looks like an old taco bell doesn’t it when they used to have

Clip: kind of

Todd: yeah brick and arches and stuff but that scene just encapsulates I think what I loved about this movie I thought the villains when they came in were super hyper amped up like they’re on PCP or something they’re over the top

Craig: they reminded me a little bit of do you remember Weird Science when they had that big party and like the biker gang broke in and like terrorized them? That’s what these guys reminded me of. Like they were so over the top, but it was the 80s. Yeah, it was, right?

Todd: But I liked that guy, the 1 who was kind of painted with half of his face, who was holding the gun. Uh-huh, Leroy. I honestly thought he was like 1 of the best actors in the movie, to be honest, even though it’s a movie where it’s hard to tell whether the acting’s good because everybody’s just hamming it up. Yeah. There’s just an energy about it and just that evilness. So, you know, the scene goes on and it, but that is, you know, we’ve seen a lot of bad movies and we’ve seen a lot of really incompetent   films and we’ve seen laughable fight scenes even from really, really good movies. And I felt like at least the action in this film, especially in this scene, is just intense and good.

Craig: Well, and if nothing else, it’s creative. I mean, he kills all 3 of them in creative ways. Like, the leader of the gang, I feel like is kind of this Samuel L. Jackson type guy. I would have never noticed. I read about it before I even saw the movie, but apparently this guy was an amputee And he only had 1 arm. So the way that Toxy kills him is he rips his arm off and then beats him with it. Him and his buddies. It’s funny. Yeah. But that doesn’t kill him. Eventually, So like this is all   in a taco shop. So 1 of the guys he kills in the fryer by frying his hands, which is kind of stupid, but all right, whatever. And then the other guy, he makes like a sundae out of his face and then like uses the milkshake stirring machine to like stab him through the throat. Oh man. And the third guy he throws in the pizza oven. And It’s so silly and it plays out over probably 5 minutes. That’s the other thing about this movie. There are multiple scenes, mostly fight scenes, that go on for a long time   and they are not poorly choreographed. No, they’re great. They’re pretty darn good. Mm-hmm. And so there are these big fight scenes that go on for a long time, and that’s kind of fun. There’s also a car. It’s not a car chase scene because nobody’s chasing them, but it’s this fast-paced fight in a car that goes on for a long time.

Todd: And that’s good too.

Craig: Yeah yeah I mean they’re they’re well paced and well filmed I guess I don’t know I mean they’re exciting.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: I was actually kind of surprised because they go on for longer than you would expect a scene like this to go on for Especially in a low-budget film, but it doesn’t feel like a slog like oh, okay. I get it. You’re fighting Let’s wrap this up. No, I mean, it’s pretty engaging stuff. I was impressed.

Todd: Yeah, that’s kind of what I was getting at, you know, is I just thought that just epitomized the movie in general. The fight scenes were great. They were well-staged, well-choreographed. The acting was over the top, Hammy, but Once you kind of establish that, it doesn’t come across as bad, right? Because it is what it is. It’s not realistic. Like I said, it’s kind of like Mad Magazine really sort of playing out in front of you. It’s all kind of a joke. But then the violence, and even like you said, the the gore effects are surprisingly good   both for this era and this kind of film. We’ve seen so much crap, so much crap, which is, you know, way, way beneath this. And so somehow, you know, even though again, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, it all kind of works for me. And especially after you’ve seen it once or twice and you kind of know what you’re expecting, I was really looking forward to seeing this movie again because I remembered it being a fun ride and I was hoping I wouldn’t be disappointed. And it turns out I wasn’t. I mean, I enjoyed watching it   again. And it has been years since I’ve seen this movie. And I was worried because, like I said, their later stuff is not always that great. It’s a little plotting sometimes, and it’s a little tedious. They did 1 called Terror Firmware, and that came out, and I bought this 3 DVD set of it, and I was excited to watch it and I could barely get through it because it was just, they were just trying too hard. And this just epitomizes an era when they were really doing it. I mean, they had this movie, Troma’s War, which   is a film that I love that they were really hoping was going to be their mainstream breakout hit, but they put way too much silliness into it could have been it could have been a pretty decent action war movie for its time. But then they put in dumb stuff like the there was like Siamese twins, like generals in charge of it all. And the guy who was like, they were spreading AIDS. That was the big bad thing that the guy was gonna do is gonna drop some AIDS bomb on everybody. And then he has a pig   nose. And I mean, it got really a little too trauma, which I think the original writer of that film really was fighting against, but Lloyd Kaufman kind of was like, no, we gotta throw this stuff in there. And it probably turned out in there, well, it almost bankrupted the studio. They were really banking on that movie and it didn’t. They did a couple sequels to this movie that were not so good.

Craig: A couple? Aren’t there like… There are 3. I feel like they’re like, oh gosh, there’s a… Yeah. Which surprises me. Have you seen them? Have you

Todd: watched the sequels? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I have. You know, I was really excited too because the second 1 takes place in Japan and it was shot in Japan, most of it. It was weird as I remember the story anyway because I haven’t read about it recently but as I remember it you know he was talking with some distributors and they were asking you know if he had a sequel to Toxic Avenger and he said oh yeah we’re working on right now And basically sold the sequel to them right then and there, and then turned around   and told his partner, well, we got to start going on a sequel to Toxic Avenger. And he ended up shooting so much footage for it. And it ended up being so long that he decided to chop it into 2. So there was a part 2 and a part 3 and it really shows. I mean it’s both of them are not really that great. There’s a fourth 1 that they did where they just I mean literally I think in the beginning the narrator says we’re gonna pretend that the last 2 didn’t exist And it’s called Citizen Toxie   and I remember thinking that that 1 was much better But I know critically that 1 also wasn’t received very well So, you know Troma’s kind of got its limits and a lot of that just has to do with its market appeal You know, it’s just so niche. Yeah, It’s so niche that it is they keep making movies like this. They’re they’re not gonna break out and make millions of dollars You know, they’re just not

Craig: I just don’t get the impression and who knows, you know people have to be business minded in any industry, but it just doesn’t seem like that is their primary concern. If it were they wouldn’t be making movies the way that they are. You know, it seems like they have every intention of appealing to a particular audience and they have a particular style and there’s something admirable about that I would say. And you know, I’ve only seen this and poultry geist, but I feel like I have a general idea of the stuff that you can expect. And   you can expect, you know, kind of goofball, dialogue and quippy jokes. That was something else too. Like the guy in the beginning, Melvin the janitor, I just didn’t find him appealing at all. I found it difficult to even be sympathetic towards him because he just was so weird and awkward. He wasn’t real, right? I mean, just wasn’t real. Right, and like the acting is so over the top. And that’s fine, whatever. You know, there’s 1 scene where 2 of the villainous young people, Slug and his girlfriend, whatever her name were, they’re having sex in the locker   room of this health club and Melvin happens upon them and he just stands there and kind of giggles while he’s watching them and like, what are you doing? Like, turn around, walk away. But then when he becomes the toxic Avenger, he changes entirely. I have to assume it’s a different actor because he’s a much different body type. He’s big and beefy and his voice drops. There’s even a joke where his mom’s like, oh, my son’s finally gone through puberty, yay. And it’s funny because when he’s monstrous and when he’s attacking people, it’s all like rah, rah.   But then when he talks, it’s like…

Clip: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, it’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. Are you OK?

Craig: It’s almost kind of like this sophisticated voice, which is funny. But I also thought that it was funny that once he actually gets in to start taking out the bad guys, then he becomes quippy. Like almost like Freddy Krueger quippy.

Clip: And you can tell all your scum friends that things are gonna change in this town. I’m not just another pretty face. Like

Craig: As he’s beating people up and killing them, he’s got these quips. That humor is there, and I can only imagine that that is an undercurrent of most of their films you’re gonna get the extreme gore I wouldn’t say that this is necessarily any more violent than many other horror movies that I’ve seen but with you know the Practical effects and lots and lots of blood you’re gonna get raunchy sex jokes. You’re gonna get lots of boobies Again, like I said, I just I really really believe that there is there has to be because they keep making   movies There’s got to be an audience for these. And so fans of these movies, you know, good for you. I’m glad that they’re out there for you. It doesn’t necessarily appeal to me, but even just, and this happens all the time, You know, I came into this thinking, oh man, how am I gonna talk about this movie that I didn’t really like? Even just talking to you and hearing it from the perspective of somebody who does, you know, have some fondness for these movies, it makes me reconsider them and think, you know, they’re appealing to some   people and I get that. I appreciate a studio and the people behind it who have heart and who have a vision and who are doing their thing. So more power to you.

Todd: And you know, to be fair, trauma has always been a mixed bag for me Too I don’t think I’m punk enough You know to really get obsessed about their movies or to really you know enjoy them at that at that level or

Craig: Todd I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re not punk enough

Todd: But you know I think just some of the earlier films, again, they have a kind of heart and a focus to them that some of the later movies don’t. I think that if I were to make some recommendations, If a person out there wanted to see some more trauma films, first of all I would say check out The Toxic Avenger before you see Poultry Geist. You know? Yeah. Check out some earlier stuff. I’ve seen Squeeze Play and some of their earlier sex comedies. They’re perfectly fine. They have 1 called The Big Turn-On, I think, 1 called   The Battle of Love’s Return, and they’re pretty typical stuff you’d see on like USA Up All Night, you know? Yeah. There’s nothing special about them now. Maybe there was at that time, but they’re fun and they’re fine for what they are. But Troma’s War I really enjoyed just for the action and the inventiveness of it. It is a pretty good fun little story and it just has some of those silly over-the-top elements. I really enjoyed, at least remember enjoying, Sergeant Kabuki Man NYPD, which is maybe, in my opinion, the closest thing that they get to something   a little more mainstream. It’s a ridiculous idea. It’s like this police, cop, detective guy. I can’t even remember what happens to him, but anyway, he turns into…it’s another type of superhero where he’s this sort of Japanese samurai, not samurai, but Kabuki superhero. And he has like, you know, flying chopsticks and silly things like that that he does. But the story itself is trying to be a little more serious, a little more inventive. And then, Romeo and Juliet, that kind of came at a time when I think they were about to call it quits. And probably due   to the quality of James Gunn’s writing and ideas, he took… What they were doing really, that was the same time that Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet came out Which was a good movie and it really took that modern take on Romeo and Juliet So this was sort of like their modern take on his modern take on Romeo and Juliet in the trauma universe

Craig: It got quite a bit of buzz. I remember hearing quite a bit about that when it came out.

Todd: And honestly, it works. I mean, I found it times a little too much, and I found it at times to be a little bit to sit through, like maybe just sometimes Shakespeare in general. Sure. But I think if you wanted to see something that’s very different, but again along similar lines of what they do, I mean it still has that trauma spirit, but it’s just not a bunch of over the top violence and silly campiness. I checked that 1 out as well.

Craig: Well, and the thing is, I didn’t love this movie, but I actually thought that the idea behind it was kind of fun. And I can see why somebody would have thought, you know what? This might make a good cartoon for kids. I don’t know that it would fly in our PC culture today with the whole toxic waste and disfigurement and that kind of stuff, But ultimately the message is good. You know, the message is it doesn’t matter that he looks like this. He’s a good guy and he’s helping out. 1 of my favorite parts of the   movie is there’s a hero montage in the second half where yeah, he’s fighting, bad guy sometimes, but then he’s also walking little old ladies across the street.

Todd: And- That’s right. Like- Literally. Yeah.

Craig: And other little cute things like that, you know, like he’s just kind of going around being a good deed doer. And I could see how you could run with those elements of being a good person and it doesn’t matter what you look like and you know fighting for the environment you know like that’s though these are good messages for kids I can see how it would work like that and I also am fascinated by the idea of a reimagining or a remake. It’s interesting to know that the original people are behind it because really what I   would like to see happen and who knows what will happen but I would like to see them take it a little bit more seriously, I think. Maybe a little bit more traditionally. Gosh, I hate that I’m even saying that, but don’t make the nerdy guy so obnoxiously over the top. You know, make him an everyman. You know, make him me. You know, the guy that’s, you know, just not super popular in a world of beautiful people. And then something, you know, it’s not unlike many superhero origin stories where you’ve got, you know, the underdog and something   happens, you know, they get bit by a radioactive spider or whatever and then they have these powers or whatever. I feel like they could go a little bit less over the top. And I don’t know, it could be interesting.

Todd: We’ll see what happens. I think there’s no question, I mean, this idea definitely has staying power. That’s probably why we’ve seen it kind of get touched on throughout the decades. And of course now with superhero movies being huge, everybody’s trying to mine this. You would hope and think and pray really that they take a little bit more mainstream approach to this and do it so that it could finally appeal to a mass audience and maybe get some legs behind it.

Craig: Fans of this movie would probably throw up, you know? Probably. Suggestion, you know? Oh yeah, you’re gonna make it all mainstream just like everybody else. And I get that, you know? If this is something that you’ve grown up with, something that you’re a big fan of, you might see that as a bastardization of the source material, but I think there’s room for both.

Todd: Yeah, there’s gotta be a mix somewhere in between, and Hopefully this guy is gonna honor that.

Craig: Well, we’ll see. I would give it a shot. I didn’t love the movie, but I loved, or at least appreciated, some of the concepts behind it. And ultimately, I was charmed by Toxy. Aw. I mean, I wouldn’t wanna make out with him like the blind girl did.

Todd: Like the blind girl.

Craig: But I’m glad that they had a fulfilling sexual relationship.

Todd: They sure did. They didn’t hold that back from us either, did they? No. God.

Clip: Either did they? Well

Todd: thank you again for listening to another episode and also thank you to Phantom Dark Dave for suggesting this. He has a nice podcast, it’s called Dave’s Pop Culture Podcast, and he’s actually recently interviewed some people like Bits of Price’s daughter. So you can go and check that out. As well as our podcast, anywhere that you find podcasts by searching 2 Guys and a Chainsaw, You can also find our website, twoguys.red40net.com, where we have all of our back episodes posted, or you can stream us live there. Also find us on Facebook and let us know if there   are any films that you would like us to see. We love getting requests, and we just like having conversations with you about the movies that you’ve seen. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

Our tribute to Larry Cohen is a social commentary on companies that make products that harm people. An unknown mutant ice cream/yogurt/whipped cream concoction bubbles out of the ground and makes people crazy, but that doesn’t stop a company from packaging it up and making it into the hottest item of the century.

We saw it on the shelves as kids. Now, both of us finally get to watch it. Hear what we thought.

Episode 168, 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 are paying tribute to 1 of our fallen Legends. We were surprised to hear a couple weeks ago that Larry Cohen passed on at the ripe old age of I believe it was 82 when it was initially reported it wasn’t reported what he had died from. I think some family friends had mentioned cancer. Larry Cohen is pretty prolific. I don’t know what your history is, Craig, or how much you know about Larry Cohen.

Craig: Not much.

Todd: He is a name that has popped up over and over and over again, you know, in movies that I’ve watched. You know, I always have for many years paid attention to who the directors and who the writers and stuff are in films. And I was just surprised to find out Larry Cohen, Larry Cohen, Larry Cohen just kept popping up in so many times that I always wondered, are there multiple Larry Coens? Over the decades, like from the 60s, all the way up through now, this man is super prolific. Mostly as a writer, but also a bit   as a director. And to say that he is a horror guy is a little bit of a misnomer. He’s just done so many different things. He started out in television in the 60s, actually very interesting story. He started out as a page boy in NBC and just bugged and bugged and bugged a guy, bringing him basically script after script after script that this guy asked for until we finally gave him a job. And he did. He wrote for a couple television series, did a couple television series of his own, and basically never stopped writing. This guy   would write every single day and even though his IMDB page is huge with credits, apparently he wrote even more than that. There’s all kinds of stuff that was never produced, scripts that he sold that for 1 reason or another didn’t get made, or pilots for television series that he started that for 1 reason or another never went through. Really well known in the industry is a super prolific guy, and not only that, but a super nice guy. I’ve just been so fascinated by him just by the name and surprisingly enough I never really took the time   to go through and read a lot about him. There is an amazing documentary out about him called King Cohen that came out last year, 2018, and I highly recommend it. I actually watched it this afternoon. It’s about 2 hours long and it’s full of interviews with him and people that he’s worked with. Talks about almost every movie that he ever did and really gives you this great impression of this guy who just freaking loved making movies. Total guerrilla filmmaker style. Most of the movies he made were extremely low budget. And as 1 of the people in   there put it in this interview is that Larry Cohen the writer became Larry Cohen the director to protect Larry Cohen the writer. So that he wouldn’t be subject to the whims of somebody else making his movies, although a lot of other people made his movies. And then Larry Cohen the director became Larry Cohen the producer to protect Larry Cohen the director. This is a guy who wanted to make movies on his own terms, had his own wacky ideas for things, and basically was 1 of the very few people in Hollywood to become writer, producer, and director   of his own material for most of his career. Like I said, whether he was writing scripts for other people, he always had a project or 2 in the works of his own and you can look at it’s just extremely prolific and the movie that we decided to review today was 1 that I encountered on those shelves a lot in the horror section in the 80s called The Stuff from 1985. So I think we’re gonna talk about him within the context of this movie. Craig, had you ever seen The Stuff because I had always wanted to see   it but I never did until today.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s 1 of those weird things where, like you, I remember always seeing it on the shelves and I don’t know why I didn’t pick it up. You know, I think I must have picked it up because I kind of had an idea of what it was about and I think that that’s kind of why I never watched it because when it boils down to it, it’s about evil, alien, mind-controlling Cool Whip and… Basically, yeah. That bubbles up out of the ground and makes people crazy. Yeah. It’s a little nebulous, isn’t it? It’s   a very bizarre concept. From what I’ve read, and I haven’t read as much about him as you have, I think that his purpose much of the time was to provide some sort of social commentary. And I think that that’s what he was going for here, was commentary on consumerism and how, especially Americans, but really, you know, it’s worldwide that we allow consumerism to be a, well, potentially deadly influence in our lives. You know, I read that he said that he was inspired to write this movie by seeing all of these stories about products that would come   out that would be really sensational and would ultimately end up proving to be dangerous and and then would have to be pulled from the shelves and Nonetheless, there was high demand for these things when they would pop up. And I think that that’s what he was going for here. And the movie is described as a horror sci-fi comedy on IMDB. And I don’t know. I’m conflicted because this is 1 of those things where, you know, we’re trying to pay tribute to somebody who we have a lot of respect for because of their contributions to an industry   that we respect and appreciate. But I don’t know how kind I can be about this movie, frankly. It’s pretty bad.

Todd: Yeah, I have to agree with you. I mean, it’s all over the place. It’s a weird movie. It kind of defies description in a way, although I’ll tell you, I was getting strong John Carpenter slash They Live vibes here.

Craig: Yeah, yeah, I see it.

Todd: You know, it’s kind of of the same old era. It seems to be shot on the same film stock, whereas John Carpenter maybe had a bit of a bigger budget to deal with and is maybe a better director than this guy. Nonetheless, the film mines a lot of the similar material. There’s a grand sort of conspiracy that involves aliens. And there’s 1 guy who’s essentially this FBI agent named Mo Rutherford, who’s called in, but it’s not

Craig: like he’s a great guy. He- No, he’s a former FBI, he was kicked out of the FBI. That’s right. And now he’s working as an industrial saboteur. Like that’s his job. And he’s played by Michael Moriarty, which I was kind of excited about. Michael Moriarty was on, or maybe is still on, I don’t know, Law and Order for I think decades. Oh yeah. So he’s a very familiar face. I remember him from 1 of my favorite cheesy movies of the 80s, Troll, he was the dad in Troll.

Todd: Oh, that’s right.

Craig: As soon as I saw that he was in it, I was like, oh, that’s cool. But he is Just really hamming it up in this movie. You know, he’s got this very stereotypical Swagger Southern accent that he plays the whole thing and he just I feel like he’s almost playing a caricature of this kind of swaggy, you know, southern sheriff type.

Clip: Oh, this is some place you got here, fellas. Gosh, let me, that’s a sweaty palm. That’s 2 sweaty palms. Let me feel you. Ah, that’s another sweaty palm. Yes, sir. Hello, sweaty palms. How do you do? So tell me about the stuff.

Craig: I think it’s supposed to be funny. And there were lots of times in the movie that I was taking notes and at 1 point I wrote down, is this supposed to be funny? Like, I think that’s what they were going for at some point. Like, it was supposed to be comedic, and I just ended up feeling like, it’s not. It’s not funny. It’s really just kind of stupid. And I guess The part when I started to think, oh, this is really supposed to be funny was when the character of Chocolate chip Charlie Hobbs showed up played   by Garrett Morris If I remember correctly 1 of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live and he is a hilarious guy. I was a baby when Saturday Night Live started out, but I’ve seen his stuff. His stuff and a very funny guy and he plays this, you know, over the top, I’m sensitive about saying things because I don’t want to be disrespectful to anybody but kind of this, you know, over the top stereotypically flamboyant black guy. And I can tell that he’s a funny guy and you know he puts everything into it. It’s just the   comedy didn’t work for me and I don’t know if that’s due to me viewing it through the lens of 2019 when it came out in 1985. I don’t know maybe it is. Maybe I would have thought it was funny in 1985, but it just kind of missed the mark for me. So I don’t know. It was a head scratcher for me. I’m not real sure what you’re going for here and it’s not really landing for me, but I don’t know. I sat through the whole thing, so we can talk about it.

Todd: It’s very high concept. You know, again, I was thinking of They Live. I was also thinking Halloween Part 3. Yeah. You know, this evil corporation doing this thing that’s a little ridiculous on its face, and yet there’s something about those 2 other movies that works a little better. And they’re a bit tongue-in-cheek as well. Yeah. Halloween 3 wants to be taken a little more seriously, I think, but They Live is obviously a comedy. I think maybe just the characters are a little more charming in it, and even though they’re at times hamming it up, there’s just   something about it that feels kind of fun. This movie feels a little bit like a made for TV movie that went on really, really long, doesn’t it?

Craig: Yes, yes, it does. It feels like a made for TV movie. It looks like a made for

Todd: TV movie.

Craig: And again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I’ve enjoyed made for TV movies, so it’s not like I just have negative feelings about them in general. But yeah, it feels a little cheap, which it probably is. You know, he was probably working on a small budget. But then again, there are some big name folks. Paul Sorvino is in this. He worked with Michael Moriarty on Law and Order. He’s done all kinds of he was in Goodfellas. I think he looks like a Stereotypical gangster type and so you see him you would totally recognize him if you   looked him up. Danny Aiello big name actor makes a cameo in this and then there are just some small cameos. Gosh 1 of my favorite ones. Okay so The movie starts out just really abruptly with these random guys who you have no idea who they are. These older guys that looks like they’re on some sort of, gosh I don’t know what, like a mining site or something.

Todd: Yeah, it’s supposed to be a mining operation.

Craig: Yeah, and this old white haired guy just finds this stuff bubbling up out of the ground, literally stuff, this white stuff bubbling out of the ground, and of course, as you would, the first thing that he does is tastes it. Because That’s what I would do. If I saw some stuff bubbling up out of the ground, I’d be like, I wonder what that tastes like.

Clip: Whatever that could be. It’s mighty good.

Craig: Harry, what are you doing? Eating snow?

Clip: You out of your head, buddy. If this is snow, try

Craig: it once. You’ll find that’s a good… No, I don’t eat snow. Come on, give it

Clip: a try. That’s not snow. Try it.

Craig: And like that’s just, it goes from there. All of a sudden it’s this huge industry where this stuff is just flying off the shelves. And we see these like ridiculous commercials for it accompanied by a great hilarious theme song about how, you know, enough is never enough, eat the stuff, I don’t know, it’s very catchy. Catchy.

Clip: The stuff, the taste that makes you hungry for more. Enough is never enough. The stuff, the taste that delivers.   Enough is never enough.

Todd: It’s total 80s jingle and apparently Larry Cohen had a friend who worked in the advertising industry and he actually hired him to write the jingle and do the commercials and everything for it and it totally shows. I mean it looks like and feels like the kind of jingle you would have gotten

Craig: to Big

Todd: Red or something like that from the 80s. I thought that was a highlight of the film, actually.

Craig: Oh, yeah. The commercials were funny, and that’s what I was getting at. And I think on the cast list on IMDb, it says special guest star for these commercials. I think that everybody who appears in these commercials would have been recognizable to some people in the 1980s. There was 1, and It doesn’t happen until probably halfway through the movie, but there’s a commercial starring Abe Bogota, who was in A Million Things, but I always remember him as the grandpa from The Look Who’s Talking movies, and Clara Peller, who was the Where’s the beef lady from the   Wendy’s commercials from that ad campaign. Wow, you’re right. Oh my gosh. I can’t believe you didn’t notice that because she says, where’s the stuff? That’s right.

Todd: Dude, that totally went by me. That’s hilarious.

Craig: And yeah, so there’s all these very recognizable people that pop up throughout. And so you would expect a movie with all these recognizable people to really have some clout and some quality. But it kind of ends there. And there were things that I got excited because after they show how the stuff is becoming this big thing, then it cuts to this kid, Jason, played by Scott Bloom, I don’t know if he’s been anything else but he wakes up in his room and he’s hot and itchy and he goes downstairs and he opens up his refrigerator and   There’s a container of the stuff in there and literally this stuff is like Cool Whip or it looks like shaving cream or something. It’s kind of like ice cream but like the big draw of it is that it never melts and it but it’s moving around in his refrigerator and then his dad who’s a big jerk comes down and and yells at him he’s like no dad it’s bad it moves and his dad’s like well I’m a jerk so just go to bed and He eats the stuff. So I’m thinking, oh, okay, great. This is gonna   be 1 of those 80s movies that I love that has a kid as 1 of the central characters, like Troll or like… Invaders from Mars. Invaders from Mars, something like that. And there are elements of that throughout, but then it tries to be several other things too. And it just, it didn’t feel focused. I don’t know, like it just felt like it was all over the place. And I read that the original cut was much, much longer. And thank God somebody made Mr. Cohen edit it down significantly. And while I say thank God, because I would   not have wanted to watch 2 and a half or 3 hours of this, you can tell. It seems really choppy. It seems like there are things that we’re missing, that there are scenes that were cut, that established relationships, and There’s like a love interest, like Moe, the espionage guy, has this love interest, Nicole, who is like the marketing director for the stuff, and like they meet, and then immediately they’re just like boyfriend, girlfriend in a relationship. And I’m like, wait, what? What just happened? Like, you just met in the last scene. Like, I don’t even understand.   But whatever.

Todd: And that doesn’t even come for later. I mean, this movie moves so quickly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie move so fast and you’re right it’s simply because it’s it’s so choppy. It’s not a good thing really that this movie moves so quickly because it does seem to lack focus. It’s like there are these 3 or 4 different threads going on. They’re sort of centered around this guy doing this investigation, but he just leaps so quickly from 1 thing to another that you’re like 15 minutes into the movie and you think, gosh, I mean,   it can’t be much longer than this. It feels like I’m watching a long episode of something. Yeah. You know,

Clip: on TV.

Craig: Well, and that’s ultimately what I thought too. I thought that the concept might have been interesting and might have worked better in shorter form. Like, if this had been an episode of The Twilight Zone and it was like 25 minutes, I think that there’s some interesting stuff that could be mined from this movie and mined from the concept, but in this form, it was too much.

Todd: You kind of could have cut out the kid entirely because the whole idea, and again, hopefully, there was a lot more that made this flow better, but this whole idea that this 1 kid is the only 1 who is noticing something is really off about this stuff in the whole wide world, basically.

Craig: Right, right.

Todd: It’s kind of ridiculous. You know, he goes ape and there’s a whole, there’s a really long scene of him going ape in the supermarket and the stuff is everywhere. And it’s actually, you can tell, like it’s almost naked gun funny in a way because everywhere he turns, every single aisle, the stuff is there. Like at 1 moment you think the stuff needs to be refrigerated, but then he, after he finishes smashing the refrigerator and knocking all the stuff out, he runs down the freezer aisle and he’s knocking all the stuff from, it’s perched on the freezer.   And Then when he gets to the end of it, there’s a couple of employees who are stacking it.

Craig: On the shelves. Yeah, making a big tower out of it. Yeah.

Todd: He knocks that down and all that. Then throughout the movie, the stuff, it’s comically present every single place you can go to the point where there’s like a little Dairy Queen-esque type stand sitting outside. Yeah. And he pulls up and he’s looking at it and he goes, wow, 3 a.m. And people are still going nuts to buy this stuff. And I’m thinking, what are these guys doing? It looks like they’re just popping open the lids of this and sticking a spoon

Clip: in it and giving it to people.

Craig: Yeah. And like it comes, it’s so funny because it comes in tubs and all the tubs are, you know, they’re branded the same and it’s very simple, very 80s. There’s like individual serving tubs and then there’s like huge like family sized tubs and like just it’s everywhere and it’s also funny in the movie because these tubs of the stuff are everywhere and the characters are playing with them and manipulating them and doing things. And more often than not, it’s so painfully obvious that these are just empty Cool Whip containers. I mean, that’s all they are. They’ll   put them down on the table, and you can hear the hollow plastic thud. There’s nothing in there.

Todd: Well, and then the form that it takes on the screen, the special effects in this movie are not fantastic, but they’re serviceable.

Craig: There are places when they’re bad. Oh yeah. There are a couple of times when they were clearly doing stuff with green screens or, I don’t know, like post animation. There are sometimes when they are serviceable. There’s 1 scene in particular in a motel room when the stuff attacks. Like, and God, just saying that sounds so stupid. Like, they’re all of a sudden being attacked by shaving cream. Like, It’s stupid. But there’s 1 scene in a motel room where there’s some cool stuff going on. They used a rotating set, the same rotating set I guess that they   used in Nightmare on Elm Street for Johnny Depp’s death scene, when he gets sucked into his bed and the blood all shoots out of his bed and stuff. And you can see that they made something with that resource that they had that looks pretty good. Yeah, it did. But there are other parts that, oh gosh, it just looks terrible. Especially at the end, the final, the stuff attack scene. I don’t know, it’s goofy. I’m sorry, I’m getting off track.

Todd: No, well it’s easy to

Craig: get off track because the

Todd: movie gets off track. I mean, it’s all over the place. And then there are times, like you say, where it feels like the blob, right? It’s this. Yes. It’s this giant. There are scenes where they’re obviously miniatures of this stuff pouring down the staircase and coming inside or whatever. But, you know, it can just as easily just sit in tubs and people ingest it. And then, I don’t know, you know, it’s like, do you have to eat so much of it before it really starts to have an effect on you, you would think the whole world   by this point would basically be a bunch of zombies because at times that’s how these people are. There’s a scene when the boy comes home to his family and he’s the only 1 of his family’s refused to eat this. Meanwhile, his whole family’s kind of gone mad with it and sends him to his room because he’s, you know, refusing to eat it basically and causing so much trouble. And when he comes downstairs, there’s this pretty funny scene. Actually, I thought it was the best scene in the movie. He comes downstairs first of all and his brother’s   playing Colecovision, which was awesome. I used to have a Colecovision. Anyway, and he’s playing Colecovision. This whole family is sitting around. Each 1 of them have a tub of this. And his dad turns to him and is trying to coerce him into eating it. And there’s a shot on his dad and he’s smiling almost straight into the camera And he’s delivering almost in an announcer voice this hilarious ad for the stuff

Clip: here Jason take some You know what I said about that that was the truth And you know that there is something alive in there. Jason, I mean, there’s something alive in yogurt. It’s called benign bacteria. Yes. I mean, there’s something alive in a loaf of bread. It’s yeast. I mean, that’s a living organism. We have plenty of things that are still alive that are good for us. I know that, but that was moving. All microorganisms move, Jason. I mean, if you could see them with the naked eye. I mean, under a microscope, you can see them   move. So what’s the difference? They’re good for us, Jason. They kill the bad things inside us.

Todd: I thought that was so funny.

Craig: Doesn’t the sun even say something like, why are you talking like a commercial? So

Todd: on the 1 hand, this stuff makes people kind of this way, like, I guess turns them into emissaries of its evilness to spread around. And then there are moments where, for example, you were talking earlier about Danny Aiello’s character, and he was a former FDA, he was on the FDA board or whatever when they approved this yeah and then mysteriously every single person who was on the FDA board when they approved this resigned or left went on vacation and whatnot Mo Rutherford comes to his house and he has this Doberman Pinscher. Isn’t that right? Was that   the dog?

Craig: Yeah, that was a Doberman, I think.

Todd: Which was the, you know, the go-to scary dog of the 80s, basically. He comments that his dog really, he’s really scared of his dog. Why is your owner scared of you? And when Mo leaves, it turns out that the dog has been eating so much of this stuff that it pulls, it yanks the phone line

Craig: out of the wall and attacks him.

Todd: And then somehow he regurgitates a whole bunch. Like people will regurgitate this stuff, like it’s coming out of them.

Craig: You think they’re dead, they’re not, and it’s so bizarre. Yeah, I know, It is bizarre because it’s as though, they’re ingesting all this stuff and then it kind of, either mind controls them. I mean, I guess it kind of has to be mind control. But it also kind of controls their bodies or whatever. And the suggestion seems to be that like their bodies are literally full of it. And at some point somebody says something, I think it’s the chocolate chip Charlie says, I’ve seen what it does to people and I’ve seen the aftermath. I’ve seen what   people look like when it’s done with them and when it comes out. So like I, and at another point, Mo says to somebody, are you eating it or is it eating you? So I think that the suggestion is supposed to be that maybe it’s kind of eating people from the inside, but it’s bizarre. And it’s also weird because yes, in these moments that I think are supposed to be the scary moments, it comes out of people and it comes out of their mouths and there are these ridiculous and bad special effects. Now to be fair, they’re   practical, which I appreciate, but they don’t look that great. But like their mouths stretch way, way, way open for the stuff to come out. Why? It’s just Cool Whip. Like why does your mouth have to be like a big gaping cavern for it to come out? Like, it could just come out. But I guess that wouldn’t look as cool.

Todd: Because it looks freaky, Craig. That’s why.

Craig: I guess. All

Todd: right. I’m down. And then there are times when, like, the army ends up getting involved. Paul Cervino’s character, oh my gosh, again this movie’s all over the place, but to kind of shorten it up, Mo Rutherford ends up going tracking down the stuff. He tracks down the town where it was originally discovered and goes to the company that produces it which was originally a mining company but now all it’s doing is basically pulling the stuff out of the ground and but he meets up with that woman that you said earlier was the advertising executive. By the   way, who by the way comes across as a total slut from the very beginning. He approaches her while she’s shooting a commercial, which was the second best scene in the movie. I was watching this with my wife and as soon as this commercial shooting scene came on, she just busted out laughing. We were so enjoying it so much. They’ve got these supermodels that are hilarious walking down the catwalk. It’s supposed to be eating the stuff and she’s giving directions. I know you absolutely love it now feed it to each other. Yeah. And they’re wearing swimming suits   with furs over them. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Craig: And the models look like they couldn’t possibly be more bored or unhappy to be there. Yes! It’s so true. It was, and like, you’re right, she is giving them directions, like, ooh, you love it, oh my gosh, okay, now take another bite, and they’re like, okay. They’re half awake, like, oh my god, I can’t believe I’m doing this

Clip: you were saying I do like to see a woman with decision. Pick your favorite restaurant.

Craig: Where are

Clip: you staying? Sherry, Netherlands. Do they have room service at the Sherry, Netherlands? My limousine’s just outside. So is mine. I bet mine’s bigger than yours.

Craig: Yeah, that was funny. But as you’re saying, okay, so then they go here, and then they go here, and then they go here. Like, that’s it. Like, that’s literally it. Like, we follow Mo around as he just hops from place to place. Let’s go to the old mining place. Let’s go to the town where they found it. And, oh, there’s nobody here. OK, let’s fly to D.C. Like and that’s it. And then, you know, they spend 5 minutes in every new place and they do something, or they tour the stuff factory, or they get attacked by   evil postmen. Episodic isn’t even the right way to describe it. But like every few minutes, they’re just hopping around, going somewhere else, and they all just conveniently keep bumping into each other. Like the kid, Jason, just kind of randomly happens to show up every once in a while. So then they’re kind of like a little Scooby Gang with Nicole and Jason and Moe, but then they’ll get separated. No, no, Jason’s in peril, but not for long. We found him and now he’s back with us and Mm-hmm. Oh my god, and that’s just how it goes for   over an hour Like most of the movie.

Todd: Yeah, and then at the end of it, you know They they end up where they’re pulling the stuff out of the ground He sets off some plastic explosives to try to bury it, but of course that’s not going to work for very long and they all escape. And then as they escape, the kid’s like, where are we going to go? There’s a small town up ahead. And he’s like, no, they control the small towns. We need to go to a big city where they can’t control it. And finally it’s morning and they’re still driving in this   big semi.

Craig: Yeah, but that was so, okay, so first of all, they get to this little town, Jason’s

Clip: like. Hey look, there’s a town up ahead. I’m gonna bypass it. It’s too small, they probably control it, we’d never get out of there. Then where do we go, David?

Todd: We go to a large city and

Clip: they can’t control it, we have a chance.

Craig: And then they drive right through town. That’s not what circumvent means. I don’t understand. And then he says, we gotta go to a big city. But first, I’m going to stop at this castle. Yes. What? In the middle of nowhere. Like, and at this castle, there is an army laying in wait, like in the reeds or whatever that pops out. And I didn’t even understand. So then he goes, this is when he meets the Paul Sorvino character, Colonel Spears, who apparently lives in this castle and is protected by his own army. Yeah. Because I didn’t get,   I think that his character was supposed to be an ex-military guy. Yeah. But now he has like his own private army.

Todd: He’s got like a little militia. I think He’s like a super conspiracy theorist kind of thing, so he’s got his own little militia, I guess just sitting around waiting for stuff to happen out in the middle of nowhere around his little castle.

Craig: It’s so bizarre. I know, and like they, so Mo goes up and meets him in this huge tower in this castle, And he’s like,

Clip: well, yeah, I just thought I’d stop by to tell you that I have videotapes of you and a 17-year-old black girl. What? Like, oh, I just wanted to tell you. Like, what? Oh, gosh.

Craig: And, like, so he’s there to ask for his help, but I guess his way of going about that is to like blackmail him, threaten him. Blackmail him. But that’s okay, because then, you know, the Colonel’s like, I will help you. And then he joins the Scooby Gang, and he’s got his whole army, and then they invade the factory. Well, and when they’re shooting up everybody, like, they’re bleeding stuff. So it’s like you said earlier, it’s so weird. Like, they’ll punch somebody and their whole face will break off, and the stuff will come pouring out of it.   I just don’t, I don’t get it. It makes it not a

Todd: very gory movie. I’m not even sure why it’s rated R to be honest.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t even realize it was. No, it definitely felt like something that you could easily play on afternoon cable. There’s nothing, There’s no sex in it. I don’t recall there being much swearing in it, if any. And the violence in the carnage looks so fake that I can’t imagine that anybody would be disturbed by it. I mean, it doesn’t look real at all. And like you said, there’s no blood, you know? Just the white marshmallow goo comes out of them. Well, even the action scenes are poorly executed. Like basically Mo Wutherford, all he does is   run around and punch people in the face. They fall backwards and they’re not a threat anymore. Oh my god, my favorite part of the movie was when they were in the small town, I think, where the stuff originated or something like that, and he meets up with chocolate chip Charlie. I love saying that. And at first there’s nobody in the town, and then all of a sudden they’re attacked by this big group of goons, and they run away and they escape in a rowboat. And all these big guys are chasing them and they’re like, get in   the boat! And it’s literally a rowboat. A rowboat. There’s no boat here. And 1 of the guys that’s chasing them jumps in the water like he’s chasing them and then pushes them off and then falls in the water like, oh, darn it. And then so they float slowly away off screen in this rowboat. And then they’re just in a bar somewhere else like whoo

Clip: thank God we got away thank

Craig: God we rode to this other town

Todd: we missed that sequence when they were rowing down the river So much cut out of this movie, I’m sure. This is pretty typical Larry Cohen stuff though, you know, and 1 thing that, you know, he’s pretty admired for was he was his own guy and he would, he was a probably 1 of the, 1 of the ultimate renegade filmmakers, shot very guerrilla style. His movies were very, very cheap, but he had a knack for finding older, out-of-work actors, like, you know, people who had won Academy Awards in the past, who were hardworking, extremely talented actors and   actresses who were just older and nobody wanted to hire him anymore. And so he’d be like, well, hell, these guys won Oscars. I’m going to get them for my movie. And so he could get these people really cheap. 1 of the last people he got for his movies was Bette Davis. Back in the late 80s, Bette Davis, mid 80s, Bette Davis was on television a lot touring these talk shows and he’s watching TV and he’s thinking, my gosh, this woman, the only reason she’s out there doing all these talk shows is she clearly wants work. And   so I’ll write something for her and he just literally will sit down and write a script in several days and he wrote a script called Wicked Stepmother.

Clip: Oh yeah.

Craig: Yeah, and

Todd: this is at the time Bette Davis was really suffering from cancer, although nobody knew it at that time, but she just, you know, she never looked fantastic as she got older, but she was just extremely gaunt and extremely just kind of looked like she was maybe nearing the end of her life. And she plays in this movie and apparently midway through or so she up and left. She made some excuse that she had to go and she just didn’t come back. And I can’t remember what her excuses were, something about health or whatever, but it turned   out that he accidentally let her see a couple of the dailies and she didn’t like how she looked in them. Apparently she had dentures in and they kept falling out. And so, you know, she was just really, really embarrassed by it, and she just kind of left the movie. And so he rewrote a lot of stuff and reworked it so that they could finish the movie and release the movie, even though half of her scenes hadn’t been shot. He just gave a lot of it to the other female character and changed the plot a little bit.

Craig: I was gonna say, I feel like I’ve read about this too, and I could be wrong because I didn’t look this up, I didn’t know you were gonna bring it up, but I feel like, did he recast the role? Or rewrite the script so that her character was then being played by a different actress?

Todd: I don’t remember. No. No, he just kind of reworked the footage that he had with finished shooting the movie in a different way with a different sort of script. And he would do this, you know, he actually didn’t like to prepare a lot. And this is 1 thing that a lot of actors and movie makers said about Larry Cohen. They said 1 of the really refreshing and fun things about working with him is he had a lot of trust and gave his cast and crew a lot of control. So even though he would be writing the   script and he’d be directing it, if somebody had a cool idea, he’d go with it. Or he’d even say to an actor, like, let’s do this or let’s do that. He came out of a time when writers were very respected and for example in the TV world when you know back in the 60s when he was involved in television production he said writers were on the set all the time it was part of their job they would come to the set because there would always need to be rewrites. The writers were very much a collaborative part   of the process. Whereas it seems like now writers are very much shut out. To even get a script that’s written by 1 writer and hasn’t been doctored up by 15 in the meantime is kind of rare. And so He very much had that spirit when he was working on the movies and that’s why actors really liked working with him so much As he let them take risks and they felt like they were in good hands Oh, I don’t know watching this movie you kind of wonder a little bit, right? But yeah Michael Moriarty loved working with   him they worked together a lot and he even kind of gave Michael Moriarty his start and they ended up working really well together and Michael Moriarty had a lot of fantastic things to say about how he really allowed him to stretch himself as an actor, try these sort of things that he wouldn’t normally have tried and even this character of Mo Rutherford he really enjoyed doing. So, you know, I mean, he has that reputation. But anyway, yeah, so a lot of his movies have all these famous people in them. Some of them kind of passed their   prime or some of them, whatever, but he was able to get them really, really cheap because of it. So he could put together a movie with this sort of high production value. And the other way that he would get production value with his movies is he would just go out and steal shots. You know when you’re out shooting a film normally the right way to do is to go and get permits. Yeah. Everywhere you’re gonna shoot you have to get a permit and go. But you can always just go out without a permit and hope you   don’t get caught. And he would do this all the time, like with most of his movies, get these insane situations where he would hide cameras everywhere and just go out in the streets of New York and do this elaborate sequence where he did a couple of black exploitation movies where a cop shoots a black man in the middle of an intersection like New York City and he filmed this from multiple angles from cameras that were kind of hidden right out there in the crowd and just see how people walking by would react and that would be   included in the movie. And so like you see that in this film, even though most of these locations are a little more isolated, you could see that they had that control. You can still see this kind of, for worse, I think in this movie. But you know, whatever. It’s like he’s clearly got a very small budget he’s working with. He’s trying to do the best that he can with that budget that he has. And he’s got a rowboat instead of a boat with a motor. And so they’re trying to make it work. It ends up looking   a little silly in this movie, and I think this is probably not 1 of his best, I would say.

Craig: Well, yeah, I mean, a lot of what you said about writers kind of being shut out, I mean, I think he, from what I’ve read, he experienced that as well, And he really was more prolific as a writer than he was as a director. I mean, he was a jack of all trades. He was a writer, director, producer. But it appears, based on the very little research that I’ve done, that he was really kind of well respected for his writing and but like he did I think it was a television show called the invaders that was   pretty successful but he wrote the initial treatment for it and I don’t know you know maybe the pilot or some of the initial episodes and then eventually he was just kind of shut out and he said that had it been up to him creatively he would have probably taken it in a different direction. Now whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing I don’t know but I you know I just read that he had kind of experienced some of those things too and it’s great that some people I’ve also read that he was   quite the character. Now I don’t that could mean any number of things. I know that he didn’t actually write, in a physical sense, his stuff. He dictated everything into a tape recorder, as opposed to physically writing it or typing it up or whatever. Which is how Rod Serling worked, actually. Yeah, I was going to say, it’s not that that’s terribly bizarre, but a little quirky. But Garrett Morris, chocolate chip Charlie, was at some point, much later, asked about this film. And he said that the production was just crazy and he was asked specifically about Larry Cohen,   his director, and his response was, I was taught growing up that if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all, and he wouldn’t comment any further. So not everybody enjoyed their experience with him as much as maybe Michael Moriarty did. So for sure. But, you know, there’s nothing wrong, especially in Hollywood, with being unique and quirky and different. It’s actually nice and refreshing. So I’ll give him credit for that. This movie may not have been my cup of tea, but I appreciate somebody who’s willing to step outside the box. I’ve   certainly never seen another movie like this. He’s certainly not relying on, you know, popular or common tropes. It’s different. It’s a risk. It doesn’t work for me, but you know, more power to you.

Todd: And that was 1 thing that a lot of people said about him. Again, if you’re at all interested in this man, you should really watch this documentary called King-Koen. It’s like a takeoff of King Kong. It’s so interesting. And a lot of things that they credit him with is just having this incredible imagination. Like he was an idea guy. He had these high concept ideas, sort of before high concept movies and high concept television series were a thing. Something like Lost comes along, seems like something he would have written. Even like The Invaders apparently had a   little bit of that vibe and that bent to it and Hollywood just couldn’t take it, you know, television couldn’t take it at the time. They said, no, this is a little too out there, people aren’t going to go with it, you need to get a little more traditional. But the very first movie he directed in 1972 was called Bone and it was 1 of the first quote-unquote black exploitation movies. He had a black actor in here and it’s this whole deal and it’s it’s it’s violent, it’s exciting and whatever. The guy who starred in that now   his name is Yafet Koto, he’s not a household name but if you saw him you would recognize him from a lot of films of the time. And then later on, right after this, he did a movie called Black Caesar for starring Fred Williamson. And Fred Williamson is huge, especially, you know, got his start in the black exploitation. It’s been working forever. He’s a bit of a character himself. But they both said, look, this guy basically busted open the doors for us. He didn’t start the black exploitation genre, but he’s 1 of those people who said, I   don’t care, we’re going to do this and it’s going to be fun. And I, you know, he, Larry Cohen said, every movie is an exploitation movie. So I don’t get the whole notion of black exploitation or whatever. You have a bunch of black actors in a movie and you’re doing something about gang violence or whatever. That’s just what it is. And, you know, he did those kinds of movies kind of a bit ahead of his time. 1 movie that we did was It’s Alive, which was hugely controversial when it came out. It’s laughable now because almost   anything goes, but at that time, this notion that there’d be a movie about a killer baby was extremely offensive. He had a really hard time getting someone to distribute it, and just through his relentless persistence, it came out and it was quite successful and spawned a few sequels. So, you know, he just always seemed to be maybe just a little bit too ahead of his time in some ways but with a guy like this right who’s doing all this stuff and taking all these risks not everything is gonna hit right and it seems like this is   1 of those movies it’s just just didn’t really work

Craig: well right but you mentioned something like It’s Alive, which ultimately on paper, it shouldn’t have worked, I don’t think, but we watched it and we actually thought that it was, I mean, in execution, not amazing, but I think that both of us cried at the end of it.

Todd: We were impressed with the depth in it, actually, weren’t we?

Craig: Right, and it was subversive. And Again, with social commentary, I think that it was commentary on the dangers of the pharmaceutical industry, which was a big deal in the 80s when it came out. I think that there was commentary there also on the notion of abortion. He had something to say, and he did it in a different and interesting way. And that movie again, you know, it’s a B movie, but Cohen himself, I read a quote, he said somewhere, these big blockbuster A movies are going to fade into oblivion because people are going to stop talking   about them. It’s the B movies that do something interesting and subversive that people are going to continue to talk about for a long time. Now, I don’t know if that’s accurate, but I think that he has a point, you know, to do something that is different, that is going to have people buzzing and talking. And you know, here we are, 2019, and we’re talking about an evil ice cream movie.

Todd: Not a great evil ice cream movie but there has never been an evil ice cream movie before or since. Right. Right. There’s a movie that he did in 1976 called God Told Me To. Have you heard of this film?

Craig: I don’t think so.

Todd: I encountered it in a bargain bin type. It was like a DVD in a dollar store bin, but I read the synopsis on the back and I was really intrigued by it because it was this sound cool it’s about these you know people these murders or whatever that are happening these crazy people are killing people in the city and when they’re encountered they basically say God told me to do it and then they kill themselves and I thought oh this is interesting You’re kind of unraveling this mystery of what’s going on here. It’s a kind of   weird cult thing. And about halfway through this movie, it takes a total left turn and becomes so whacked out that it’s almost impossible to describe. And I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who’s watching it, but it’s just like, I mean, it’s just insane that anybody would make this movie. Again, very high concept and really interesting. And just like it lives, 1 thing that really struck us about that movie was that even though it had that element of the killer baby and all that, you know, we cried by the end because there was this subtext,   it was this father coming to terms with his son. And that was really touching, really emotionally touching. And in This God Told Me To, it’s also a little bit about this guy coming to terms with faith and kind of has these ideas as far as like the nature of God and stuff like that and belief and religion and things that ends up in the middle of this crazy plot that has this sort of Jesus-like character with a vagina on the side of him.

Clip: Oh my gosh.

Todd: Oh, he is just so crazy. You’ve just got to see it to believe it. Like, at the end of the day, there are just some elements in there that kind of stick with you. And so There are times when I feel like he really had a good handle on character. And I just didn’t feel like this, it just felt like maybe there’s just too much cut out of this movie. I’d like to give him that credit. You know, maybe there was, he had something, a kernel of that in this movie that just is completely lost. I   just felt like this movie was like all plot and very little substance. You know, it had this social commentary on it, which was funny and funny, and at times executed very well, but it was it, you know, it was kind of all surface and didn’t have any of that other trademark stuff that his movies often have.

Craig: Well, and I can’t say that I, I don’t know, I don’t want to be too tough on it. I can’t say that I enjoyed much of it at all, but I really felt like it really fell apart at the end. Like, I felt like the last 15 minutes, it seemed to me like they were trying really hard for the comedy at the end, and it was just falling totally flat for me. I mean, you know, they think they’ve defeated the stuff at this factory and they’re trying to get the word out to people. So they’re at   this radio station and chocolate chip Charlie shows up and it turns out that he’s infected by the stuff and his head explodes and the stuff chases whatever her name is, Nicole. And they somehow find out that the only way to neutralize it is to burn it. And at 1 point Michael Moriarty’s character cuts in half this enormous electrical wire and this was the part with the special effects that I said were really, really bad. Oh, they were horrible. He jumps up and he electrocutes it. There’s another part too where this stuff.

Todd: I know what you’re gonna say.

Craig: It jumps on his face. Yes. Then Nicole’s idea to rescue him is to set his head on fire.

Clip: It’s to burn it off of

Todd: him, yeah.

Craig: Like that. Hold on, hold on, I’m gonna set your head on fire.

Todd: I was thinking that too, I was like, oh my gosh, well this isn’t gonna end well for anybody, but nary a scratch on him or his hair piece.

Craig: Oh no. Yeah, no,

Todd: he was

Craig: totally fine. But it goes, I felt like it was totally going for the comedy at the end and it just didn’t work for me. And then the last scene was like, okay, So Mo, the main guy, approaches the CEOs who were funding the stuff and he goes to them and they tell him that they are going to rebrand it as the taste. And it’s only going to have a certain percentage of the stuff in it not enough, you know, to cause people harm or whatever. And he’s like, oh, well, I’m going to force you at gunpoint   with this little kid Jason shows up to. He’s like, we, the 2 of us are badasses, and we’re going to force you to eat cases and cases of the stuff until you die. And then they do, and then that’s the end. It just seemed like such a weird change in character. All of a sudden he’s this wicked badass who’s just totally down with killing people. Now granted, they’re bad people I guess, you know, they represent the corporate greed and blah blah, But you and your child sidekick are just gonna go around and kill people. Hell no.   It was weird. And that’s it. Then it’s over. Except for Nicole delivers an epilogue. Like, it’s so weird!

Todd: Yeah. And there’s a scene, I’m trying to think if it’s in the version that you saw where there was sort of a black market thing, like it

Craig: showed that. Yeah, yeah.

Todd: Like it’s just never ending. And I mean,

Craig: I know that’s- It’s like crack now, like shady people in alleyways are receiving shipments of it. In the 80s you would always see in the movies when they would get a shipment of heroin or cocaine or whatever and somebody would lick their finger and stick it in there and taste it. Like, okay, yeah, it’s good. This is the real stuff. Yeah, like they’re doing that with the stuff.

Todd: Because this is so appealing, right? I mean,

Craig: you can’t really, we don’t

Todd: really see the pleasure that this brings. I mean, they think it tastes great, That’s about it. It’s not like it throws them into throngs of ecstasy that we can see.

Craig: Well, I don’t know. There are suggestions, like it gives people a lot of energy and they don’t have to eat anything else. And the mom at 1 point. And they lose weight. Yeah, the mom’s

Clip: like, I’ve already lost 5 pounds this week and I feel great.

Todd: Like, so stupid. And that in itself is part of the parody, right? You know, these products, they’re supposed to do absolutely everything for you and there’s nothing bad about it and it turns out they’re killing us as we find

Craig: out so many times. It’s like, oh, Lestra. Remember, oh, Lestra. Like, here, it’s good for you. It’s really, really low fat. It’ll cause you to leak out of your butthole, but that’s

Todd: all right, don’t worry about it.

Craig: Dude, I love

Todd: the Lestra. Nothing ever leaked out of my butthole.

Craig: I’ve never tasted Doritos so good. And so guilt

Todd: free is when I was eating the Lestra Doritos. I’m glad I was born at a time anyway. No, but like, you know, that’s kind of the thing, right? It’s gotta end in this way that the corporation eventually wins out. You know, I mean, it makes sense that it’s never over because it is never over That’s part of the commentary, right? Right. You can’t ever get away from these guys But a movie like for example, they live huh just does it in a more satisfying way like at the end Yeah, the corporation does went out but he   gets to take out a whole bunch of them at the end, and he sticks a big middle finger up and is like, F you, you know? While he’s going out, and there’s just something really exciting and fun about that way of ending it, that this movie, it just didn’t, it just kind of fizzled. Yeah. You know, it just wasn’t as fun. Plus we were all just, I don’t know, but like you said, I was so ready for this movie to be over by

Craig: the time it was over definitely

Todd: another scene. Oh, okay Oh, God. There’s another scene. Oh, okay. There’s this little epilogue credits, please good, right?

Craig: Yeah, so you know How many times do we do this, Craig? We give tribute episodes for people.

Todd: I feel really guilty about it. We pick these

Craig: movies. Nonetheless, Mr. Cohen, you know, I still have mad respect for a guy who, you know, was kind of, you know, this gonzo player in the industry. And obviously he was doing something right because he was prolific. He worked all the time. People had a lot of respect for him as do I. So maybe we just picked the wrong movie. Maybe we should have done God Told Me to Do It.

Todd: Or Cue the Winked Serpent or something.

Craig: I think that we picked this 1 because it was so familiar to us being kids of the 80s and we had never seen it. And we wanted to see it. Yeah, we wanted to see it. I wanted to see it. And I’m glad I saw it. I don’t ever need to see it again. But you know, now I’ve seen it and It is what it is. I do not mean to speak ill of the dead. I mean no disrespect. I have a lot of respect for this guy. But I can’t say that I can give this   movie any glowing recommendation.

Todd: No. Me neither. Me neither. Go check out another 1. Go check out It Lives. That 1 kind of gets the flavor of what’s going on in this movie, but it does it in a much more satisfying way. Yeah. Yeah. 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 if you just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. You can also find us at our web page where you can stream our episodes live and visit all of our back catalogs. TwoGuys.Red40Net.com. Of   course you can also find us anywhere you can find podcasts. Once again, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw is who we are. And if you like what you heard please drop us a note on our webpage, you can go to our Facebook page, give us some requests, let us know what you thought of this movie. We love hearing from our listeners. Until next time, I’m Todd

Craig: and I’m Craig

Todd: with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

It’s not the Gremlin-knockoff you always thought it was!

Episode 167, 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: Let’s see, we wrapped up our month of sequels and now We’re getting back into stuff that we want to do, right Craig? Yeah. So, no, we wanted to do everything we’ve done up to this point. Of course, if we didn’t want to do it, we wouldn’t do it. That’s true. What we did do this week was Critters from 1986. I really thought I had seen this movie before. I swear I had seen this movie before. I think maybe I’ve seen   1 of the sequels instead, because watching it was a bit of a surprise to me this time around. How about you, Craig? Had you seen this film before?

Craig: Well, I kind of feel the same way you did. Like, I was sure that I had, and I’m sure that I have but even in that certainty I knew that it had been I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid and I Didn’t remember anything about it except for you know what the critters look like But so yeah, so I went in, you know, not knowing and remembering watching these movies when I was a kid. And I remember enjoying them when I was a kid, but I just went in with really low expectations. I just   thought, you know, this is 1 of those movies that I liked when I was a kid, but I’m sure that it’s probably awful, but that’s okay. I’m prepared for that and hopefully it’ll be fun. And I was really surprised. Yeah? Yeah, I felt like this movie was better than it had any right to be. Yeah?

Todd: Are you,   are you,   I don’t know, what do you think?

Craig: Ummm… Ha ha ha ha ha!

Todd: Maybe it was better. You’re right, no, you’re right. It, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, but then it had any right to be. It kicked off and I instantly was thinking, oh, this is sort of Roger Corman style Movie making right? It’s the effects are a little cheap at least at first.

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: the sets are a little cheap Everything’s quite derivative, you know even Critters itself was accused of being derivative because it only came out about 2 years after Gremlins did and it’s Gremlins, Critters, but that turns out to be not the case. In fact, apparently the writer of the movie, Dominic Muir Muir? Muir? I don’t know how you say it. M-U-I-R. He came up with this script long before Gremlins. It was based on a childhood dream that he had. And I would say, yeah, I believe it. It sounds like they actually even had to make some changes   to it in production in order to downplay the similarities between Gremlins and this movie. Although I don’t know what those changes were, but you could be forgiven in 1986 for thinking, oh, this is kind of a knockoff of Gremlins, except for the fact that it takes a little bit more of a sci-fi bent to it. Well, a lot more sci-fi bent to it, honestly, than Gremlins did. Gremlins is a little more supernatural. Monster movie. Yeah, yeah, that monster movie. And this is, the critters are aliens. They’re escapees from an asteroid prison, and it’s all very nebulous   and unknown really what’s going on there in the opening scenes. But you know, you get these, I don’t wanna say low budget, but sort of mid-level budget, sci-fi effects and costumes and sets and things. You got a little guy floating around on a floating platform straight out of Dune who somehow is maybe in charge of this prison or something. And when these critters have escaped, which we don’t see a big production about it, it’s all just, oh, they’ve escaped somehow in a ship, and he gets sent 2 bounty hunters off to get them. And I don’t   know, you know, like, I’m looking at this and I’m thinking battle beyond the stars I’m thinking some of these other sort of lower budget Roger Corman films except the effects were a little bit better I think

Craig: yeah,

Todd: they were just times when it dipped into That let level of territory. I think especially with the bounty hunters I mean these bounty hunters come on the screen and at first they have these heads that are undefined. They’re these like supposed to be green, glowing heads and faces, but it’s half done with these sort of like white condoms pulled over, some actors’ faces, and then half done with this odd camera effect where somebody painted a glow over them. And it’s not very consistent from scene to scene when you see these bounty hunters, how they pull it   off. And so it just has that unpolished look of, I don’t know, the kind of movie I usually like to watch. So no real complaints there. Ha ha ha

Craig: ha. Right.

Todd: So I don’t really know where I’m going with this, except to sort of describe my initial impressions. And then as the movie went on and on and on, I felt like it went on and on and on. I just, I don’t know, it seemed to lack the focus that Gremlins had. It’s really going hard for Charm to be the sort of charming family movie, kind of like Gremlins was or ET or those kind of films. But I found it kind of lacking that arena too, that really never quite picked up for me. And so, I don’t   know man, I was, you’re right, it was better than I probably had any right to be, But I can’t say I was engaged through the whole thing and I was kind of ready for it to be over by the end of it

Craig: Well, that’s fair enough. I agree with you like the effects Well, just everything about it is not as good as some of those great movies from the 80s Like you said like Gremlins or ET. I mean those are classics for a reason But it had some similar charm and it even had, I don’t know, I felt like because of its limitations, it felt like it had more limitations, whether it be due to budget or whatever it might be, more so than some of those other movies. And I felt like it was because of those, some of   those limitations that it had its own kind of charm going on. Like you said, the bounty hunters, they’re like, silly putty heads look kind of goofy. And the set pieces, gosh, I’m trying to think of other movies that we’ve seen that it reminded me of, like Galaxy of Terror, kind of,

Todd: maybe. Definitely Galaxy of Terror.

Craig: Yeah, clearly lower budget, but that’s fine. And something that surprised me is, you know, you’ve got that whole escape and I thought there were really cute things like the critters, we’ll call them that, I guess technically they’re crites. But some of the cute stuff I thought was they talk, like they have this kind of made up language, I guess. The creator said that he kinda combined an Eastern language. I don’t remember if he said Japanese or Chinese with like French or something. I don’t remember. But it sounds funny and it’s funny when they speak it because   they subtitle it and you know, they’re goofy and crass and That’s funny. 1 of the things that I thought was a little bit disappointing was that this is not even an hour and a half long. It’s only an hour and 26 minutes. And you don’t even see a crite until half an hour in. Yeah. Which seemed a little bit prolonged for me. So that would be 1 complaint. But once you do see them, I mean they’re clearly puppets. If I’m not mistaken, the crites themselves are all entirely practical. And they look at, I mean they kind   of look like, you know, a puppet with a puppeteer’s hand up its butt or shaking it from behind. They’re pretty limited in what they do. You know, they mostly just kind of open their mouths. That’s it. And like when they move around it’s funny it’s almost like they took like rubber bouncy balls that we would play with when we were kids and covered them in hair and then just threw them around like.

Todd: Which I thought was was actually kind of cool. You know, I guess it is a little similar to, I’m remembering now that when Gizmo gets wet, doesn’t he pop off these little furry

Craig: little.

Todd: Yeah, yeah. So there’s a little similarity there, but I think it was a good use of their limitations. I mean, Just like you’re describing, it’s obvious these guys did not have the budget that Spielberg had for Gremlins, but, or Dante I should say, had for Gremlins, but they solved that problem by, I think it’s cool actually, that they can spin into these balls that just sort of roll around. It neatly solves that problem of how do we show these people walking? How do we show these

Craig: puppets walking?

Todd: But it’s also kind of scary, like this idea that these things can just, boom, they fly into your room so quickly just by rolling in, and they can just as easily roll down the stairs and roll out right between your legs. They have a mobility, I guess, in that way that the gremlins didn’t get. And that made them a little more otherworldly and cool in that way. I thought that was actually a unique thing, but you’re right, it’s totally furry balls running around.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. And so, you know, there’s that element of it. I like the design of the creatures. I think that they’re, to a certain degree, kind of cute, but at the same time menacing. Like they’ve got these great big huge gaping mouths full of these little tiny razor sharp teeth, and they’ve got these glowing red eyes, and there’s an element to them where they’ve got, you know, kind of like these porcupine spikes that stand up on their fur and that they can shoot out and like tranquilize people with. I thought that the design was   cute and that the execution was efficient. You know, it worked for what they needed. Beyond that, I just thought like technical elements, like it’s not poorly shot. No. Like it actually looks pretty good and the score was fun I thought in in various parts of the movie and 1 of the things that kind of blew me away was that it’s an incredibly recognizable cast like It seems like almost every face in the movie you recognize from something else. Yes, absolutely. Mostly from the 80s, but some of the actors, like 1 of my favorites, Dee Wallace, who   plays the mom. I was talking to my partner last night and I was like, you know, D Wallace, the mom from ET, she’s in it and she plays the mom in this and he was like, does D Wallace ever not play the mom? And I was like, no. But she’s in it and then there’s lots of other, like I said, not necessarily huge names, but all of them recognizable. Another very recognizable face is a very young Billy Zane as like the teenage love interest. That was funny. I completely forgot about

Todd: that.

Craig: Yeah, for real. And the acting is not bad either. No. It seemed like they were taking it seriously. They weren’t hamming it up for the cameras much. I mean, there’s 1 character, Charlie, and that’s kind of his character. He’s kind of crazy Charlie. And so he hams it up a little bit. And the bounty hunters are, even though they’re playing it straight, their characters are kind of hammy just because of the nature of their characters. But beyond that, you know, it’s not poorly acted. I just I was surprised. I’m not suggesting in any way that it’s   a great movie or any kind of classic. It’s certainly a B-movie. I don’t know what the budget was, but it made decent money when it came out. I think that it suffered from the fact that it came after Gremlins because everybody just kind of assumed that it was a copycat, even though it really wasn’t. Even Siskel or Ebert, 1 of them said, well, for a copy, it’s really not that bad. And that’s unfortunate because it wasn’t. It was an original idea. It just happened to come on the heels of Gremlins. And I do think that it   suffered for that, but there’s a lot to be said for it. Another critic, I don’t remember who it was, said that it’s a fun little romp, and it seems like it was made by people who really had a good time doing it. And that was the sense that I got too. You know, it seemed like they were taking this seriously and trying to put together the best movie they could for this type of movie. And ultimately, I think that it was pretty successful. I don’t remember the sequels. I kind of remember the second movie, and all   I remember about it was that there was a restaurant called the Hungry Heifer, and it had a really funny theme song, and we used to run around singing that theme song a lot, but that’s all I remember.

Todd: You guys had an interesting childhood.

Craig: Yeah well and there were 4 of them all together I don’t number 4 was you know like critters in space which is kind of ironic considering that they are space aliens, but I don’t really remember those, but I do remember that I would get excited when I would see them on the shelves. Back in the day, any of our younger listeners, like millennial and younger, won’t remember that before the days of the internet, you didn’t even really know when films were being made necessarily, when they were going to come out, unless they were, you know, like   box office, like blockbuster movies that they would show the trailers on TV. Smaller movies like this, especially the sequels, that would just appear on the video store shelves. And I remember getting excited when the sequels would come out and I would always rent them and I don’t remember not enjoying them. But I don’t know, I guess I should stick with this movie.

Todd: Well, I think it’s the tongue in cheek nature of this movie from the very beginning that kind of saves it. Because, I don’t know how to put this, it’s the jokes and the laughs that they’re making, you know, they’re serious about making a good movie, right? But they’re serious also that they’re making a goofy movie. Sure. And that they’re literally cracking jokes in this movie and making all kinds of references. Like, all right, D Wallace was an ET.   There are a   couple references to ET in this movie. The boy in this movie tries to run his thermometer under hot water in order to get out of going from school, which is what he did in, you know, what the boy did an ET as well. Although it doesn’t work this time around. There’s a point where a creator comes face to face with a stuffed ET doll and, you know, kind of looks at it and is playing around with it. And that’s kind of funny. And There were elements like this, obviously in Gremlins too, right? They had these little   jokes where the Gremlins were really playful and they did these kind of sick things. They were kind of a tongue in cheek nature, especially when you get like to Gremlins too, the new batch, when every Gremlin is their own character and some of them are talking and all that weird stuff. But with this movie, like, they didn’t have much else to really go on because I felt like the budget was so cheap. And I think that the thing that really brings this movie down a little bit is maybe the writing. Maybe there wasn’t a lot to   do with, that they could do maybe, with these critters who come from space and basically invade a farmhouse. That’s what this movie is. Yes. And so they had to spice it up by bringing these bounty hunters in who are sent down. And these bounty hunters can take the shape of people that they see and so the first shape that 1 of the bounty hunters takes while the other 1 for some unknown reason decides to go with his glowing green head for a while is this like famous who has this number 1 hit song on TV, some   80s glammed out, you know, hairband rocker dude. And so he’s walking around this movie as this famous person, only it’s not until toward the end of the film that the boy even recognizes him. Like, I thought they were gonna go somewhere with that like you know you’d see the news things like this famous Rocker guy is running around with the blaster like blasting people, but but that’s just sort of left on the floor you know and The movie is fun when the critters are in there, but like you said, they don’t come in until pretty late.   We get all this crap with the bounty hunters, and even when the critters do come in, we get a lot of crap with the bounty hunters in between. And let’s just lay it on the table here. These are the worst bounty hunters you could possibly hire to go on some intergalactic quest and take out these critters. Their weapons aren’t suitable for the job. They move extremely slowly. They don’t seem to know where they’re going or what to do. And all they do is choose screen time. You know, and that’s so we’re kind of divided. Like we   want to get into this fun critter movie and see this family, but it gets chopped up by these scenes of bounty hunters like walking sinisterly into a bowling alley. Right. And looking around and nobody knows who they are. And the only thing they can do is grab a guy every now and then and go, I want the crights, wear the crights. And when they don’t get whatever answer they’re looking for, they just start shooting things and people with these giant guns, and then they leave. And I mean, is this supposed to be suspenseful and scary? And   I mean, am I supposed to be on the edge of my seat, like as the bounty hunters are closing in on the critters on the farmhouse? Like, no, you know? It’s boring and it’s plotting, and it’s like, get me through this stuff. Finally, toward the end of the movie, when we have our big climax where the crit, the bounty hunters are where they’re supposed to be, they’re at the farmhouse, which I don’t think was actually that far from where they landed, which I don’t think was very far from where the critters landed, but okay, finally they   loop back around and they get there. These guys are kind of on the same side, right, as the humans. Like, That’s the thing that’s kind of hanging over my head through this whole thing is these guys are coming in and blasting up a bunch of humans. But really in a better written film, they’re getting the help of the humans to find the critters. And then when they get there, they’ve got these giant guns and they just blast giant holes into everything and they’re aiming them toward these little creatures that are about you know 6 inches tall.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Like I think maybe it’s supposed to be part of the joke that they’re blasting the house apart, trying to destroy these tiny little critters, but it’s just monotonous and tedious for me, watching this go on. And so it was hard for me to get that same sense of thrill and wonder and excitement and really to get into that plot, it was hard for me to do that, and that’s why I think I just couldn’t wait for the movie to be over by the end of

Craig: it. Well, I think you kinda nailed it. I hadn’t really thought about it, but hearing you talk about it, you’re right. The central story is about this family, this nice, wholesome farm family of Helen who’s played by Dee Wallace and her husband is Jay, played by Billy Greenbush, who I feel like I looked at his IMDB page and I couldn’t really peg anything but he’s so familiar. I know that I have seen him in a million things. And then their son Brad who is played by Scott Grimes, another incredibly familiar face from the 80s. The daughter,   April, I don’t recognize her so much. She’s like the teenager, and it’s very stereotypical. And they are the central characters. And then you’ve also got this kind of goofy off the wall character named Charlie who was kind of typical I think in the 80s but that you don’t really see very much today because it’s a little bit not PC. You know he’s kind of the slow 1. Yeah. In this case, I feel like he’s got some backstory. Like he was like a star pitcher or something, but I don’t know if he got injured or if he   just started drinking because like now he’s the town drunk or whatever, but he just is kind of the slow 1. In the original Leprechaun with Jennifer Aniston, they had a similar character. The guy that was just kinda, you know, you like him, he’s very childlike and you root for him, but he’s kind of the slow 1. And I don’t know, in the 80s, for better or for worse, we weren’t as sensitive about those things, but you just don’t see it much anymore. And Charlie is an endearing character, I really like him. And the actor who plays   him, Don Keith-Opper, he does a good job. But that’s the central story. And you’re right, now that I think about it, It seems like all the bounty hunter stuff is really just To stretch for time. It seems like it. Okay, you’re saying, you know, they’re going around shooting everybody up. I don’t remember them hurting anybody. They cause a lot of destruction, you know, like they go to a church and for no apparent reason. That’s the other thing. Their only purpose is they’re looking, you’re absolutely right when you say they’re absolutely terrible bounty hunters because all they   can do is just wherever they happen to end up, we want the crites. Like, these people are hiding them. Like, I don’t know. And then when the crites aren’t produced, they just start shooting the place up. I didn’t get the impression that they were actually shooting or hurting people, but they were certainly causing a lot of destruction in their wake. We want the Krites. Oh, really? Who are they, some new team? The Krites. Look, Mr. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do like that you said that the 1 bounty hunter takes the rock star   persona and he’s played by Terrence Mann. And Terrence Mann has always just to me been the poor man’s Tim Curry. Like, he’s like kind of a taller, hotter Tim Curry, but not as talented. But pretty to look at throughout. And then I thought that it was also, you know, it doesn’t really make any sense. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. But the other 1, like, just can’t decide who he wants

Todd: to be.

Craig: At first, he’s just got, you know, his nebulous head. And then he just takes on the form of anybody he happens to randomly see. So the first person that they come in contact with is this cop, the first casualty of the crites on earth and so he takes the image of the dead injured cop and of course this confuses everybody in the town because it’s a super small town, so they know everybody. And then they go to the church and he’s the cop and everybody’s like, hey, Mr. Cop, why are you here and dressed crazy?” And   then he like, it’s almost like every time he transforms, it’s like he gets indigestion, like his stomach starts grumbling. And then he turns into somebody else. And he turns into the preacher from the church and everybody sees it happen and are all surprised. Then they go to a bar and Charlie is there and of course they get into a bar fight and they shoot the place up. He turns into hot Charlie. Charlie’s kind of this disheveled, drunken looking guy, but then when the space guy turns into him he’s all sleek and cool and I don’t know   I mean it’s it’s kind of fun I think I this feels like and I don’t know if this was the intention or whether it was just that in the 80s these movies were being made, I don’t know. But it feels like a movie for kids. And not little kids necessarily, but for 11, 12 year old Craig in the 80s. Like, it’s pretty benign. Yes, there’s violence, but there’s not a lot of gore, there aren’t a lot of kills. I think only 1 person dies, right? Isn’t it just… Like 1 or 2. The cop? Yeah, 1 or   2. And it’s not gory, those kills. No. It’s more just kind of about mayhem and things blowing up and silly jokes. Like the critters, 1 of my favorite lines was at some point, the farm is under siege. No, 2 guys get killed, I guess, cause Steve, Billy Zane gets killed at some

Todd: point too.   Billy Zane, who is the most atypical, straight male teenage boy I’ve ever seen. I think he’s probably not straight. He has an incredibly hard time making out with his girlfriend in this movie.

Craig: Well, I don’t know about Billy Zane in general, but if he wanted to be on my team, that’d be perfectly fine with me. He was. He was. He was hot and he was, woo!

Todd: I’d never seen him this young. I really hadn’t.

Craig: Yeah, yeah. And he’s still not bad to look at. He’s got a lot less hair now than he used to, But there’s 1 point where the family has been attacked. The poor dad takes the brunt of it. He gets attacked several times. And there’s 1 point where they’re kind of locked outside their house, I think. And the mom has a gun. And we see the 2 of the crites on the porch and they speak in their language their language is really funny it’s just funny the juxtaposition of them talking with the subtitles underneath. It’s just funny.

Todd: It is.

Craig: It is funny. And these 2, these 2 crites talking back and forth, 1 of them says, they have weapons, and the other 1 says, so what? And then the 1 that says, so what? Gets blown away with the shotgun, and the other 1 goes, fuck.

Todd: I was surprised to see the F-bomb in the PG movie. I can only imagine it’s because it was printed on the screen that they got away with

Craig: it. Well, it’s PG-13, and I have always heard, now I don’t know where, I can’t source this, But I’ve always heard that in PG-13 movies you can have 1 f-bomb so Just figure out where you really want it because you only get 1 Here is where they used theirs, And I thought it was really funny. And so there’s funny stuff like that. Yeah, there’s funny stuff like that. I don’t know. It’s cute and charming in its own little way. It’s not spectacular. I don’t know if I agree with you that it’s boring. It does take a   little while to get to the good stuff. And then once you do get to the good stuff, you kind of have to slog through some of the bounty hunter stuff. Even though I didn’t find that entirely boring, I just found the bounty hunters to be dumb as characters, but You know it lots of shooting and explosions. It’s not like it was it’s not like nothing was happening But the the the central part of it the the farmhouse under siege. I actually thought was kind of a good

Todd: romp. Well, when we were there, it was good, but again, I felt like even those moments suffered a little bit from that aspect of we just didn’t see the critters enough. And again, to make comparisons, again, to Gremlins, where Gremlins really gives you that feeling of a multiplying horde of creatures that are just taking over a town, you know? And they do this, I think part of it too, that they’re able to accomplish that is because they give you different scenes of different things happening to different people, right? So there’s the old lady who gets attacked.   There’s the old man who gets attacked There’s the this you know this barbershop or this other place It gets attacked even though we keep coming back to the main characters where they are. This movie really doesn’t have that. It’s pretty well focused on this farmhouse. But the scenes with the critters there attacking people, being a direct threat to somebody, they would kind of pop in and pop out, you know? I didn’t even get a sense of how many there were. I mean, come to think of it, you know, were there just like 8 or maybe 7?

Craig: In the beginning, when there was the escape, they said that 8 escaped.

Todd: Oh, okay, all right, so maybe that’s why. Maybe I was imagining it to be you know, this kind of ever multiplying herd of people But really was just 8 escape critters But with there only 8 of them and at any given time maybe like 3 of them are in 1 room And so there’s really nothing happening in the other rooms and sometimes they’re outside on the porch and sometimes they’re inside but then they’re sort of outside again and there are these sort of long stretches where the family’s just cowering in the living room and nothing is   happening you know they’re they’re talking with each other they’re tending their wounds I wonder where so-and-so is I wonder what’s going on blah blah blah And they seem perfectly safe with the doors closed. And so, you know, there wasn’t just this impending attack sort of feeling that I got. It was only when they opened the doors and tried to walk out that maybe 1 or 2 of them would be there. Yeah. But then they would run away. And so, it’s kind of this touch and go thing that I didn’t really, it was hard. It was hard

Craig: to. And you’re right, especially for a while, if they could just be in the house, they were okay for a while. And they even comment on that outright. Eventually, the critters start getting into the house. But again, it’s just like somebody off set is throwing a hairy ball through a window, you know, like that’s how they get in there. And then they’re in. So it’s like, oh, we’re safe in here. They can’t get in. Oh, except now they can. And now they’ll chase us around in the house. 1 thing that I will say is, you know,   with this family and the family drama that’s going on, they play it as though this, it so could have gone the other way. They so could have played it super, super cornball and cheesy. And this could have been a super cornball cheesy movie to and to some extent it is but the actors especially the main family and especially Dee Wallace plays it straight yeah like like this it like that we’re really in danger and I really care about my family, and this isn’t something to hearty-har about. D. Wallace, she looks legitimately terrified.

Todd: Yeah, she does.

Craig: Throughout a lot of this movie, and she has moments of like genuine emotion. You know, there’s 1 point where they, her husband’s been attacked at least twice at this point and he’s not well because the critters can shoot these darts out of their backs and apparently they’re poison darts. It seems that the suggestion is that it’s not poison that’s intended to kill, but rather to sedate, because they don’t die from it, they just get really sleepy. But her husband’s not well, and so she’s trying to tend to him and the son, not intentionally, but it’s just   kind of pestering her and she lashes out at him.

Todd: He looks pretty sick mom.

Craig: I’m okay sport.

Todd: He’s fine. He doesn’t look fine to me. Why don’t you go check the windows? I already did.

Craig: Well, check them again!

Todd: It’s okay, Mom.

Craig: Oh, I’m… And it’s like 5 seconds of legitimate family drama. Like, what? Where did this come from? But it didn’t feel out of place to me. It worked, it worked. And I felt the connection with this family. And I believed that they cared about each other and were concerned about each other and eventually the dad has to send the son off for help and that’s a dilemma because he doesn’t want his kid to be in danger but both of the parents are incapacitated at that point. I thought, I liked that stuff.

Todd: Yeah, I agree with you there. I think that there was, there’s no question, like they seemed like a real family. They weren’t a Hollywood family. In fact, maybe to their detriment, they weren’t a Hollywood family. There’s no moment, there’s no kind of 1 person here who sweeps in and saves the day. That’s what in some ways really sets this movie apart and as real and authentic as that is, maybe it’s also a bit of a failing in the movie because it’s also not a case of where everybody came together and came up with a plan and   together we’re able to outwit them, you know? It’s just stuff happens, and sometimes this person shoots him, and sometimes this person shoots him. The sheriff who is a riot, because he’s always, he’s played by M. Emmett Walsh, he doesn’t have much to do, you know? He comes in and he really doesn’t do much There are a few scenes with him kind of going around to the places where the destruction have happened But once he gets to the farmhouse, he’s not really much help either Nobody’s really got a great idea of how to take care of these   people and then the bounty hunters come up and they’re really no better, but somehow they end up getting the upper hand at the end of the day. But there are moments, and I think this is where I think just Dee Wallace kind of steals the show. Like you said, she has all this emotion, but then there’s that 1 moment where I think they’re upstairs in the bedroom and they’re cowering, and she’s just kind of had it and so she picks up the shotgun and she blasts 1 of them through the door and kills him in the   hallway and then comes out and for a little bit of the movie she’s a bit of a Rambo and that was kind of fun to see but not you know hey cool I’m a Rambo kind of way but in a sort of a hysterical mother I know I know of nothing else to do than this kind of way.

Craig: Yes, I you know, I don’t have to tell you and if Those of you out there in the Internet land if you’ve listened to us before you know I’m a huge D Wallace fan, so I could go on and on about her Forever I think she’s great in this movie and there are so many little things like you said the sheriff again somebody who I can’t pinpoint him from anything precisely, but he has such a recognizable face. I just feel like I’ve seen him in a million things. And there are other people in this too. Of   course, it’s a new line film, which means the executive producer was Robert Shea. So his little sister, Lynn Shea, has a role, she’s the police dispatcher. I almost didn’t recognize her at first, she’s very young in this movie.

Todd: She is.

Craig: It actually.

Todd: It might be her best acting gig I’ve ever seen.

Craig: Oh gosh, I really like Lynne Shea. I love seeing her pop up in these movies and she really has made a career for herself as a horror actress on her own. Clearly her connection to her brother helped her in her career, but she’s really prolific as really kind of the star of all of those insidious movies. Yeah, that’s true. Or most of them.

Todd: I’m not really sold on her as an actress, but I thought that in this movie, she had a very unique and very well done character.

Craig: Yeah, well I don’t know, yeah as an actress, I mean she’s 1 of those actresses that, she’s always Lynn Shea to some extent, you know? And that may have something to do. She’s got a very distinct look. She’s got a very distinct voice, but I just enjoy her. And so it was fun to see her pop up.

Todd: Come on, Sal. What’s happening? Well, this here says that John Travolta used to be a

Clip: waitress in Fort Myers, Florida

Todd: What’s happening here, Sal? Big bowling tournament tonight and Charlie he’s sleeping it off in the back. Oh, be nice, Harv. He don’t mean no harm.

Craig: So there’s, you know, they battle the crates at the farm, and there’s little gags where It’s just like, okay, we get attacked, we get away, we get attacked, we get away, we get attacked, we get away. Which is fine, that’s not inconsistent with the horror genre, especially when you’re talking about these kinds of monster movies. And there’s little gags throughout like it the son Brad is a Pyro basically, I mean he’s a firecracker Enthusiast and and he makes his own firecrackers and he gets in trouble for that early on in the movie But at 1 point   when the critters are attacking his sister, he throws a firecracker at 1 of them and it eats the firecracker and the firecracker explodes inside it and it doesn’t blow it up, but you see like its eyes get wide and it kind of expands a little bit and then it falls over dead.

Todd: It tips over, which is funny. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, I read that was actually kind of a complicated effect for them to get.

Todd: It’s so hard to believe, isn’t it?

Craig: I know it is hard to believe.

Todd: It looks like a little doll tipping over. Right. But everything leading up to it was cute, yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And so there’s that gag. There’s another gag where Brad, when they’re inside, I think this is a terrible idea, but to deter the crites chasing them, he throws an oil lamp on the floor and 1 of the critters catches on fire and then rolls into the toilet to put itself out. And then later on the bounty hunter finds it in the toilet and shoots it in the toilet which may have been a nod to ghoulies now here’s where you are better about remembering these things than I did the guys behind the effects were the Chiodo   brothers, right?

Todd: Yes, they are.

Craig: I’m pretty sure. And they worked on a lot of these types of movies. Like, they did a lot of… No. No. No, they didn’t?

Todd: No, no, no, no.

Craig: What did they do? They did a lot of creature effects, didn’t

Todd: they?   They did like, like killer clowns from outer space.

Craig: There you go.

Todd: Not as many as you would think. I think they had a little bit to do with Team America, World Police, which was very impressive, effects-wise. But yeah, not as much as you would imagine.

Craig: Gosh, I just, I know that I’ve heard their name in reference to so many things, but I guess I could just be making that up in my head. I don’t know. But these little effects and little things that they did, it was fun and they experimented with it and they played with it. In this movie, as the crites continue to eat, they grow and they continue to get bigger. Now, until at 1.1 or 2 of them are like person-sized by the end. And I didn’t remember that at all. And I don’t remember if that’s something that   carried on through the series or if they abandoned that because I always think of them as being, you know, kind of like basketball sized. But in this 1, they continue to grow. And so eventually you’ve got these big ones chasing people around. And 1 of the big ones eventually kidnaps the sister and takes her back to the ship like they’re going to take off with her, which I like, was she just a snack for later? Was there some other intent with that?

Todd: I wasn’t really sure, but

Craig: I did. I liked the effects as I don’t want to say as simple as they were because I’m sure they weren’t simple I feel like a lot of work went into manufacturing these little creatures But then the execution of how they moved and stuff, it felt like people working on a budget and coming up with the best way that they could utilize these props as possible. And as simplistic as it ultimately was, I still thought that it was fun and it looked pretty good. I mean to some extent You can see it for what it is,   but it was still cute and fun, I thought.

Todd: Well, let’s talk about 1 of the best effects of the whole movie. To lead into it, just like you said, the sister gets kidnapped. This is the climax. This is sort of the, we’re gonna fix everything. The boy gets on his bike, and he chases after the critter who’s dragged his sister away who’s human size. And I think Charlie joins him at the same time. And they end up at the ship in the field which is just behind the house. And he goes in and he basically drops a bomb in there as he put 1 of   his like little pipe bombs in there as he pulls his sister out, but isn’t-

Craig: Little pipe bombs, it’s a huge pipe. This kid is making like these huge sticks of dynamite.

Todd: This kid was, you know, just a couple years away from shooting up the school quite honestly when

Craig: you see what he was

Todd: doing Yeah probably You wouldn’t even want to put this in a movie nowadays because the ideas that would give kids Yeah, but yeah So he dropped 1 of those in there But didn’t light it and he they get out and as the ship is taking off Charlie gets this idea to light a Molotov cocktail with 1 of his bottles of liquor They toss it into the ship and so it causes a fire   in there and as the ship is taking off, Charlie gets this idea to light a Molotov cocktail with 1 of his bottles of liquor. They toss it into the ship,   and so it causes a fire in there. And as the ship is taking off, you’re getting ready, you’re waiting for it to explode, but it manages to go over the house in just this cute little bit of nastiness. It like zaps a laser down and blows up the entire farmhouse, which I didn’t see coming, but I was like, oh my God, that’s sick.

Craig: Right, and like just to be mean, like, ha ha.

Todd: And then like 2 seconds later the ship explodes and that’s the end of them, that’s the end of the story, but then you’ve got this family and their whole farmhouse is just a wreck. It’s just lumber all over the yard. 1 of the guys, 1 of the bounty hunters in this kind of cornball, you know, ending scene, hands the kid some unknown device from his belt. And it beeps at just the right time and the kid picks it up and pushes a button and it does something, it reverses time or who knows what, but it ends   up putting the farmhouse all back together. And I was marveling at this effect. Now- Me too. First, it’s obvious what it is, it’s film played

Craig: in reverse.

Todd: Is it   a miniature? Maybe, or full, I’m not, it’s gotta be miniature, but it was a really well done miniature, right?

Craig: Yeah, I

Todd: thought so. Because the detail, like, you could have shot the farmhouse blowing into a bunch of bits and then reversed that shot to have it kind of sucking together. But it is a good two-minute sequence of the pieces of this farmhouse rolling across the lawn and coming back together in quite detailed fashion until the roof itself comes back together almost like a flower opening up. The shingles come out and even played forwards in the destruction of this. Like I couldn’t tell exactly how all of that was accomplished. It was a beautiful piece of effects work I   thought.   Yeah, yeah

Craig: it looked good.

Todd: And it was a great way to end the movie I was like, oh my gosh, that’s wonderful So yeah So they get their farmhouse back to at the end of the movie and I thought that effect was was Better than any of the effects in the movie Yeah,

Craig: oh gosh. Yeah, it was really good.

Todd: Yeah

Craig: and again, it was just kind of 1 of those moments All of this has happened overnight and they pull up in the morning to find their house completely destroyed and poor D Wallace’s character is just like Devastated she’s like yeah, she’s crying like it’s horrible but then it all comes back together and even the cat is okay and you know all is well with the world and then it pans over to the chicken coop and you see amongst the chicken eggs these very odd eggs which are obviously supposed to be crite eggs, and you kind of   hear the crite giggling like

Todd: hee hee hee hee.

Craig: I read, and I vaguely remember this, that that is really where the sequel picks up. It’s set at Easter. We’re always looking for Easter movies and I can’t believe we’ve never done Critters 2 because it’s set at Easter because they think they paint these crite eggs up as these great big giant Easter eggs.

Todd: That’s great.

Craig: And the crates then hatch and cause mayhem again.

Todd: I’m making a note.

Craig: Yeah, the kid that played Brad reprises his role. I don’t know how much later it’s supposed to be. He looks significantly older in the stills that I’ve seen from the second 1, but he does reprise his role. And there’s, I don’t know, maybe Charlie reprises his role. Terrence Mann was in all 4 Critters movies. I read the trivia for all of them and 1 of the things that I thought was funny was that they constantly repeat how Terrence Mann was in all of them. But apparently in Critters 3, the credits roll and Terrence Mann is credited   as his character Ugg before he even ever shows up in the movie because he only shows up in a post-credits scene that sets up part 4. And so then he’s in part 4. And I don’t know, Like I said, I’m pretty sure I saw all of those. 1 of the reasons that we decided to do this this week is because Critters has been in the news, or at least the horror news lately. It’s being revived in possibly more than 1 area. I know that there is a limited series available exclusively through Shudder right now, and I   don’t remember what it’s called. It’s Critters the new something.

Todd: The new batch, the new recipe. Or something, right. The new

Craig: bites, whatever. Apparently it’s already available, and I heard limited series, and I’m like, well that’s interesting. You know, you get a 6 episode series or whatever. Apparently the episodes are so short that the entire series is only about 70 minutes long in its entirety. It’s not getting good reviews at all. Really bad.

Todd: I’ll bet it’s making that mistake of going for CGI, huh?

Craig: I don’t know, I don’t know. It looks like a lot of it’s practical. In fact, the 1 review that I read, it blasted the whole thing and said it’s awful, but that the only reason that they gave it any credit at all was for the Kright creature effects. So I think that they are still practical. But yes, lots of CGI beyond that. The crits themselves are still practical, but then lots of other CGI, and apparently really, really low rate CGI. Which is unfortunate, I don’t know. Given the opportunity, I might check it out anyway. It’s only   70 minutes. I’d give it a shot. But then I’ve also heard rumors that there may be another sequel shooting right now. Have you read that?

Todd: I thought I saw a little something about it. Yeah, but I don’t remember the details.

Craig: I think all that I heard is that It’s it’s kind of hush hush and that it may be shooting in Australia right now and that D Wallace is also shooting something in Australia right now. Oh. So.

Todd: Put 2 and   2 together.

Craig: Right, so maybe, who knows, it could be just a rumor, there could be absolutely nothing to it whatsoever. But I’ve heard rumblings, so maybe we’ll be getting Critters 5, the return to Grover’s End or whatever this place is called. I don’t know.

Todd: That would be nice. I wonder if it is gonna be scored by David Newman, because we can’t wrap up our discussion of this without mentioning, because you said earlier the music is great, and the music is fantastic. And this was David Newman’s very first film score. And I mean, he went on to do maybe half of the kids’ movies you’ve ever seen. I mean, he went on from this to do like heathers throw mama from the train Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure Tommy boy the mighty ducks Jingle all the way. I mean Matilda like all of   these like Galaxy quest all of these like, you know family friendly movies like he you can tell like from the outset, he really nailed this formula. And I’m looking through it right now and I’m seeing that, yeah, he, none of the other critter sequels are on there. I guess he got too expensive for them really quickly. Probably. But yeah, the score is so reminiscent of a Steven Spielberg kind of-

Craig: It is.

Todd: It almost doesn’t even belong in this movie. Like there’s just, it’s just like the movie’s a little too low budget for it, you know? That was kind of what I was thinking as I was watching those first 10 or 15 minutes or so, you know, when they’re playing around in the kitchen and having their family blah, blah, blah this, and the score is sweeping through and all that, I’m like, wow.

Craig: Yeah, I agree with you, but I will also say that, you know, they were very fortunate to have that because I feel like that’s 1 of the things in addition to some of the acting and stuff that really kind of elevates this movie. Yeah, it elevates it above where it really should have been. It should have just been a really goofy, silly kind of movie. Well, and the director, Stephen Herrick, this was his first directorial job, and then he went on to do Mr. Holland’s Opus, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and 1 of my favorite   movies of the 90s, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, and others. And so, you know, there was talent here, some of it, you know, burgeoning talent that maybe still had a ways to go to develop, but I think it shows.

Todd: It does, it

Craig: does. For a early effort for some of these people who went on to do some really good stuff, people who were paying attention hopefully saw, you know, there’s some good stuff going on here, and these people went on to do better things.

Todd: Yeah. Well, and we’re still talking about critters, right? We’re still getting sequels and TV things, so something hit here. We’ve gotten more critter’s sequels than gremlin sequels. Maybe there’s something to be said for that as well. All right, well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend. You can find us online at our website, twoguyz.red40net.com. Or you can find us on Facebook to search for 2 Guys in a Chainsaw. You will find our podcast everywhere podcasts are listed. Subscribe to us there. Please send us a message,   let us know what you think as well as any requests that you may want for the near future. Until that next time, I’m Todd

Craig: and I’m Craig

Todd: with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

This week, we have a special guest on to chat about everything from the state of horror to Abraham Lincoln’s accent. Bill Oberst Jr. is an Emmy Award-winning, mega-prolific actor in the horror genre who has amassed nearly 200 roles in just 10 short years. His down-to-earth and honest persona contrasts sharply with the killers he usually plays (when he’s not playing, say, a talking dog), and we enjoyed some deeper conversation than usual about what it means to make and watch horror films.

Oh yeah, and we talked about the Asylum mockbuster Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.

Episode 166, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: . Hello everybody, and welcome to Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig, 

Todd: and today we have a very special guest with us. Uh, say hello to the people bill. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Oh, well hello people. But I want to know how the heck you came up with two guys and a chainsaw?

Todd: This is Bill Oberst Jr., a very prolific star of the horror screen, and we’re really, really happy you’re here.

Let’s see. Two guys in the chainsaw. I think, what did we, we batted around questions, uh, ideas, right, Greg? 

Craig: Uh, well. Todd sent me a list. 

Todd: I guess for me, that counts as bad. 

Craig: Yeah. And uh, we narrowed it down. And you know, bill, it’s funny when Todd asked me to do this, I was a little bit skeptical. Uh, I didn’t, uh, have any experience doing anything like this, and I thought that we would just sound like a couple dorks talking about movies, which we do.

Yeah. Um, but, so I just kind of went along with whatever he said, thinking that this would never go anywhere. And so, uh, we just kind of landed on that name. And here we are a hundred and almost 70 episodes later. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: I, well, I 

Todd: really wanted to use the chainsaw sound effect for our intro. I think that’s kind of what tipped the scale on that one.

Bill Oberst Jr.: I have not heard that intro. I’ll have to, I like that there’s something about a chainsaw, isn’t it? 

Todd: There is, right? It’s super scary. Their whole massacres, their whole movie’s built around chainsaws, right? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: There is many bad chain chainsaw movies is there are bad zombie. You know, I got. I get scripts because I’m in the John Ray and.

Two years ago, there was a zombie Western craze. Apparently someone had won an award with the zombie Western screenplay, so they were coming in from all over the world and in one week I got three zombie Western scripts, two of which included a zombie sheriff riding into town on his RV horse. 

Todd: I would love to see them 

Bill Oberst Jr.: on it.

Come on guys. Thank, I hope they never got it made. 

Todd: Nope. None since then. Geez. The craziest past. Huh? How about now, bill? Are you getting more? Well, by the way, for our listeners out there, the movie of Bill’s almost 200, uh, film credits that he has up on. IMDP you should go to his page. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s really, really late.

Yeah. I’m the one we chose to review today was Abraham Lincoln versus zombie. So that’s why we’re talking about zombies today. Um, what is it about the zombie genre, bill? What is it that, uh, is there, are you seeing a slow down or is it just as popular as ever? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: No, there’s no slow down. Something happened in hell if I know, because.

You know, I’m an older guy. And so in my generation there were monsters. And the idea was that the monster was something other, but really it was us. And then you get the additional layer that we. Create the monsters by the way. We react to their monster dumb. And this gets back to the idea of traveling carnivals, of exhibitions of human oddities, the Frankenstein monsters, the universal, you know, I didn’t ask to be born Larry Talbot, the original Wolf man.

Um, the idea of some inner trait that you can’t control, all these sort of things. It was more tied to humanity, but then at some point long after, I was going to say the atomic age, as long after the atomic age, our taste in monsters changed. And I think when the walking dead hit, zombies became codafide as the monster.

And so if you talk to a kid today. The 14 year old version of 14 year old, nerdy me, and you say monster, immediately they will think zombie. Yeah. Um, so I, so I think that it’s, there’s some underlying cultural, I think it relates to a hopelessness, not, not just a fear of the apocalypse, but a certainty that we are headed towards.

In apocalyptic and a lack of hope. That’s what I think accounts for it. 

Todd: That’s interesting. You know, there are a lot of people who talk about this and frame frame it, you know, the same, similar thing about superhero movies, right? Why are we seeing so many big blockbuster superhero movies all across the world?

And I’ve heard people argue a similar kind of thing that, uh, people are a little hopeless right now and they’re so down trout and what they want to see in their entertainment is somebody who can come in and fix it. Because at this point we’ve decided we’re unable to fix anything ourselves or come to any consensus about anything.

And everybody’s fantasy is just for somebody who’s better than us and bigger than us, who is pure and good to come in and sweep all the bad away and set things. Right. So you’re talking about kind of like the, the parallel one is a little more hopeful. One is a little more cynical and 

Bill Oberst Jr.: sure. I mean, one version says that we were already the walking dead.

All of us. Because we can’t really do anything but shuffle around and consume each other in in spasms of hate. That’s all we can do is eat each other up and then regurgitate the bile, which creates more hate and more walking zombies. That’s us. That’s our society in the view of. Many people who are younger than me, who I interact with in the business, they are quite certain that humanity has no future, that we are definitely headed for either a robot apocalypse or a zombie apocalypse.

And at three in the morning, they have arguments about whether it will be robots or zombies, but definitely nothing good is going to happen. Wow. 

Todd: So these are conversations you’re actually having on set with the people in this industry right now. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Oh yeah, man. Absolutely. These are, this is, this is the general mindset of the people who are now creating our entertainment.

And I think that this is, um. This is a built in problem with our fascination with popular culture. You know, for instance, the Oscars are essentially an entire industry award. They’re no different than the plumbers association or the national engineer’s association giving me their awards, right? But we lend them almost a spiritual, religious credence because movies which are made just to make money, we take them in and make them.

They form. I think they fill a spiritual void in us. And so because of that, we’re tied into spiritual culture in a way that we can’t easily dismiss these images that are coming to us by groups of people who are creating our entertainment, who are hopeless. And so it’s, it breeds more hopelessness in us because we’re not able to.

Take off the cultural glasses and say, this is something made by a human being just like me, and this is their point of view, and I don’t have to accept it because there’s the, uh, music. And the glamour, and it’s, it’s big and it’s, you know, it gets into us in a way that a book doesn’t, we can look at a book and go, ah, that’s bullshit, but it’s harder to do that with a movie and we’re willing participants in it.

So yes, these are real conversations that I have all the time on set with people. And the wider. Culture has zero discernment when it comes to what we consume. If it’s big and flashy, we eat it. 

Craig: Is that a, is that one of the reasons that you ate? You know, I’ve read, you know about this movie and, and some of your reasons for taking this movie, and you’ve done not only so many.

Movies, but you know, uh, such a wide variety. You know, I was looking at your page and you’ve done voiceover stuff for kids, movies and, uh, all kinds of stuff. So what brings you to a particular project and I guess specifically this project, what was it that made you say, yeah, sure, I’ll take this on. They fired 

Bill Oberst Jr.: their original Lincoln.

Craig: No, that’s not what I’ve read. What I’ve read is that you’ve actually played Lincoln multiple times on stage that they sought you out because of that and that you agreed to do it so long as you would get to deliver the Gettysburg address. Is that just bullshit? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: No, it’s the, so I just added the additional truthful element, which usually doesn’t get out there.

So what happened was they had a Lincoln who was fantastic, and I thought it was really great. It was very, very tall. I’m not very, very tall, and that’s a essential part of a Lincoln. And so then I got contacted by the producers who knew that I had played Lincoln, and they said, well, you know what? If we had you dub.

Some of Lincoln do some of the voice. So I did some of the voice, Oh, this is fantastic. So you know, maybe we’ll have our Lincoln do our Lincoln, and then you’ll dub the voice, which I thought immediately, well, you know, this is going to be very cumbersome unless you have him off screen a lot. And so then sure enough, I got a emergency call from one of the producers at the asylum about 11 o’clock at night and said, can you get on a plane in the morning?

And come fly to Savannah and play Abraham Lincoln for three weeks. I was like, I’m five nine okay, in lifts, I’m five nine and he said, you’ll stand on a box. And I said, I haven’t even seen the script. He said, you can read it on a plane. We really want you to do this. So I said, okay, we’ll call my manager and wake him up and you guys talk.

And so they did. And the next morning I was on a plane, so he got to set and the director, Richard Shenkman, who was not happy about losing his very tall, wonderful Lincoln, for whatever reason, he looked at me. I said, Oh, hello, pleasure to meet you. And he said, you’re the new Lincoln? I said, yes. He said, God, help us.

God help us. Uh, eventually, eventually we formed a good working relationship and I hope I gave him performance he was happy with, but I did have to stand in a box. So yes, I, I was very eager to do it because I knew that I would never again be allowed to play Lincoln on film because I’m not six, four. But I thought I could bring the spirit of Lincoln to life.

And if it had to be zombie movie, so be it. 

Craig: They 

Bill Oberst Jr.: hate you, Abraham, why must you go to that awful place. Because the battle of Gettysburg was significant and it must be recognized. I don’t see why they were 15 Oh, dedication of that mass graves and of it. I must attend. I’ve been asked to speak. What does the refuse to say over the bodies of dead young men?

It’s my belief that all victory, there was a turning point in the war. I wished to deliver a message you.

Craig: I want to say, you know that first of all, you didn’t look short. He’s standing on that box. You looked very tall and commanding. So, uh, congrats there. And I really thought that your performance. Uh, of Lincoln was great, you know, of course, we have seen him portrayed by many people and many people have done a great job.

But, uh, I thought that you really embodied the character. And when I read that, you know, a little bit of trivia that you really wanted to read the Gettysburg address, I read it after I had watched the movie, but that part of the movie room and stood out to me and I thought, wow. Yeah, I get it. I get why they wanted this guy.

You know? You know, it’s, 

Bill Oberst Jr.: it’s really funny that you say that because, um, the Gettysburg address was only a couple of lines in the original script, and Richard Shakman is also a great lover of history. I said, well, I said, what do you want? Do you want a parody? He said, no, I want the Lincoln on the penny and we’re going to do the Gettysburg address, and they won’t let us use it in the movie.

But we’re going to do it. We’re going to shoot it anyway. Let’s shoot the whole thing. And uh, and so we shot it, both of us thinking, okay, we just did something just for us and it won’t be in the movie. And then they used it. 

Craig: Uh, and that’s great. You know, I’m starstruck just talking to you about it because I’m so fascinated with the industry.

And to be able to talk to somebody who has so much experience is a really a delight for me. So thank you again. Okay. For, for joining us. And, uh, 

Bill Oberst Jr.: you and, and you know, nobody ever really wants to talk about the need of this stuff. And so that’s where I’m, I knew you guys would, and I’m really happy to talk to you.

You know, the ideas behind it. Not everybody’s only interested in what’s it like on set. Hmm. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, I have to say like this kind of, um, really dovetails into why you’re here in the first place, bill, because, you know, we actually have met and formed a bit of a friendship over the last couple of years online mostly, but then in person for a couple of days before we did this podcast, I would every October for a little while, started challenging myself to watch a horror movie a day.

And then I would challenge myself to write it up that evening and then posted on my personal blog online. And it was just something I was doing because I enjoy horror movies and I don’t get to watch them very often. It gave me a month for my wife to say, okay, Todd, you can watch your, another horror movie today.

And, uh, and then I could exercise my writing shops as well. And so I was visiting my dad, who actually isn’t a very big fan of horror movies. Uh, but I was with my parents and I had to watch, you know, a horror movie that night. And I said, Hey dad, you want to watch it with me? And he said, sure. And so we were flipping around, I think it was Netflix looking for a movie to see.

Yeah. And, uh, Abraham Lincoln versus zombies for whatever reason, came up. Uh, and he said, Oh, I think I’ve heard of that. And I said, no, I think you probably heard of Abraham Lincoln versus vampires. Uh, but we sat down and we watched it anyway, and, you know, we watched it and we thought, Hmm, it’s not a fantastic film, to be completely honest.

But the thing that really kept me glued to the screen was. Watching you. Uh, and I’m really not blowing smoke there. I didn’t know you at the time, but, uh, you know, by the time it was over and we’d seen the Gettysburg address and this whole thing unfold for it for in front of us, we just kind of looked at each other and said, wow.

The guy who played Lincoln really elevated that material, and that was the most fun that we had in this movie was just watching Lincoln on screen and your portrayal of him. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: And that’s because of Abraham Lincoln, really, not because of me. I try to bring the spirit of Lincoln and any time you. You correctly interpret Abraham Lincoln, you’re going to have something soulful and interesting.

You can learn in the wrong what you even 

Todd: had. You even got to like the voice in there as well. Like, you know, I think for a long time as at least I remember as a young kid, there’d be portrayals of Lincoln and he’d have the certain kind of kind of commanding voice, and then later on I learned. That’s right.

It was pretty well known that he didn’t have that kind of voice. And so again, I was impressed that you didn’t go with that caricature voice of Lincoln to do this, but went more authentic. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: We shot ours before the Spielberg came out, and when I saw the Spielberg again heard the voice of Daniel Day, Lewis said, I thought, okay, I did okay.

I can die now because I’ve done it. I made at least one choice that Daniel Day Lewis made. We have at least one, one acting choice in common. 

Todd: The voice of Lincoln. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Yeah, the voice. Well, I always think if, if a character is already important, don’t make his voice sound important. It’s always better to counter point, you know, come from underneath and make him sound as if he’s almost fumbling for his words.

Todd: Well, it, it kind of de mythologize a SIM a little bit, right? It kind of brings him down to earth and maybe a little more relatable for the audience. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Any any was, he was like that in life because people would come in with something very important and he would tell a story about a farmer and a plow and a dead dog stare out the window for five minutes and then he would say the thing that ends up in the history book, but he didn’t just open it and say the things that ended up in the history book, I think he was.

As authentically American as anyone in our history books. He really was the spirit of America with all of our warts. He was so ugly. He was so unattractive in every way. He wasn’t a skilled public speaker, but he had this spirit of this country. So it’s a search and rescue mission that we’re on. Then mr president,

truthfully, gentlemen, I hold out a little hope of recovery at our large troops. But I aim to learn exactly what fate befell them and to complete their mission God-willing because their aim was a kosher one. Fort Palasky must be captured, draw, fallen comrades. 

Todd: When you’re acting, you know, are you tapping until, are you looking at a character and saying, what bits of this, uh, can I especially relate to or what of myself can I bring to the character?

Or do you try to remove yourself entirely from that? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Remove. Um, and better actors than me. I’m not a great actor, you know, but really good actors say, well, you know, we use the as if it’s as if so. And so it was happening in my life and I relate to that. I’ve never been able to do any of that. I just know that all humans feel the same thing.

We’re all capable of the same thing. Mother Teresa and her som had been locked in are essentially the same. They just made different choices. But we all have the same faculties. So I figure, okay. If, if I fully understand the world, the intellectual, spiritual, physical world of this character, then there’s no reason that I can’t interpret that because we have exactly the same faculties.

Um, so that’s, for me, it’s knowledge. The more I know about, I don’t mean you know where he was born, as sure that’s important. But I want to know when we look at the world, we all see it in a very particular lens. What is his lens. And if you can understand the characters, Lynn so well, that you can look at a new thing they never saw like zombies and think, here’s how they would have seen this threat.

Then you’re getting close. And that’s what I wanted to do. 

Craig: Well, I thought that you did a really good job of making the character, you know, very human and very relatable. But, you know, the, the Lincoln that I think of when I was a kid, my parents took me to Disney land or world or one of those things. And you go to the hall of presidents and you’ve got, you know, the animatronic Lincoln up there.

Um, and despite. The fact that you really gave him these human characters. I still got that. I conic Lincoln from you. I think that that was, for me, it was relatable because that was kind of the. The image of him that I’d had, and maybe that had to do, you know, you talking about his appearance and whatnot.

Maybe that had to do with, you know, the, the makeup and the design regardless, despite the fact that you did bring a personal character to him, you still captured, uh, that iconic nature 

Bill Oberst Jr.: and chronic nature of Lincoln. His granddaughter comes from weakness. It’s not. Well, Ray Bradbury said this, it’s not fullness that gives us strength.

It is. It’s want, it’s emptiness, it’s yearning. That’s what gives a person in a character strength. And I think that’s what gives him that grandeur is his inherent weaknesses. 

Craig: And something else that I was interested in, you know, Todd and I had been texting back and forth over the past couple of days talking about this movie.

And, and we’ve. I’ve been so excited to do this. But you know what, what Todd said a little bit earlier, and I wouldn’t say this, that I didn’t think it was a great movie. I wouldn’t say that, cause I feel like that’s like, you know, somebody invites you over for dinner and then you criticize the food. Like I’m not going to do that.

Um, but the, the critics kind of expressed the same thing that, that Todd did. You know, I was reading the critical reviews of the film. Um, and, and they weren’t particularly kind to the film, but. Pretty much everybody said that. What elevated the film above some of the asylums, other productions was your performance.

Now, as an actor, you know, I’m a community theater actor, so my experience. Yeah. Is far different from yours, I’m sure. But as an actor, how does, how does that make you feel when somebody says something? Well, it wasn’t a great movie, but he was great in it. I mean, is that a compliment to you or, 

Bill Oberst Jr.: it’s embarrassing and it makes you squirm.

So do you never mention it? You never, um, share those sort of comments. And if you make a comment on the. Review page, which I always try to do. If comments were allowed. You mentioned other people. Yeah. You mentioned say thank you for reviewing, you know, Todd Coon’s movie, blah, blah, blah, and make it, you make it implicitly clear in your comments that the movie is not about you.

Todd: And that’s exactly what bill did actually. Um, you, you must have a Google notice that pops up every time you’re mentioned online someplace new. And, and so that’s the only way you have read my review. And, uh, and I was shocked. I was really surprised when, um, just a day or two later, bill came on and wrote a comment there.

And one thing I’ve learned about bill over the last few years is he’s a very humble person. He’s not very likely to toot his own horn, but he did. He came on and he said, thank you so much. And he. I pointed out some of the funny things that I thought were funny about the movie, and he said, I’m glad you enjoyed those bits.

I thought they were funny too. He talked about the rest of the cast and how he had a good time. I actually wished that was still up. I was looking for it the other day, and I realized when I moved my side over, uh, I moved my information over to a new version and somehow that got lost. But, uh, through that comment we had a bit of a back and forth and we kind of left that at where it was.

Uh, but then later on. Uh, because I was working at the university at the time, and good friends with a man named Randy, who is a professor at the school who taught a class called T still teaches a class called acting for the camera. I said to Randy, I said, you know, I have this, um, this nice little exchange with this, a really hardworking actor out in Hollywood, you know, he seems like a pretty down to earth guy.

He seems pretty nice and we had a nice conversation. What if I reach out to him and see if he’s willing to come back and talk with the kids about his experiences in Hollywood. He has real experiences like, like from one working actor to these kids, no holds barred kind of thing. And I reached out back to you and you, and you said, you know, Todd, I’ll do you one better.

I’ll fly out at my own expense and I’ll do this with him. Maybe we can put together a kind of, um. Presentation that I’ve been wanting to try out for a while about building your own personal brand. And sure enough, a bill came out to our small little Midwestern town and spoke to these students, gave him some amazing advice, did a wonderful presentation for our community there.

Uh, shared a lot about his experiences in Hollywood, but I also felt, uh, did a fantastic job of inspiring others, uh, who are going out into the acting world, not just telling them it’s going to be hard right. Which is, you know what? They hear a lot, but don’t necessarily believe, but also saying it’s going to be hard, but here’s how you deal with that.

Here’s how you cope with it, and here’s how you can use some things to your advantage like I did. And, uh. Yeah, I mean, I just want to thank you publicly for that. That was a wonderful thing you did for our students, and I thought a lot of the advice that you had was really good. You know, you have a very interesting story about how you really took off as an actor who’d been doing stage work for so long and suddenly broke into the movie industry very quickly over a short time.

A mass, a lot of credits. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Yeah. I enjoyed sharing that with them. I like. Challenges. I like nearly impossible things and I love taking machines apart and figuring out how they work. And, uh, uh, the business of entertainment when I was really rocking and rolling in it, which was 2008 to 2018, um, was a particular kind of machine.

And I enjoy taking it apart and figuring out, okay, how do I do this? What are the components? It was fun. Well, 

Todd: has it changed now? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Oh yeah. The more digital there is, the more or less money there is to be made. Um, and so that’s why, you know, the movies that I make and that, uh, everybody I know in Hollywood makes that people, you know, family members and people who grew up in the era of theaters will say, Hey, what am I going to see you in a movie on a theater?

Never. 

Craig: No, that’s not true though. You just worked with Rob zombie, didn’t you? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Okay. There’s usually an occasional line. Yeah, for the most part, the answer is no, because the industry has, in one sense, gone underground. 99% of movies now, and that’s actual statistic, are watched on devices. They’re not Washington theaters anymore, and so movies are out there and they’re making money, but there’s such a proliferation of them.

Everybody can make a movie now. And so everybody does make a movie, you know? Um, and so that’s why there’s plenty of work. But that’s why I decided, or I, you know, I did my 10 years of rock and roll and with movies, and now I want to diversify back to stage. Do my movies to make my money and do my stage for my part.

And so that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m doing now. 

Craig: How you feel about that, you know, do you think that it’s just, you know, kind of a natural progression of things? Is that a good or a bad thing? You know, Todd and I review all kinds of movies. We. Do some movies that have been really successful, you know, uh, theatrically, but really we tend to lean more towards more obscure things.

Um, and we’ve done, uh, movies that have been more independent and made by lesser known. People in, in the field. And so from your perspective, do you think that it’s good for the industry, that more people are getting this platform, uh, maybe people, even people with less experience, or do you think that it is in some way bringing the industry to L a a lower level of.

Excellent. I don’t know if I’m phrasing that correctly. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: It’s, um, it’s, it’s great for humanity and bad for business, so it’s, which means that it’s probably a really good thing. And what it’s done is the same thing as happening in all areas. You know, there is no middle class anymore and it’s the same in Hollywood.

You either work here, low budget pictures, or you work in the super blockbusters, which are the only ones that are ever going to movies anymore. And there’s nothing in between. So yeah, it’s, it’s done the same thing that that has happened to all industries, but for humanity, it’s a great thing that a guy in Mumbai and write about his lived experience and show it to the world.

It’s a wonderful thing. It is, although, you 

Todd: know, I’m thinking about what you said earlier about how you said that, um, we’re consuming pop culture. We’re taking it more seriously than we used to. These films that are really made, first and foremost to make money. Uh, and we’re trying to read a lot of artistic merit or a lot of deep thematic material into it when maybe that’s not a good thing.

And I, I, I also wonder, you know, if another consequence of this is we used to have a sort of shared experiences, humans, or at least, I mean, not across the world necessarily, but in our pockets of culture, like maybe say nations, uh, you know, we all kind of watch the same one or two TV. Programs, uh, one or two network television programs.

We’re kind of watching the same news, reading more or less the same newspapers. Uh, and now that it’s possible for anybody and everybody, you know, in journalism, for example, to start their own little online news source, for us to be able to put out a little podcast like this for people to listen to. And.

All these movies to be made, and then a platform like Netflix comes along and a, you know, who knows how many movies there are and Netflix, but I know that it’s curating a bunch for me and it’s throwing at me the ones it thinks I’m going to like. I mean, in some ways is it, is it bad? Because it’s dividing us a little bit more by removing that shared experience.

Bill Oberst Jr.: Yes. Homogeny is gone and homogeny was, were created Hollywood. There is no Hollywood. It was always just an idea. I mean, I lived there for 10 years, full time and everyday I’d go out and see the Hollywood sign and we go, this, this doesn’t exist. This is a monument to an idea. But the idea is possible because we had a shared experience.

Things like going to the moon, which are from my culture, you know, everybody was watching that and it was possible then to have great. The MADEC experiences as humans, and it’s not now. I think also that this celebrity station of, uh, our culture, the emphasis on celebrities to the point that now it’s not even just who is a bigger celebrity within the celebrity world, but we Al, we all want to be celebrities.

Everybody wants to be a celebrity. So there’s even some jealousy of celebrities, you know, well, what the hell do they know? So what they want an Oscar, I did a YouTube video. Um, and, and yeah, so because of that, there’s less of a, uh, there’s less of a trust and a willingness to join in a joined experience. I do more in the loss of that.

The whole idea of cinematic exhibition was that you would, with a group of strangers in the dark, experienced something larger than life. And now everything about that is the opposite now in isolation. And not in the dark. You experienced on the go wherever you are, and you experienced something that’s small enough to fit in the Palm of your hand.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. How do you feel about that notion of celebrity? I mean, I’ve met, I suppose, a couple of celebrities in my life, but yeah, this is certainly, uh, the most. Expansive conversation that I’ve had with somebody who, with 200 credits on your IMDV page that I would consider a celebrity. And you’ve worked with, you know, Rob zombie, you’ve worked with Jamie Lee Curtis, some of the biggest names in horror and in celebrity culture in general, like what are your, do you feel like a celebrity and how does that whole culture, how do you feel about that?

Bill Oberst Jr.: Or what are you celebrating for? That’s. What makes you, you can feel celebrated and if you’re celebrated for something that’s. You have legitimately work your ass off and you’ve done what you think is good, laudable work, then it’s fine to be celebrated, but it’s celebrity. That’s just a silly concept.

It’s like the, it’s like the question, are you famous? You know, I used to tour schools all the time when I did stage work and I was working stage actor for 14 years. I may make a full time living doing it. And the first thing kids would ask always the very first thing, I’d be there to play Mark Twain or something.

Are you fans? And if the, and if the answer is no, that it shuts down everything. Um, so yeah, you meet people like Jamie Lee, Curtis, um, uh, Rob zombie, and I didn’t think anybody feels like a celebrity. They are aware that their work is celebrated. I’ll give you an example of what it’s like at the upper echelons.

I worked with Hugh Jackman. And we had a scene where I was his boss and we had a phone conversation or we had a conversation in the office, uh, face to face. Like he’s standing over me at the desk telling me I’m not going to do, you know, I want him to cheat or something and he’s not, I’m not going to do this.

So anyway, they, they shoot the master, which is both of us, didn’t. They shoot, he does coverage over my shoulder, and then they say, well, now we’re going to do the over on bills. So mr Jackman, you can go back to your trailer. Because you’re not in this shot. We’re shooting a clean on bill, and Hugh Jackman says, no, I’m going to stay here and I’m going to feed lines to bill.

I’ll sit in the corner. And I said, you don’t really have to do that. And he said, if it was me, would you do it for me? And I said, yes. He said, we’re in the same business. Let’s do the scene. And I find the same thing with all of the quote to celebrities that I’ve worked for. Jamie Lee, Curtis, Rob zombie, they’re working people and they understand why they’re celebrated.

So that kind of celebrity gray, but it’s a difference between being celebrated, deservedly, and just being a celebrity. Sure. 

Craig: That makes a lot of sense. And, and w you know, I, I read that, uh, Jamie Lee Curtis was a big fan of you. She directed you in an episode of Ryan Murphy scream Queens. Is that right? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Yes.

And, um, and I made her laugh so hard that we ruined to take, I don’t really, really happy about it. I made her laugh because I did exactly what she said to do. Well, 

Craig: great. Hearing stories like that, it makes me happy because it makes me happy to know it. Confirms what I want to believe, which is that these people are just people, you know, we do celebrate them and we elevate them to such a high status and look up to them in, in so many ways.

Um, it’s nice to hear that they’re, you know, they’re just folks just like, you 

Bill Oberst Jr.: should never look up to them. I think that’s our mistake. You can celebrate that babe Ruth. A great baseball player. Celebrate him for being a great baseball player and thank God he didn’t live in this era. We would think, well, he’s a God and everything he does must be right and I must look up to him.

Why would you look up to Jamie Lee, Curtis or me or anyone in the business? Why would you do that? Celebrate them for the activity they do that you admire. 

Craig: I think it’s just because I have so much respect for your craft and your talent. Again, like I’ve said, I studied theater a little bit in college and I’ve continued to do it.

I’m all, I’m, I’m turning 40 this year. I live in a very small town. Uh, we have a very small community theater. I continue to act and, and I like to do it. And so to see these other people who. Are so talented at what they do. I so respect that talent and what they do. That’s why I look up to people like you.

It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with you personally, but it’s just your craft and your skill that I really admire and respect and that I do look up to. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Boom. And that’s it. Yes. And I do the same thing for, uh, writers and creators and in fields that I’m interested in, and I do exactly the same thing.

I would just never assume that all of their personal traits are laudable. It’s never a good. 

Todd: This is a very timely conversation. And because this is a question I’ve struggled with a lot too, is it possible to celebrate a person for what they do and still know that there are other things they do that aren’t so great?

I think as a culture, we’re struggling with that right now with the me too movement. You know, we, we, we’ve always known there’s this. Insidious side of Hollywood that most people would like to pretend isn’t there. And that’s super convenient for those who aren’t effected by it. Uh, but for those who are affected by it, you know, it can leave lasting scars.

And that’s what is being forcibly finally, you know, pushed up to the forefront. And we’re learning that these people, I mean, I hate to name names, but just, I’ll just give one example. You know, Kevin Spacey, uh, is a guy that I would just go and see a movie. Just because he was in it, because I loved watching him work.

Uh, and now, uh, you know, there are these allegations against him. We still don’t know if they’re true or not, but he’s being, um, you know, tested in this regard as to his character. And there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of push, like, well, don’t watch his movies now. You can’t enjoy them anymore. And knowing who he is as a person, and I, I struggle with that because I get that.

I understand that feeling and you know, it’s, it’s kind of rooted in the business world. Like, why would you spend your money to support something that you don’t agree with? Because, you know, behind that actor is still a person who’s, who’s indirectly, but you know, very real, getting money from you by supporting their, their work.

But on the other hand, uh, you know, like you said, it’s like nobody’s perfect. And people who are bad people all throughout history. We know we’re terrible people made really beautiful and really wonderful works of art, and that’s something that we all have to struggle with, you know? Where do you fall on that, you know?

How do you feel? I’m having a hard time 

Craig: reconciling to put you on the spot. Not to 

Todd: force you to pin this down yourself, but do you have any thoughts on this? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: But he was without sin cast. The first stone is the first thought that always comes to my mind. And then too, everybody has their own age. You have to decide, um, you know, if it’s, um, if it’s a German filmmaker who supported Nazi-ism, then no, I can’t really enjoy the movie, but, you know, then everybody has their own lines, you where you have to decide.

And so that’s consumer culture. People can decide, but I don’t think anybody has the right to say to somebody else, you can no longer enjoy this person’s creation because we know an unsavory thing about them. You know, I spent my much of my theatrical career recreating historical characters, and one of them was JFK, who I did four or five years up in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts for the Kennedy museum.

And Kennedy’s, um, personal, intimate history is full of very bad choices, shameful choices. And at the same time, his oratory and his actions inspired millions. And so yeah, I’ve thought about this for years and years. How do you, how do you divorce the two? And I’ve decided you either have to be able to look in the mirror and say, this is what a human being is and I’m looking at all of me and then apply that same standard to others.

Or you just become sanctimonious and say they did a bad thing and I could never do that bad thing. I think there’s some empathy involved. 

Craig: Yeah. Oh, I, I think that’s maybe a, one of the best explanations that I’ve, I’ve heard, uh, in having this discussion, it brings me to something else that I want to ask you about because I learned this first from Todd.

Then also in reading about you, I’ve learned that you are somebody who is very much guided by your faith and your religious beliefs. And I was wondering if that has any. Impact on your choices that you make, uh, about roles that you will take or things that you will do on screen or, or. In things that directors ask of you, how do you marry your faith with your profession 

Bill Oberst Jr.: there?

Well, Jesus is at the center of my life and I mean, Jesus of Nazareth, the, um, historical teacher, the teachings, uh, move who he is, the whole metaphor of his life, everything that’s at the center of my soul. And so that’s, and it’s always there early on. I’m on stage. I didn’t play a lot of evil people, but on film, my face has has a rough texture.

And so I was equated with malevolence and early on I had these inner spiritual conversations with what I view is creator God and said, you know, I’ve been asked to play evil a lot. What am, you know, what do I do? And what I arrived at was, if I’m going to play evil, I’m going to damn well play evil. I want to make your skin squirm and I’m going to make you.

Think, Oh, this isn’t a joke. There’s something really bad in the world. There’s some rot at the core of the Apple of humanity. So that, yeah. So I’ve embraced it because of that. Uh, I’ve never asked to play, uh, rarely asked to play anyone who’s essentially good. And that’s okay because none of us are essentially good.

But there were two things, only two things that I want do on screen. Lord knows. I’ll do just about anything and have done. I mean, there are only two things that I want to, and one is, I don’t say GG, I only said it once because so many people find it so offensive. It’s like a slap in the face. Um, I’ll say five, but I get bored with it.

It’s so tiresome. It’s just such an overused word, but yeah. Okay. I’ll bargain with you to take as many fucks out as possible. Leave me just one or two for emphasis. Sure, 

Todd: sure. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: But, okay, so, so I won’t say GD. And then the other thing, I won’t play a corrupt minister, and I’ve turned down three scripts because of that.

People who say, I have faith and I am in touch with the creative force of the universe and then do really, really evil things. I know those people exist. But I don’t want to add fuel to that particular fire. So those are my only other two limitations. Other than that. No. If it’s evil, sure, I’ll play evil on whatever form.

Usually my body, my mind, my soul, whatever. That’s my job. 

Craig: Right. Uh, well I, I, that was a great answer and I just want to say that I have a, a huge amount of respect for that. I consider myself a person of faith too. As an actor. You. Are pretending to be someone else. You know, it’s, it’s separate from who you are.

And I don’t, I don’t know if everybody understands that, but I do. And, uh, I respect that you do have your boundaries. I think that’s, that’s amazing. That’s great. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: They’re pretty limited boundaries, no 

Craig: boundaries, none the less. And I would, you know, I don’t know. I’ve never been put in a position where I’ve had to make those choices.

I’ve never been asked to do that. But I see things in film sometimes that, you know, I love. Horror films. This is what Todd and I do week to week for the last three years. We talk about horror films and they’re, you know, I can watch people getting hacked up with chainsaws. Doesn’t bother me at all, but you put a dog.

In violent situation, it really bothers me. Um, I’m, I’m, I’m really bothered by sexual violence. It really bothers me and I don’t, I don’t know what choices I would make if I were asked to be put in those positions. I don’t think that I could, and not just as a person of faith, but just as a person. I don’t know that I could.

Put myself in those shoes and maybe I wouldn’t want to, uh, because you are, you know, you are pretending, but in a way, you know, you are also really trying to embody that truth. And I don’t know if I would be comfortable doing that in some scenarios. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Don’t. Yeah, you absolutely right. And it stays with you.

Every single role that you do. Now that sounds pretentious. I try not to sound after pretentious, but that is the truth. It stays with you and it’s like a very thin layer that you can’t ever really scrub off that you’ve been to this world. And, um, yeah, the world’s built up and they, they accrue over time.

That’s very true. 

Craig: You’re a professional, you know, this is what you do for a living. You have honed your craft and, uh, I’m sure that you, uh, have a very strong sense of who you are as a professional and you make those decisions accordingly. Uh, so I just have a lot of respect for that. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Thank you. 

Todd: Can I ask along those lines, bill?

You know, I’ve seen stuff that I kind of wish I hadn’t seen, and I’m like, Craig, you know, I will. I will. Um, I can watch pretty much anything on screen that’s fiction, but, you know, especially like here in the era of YouTube, we get to see a lot of stuff, uh, that wasn’t previously available to us, that that’s actual real life.

Uh, have you ever played a role that has stuck with you so long that you kind of regretted playing it? Or maybe you wish you hadn’t. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Yeah, there were two. One was a movie called children or SAR way. I played a cop leader and the other was circus of the dead where I played a, uh, a necrophiliac whose day job was as a circus clown, which sounds humorous, but it was not humorous.

And in both cases, they were, uh, liars within layers, within layers, within layers, so that there was no truth in them. So that even when they said, now I’m going to tell you the truth, even that wasn’t the truth. It was an unending, intimate nest of lies. And that is very sticky. That sticks in your mind, particularly when your job is essentially to lie.

You know? I mean you, yeah, you’re, you’re coming from a truthful place, but you are pretending that you’re something that you’re not right. And to play a person who really doesn’t have a core, who just lies, and if that lie doesn’t work, they’ll tell another lie. Um, that, that sticks with you. And both of those, both of those movies gave me nightmares.

And I know people would say, Oh, you got a nightmare from, you know, movie, but you have to live in this. And if you’re going to do it real, no matter the budget level, you have to give them the real inner experience of that person. Or the camera can tell you’re lying. 

Todd: You could or you could just phone it in, but you’re not that kinda guy.

Bill Oberst Jr.: Well, I can’t phone it in because I’m not an a list accurate. I don’t get hired. When people call me and say, we want you to do a role. Almost always it’s followed up by saying, I saw you in blah, blah, and you were so intense, and I know that’s what they want. I’m not allowed to phone it in. I’m not. Famous enough to foam it in.

Craig: Along those same lines, my, uh, freshman year in college, I was cast in a play where I was cast in a role that I could relate to on a personal level, but he was the bad guy and I felt like. I learned something about myself by playing that role. Have there ever been any roles that have been regulatory to you that you learned something about yourself from?

Bill Oberst Jr.: Yes. I’m over all I did for criminal minds in which I played a, uh. Deformed serial killer, and he was physically deformed because he was a product of incest. My mother was Adrian Barbeau and my father was Tobin bell from the solvers. Wow. Years ago when they were teenagers and I kidnapped Adrian Barbeau, and we have this girl, she’s, she’s amazing.

By the way, when you put, when you put barbed wire around Adrian, verbose neck and yeah, it’s fake Barbara, but it’s, it can really hurt you. It’s the points are sticky. When you put that Barb wind around her neck and you say, is that okay? She says, make it a tighter, let me feel it. I’m like, damn, this woman is amazing.

But the reason that, uh, for that movie, I was, I felt very vulnerable because, um, I had my shirt off with my weird torsos show and, and they gave me deformed hands and I had a big ugly ear, and I was as physically unattractive as I’ve ever been. In a film and playing this guy who’s monstrosity. It was the classic wounded monster.

And the reason that it touched me personally because as a kid, I was fat. I had bad acne, I was a sissy. I was weird in every way that a boy in South Carolina could be weird. And, um, and I was in many ways, a monster and was treated like a monster. I don’t mean that in a self pitying way. I just mean that, you know, in the world of kids, kids are cruel.

Yeah. And playing this monster reconnected me with that and stripped away a little bit of the ego that working in LA had given me to say, you know, you’re still, you’re still this thing. You’re still this monster. You’re still this oddity, and that was the soft and touchy to reconnect with. 

Todd: You know, I was really disappointed to see that.

One of the first things I thought of when I saw that criminal minds is wrapping up is I was really hoping to see a revival of your character on a later episode. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: They didn’t know what to do with it. Matthew, Greg googly wrote it. You know, one of the cast members who played Dr. Reed for years, and Breanne Frazier, the main producer, he wrote the script, and so that, that character was very close to their heart.

But when the show aired, they got some feedback. Some people loved it, and other people said, this is really, really dark. This is, this character is too dark for criminal minds because Matthew is a horror fan, which is why he wanted me. He hired me to do it. So I think they just never knew what to do with it.

Todd: Well, there’s a lot of dark stuff on TV right now. You know, coming back to the zombie thing you were talking about, um. Oh, the walking dead. That show and zombies in general, like you said, there are some people who would say, and probably rightly so, that the zombie genre didn’t really die or go. There was always some people who are interested in it, you know, more or less starting with George Romero’s films and going up there, but there’s no denying.

It’s much more popular over a wider swath of audience right now. You know, it’s not like happy stuff. Uh, you know, you alluded to maybe why. But why do you think that zombie movies in particular in all this darkness right now is so popular with such a widespread audience on television? 

Bill Oberst Jr.: My, I think we don’t believe anymore.

You know, I’m getting ready to play Ray Bradbury on stage. I got the right from his family to play him. And so Bradbury said this at the end Fahrenheit four or five one one of the characters says, everyone must. Touch something so that when they die, their soul has a place to live. And it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you love something and touch it and you leave it more like you, when you die, then your soul has a place to go.

And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right. And when people look at it, you’re there. And that’s what Ray thought about his books. But I think that. Somehow as a larger culture, we’ve lost the belief that whatever it is, it doesn’t matter really what it is that you believe in, but believe that you can personally touch something and make it better than it was.

That’s a pretty core belief for humanity, and I think the popular culture reflects it. Yeah. 

Craig: Gosh, yeah. I’m so glad that you’re getting the opportunity to play Ray Bradbury because I know that you are a huge fan as are as are we. Both of us have have read, you know, Bradbury, and we have a. Talked about the film adaptation of something wicked this way comes on our podcast.

Um, so I’m really glad that you’re, you have that opportunity. Are there any other dream roles that you would love to play before you retire? Or 

Bill Oberst Jr.: only one. And that’s, um, Eric, uh, Phantom of the opera because then you’re in the book. He was born that way. Nobody threw acid in his face. He wasn’t burned in a fire.

He was born that way, and he was actually exhibited at a human oddity in a circus for a while. And then he was purchased as a freak and traveled around what was then known as the orient. And that’s where you learn these grammatical skills. And only the Cheney silent version kept that backstory for Eric.

And even they. The original version, which is completely lost, had seen showing him, you know, his origin and the audiences couldn’t stand it. So they took it out. So there are hints of that and the Cheney version and every other version says, we have to find an excuse why this guy. Is so ugly, or an Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Well, he’s ugly, but he’s also really kind of hot and romantic.

We, we seem to have trouble dealing with that. We turn our eyes away from things we consider not like us. And the more freakish and not like us, the more we want to turn away. You see a person who has only, um. You know, one limb, they’re missing their arms and one leg instinctively, instinctively, we turn away because it’s so unlike us.

Yeah. So for that reason, that’s. I like to explore that type of of role, you know? Yeah. If I had one on my bucket list, it would be that or something like it. 

Todd: Oh, well it is such a coincidence that you bring that up, cause I’m in the middle of that book right now and my wife read it and she passed it to me.

She said, Todd, you’ve got to read this. It’s so different from, and it’s true. You’re right that the book really deserves a real adaptation, I think. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: I think so too. And, but we, we don’t deal well with that. Well, you know, we don’t do well with it. There was the one moment in the 31 Frankenstein, when the monster reaches up to the light and this look on his face, this rapturous look on his face, and then they shut off the light and, and that captured sort of the same feeling.

Craig: Well, I hope you get the opportunity. It may be one of our many listeners 

Todd: both. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Yeah. 

Craig: Both of them can pass you on to some great director. That’d be fantastic. But I just want to say, you know, we’re, we’re nearing the one hour Mark, which is where we are. Usually pass off. And, uh, this has been, you know, in 170 episodes or whatever, one of my favorite episodes should record.

It’s, it’s been very different in format from our other episodes, but it’s just been really, really cool to kind of get some insight into not just the industry, been to some personal insight into somebody who has really been immersed in it. And I can’t thank you enough. For agreeing to do this. It means so much to me.

Talking to somebody who has worked with some of the people that I admire most in the world. Somebody who I admire just based on the huge nature of your career. Uh, so I, I again, I, I just want to express my extreme gratitude. Thank you so much. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: I thank you. It’s been one of the best conversations I’ve had in a while.

These kind of conversations are like. Fertilizer to me, I need, and so thank you for this opportunity. 

Craig: Oh my gosh, you’re so welcome. 

Todd: Thank you so much for joining us. And you know, Abraham Lincoln vs zombies go out and see it. 

Craig: It’s about Abraham Lincoln and he fights zombies. 

Todd: They sleep and he speaks by them while they sleep.

He has this really bad ass side that switches out and he, he chops off 

Bill Oberst Jr.: and divide it again.

Craig: Dude, I love that shot of you. You know the shot of you set against the sky with your size. Like if I were you, I would totally have this framed in my house. I hope, 

Bill Oberst Jr.: and if you, if you’ll notice, I’ll say, this is my partying thing. When you look at that shot, the size is broken because they only had three and I broke every one slingy because they weren’t meant to be flung open so violently.

But every time I just got into it and go and they go like. Bill broke another one, but it work. 

Craig: It looks fantastic. You did a great job. 

Bill Oberst Jr.: Thanks guys. 

Todd: Thank you bill, and thank you for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this one, please share it with a friend. You can find us online all on iTunes.

You can find us on Google play anywhere your favorite podcasts are. You can also find us on Facebook. Just search for “two guys in a chainsaw”, or you can go directly to our website where you can stream our episodes and leave us a comment there as well. 2guys.red40net.com. Was he continuing with another episode next week?

Until then, I’m Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

A high-concept flick that was clearly dreamed up over cocktails between friends, Zombeavers is our latest request from loyal listener, Ryan. And what a ride it is. We found more charm here than your average , thanks to some excellent writing, great cinematography, and the decision to “keep it real” on the…um…beaver effects.

Episode 165, 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, we are continuing with requests. This request This week was 1 that you had seen I had not even heard of but we want to thank Ryan for suggesting Zombeavers. I think that the reason we chose this 1 is after last week’s really really heavy movie I specifically asked Craig can we please just watch something goofy that I don’t have to think about, I’m not gonna care about? This pretty well fit the bill for me. So yeah, it’s pretty nice. So yeah, I hadn’t heard   of it before, but you’d seen this before. This is totally the kind of movie that I could see you’re like on Netflix or Amazon Prime flipping through 1 night and going, ooh, zombievers, let’s check this 1 out.

Craig: Definitely, and that’s exactly what happened. I don’t remember if I had heard of it or what, but yeah, I think it came out on Netflix eventually at some point, and I just thought it sounded hilarious. I mean, come on! Like, how can you go wrong with a title like Zombieverse? So I watched it and I made my partner watch it with me and it’s stupid. It’s a stupid movie. Yeah. But it’s, I kinda thought it was kinda hilarious and my partner didn’t hate it either.

Todd: No, which is good. That’s a pretty high bar actually.

Craig: Actually watching it for this podcast is actually the third time I’ve seen it. I liked it enough that I watched it again after. It was 1 of those things where I was grading papers or something and I just needed something stupid in the background to put on. Yeah, so this is my third time watching it, and again, I’m just gonna put it out there. It’s dumb. It’s a dumb movie, but it’s 1 of those movies that it knows what it’s doing. It’s not trying to be something it’s not. It’s trying to be a goofy, stupid, funny   movie. And it is.

Todd: And that doesn’t always work. We’ve talked about that before, how we’ve seen these goofy movies that are maybe trying too hard. Or something just doesn’t, It’s just a chore to watch. It’s not really as funny or as interesting or as compelling as it thinks it is. And you’re kind of watching your watch. I have to admit, I don’t think that this movie really moved like I wanted it.

Craig: Yeah, it’s a little slow.

Todd: It’s a little slow and The action isn’t that intense. I don’t know. But part of it’s just, you know, they’re beavers. Right? So what all can you do with beavers? But I still enjoyed it. I mean, it’s only like an hour and 20 minutes long, so it’s not long at all. You know, it’s goofy, it’s funny, you know what you’re getting into. You just have to sit through a lot of beaver jokes like a lot   Yeah

Craig: They even comments on it in the movie like alright enough of the beaver jokes

Todd: But they kept coming

Craig: I’ll say the same thing, you know, watching it this time around and really, you know, sitting and watching and paying attention and taking notes and stuff, I really thought, you know, the first, like you said, it’s like an hour, 15 hour, 20 minutes. The first 30, 40 minutes, feel free to get up and go to the bathroom or get a beer or whatever. Like you’re not gonna miss much. But when it gets to

Todd: the beavers,

Craig: the stuff with the zombie beavers.

Todd: Oh, By the way, I have   to knock this off of my list of things too. We had marker boner a couple weeks ago, zombie beavers, another thing to tick off. I don’t know how many more subjects we could possibly cover in this podcast, But I feel like we’re going through the whole encyclopedia and beyond   yeah, yeah You

Craig: go it but when you when you get to that stuff. I thought it was really fun and like there’s a lot of really fun stuff, you know cuz these zombie verse their puppets and Yeah, but but that was what was great

Todd: about them actually. Like, I was really worried when we went into this it was mostly gonna be CGI because that stuff just ends up looking so cheap and it just makes   the   movie like horrible. And these were honest to goodness zombie beaver puppets straight out of the Jim Henson, well maybe Jim Henson’s younger brother’s factory.   But you know. Yeah right.

Craig: But it’s funny because like you know like these beavers are attacking and you can tell that it’s just somebody’s arm up in a beaver puppet just shaking the beaver puppet at the you know like

Todd: it’s has just moving sideways back and forth back and forth the mouth barely opens there’s not a lot to it there even some interesting effects later where they do some things like that we see a lot in the zombie genre. They try to pull it off with a beaver with somewhat limited success. Like I’m thinking about the scene in the kitchen where the girl is up on the counter and when her beaver is getting attacked by the beaver. And of course I’m very focused on that aspect of the scene that I almost missed the fact that   as the zombie that she has like, I guess she kind of swiped at it, somehow cut it in half. As it’s crawling across the counter, it’s body is separating, you know? And yeah, the effect, they were going for it, and I was happy that they were trying something like that, but The effect just looked, yeah, not that great.

Craig: I don’t know, I thought it was funny. I just think it’s corny and it works for me. It’s not a great movie. I’m not gonna push this movie as some sort of masterpiece because It’s certainly not. It certainly has lots of flaws. Are you sure? But just something to sit back and mindlessly watch and have some laughs. And I would highly recommend alcohol. I think that’s going to enhance your experience significantly.

Todd: That’s also a whole other subcategory of movies that we’ve kind of established on this podcast as well. Ones you need some kind of controlled substance with and the other ones that you can just watch on their own. This is definitely a party movie for sure.

Craig: Well, the plot is so simple. I mean, if we wanted to, we could summarize the plot in 30 seconds, a bunch of kids go out to a cabin and get attacked by zombie-vers. I mean, that’s it. If we want to be a little bit more specific.

Todd: We want to analyze a script for Oscar consideration.

Craig: It opens up with this hilarious scene where you see this truck and it’s a medical research facility truck and these 2 hillbilly isn’t quite the right word, you know, like they look like somebody, they look like gas station attendants from the Midwest or something like that, you know, the drivers of this truck. And they just have this dialogue that I am 100% confident was made up on the spot. Like I can, I just imagine that They filmed probably an hour of these guys just, you know, shooting the ball, you know, making up these goofy stories, trying   to make each other laugh? And it’s so funny. And like I said, this is the third time I’ve seen this movie and it was the first time that I realized that 1 of these guys is John Mayer. Did you rec- did you notice that?

Todd: Yeah. Well,   I actually recognize the other guy, Bill Burr, because I’ve watched several of his comedy specials, like he does stand-up, and I don’t know, he might have a TV show or something, but no. I mean, John Mayer, I guess he’s got a mustache on and glasses and a hat I’m not that familiar with John Mayer But I thought they kind of disguised him a little bit to the point where I had to look it up to know that was him Yeah, for sure. I didn’t know he was that funny.

Craig: No, he is funny and They’re just talking and it’s just so random.

Todd: It creeps you out. You know, we just agreed on everything. Want to get some beers? Want to watch the game? Absolutely. You get beers, and we watch the game? I hear a lot of myself in this story. Like… Laughter Oh my God.

Craig: I can only imagine that these guys just had a blast just cracking each other up with these ridiculous stories. In fact at the end of the movie there are bloopers and you see some of the outtakes and it just looks like they were just having a great time. But anyway, at 1 point the guy who’s driving is on his phone and John Mayer says, hey, you see that deer? And he’s like, oh yeah, I see it when he’s totally not looking at the road at all. And then he hits the deer and it just explodes. And   it’s gory, it’s great, you know, like the blood and guts are dripping off the front of the truck and stuff. But a big drum of something flies out of the back of their truck into the river, which we’ve seen a million times. It’s how all these zombie movies start.

Todd: Yeah, Return of the Living Dead 2.   Ha ha.

Craig: Right. That’s how it all starts out. And then there’s what I thought was a really great credits, opening credits sequence that was partially animated. You know, like as this drum is floating down the river, you know, superimposed over that, there’s this animated sketch, I guess. And it’s very Scooby-Doo-esque, you know, with like the animated zombie-vers chasing around, you know, those rascally kids. And I just thought it was cute. I just thought it was a really good way to kind of set the tone of the movie

Todd: Yeah, it set the tone and it’s really that kind of humor this almost stand-up, I don’t want to say stand-up, but almost Saturday Night Live level humor sometimes is coming through. The dialogue’s pretty witty. Sometimes it’s a little silly. There’s like 3 writers on it, but Jordan Rubin is the director, and he’s 1 of the main writers, and I guess he and Al Kaplan, John Kaplan, sat around probably over a few beers In a Denny’s or something and came up with the idea for this movie, but he’s been he wrote for the man show You know   Adam Carolla show those on TV cranky anchors a lot of comedy He’s done big-time writing for comedy like for movie awards and and Comedy Central and stuff like that. And this is actually his very first film, so feature film. And so it was really, I think it showed like the quality of the writing and the quality of the jokes, it was a couple notches above what we sometimes see in this kind of movie. You know, it’s a little, it’s modern, it’s a little hip, it’s a little ironic, it’s a little millennial, and it works. It worked   for me, actually. Even though The delivery was sometimes a little uneven, the acting was sometimes a little uneven. The jokes were funny. Like I probably would have read the script and laughed out loud at so much of it that I probably didn’t laugh out loud at on the screen, right?

Craig: Yeah, yeah, I agree, and you’re right. The acting is, I don’t know, it’s okay.

Todd: It’s not terrible, but you know.

Craig: No, it’s not terrible. We follow primarily these 3 girls. There’s Mary, who’s played by Rachel Melvin, who is from days of our lives. Don’t ask me how I know that because I won’t tell you. And she’s kind of like, I don’t know, she’s the 1, the pretty 1 who wears glasses. Okay. And then there’s Zoe, who’s like the smart mouth slutty 1. And then there’s Jen, who’s the sensitive blonde 1. And Zoe’s played by Courtney Palm. Jen is played by Lexi Atkins. I didn’t recognize them from anything I looked at their pages didn’t recognize anything they’ve   been from but you know 3 pretty girls great yeah doing some kind of weird southern accent that comes and goes.

Todd: Yeah, I was trying to figure that out, right? Like at times, Zoe would sound a little southern, but then it would stop. And were they like in the middle of filming and she decided she needed to add a little bit of this to some of her earlier scenes or something? I don’t know.

Craig: I don’t know. And they’re supposed to be from Indiana, right? Like do people in Indiana have a southern accent?

Todd: I don’t know. It’s not really, no. I don’t know if they were trying, you know Maybe though the cabin of the woods environment was inspiring them to get all southern

Craig: I guess

Todd: then you’ve got a couple other guys in here who are really like Stereotypical redneck guys walking around who really lay it on thick. Yeah, but again, it’s it’s Indiana I guess well, it’s just it’s the woods.

Craig: So right well and they try to you know, they set it up like it’s like this backwoods kind of area. There’s a very brief scene. You know, they’re all driving there and they’re just talking and you kinda get the idea that Jen is sad because she’s crying in the bathroom because her boyfriend cheated on her or something. And so they’re going on this girls trip to get past all that I guess. And as they’re driving we cut to this other scene where it says, welcome to Ashwood, which apparently is where they’re going, and there’s this kid   fishing. He looks like he’s about 15 years old, and he’s wearing a number 1 dad hat, which I thought was hilarious.

Todd: Yeah, what was that all about?   Real non sequitur there.

Craig: Yeah, he gets attacked by something and like it’s POV for the first half of the movie with these attacks and like you just hear kind of these grumbles like, you know, you know, beaver attacks and they get there and there it’s Mary’s cousin’s cabin is just this, you know, nice ish, you know, like not posh, but a decent cabin on the lake. And that 1 of the They meet the neighbor lady who comes over and talks to them and there’s a funny exchange because Zoe, the bad 1, is kind of messing with the neighbor.

Clip: Well, we were supposed to have toward getaway sex, but Jen’s dad cheated on her,   so… Oh, I see. She is kidding, Mrs. Cuckerson.   I am kidding. None of us have had sex. Ever.

Todd: Yeah.

Clip: Oh, it’s okay, Mary. My daughter’s a total bitch too. A real whore. Sometimes she brings people home, I don’t even know what sex they are. And I’m not saying anything negative about them. I’m a very, very liberal woman. But my daughter is a real piece of work and not that attractive. Well, if you girls need anything, you know where to find us.

Todd: Just some

Craig: funny stuff going on.

Todd: Yeah, there was a lot of this little sort of subvert your expectations going on in the movie, especially with some of these older characters. And this scene was 1 of the scenes where I just kind of rolled my eyes at. I thought it was cute. And once again, the writing was funny, but the delivery was just a little off. And maybe the editing too, it just, It didn’t work for me in that way, but it was at least some funny dialogue. They were going back and forth. And you know, this neighbor you think is gonna have   a big role to play in the movie. You know they’re gonna get attacked in this cabin and the girls turn and look and wave at her husband and they’re literally like 50 feet away. Their cabin in this, at least in this shot, looks so close to this other house. But then when things start going down in the movie and these bad things are happening to the girl and they’re running outside and they’re running inside and things are breaking and whatnot. It now suddenly it’s like their neighbor’s house must be off in the distance somewhere because they   can’t even hear what’s going on or they’re looking through the window and barely seeing what what’s happening over there. You know, I just I want to say this was kind of a big failing of the movie for me was that the stakes just Never seemed to be that high The situations didn’t seem to be that dire I mean, yeah, they’re getting attacked by zombie beavers But I think the movie wanted us to think it was a bigger threat than it ended up kind of looking on screen. And so, like, leaving the neighbors out of it and   not having them… Like, they don’t even run to the neighbor’s house when they need help, when they first, you know, run out of the house. And so all of that just felt a little off to me. They’d set all this up in the beginning. They made a real point of bringing this woman out, showing you the house over on the other side. And then it just kind of got forgotten until about the last third of the movie or quarter of the movie when 1 of them ends up at that house.

Craig: Yeah, fair enough. I mean, it’s not, you know, it’s not fine literature or anything, you know, it’s not like the writing and the planning that went into the writing is that impressive. So I get what you’re saying. It didn’t bother me. I mean, they do end up over there eventually at some point and that lady shows up again in a fun way.

Todd: Yeah I

Craig: mean I get it if you’re analyzing zombie-vers and the motivation of the characters then yeah yeah maybe they should have run over there earlier.

Todd: Craig, if we’re gonna make this last an hour like we usually do,   we gotta talk about something. I know,

Craig: and it’s funny, because I’m just trying to get through stuff.

Todd: Yeah, let’s just whiz through the plot, right?

Craig: Okay, so they go swimming, and Zoe goes topless, because she’s the bad girl, so you get boobies.

Todd: That was nice, actually,   I really

Craig: liked that. Yeah, she’s got nice boobies. They swim out to this you know kind of floating dock or whatever and they’re hanging out there and then they notice this beaver dam and Jen, the cutesy blonde one’s like, Oh, I love beavers. And so first of all, they swim right up to it, which I don’t think that I would do. That seems kind of risky. Yeah, they swim right up to it and they get out and like they notice all this like green like gobbledygook all over it because obviously that’s the Waste or whatever it was from   the medical facility, but they just think it’s beaver pee

Todd: And so

Craig: they were standing there talking about it and they see an enormous grizzly bear. They’re all scared of it or whatever, but then this like mountain man, Smith, shows up and shoots his rifle and the gun, or excuse me, the bear runs away and he’s kind of menacing and tells them that they should cover up and like criticizes their tattoos or whatever. All of this is leading up to them hanging out and being very girly in the cabin and then they start hearing these scary noises outside and oh what’s happening and so they go outside and it   turns out that just their boyfriends have shown up. Zoe has been in cahoots with the boyfriends to get them to show up. They were all supposed to go together in the first place, but then Jen’s boyfriend cheated on her and so they canceled the boys, but now the boys are

Todd: here. By the way, this would super annoy me. If I were, I felt so bad for those girls you got this like girls day out or this guy’s day out or you know Retreat you’re gonna do it then suddenly all the boyfriends show up or all the girlfriends show up Nothing is gonna kill what you guys set out to do there quick more quickly than just bringing over the mates, you know

Craig: Yeah, yeah, I know but it’s something that you that would totally happen at that age, right? Yeah, you’re right. It would. Somebody would think, yeah, right, exactly. But anyway, okay, so the boys show up. Now, they’re all coupled up. Now, Mary’s boy is Tommy, and I don’t know, he’s just handsome and jockey. That’s all that he’s got going for him. And then Zoe’s boyfriend is Buck and he’s the goofy funny 1. And Jen’s boyfriend is Sam and he’s the cheater and he is played by Hutch Dano. Did you read this? That he’s the grandson of Royal   Dano?

Todd: Are you kidding me?

Craig: No! No! I didn’t see that! Yes, it’s Royal Dano’s grandson.

Todd: Oh my goodness. We love Royal Dano. Interestingly enough, Hutch Dano didn’t even try a southern accent, did he?   No, I don’t think so.

Craig: And really, honestly, I don’t know a whole lot about Royal Dano except for that He was this old-school kind of movie star and we loved him in house, too But I was just totally tickled by the fact that it was Royal Dano’s grandson even though he’s a douchebag in the movie.

Todd: It’s fine   Yeah, everybody’s a douchebag in this movie

Craig: pretty much

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: and then they show up and it’s exactly what you would think it would be, you know Buck and Zoe have loud sex and you know, it’s it’s just all goofy and and Jen whose boyfriend Sam has cheated on her, she’s got this picture on her phone that somebody had tagged her, a friend of a friend had tagged her in and it’s a picture of her boyfriend making out with somebody else, a brunette, but you can only see the back of the brunette’s head. You can’t see who it is. It’s that for a second, like silly college

Todd: cabin movie. Yeah, the zombie beaver’s part couldn’t have come along quick enough for me.

Craig: Oh no, absolutely.

Todd: This is all just like, you’re kind of watching, okay we get it, there’s gonna be some tension here, there’s gonna be some tension here. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. It’s slightly shades of the descent, right? Where they’re trying   to sort

Craig: of set

Todd: up this thing. And I’m thinking, okay, so later in this movie, there’s gonna be a scene where these 2 girls are gonna have to confront each other and 1 might do something bad to the other, you know? And then it’s not that intense because it’s a comedy, but you know, there’s a little bit of that and, oh, yeah, okay, maybe I’ve just seen so much of this stuff that I was ready to move past this and get to the zombie beavers. And then the zombie beaver shows up in the bathtub. And I’m just kind of wondering,   did it come up through the drain? How did the beaver get in the house?

Craig: Don’t ask questions.

Todd: Just go with it.   You know I like   to ask these questions.

Craig: Okay so Jen is in the bathroom, the pretty 1. Of course she takes off all of her clothes except for her innocent white cotton bra and panty set. Yeah. Then she opens up the shower and there’s a zombie over in there. Now I have to say, I loved these creature effects. I just thought they were so much fun. You know, they look ratty and rabid and diseased and gross.

Todd: White eyes and yeah.

Craig: And they don’t look particularly real, but there’s a whole lot of motion. Like they move a lot. And it really just looks like somebody’s shaking them. Like somebody’s shaking a toy from underneath. And you only kind of see them in glimpses, but I just thought it looked so fun. I don’t know, they were just really fun effects. And when they would jump out at people or you know poke their heads through windows or up through the floor

Todd: or Leap through the air at people and like get shot in midair This is like weird stuff like that beavers probably can’t do but maybe zombie beavers can do

Craig: And it was funny and like then it’s nighttime okay, so I the first, there’s just the 1 zombie at first and, you know, Jen freaks out and at first nobody believes her or at least thinks she’s overreacting. But then when they get in there and they see that it’s messed up, like they all kind of freak out and Tommy takes a baseball bat and air quotes kills this first zombiever and puts it in a trash bag and sets it out on the porch. Well, okay, that’s it for that night. They get up in the morning and   they go outside and it’s gone. And the boys are like, well, you know, another wild animal came and took it.

Todd: Yeah, makes sense.

Craig: And they’re going to go swimming. So they go down to the pond and they go swimming and, you know, they’re having a good time or whatever and this is where we find out Mary and Sam end up on the floating Dock by themselves and we find out of course Shocker that Mary is the brunette in the picture that Sam is kissing. I mean, I guess they needed something along the lines of plot, but like it just seemed dumb, and I didn’t really care. It just seemed to be like, well, we need to add some tension between   these characters. But then ultimately when it came down to it, nobody cared.

Todd: Yeah, even she didn’t care. The minute was brought up, she looked pissed for about a minute or 2 and then she comes over and says oh I’m really sorry and her response is basically that’s okay we have bigger fish to fry now like oh okay well I guess we don’t have to worry about this anymore all this drama around this love triangle thing and then she just drops it which you know fair enough the Zombie version.

Craig: Right I mean exactly zombie verse right

Todd: What more needs to be said?

Craig: Later in the movie they like they kept Trying to play it for drama like maybe Mary really has feelings for Sam And maybe there’s really something between them who cares nobody cares.

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: he’s a douchebag It’s it’s just stupid well.

Todd: He tries to bang her later, and then he gets

Craig: well they

Todd: they get attacked

Craig: Yeah, so we’ll get I mean they basically get there.

Todd: We’re not getting there fast enough Craig You you’re the 1 who watches 3 times come on I’m putting this in your in your lap

Craig: I know it’s cool I’m trying that’s me too boring about it Jen won’t get in the water because she’s still scared of the beaver from last night. But they eventually convince her and she walks down in there. But right away, she’s only ankle deep in the water. She feels something brush her foot and she freaks out. And of course, everybody’s making fun of her. And then all of a sudden Buck goes down underwater. And everybody thinks that he’s goofing, like that he’s making fun of her. But then he, well, if you’re paying attention, you see that   the water turns CGI red around him.

Todd: CGI red. Is that a color you can pick out at Home Depot for your walls?

Craig: Yeah, CGI red. He comes up and he’s holding his foot. His foot has been bitten off. And all of this sounds really silly and it is and it feels really silly to recap But it’s kind of fun to watch, you know, they all swim to the raft and they tie off Buck’s leg Zoe has a dog a little dog and and they take off its life vest and use that to tie off his leg, because you know, that would work. Meanwhile, Jen runs back to the house to try to call for help, but the beavers have   cut the phone lines, because of course they have.

Todd: Because of course. And they show the phone box outside of these 2 lines coming down from it, these 2 red beaver scratches across the wood behind the cut lines. It’s so goofy.

Craig: And the beavers start to attack the people on the raft from underneath and Jen is getting attacked in the kitchen.

Todd: It’s like Creepshow 2, right?

Craig: Yeah, oh that’s totally what it reminded me of too.

Todd: But her kitchen bit is the is the beaver attack the beaver on beaver action

Craig: Yeah

Todd: in the kitchen and it’s not as exciting as it as it sounds But she’s just you know backing away from him on the counter and he gets up on the counter and is approaching her and Hardy har har we see what’s going on here. It’s the visual sight gag And then I think 1 of the other they end up off the raft by this point, don’t they?

Craig: Well, yes, because Sam takes Zoe’s dog and throws it in the water as

Todd: as a diversion. And I’m sure you and Alan had to shut the movie off at this point I’d like take a breather

Craig: before you know because Because it looks so fake and because it’s so silly But you know the funny thing is I in these movies when this happens usually another 30 40 minutes into the movie the dog shows back up like yeah it didn’t really get the dog no the beavers get the dog but there is in the bloopers at the end And I have a soft spot for bloopers, especially in a goofy cornball movie like this in the bloopers at the end They showed the dog swimming around with these floating Zombieverse and the dog is just   having a great time and you hear somebody off camera say it’s supposed to be afraid of them.

Todd: Stupid dog. Yeah, I was really disappointed we didn’t get the zombie dog coming at the end. I thought for sure this was setting up for the dog’s revenge and he was gonna go and get this guy, but no

Craig: That’s too bad missed opportunity They all get back home then it’s nighttime and the Beavers are surrounding the house and I just it there’s It’s charming in a way to me, because the way that they show that the beavers are surrounding the house is just to show these illuminated eyes against a black screen. It looks in no way, in any way, convincingly real at all. It doesn’t even seem like that’s what they were going for. No. Like it almost looks like they just cut holes out of a black piece of construction paper and shone a light   through it.

Todd: Well it just, it looks old school, you know? It’s kind of old school black and white horror movie. And that’s what I thought was a little charming about it You know, this would be like, you know, you look out the window and the eyes are glowing in the woods And that’s what you’d see in some 1930s Universal horror movie or something with a lot less caliber. You know, it just, and I liked that. Like why try to convince us with some dumbass CGI that doesn’t look convincing anyway, or try to put a whole bunch of crazy   puppets out there that also aren’t gonna look convincing. It was nice, It was a case of where less was more, in my opinion.

Craig: Yeah, I thought it was fun. I thought it was funny. But Zoe’s ticked off that Sam killed her dog and so she spills the big secret. But again, Nobody really cares. The 1 that I felt most sorry for was Tommy. Tommy is Mary’s boyfriend and nobody gives a shit about him.

Todd: No. Like. And he cared for like a second too and then again went on.

Craig: And So then Tommy and Zoe are going to try to take Buck, who’s lost his foot, to the hospital. And again, it’s just so stupid. Like his foot has been entirely severed. They’ve barely tied it off. And meanwhile, he’s still like running around, like running away from, like how are you running? Your foot is cut off at the ankle. And then we see the neighbors again and the wife’s like, I think I heard something over there. And the husband has 1 of my favorite lines.

Clip: Did you hear something?

Craig: Did I hear what?

Clip: Banging, hollering.

Craig: Oh, It’s just those kids scissoring each other and the lady gaga

Todd: Best lied in the movie by far

Craig: Scissoring each other

Todd: Jordan Rubin. Whoever came up with that line. Genius.

Craig: Okay, so those 3 are trying to get away, but there’s a tree down in the road and God I’m the movie like so much of it had to have been ad-libbed like there’s So there’s a tree down in the road and Tommy gets out to like see what’s going on So it’s just Zoe and Buck in the car and he’s just like,

Todd: I’m sorry I never ate your pussy. I’m gonna go back and eat all of that 1 day.

Clip: It’s okay, baby. We’re going to get out of here. Okay.

Todd: It just smells so bad down there.

Craig: So dumb. It’s so juvenile, but I don’t care. Like, that stuff gets me. I am like a 12 year old boy, you know, at heart. And those ridiculous, stupid jokes just crack me up. I thought it

Todd: was so funny.   Well that character’s kinda cool. I mean, he’s got maybe some of the best delivery of any of them. I mean, he’s maybe the most-

Craig: He’s a funny guy.

Todd: He has the best comedic timing. Yeah, he really, he reminded me of the, the goofball from Scream, right? The first Scream? Yeah.   Like, he’s kinda   the same character.

Craig: Well and he plays the same role as the goofy guy from oh, what was that Nazi zombie movie?

Todd: Which 1?

Craig: The Nazi zombie movie the We’ve watched them both.

Todd: Oh, yeah, dead snow dead snow

Craig: dead snow. Yeah, the original Dead Snow. There was kind of the chubby, goofy guy in that. This guy reminds me of that too. That’s right. But Tommy gets killed because, of course, the beavers chop down a tree to fall on him. And then Smith, the hunter, shows up and saves Zoe and Buck. Meanwhile, back at the house, oh no, there’s, well, back at the house, Sam and Mary and Jen are boarding up the house, which is boring. And then they’re in the truck and they have this conversation where Smith says to Zoe and Buck.

Todd: Back in the 70s, a beaver fever hit. Stirred up the whole damn county.

Clip: Beaver fever?

Todd: Caused by the Giardia parasite. Beaver’s carrying.   Is this whole monologue about beaver fever? You know, when they were writing this script, somebody just sat down with like, I don’t want to say a thesaurus, they just googled beaver to see what kind of, how many beaver references can we throw in here? And oh, okay, beaver fever, Giardia from the 70s, All right, we’ll make sure we get that in there somehow

Craig: God it’s so funny and they fight they they get back to the house but now the other people have the house all boarded up and so they can’t get in. Smith is like shooting the zombie beavers and he’s just gonna, filthy hairy beavers.

Todd: Oh, it   never ends.   Oh my god.

Craig: It never ends. So they run off to the neighbors and they find the Mr. Gregorson is dead. It’s cutting back and forth at this point and it cuts back to the main house where Sam and Jen and Mary are and I feel like they kind of get into a spat, you know, of course, because they are the love triangle or whatever. And at 1 point they’re spatting and Sam says, we can’t turn against each other now. That’s exactly what the Beavers would want. As you can tell folks, the writing in this movie is amazing and deserves   every award. But seriously, it’s 1 of those things where you know that everybody’s in on it. They know how stupid this dialogue is. And they’re just doing their best to deliver it.

Todd: Without laughing.

Craig: Right, without laughing. Either in the goofiest way possible or in the straightest way possible. So it comes across as really funny and it does most of the time it works the the acting is not amazing But especially now Like before the beavers showed up. It was a little bit rough But once the beavers show up and it’s moving then it’s it’s funny. Oh God, I don’t know Smith and Zoe have a discussion about Buck’s foot and Smith’s like, yeah, they’re not gonna be able to put that baby back on.

Todd: Because they’ve had it in a bag on ice the whole time.

Craig: Yeah, right, like he’s just, Buck’s just been carrying it around in a Ziploc bag, like using it as a pillow, it’s kind of funny. And then it cuts back to the other house, where they’ve just had all this tension, where they’ve turned on each other, whatever. Mary has gone to bed, and then Jen comes in, and I’m like, what is happening?

Todd: Yeah. I thought it was a dream sequence at first.

Craig: I did too. Jen like crawls on top of her in a very seductive way. Like it’s very sultry and Mary’s like, Oh, so you were never upset that Sam cheated on you. You were just upset that it was with me and I really like you, but this is never going to work. And then, and I honest to God didn’t even see this coming. No, me neither.

Todd: Me neither.

Craig: And when it happened, I just, I glowed. Like, this is amazing. Jen turns into a giant zombie. Yes.

Todd: Giant buck teeth, her nails grow claws, her face shape kind of changes a little bit. She’s got a tail, yeah, that she’s banging against the floor at 1 point. Yeah. That kept the movie interesting.

Craig: And the makeup, it looks fun.

Todd: Yeah, it’s not bad. It’s really gross, actually. I mean, it’s hard to look at because it’s pretty disgusting.

Craig: Well, she’s on top of Mary, and she’s drooling into her mouth. It’s nasty, But it’s also hilarious. And then from here on out, it just goes kind of crazy. Jen attacks Mary, Sam knocks her out, Then Buck turns into a beaver zombie and attacks Smith and eats his face. And Zoe tries to shoot Buck but accidentally ends up shooting Smith. Buck chases Zoe upstairs where she ends up being confronted by the neighbor lady zombie beaver and she has to jump out a window and it like from the second story and it appears that she’s unconscious and   that’s where we leave her for a while. Meanwhile back at the other house Sam and Mary are running away from Jen the zombie beaver and they end up in the bathroom and all of a sudden Mary is very concerned that he’s been bitten and that he may turn. So she makes him take off all of his clothes, which he does, and he’s fine. And so then he tells her to take off her clothes and she takes off everything but her underwear because apparently this actress was not showing her boobs

Todd: in this movie. Yeah.   That’s clearly the reason.

Craig: And then the zombie-versus are attacking, Jen’s right outside the door, but they decide that this will be the perfect moment to bone.

Todd: This didn’t make any sense.

Craig: So they do. And

Todd: then the beaver shows up.

Craig: And then Jen, the zombie, shows up, right?

Todd: And she

Craig: bites his dick off.

Todd: And they make a big production out of her biting his dick off like he’s standing she’s on her knees She pulls away from his crotch and there’s like long stringy blood and gore coming out And it’s I mean it is it is an up close and personal dick biting scene that we don’t get very often Especially not from a zombie or I think It might be a first for our podcast. Yeah,

Craig: so. It

Todd: might be.   Not our first dick removal scene by far, but definitely in this manner. Yeah, it just went way off the rails. At this point, anything’s gonna happen in this movie. And I think that’s part of the fun of it is just realizing it’s gonna be balls to the wall for a little while here Yet at the same sense like I said earlier I just didn’t feel a sense of urgency like I really cared what was going on Like I could kind of keep track of what was happening even because like you said 1 minute they’re running away   from someone, and as soon as the door is shut, suddenly they’ve got this scene where they’re talking and they’re stripping down and whatever’s gonna go on. It’s like, the fun thing about, for example, what makes a movie like Shaun of the Dead work, is, well, not just that it’s shot of the dead, Mrs. Zombievers, but the fact that it’s a horror movie as well, it’s like a horror action movie as well as a comedy, right? And so they make it funny, but at the end of the day, even if you stripped all the comedy out of   it, it’s just a compelling action horror movie. Sure. It’s scary at moments, there’s a lot of tension to the scenes and the setups are really good. And here, you know, I just didn’t feel like the attack scenes were that, huh, yeah, I don’t know, you know, maybe it’s just cause they looked like puppets, Maybe it’s because they’re kind of small and you know we’ve talked about this when little animals attack you can’t you just kick them away? Or get to a higher ground or you know something like that boarding up the windows and the doors would   seem to do the trick So you know none of this really I wasn’t really on the edge of my seat for any bit of the action in this movie. And I think that could have been fixed and it would have made it a better film, honestly. But, you know, What are you gonna do?

Craig: I get what you’re saying. I mean I was just in it for the ride I mean it I wasn’t I had no expectations. I mean the movies called zombie verse

Todd: Yeah, but you know it could be a different kind of ride right it could be a roller coaster instead of you know It’s a small world right you know I mean like yeah.   Yeah, that’s   what I’m saying. It wasn’t a huge thrill ride. It was a fun ride It was a goofy ride stuff happened. It was referential blah blah blah, but I wasn’t heart-pounding in any way shape or form

Craig: Oh, no. No, no, it’s not scary. No, and you’re right. You’re right There’s very little tension because ultimately at the end of the day You don’t really care what happens to any of these people.

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: you know like

Todd: that’s true   It’s

Craig: not like you’re attached to any of

Todd: them They’re   not even attached to themselves

Craig: no in fact you almost are kind of hoping that they will get killed in some kind of interesting way. Not because they’re entirely unlikable, but just because you don’t have any particular connection to any of them. I don’t know, it’s just.

Todd: It does subvert your expectations in that the woman I picked out to be the final girl absolutely was not the final girl. Right. I thought that would

Craig: be Jen.

Todd: Right. And she totally wasn’t. That was pretty nice. It was in fact, Spoiler alert, it was Zoe, which is the first girl to take her top off, which totally breaks the rules, right?

Craig: Right. The slutty naked girl. See, and I didn’t expect it to be Jen, because I thought that she was a little bit too goody goody and a little too bland. I thought it was going to be Mary. Mary seemed like. A little smarter. Not the tough 1, but the 1 with the strongest head on her shoulders And I totally thought it was gonna be her so then after Sam dies I guess cuz you die when your dick gets cut off

Todd: Well, you want to

Craig: She runs and the zombie the zombie versus have set the house on fire at this point and they’ve boarded themselves in so they can’t get out so she’s running around in her panties in this burning house and then from out of nowhere a truck drives into the cabin and it’s Zoe which I didn’t see. I mean I knew she wasn’t dead, like they didn’t try to make us think she was dead.

Todd: You just lost track of her.

Craig: Yeah, you lost track of her, exactly. And for her to be kind of the hero at the end was unexpected to me. So she comes in and she picks Mary up and they drive off, but then they are surrounded by zombies and now it’s not just beavers now everybody is zombies including Smith the Hunter who can still use his gun and he shoots at them which causes them to wreck into a tree and then everybody else pretty much who’s died in the movie up to this point starts attacking their car and they’re all with their big   beaver teeth and beaver tails and whatnot. And the bear, oh god I loved that. The enormous grizzly bear from the beginning is a giant zombie now. I thought that was so funny. But Anyway, they end up getting away and they drive to the point in the road where the road is blocked off, because the beavers blocked the road

Todd: or whatever.   They built a dam in the road.

Craig: Right. Not only do they get out and start walking, but Zoe, who has been a total bitch through the whole movie at this point is the hero and she’s saying to Mary it’s gonna be okay and she’s very calm and she’s like we just have to walk from this point but it’s it’s morning and it’s gonna be alright. They start walking and out of nowhere, Mary pulls a gun on Zoe. And Zoe, saying what the rest of the audience is thinking, says, where did you get that? Yeah. And Mary says, oh, the glove box. Oh, okay.   I guess it’s the same place that you got the jacket that you’re wearing now too since you were in your bra and panties the last time I saw you. So she pulls a gun on her and she’s like, I know your bit. I know you’re a scratch. You’re going to turn into 1 of them. And Zoe’s like, no I’m not. She’s like, but, she says, at the very least, you have to wait until I turn, otherwise you’re a murderer. At which point, Mary turns into a zombie of her, and Zoe kills her. I only remember how   she killed her.

Todd: I think she had an axe on her. She had an axe on

Craig: her. Yeah, that’s right, she did. She’s been carrying her axe. She kills her with an axe. You know, it’s the triumphant thing. I’ve seen this in a million horror movies. It’s the final girl, she’s beat all to hell, and she’s just walking down the road hoping to find her safety. I can’t tell you how many movies we’ve seen. The Evil Dead remake, 31, which we did recently, it happens all the time. And it’s that exactly. And she’s walking down the road and the triumphant music is playing and then all of a sudden we cut back to   the 2 truck guys.

Todd: And it’s the same joke. It is really funny actually where he’s checking his phone again The dude says John Mayer’s character totally straight laced and totally straight says you see that girl on the road there He’s like, yep. Okay, I trust you

Craig: So funny unfortunate, but such a fitting ending like so irreverent and And then there’s a whole series of bloopers, And there’s no sense in recapping those. You got to watch the movie, but they’re hilarious. You see all these outtakes with the different ad lib lines, and you get to see all of the actors cracking up, just seeming like they’re having a great… And that’s 1 of the reasons that I love bloopers is because you get to see how much fun the actors had making the movie. And it really looked, at least from these bloopers, it really   looked like they were having a good time. And that was a lot of fun. And then the credits roll and there’s a whole zombie verse song.

Todd: Oh my gosh. This basically   recaps the plot of the movie. It’s so hilarious.

Craig: It’s fantastic. It’s fantastic.

Todd: A lot of care went into this, you know, the, And then there’s a post credit scene as well. It’s the carcass of our zombie-ver bear, zombie-ver bear, and there’s a little bee that is, I guess, feasting on its blood and then it leaves and it follows the bee up to a hive where there are a whole bunch of other bees and it just leaves you to put 2 and 2 together. Oh, ha ha ha ha, zombies. Zombies. Oh, I get it. Zombies.   Ha ha ha ha.

Craig: Oh gosh, I don’t know. I mean, it’s a dumb movie. I’m not going to try to sell it in any other way than it should be. It’s dumb. But I just thought it was fun. It’s goofy and funny. When you said last week after we did Hereditary and you were like, man, we got to get out of some of this drama. Let’s go for something just goofy. And you were reading through the list of requests that we had. And I said, you came to this when I said, oh, we have to do Zombieverse. I mean, that’s   it. If you’re looking for something mindless and fun and funny and crass and stupid and just something to have a good laugh at, I recommend this movie. I think it’s funny. I think it’s a funny movie. You know, As far as quality, the writing is funny. The only thing that I would maybe say is a little bit subpar, some of the acting, particularly in the first half of the movie, but that’s to be expected with this type of movie. I would say that the writing is pretty good. And the other stuff, you know, the puppetry, the   effects.

Todd: It’s

Craig: charming. The cinematography.

Todd: The cinematography is great. It really is, yeah. Yeah. The music is good, most of it is, yeah. I agree with you on all that. Actually, I was, even just from the first shots of that barrel going down the stream I was like artistically and technically speaking we’re in for a pretty well-made movie I think as far as you know cinematography goes and that didn’t disappoint at all.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, It’s got its charm. It’s certainly not the best comedy horror movie we’ve seen, but we’ve also seen some terrible comedy horror movies. I’d watch this over Return of the Living Dead, part 2, any day. Yep. Me too. I guess we really need to thank Ryan for requesting this movie. Thank you Ryan so that we could get a little reprieve this week and onto something pretty light. We will tackle maybe 1   or 2 more requests and then we have   a very special episode coming up for you in April so Stay tuned for that 1.   If you   want to see all of our episodes as well as our back episodes, you can catch them at 2guys.redfortinet.com. Obviously on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitch, or anywhere that you can get podcasts, you can find us there too. Also on Facebook by searching 2guys and a chainsaw, and you’ll find us there. Leave us a comment, let us know what you thought of Zombiebers and any other movie that you’d like us to do in the future. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.  

This week’s request comes from Joseph – last year’s breakout horror hit, Hereditary. It boasts a stellar cast and, in its own way, brings Rosemary’s Baby into the 21st century. Thanks again for the request!

Episode 164, 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 are still doing some requests this month. And last week after we finished our podcast, Todd kind of ran through the list and I got really excited when he said that our listener Joseph had requested 2018’s Hereditary directed by Ari Aster because I had seen it fairly recently. There was quite a bit of buzz about it, at least here in the States there was. And I had seen it and I really enjoyed it. So I was looking forward to talking about it. Todd, did you know anything about this

Todd: going in? I mean, I had heard of it, just like you. Well, I hadn’t seen it going into it, but I had heard of it. And I had been seeing all of the press that was saying that this is 1 of those really unique horror films that doesn’t come along very often. Like we’ve been getting lately with Get Out and Baba Duke a few years back and it follows and I figured this would be kind of in that same vein of a horror movie that takes a bit of a different approach to the horror. And I   wasn’t disappointed at all in that respect. In fact, I wasn’t disappointed in the movie at all. I thought it was quite Good.

Craig: Good. Yeah, me too. I don’t know how different I would say it is. I just think that it’s really well made. You know, it has shades of movies like The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby, But kind of like those movies, it’s at least as much, if not more of a family drama than it is a horror movie. I mean, there are certainly horror elements in the movie, but a lot of it just is about this family and how they deal with tragedy and trauma. Particularly the mother of the family, her name is Annie and she’s played by   Toni Collette, who I am a huge fan of. I just think that she’s an amazing actress, period. You know, she does comedy amazingly well. She sings, she does television, she does film, she’s done horror. She’s an Australian actress and she started out there doing some comedy and then I think her big break in the States, I mean the films that she did outside of the States did well here as well but I feel like 1 of her first big movies was the sixth sense. She was great in that, and I just think that she does a   brilliant job in this movie. In fact, I was really thinking that maybe she would get some awards buzz for her acting in this film, and she didn’t.

Todd: No, what a shame.

Craig: I don’t know if it’s because of horror genre films don’t typically get a lot of love when it comes to awards and recognition but oh man, she just gives a performance in this film that just blows me away. I was talking about it last night, and I said just the energy that it would take to play her character in this movie. I can’t even imagine mustering that kind of frenetic, frantic energy. She just, she blows me away.

Todd: Yeah, I thought it was in some ways I was also getting the shades of the Babadook in there where again it almost seems to be more of a family drama well half family drama half horror but the woman in there it’s just so raw promotion and her feeling and her breakdown and you just see it just like here too. Like you say, I don’t know as an actor, if I’d be able to muster that kind of strength for take after take and just conjure it up like she clearly can do. And I read that she didn’t   even really want to do any more horror, but it was after reading the script that convinced her, okay, I’ll do this 1. And I’m sure she’s pretty glad she did.

Craig: Yeah, I can only imagine. It’s a really good script. I’m blown away by the fact that this is this director’s first feature film because it’s so well done. At least from my very amateur perspective, it seems so well done. I mean, the cinematography is just beautiful. The suspense is right on point. The score is really, really cool. It just seems like every element was so carefully considered and it really comes together to make what I think is really a really frightening film. And I was excited because from the time that I saw it the first time,   I immediately wanted to turn around and watch it again. Because…

Todd: Really? Yes! Because I finished watching it and I was like, oh god, it was fantastic, but I don’t know if I could make it through this film again. Not because it was boring, but far from it, but I don’t know if I could take it emotionally.

Craig: Right, and I understand that, and I didn’t. It’s not like I turn around and watch it the next day. It’s been a couple months since I saw it the first time at least, if not more. But with the revelations that come at the end, I felt like there was so much. And it’s a long movie. It’s just over 2 hours at 2.07, which is a little bit long for me, but it doesn’t feel long. It moves and you’re invested throughout the entire thing. And I read that the original cut was well over 3 hours, which included   even a lot more family drama. I think they were probably wise to cut it down to about the 2 hour mark. But with the revelations that come at the end, I just thought there’s so much in the first, you know, before those revelations come, there’s so much that hints at them and suggests what’s actually happening that I didn’t catch the first time around. And I was right, watching it the second time around was a whole different experience because I knew what was coming And so I knew what to look for and there are oh my gosh,   you know just foreshadowing galore In this movie, but it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t smack you in the face the first time around so watching it again for a second time, I took more notes over this movie than I have taken over 1 of our podcast movies in forever. And that makes me a little bit nervous because we don’t have time to talk about everything that I wrote down.

Todd: So true.

Craig: But there’s so much foreshadowing and imagery that ends up paying off in the end. You know, I teach literature and it feels literary in that way. You know, There’s foreshadowing, there are themes that are highlighted in various scenes, and I just thought it was

Todd: great. I read that the director, this even though it is his first feature film, he’s done a few shorts, a couple shorts that were pretty well received, and I think he was a student at the American Film Institute and has been writing little screenplays since he was a kid and Said that he has like 10 screenplays already Yeah That he really wants done and even to prepare for for writing this movie before he even wrote it He sat down and wrote detailed biographies and backstories for every single 1 of the characters before he ever sat down   to write the story out. The main actress in the movie who plays Annie said that he is by far the most prepared director that she has ever seen. Like, he came to the set, he had everything, he knew exactly what he wanted. And it shows, to put something like this together, I think you have to be a person that mindset. And in that way, it really reminded me of Hitchcock. He was a guy who felt like the act of shooting the movie was really boring. He felt like most of the creativity and the act of preparing   for the movie and setting up your shot list and your script and getting all that fine-tuned was really where all of the process lied. And then he just kind of hated having to put it on camera.

Craig: Well, I can definitely see that Hitchcock influence. I don’t know if he was directly inspired, but whether or not. You can see it because there is such intricacy of detail, which Hitchcock was kind of known for. The movie is the story of this family. So there’s the mom and the dad. There’s Steve, who’s played by Gabriel Byrne, who is just an amazing actor. He’s been in a bazillion things for decades. Annie, played by Toni Collette, who I’ve already gushed about. Peter is the wife. Peter is the son. I think that he’s probably supposed to be about   17. He’s played by a kid named Alex Wolfe who I haven’t seen in anything else, but he does a really good job in the movie. And then the younger sister, Charlie, who is played by a relative newcomer. I know that she’s continued to work after this, but this was her first feature film. Her name’s Millie Shapiro. And the very opening shot is, well, it’s actually not a shot, It’s screen text. And it’s the obituary for the grandmother, Annie’s mother, who has passed away. We open up with the family preparing for the grandmother’s funeral. And just seriously,   like every shot, like the very first visual shot we get is a view of this tree house through a window. And the tree house becomes important throughout, but just everything is visually stunning. Again, I’m not gonna be able to hit everything, but then we get a shot of the mom’s studio. The mother is an artist and she works in miniatures. So her studio is filled with all of these miniatures of their home and various scenes from their life. And it zooms in, we zoom in on 1 of the miniatures and it zooms in to what turns   out to be the son’s bedroom and all of a sudden, you know, it zooms in on the miniature And then seamlessly that shot becomes the actual son’s bedroom and we see the mom or the dad 1 or the other come and wake up the son to go to the funeral and Just from that very beginning it sets up, you know kind of this symbolic thing that they are, I don’t know, if you haven’t seen this movie and you want to, turn this off. Don’t listen to it. Because there are so many surprises And it’ll spoil it   for you if you haven’t seen it. So turn it off, go watch it, come back, we’ll wait. But it just sets up kind of this motif that they are kind of these like little dolls in a dollhouse that are being observed and moved around by forces outside of themselves and it’s just so seamless and and cool it just Was just blown away from the beginning.

Todd: Well, it is and it’s those 2 images. I think combined You know, you’ve got like you’re saying this sort of dollhouse imagery which sets up these ideas of fate, you know, how much control do we really have or who is really manipulating us? They’re even played like a doll’s house, you know, there are a lot of these family drama type plays that are set up like that. Shoot, you watch a play and it’s really like watching a tableau, right? Right. Wes Anderson, you know, who really makes this his style, where it seems like every shot in   his movies is shot directly through a fourth wall that’s looking in on some very precisely arranged tableau. Yes. This Guy does this throughout the whole movie. In fact, I think the whole thing was built on sound stages so that they could pull out far enough to get that impression. And he moves through the rooms, he slides up and down through the rooms like that. There are times when a shot opens and you could swear you’re looking at a miniature until somebody starts moving around. Even some of the exterior shots, I would swear, are miniatures trying to   pass off as outdoor shots. And I think that’s deliberate, you know? He’s trying to create that constant connection through the whole movie. So you’ve got that aspect of it. But then even just opening up with that all that text on the screen in a column, right, of an obituary. And it didn’t look like it was cut out of a paper. It’s just black, white text on the black screen. You know, when I see stuff like this in front of a movie I usually am like oh god now I’ve got to like hurry up and read all   this before it goes away But you read it and then I mean there’s just so much of it But it again sets up this other thematic element that’s going through this movie and that’s this concept of family It’s just your typical obituary where you were just smacked in the face with this person died and they were survived by this person and this person Widowed and this person died and they’re survived by these and just like a whole lineage is laid out in 1 column on a Piece of paper which Most of the time means nothing to   the rest of us. Like we kind of skim through that. It’s mostly there for the family. But it’s really setting up that we’re gonna get in here and we’re gonna dive into this family and their lineage, their heritage, all this stuff is gonna be a very big part of the movie. And Just those 2 things together at the beginning of the movie are pretty, I think pretty genius. You know?

Craig: Yeah, yeah. I feel like you kind of have to see it more than once to kind of catch some of these things. And not really. I mean, I remember the first time that I watched it thinking that, You know, there were things that set off triggers in my mind, like, oh, that’s interesting. Like, they’re at the grandmother’s funeral, and Annie speaks, the grandmother’s daughter speaks, and she says, it’s nice to see lots of strange, new faces here today. So, you know, it’s a bunch of people that she’s unfamiliar with.

Clip: My mother was a very secretive and private woman. She had private rituals, private friends, private anxieties. It honestly feels like a betrayal just to be standing here talking about her.

Craig: It’s so small and so, you know, you just don’t even think about it. You know, Toni Collette plays it so well, like she’s clearly upset, she’s clearly nervous, this is her mother’s funeral. And so it could be so insignificant but it ends up there’s a reason why strangers there for her

Todd: but at the same sense though it’s also showing us how the family has really mixed feelings about their grandmother and her death She’s kind of admitting some harsh truths when she’s talking to people, but she’s doing it in that semi-polite way at a funeral where you can’t really say anything bad, but it would be silly not to. It’d be silly to sit up there and pretend that she was this great, wonderful person that they all got along with and so she nails that pretty well, you know, the writing is good, the delivery is good, and then   even later when Gabriel Byrne looks in on his son and says, you know, are you doing okay? And he’s just kind of laying in bed and he nods his head and he’s like, are you sad? And his son’s kind of like, mmmmm. I mean, right from the beginning you get this melancholy air of a funeral and what is so true to the family experience that everybody’s gonna have to deal with a funeral and that uncomfortable mixing of gathering, you know? And then this admission here that, grandma was a flawed person, not all of us had a   great relationship with her. It sets up some mystery and some intrigue, yet at the same time, it feels very real, you know? Yes. There are times when you’re not super sad that someone died because you know that they suffered, or if you’re gonna admit it to yourself, you never really had a close relationship with them. So you’re not gonna be bawling tears at their funeral. And it’s just so cool to see that honestly in a film.

Craig: Well, and as it turns out, at least from their perspective, we find out from Annie later that she had a very strained relationship with her mother throughout her entire life. In the later part of her mother’s life, from their perspective at least, she was struggling with her mental health and so they brought her to live with them and it’s obvious that their relationship was strained. And so, yeah, it makes sense that this is an awkward time for them, but there’s also little things, you know, like the director or the cinematographer, whoever made these decisions, you know,   like they close up on the grandmother in the coffin. There’s a very close shot on a necklace that she’s wearing that has an intricate symbol on it. And this symbol then continues to pop up throughout the rest of the movie. But just these little attention to detail moments, you notice them, because you think, why would they show us this if it weren’t significant? And then when it comes up again, you’re like, oh, I recognize that, what’s going on here? Yeah.

Todd: It’s satisfying as a viewer, right? I mean, you feel like you’re unraveling a mystery, even though you’re not really sure what you’re unraveling. But it’s nice to have those touches where, you know, those are, things are foreshadowed for

Craig: you. So once the funeral’s over, we kind of start to get to know the family. The initial focus seems to be on the daughter, Charlie. She’s young. She’s 13 years old. She’s just different. It’s difficult to describe her. She seems a little bit withdrawn. It seems like her outlet is drawing. She draws a lot. And she just has these weird ticks. Like she clucks, like she just randomly does that. And I remember the first time wondering, maybe she’s on the spectrum. Maybe she has some form of Asperger’s or autism, which causes her to be reserved or   awkward in social scenarios. And it seems like the family is totally used to her. They don’t view her as being really all that odd at all, but we as viewers, you know, she’s kind of different. And they make a big deal out of pointing out that she’s allergic to nuts because that comes up later. And she makes like these like weird sculptures, which, you know, ultimately is kind of weird, but she’s a kid, and she’s kind of a weird, reserved kid, and she takes things and puts them together into these weird sculptures, and she’s just kind   of an odd duck, or at least that’s the way that she’s painted in the early part of the movie.

Todd: Well, and her mom does that too, right? She’s an artist and she kind of puts together these not so weird, very realistic, I thought it was actually a very interesting contrast. At first I was thinking, wow, this little girl kind of grew up trying to emulate her mother, or maybe she’s gotten a little bit of that artistic bent to her, But she’s either not old enough yet or sophisticated enough yet Or maybe her mind is just in a completely different place that she goes this other direction with it It just felt very real that this girl   could still be this woman’s daughter

Craig: sure oh absolutely Charlie seems to be struggling with her grandmother’s death certainly more than her brother And the mom goes in to talk to her 1 night and she says,

Clip: you know, you were her favorite, right? Even when you’re a little baby, she wouldn’t let me feed you because she needed to feed you crazy.   She wanted me to be a boy.   You know I was a tomboy when I was growing up. I hated dresses and dolls and pink.   Who’s gonna take care of me?   Excuse me, You don’t think I’m gonna take care

Craig: of you? They continue their conversation, but the mom eventually says, you know, you never cried as a baby, even when you were born, you never cried. You know, they have this little moment together And it just points out that this girl has always been kind of different which seems very innocent and not Really all that strange at all. You know kids can be weird. That’s not unusual at all, but when you finally know what’s going on in the end it all just comes together and then throughout I’m not gonna point them all out but throughout the   movie at different points and this is the first time we see weird words scrawled on the wall it’s like satiny like S-A-T-O-N-Y is written like in the wallpaper. And we continue to see these foreign words written on the walls throughout the movie. I guess in hindsight it’s kind of interesting that nobody ever questions that. I mean, I guess the only 1 who really ever sees it as the mom Maybe she thinks that it’s Charlie doing it and so she doesn’t think it’s weird I don’t know I would think it was weird if I kept finding all   these foreign words scrawled on my walls, but

Todd: but it’s just there It’s not like anybody sees them and comments on them or anything. It’s just 1 of those things that’s pointed out by the camera.

Craig: Yeah, and it’s not like it’s like spray paint graffiti. It’s like somebody took a pencil and kind of, you know, in a small part of the wallpaper, scratched that in or whatever. The mom goes and looks through her mom’s stuff and she finds a book that is titled Notes on Spirituality and she finds a note in it that says, Dear Annie, forgive me all the things I couldn’t tell you. And then it says other things and it ends with, our sacrifice will pale next to the rewards. And she closes the book and she puts it away   and she turns off the light and she sees the grandmother lurking in the shadows of the room. And we do too, And it’s clearly her. Like, it’s not like it’s just a suggestion. Like, it’s certainly dark. It’s hard to see. But it looks like an apparition. Of course, when she turns the lights on, there’s nothing there. So she just thinks that she’s imagining things. But that’s another thing that I love about this movie. There are suggestions that Toni Collette has struggled with her mental health in the past. And so Now that all these weird things are   going on and she’s kind of struggling with things again, it’s always in the back, it seems, of everybody’s mind that maybe she’s just losing it. Yeah. And I think that that is supposed to be in the back of our minds as the viewer too. You know, is what’s happening to her, is it external or is she just losing it? Because it easily could go either way.

Todd: Yeah, it can and that’s in the way it’s presented and it’s also the way the plot unfolds because you know there are a lot of the things that happen to her and even to The other characters happen away from each other You know their private moments and so you can put yourself in the other characters frame of mind when somebody comes to you and says Hey, this just happened to me or they come to you frantic because they had some experience. Well, we know that we’ve all gone through a difficult time. We’re gonna be seeing things.   We’re gonna have trouble processing. Mom has a sleepwalking problem. I mean, and these little nuggets of information get added slowly through the movie. So just when you’re thinking, oh, maybe it’s a ghost, then you find out, oh, by the way, mom also has a sleepwalking problem. And there was this horrifying incident that happened earlier where she woke up when she had doused her son in his bed with like paint thinner and was about to light him and herself on fire, you know? Right. And it’s like, whoa, okay. You know, it draws you back into questioning and   that’s really interesting. And the way that we even get to that point is she goes to grief counseling for her mother’s death.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: And as she’s sitting there she gives this long monologue of her family history and first of all the performance is fantastic. Yes. The camera if I’m not mistaken doesn’t cut away 1 bit and she just pours this out just like a battered damaged person who’s going through grief would do awkwardly in front of all these strangers. And what she’s doing is almost what we- it’s like the other side of the obituary, right? At the beginning of the movie, we get all the facts about the family. Here, we’re getting all of the skeletons in the closet and   she starts telling that that so-and-so had mental problems her mother was diagnosed with mental problems her uncle killed himself

Craig: no it was her brother and this is it’s it’s important like she reveals such

Todd: detail

Craig: and in the moment it just seems like dark family history well first of all she says that she’s been to grief counseling before and she says well actually I was forced to come so you know obviously there’s some history there yeah and she says that her father died of starvation because he had psychotic depression And then she says that her older brother had schizophrenia

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: and he killed himself and he left a suicide note blaming his grandmother and he said that he killed himself because his grandmother was putting people inside of him.

Todd: The grandmother or mother?

Craig: Well his mother, his

Todd: mother.

Craig: Yeah, yeah his mother. Like the grandmother, but his mother, right. Was putting people inside of him. Which, you know, sounds crazy and the way that she delivers it like like you said she’s just dumping out this dark history and in fact she’s trying to defend her grandmother, her mother excuse me, she she feels guilty that they haven’t had a better relationship and and she says my mother had a horrible life here are the things that happened to her and her son killed himself and blamed her and it all sounds very tragic and sad and it makes   you kind of understand why she might not be the most mentally stable. But those details end up being so significant. But he does such a good job, the director or the writer, whomever does such a good job, of just kind of letting them roll off your back. Like, oh, okay, family history, exposition, but then ultimately… That’s there. It’s puzzle pieces. Yeah, it’s puzzle pieces. And I just think that it’s so well crafted. And she also says that she and her mother had such a strained relationship. They had a relationship up until she got pregnant with her   son that she cut off her mother at that point and she said, and I didn’t let her anywhere near my son but we kind of reconciled and then when I had Charlie the daughter she just sunk her claws into Charlie from the get-go and and Charlie was her favorite and you know, she absolutely doted on her and that’s Entirely relevant too.

Todd: Yeah, I think the kind of turning point here in the movie is a tragedy that happens not long after this

Craig: I read recently that they made pains to hide this. I didn’t see it coming at all. I was so shocked when this happened. It felt tragic to me as a viewer. I was like, oh my God, I can’t believe that just happened. But you tell it.

Todd: It was horrifying. No, it was horrifying. And you know, basically, brother wants to go out to a party that night and mom is I think she’s a little concerned about the party She doesn’t really want to say no, but she’s at quizzing him if he’s gonna drink and he likes to toke quite a bit

Craig: Yeah, he’s a smoker

Todd: She’s like well bring your sister along And she kind of forces the sister to go along to the party too. And I mean, to his credit, he’s like, okay, that’s fine. And he brings her to this teenage house party where everybody’s drinking and smoking and stuff, kind of leaves her to go into a room with a girl he’s interested in and hit a couple bongs. And in the meantime, hit a couple bongs, hit the bong. Yeah. I don’t need to sound like I’m 41, right? I think I can still sound like that. He goes, I think   that man hit a couple bongs of marijuana They’re marijuana smokers So anyway, no he goes to hit the bong in the room and the sister ends up eating some cake that has nuts in it and she runs in and she’s having this episode. And so he grabs her, runs into the car and starts speeding down the road, trying to get her to the hospital. And she’s having trouble breathing and she rolls down the window and she sticks her head out the window. Yeah, totally took me by surprise too. There’s like a dead deer in the middle   of the road, which is also significant. It’s already there. And he has to hit the brakes while his sister’s head is sticking out the window. And there is a pole near the side of the road, which we had seen before, in fact. A car drove by it and the camera lingered on the pole, which happened to have that same symbol on it that the mother’s necklace had. She basically gets decapitated.

Craig: Yes!

Todd: And the fallout from this is just heart-wrenching. Because it’s so… They don’t let up on… I mean, they force you to go through the tragedy along with these characters.

Clip: I

Todd: know. We get this really long shot of this kid behind the wheel just sitting there. He hasn’t turned around, but he knows exactly what’s happened, and tears are welling up in his eyes, and he’s gotta make some decision. He goes home, and it’s just anguish from the mom, and all of this is edited so well together. There are like screams. At first, you’re not sure where they’re coming from and it turns out it’s mom in the bedroom and and that’s juxtaposed against the brother and I just I was like, okay, okay, let’s get past this like   I don’t need to see the family Hurting so much, but he really pushes it in your face and this first half of the movie is really with a little creep with with some you know all this foreshadowing sprinkled in is really a family drama

Craig: yeah

Todd: it’s so funny I’m watching it I’m thinking of the ice storm I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that an Ang Lee movie

Craig: and

Todd: then I went to the IMDB page and read through You know a lot of trivia there and the director cited the ice storm as 1 of his Inspirations for the for the movie so I thought oh, yeah Yeah, that clearly came through and that’s similar There’s a traffic accident a whole family has to go suddenly deal with this tragedy And you’re really up close and personal with them. That was nice. Again, a little bit like the Babadook as well, where you’re sort of forced to deal with this poor woman who’s gotta handle this kid who’s really   a handful. Yeah, yeah. Oh, but it wasn’t pleasant. Oh.

Craig: No, oh my gosh. And the director does a lot with close-ups, you know, after the young girl is decapitated, it’s just a close-up on the brother’s face and like he’s clearly in shock, like he doesn’t know what to do. And So he just goes home and goes to bed, you know, with the sister’s body in the back seat. And the next morning he hears his parents wake up and he hears his mom say, oh, I’m just going to run into town for a minute or whatever. And but it just stays on his face until you start   to hear Tony Collette shrieking. Like it’s just the most anguished shrieking. And then she just continues. You see a scene of her just on the floor, you know, writhing on the floor, and her husband trying to console her and her saying, I can’t do it, I just wish I was dead, and screaming and screaming, and then at the funeral, she’s still just unconsolable, and ugh. I can’t imagine the emotional gravity that it would take to portray that, but oh boy, is it effective.

Todd: It made this movie so hard to watch, Craig. We’re gonna have to watch some stupid, hilarious, dumbass 80s horror film next week because I can’t take much more of this kind of stuff 2 weeks in a row, you know? It just really gets to you after, I mean the whole movie lingers with you, you know, long, at least for me, lingered with me long after I finished watching it, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Right,

Craig: it is, it’s tough to watch, but it’s so well done. And so then the next 10 minutes really just kind of deal with them dealing with their grief, and the mom is kind of a mess and the boy is at school and he can’t focus and he’s a mess. The mom eventually goes back to the grief counseling but she can’t bring herself to go in. She’s in the parking lot and she goes to leave but somebody flags her down and it’s this woman and she says, you know, I, I see, I saw you here the last   time you were here. Are you okay? And she tells her, you know, I, I, the last time I was here, it was because of my mom or whatever, but I lost my daughter and this lady says, oh, I lost my son, and my grandson, they drown. And she gives her her phone number. And then weird things start happening, like Peter will be laying in bed and he’ll hear those clucks that Charlie used to do, like in the night, and it scares him. Someone very ominously slides a flyer into their mail slot for this like public seance.   And eventually Annie goes, she calls Joan, the woman who gave her the number, and she goes to visit her and she notices her welcome mat and she says, oh, I noticed your welcome mat. My mother used to embroider ones just like that. Hello. Like major foreshadowing. Just little tiny things like she’s drinking tea at Joan’s house and she picks something off of her lip, like there’s something in her tea. Like I have no idea what it was supposed to be. Little suspicious things. And that’s when she tells the story, the sleepwalking story. And she says that   Peter has never really trusted her since then.

Todd: Yeah, and then what just follows is just this family coming to terms with it while weird things are happening to them. And what you said really rings true in that you’re really not sure if what’s happening is just in their minds because they’re trying to process the grief or if it is actually something supernatural. And I think you’re really questioning that almost up to the very end of the film.

Craig: Oh

Todd: yeah. And even then, you know, I walked away and I thought, could still the whole film be interpreted that way? Could it still all kind of be, by the end of it, they’re all an absolute mess and half of this is going on in their heads? And I don’t think so at the end of the day. No. But you do wonder if there’s a bit of magical realism going on here, you know, right? But no, I think at the end of the day, it’s not but you’re certainly questioning it and that’s good Because the characters are   questioning it as well So once again the director is putting you in their spot in that dollhouse to experience all this with them and also have these questions. It’s really emotionally engaging and draining at the same time.

Craig: It is. And while these suspicious things are going on, still we are dealing with the family drama. And 1 of my favorite scenes in the movie is 1 of the hardest ones to watch, where they are all, Annie is becoming very distant and she’s making a model of the accident scene, which upsets the husband, because he thinks if the son sees it, he’s gonna be upset. And it all leads to this really uncomfortable dinner scene, Where everybody is just very distant at first. And finally, Peter says something to his mom. I think he just asks her   if she’s okay. And she’s like, what, what? Why wouldn’t I be okay? And he says well is there anything on your mind. It’s like is there anything on your mind

Clip: Yeah, okay, so fine and say what you want to say that

Todd: hey, dad.

Clip: I don’t want to say anything. I’ve tried Saying

Craig: okay, so try again release yourself.

Clip: Oh release you you mean   yeah fine release me just say it just Don’t you swear at me you little shit. Don’t you ever raise your voice at me! I am your mother! Do you understand? All I do is worry and slay and defend you. And all I get back is that fucking face on your face, so full of disdain and resentment and always so annoyed. Well now your sister is dead. And I know you miss her. And I know it was an accident and I know you’re in pain And I wish I could take that away for you I wish I   could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but your sister is dead.

Craig: I love Tony Colette so much but in this moment I hated her and I understand like they have dealt with such a horrible tragedy, and I can’t imagine processing that, because ultimately, it wasn’t the son’s fault.

Todd: Right, Right.

Craig: But as a result of his actions, Charlie is gone. Yeah. And it seems like that’s what she’s really struggling with and they have this major confrontation and she just says the most awful things to him like, you know, I want to be there for you, but then I just look at your face and it’s just your face. Like, it killed me because it’s awful. As a mother, she should never say these things. But as a person who has been devastated by tragedy, not just once, but throughout her life, she’s clearly damaged. It’s hard to listen to   and it hurts him and you can see he’s crying. The last thing she says is, nobody will take accountability for the things that they’ve done and he says well What about you you made her go to the party? She didn’t want to go you made her go and that’s finally when the dad’s like, that’s it That’s enough and poor Gabriel burns character just has to be the 1 who tries to keep everybody’s shit together throughout the movie. And I feel so bad for him. And there’s finally 1 point towards the end of the movie where he   finally breaks down and I’m like, dude, cry it out.

Todd: I think another really significant scene is the dream within a dream sequence that happens after this, where the mother is presumably sleepwalking and she ends up in the son’s room, and we get even yet a little more information and She says some more nasty things to him. It turns out she’s in the dream, so she didn’t actually say these nasty things, but she says to him, you know, I didn’t even want you. I didn’t even want you to be born. And she admits that she tried to have a miscarriage when he was pregnant. And he shoots   back like, of course that feeds right into his fear of you were trying to kill me with the paint thinner, you know, even when I was in bed and older and all that. So then you really start to worry about this family. Mom is a time bomb, You know, even sleepwalking, she could do something damaging to these people. So it just creates this tense situation that’s just in any moment. What’s already pretty out of control, but it could get dangerously out of control very quickly. And that’s a lot of the tension of the movie.

Craig: Absolutely. And like you said, that moment ends up being a dream. But of course we don’t know that in the moment. And I just, I can’t praise Toni Collette’s performance enough. She said, you know, they’re talking, they’re having a conversation and she says, I never wanted you. And the way that she delivers it is she says it and then it’s like she realizes what she said and she’s horrified. Just her reaction, like she says it out loud and then gasps and covers her face like, I can’t believe that I just said that out loud. And then   she continues to go on to try to explain what just makes things even worse right around that time She goes to visit Joan actually she meets bumps into Joan in a parking lot Yeah, Joan is all ecstatic and she’s like, oh my gosh. I just had this amazing experience I went to this public seance and she’s like, I know what you’re thinking, I know it sounds crazy and that’s what I thought too, but you know, there were all kinds of people there, doctors, scientists, and by the time we left, everybody was convinced and I spoke to   the medium after and she came back to my house and you just have to come with me. You have to come with me. I have to show you something. And so she takes her back to her house and she says, now I know you’re going to think this is crazy, but this medium helped me contact my dead grandson. And she says, I can show you. And she does. She does this seance where it’s kind of a Ouija board thing except they use a drinking glass and it works you know like the glass moves and Tony Collette   clearly like feels things going on around her and her reactions again Tony Collette’s reactions in this moment are just amazing. And eventually Tony Collette gets freaked out and says, I have to go. But Joan says, okay, it’s okay. I understand you got to go. But if you want to do this yourself, here are the instructions on this piece of paper. All you have to do is recite this incantation and Tony Colette’s like, what language is this? She’s like, oh, I don’t know, just say it. The lady told me to say it. And she’s like, and you   have to make sure that everybody in your family is in the house when it happens.

Todd: Pretty smart.

Craig: Which is so ominous and like if you watch horror movies never read an incantation that you

Todd: know what it means out loud.

Craig: This is never going to lead to good news. But ultimately, she does. She does it in the house by herself, which we don’t see, it’s off camera. But then apparently it works, so she calls the whole family down, and they are very skeptical, of course, as you would be, and the father is actually a little bit irritated but the son says it’s okay you know we can try it I suppose and they do but things just don’t go right it all seems very uncomfortable like the glass moves but then other things start happening. Something shatters in   the room, the candle flares up, the sun is very uncomfortable and very upset and crying. And at 1 point the mom almost seems to kind of become almost hypnotized and it seems as though she’s speaking to her own mother and she says, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to scare us? And her husband throws a glass of water in her face to bring her out of it. And once he does, she doesn’t even know what has happened. That sets into motion the whole last part from this point on.   She unwittingly, in her desperation, has opened a door that they just can’t close at that point.

Todd: That’s a very good way of putting it. And you know what, I was just thinking about this. Her look and her feeling, she was in many ways so channeling. Shelley Duvall, I felt like, in Shining, and very much so. She even has a little bit of her look like a young Shelly DeVaul Uh-huh. You’re right. It just kind of spirals out of control and I think you just have to see the movie but all this Clearly supernatural stuff starts happening. She starts putting pieces together She goes back up into She tries to go back to Joan   and Joan’s not there, but we can see inside Joan’s apartment and we see suddenly she’s got all this weird stuff and a picture of her in there.

Craig: A picture of Peter.

Todd: Peter, right, a picture of Peter and also those symbols on the wall.

Craig: Like on a shrine kind of thing, Right.

Todd: And she goes back upstairs into the attic and she pulls out her mom’s stuff again and and and pulls out those those doormats and realizes yeah she’s made these for a lot of people and it is exactly like Joan. Right.

Craig: And

Todd: then she pulls out the frickin photo album and there’s Joan in there along with her mom you know clearly involved in this weird-ass cult thing in like a wedding dress and and there are people having ceremonies and all this stuff and it’s just, it’s like straight, flat out, Roseberry’s baby kind of stuff.

Craig: Oh yeah.

Todd: Here’s basically what’s happening. There is this demon and she reads it in the book, you know, it’s another 1 of those cases. She opens this occult book to the right page and there’s a highlighted passage in an underlined sentence, you know, that spells out what we need to know. And that is that there’s some demon that this occult group was trying to conjure up and her mother was obviously deeply involved with making this happen. But this particular demon is uncomfortable in a female body. It needs a male body to inhabit. Once again, you kind of put   all those pieces together, what we heard earlier in the movie like you said about her own family and her kids and now you know why her mother was obsessed with the son and Then when she couldn’t get with the son Had to sink her claws into the daughter And then it starts to kind of explain why was the daughter so weird? Well, the implication here, I think, is that that demon was, in some sense, inhabiting the daughter’s body. It was just not a very successful possession, you know, not complete or whatever, or just at least uncomfortable   and needed to move on. Right. And you know it all has to do with this blue light that we see a lot of places you know happening that we didn’t mention but there’s that. But then it starts to get to the Sun and the Sun starts freaking out as well as this demon is getting closer and closer to him.

Craig: And like losing control, like there’s a scene where in school he loses control of his body. He raises his hand in a very odd way and the teacher calls on him but it becomes clear that he’s not in control of his body and his face is contorting And eventually he slams his face down on the desk. Now I don’t know if that was like Peter, you know, slamming his face down on the desk to kind of reclaim. Himself. Because it seems to shock him out of it. Yeah, Like the pain shocks him out of it and   he comes back. And this poor kid, I mean, he’s seeing things like he’s sitting in class and he turns and there’s a glass case next to him and his reflection is just smiling at him, honestly. He calls his dad from school and we don’t hear the conversation, we just hear it relayed. But the dad tells the mom that he feels that Peter feels like some sort of spirit is trying to take over his body, which again all falls into place because that’s why Annie’s brother killed himself. He killed himself because he was supposedly schizophrenic and he   blamed the grandmother for putting

Todd: Trying to put people inside him. Inside him. Yep. Right. There’s all the supernatural stuff happening with Annie’s book and drawings of the sun are showing up in there with the eyes X’d out and the mud, this is freaking out the mom. And so mom isn’t, you know, this is the thing. It’s not like mom is becoming overtaken with part of this plot to also possess her son. She’s starting to get a sense of what’s going on, and so she’s trying to protect him, but all of her efforts to protect him are backfiring. And she goes up   to the attic, and this is another case of where something that was planted early on, the husband had gotten a phone call from the cemetery saying that the grave had been desecrated and he just doesn’t tell the rest of the family. Later on, oh yeah, that happened, and it turns out that the mother’s body had been dug up by somebody, decapitated, and put up in their attic all this time. And when the mother goes up there and finds it, she’s like, oh my God, you know, and she just flips out and the husband comes home and   he’s flipping out because she’s flipping out. He is like, you are insane. This is crazy. And Gabriel Byrne just plays this so well, you know? He does such a good job of the guy who’s really trying to hold it together. He’s really trying to be that reassuring rock for his wife. But the more and more she goes on, finally he kind of reluctantly decides, I’ve gotta put my foot down. We can’t let this go on. She wants him to burn this book and she cannot successfully burn this book because when she tries to do it Every   place the book gets set on fire her own clothes get set on fire So she’s like you’ve got to do it, which is a big mistake She tosses the book into the fire at the end of their big argument, and he just bursts into flames, and he’s out. And then she’s just bonkers from here on out, and the sun comes home and finds him.

Craig: Oh my gosh, and again, there’s a moment where, you know, when she sees him burst into flame, like she opens her mouth in a silent scream. And then in an instant, her facial expression changes. And you just see that that’s it. Like, well, she just broke. Like I just watched it happen. And then things get totally crazy. Like Peter is home this whole time, but I guess that he was sedated after he knocked himself in the face, because like they had to carry him in the house. So I guess he was sedated, but he wakes up   and he goes downstairs. And even before he goes downstairs, when he wakes up, he kind of like hears something in his room and he doesn’t see it, but we do. His mom is crawling around on the walls behind him. Like literally. Yeah. All of a sudden it’s crazy, crazy. And I have to think the only way that I can interpret that is that now she is in some way completely overtaken by whatever force is you know caught yeah this to happen

Todd: I think what happened was you know the spirit was kind of in the book or somehow connected to the book, and so when she tosses that book in the fire, it jumps out of there because there is a flash of that blue light when her expression suddenly changes. But of course, we know it can’t be in a female body forever. So now he is using her and her broken mind as kind of the agency in which to execute the rest of the plans.

Craig: Well, and it said that the book that talked about it’s King Payman is this demon or god or whatever it is and it says that it will inhabit the most vulnerable person available. And so I can only imagine in that moment that she was the most vulnerable.

Todd: Without a doubt.

Craig: So he goes downstairs, he finds his dad’s body, and things just get so creepy. Like we see over his shoulder that his mother is lurking over him on the ceiling, but He doesn’t see her, but he turns and he sees this creepy ass, smiling, naked old guy standing in a doorway.

Todd: I know.

Craig: He doesn’t see his mom, but she gets off the ceiling somehow and then bursts out of nowhere. And then at 100 miles an hour chases him up into the attic.

Todd: That jump scare was so effective. So effective. She comes out of the corner,

Craig: yeah, right at him, and he runs. And it’s so fast. It’s not like regular movie chasing where it’s like, oh no, don’t get me. Like, no, like they sprint.

Todd: It’s literal. This is what would really happen if you were suddenly being chased, yeah. And he runs up in the attic because it’s the only thing available to him at that moment. You know, it’s not like he had a choice and he runs up in the attic and pulls the thing up Behind him, but then he sees the body in there and then suddenly without really good explanation The mom is again hanging from the ceiling, but she has a piano wire Yeah floating and she is very deliberately and robotically starting to saw off her own head.   At first I thought she was stabbing herself.

Craig: And the naked people are up there.

Clip: The naked

Todd: people are up there, yeah.

Craig: I applaud when nudity is not made a big deal of. Like, it’s not sexual, it’s creepy and weird, but it’s just straight up naked people, you know?

Todd: They gots to be naked for the ceremony or something. Right. Oh, it’s just like, there’s another possession movie like this that came out in the 70s that did exactly the same thing. It was kind of a Rosemary’s Baby-esque movie. I can’t remember the name of it, but yeah, it was a similar deal where all these naked people were standing around being creepy. I mean, he pulled this directly off of some earlier films.

Craig: Sure. To escape all of this, Peter jumps out the window. And while he’s laying unconscious on the floor, we continue to hear the sawing until it stops. And then we hear a thud on the floor so she’s clearly decapitated herself. And then the spirit light that we’ve seen several times comes back and seems to kind of, I don’t know, the sense that I got was that it kind of went into him And I think that that’s what we’re meant to believe because he wakes up and he stands up and he sees his mother, headless, levitate into   the tree house and he follows her. The forest that surrounds their house is lined by all these creepy naked people. He climbs up in there, more creepy naked people all bowing down to this weird mannequin-esque kind of statue with Charlie’s head on it and his grandmother and his mother also headless bowing to this thing and he just stands there and then Joan we don’t see her face but I think it was meant to be her her voice seemed familiar crowns him literally takes a crown and crowns him and says, Oh, Charlie, don’t and I mean that   I’m not making a mistake. I screw up names all the time. But she crawled. She calls him Charlie and says, everything’s okay now. We have got you into your new body. You are Paimon. Thank you for all you’ve done for us. Continue to bless us. And she shouts, Hail Paimon, and everybody else shouts, Hail Paimon, and he just stands there. And the implication is that this demon now, like Peter is gone, And he is now this demon that or God or whatever it is that Charlie was before. And the very last scene is just a cut   to the actual last scene, but in the miniature, Like the model. And oh my god, I just thought that it was so haunting. And it’s 1 of those movies where the bad guys win. And it can be frustrating in some situations, but in this it’s almost, I don’t want to say satisfying, because I feel bad. I liked these people. I was rooting for them, but it felt Right that they lost, you know, they were being manipulated from the beginning. There was even when Peter was in school the lessons that he was listening to were all about   Greek tragedy and fate.

Todd: And

Craig: it talks about like, is it more tragic if the tragic hero has a choice or if he was just fated to fall? And in this case, it seems like the suggestion is that this was, you know, they were doomed from the beginning. They were just these pieces being moved around. And this was how things were destined to happen. And it is tragic and it is sad, but it seems like the most appropriate ending. I can’t think of an ending that would have been more appropriate.

Todd: No, I completely agree with you. And it’s also in line with this genre of film, you know, the Satan worshipper genre. I mean, if you look at them most of the time in the horror genre, they get it. You know, it’s like Rosemary’s Baby, for example. The Antichrist is here now. We were succeeded in our plot, and yes, it was a plot all along. Ha ha ha ha ha. You know, and that’s the thing. The Rosemary’s Baby, The Wicker Man, you know, most of these films end this way and it’s interesting that a movie that actually   does pull Shamelessly from a lot of these different already well established and in some cases well worn tropes and images and whatnot can feel just so fresh and still be so terrifying. You know, it doesn’t feel like a movie that’s stealing from all of these things. It feels like a movie that at best is paying homage to them and in fact, putting it together in a very organic way. Yeah. It worked for me. It worked very much for me. Oh, the other 1 I was thinking it was The Witch. It seemed a little bit to have   a bit of that flavor, right?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: I loved it. I thought this movie was a blast. Well, a blast. It wasn’t fun to watch in the sense that, you know, I felt ill through a lot of it, and it was a real emotionally draining experience, but it was a very cathartic, satisfying experience. Well made, beautiful to see, incredible performances that really draw you in. And I can see where he’s getting a lot of rave reviews about this and we’re already anticipating his next movie, which I think there’s already a trailer out for it now.

Craig: Ah, yeah, well I look forward to it because I thought this movie was fantastic. You know, I think I would go so far as to say that this was probably the best horror movie of 2018. I just thought that it was absolutely, I just thought it was brilliant. Everything about it, the score was fantastic. All the cinematography was great. All the performances were great. But I swear, Tony Collette just blew me away in this movie. I just thought that she was brilliant. All right, Well, thank you very much for listening to another episode. Thank you, Joseph,   for recommending this movie. This is the most fun that I’ve had watching and talking about 1 of these movies for a while. We’re gonna continue to do some more requests for the next couple of weeks. And if you have requests, go ahead and send them in. We can’t guarantee that we’ll get to them this time around, but we really enjoy looking at and talking about movies that you all are interested in. And we will get around to them eventually, so Let us know. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find us all over the place. I   listen to us on Google Play, but we’re also on iTunes, Stitcher. We’ve got our website. We’ve got our Facebook page where we encourage you to interact with us. We love hearing from you. We’ll be back again next week with another request. Until then, I’m Craig. And I’m Todd. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

We’re jumping back to a few requests this month and tackling this Ken Russell film that is difficult to categorize. Is it self-aware satire or just a cheesy failure? Is it horror or comedy? There’s a lot to unpack here in this surprisingly fun film. Thank you, Robin, for suggesting it!

Episode 163, 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, as we promised, we’re going to come back to some requests, especially some requests that we received during request month. So today’s film is 1 that actually has been on my radar, but I don’t think it’s been on any of our lists that we’ve composed together. So I was really glad that Robin contacted us through our Facebook page and suggested that we do The Lair of the White Worm by director Ken Russell, infamous director Ken Russell. I’ll just briefly tell   you my backstory with Lair of the White Worm, which is not much. I remember being a kid probably in the early 90s and my dad rented this movie from the video store and watched it by himself and I remember coming up to him the next day as we were returning it and seeing the cover like that’s bizarre This doesn’t look like the kind of thing my dad would normally rent. And I said, so how was it? Did you enjoy it? And he said, it wasn’t really what I expected. So what does that mean Dad? No, I   didn’t really enjoy it. Which, totally, now I’m watching the film, is absolutely what my dad’s take on this movie would be. That’s funny. But, unfortunately, so it’s been kind of, like I said, on my radar for a while, but we hadn’t seen it until today.

Craig: I never even heard of it, which is kind of surprising to me. I don’t recall seeing it at the video store. You know, I was surprised to see that it stars a very very young Hugh Grant

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: I was just really surprised I hadn’t heard of it And then I started watching it and I’m like like I watched like the first I don’t know whatever 15 minutes And I was like oh, it’s gonna be some stuffy British film, like, okay, so, like, there’s like some snake people or something, whatever, and then it gets to 1 scene and I’m like, wait, what? What? What is happening? And then from then on, I was like, holy shit, it’s like, what is going on in this movie? It’s crazy.   From then

Todd: on, you were hooked, huh?

Craig: I don’t know if   I would say I was hooked. I was shocked. Like oh my gosh, it was wild. This is 1 of the craziest movies that we’ve done. And we have done some crazy ones. The crazy movies that we’ve done have been so crazy that they’re not really comparable aside from the fact that they are so crazy and bizarre and out there. But like, this was giving me shades of like society or even like the boxers omen like yeah like it’s it’s nuts it’s a nutso film and before I even watched it I read some stuff about it and   I read like that Hugh Grant won’t even talk about it like really he refused yeah like he refuses to discuss this movie at all which I think is a little bit silly but I kind of get it like it’s it’s out there well

Todd: it’s out there and crazy in a very respectable British way.

Craig: Yeah, I guess.

Todd: Well maybe not respectable, but yeah, very, very, it’s its own flavor of crazy. Like it’s not trauma crazy, it is its own flavor. Like you said, it starts out and it seems like it’s going to be this sort of stuffy British Gothic horror film and then it turns into this wackadoodle. At times it’s like a bad 80s music video. I was thinking like House, you know, with some of those visuals. You remember House? Yeah, yeah. Not House like… House-su. House-su, yeah, the Japanese 1. Did, have you ever seen any of Ken Russell’s other films by chance?

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know what else he’s done.

Todd: Maybe the 1 you’re most likely to have seen would be Altered States.

Craig: No, I haven’t seen it.   I know what it is, but I haven’t seen it.

Todd: He also did a very notorious film called The Devils, and actually it’s so controversial that Warner Bros., even to this day, refuses to release it in its uncut state.

Craig: That 1 has to do with nuns too, doesn’t it?

Todd: Yeah, it’s kind of an obsession of his. He likes nuns and Catholic imagery and stuff in his movies and shocking weird stuff. It’s just sort of his MO. He started out as a BBC television director and directed episodes of things and developed series and stuff and got more and more kind of outlandish and out there and then moved into film. And I guess maybe the 1, the other 1 you’re most likely to have seen would be Tommy. He did the Who’s Tommy.

Craig: Oh yeah, yeah, I’ve seen that.

Todd: And almost all of his films have actually been pretty successful commercially, I think for 2 reasons. First of all, because of the controversy. I think he’s not a Roger Corman, I think, who does controversial things just to make a buck because he knows where his bread is buttered. I just think he’s kind of a whacked out there kind of guy and so his movies are so controversial and have all this weird stuff in it that’s bound to stir people up and so they end up you know bringing people out to see them. But then the second   thing is, honestly, they’re well made. There’s a lot of symbolism and imagery in here. The filmmaking is a high quality, I think. He is a very respected director, even though I don’t know if there’s a critic on the planet that’s willing to say everything he’s put out has been gold. And this 1 tends to be on people’s list of the maybe the more silver or bronze level stuff that he’s done. I read that he did this movie as part of a like 4 or 5 picture deal with a studio. That was because his film Gothic, which   we should probably do. I’m curious

Craig: about it anyway. I know I’ve seen it. I remember that from the video store. There was like a little goblin-y kind of guy. Yeah, I

Todd: remember that. You’ve seen it?

Craig: I have seen it, but I don’t remember it. I just remember the cover.

Todd: Yeah, it’s like about the night that Mary Shelley invented the Frankenstein story. And a lot of his movies actually are takes on old historical novels, you know?

Craig: As is this 1.

Todd: Yeah, as is this 1, which is based on a Bram Stoker novel called The Lair of the White Worm. I’ve even seen people liken this to, I think it was Roger Ebert, liken this movie to something that Roger Corman would have put out just because of its theme and its tone. And he really considered this a pretty schlocky B grade movie. He didn’t give it a very high rating, but I don’t know. I’ll be interested to hear your take on it as well as we talk about it because it’s got, it’s got some layers.

Craig: Yeah, that’s the thing. And like, I’m not, I don’t consider myself to be an avant-garde, artsy kind of guy. I’m much more straightforward in my tastes. But this, I don’t know. I was actually kind of impressed. Some of the imagery in this movie is really controversial you know here I am ironically a gay Catholic but but like there’s lots of gosh   I don’t even know how   to describe it okay so well yeah but I was going more for the Catholic you know side of it Lots of Christian imagery in a very, God, you would almost call it sacrilegious. I can see how if somebody were a very religious person, they might be kind of offended by some of the imagery in this movie, because it’s pretty crazy. But anyway, it starts out, well, first of all, it’s by Vestron. I loved Vestron. Vestron put out great horror movies in the 80s. And I was just watching the, I didn’t know that it was based on   a novel by Bram Stoker. I’d never heard of this title before, but it starts out this guy Angus is doing an excavation, I guess like at his girlfriend’s house. Like that was kind of weird, whatever. Yeah. Or was it his girlfriend even, or is he just there? I don’t know.

Todd: He’s kind of a friend. She’s not his girlfriend yet, but he’s definitely a friend. But it’s hard to see what their relationship is at this point, yeah.

Craig: Sure, so he’s doing some, he’s an archeologist, he’s doing an excavation, and right away he finds this giant skull and it looks like a snake skull. I read that they actually fabricated it using cow skulls and whatever, but it looks cool. And then he also finds like some coins with some weird imagery, like 1 of them has like a serpent like wrapped around a cross. And then we go to a hoedown in a church.

Todd: It’s like a disco hoedown.

Craig: Where we get this great song about this legend of this giant worm.

Clip: Now the worm got fat and grown and grew in awful size with great big teeth and a great big mouth and great big goggle eyes. And when at night it crawled about looking for some booze. If it felt dry upon the road it milked a dozen coos.

Craig: And you know, it’s all very celebratory and they’ve got like this giant white worm puppet that a bunch of people are like dancing around in.

Todd: It’s kind of the equivalent of the Chinese New Year dragon Puppet dance kind of thing.

Craig: Yeah, that

Todd: they’re sneaking around through the crowd as they dance. It’s cool. Sure.

Craig: It’s cool and it’s kind of freaky too. It is, but it’s fun. It’s all about how, I guess, you know, this worm, this white worm, which really, you know, was a snake or a dragon or whatever used to terrorize this area. But an ancestor of Hugh Grant’s, Hugh Grant’s name is James Dampton, and 1 of his ancestors fought the snake and cut it in half. And so like they do this whole thing where like, you know, the big, you know, puppet snake or whatever, you know, breaks into 2 pieces and then is dancing around in 2   halves or whatever. It’s celebratory, it’s fun. And that kind of sets up the lore of what’s going on. Meanwhile, we’ve got these 2 sisters who are also in attendance. It’s Mary and Eve, right? Eve is the other 1. Yeah, they live and I guess run kind of like a bed and breakfast type deal. I guess so.

Todd: He’s the landlord. Well, he’s like kind of, he’s the lord, right, of the manor. And so this is sort of his party and it, you know, goes back generations, all of this legend or whatever is within his family. And then he is the landlord of this house that the 2 sisters live in and they are orphaned Fairly recently orphaned just like a couple years ago I guess and they’re living in a house on his property Which is kind of funny that this other guy has been excavating on his property It hasn’t even been asking him about   it But yes, and they meet at this party actually, the 2 sisters. It turns out that Eve is sort of a girlfriend of James. Mary is a girlfriend, well friend anyway so far, of Angus. And I thought this meeting scene, again, this just, I really like what Ken Russell does visually. This meeting scene is so interesting because the guy who plays Angus, Peter Capaldi, at this young age, the way that he’s done up in this movie almost looks like Hugh Grant’s brother or like his twin. They have such a similar look, don’t you think?

Craig: I don’t know. I think Hugh Grant’s is very pretty and this guy’s a little bit more rustic, but…

Todd: Yeah, I mean, I agree, but if you kind of squint and you look at them both on the screen, their nose, their kind of their facial structure, everything, almost down to their hair except the 1 guy’s hair is a little more done up than the others. They meet at the buffet table of this party and they’re talking with each other and they’re figuring out, oh this is how I ended up being here. They tells the lore about the worm and everything, finds out that he’s been digging in his yard and mentions that he’s found the skull,   which James takes an interest in because it’s part of his family legend. In the meantime, this just the way that this is framed, they’re exactly you could bisect the scene down the middle. And it looks to me anyway, like a split screen

Craig: where

Todd: the 2 sisters look very similar and they’re right next to the 2 guys. They’re almost like mirror images of each other. And this had to be intentional. It’s a cool framing. But then this buffet that they’re at if you really look at it and it gets called out later But if you really look at it while it’s going on you see there’s just all this like disgusting Kind of stuff on there. It’s like the party is done up, this worm party is done up to like almost like a Halloween type Yeah Affair right? So they’re like   tentacles coming out of the jello and in the meantime James is giving Angus some stuff on his plate and Angus is eating it and after a while Angus, toward the end of their conversation, Angus says, oh this is pretty good I’ll have some more and Hugh Grant says, oh you want some more? Mmm,

Clip: it’s very tasty.

Craig: Oh good, so you’ve taken to   our local speciality. Pickled earthworms in Aspic is not to everyone’s taste I can tell you. Eww!

Todd: To which he kind of like chokes a little bit and they’re just these bits of humor and also like if I was making a drinking game for this movie I would say drink every time there’s some kind of funny joke or wordplay or kind of visual thing going on. And drink every time there’s some reference, oblique or not, to worms. Because it is jam-cram packed in this movie in every scene you could possibly imagine. Some reference to worms. And it became kind of a game for me after a while to make sure I spotted or heard   all of them.

Craig: That’s funny.   Yeah, there are a lot. And I see what you’re saying. I hadn’t considered it, but even with the girls who are sisters, of course, so of course they should look a little bit alike. But the 1 that is paired with James, Hugh Grant, is kind of the more traditionally pretty 1. And the 1 who is paired with Angus is kind of, she looks To me a lot like Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live.

Todd: Yes. Yeah spitting image. Honestly.

Craig: Yeah Yeah, but yeah, so you’ve got like the kind of polished up pair and the more rustic pair Yeah I see the duality that you you’ve got going on there and there’s so much like I I have this isn’t even a long movie and I have so many notes and I’m trying not to get too caught up in the details, but the girls’ parents are missing and have been for a while, like I wasn’t really clear on how long they’ve been missing. And they’ve recently, somebody has found their dad’s watch at StoneRig Cavern, which isn’t important   at this point, but becomes important later on. So that’s why I bring it up. Anyway, Then this other lady, Lady Sylvia, shows up. Like, she’s just kind of sneaking around outside or something, and a cop, you know, sees her, and then he gets bit by a snake and she sucks the venom out of his leg, which is kind of sensual and weird but you know I wasn’t thinking too much of it yet you know I’m thinking okay this lady you know she’s the mysterious lady who shows up this is a Bram Stoker book she’s probably scary   whatever I don’t know

Todd: yeah you get that from the very beginning, don’t you? Even when she appears.

Craig: Well, and she’s very beautiful and sensual, and so you just kind of get that vibe from her that there’s something sinister about her.

Todd: Well, and you know you’re watching a movie called Layer of the White Worm and you’re getting all these white worm references thrown in your face, even just in this first 10 minutes of this movie. So when she shows up and she’s dressed all in white and she’s got that thing and she owns this home called the Temple House which is this big mansion that’s nearby that apparently is only she’s only in during the springtime or whatever and she’s gone most of the other time and so yeah that whole scene with her and the cop in there   who by the way is played by Paul Brooke who I recognized immediately as Mr. Fitz Herbert from the the Bridget Jones’s diary.

Craig: I just I recognized him because he’s got a wonky eye. I knew I had seen him before. What is it?

Todd: What is it about British actors and wonky eyes? How many how many wonky eyed British character actors are there that you’re like, oh, it’s that guy.

Craig: Anyway, Lady Sylvia goes by the sister’s house while they’re out and she steals the skull and then she walks up to a crucifix and we just get this shot of her with these, it’s out of nowhere. In 1 moment she’s just regular lady Sylvia and then we cut to like a close-up of her and she’s got like these 3 inch fangs like snake fangs and like scary snake eyes and she shoots I don’t know venom I guess out of her mouth onto the crucifix, and I’m like, oh, well, that’s weird, but okay, whatever.

Todd: And it comes out of nowhere. Right, it comes

Craig: out of nowhere. And it leaves just as quickly.

Todd: I mean, and it was a little bit scary, I thought. I mean, it was shock, kind of a shock, you know, jump scare kind of moment.

Craig: Yeah Well, and and it looks good like it’s funny cuz she’s she has these fangs At various points throughout the movie and other characters have them at some points throughout the movie and they’re huge and they look fantastic. But it’s obvious that the actors can’t close their mouths with those fangs in so they just have to walk around with their mouths wide open, which is Kind of hilarious. But anyway, so she steals the skull and she leaves Okay, and then James and Eve come back to the house after the you know, fun night of dancing or   whatever and This was the moment like Eve is walking upstairs. They say I’m tired. I gotta go to bed or whatever. She notices something gross on the wall and on the crucifix and she goes and she touches it and then it was it’s 1 of the trippiest scenes I’ve ever seen in my life And there are several of them throughout, but this is where they begin. And it’s just like a punch in the face. Like, yeah, everything has been, you know, so kind of subdued and very British and you know, up until this point. And then   all of a sudden we’re in like this surreal, it felt like a painting, you know like, but it was you know live action obviously and Jesus on the crucifix against this kind of technicolor background and this huge white snake wrapped all around Jesus in the crucifix. And then there are these scary, there are like nuns like praying in front of the crucifix and then these gladiators come out and graphically, I mean not like porn graphically but pretty graphically like rape the nuns and there is some brief like topless nudity with these nuns but they’re still like   in their, I don’t know what you call the top part, but like the headpiece of their habits. And so it’s just, it’s really shocking. Like I was shocked.

Todd: And it’s also really cheap looking in a film, In a movie that honestly has been quite beautiful up to this point, and really almost noir in the way that it’s been filmed with lots of shadow and really good costume and grandiose and beautiful settings, You get what you just described and it looks like a shot on video music video.

Craig: I get what you’re saying. I can totally see that. Like an 80s music video and this is you know the movies from what 88 so it is the 80s whatever but to me it didn’t look so much like cheap as it looked like This is a stylistic choice that we’re making.   Oh   yes, yeah, I agree. I was actually kind of impressed. Like, to be, I felt a little dirty. Like, oh my god, what is happening? And like, in the vision, like Lady Sylvia’s there, but she’s like this demon snake lady it’s crazy like it is it’s just absolutely insane and then it’s over and she passes out I don’t know Then it goes on from there and then it gets back more into some of the realistic stuff. And there are several of these scenes throughout. And then when we get to the end, it all kind of culminates in   these things kind of coming into their reality, not just being visions or whatever, but I have to give it credit for just… It totally caught me off guard. I was surprised. Honestly, you know, I’m not easily offended or easily shocked, even when it comes to like religious iconography and stuff. You know, like I go to church and blah, blah, whatever. But I’m not easily shocked by these things. But it just it happens so quickly and it’s so in your face. I was like, holy crap. Like, I feel like I literally, well, I know I did. I   literally paused it and was just trying to write down everything that I could remember because I was like, oh my God, that was wild.

Todd: Yeah, I know. It really was. And I think the whole movie totally is kind of like this too. There are moments where the film is very, I think, well structured and very well played. There are moments where it just seems like a cheap B movie. Like for example, not long after this, there’s a scene of like a Boy Scout.

Craig: Yes! He’s, he’s, he’s,

Todd: It just comes out of nowhere too, and he’s hitchhiking through the woods, and she comes and she picks him up and she takes him back to his lair.

Craig: Sylvia, Lady Sylvia.

Todd: Yes, Sylvia does, sorry. Comes and picks him up and brings him back. She’s saying these lines, And there’s so many of these lines in this movie, and I think the movie is just so much more charming with this stuff in it.

Craig: There’s some system you’ve got there. How do you rate the music? I’m not really into any banging. Are you into any sort of banging? I’m not bad on the math, Algon. You’re sweet. What’s your name? Kevin. The mates call me Kev. Ah. Look, Kev, you’re soaked. We’re passing my door. Why don’t you come in and dry off? It’ll be getting dark soon. A big boy like you afraid of the dark? No, I just don’t want to be late for my dinner at the Euphostal, that’s all. Don’t worry, you’ll leave me well satisfied. Yeah.

Todd: You know, and he’s looking down at her garter, which is showing and all that. They’re just all these little lines and this Kevin guy Who’s I think play an actor playing a person who was supposed to be much younger than he really is Nonetheless, it’s like the dopey doesn’t really get it kind of Boy Scout guy And the next see the next shot is of them playing freaking snakes and ladders in front of a fire. And all you see is a shot down on the board of them playing snakes and ladders for a good like minute   while they do it. And then a shot of him and he’s kind of bundled up, you know, by the fire, getting warm or whatever, laying down. And then a shot of her and again, bam, like it hits you in the face. She’s in the sexy lingerie. Just laying there in front of him. Oh my gosh, it’s so funny. And then of course she seduces him and leads him. The next thing you know, he’s in a fricking hot tub. But this hot tub.

Craig: A bathtub, not just a hot tub, like she’s bathing him.

Todd: It’s massive and it’s circular and it’s at the foot of this grand double staircase with this huge like marble chalice behind it and surrounded by plants and things. It’s meant to evoke a temple. Yeah. You know? And here he is kind of at the sacrificial altar and he stands up and you know and she’s washing him and again he’s just not mature enough to play into this but she’s washing him and as she goes a little further down and the camera comes up to his face she says

Craig: That’s the other thing about this movie. Like there are parts of it, like this part, but this part isn’t even, it’s not even 1 of the more suggestive parts. Like it is overtly sexual. Yeah. Like so sexual. And like you get this, like she’s, I don’t remember if she had a sponge or if she’s just using her hands or whatever, but I swear to God, if I were a 13 year old Boy, I would have probably watched this scene 4 or 5 times in a row, depending on how many times I needed to watch it. But   like, you know, it’s so overtly sexual. It’s crazy. And it gets even crazier than that later with like these crazy enormous fallacies. Like oh my god it’s nuts. We’ll get there.

Todd: Well she has this and if you’re paying attention to And I’d love to look in the background and kind of look for out for this sort of stuff But if you pay attention even in other scenes scenes that don’t even take place at this house that have nothing to do with her There are a lot strong phallic images in the background like even Hugh Grant’s character James When he’s getting into bed and by the way this guy lives in a literal castle. This is like, Marie Kondo went on vacation and several generations of families gathered all   the junk they possibly could and just kept it in every cram, packed it into every nook and cranny of this house. It in itself is almost a parody of this sort of gothic

Craig: trope. It’s so funny. It’s a perfect role for Hugh Grant. I’m really not a Hugh Grant fan because he just seems like such a stuffy asshole. Pretty much everything that I’ve heard about him in real life suggests that that’s really kind of how he is. But he has this very stuffy way of talking, you know? Like, oh god. And he’s just perfect in this role. Like, he wakes up in bed and like his butler is just, you know, waiting for him to wake up and he’s like, Oh, Jeeves, bring me the paper. Like it’s so ridiculous.   It’s so funny.

Clip: I don’t think I’ll be able to make it

Craig: to the breakfast table today. Like, oh my god.

Todd: You might as well have a pipe in his mouth. Yeah,

Craig: it’s great. Right, but he’s perfect for it because it works.

Todd: I think it’s parody. You know, I really do think it’s true parody. And that’s what’s kind of charming about this movie but also why it’s just a little dis- it adds to the disjoineness of it I think. At times it looks cheap, at times it’s kind of a clever parody of these films, at times it’s almost naked gun-ish in its parody and some of the stuff that they’re saying. And at other times, it’s really just quite well structured and quite visually arresting, you know? Yeah. So it’s kind of all of these things in 1 movie. And   like what you said, where it just kind of hits you in the face, on a more subconscious level, a lot of these things sort of hit you in the face as you’re watching it.

Craig: There really are really funny things about it too. So Sylvia eventually kills Kevin, like, you know, poor little Kevin. She First, does she bite him? I think she bites him, so he’s paralyzed or something. And then she’s going to sacrifice him, because I guess presumably he’s a virgin, she’s going to sacrifice him to the worm, but then the doorbell rings and it’s James, and so she has to hide him. So she just sticks him under the water and he drowns, you know, presumably, whatever. But before that, like when they’re talking and playing Snakes and Ladders, she’s   like, maybe we should have a little music. And as she goes to the record player to put on a record, apparently he pulls out a harmonica and he starts playing it. And this is my favorite part of the whole movie is like, I guess, I don’t even know what the requirements are, but there’s certain music, like when this kid starts playing the harmonica, like she’s enthralled, like he’s snake charming her, and she has to do a little snake charm dance. And it happens several times. And it happens later. Oh, God, I know I’m jumping way, way   ahead. Eventually that cop, the wonky-eyed cop that we talked about, We find out later that he has been turned into 1 of these snake people and somebody snake charms him and he does the snake charm dance. And it’s so funny. Oh my god. But it’s just hilarious. That’s like their only weakness. Like they’re these skillful killers and evil plotters or whatever. But whip out your harmonica or your bagpipes And you can charm them and force them to do a little dance for you.

Todd: And then even earlier, even later, or is it earlier than that, Hugh Grant, this character James, gets this idea and puts these massive speakers on top of the castle.

Craig: Of his house, yeah.

Todd: And then finds, goes through his parents’ records. In something that could have been just a quick scene, like, oh, I know my parents had this record of some snake charm or whatever, here it is, and he puts it on the thing. It’s long, this is like a 10 minute scene where he finds a record, he thinks it, and he asks for the butler’s opinion. And as soon as he starts playing the record, it’s right but it’s not quite right. And suddenly there’s a close-up on the butler’s face and he gets this like licentious look in his   face and starts getting all hot and sweaty like,

Clip: That certainly conjures to mind a selfish charmer, my lord. 1 of the feminine gender your father empowered in Istanbul. She was, what is euphemistically known as a… Deadly dancer? Maybe try the B-side, my lord.

Todd: And as soon as that starts going and blasting out across the town, the next shot is of… There’s a giant wicker basket. No lie. Yes! Next to the fireplace and the woman slowly starts rising out of it. Like, what? Was she just hanging out in this wicker basket the whole time?

Craig: Oh my god, yeah, it’s so funny. And I knew, like, I almost feel like I predicted it a little bit in my mind. I’m like, oh my God. And I think in my mind it was kind of like, what could happen here is that this lady could be in like a wicker snake basket and come out.   Yep. Yep, there it is.

Todd: It was perfect. It’s true, but like the whole movie is imminently predictable. You basically know what’s going on. You’re at least 4 steps ahead of everybody else in this. But then again, it doesn’t take them long to catch up either. There’s a scene where they kind of sit down at the table, these 4 characters, these 4 main characters, and end up bing bang boom, putting 2 and 2 and 4 and 4 and everything together, and basically have it all figured out. They’ve just got to go and investigate and find out where the worm is. And that’s   where all these little plans and things hatch, which in itself is really funny because again, I think it’s just sort of parody. I really do. I really see this movie in many ways as a parody of these kinds of films, but I enjoyed that part of it. I liked the fact that he was telegraphing everything in advance. You know, even before the police officer reveals himself as a snake, you know it’s coming. Sure. He pulls up and asks Mary’s character to come with him and he has to identify a body because apparently her sister, no, her   mother, has been found and killed. We’ll get to that in a minute. But when he pulls his car up to her it’s interesting the shot is directly on the car but there is a big bright reflection in the windshield Where his head would be so you can’t even tell who she’s talking to in the car Even though you know, it’s the policeman because you can hear his voice and there’s something very unsettling about that You know to see these 2 characters talking to each other but 1 of them is deliberately obscured. And then when she walks   inside, there’s this long shot of him, just his face. And he’s not really, it’s not like he gives a creepy evil smile, but just the fact that they’ve zoned in on this guy’s face and he’s kind of twitching a little bit, just for a few seconds, shows you, okay, this guy, something’s up with him, right? He’s bit

Craig: or whatever.   And I

Todd: feel like most movies would hold that out until later, because later when she’s trying, when he comes around to the other side of the car, she notices that he’s bit in the wrist and that kind of would have been the moment when you’d think okay This is when the reveal should be but no he telegraphs it way earlier And he does that with everything like you know from the beginning that this woman is this white yeah Snake you know you know from the beginning that all I mean almost all of these things are telegraphed way in   advance. And it’s got to be, I think it’s intentional, you know, I don’t think it’s just sloppy filmmaking or bad writing. I just think that they meant for you to not really watch this movie and be in suspense, you know, as to what’s going to happen. There’s plenty of shock coming at you without the suspense of the plot getting in your way.

Craig: Well, and   that was my favorite part. I’m not gonna race out and read Bram Stoker’s novel, but I wonder how closely it sticks to the source material. I have no idea, but you’re right. My favorite things about the movie were those crazy, you know, ultimately it’s basically a mystery. Like These 2 girls’ parents have been missing for a while and they found the dad’s watch or whatever and they found it in this cavern and they’re putting together little things here and there. Hugh Grant will say totally stupid stuff like, oh, maybe this cavern was the home of the   dragon. I mean, it’s just, all that’s kind of, you know, it’s fine, you know, as far as moving the plot forward. But the interesting stuff is the surreal stuff. Like at 1 point, he, James, has a dream where he’s on an airplane.   Oh my god.   The girls’ parents are there, but they’re catatonic. And then the girls are like stewardesses and then lady Sylvie is there and she’s like an evil stewardess. Like they fight

Todd: and stuff. It’s like snake airlines.

Craig: Oh my god, it’s so, it’s, there’s so much, you know, sexuality, like lots of shots of like garter belts and legs and stuff.

Todd: And the stewardesses start wrestling in the middle and while he’s watching he’s holding a marker that he slowly like rises.

Craig: It’s so in

Todd: your face.

Craig: Oh my God, that was so funny. Oh, God, what do I have? I have something written in my, marker boner, is   what I have written down.   Oh my God, so funny. And then, you know, they go and they explore the cavern and 1 of the girls, Eve, is like, well, I don’t want to do this. So Mary’s like, okay, well, you can leave. So she like starts to go home. And then Lady Sylvia is like just casually up in a tree and she’s like, oh, I chased a kitten up here, but now I can’t get down. And so Eve helps her get down. Obviously then Eve is hypnotized and Sylvia takes her back to her manor or whatever. Then Sylvia is naked in   a tanning bed and like she gets out of the tanning bed and she’s naked. And then she has this like 3 foot phallus, like a ceremonial phallus or something. And she goes into this whole monologue.

Clip: Do you believe in reincarnation, Eve? I do. But then I am immortal. And I have seen the same souls inhabit different beings throughout history. I’ve seen you before Eve, many centuries ago. In the time of my lover, the great Emperor Cerausius.

Craig: Yes, I can see

Clip: you now on your knees, blindly worshiping your false god. Fancy praying to a god who was nailed to a wooden cross.

Craig: And she tells this Eve to get undressed, which she does, except like, she takes everything off except her shirt and then Sylvie’s like, oh, that’s enough. Like, God forbid you get totally nude in this, you know, since I am, who knows, whatever. And then she’s rubbing this phallus like up her inner leg and like then it cuts to Eve’s face and she’s like, like what are you doing to her? Like stop it! Like Oh my god, just crazy, crazy stuff.

Todd: She’s checking to see if she’s a virgin. That’s what she’s doing. And she finds out she is, so she decides she’s going to be her sacrifice.

Craig: Yeah. And then they do that whole setup where James invites Sylvia over. He doesn’t invite her, he snake charms her over, like you said, with the huge speakers. And so the other 2, Mary and Angus, sneak into the house where they find the girl’s mother, but she’s a snake person now. That was scary. It was scary.

Todd: Yeah, that was a scary scene. Of course, the mother is sitting by herself. This is the first time we’ve seen the mother.

Craig: Except for in the dream. She was in the dream.

Todd: Right, and it’s strange. Like, you don’t even think she’s gonna be alive and you’re watching this thinking is she an apparition or something like that she just sitting in a very empty room because no room of this house has more than 1 piece of furniture in it but she’s watching TV and of course there’s a snake program or something on TV and as they approach her she turns around and suddenly she’s that crazy, creepy snake woman with the huge fangs and the eyes. And it’s like you said earlier, it’s really good makeup. It’s kind of like   how Fright Night, like the makeup kind of made that movie. It’s the same way here, right? It just, it makes it scary. And it’s good because it could have been super hokey. That wouldn’t have been the right balance. The movie’s already a bit hokey.

Craig: Well, and it’s even like she’s sitting, the mom is sitting in this huge room with maybe a fireplace or something, but it’s just like this huge empty room and she’s just watching this little 1980s TV and it’s just, she’s watching this video of Sylvia like dancing with a python, which again gets very sexual. Like there’s closeups of the snake’s tail like curling up under Sylvia’s vag. Like it’s very… Yeah,

Todd: she’s got her mouth open approaching its head. Yeah,

Craig: it’s totally… Like she puts the whole snake’s head in her mouth like, ugh, It’s crazy.

Todd: Just like Alice Cooper used to do. True, true.

Craig: And then the mom attacks and bites her. But I guess because Angus is an archaeologist, he knows that you have to suck snake venom out. So he does. And She’s okay, I guess. While that’s happening, James is waiting for Sylvia to arrive, which she doesn’t, but like his power goes out and he sends the butler down to check things out or whatever. And the butler screams and then the mom, the snake mom, jumps out at him. Leaps. Yeah, I’m not really sure how she got there so quickly. But she did. She leaps out at him and   he grabs this sword that is at least as big as he is. Oh yeah,

Todd: it’s this huge, long, like 6 foot medieval sword that, you know, again, probably the same sword, you know, that’s been in their family for generations that killed the, you know, the worm or whatever. It’s

Craig: fun. It’s a great shot, like, it’s in slow-mo and he like does like kind of a little pirouette kind of deal and yes like and slices her in half in slow motion and like it’s nothing like And then right

Todd: He could just lay that down and smoke a cigarette. It is so funny, I think. But it’s so in keeping with his character. And then again, he turns around and he calls Angus and they have a chat. And he’s just so swab about it, you know, it’s like, yeah, my power’s out. Yeah, I know. Well, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just, I just soaked all that up. It was like James Bond wandered onto the set of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Yeah. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. It was really funny. When Mary’s mom, I guess, bit her, then there was more… It’s like you can’t call them flashbacks. I guess they’re more like visions. Like anytime they get bitten or they touch the venom or whatever, like they have these visions. But then there’s this crazy, and you’re right, it’s so much like an 80s music video. Like it’s all Technicolor and it’s Sylvia, like she’s all blue and she opens her mouth wide open and there are like these guys like dancing in her mouth and then they come out and they like Rape Mary   and it’s crazy We eventually we eventually get some explanation Sylvia explains to Eve that you know this Dionin or whatever is this ancient demon it’s all very kind of the Cthulhu guy.

Todd: Oh yeah it’s very Lovecraftian.

Craig: Yeah it’s very Lovecraftian.

Todd: And she kind of, especially later when we’re in the lair and she goes off on another 1 of these diatribes, she kind of explains that this whole serpent thing dates back to the Garden of Eden. And so this Dionin is really like the serpent that was in the Garden of Eden and it’s been the serpent, you know, throughout history or whatever.

Craig: Right. You know, it gets all into religious stuff like how God expelled him and blah, blah, blah, whatever. But it turns out that they had this temple for Dionin and then these nuns tried to build a convent on top of that and that’s where all this nun imagery comes from.

Todd: It’s so silly.

Craig: And it is and they try they do some stupid archaeological stuff too like they try they go visit this cave which is an amazing location. Oh my gosh. It’s absolutely stunningly gorgeous, this cave location.

Todd: It was a real cave too, that they use for that.

Craig: It’s amazing. And it looks like a dragon’s lair. Like it’s very kind of circular, like you can imagine a serpent, you know, a giant serpent snaking through this place. Very, very cool.

Todd: And it’s in the, cut in the side of a mountain where, you know, when you’re inside looking out, you’re looking down across the horizon.

Craig: It’s so beautiful, yeah. Yeah, it’s really cool. Hugh Grant, James, I don’t know. I didn’t even follow all of this. Like somehow there’s like a crack in the ground and the snake is trapped down there. I don’t know.

Todd: It’s kind of loose. And it’s stupid how he comes to these realizations. You know, it’s total movie BS really.

Craig: Right. The cop, okay, So the cop picks up Mary the morning after all of this hullabaloo takes place and he says that he’s taking her to the police station But first they have to pick up Sylvia and like you said you can tell immediately that he’s Evil And so he takes her to Sylvia’s house. She tries to run away, but then he turns into Snake Man with the big teeth and the scary red eyes. But then Angus pops up out of nowhere playing the bagpipes. This, it has to be, You know, as I was watching it,   I didn’t really think that it was intentional comedy, but talking to you about it now, it just had to be. Oh yeah. It just had to be, because not only does Angus just pop up out of nowhere playing the bagpipes, but he’s like in full Scottish regalia. Like, he’s in his kilt and like the knee socks and like.

Todd: And they have this awful, awful goofy little dance between the 2 of them where they’re just kind of more or less stepping around each other outside around a

Craig: Him and the cop! The big fat cop! It’s so funny!

Todd: Actually the cop leaps on him, gets the better of him, which I thought was surprising. And just before he can bite him, he throws him back and the cop gets impaled on a snake-shaped sundial. And again, so comedy, like this guy’s got these wonky eyes, right? And what happens when he gets impaled on the sundial, but 1 of those sundials is jutting straight up through his eye and the eye is the end of the sundial like ha ha.

Craig: Oh god. Okay so then so Mary is inside now. We don’t even see how this happens but somehow she’s captured and she gets tied up like in this evil pit and Eve is also in there like just in her bra and panties like tied up in this pit.

Todd: Oh, it’s this it’s classic It’s like 1920s or 30s kind of adventure movie type stuff.

Craig: Yeah, it’s Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom kind of stuff.

Todd: In a cave with a big, big glowing pit and these girls are in their underwear, you know, dangling over it tied by ropes. It’s, You just have to laugh. It’s so hilarious.

Craig: It is pretty funny. And Angus goes in there and he injects himself with something, which I was a little bit curious about, but whatever. It makes sense later. And then he lets loose a mongoose, like this mongoose is gonna lead him to Sylvia, which it does, I guess.

Todd: She’s just in the next room after all.

Craig: Right, she’s just behind the curtain like 10 feet away. But she jumps out at him and she’s like buck naked and all she’s blue at this point and she bites him and drags him into the pit for no apparent reason because he’s supposedly dying and then he supposedly dies but he’s not because again it makes no sense eventually but supposedly what he injected himself was like anti-venom or whatever. Then we see a scene of James, Hugh Grant, or whatever has a whole crew in the cave and in the cavern, which I didn’t even understand.

Todd: I didn’t understand this bit at

Craig: all, yeah. I didn’t understand it, like he’s just absent from this last scene, so they filmed him in the cave with a crew, I have no idea what’s going on there. Anyway, but then Sylvia like summons Dionin or Dionin or whatever it is and then she straps on that huge phallus.

Todd: With a point in the

Craig: end. Yes, and it’s like she’s going to penetrate   Eve with   it, but then the snake starts to come out of the pit so she doesn’t have time, she’s like, oh darn. Guess no time for this.

Todd: Yeah, she literally says, time for ritual, no time for ceremony. And goes up and starts to cut her loose so she’ll fall in. But at this point, Angus wakes up, he runs over, and he ends up pushing Sylvia into the pit instead. There’s a bit of dangling and a bit of cutting. He leans over to cut off her hand in order to cut her loose from holding onto Sylvia’s legs, which is rather silly.

Craig: Right, holding onto Eve’s legs.

Todd: Eve’s legs, sorry.

Craig: No, it’s fine. The smoke is coming out of the pit, and you hear these roars and stuff, And then all of a sudden, the head of the snake appears. And it looks kind of cool. And I read that it was like a VW Beetle that they just painted up to look like a snake. Like they just like, like the hood of the beetle, like they just opened and closed. That’s so weird. But it looks pretty good.

Todd: It did look good.

Craig: But yeah, he drops Sylvia in there and then, you know, He pulls a grenade out of his pocket.

Todd: From under his kilt. He pulls a grenade out from under his kilt. Where were you holding this grenade?

Craig: And he drops it in the snake’s mouth, and the snake explodes. And then there’s just a cute little James and Angus meet up outside 1 of the chateaus or whatever and they just have a little chat. And Angus says something like, well, you drove the snake out to us. Well, I don’t have any idea how that happened.

Todd: Yeah, that was kind of bizarre. And this is where I thought the movie should more or less end. You know, these 2 guys, they look like each other anyway, just out having a smoke and walking off into the sunset. But there’s this tail end to it. I guess the horror movie needs a tail end like this. Angus goes back inside. He gets a phone call from the hospital, which he had developed a serum apparently. And they say, yeah, there was this mix up. And the serum that we gave you was actually just anti-arthritis medicine. But I’ve   got the serum here and you can come in and pick it up tomorrow. And he looks at himself in the mirror and starts to lick his lips and then he goes out and he sits next to Hugh Grant in the car and they’re going to drive along. And then we get more of this sort of double entendre.

Craig: Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m famished. We stop on the way for a bite. Why not?   So he’s a snake person now. Yeah. That was kind of giving me little shades of an American werewolf in London. Yes.   Kind of   like that buddy, you know, jokey kind of thing. Oh man, I swear this is 1 of the more bizarre movies that we’ve ever done. And I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it, especially, you know, Hugh Grant’s a famous guy. I can’t believe that I’ve never, I would have thought that I would have read something about, oh this crazy movie that Hugh Grant was in that nobody knows about or something, but I’d never heard anything. But I want to give a shout out to Robin who asked us to do this 1 because otherwise I would have   never seen it. And it’s so crazy and so bizarre and I’m just glad to have seen it. It’s so weird and I have no interest in ever watching it again. But I’m glad to have seen it. It was surreal. It was a weird experience. And I have to admit that it was fun. Just because it was so bizarre, it was fun to watch, and I was really looking forward to talking to you about it today. Yeah, me too.

Todd: Thank you, Robin. Honestly, I really enjoyed it. Like you, I really enjoyed watching this movie almost from beginning to end. You know, it just took you in directions that you didn’t expect it to go. It was total wackadoodle at moments. It was very shocking at some times. It just kind of checked all my boxes in a way that somehow worked. You know, these kind of movies aren’t always gonna work. It’s better than…the only other Ken Russell movie I’ve seen is Altered States. And Altered States also takes a strong left turn where it gets kind of crazy   and bizarre. And that 1 didn’t really work for me as well. It just didn’t seem very plausible even within the realm of the movie, the direction that that film took. But this movie, even though all kinds of crazy and plausible thing happens. This is 1 of the only horror movies that Ken Russell’s ever done. And it just seems like he chose to do more of a sendup of the genre, you know, than anything else. And it kind of succeeded for me in a way that a lot of these, you know, we do a lot of these   parodies. We do a lot of these send ups of horror films. There’s, you know, it’s, there are a dime a dozen nowadays, but this is 1 that’s kind of stands in a category all of its own. And also, you know, it gives us the opportunity. I often think about this, Craig, you know, you and I have been doing this podcast, we’re going on over 160 episodes now, we’re in this genre where you just see shocking things all the time, right? And we’ve, I mean, the stuff that we’ve talked about on this podcast, you know, and it’s   helping us, you know, do this checklist. And I just checked off today, Marker Boner. We got to… Yeah, that’s

Craig: a good 1. But I appreciate that it was bold, you know, it was bold in its imagery, you know, that was, I don’t know, who knows who the intended audience was but that could potentially have been offensive to many people And I like that it didn’t shy away from that it didn’t shy away from the

Clip: overt sexuality It

Craig: didn’t shy away   from the overt sexuality. It didn’t shy away from the arguably sacrilegious imagery. You know, if you’re going to do it, go for it. And I feel like they did. So kudos for that. Not to say that that makes it a great movie by any speciality of imagination, but you know, if you’re gonna, you know, go balls out, do it. Yeah. And I appreciate that.

Todd: Well, I think that’s Ken Russell’s MO. I think you and I, we should put the devils on our list. We’re going to have to watch that, you know, whatever version we can find.

Craig: Sure, maybe.

Todd: Well, thank you again Robin for this wonderful selection. We really enjoyed watching it. We always enjoy watching your requests. It gives us a chance to do some things that we on our own might not think about doing. And certainly this movie really tops that list. You can get online and find us at our Facebook page. Just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. You can also go on our webpage, twoguyz.red40net.com and start a conversation with us. Introduce us to other films that we might not find on our own. Let us know what your favorite is, what   you thought of this film. We love having those conversations with you. And we always appreciate it. If you forward this podcast onto a friend who you think might like it, spread the word a little bit. It helps keep us motivated to do this week in week out. Until next time I’m Todd and I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

The last of our month of sequels brings us back to the Return of the Living Dead series to see if the second is as funny and iconic as the first. Turns out, not so much. Have a listen to see what we thought of this 80’s horror comedy.

Episode 162, 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, we’re wrapping up our month of sequels with a movie that I was actually really looking forward to doing. It’s Return of the Living Dead Part 2 came out in 1988. We saw Return of the Living Dead and it’s an earlier podcast. I know we both enjoyed it. I think I probably enjoyed it more than you did, but it is a pretty bizarre movie, fun, and kind of a horror comedy. Well, it’s very much a horror comedy written and   directed by a guy named Dan O’Bannon, who was responsible for the Alien movie and other movies we’ve done on here like Night of the Creeps, Dead and Buried. This sequel he had nothing to do with. In fact, most of the people involved in the original except for a few of the actors also bizarrely didn’t want to have anything to do with the sequel as well. They didn’t even like the script and so I didn’t really know that before watching this movie so I was able to kind of come into it and judge my own opinion. I   was excited to see that a couple of the main actors were coming back again to do roles that were completely different, which is a little strange to have a sequel to a movie and have 2 characters, actors come back but play completely different characters. But they had good chemistry in the first movie. And… True. Well, I don’t know. For what it’s worth, I watched this film and I did not really enjoy the experience as much as I had hoped. Let’s just put it that way. Just lay all our cards on the table. How about you, Craig?   I hadn’t seen this before. How about you?

Craig: Oh, man. No, I hadn’t seen it either. And I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that I loved the first 1, but you recommended it and it was fun. It had, you know, its moments and Linnea Quigley was in it and we love her. That was a lot of fun and she was really good in it. And so I didn’t really know what to expect. I mean, I didn’t have like really super high expectations or anything, but okay, I’ll set it up like this. Okay, so I was really busy the day before we were supposed to do   this and I didn’t have time to watch it during the day and my partner and I were performing in this deal and we were busy all that day or whatever and then he said, It’s okay, don’t worry about it, we can watch it together.” And I said, well, it’s not going to be 1 that you’re going to like. It’s going to be pretty stupid. And he’s like, it’s fine, we can watch it together.

Clip: It wouldn’t

Todd: be the first time, I’m sure he said.

Craig: Right, right. And so I put it on and we started watching it together and half an hour into it, 23 minutes into it actually, I said, I can’t do this. I can’t make you do this. And he was really nice about it. And then the next day I was watching it and I finished it and he was like, well, so what did you think? And I was like, it was awful. And he was like, I know, Thanks for not making

Clip: me watch the whole thing.

Todd: Well, when you’re watching a movie like this, and especially when you have some hopes for it, at least, some preconceived notion, and you want to enjoy it, you get about 20, 30 minutes in and you start to have these feelings, which were very similar to me. Like, oh, this is going to be funny, like the first movie. And then it’s like, oh, it’s really kind of slapsticky. And oh, This is really kind of trying to be like Steven Spielberg at the same time with the kid angle and yeah And then it just seemed to be a   bit of a mess You really hope that by the end of it, maybe the movie’s gonna redeem itself You know if I just keep watching a little longer, maybe by the end I’m gonna come around to it and it just goes off the rails and stays there I think. At the end of the day it’s not really fun to watch. It’s just, I don’t know man, I think the original movie had such heart to it. I went ahead and watched a documentary on the making of Return of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead   Part 2, which you can see on YouTube, which I highly recommend, especially because the part about the first movie is way longer than the part about the second movie and they get almost all of the original actors and the special effects people from there talking about it. You know, the story behind the first movie is really quite interesting. This whole series, Return of the Living Dead, has 5 movies in it now. I think the last 2 were released straight to DVD. This 1 was theatrically released and was received poorly. The first 1 was received quite well   and continues to be received well. I’ve heard that the second 1 has a bit of a cult following now. I really don’t know why. And then there was the third 1 that kind of took a different direction and I don’t think did so well either, but maybe was a notch above this 1 from what I hear. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to watching it. But you know, the original producer of the first movie, Russo, was 1 of the co-producers with George Romero of the original Night of the Living Dead movie. And they decided to   part ways after that, but they both wanted to do some additional movies. And so they had this agreement that if George Romero could take his films and use dead in the title. So he has Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, you know, all that. Yeah. And then Russo could take his and put Living Dead in the title. And so that’s why we have Living Dead. This is all Return of the Living Dead. And so there’s spiritual successors in that, even in the first movie, it references George Romero’s movie, basically saying the movie exists   in that universe and then they say, but that’s not the real story, this is really how it happened and that’s kind of what we get. But Dan O’Bannon with the first movie, and I think it’s worth talking about here just because we got to make the comparison. This was summed up very eloquently by 1 of the actors in the film, is that he really made a horror movie first that also had comedic elements. Like, the whole movie is pretty silly, and it’s pretty fun, and it still has some pretty scary moments.

Clip: The special

Todd: effects are really good. That Tar monster, Tar zombie or whatever in the beginning who goes, brains, you know what I mean? Yeah. So cool. And this movie tries to recapture that magic and it tries way too hard. It kind of takes everything to a 3 stooges level of comedy and it turns it from playing it straight to being overtly trying to be overtly funny. Not as far as like an airplane type movie where there’s a site gag in every frame, but definitely compared to the first movie, it just feels like they’re trying way too hard and   it shows and it removes a lot of the heart and the fun out of it. And the horror kind of takes a backseat. Even though the special effects guys and the makeup guys from the original movies went on to work on this movie, despite the fact that nobody loved the script. I mean, nobody did. So the special effects are great in this film, actually, I think. Yeah. There’s some good moments, just like there were in the first movie, but it’s just not enough to overcome a really lame script. And it just feels like a slog to   get through. It feels like it’s way too long and it just doesn’t have that heart. And the funny thing is, and I read this in the trivia as well as you probably did, but then on this documentary they keep talking about how the director himself who wrote the script didn’t even seem that invested in it. He was another 1 of these guys who came in, even though he wrote this script, he doesn’t really like horror movies. He was doing this and everybody involved said, you know, great guy as a person, but on the set, his lack   of enthusiasm just infected everybody else. At 1.1 guy said, I’m not even sure why I’m here doing this. I think all of that pretty much comes across on the screen.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. It was weird. It has a weird feel from the beginning. And I don’t know, you know, I’m not a filmmaker, so I can’t really speculate. But I don’t know if, you know, when filmmakers go into making a movie, if they have a target audience in mind, but this felt to me like if there was a target audience in mind, this felt like it was a movie for 13 year olds at a sleepover. Yeah. I can kind of see how if you were 13 and you had a bunch of guy friends or girlfriends   over and you were just wanting to goof, maybe it would be kind of fun. I don’t know. It did feel weird. It felt like it was made for kids. But at the same time, I don’t know, you know, in the 80s was a, this came out in the 80s, right? What was the year on this? 1988. Yeah, late 80s. You know, filmmakers were doing that in the 80s, making horror movies for kids. And that’s what this felt like to me and it’s rated R I really don’t think that it should be rated R and I heard   that heard and hear anything I read that it wouldn’t have been rated R had it not been for 1 scene where a zombie gets cut in half and then both halves of the body are like running amok or whatever. It would have gotten a PG-13 if they had pared that down a little bit. But even that, I mean, it’s not like it looked real or anything, you know? It was very special effects-y and not particularly gruesome. I don’t see how merited an R. And it just, ugh, God, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but   it just really didn’t work for me. I love horror movies that are made for kids. Love them.

Todd: Yeah, we’re big fans.

Craig: Yeah, huge fan. But this 1 just didn’t work. It wasn’t, I don’t know, it was dumb.

Todd: I just think it existed in this ether somewhere in between you know it really couldn’t commit to any 1 of these ideas because I don’t feel like there was much direction behind it It really isn’t a solid horror movie. It’s not a solid funny comedy. It’s not really a good action adventure kind of film because it’s got huge pacing problems there and urgency issues. And it doesn’t really commit either to this sort of kids. I mean, there’s kind of, it’s almost bookended by the kids involved, but it’s not like a Goonies type or Adventures in Babysitting   type romp through the zombie world at all. It still is mostly centered around adults. And even though 1 of the main villains, it turns out, I mean, to call him a villain is kind of tough because he starts in the beginning and comes in at the end, but he’s a kid. And there’s, you know, the kid who’s a thread through the movie but hardly has much to do. It just kind of floats around and you just you can’t hook your mind into it in any way that’s terribly engaging I think. And so it’s just 1 of   those movies where for me anyway I’m just sitting there watching the action unfold and waiting for it to be over.

Craig: Oh absolutely. It would be worth it to kind of set up how things start. I mean it starts out with this you know voiceover exposition.

Clip: In the fall of 1969, the Darrell Chemical Company under contract to the US Army conducted a series of secret experiments with a new biological weapon called 245-Trioxin. According to reports, the chemical was a catalyst in genetic reactification. What this meant and why trioxin was useful has never been revealed. But 1 thing is certain. Trioxin was soon considered too dangerous and volatile, even for experimental use. Interest in the lethal compound was abandoned several years ago. The army will not comment other than to say all tri-oxen has since been destroyed.

Craig: So we see these military trucks carrying these big barrels that are supposedly you know carrying this incredibly toxic substance but they’re just like in this open truck with like a nylon strap around them or whatever. 1 of the barrels falls out, of course, or a couple of barrels fall out and they fall into this river or creek or something. And then we cut to suburbia and we meet this kid, this little kid Jesse, who’s gonna kind of be the main kid throughout. He’s this young blondish kid. He’s like the good kid and then there are a   couple of like bad kids that are, I don’t know, trying to initiate him into some kind of club but it all seems like maybe they’re playing a joke on him or something. I don’t know.

Clip: It’s not

Todd: like he’s walking down the street and he’s getting bullied. He sees these kids out the window, he grabs 1 of his comic books and he runs down like he’s trying to appease them?

Craig: Yeah, like he wants to be in their club or something, but they’re the mean kids, I don’t know.

Todd: But then he says he doesn’t want to be. I mean, then it’s like they’re pushing him to be in their club and I’m like, what? What was your goal here? I didn’t I didn’t get that it seemed it seemed clunky

Craig: They try to push him into this mausoleum and they say it’s their playhouse or whatever and they’re gonna initiate him But he doesn’t want to go in there so he runs away and he runs into this drainage pipe to try to hide, but they find him, but they also find this big barrel, and they take like the lid off or whatever, and we see 1 of these creepy gross zombies in the barrel. And then, this is where it gets, I suppose it could be funny, and I’m not sure what they were trying to do. I guess   trying to appeal to fans of the first movie. But then we meet these 2 other characters, Ed and Joey, who are both actors from the first movie. Ed is played by James Caron and Joey is played by Tom Matthews. And they are playing virtually the exact same characters that they played in the first movie. They just have different names and they’re supposed to be different people.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And it’s it’s so weird. It is. Ed has hired Joey to help him like in his grave digging endeavors or whatever.

Todd: This is the thing about this movie too is that part of what’s so unappealing about it is it almost seems to be ripping off of the first movie. In some ways it’s almost telling the same story. Yes! Because these 2 are working together, right? Ed is the leader, that’s exactly what we had in the first 1, and Joey’s the guy who’s kind of going along with it but kind of unsure, the greenhorn, and they’re still doing something with medical stuff, but Ed’s robbing graves because he’s got to unearth skulls because people will buy skulls, but they’ll   only buy them if they’re like freshly buried. So they’re going into a mausoleum to get these and then they spend hours in the mausoleum. And in the meantime, they’ve got a woman named Brenda who is I guess Joey’s girlfriend or? Yeah, yeah. And she’s sitting out in the van waiting for them. So broad daylight these guys are just popping into the cemetery by the side of the road and robbing graves for skulls. And again, the same kind of dynamic and the same thing happens to

Craig: them. They even repeat some of the same lines from the first movie. Like, Ed says something like, if you like this job, you’ll do this or whatever, and the other guy’s like, if I like this job, like it’s verbatim from the first movie, which is so weird. Jesse, the little good kid, escapes the mausoleum, but then the bad kids go back and let this swamp gas out of the barrel or whatever. Then again, we have the same thing from the first movie but it’s just so fast and so clunky. Like the swamp gas like brings on   a storm and brings on like all this smoke that rolls into the graveyard and then okay so we’re probably what like I don’t know 10-15 minutes into the movie at this point and then it’s just thriller for the next hour. Like, that’s literally all it, like it’s thriller and then cut to our characters doing some things that are really unimportant and then thriller again and then cut, like seriously, like every other scene is just a shot of these hordes of zombies walking towards the camera, backlit with all this smoke and fog and they’re doing their zombie   thing. And that’s it. That’s the whole movie. And they just, like they chase these characters around from set piece to set piece, and that’s it.

Todd: Like that’s literally the whole movie. Yeah, which could be cool, you know? I mean, we like that sort of thing, And we’ve seen it in other movies and we’ve praised it. You know, we liked the Midnight Hour, how that kind of threw back to thriller in a way with the different kind of zombies coming out of the ground and whatnot. But here, they also try to add a lot of slapstick to it. Like 1 zombie guy is coming out of the ground, he’s reaching his hand out and another zombie comes by and steps on his hand.   He’s like, ooh, and then he tries reaching his hand out again and another zombie steps on his hand. He’s like, ooh, and then he thinks he’s coming all the way out and another zombie comes and steps on his head and pushes him down into the ground. And once again the first movie had comedy but it wasn’t like this.

Craig: No, it wasn’t that slapsticky.

Todd: No, it sort of arose out of the situations, Right? And here it’s just trying very hard to be slapsticky. And so there are all these gags with the zombies. And some of them are cool. I mean, you know, if these things existed in a better movie, we’d probably be laughing at them. There’s a point where a woman gets bit by a zombie and she ends up tearing his jaw off. And, you know, there’s that whole sequence you referred to where they’re trapped in a hospital and the kid goes off alone and he gets attacked by the   zombie and the sister comes in and blows it in half and then it’s like lower half is looking for its upper half and it’s walking around. We even got something like that in the first movie where they had to saw that zombie’s head off and so there was that headless corpse walking around. But again, it just organically seemed to come a little better, a little more natural out of the situations. Whereas here it just feels like they’re trying really hard. Like what you said when they released the gas, they have an encounter with our iconic, you   know, slime. I mean, they’re even doing this again. They’re doing this tar zombie creature again. But the second time around, it just doesn’t look as good.

Craig: Nope, it doesn’t look as good. And you know all that like when so when the zombies are you know rising out of their graves there are all those jokes you know with them getting pushed back into the grave or I don’t know, all kinds of goofy stuff going on. And the first time I was rolling my eyes, I was thinking, okay, I get it, hardy-har, that’s funny. But then it just went on like that through the whole thing. And like it’s, It was funny for a second, but I’m not amused anymore. And I had no idea   what the, I don’t know, I talk about the rules. The rules, what are the rules? What are these zombies? Some of them are just like, groning zombies, but then some of them are like stand up comedians. They can talk and they are shooting off 1 liners and heads are saying things like, get that damn screwdriver out of my head. Yeah. What? Why are some of you entirely sensible and have consciousness, and then the rest of you are just mindless brain-eating

Todd: corpses. And once again we had this in the first movie but it worked there. The thing about the zombies And and this is 1 thing that was neat about this movie that we I really praised anyway about it Is that it did go a little bit of a different direction from Marrow zombies to zombies are a little bit quicker They had an intelligence about them and they did occasionally talk But it was It was not through the whole movie. And when it did happen, it was funny. There’s the zombie going brains into the camera, which is   just at 1 point, it’s like half terrifying and half drop dead hilarious. Then there’s that really great scene where they have the half zombie woman strapped to the table because they realize she can talk and they want to interrogate her and find out why are you doing this? Why are you eating brains? And it’s not like she suddenly can talk like a normal person. She’s struggling to speak but you know and she’s speaking really slowly and it seems really painful and she explains, oh well, it’s pain, the pain, the pain. They eat the brains to dull   the pain or whatever of being dead. That’s a cool scene. There’s even a gag in the first 1, which I remember, which I was totally able to let slide because it was so funny where I think some cops get killed and then they send in more cops and they get killed and then the cops come over the radio and 1 of The zombies picks up the radio and says, send more cops. Yeah, yeah. And it’s hilarious.

Craig: Well, and there’s a throwback to that in this movie where at some point all the characters, I mean, like we’ve got this core group of characters. There’s Jesse is the good kid, he’s got a stuck up sister named Lucy, she’s got a love interest named Tom, and then there’s Ed who is the Grave Digger and Joey who is his assistant and Brenda who is his girlfriend and they all kind of run around together all the time. At some point, some of them are dead and blah blah blah but Some of them have hijacked an ambulance and   they get on like the walkie or whatever it’s called on the ambulance and they’re like, is anybody there? Is anybody there? And the zombie in the hospital picks it up. Come to the hospital.

Clip: Show me right there!   Hold it, hold it. Ah, pardon me, but could you tell me who the President of the United States is?   Harry Truman.

Craig: I just don’t get it. Like, some of them, it’s almost like some of them are still almost like regular people. And I could almost deal with that if it were consistent, but it’s not like, if it were consistent that fresh zombies, like people who had just died still retained some of their consciousness which I feel like is kind of what they were going for but it was inconsistent Because sometimes it would be old crusty gross old zombies that would be talking. It just didn’t make any sense

Todd: And once again, it was just too much, you know, too much of that. Everything we’re listing off, there’s a throwback to the first movie. Here they’ve recreated similar situations from the first movie, except they’ve done it more poorly. There’s even a scene where, of course, the same thing is happening to Joey and Ed which happens in the first movie Which is if you’re exposed to this dioxin and you’re alive it slowly turns

Craig: right but in this movie It seems totally unexplained like if you’ve seen the first movie it makes sense But if you haven’t like did we ever see a scene where they were exposed to the gas? Is it just because they happened to be in the mausoleum?

Todd: Yeah, that’s kind of what it has to be. You have to see that they were, yeah, it happened to be in the mausoleum, which doesn’t make a lot of sense because what about Brenda? She was outside the whole time and this was creeping through the cemetery. I mean, in the meantime, there’s all that inconsistency of like, here are all these zombies popping up left and right and the graveyards filled with them But when Brenda pops out of the van to check on them, she only sees 1, right? And so they go through the same transformation where   their skins turning white and they’re going through this rigor mortis and they’re in the back of a car and Joey turns to Ed and even says this feels so familiar like this has happened before.

Craig: That was really the only part of the movie that I enjoyed. Just because it was so obvious. And first of all, their acting is so hammy. Either they weren’t directed at all. And the guy who plays Joey, his name is Tom Matthews, he was in the first movie, he was 1 of the stars of the first movie. I read that he hated making this movie. It was just miserable. He just absolutely hated it. He said the only thing that he liked about it was the craft services. Yeah. But like they and it was hammy in the   first movie too. But for whatever reason it works there, but their acting is just so hammy, they’re like, oh, like, you know, they’re groaning and they’re in such pain and like it’s so vocal and so melodramatic. Again, in the first movie it kinda worked, but here it just seems, it almost seems like parody.

Todd: Yeah, it’s like parodying their first performances, isn’t it?

Craig: Right, right. And how can you, you hardly can call it parody when it literally is the exact same thing. And like you said, I feel like we’ve been here before and you were there and they were there and oh Like yeah, I know I saw the first movie too. I don’t know what’s going on either like so and the exact same thing happens to them again, they die. They go through all this agony forever and ever and ever. Brenda, the girlfriend, just like the girlfriend in the first movie, is desperately clinging to the boyfriend, trying to   get people to help him and, you know, hoping that things will work out. And eventually, you know, he dies, which we see by him closing his eyes for a second, and then he opens them again. And he chases her into this church and it’s almost an identical scene. Now it doesn’t go on for nearly as long. I feel like in the original movie the chase in…was it a church in the first movie? It was something very much like a church.

Todd: Oh gosh, it sure feels like it. I don’t remember, but I remember thinking the same thing. I was like, there was a scene like this in the first movie.

Craig: Yes, where the infected boyfriend chases the girl for an hour and he’s like, I love you, why won’t you let me eat your brains? And it went on for longer in the first movie. In this 1, he chases her for like 5 seconds and he’s like, your brains smell so delicious and spicy. And she’s like, spicy? And he’s like, yes. She’s like, okay. And then she just lets him eat her brains. And that’s it. That’s the end. That’s the last we ever see of them.

Todd: Oh, that was so annoying. She just literally just sits there and goes, oh, okay. Well, have at it.

Craig: And he bites into her head like an apple. She just sits there.

Todd: What? Oh, God. I couldn’t stand that bit. And even just like in the first movie, they go and they end up finding a doctor. And in the first movie, the doctor was quite a quirky character. He was more of a mortician, I guess, and he actually helped out. He became kind of 1 of the team trying to escape the zombies and survive. But, you know, he also interrogated that woman, strapped her down, and came up with theories about what was going on. In this movie, they meet up with a doctor, and the doctor in this movie   is played by a very prolific character actor named Philip Bruns, whose performance is really out of another era. Yeah.

Craig: You know? He’s got a Groucho Marx kind of

Clip: thing, like, ha ha.

Todd: Yeah. Just completely ambivalent to what’s going on, more yuck, yuck, yuck about everything that’s happening around him and aloof.

Craig: Always looking for booze, like that’s his primary concern. I don’t know, to be frank, thank goodness for him. I actually found him kind of amusing. He’s such a minor character, but at least, you know, like when he’s examining the guys who are dying but are not dead yet and like he’s like, stick out your tongue and Joey does and he takes the stick that the doctors use to hold down your tongue and he just like pushes the tongue back in like, oh, I don’t want to see that. Like, I mean, it was very goofy and slapsticky,   but I don’t know if it’s because this guy was older and he came from a different era, but at least he sold it a little bit.

Todd: Yeah. He committed to what he was probably instructed to do. If you could kind of like draw a little bubble around him and just consider his performance as not really being associated with what’s going on around him. You’re right, it was more entertaining than maybe anything else that was going on around him. But it didn’t fit, you know? And again, they’re trying to make this funny. Oh, it doesn’t fit, you know, hearty har har, but it just didn’t work.

Craig: Yeah, yeah. As far as plot is concerned, like, they run to the hospital first, and there’s the whole shoot a zombie in half, and I don’t know how they did that. To be fair, I guess the effects there were pretty good, where you’ve got the legs walking around and the upper half trying to reconnect with the legs.

Todd: I liked that bit, actually. I thought that was fun.

Craig: I thought that it was a nice touch that there was like a stump of the spine sticking up out of the waist of the lower part of the body. That actually, you know, As far as special effects are concerned look pretty good. The special effects overall aren’t bad some of The zombies at times are clearly wearing masks.

Todd: Yes, that was a little distracting

Craig: Yeah, and and so it’s it’s not always great, but it’s not terrible either. I just was thinking as I was watching it, I hang out with theater people, and a lot of my friends were theater majors in college, and I kept thinking, my friends could do this. You know, like stage makeup. You know, like, it looked like stage makeup. And that’s not to say it doesn’t look bad. I have some very talented friends, but I don’t know. On film, it just didn’t always read. Some of it looked okay, some of it didn’t. And some of like   sometimes the zombies were like lumbering around, and then sometimes they were walking really fast. Like it was just really inconsistent.

Todd: Well, a lot of them were played by the same people.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: What they did was the special effects guy went in and made a whole bunch of different masks basically different cheeks, different forehead pieces, different chin pieces and things so that they could kind of create almost an endless combination of different zombies for different shots and still use a lot of the same people. So actually Scuz from the original movie Return of the Living Dead was a number of the zombies in this movie. He played quite a few of them, including the Michael Jackson zombie who makes an appearance at the end, which we can talk about later.   But yeah, you’re right. The overall effect was, especially when compared to the really great animatronic zombies that you get, like that zombie head and the crusty, even the not so good but still acceptable like Tar Zombie, they just look very different from these other zombies who were obviously people wearing masks made up.

Craig: Right and and there were some that were really good like you already mentioned it at 1 point Brenda gets attacked and the zombie like bites her fingers and she rips the lower part of his jaw off. That looks cool. It looked like they spent time on it and it looked good. There was 1 zombie lady who had… With the worms? Oh my gosh. Coming out of her face and the worms moved around. That was fantastic. That looked really

Clip: cool.

Craig: Yeah. That was

Clip: awesome.

Todd: It was like so many worms, she’s almost like a medusa with worms coming out of her face.

Craig: So you know in there there was some really good stuff but it was kind of few and far between.

Todd: There’s another scene too where they’re in the car and I think this is before the 2 guys turned completely but there’s a zombie on the roof and it reaches in and they roll the window up on his hand and it chops his hand off and there’s a long kind of again 3 stooges esque scene or Evil dead whatever you want to call it where they’re fighting with the hand that’s crawling around back there like thing. Yeah. You know, and it’s pretty obvious that they got just a hand with a stump attached to it and maybe the   rest of the arm is painted black that they’re running around on these people. But it was shot in such a way that it was done pretty well. But I was, I don’t know, by that point I was kind of groaning at these sort of gags. I thought, oh, here’s the hand loose in the back of the car. Ha ha ha, you know?

Craig: And it’s gonna grab the doctor’s wiener. Like, you know, as soon as the doctor says, I don’t know why everybody’s freaking out. It’s just a severed hand. And so then it grabs his wiener. And they’re like, ha ha ha. Like, that’s the joke. OK, throw it out of the window now. Yeah. Punchline, done. Ha

Todd: ha ha. And Jesse, the boy, and his sister Lucy, I think at 1 point also run into an abandoned house. 1 thing that’s really strange and, you know, is an unanswered question for quite a bit of the film is why where is everybody else? I mean, yeah, only we only have these 6 or so characters and they’re running through town and they’re driving up and down and There’s nobody there and At first it was really distracting. They even go into somebody’s house. They break in and they grab some guns out of this gun cabinet that’s sitting   there. I guess there’s supposed to be this big hilarious reveal that Lucy is a sharpshooter, but it’s not really as cinematic as it was probably intended to be. So, okay, she’s a sharpshooter. It’s not like she’s a total badass or anything, you know, during the movie. And then finally, when they get to the hospital and the hospital’s empty is when the characters start remarking, hey, you know, where is everybody? That’s kind of strange. And there’s 1 line that basically explains it. We start to see the army, which, I don’t know, is an interesting addition to the   movie. I don’t understand this at all, really, because we get a couple shots of the army from the beginning. We get the original scene at the beginning, like you said, that sort of sets up the loss of the canisters. A little bit later, not too long after that, we get another scene that shows that they’ve recovered 2 of the canisters, so they know 1 is missing, but they don’t have a clue where it is. And then later on in the movie, Jesse actually goes back to that canister after those kids open it and sees that it’s   open. That’s when he has the encounter with the zombie, I think. But he copies the phone number for the army off of the canister, which I think is kind of funny because in the first movie, you know, they’d also had these phone numbers on the canister like, call the army here. You have this thing.

Craig: Right. Nobody did anything. It’s like a 1-800 number. Like if you find, if you happen to come across this zombie canister, Call this number. Right. It’s like

Todd: a lost phone or a backpack or something. It’s funny. It’s kind of a cool bit because he calls from their home. And this is in the 80s, you know, we didn’t have caller ID or anything.

Clip: He

Todd: calls from his phone, finally gets patched through to this army general out in the field and he picks it up, he says hello and before Billy could say anything, a couple of the other characters who were driving that van drive it into the telephone line for the neighborhood or something and it cuts off all of the phones in there so he can’t even get a word out.

Craig: And once again that phone call is verbatim. Yes. A phone call that was made in the first movie. That’s right.

Clip: That’s right. I guess they

Todd: think they’re being clever here or. I guess. I don’t know. So sometime between that unsuccessful phone call and about 2 minutes later, I don’t know, what we find out is the army has cleared out the town. Now, A, why did they know that was the town? Because the phone call was unsuccessful. B, say they were able to track the phone call anyway and so they made it to that town. Why weren’t any of these characters who by this point are running around the neighborhood between these houses getting rounded up in this? I mean it’s not going   to be easy to evacuate all these people out of a town. But there’s a throwaway line by a couple military guys sitting on a Jeep downtown.

Craig: I’m telling you, Sarge, we cleared out the town. We should be way over here. Well, and that’s another thing too. I know you’re a military kid and I’m certainly not. I have respect for the military, but I don’t have any connections to them or whatever. But It paints the army or whoever this is supposed to be as being totally stupid in that. It’s just so dumb.

Todd: From the very beginning. The guy who’s driving that first truck is listening to stereo on his speakers and smoking a joint. I mean, come on. Yeah. Right. He doesn’t

Craig: even care about it. Right. Then there’s 1 point where these 2 good-looking, at least, like soldiers are sitting in a jeep and like The thriller horde comes around the corner as they have every 4 minutes for the whole movie. I joined the army to see the world, not this!

Clip: Get hold of yourself son, you’re an American soldier. We’ve got a firefighter in our hands.   And the   enemy’s already dead. Beautiful.

Craig: And then they start shooting the zombies and the zombies just get up and kill them. If I were military, I might be a little irritated.

Todd: It’s over the top, total cartoon, you know, just like The Doctor really. It’s just a cartoon performance by these supposed military people. It doesn’t, again, it’s trying to be funny by creating these stereotypes and using these parodies But it just doesn’t really work because none of it makes a lot of sense in the context of the movie I thought there you know there was a scene though in the empty town that I thought was probably gonna gonna make you turn over and cry

Craig: Oh It wasn’t graphic enough, but I was a little perturbed.

Todd: The zombies broke into a pet store and started eating all the pets. Yeah,

Craig: I mean, but it just looked like they were ravaging stuffed animals, so it didn’t really bother me all that much. But it was funny to me because it was like that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back for Tom. I know, right? Like Tom, like Tom the hot hero, like he sees this and he’s like, I’m just not going to take it anymore. And he like chases down this zombie like they’re driving an ambulance at this point because why not and He he’s like I I know they’re already dead, but I’m gonna get 1   anyway And so He like rams it into this huge electric sign and it electrocutes the zombie and the zombie dies, which I didn’t pay any attention to. And then later on when they made their way to the power plant, I’m like, Oh, I see what they’re doing here.

Todd: Basically, they can’t leave the town because although the military has taken great pains to clear it off all the people, apparently after that, if you’re a person still left in the town, you’re screwed because they drive down, I guess down the only bridge that leads out of town. There’s a tank and a whole battalion of people just standing there waiting to shoot at anything that comes by.

Craig: That was 1 of my favorite lines actually. They try to get out over that 1 bridge out of town or whatever and the military, like a whole, like 20 soldiers with machine guns are shooting at them, but they’re fine and the ambulance is fine. Like the tires aren’t even flat or anything, and they drive away, and then the doctor’s like,

Clip: interesting situation. Soldiers in front, zombies in the back.   Speaker 6: Maybe we should slip off the side and have a cocktail   or… No?

Craig: I think that was the smartest thing anybody said in the whole movie.

Todd: So their big idea is to go to the meatpacking plant and get all of the cow and calf and lamb and sheep brains, pork brains, whatever they can grab. And then from the back of the van that they’re driving, the ambulance or whatever, They’re tossing these brains out like Hansel and Gretel, luring the zombies down a path through the city to the big power plant. And there’s a spot between the big generators or whatever they are, Transformers, that is also a little wet. And Tom rigs up some, basically destroys, pulls the wires out from the Transformers.   It’s all movie stuff, you know? Yeah, yeah. Throws the wires down in the water and then their goal is that they’re going to have the doctor, once they call him, I guess on the radio from the inside, turn the power switch on, which is going to electrocute all of them between the Transformers. But of course, that doesn’t quite go right because he leaves his radio there, so the doctor can’t get called quite in time. And the zombies break through because the evil boy zombie Billy climbs over the fence, comes to the other side, opens up the   gate for all the zombies to come through. So they’re trapped in the van and then they’re not. I guess there’s a fight sequence basically, kind of a final battle between Billy and Jesse. Billy ends up electrocuted, the doctor helps out with that, and then they flip the switch just in time for all the zombies between the 2 breakers to get electrocuted.

Craig: Right after Lucy and Tom make out for a second. Yeah,

Todd: that’s right. There’s always time to pause and make out.

Craig: Right, but like the zombies are like they’re in the back of this big meat packing truck or whatever and the zombies are breaking in and when they first encountered 1 another like he was coming to repair her cable or something and he’s like, don’t you remember me? I used to go to school with you and she’s like, no, I don’t remember you. And then in this moment when they’re about to die, she’s like, I did remember you.

Clip: And then they make out.

Todd: It was dumb. And then speaking of dumb, at the last minute, also during 1 of our final shots of the zombies getting electrocuted, a zombie dressed exactly like Michael Jackson from Thriller leaps up into frame and jolts a few dance moves before he falls down.

Craig: Not a bad dancer. No, not at all. Well,

Todd: that was our guy. That was our guy Brian Peck. And it turns out that that was like a total last minute thing on the set. Brian Peck had actually, when they were standing around filming these final zombie scenes, had noticed that 1 of the extras had come with a replica Michael Jackson jacket on, like I guess as a joke. He pointed this out to the special effects guy and he said, hey, follow me. So they took the jacket and he spent like at least a couple hours while they were shooting or doing something else, putting him   in this Michael Jackson makeup and he brings him out and the director takes 1 look at him and says Absolutely not All the producers there are like shaking their heads no no no no no and he said I see he said I seriously I sat there for 11 or 12 hours in this makeup waiting for all that to finish and finally by the end It’s like the director just had the sudden change of heart and just like okay. Okay, fine fine Just go in there go in there He gets the shot rolling and then he’s like,   alright go up do your thing and he said I I didn’t believe it was ever going to make the final cut of the movie. So they were all very shocked, obviously, that that bit made it into the movie when they finally saw it.

Clip: It was

Craig: 1 of the best parts of the movie. Thank God it did make it in. It’s literally like maybe 5 seconds, but it was fun. And again, like that’s another 1 of those things. Like this, it felt like a sleepover movie. Like that’s hilarious. Like it’s 1988 or 1989. It’s Michael Jackson. Like that’s, it’s great. It’s 1 of my favorite parts.

Todd: Well, you know the thing that I liked so much about the first movie, it was so punk. It did these neat things with the zombie. It had this killer soundtrack. Yeah, it was over the top and stereotypical. You had this group of kids who would never be hanging out together in real life. You had these preppy, the jockey, the nerdy, the Linnea Quigley characters naked for half the movie, and the guy with the earrings and the just total punk. But they just had an edge to it. It had kind of a fun edge and really it   moved. That movie was driving and moving and the comedy came out of the situations. I thought the acting, even though it was really campy, was really fun. And this movie is just campy in a totally different way. It’s trying to be campy. And I think I’ve kind of discovered that when you’re trying to be campy, most of the time the results are not so good.

Craig: It just depends. You know, when you said when you’re trying to be campy, it doesn’t always work. Well, that’s not always the case. I mean, not always. What did we watch with poultry geist? Like obviously, like that was going for the camp and it succeeded in that way. I didn’t love that movie but I appreciated it for what it was, like it was going for gags and laughs and that’s fine. But this was, it was just really uneven And like even at the very end, like the last thing we see after all, you know, all of   the zombies, they do, they electrocute them, all of them, and they all drop dead. And the last thing we see is our final survivors, Lucy and Tom and Jesse and the doctor, you know, walking away and the doctor’s still talking about getting a drink or whatever, and they walk out of frame. And then it’s the military going and burning all these corpses. And then there’s just this 1 head that’s like,

Clip: Oh, come on, guy. Back off of that thing. I got this. Don’t hit a girl when she’s down.   000.

Todd: Ah.

Clip: Ah. Okay, no more brain. You win for now.

Craig: And That’s the very last, like all of a sudden you’ve got this jive talking zombie head, and it’s not the first talking zombie head we’ve seen, so it’s not like this is new or anything. But it’s just so silly, and it just felt really uneven. I saw that people, I read online that people said that it was like an ET copycat, like what? I don’t see that at all. ET was a great movie about kids, and that was super fun. And I mean, I guess if you’re talking about going for the kid audience, I understand that,   but it just felt really uneven. It wasn’t sure what it wanted to be and it was in parts kind of trying to be scary but in other parts just being over-the-top ridiculous and it just it really really didn’t work for me.

Todd: You know I think maybe just over time people overanalyze and dissect these movies so much that they find these, you know what I mean? I think that’s where comments like that come from. There’s some fan of this movie out there, probably who saw it as a kid and really had fun memories of it because, you know, we have movies like that, right? Oh yeah. We’ve done a couple recently where we love them as kids, we don’t appreciate them so much as adults, but we’re still colored by our initial feelings for them. They probably then look at   it and start making these ridiculous comparisons to ET and saying that it’s a genre masterpiece or a cult classic. It’s not gonna show up in my list as a cult classic by any means. I love the original. You know, we can’t finish this episode without mentioning a special appearance in this movie by Forrest J. Ackerman.

Clip: I

Todd: don’t know, do you know who Forrest J. Ackerman is? No. He is, was, super famous. He’s the guy who basically coined the term sci-fi. 1 of the largest collectors of memorabilia in history had a house that was basically like a museum. And he was a literary agent for tons of science fiction authors like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov. Wow.

Clip: A lot

Todd: of people call him like the godfather of sci-fi. Like he was the biggest supporter, biggest fan of the genre, and not only was he an agent, but he was a magazine editor, he wrote science fiction himself, he’s done appearances in like at least a hundred movies, you know, like this, just kind of little cameos because he’s so beloved by people.

Craig: Who was he?

Todd: He was that zombie who broke into the garage. Remember when the doctor points out the neighbor that he knew?

Craig: Oh, yeah, yeah. And here’s

Todd: the funny thing. This is like how clueless this director is. He had him take off his glasses and this is a guy like, you know, it would be like telling Groucho Marx to take off his glasses. Like that’s his trademark. Like that’s how you recognize him and he didn’t even know that. So here’s this this really famous guy he’s put in this movie to put a reference to and he’s had him take off his trademark glasses for the role. You know, it’s kind of dumb. Yeah,

Craig: it’s too bad.

Clip: But he’s

Todd: in this movie, it’s kind of interesting.

Craig: Yeah, what you said, if I had seen this movie when I was 11, I might have had fond memories of it, but I’m not 11 anymore. Like that time has passed. So we liked the first 1, we gave the second 1 a shot. I’m not in any huge, even though, you know, I guess the third 1 supposedly kind of takes a new direction or whatever. I would certainly hope so because overall I got to give, and I don’t do this very often folks I try to be optimistic about things, but I gotta give this 1 a   big thumbs down Well,

Todd: I think they made a big mistake They brought the wrong actors back if they had brought back Lenny a Quigley to dance around naked a little bit Then I would have yes movie much higher rating. Guys in a chainsaw. You can also search for us on Facebook. Leave us a comment there. Tell us what you thought of this episode. We are done with our sequels for this month. We’re gonna go back and pick up requests again. We’ve gotten a few extra requests that came in during a request month in January that we want to honor and   so we’re going to be picking and choosing a few of those. It’s definitely not too late to submit your requests. We will do them either now or in the somewhat near future. Until the next time we see you, I am Todd and I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

Although we have yet to review the original Poltergeist – one of Craig’s favorite movies – we nonetheless decided to spring ahead to this follow up, which reveals another layer to the spooks hiding beneath the Freeling family household.

Episode 161, 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: Continuing our month of sequels, we decided to dive into a sequel that we haven’t actually done the original for yet, surprisingly enough. This 1 is Poltergeist 2 The Other Side, which came out in 1986 and after watching this film again for the first time in ages, I think I realized I remember more about this movie than I do the original. Yeah. We used to watch this all the time as kids. I think we had it on tape. Yet I have   forgotten so much about it. Like I knew I had key scenes in my head, but as far as the whole plot and kind of how it all went down that much was new to me again for the fresh for the first time so it was fun to watch this a second time around the original movie made a big splash Toby Hooper directed it Stephen Spielberg produced it and there has always been some speculation that maybe Steven Spielberg did a little bit more than just producing it. He was on set a lot of the time but we   get a lot of conflicting stories about that. That’s the original. The second 1 here was directed by a guy named Brian Gibson. Brian Gibson is a British director and before this he really didn’t do a whole lot. He directed a bunch of videos for Sticks and shot a movie called Breaking Glass. So this was kind of his first big time film. And then the producers and writers of the original poltergeist came back on to write the screenplay for this 1 as well. And Jerry Goldsmith came back on to do the score for this and he actually   won an award for this, the score. And the score is great. I have to say it’s fantastic score. He did something a little bit different than he did for the original, but it just turned out wonderful. In fact, the minute, you know, about 5 minutes into this movie, I was just thinking, God, this movie is like so Spielberg. Yeah. I mean, He had nothing to do with it, but the movie just feels like a Spielberg movie from the very beginning. It’s like it was intentionally filmed that way.

Craig:Yeah. And I think that some of that has to do with the score. I talk about this a lot. I don’t know if I’ve talked about it on the podcast, but I talk about it with my partner and my friends and stuff. When we were growing up in the 80s, movies so often had these amazing orchestral scores. To be fair, This 1 isn’t as orchestral as the first movie was. He played more with synthesizers and electronic stuff, but there’s still the very iconic Carol Anne’s theme that runs throughout this 1, which is really familiar. And you   just don’t get that much anymore. I just feel like filmmakers anymore just don’t worry about or think about   score so much anymore. But it made such a big difference. You know, like you think about E.T. And like you said, Steven Spielberg movies, but it wasn’t just him. Lots of people were doing it. And the scores were so memorable that the moment you hear them it strikes a chord with you and I think that that’s why some of these movies or at least in part why some of these movies are so memorable to me at least.

Todd:Yeah and you hear it and you instantly know you’re in for a certain caliber of film. And I don’t know if it’s just a chicken and egg thing, you know, but you also feel like, okay, this is gonna be a PG family-friendly movie, you know, which this is. And the original Poltergeist was. I mean, considering it’s a horror film, it has some horror elements, but the horror element, nobody dies, it’s not gory, you know, none of that stuff. So it is a movie you can watch with your family. In fact, I think this movie and Poltergeist   were both rated PG at the time, but have subsequently gotten a PG-13 moniker because at the time they were released, the PG-13 didn’t exist yet, yeah?

Craig:Well, at least the first 1.   I mean, this 1 is PG-13, but I think that you’re right. The first 1 was PG, and surely would have been PG-13 had that rating been available, but it wasn’t. But you’re right. I mean, it’s scary. I mean, I think both movies are scary movies, but you’re right in both. You know, there are 3 of them in the original trilogy. I choose to ignore the remake. It was terrible. But in the original trilogy, there are there’s only 1 violent death in all 3. And that’s in the third 1. And even it is pretty tame. So, yeah,   but still, I loved these movies when I was a kid, but maybe a little bit too scary for some kids, but when it comes down to it, yeah, there’s really not a whole lot of violence, if any at all, really, and no violent deaths. Like you said, it’s more just like kind of a haunted house kind of thing, a spooky kind of thing. And there’s imminent danger, but ultimately everybody’s okay and it’s fine.

Todd:Yeah, you know, I can’t say I really enjoyed it that much watching it again as an adult and maybe in this day and age Maybe in the 80s it passed a little better than than it does now This is a movie I’d watch with my son and he’d probably really like it for sure when he’s old enough But as an adult I felt this movie had a lot of problems. More than anything, I felt like it was just a little too… I don’t know, like the original had focus, right? The original had… It was basically a   haunted house story. There are all these creepy things happening. It starts out with this poltergeist activity with things moving around, and it gets more and more intense in this family. They don’t know what’s going on. They call in a psychic who comes and tells them that they’re in danger and that their house is a problem. And their girl disappears. She gets sucked into the other side, right, and they enlist the help of this psychic to bring her back. And then at the end of it all, spoiler alert to anybody who hasn’t seen Boltergeist, but at the   end of it all, the big climax is this crazy scene just where the whole house seems to be coming apart and all the stuff is happening and they find out that the house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground which is why these things have been happening. And so the second movie takes that idea of the Indian burial ground just a little deeper, if I could

Craig:say. Yeah, literally.

Clip:It turns out like the Freelinks are the most,

Todd:I don’t know, like the most unlucky family in the world. Not only was their house built in an ancient Indian burial ground, but underneath that happens to be a cave where a whole other set of people came and went into basically the gist of it is that there was this preacher kind of like a Mormon thing it’s it’s well

Craig:it was it was a doomsday cult doomsday is what it

Todd:was yeah Mormon era right sort of doomsday cult taking is taking this group of people way out west who is following this charismatic leader we find out that his name was Cain, which is always a scary sounding name, a Cain, and he basically tells this group of people that the world’s going to end. They follow him into this cave, they seal themselves up. When the world doesn’t end, he forces them to stay down there and they all die. And so all of this is in a cave underneath the burial ground upon which their house was built.   Yeah. It’s a little silly, but okay.

Craig:Right, but okay, whatever. I mean, they had to introduce some new element so that’s fine And I actually find the character of Reverend Kane to be very scary and a lot of that has to do with his portrayal This guy was a character actor His name was Julian Beck and he did work as a kind of a character actor in theater and in film and this was like kind of a rare big role for him and he’s super creepy and sadly part of that is because he was dying of stomach cancer at the time and so   he’s got this really super gaunt look,

Todd:he’s got these

Craig:big eyes, like I mean he almost, he kind of looks like a human skeleton, you know, he’s so gaunt. And he is super, super creepy. I think that part of the reason that this, I agree with you that I much prefer the first movie. In fact, the first movie is probably 1 of my top 5 favorite movies, period. I love the first Poltergeist movie, it’s great. But 1 of the things that I feel like they couldn’t recapture is that the first third or so of Poltergeist is kind of this charming, cute story about a family. And   initially, when weird things start going on in their house, it’s almost like it’s fun, you know? That’s true. Like, oh my gosh, the chairs move. Like, this is so cool, come see it. And like, look, I can sit something in this spot in the kitchen and it will slide to this spot. And I can even sit our daughter, Carol Ann, in the spot and she’ll slide from 1 side of the kitchen to the other. And it’s fun, like it’s not scary at first, and it’s only when things start getting dangerous then it becomes scary. Well in   this movie they’ve already dealt with all of that, so As soon as things start happening, they know this isn’t something to be messed with. So a little bit of that charm from the initial movie is removed. And I agree that This movie isn’t as good. I still like it in reading the Trivia about it. I was interested to see that the original cut was like 2 hours and 11 minutes or something like that   and they cut it down here to just an hour and a half. And I’m glad that they did. Even though I think that there are parts of it that seem a little bit disjointed and there are parts of it that feel a little bit rushed, especially the finale.   Oh my gosh.   I can’t imagine a 2 and a half hour version of this because frankly, even though I felt like, you know, things were consistently happening, I was a little tiny, tiny bit bored.

Todd:Yeah. Well, I don’t think it has a lot of build. It starts out slowish. There’s an Indian, his name is Taylor, an American Indian named Taylor, and he goes to the top of this craggy hill. I don’t know how he got up there but anyway yeah sort of a spiritual vision thing and gets imbued with the powers I suppose of a healer through a whole bunch of special effects and a flame and this kind of ritual ceremony on the middle of nowhere. That comes into play later. We see him driving down a road. He’s called by,   I guess he’s called by Zelda Rubenstein’s character who was Tangeena from the first movie to the site of this house. This, I mean this is really basically picking up where the first 1 left off, almost immediately.

Craig:Pretty much. I think it’s supposed to be a year or 2 later. Oh, really? OK. I think so. But yeah, I mean, he goes back to Cuesta Verde, which is where the original site was. And he goes back to the house. And that’s like you said, they go deep down in there. And he sees all of these remains of these people, like underneath the Indian burial ground, like they don’t just wipe that away. Like, no, it really was an Indian burial ground.

Todd:Yeah.

Craig:But also, this doomsday cult, you know, also all died right underneath your house. And so, and now we’re gonna have to deal with that. Yeah. And I

Todd:feel like all of this is just kind of a convenience thing, like the writers are really grabbing at things to make a sequel for that is all going to tie in together because I’m just wondering why did they feel the need to dig further down and do further investigation here. You know, they find this cave and these people inside, and so he goes down, he checks it out, he senses an evil. Tangina senses an evil too. And then we jump right over to the Freelings who are now at the grandmother’s house. This is the mother of   the mother. We get this, I think we already kind of know it from the beginning, from the first movie that Carol Anne is a bit special. She can sense things more than the others. And it turns out that her grandmother also has this gift, that she has this sort of psychic ability. And so she notices this while they’re together and is talking with her mother who is played by Geraldine Fitzgerald. Classic Hollywood, yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, they’re there at this house for a while, I guess a year. There’s some moments where Carol Ann can   sense some things. She can see colors. She’s handing her yarn that she wants without looking at it. You know, she’s got the right colors or whatnot. She’s drawing creepy pictures of faces that will come up later. It’s pretty typical stuff. And then in a pretty interesting moment, the grandmother says good night to Carol, or Carol Ann goes in and says good night to the grandmother, kisses her on the cheek and walks away. When she goes into the basement, her little toy telephone rings and when she picks it up, she says, oh, hi, grandma. Oh, don’t worry.   Everything’s okay. All right. I love you too. Bye bye. Hangs up. And then the next morning we find out that grandmother passed away in the middle of the night. And Carol Ann is obviously was contacted from beyond the grave by her grandmother so You know we have this little element going but you know all of these scenes with the family are quite cute

Craig:Mm-hmm very Sweet

Todd:the nice thing about this family is that they really do care about each other. There’s none of this like tension Really nothing wrong here Which which is I don’t know that’s not actually I had remembered, you know in this movie I really remembered a breakdown of the father character played by Craig T. Nelson, Stephen, because at later point he’s drinking tequila and stuff and I think as a kid I was just associating the drinking and the alcohol with him you know kind of wrestling with stuff and I think the script is going in that direction by   the middle of the end of the movie, but either due to the cuts that were made or just the way it’s written or how fast the movie goes, I feel like that’s almost, it’s so downplayed as to be non-existent. Like we’re told that he’s having this emotional struggle, but we’re not seeing a really deep emotional struggle here throughout the movie I think it’s not deep enough anyway to really resonate with me I mean to the end at the end of the day He’s still very much connected to his family very much attached seems very much in   control He might not be making all the right decisions, but he’s still a decision maker making decisions through the movie, you know, he’s not incapacitated.

Craig:Right, well, I have, you know, you talking about, you know, how the family, you can tell that there’s a strong bond between them throughout. That’s true But that’s really kind of like the point of the movie I mean like that’s their strength is like that together. That’s true right And that they love each other and that their love can conquer all or whatever. And you do see that. And people emphasize that throughout. They say that the evil is going to try to break you up. They’re going to try to turn you against 1 another. But your   strength is that you are together and that you love each other as a family. And that’s where they draw their strength. And that was true in the first movie too. I will say, and I don’t know if it’s because of the writing or the direction or I have no idea what it is, but I felt like Craig T. Nelson’s performance in this movie was a little bit flat. I believed him more in the first movie. In this movie, he feels kind of more like, Oh, I’m the goofy dad.

Todd:The whole time.

Craig:Yeah. And then he gets very sinister at the end when he kind of becomes, well, spoiler alert again, but frankly, literally possessed, really, at 1 point. And that’s scary, but beyond that, he’s painted a little goofier in this movie than he was in the first, which I don’t love. You know, it doesn’t kill me, it doesn’t take me out of it, but it’s not great. Before the grandma dies though, there’s this great scene that I love, like they’re at a shopping center, the mom and the 2 kids. There were 3 kids in the original movie. There   was an older sister named Dana. And this gets down to there’s, we could probably do a whole episode about the poltergeist curse. But the oldest daughter from the first movie was murdered. The actress who played her was murdered by her boyfriend shortly after filming the first movie. And so she doesn’t appear in this movie. And apparently in a deleted scene, they explain that she was off at college. Really, like, you could just assume that, you know? Like, she was old enough in the first movie, you would assume she was off at college or she had moved   out or whatever. But anyway, so the mom is at a shopping center, like an outdoor shopping center with the 2 kids. This creepy guy, Carolanne kind of gets separated from Robbie and the mom. And this creepy guy, this ghostly guy, who Carolanne sees people like walking through him. Like he’s clearly like an apparition, follows her around. And again, It’s this Reverend Kane, and he’s dressed in like period clothing Which apparently nobody finds to be odd? And he he talks to her and he sings to her.

Clip:Alright, I’ll sing your song till your mom comes back. God is here, his holy town. Earthly fall, be silent now.

Craig:And so we know that this is basically the new villain who is pursuing her. And as it turns out, we’re meant to believe That though he didn’t appear in the first movie he was part of   the entity or the evil entity or it was at least a witness to what happened in the original movie and he needs Carol Anne to fulfill his purpose to lead his people out of the earthly realm into the light. And so he’s after the beginning. Again, I really can’t say enough about how creepy Julian Beck’s performance is. Like, it’s nightmarish. I mean, especially if you’re a kid, I mean, you know, like, which is when I saw this, you know, he’s the creepy guy that your parents warned you about. Don’t talk to strangers. You know, like,

Todd:so creepy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you just see this guy, you would want to spend more than 5 minutes with him. He just, his whole appearance. And then his performance is quite good too. He speaks very slowly and very deliberately, whether it’s just the way his face is or whether it’s very deliberate to he really makes a point of opening his mouth a lot showing his teeth and Just being very deliberate about what he says. It sounds it feel it sounds calculated kind of like a cunning person Yeah, but Yet he’s also trying to come across   as a slow, deliberate kind of preacher character, which, you know, that’s kind of a character trait of some, you know, Southern Baptist or evangelical type preachers. It’s just sort of slow. So, I mean, it all really fits well. It’s played quite well. You know, I was looking up more about this actor and I was so surprised to hear that he was a big pioneer in avant-garde theater, in the avant-garde theater world. I mean he was born like 1925 But he got together with a group of people and they were doing something called the Living Theater where   they did these extremely experimental and controversial type theater performances. Eventually they had to do it like in people’s homes because they were getting arrested for stuff like indecent exposure and public nuisance and they would do shows where they would like like go into the audience and do all this audience participation like you like apparently also they were big anarchists And they were big on LSD and drug use. And so he would be high on LSD. They would all be tripping on LSD when they were doing their performances and stuff like that. 1 time they were doing   a show about drug users and there were actors walking around amongst the audience, like yelling at audience members, trying to get them to give them money for their next fix you know. Another 1 like they wrote off like a list of social taboos and 1 of them was public nudity and they’re doing this while they’re taking their clothes off which is 1 of the things that would get them arrested. Like this, this guy who’s like in his sixties or so, by the time this movie comes out and is sure to die had a really interesting career   behind him. But, yeah, you know, I think that this character, the thing that I think bothered me so much about this movie, and I think you pointed to it about I think Greg T. Nelson’s acting sort of flat in this movie really contributed to it, but the other aspect of it is is it seems like the way that this Kane character is trying to get into them is by driving a wedge between the dad and the family, like trying to play on his supposed inadequacies and his feelings like he can’t be a man. But I don’t   really see that, you know, he’s being told about it. Well, there’s a scene after the 1 you mentioned, and after the grandmother dies, where this guy walks up to the house, Cain, and it instantly starts raining, which should be your first clue, by the way. It’s like only raining over the house. He walks up to the door and he’s singing a hymn and he has a dialogue with the family outside and he’s trying to get into the house. Oh, just let me in, just let me in. And then he starts talking about how, a little bit   more and more about how he knows what’s going on with them. At this point, they have already met, I skipped a bit, but they already met this tailor guy, which is big. I guess I should talk about that first, right? The Native American Indian tailor shows up at their house and tells them that they’re in grave danger and he’s been sent by… Tangina. Tangina to

Craig:help them. Well, and this is after, I mean, we very early on in the movie, right after the grandma dies, there’s a big scene where big clouds come up over the house and the phone rings again, the toy phone, but this time it’s not grandma, it’s somebody scary that Carol Ann talks to and like.   The whole house shakes and all this crazy stuff is happening, the toys all come to life and are walking around and. Just like before basically. Right, just like before, exactly. And you know, the parents, it all happens very quickly and the parents bust into the kids room and they find the kids and Carol Ann turns and looks at them and says they’re back just like they’re here from the first movie. You got to get the tagline back in there. So at this point, at this point, they know that this crap is happening again. And then that’s   when Taylor shows up. And Carol Anne likes him right away, but Stephen the dad is very skeptical of him.

Todd:Yeah, and he shows himself as the mystical Native American. You know, it’s sort of this trope and I think nowadays it feels a little weird.

Craig:It does, but the funny thing is he really was.

Todd:Yeah, true.

Craig:Like the actor who played him. This is the same guy, Will Sampson, who played the silent patient in 1 Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Chief, I think. But in real life, this guy was a shaman, like, for several different tribes. And once again, you know, I read this in the in the trivia. They say, because later on there are scenes where there are skeletons and corpses and cadavers and stuff, and they said that Some of them were real because it was cheaper than getting the fake ones Well, that was true in the first movie too, and   they say you know the actors didn’t know well You would think that the actors would at least be suspicious in the first movie Jo Beth Williams was in a pool with all these skeletons that were real. And she didn’t know it at the time, but she found out later. 1 would think that they might at least be suspicious the second time around, but apparently not. And lots of weird stuff happened. They did a whole day of shooting with these real corpses and the film all came out totally blank, just black, and they had to go back   and do hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of reshoots. And so they thought that the set was possessed so Will Sampson who played Taylor came in and did an exorcism of the set like quit using real bodies   You guys.

Todd:I get that it’s cheap.

Craig:You’re right. I get that it’s cheaper, but man, think about the other costs. It’s just so weird.

Todd:Like what do you do? You walk into the Hollywood props closet and there’s a door that says fake corpses and another door that says real corpses. I guess I’ll take 5 of those and we’re gonna cut a little bit of money I’ll take 3 of those over there.

Clip:Okay.

Craig:I get what you’re saying. I get what you’re saying. You know, it seems you know the the Native American Spiritual guide or shaman or whatever like it seems like a trope and it does and it was but in this case Turns out he really was that guy

Todd:Yeah, maybe they did need special effects for the moment where he’s raised his hands in the air and all the butterflies are floating around him and they’re on.

Clip:I think, you know, there’s nothing wrong.

Todd:I mean, you should be able to do this, right? You should be able to do something like this as long as you’re being respectful and you’re not making fun of it or whatever. Of course, there’s mysticism in Native American religions and all that. You should be able to have a shaman doing shamanistic things and wonder, just like you could have a magician doing crazy stuff or whatever.

Craig:Or a priest or whatever.

Todd:There’s a billion of that, right? So no big deal, really. It just feels a little weird. And I think it feels especially weird because it’s so super magical, like with Jerry Goldsmith’s score behind it. And they’re looking out the window and just abject wonder with these like bright smiles on their faces. Again, it’s like total Spielberg and he sits sitting there just staring up into the sky and these butterflies are twirling around him. It’s sort of like, oh, come on, you know, it’s almost like a cartoon at that point. But anyway, okay. So we’ve got him,   he’s there. Craig T. Nelson’s character, the Stephen, the dad, is a little skeptical of him, but not skeptical enough, apparently, to keep him from living in their backyard. So he’s in a tent in their backyard.

Craig:So long as he’ll work on the car.

Todd:Yeah, exactly. That’s basically it. Because the car is angry. So this is going on. And in the meantime, as I was talking about earlier, Cain comes walking up to the house and he has this whole dialogue with them. Now,

Clip:you are in danger. What do you mean? I’m with an organization who’s concerned with families like your own, families in crisis, that are preyed upon by charlatans with fake magic and false solutions. I don’t expect

Todd:you to

Clip:believe me now, but let me come in and talk to you about it.”

Todd:And finally, the father sends the rest of the family inside, steps behind the screen glass, the screen door closes it so that he’s got something between him and this guy. And it’s just a really creepy scene, dialogue that goes between them. It’s so, and I don’t know if they film this on a different day, if they intentionally did something different with his makeup or if it just looked different between the screen? Because as their conversation goes on, Kane seems to like look more and more gaunt and menacing, just like physically. Did you get that feeling?

Craig:Well, he, yes. And you know, all these special effects and things that happen throughout like that’s scary and exciting But like I feel like this is 1 of the creepiest scenes And I think that part of it is just that we as viewers I Think that Stephen the character picks up on it eventually but just the manipulation tactics of this guy, it’s believable because you can believe that This would be a guy who would be able to manipulate a group of people into believing that it was in their best interest to go underground to endure the   end of the world or whatever. Yeah. And, you know, that’s just kind of a spooky thing. You know, ministers, spiritual leaders, they have to have a certain charisma or something in order to get people to listen to them and to believe them.

Todd:Yeah, it’s true.

Craig:And some people, you know, can use that in bad ways. That’s what it feels like here. Like he’s saying, I’m here to help you. I want to help you. And, you know, this other guy who you’re listening to is bad. Don’t listen to him. And he totally plays on Stephen’s insecurities about being able to protect his family, about being a good father, about being a man, questioning just his manhood and his masculinity and can you protect your family? Can you lead your family? And it works.

Todd:Like

Craig:he’s almost, and he’s got this hypnotic thing going on, which you can see in the performance. And I think they do a good job here where you see that somehow Kane, he locks in eye contact with Steven. And when they’re locked in, he kind of has this hypnotic power over him. And then I feel like Carol Anne says something off from you know the distance from back behind Stephen and it diverts his attention away for just a second but that’s enough to break the spell.

Todd:That’s right.

Craig:Oh it’s just it’s I can’t describe it well enough It’s just such a creepy eerie scene and this guy is spooky looking to look at anyway And then to see this kind of magnetism and power that he has to manipulate It’s It’s really spooky.   It’s really good.

Todd:It is good. It’s a little like the vampire, right? In that kind of hypnosis and also this insistence that he’s got to get in the house. Like, I don’t know about you, but what’s going through my mind here was oh I see like he has to be invited in like in order to do it and this is his tag this is what he’s doing and so that’s you know that’s part of the tension here too it’s like oh my god don’t let him in or it’s all over for you guys you know right But but that   again that’s a bit of a letdown actually because it turns out that’s not the case at all Right in the context of the rest of the movie after such a powerful scene I felt like that scene didn’t really amount to much for 2 reasons 1 was that it felt like it was setting up this notion that they had some barrier of, you know, that if as long as he wasn’t being brought into their home, they could somehow keep him at bay. It turns out it doesn’t even matter. Like, he can reach them anywhere they are. And   he even shows up as an apparition in their living room a little bit later, like as if it’s nothing. So there’s that part that I was like, oh, that’s a shame. But the second part is, this is the only place I could find in the film where we really is alluded to any sort of self-doubt or this notion that Stephen is unable to provide for his family or has this this self-consciousness about him. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but anything up to this point I really didn’t see that, and even after this so they’re   trying to play with it but it doesn’t really come through and so it seems like just telling us instead of showing us a kind of lazy writing where he says I’m peering into your mind and this is what I see and Stephen’s saying oh my god you’re absolutely right and now we’re supposed to get that information but it seems at odds with the rest of how the movie goes.

Craig:Gosh, I don’t like to be contrary but I will disagree with you a little. That’s a lie. I love to be contrary. But I’ll say I think that they did a better job than you’re giving them credit for by showing beyond this point. Now maybe not up to this point, Except for, you know, like I can see how that would be something easy to play on where, you know, his business has failed. He’s now, you know, he was a successful real estate developer. Now he’s selling crappy vacuum cleaners door to door. They have to live with   his mother-in-law because he hasn’t or can’t provide them a home. So there’s that leading up to it. And then after this, there’s at least suggestion of his retreat into Alcohol, you know, he’s drinking Pretty consistently from this point on I don’t know I got the suggestion that this was kind of a defeated man.

Todd:You know? I mean, I see the suggestion, what you’re talking about, but up until this point, even though, yeah, there are these things, he’s still pretty confident about it. You know, he has that whole conversation with his wife, where His wife is at more than him kind of saying, look, we’re in a bad spot right now. We’re living with my mom and why are you selling vacuum cleaners? We need some stability or whatever. And he kind of starts to go into this goofy sort of play acting thing like, oh, you’re right. Everything’s going downhill. And she   starts laughing at him and they embrace and they kiss and they love each other and the kids come in and they all love each other and it’s all like, you know what I mean? It’s like, it’s not like I feel like he buys into that. Maybe he’s not making the right choices. Maybe he’s unsure of the choices he’s made. I don’t know. I just don’t get the sense that he’s lost that self-confidence up until this point. And then later as the film goes on, yeah, there’s the alcoholism part, right? He’s hit in the bottle a few   times. But I don’t know. Aside from like 2 scenes, and maybe it’s just because the movie’s pretty rushed from this point on anyway, aside from 2 scenes of him drinking, I mean, that’s it. I mean, to me, that’s kind of lazy. We don’t see him stumbling around. We don’t get the sense that it’s inhibiting his ability to connect with people or that at the end of the day, you know, he’s not functioning or he’s, I don’t know, it’s just, I don’t, I didn’t get any of that. Maybe it’s in deleted scenes or…

Craig:Well, that’s what I was going to say. You know, an hour was cut, you know, who knows what we lost there. But even in the stuff that you’re saying, when they’re talking about how the insurance isn’t going to cover their lost home because since it just disappeared, it’s only technically missing. Like, that’s so stupid. I know, but it sounds like something that an insurance company would do. I, you know, whatever. And they do, they have that discussion where they’re talking about how they’re on hard times or whatever, and he turns to humor. But I see that   as a defense mechanism. You know, like, what else are we gonna do but joke about it? You know, his retreat into alcohol, I think, even though we don’t see that much of it, and I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with having a few drinks to drown your sorrows, that’s fine. But I think that the suggestion is that he’s maybe diving in a little too deep.

Todd:Well, I tell you what, if nursing 1 bottle of tequila over the course of a

Craig:couple of movies. Through the

Clip:whole movie. He’s diving in deep.

Todd:I’d say he’s at the shallow end right now, for sure.

Craig:Oh man. Okay, well, Diane, the mom, then has a vision. I don’t remember if it’s inspired by anything. I think maybe Tangina, yeah, Tangina gives her some pictures, some photographs of the cult. And she recognizes Kane and she sees the underground bunker that we’ve already seen the corpses in. And so we know that she is kind of special too, which Tangina says. She says, you know, Carolanne is special, your mom was special, and I bet anything that you are too. She says that Carolanne’s highly clairvoyant and Kane thinks that he needs her to lead them into   the light. And then crazy stuff starts happening. Robbie, the son, who, I don’t know if this was a reshoot or not but did you notice that in this braces scene that he looked like at least 2 years older than he looks in the rest of the movie?

Todd:No I didn’t notice that. You know for me I was I had in my head that the braces scene happened to the girl in the first movie so I’m I was totally off on this catch

Craig:well his his braces attack him and that sounds really stupid that it’s there’s actually some really cool effects you know the The wires and the braces shoot out and it’s a ridiculous amount of wire. It like ties him to the ceiling of the bedroom and The parents come in are trying to help and they’re yelling for Taylor to come help that he doesn’t because he’s protecting Carol Anne and when they finally get Robbie out Steven is mad. Why didn’t you help us? And he says cuz they don’t want you They’re just trying to distract you away   from her. They want carolyn

Todd:I don’t know man There’s gonna be a lot more stuff happening. And this is kind of how I felt about the movie. Like, why don’t they just go after Carol Anne then? Like, why would you in her bathroom? Why didn’t she just get sucked down the drain or something?

Craig:Yeah,

Todd:if they can do any of all this stuff, we’re about to describe is just going all over the place. It’s like his…

Craig:His

Todd:braces attacking him and stuff. And not like that was that restrained in the first movie, but it just felt a little more grounded. And in this sense, Because it’s been hammered into our heads that they’re trying to get Carol Ann, I’m trying to think, what is his method? It didn’t ring true to this character who apparently has all of this control, can make all these spooky things happen, why he’s having such a hard time pulling her away when he can do anything he wants to the rest of the family?

Craig:I feel like I’m defending it too much, but until Robbie goes away to the bathroom to brush his teeth or whatever, they’re always all together. Like they’re slumber partying, Not literally. They’re just all sleeping together in the living room. So they’re all always together. I feel like by attacking Robbie when he goes off on his own, that’s to try to get them away from her. And it works. It does get the parents away from her, but that’s why Taylor stays, because they’re trying to get her alone so that they can, and it all comes down to,   it sounds so cliche, but it doesn’t even bother me because, you know, I like that idea of a family’s bond and a family’s strength protecting them. Yeah, it sounds like a cliche and very well maybe, but it doesn’t bother me. And so to have that idea of the only way to get to her is to get the rest of them away from her that makes sense to me. All right,

Todd:I’ll grant you that. I didn’t really see it that way before but now that we’re talking about it, it actually makes perfect sense.

Craig:Well, so anyway, I don’t know. We get lots of exposition about the doomsday cults or whatever, and then Taylor takes Steven up to this impossible rock tower.

Todd:Maybe they cut out the scene in between there where they were like scaling it, you know, with the other, their climbing gear.

Craig:It’s funny, like, I feel like 2 weeks in a row, we’ve watched movies where they’ve had to climb impossible mountains.

Todd:Oh that’s right. At least in the last 1 they actually climbed it.

Craig:Right. Instead of just appearing at the top and like Stephen with his like dad gut is just like sitting up there like yucking it up like, what are we doing up here?

Clip:I loved his line actually, because they’re like a sweat box.

Todd:We’ve heard about this because there have been some accidents in regards to these sorts of things. But It’s apparently a very traditional Native American thing to put yourself in a hut or something and then get all sweaty and then…

Clip:I love the health club. I’m just wondering when I get the key to my locker.

Todd:And actually the reaction is really cool, you know, he just smiles at me says a sense of humor that you’re gonna need that You know, it’s not like he says pay attention you dick, you know, it’s yeah, it’s it’s cool No,

Clip:actually, yeah

Craig:Taylor Taylor plays it very cool with Steve throughout the whole movie. And I like that. Like he gets him, like he gets, this is the kind of guy you are. I get it. Like I can work with that. He’s totally, he’s totally cool with them the whole time. But anyway, he blows some magic smoke in Stephen’s face and that’s important later.

Todd:He gets sucked into to blow out later, yes.

Craig:Right, right, exactly. But then, okay, so he tells him, you have to take your family back to Cuesta Verde, The original site, their old house or whatever. It doesn’t really explain why, but okay. And then all of a sudden Taylor is gone, which I don’t understand. Was there some sort of explanation for why he wasn’t with them anymore?

Todd:He just off the cuff said, I’ve done all I can for you. You’re on your own, basically, which is kind of another funny thing about this movie. I mean, I know you’ve got to do things to advance the plot and for our audience’s purposes. But you know, as soon as they find this pit underneath the Indian burial ground in their house, don’t you think that Tangino could have at least like called them up first? Like let them know, hey I’m sending a guy your way, I’m also gonna be there shortly.

Craig:They just

Todd:leave them leave them out in limbo for a while, send this mysterious Indian, oh, by the way, Tangina sends me, he’s there for like a week or 2. And then Zelda shows up again, like, how far away do they live? And then this time, he just up and leaves, like you said, and now you’ve got to fight it alone. But then when they get to Cuesta Verde, Tangina is right there. Like she’s been camped out by that hole like for the last

Craig:2 weeks. So they end up by themselves which leads to this what I think is probably the most memorable scene of this movie when the family is just all home together and like Diane is taking a bath with Tangina, which by the way, I don’t remember if

Todd:she’s not taking a bath with Tangina. I’ll tell you that.

Craig:No, you’re not. You’re right. That would have been that would have been an interesting twist. She’s taking a bath with Carol Anne. I was thinking I was thinking ahead of myself. I was trying to think it was coming next. But yeah, like they’re taking bath. And I was good. I was trying to come up with the critics names. I think it was Roger Ebert who hated this movie.

Todd:Gene Siskel hated it.

Craig:Okay, all right, hated it. And 1 of the reasons that he hated it was because he thought that Jo Beth Williams was trampy because she had appeared nude in movies before. Well, I guess technically she appears nude in this movie too because she’s taking a bath with her daughter and you only see her from the back.

Todd:I can’t think of anything trampier than taking a bath with your daughter.

Craig:Right. You maybe see a tiny, tiny little bit of side boob. Like it’s so tame. But anyway, regardless, Stephen is drinking. He’s finishing off this bottle of tequila that he’s been nursing the whole time. And he drinks the worm, which they call it tequila so many times. I have never seen a tequila with a worm in it. Now Mezcal has a worm in it, and I’ve drank that, and that stuff will fuck you up. That stuff will put a demon in you.

Todd:You’ve had some exorcisms yourself.

Craig:Yeah, I’ve been to Mexico. But so he drinks the worm, which you do. I didn’t have to be the 1 to do it, thank God. But he drinks the worm and it’s a possessed worm. It starts moving around before he even drinks it and then he drinks it and then he’s possessed by Kane and if his acting has been flat through the rest of the movie I thought Craig T. Nelson did a really good job here of channeling Julian Beck’s character.

Todd:He did. He gets

Craig:very wide-eyed and he made a point of pulling his lips back over his teeth to really expose his teeth. He talks like him and he’s very sweaty. It’s a really uncomfortable scene because he first has a creepy thank god brief scene with Carol Anne. That could have gotten very dark, but luckily it was very brief. But then he’s with Diane and you know, these 2 actors had really strong chemistry together. Like I really believed them as a husband and wife, 100% from the first movie to the second movie and to now see Steven being so creepy   with her and it starts off just really super handsy, but then it gets violent and rapey and it’s it’s really intense and very uncomfortable and really scary and I thought that they both did a really good job with it.

Todd:This begs that question earlier though. Why did he have such a brief little scene with Carol Ann?

Clip:He possessed Carol Ann’s dad. Carol Ann’s right there.

Todd:Can he just grab her and go? Why does he have to let her run off and then have this whole deal with her mother? I don’t know, did he just pop a huge boner or something? Like, well, wait a minute.

Craig:I guess, but somebody had said, either Taylor or Tangina had said, his goal is gonna be to drive you apart. He has to drive you apart and Then not only is he being creepy and rapey with the wife, but he’s intentionally very loudly saying you never wanted Carol Anne. You don’t love Carol Anne. You never wanted her.

Todd:Yeah, you wish she hadn’t been born.

Craig:Right, and the wife is trying to shush him and she’s crying. And I don’t know if there’s supposed to be some more to the backstory there or whatever, but it’s effective because we see that Carol Anne hears it and that it upsets her. And if their family bond is really what is protecting them and keeping them together, then he has done something by driving this wedge or planting this seed of doubt between them.

Todd:True.

Craig:And then, you know, as he’s like trying to rape her, Diane says to Steven, I love you, don’t you know that? I love you. And it’s like Steven gets control of his body back, like he’s fighting it and he fights it and then he starts to wretch and he vomits up what first looks like kind of a big scary worm but what turns into a freaking demon that he expels out of his mouth and it just looks awful. And I read that the filming of it was awful because it took so long to do and they   had to do so many reshoots and poor Craig T. Nelson just was in agony, I guess. But it looks amazing. And then he vomits up this creature that goes scurrying along. And it’s this creature that looks so freaking cool. And He’s like, he’s kind of got Kane’s face, like with the teeth and the eyes, but very, you know, other worldly reptilian. He was played by this stunt man who was a Vietnam vet who had been a triple amputee it just looks

Todd:It’s hideous.

Craig:I think if anybody remembers anything from this movie This is the part that they will remember because it’s just so unsettling. It’s really cool

Todd:It’s the PG-13 part of the movie honestly. Yeah

Clip:It’s gross and it was grays away and I guess I HR Giger who designed alien

Todd:and all that did designs for this movie as well. The design for that creature that, I don’t know if it was that particular version of the creature or if it’s the creature that that then turns into in their stairwell, which is where they’d have a bit of a battle with it.

Craig:Yeah, the beast is what it’s referred to.

Todd:And he wasn’t happy with with the way all that turned out. He said that it just showed him that he has to be on set for any of these movies that he advises or else it won’t be done to his satisfaction.

Craig:And I understand that and I respect him so much as an artist. I’ve seen so much of his artwork, his sketches and stuff. And he, you know, I can’t imagine what kind of dark mind his stuff comes from.

Todd:It didn’t look enough like a giant dick is probably what it.

Craig:Maybe. Maybe, but his artwork really is amazing. I thought the creature looks good But then just like in the first movie and I’m not complaining about this because I love the first movie the house goes crazy You know, they’re fighting their way through all kinds of weird things going on in the house They end up in the garage because Carol Ann has hidden in the car and they finally get in the car. There’s a scene where a chainsaw attacks the car. They considered shooting the movie in 3D And so this is 1 of the scenes that   was supposed to pay service to that it actually looks kind of goofy in the movie But

Todd:sure does it’s kind of labored too

Craig:but they get out and they have to go back to Cuesta Verde and They do and they go down and you know under where their old house was back to the burial spot

Todd:Well, and and tan gene is there waiting for them

Craig:Yes, And this is what I was saying earlier, like

Clip:all this stuff’s going on and she’s

Todd:just hanging out by the hole waiting for them. She knows they’re gonna be there.

Craig:Here, I knew you’d come like it’s about time geez did the house just attack you come on So they go down there and then I could you can tell you can tell that they in editing or wherever that this was very rushed because they just get down there and then from out of nowhere there’s like a big flash of light and you hear Kane’s voice and Diane and Carol Anne gets sucked into the void. And this is my biggest complaint with this movie is that the finale of this movie is just too reminiscent of the finale   of the first movie. It’s really the exact same thing.

Todd:You

Craig:know, that Carol Anne is off floating in space In the first movie, Carol Anne is off floating in space and they have to send Diane and to get her. And in this movie, Carol Anne and Diane are both floating off into space. So, and Taylor’s there too. He’s tending a spiritual fire down underground, apparently.

Todd:They just turn around the corner and there he is.

Craig:Right. And he’s like, this is the entrance, jump in. And so they do. So Robbie and Steven just jump into the fire. And then they’re all just floating in space. And it’s all very ethereal. Like, you know, it’s 80s special effects. So it doesn’t look particularly real, but it’s pretty to look at at least. They’re all just floating in space and they get together, but then the big beast appears again and somehow, Taylor has this spear that we saw in like the first 30 seconds of the movie and then never again. And he throws it into   the fire and Steven gets it and he throws it and it kills the beast. Like the beast explodes, but the explosion causes Carol Ann to go flipping off into nothingness and they can’t see her. And Taylor’s like, oh no, it’s over. She’s lost. But then thankfully, the angelic grandmother comes out of the light with care land and reunites them all. And they all come back out of the fire and they’re back and everything’s okay. And then there’s some cute little comedy where Steven gives Taylor the car and then they realize they don’t have a way to   get home so they all go chasing him down the street and that’s the end. The ending, as quickly as I just paraphrased it.

Todd:It’s basically as quick as it is.

Craig:It’s like it goes so fast. Yeah. And it’s a little bit of a letdown. It’s a little bit anticlimactic, which is unfortunate.

Todd:It’s unfortunate and it’s a little cheesy too. I mean the whole thing’s a little hokey. I mean I guess this universe is kind of like that. Like you said, it’s very much like the first 1, but this magical spear gets thrust in the spiritual realm and then they just shows up where they are and they toss it at the demon and then it’s dead. I mean, you know, I think it’s a big letdown honestly. It just goes by so quickly and it’s too special effects-y for me. I don’t know. I felt like a lot of it   was.

Craig:I agree.

Todd:Yeah, it loses some of that magic. Again, It doesn’t ground it so much in reality as much as a movie about poltergeist and the other side or whatever can be grounded In reality You need hooks in there a little bit and I felt like there was just so much going on throughout the movie that you know the braces thing attacking the kid, the ghost appearing everywhere, this demon thing coming out of his him spinning out the the demon worm and all that that That’s what I meant when I said earlier, like it just kind of lacked   a little bit of focus. I think what I really meant was it just lacked a grounding in a sense of like some rules that I could understand and play by. You know, I think a lot of people, their complaint about fantasy in general is that, well, anything can happen. So how do I get invested in it when I know somebody’s going to swoop in with a magic spell or a magic creature and, and, you know, Deus ex machina something away. And I felt like this movie did that a lot. It was a spectacle to watch, it   was well acted. You know, I like the family and I think I have gained a bit more appreciation for it talking about it with you. Now that you have kind of explained to me that it’s their whole family staying together that maybe Is what kind of kept them alive through all this and it makes a little more sense that way I get it

Craig:I get it. It’s not a great movie. I don’t know I don’t know if it’s because of my love of the first movie like seriously, I can’t go on I can’t believe a hundred and who knows how many episodes we are in now.

Todd:And we haven’t,

Craig:oh geez. And we haven’t done Poltergeist. Seriously, it’s 1 of my favorite movies. It’s not as good, but it’s not a terrible sequel. Have you seen part 30A

Todd:long time ago when I first came out, I saw it once. That was it.

Craig:Part 3 is not even a good movie, but I love it.

Todd:Doesn’t it take place in a skyscraper or something?

Craig:Yes, it takes place in the Hancock building in Chicago and It’s not a good movie, but I absolutely love it. I think part of it is Heather O’Rourke, Carol Anne. She’s just so sweet and cute and innocent and, God, I just love her so much. Then part 3, the tragedy, again with the curse, the tragedy of part 3 is that there are different stories. Some people say that they had finished production and then she died right after, And then they went back into film reshoots. There are other people that say that they hadn’t finished and she   died, but she died. This sweet, poor, cute little girl died because she was misdiagnosed with some sort of stomach ailment. And it’s just so sad. And she’s just so sweet and cute in these movies. And I just love her. And really, Craig T. Nelson, you know, he’s still a very active.  :00 – :32

Todd:Working actor and Jo Beth Williams has done tons of stuff too. But I just, there was, there’s something natural about this family. Like I just believe them as a family and I’m rooting for them and I liked following their story. And I can’t say that I didn’t like this movie. I liked it. It has its problems. I still like it, especially as far as sequels go because sequels are such a mixed bag. I think this was a serviceable, if not better than that sequel.  :33 – :42

Craig:Well, when you talk about that and we talked about this for the last couple sequels we’ve done as well, this movie does at least satisfy you in that almost all the main characters are back.  :42 – :42

Todd:Right.  :42 – :11

Craig:And you know, it’s it’s picking up kind of where the last movie left off and it’s tying in pretty strongly to the plot of the first film even though it goes off kind of in its own way maybe even a little too much like you said the ending is almost exactly the same but at least they’ve maybe done a better job of striking that balance of giving the fans enough of what they liked about the original while still trying to be original in and of itself. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode.  :11 – :39 If you enjoyed this 1, please share it with a friend. Our month of sequels is wrapping up to a close. We have 1 more sequel for you coming up next week, Return of the Living Dead Part 2. So look forward to that 1. Neither of us have seen it before. We’ll let you know our take on that. You let us know your take on this and any other episode that we’ve done by going to our website at 2guys.redfortinet.com. You can find us on Facebook, just search 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. Leave us a comment there on  :39 – :52 either of those places and let us know what you thought of this film. Give us some requests for things that you want to see in the future because we are going to do some more requests coming up here really soon. Until next time, I’m Todd and I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.