Let’s celebrate our milestone 450th episode by diving into Wes Craven’s 1989 cult classic, ‘Shocker.’ In this episode, we discuss the film’s notable scenes, its mix of horror and comedy, and Wes Craven’s unique touch on the genre.
We also delve into the background of the film, the cast, the challenges it faced, and why it didn’t become the franchise starter it was meant to be. Whether you’re a fan of Wes Craven, classic horror, or just looking for an in-depth and entertaining discussion, you won’t want to miss this episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw!
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Shocker (1989)
Episode 450, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to the 450th episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Todd: 450 episodes. Man, can you believe it? Absolutely not. Like it just seems unfathomable.
Todd: I feel like, I feel like not long ago we were celebrating our 400th, so it feels like the last 50 have just flown by.
That in itself sounds hilarious to say. It seems like it.
Craig: We were just talking about 365, like that was a big milestone for us. It seemed like that just happened. I, I can’t believe it. I remember when we first started this. I don’t remember how the conversation happened, but when we got to like the first 50 and I told my parents, my mom was like, are there 50 horror movies?
And I thought that was really funny at the time. But gosh, at some point I guess we never will run out. But I mean, you never will. 4, 4 50. Dang. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of movies. I bet I couldn’t list
Todd: 50 of ’em. Right? Oh God. Well it feels really good. And as we did when we started out, Wes Craven had recently died.
So our very first episode was people Under the Stairs. We decided for our 50th and then for our hundredth and most of our milestones along that way, that we were like, why don’t we just go back to West Craven? And so we tend to save our West Craven movies for these milestones. Yeah. And it’s been a long time.
I think it has been. And you know, it’s funny that we still have a decent little pile of movies to do now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, we’re far past the hills have eyes. And last house on the left was the last one we did. And God, it does not seem like 50 episodes ago. But uh, there you have it.
This one, uh, we had our choice between if a couple eighties ones and we settled on Shocker from 1989, which I had never seen before. Had you seen it?
Craig: Yeah, I definitely had. I didn’t remember a whole lot about it. I vaguely remembered liking it. And I, I knew what the general premise was, but I hadn’t seen it in a long time.
And I’m glad that we picked this one because one of the other ones that we were thinking of was Chiller, which I have never seen. And because I’d never seen it, I just had time. I kind of popped it on and it didn’t look as much fun at all. I didn’t watch it for very long. It was made for tv and the quality’s pretty low, and I don’t know, it didn’t look great.
So I still haven’t seen it. If we get around to 500 or five 50, we’ll get to it eventually. I, I have a feeling if we, if we make it to 500 our next bet, we’ll probably be the serpent in the rainbow would be my guess. Oh, for sure. But, but no, I’m actually really glad that we went with this one because. I remembered liking it, and I did like it.
It was fun and I’m really kind of surprised that it didn’t do well, especially coming off the heels of a nightmare on Elm Street, which was so wildly popular. The only thing that I can think is that people just wanted more Freddie. They didn’t want Offbrand Freddie, they wanted specifically Freddie Krueger and I, I think maybe that’s why this one didn’t take off.
But it’s fun. It’s, it’s, it’s a lot like the Nightmare movies. Frankly, maybe too much. Really?
Todd: I, I was just gonna say, it’s real ironic, you know, that you say that because that’s sort of what Wes Craven was trying to do with this movie. He was trying to create a Freddie competitor. He had been a little sad that the series kind of went on without him.
He was originally very uninterested in doing a sequel to the first movie. Yeah. But then after the second movie, got a little bit in, more involved with the third movie. It’s, it’s so weird. His career, it’s just been fits and starts. He started off real strong with certain movie, well, well, with the last house on the left doing really well.
And then the Hills have Eyes and the Sequel Hills have eyes and do so great. And he kind of found himself right back where he started, and then he did Nightmare on Elm Street after a while. And, and that was huge. And then went on to Deadly Friend and that kind of flopped. And then he couldn’t find himself getting any work anymore.
It, it’s just so weird. You know, he had these moments where he had these movies that were just really, really well received. And then in between just. Parts where he was kind of down in the doldrums and I think between the, his last big success in this movie, he was doing a lot of television just to pay the bills.
You know, he is directing episodes of TV shows and things like that and wasn’t enjoying it. He did not enjoy television. He was just scrapping, trying to get back into film and back into film. He thought Freddie has become this icon. It’s also been ki become kind of jokey. He wanted to create a Freddie competitor, somebody who is more gruesome and more serious than than Freddie.
And this was his. Attempt at that. It really wasn’t well received, but you could definitely see what he was going for because it very much has a lot of nightmare, Elm Street, Freddie ish stuff about it a lot. This villain is more brutal and just kind of like a crazy homicidal maniac who also, I guess is sort of a devil worshiper and whatnot.
And so you can see that he’s created a more intense villain here, but I’m afraid, for me, the movie’s just kind of a mess. It’s a fun mess. But I’ve read reviews where people are like, it feels like three different movies. And I totally agree. I mean, there’s a lot going on. There’s so much happening.
Craig: He, like you said, he was setting this up to be a series of movies, so I kind of think in some ways he was throwing the kitchen’s.
Sink in and thinking, yeah, we can explain all of this lore later. Yeah, let’s just have fun and we’ll explain it later. And you know, Cisco and Ebert, I don’t, they were split on it. I don’t remember which one liked it and which one didn’t. Cisco liked it a bit, not, not a ton,
Todd: but yeah, Ebert hated it. I didn’t read Ebert’s review on it.
Craig: Well, he said I didn’t read it. I read a summary of it, but he said there, there was too much. Unexplained, like his complaint was, we have no idea what the rules are. And I agree. Oh yeah. Like that is a hundred percent true. It’s the biggest problem. Anything can happen. Yeah. Like, pretty much. And, and there’s no consistency to that.
That didn’t bother me. I don’t know. And maybe it’s because I saw it when I was a kid and it really kind of is more about visuals and what’s happening. Not so much why, like, I don’t care. He’s a devil worshiper that can go into electricity and then also TV waves or something. Great. Whatever I like I am, I’m,
But he also jumps between bodies. I mean, like, yeah, he can do that too. And how does he jump between the bodies? Like what are the rules for that? Like, I don’t care. It became, at first I thought I sorted it out that I hadn’t. And well, you know, I mean, do any of us really care? Probably not. But it, it bothered me watching it.
Not because I was trying to be critical of the movie, but just because my brain kind of gave up. When you know the rules, you’re trying to sort out how the villain’s going to what his next move is gonna be and how the hero’s going to thwart him, right? When there aren’t rules you, you’re just always in the dark as to what’s gonna happen, and so you can’t anticipate anything.
And so I just lost any anticipation and by the last 20 minutes of the movie, I just was like, ah, okay. It’s just gonna be a big chase scene. It, it has been for the, you know, the previous hour and I don’t really get it where he’s gonna be at any given time or how they’re gonna sort it out. It is just gonna be a big battle at the end and whatever.
We’ll just go with it. I just wasn’t that engaged.
Craig: Yeah, the last half. The last half drags a little bit, which is too bad because I thought the first half was really well paced. Like Yeah, a lot happens. And you’re right, it is kind of all over the place. It’s not just with the nature of the villain, but like there are.
Ghosts and magic necklaces and it’s a little hokey.
Todd: There are parts, I’m sorry, there were parts where it was a little hokey and, and so campy. I was kind of rolling my eyes. I was like, all right, I just have to remind myself, Freddy is campy too, and I love it. Yeah, totally. And I love a lot of campy movies, but God, this movie really leans into it by the end.
Craig: I also felt like it had Wes Craven all over it. Like, oh, for sure. I mean, there are so many parallels to a nightmare in Om Street, but then even like Ghostly girlfriend who, we’ll talk, we’ll explain all this stuff in a minute, but just generally speaking, like, yeah, ghostly girlfriend reminded me a lot of.
Christy Swanson from Deadly Fringe. Oh yeah. She looked a lot like her. Geez. Yeah. Even in the, like the design. Yeah.
Todd: And like, what’s her name in Nightmare on Elm Street three? Yes. Yes. I know who
Craig: you’re talking about. White dress. Yeah. I mean, even the, even the first victim in part one who’s blonde and wears a long white matronly nightgown, like apparently he’s into that.
Craig: no, the truth is he was probably trying to appease the sensors because like most of his movies, this movie had to be. According to Craven, drastically cut to get an R rating, which seems, yeah, we’ve talked about it a million times, but it, in today’s context, it just seems so stupid.
Like it’s really quaint today. Again, I don’t wanna get into it too much ’cause we’ve talked about it before, but just even today, the kind of, the idea of the MPAA just seems so dated. Yeah. If, if people wanna know about the content of a movie, they can easily find out. And if you’re really concerned about it, then you should.
We don’t need some puritanical board of governors telling us what we, what is appropriate and what isn’t appropriate for us or our children. Like, it’s just so stupid. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I mean, like I said, and you’ve got teenagers in peril, unbelieving parents, asshole parents, uhhuh or kids
Right, right, right. You know, maybe, you know, unexplainable. Powers or, yeah, and that’s fine. Uh, like dreams. All of dreams. Yeah, definitely Lots of dreams. Definitely dreams, Uhhuh and that’s great. I like West Craven. I like a nightmare on Elm Street. This movie works for me, but I can totally understand why it wouldn’t for others.
I could see why others would call it out as blatantly ripping a lot of stuff off from a nightmare on Elm Street. Again, that doesn’t bother me, but you could certainly say that. I mean, even the introduction almost is exactly the same as, yeah. Nightmare on Elm Street, whereas in Nightmare Elm Street. It. It has to be.
There’s no getting around it, you know, in Nightmare. On Elm Street, it’s Freddy. It’s just shots of him, like from the knees down, walking around in his workshop, making his gloves like you never see his face. This is the exact same thing. It’s some guy in big boots walking around in some sort of workshop.
You’re only seeing, you’re not seeing his face, seeing him from the leg down, seeing his hands doing what he’s doing. But he’s working on electronics. Yeah. It’s shot the same way. It looks the same. It basically is the same Uhhuh. It’s something that nightmare on Elm Street. I mean, I love the score from a nightmare on Elm Street.
It’s iconic, but I did like that this movie is scored largely through rock music.
Todd: Oh yeah. I loved the soundtrack of this movie. That was nuts. So when the credits are going, I’m like, oh, this got this great hair metal song. Like shocker or whatever. Yeah. And then I saw one of the producers with Shep Gordon, and I don’t know how familiar you are with Shep Gordon, but he is a legend, Alice Cooper, a lot of, a lot of bands coming up.
I didn’t realize until I started digging in that he also produced films. And also he is responsible for the celebrity chef thing. He’s the guy who had the idea like, we could make these chefs celebrities. And so like Wolfgang Pock and Muriel Lagasse and all those early guys, Shep Gordon’s the one who pushed them up into stardom.
And I mean it’s, it’s nuts. And then it makes sense because Desmond Child is doing the music supervision. One of the biggest songwriters in Rock in History wrote Tons of Alice Cooper’s stuff produced meatless third album wrote, living on a Prayer, you know? Oh, almost. Every iconic eighties hair metal song and, and far beyond hair metal.
This guy wrote, I mean, he’s making millions of dollars off of royalties and, and he’s just aerosmith’s most popular songs. You know, dude Looks like a lady. Things like that. Ugh, I hear you all come from this guy. So it’s nuts. And then William Goldstein did the score that isn’t rock music and he is also a very iconic film scorer film and television.
It’s nuts. So here you are with this star, studded cast, fricking Timothy Leary shows up in the credits of like, Timothy Leary’s gonna be in this. Like wow. So he’s got a lot of people behind him and he is got this, this strong, like you said, going back to the music, the strong metal score. And I think it was interesting how we just came off a couple episodes ago.
Talking about Friday the 13th, part seven Uhhuh, and it was part five, I believe Jason lives where they really just kind of po you know, we’re trying to make Jason big and relevant and kind of reinvent him and as the big un dead zombie and, and making an event like The Nightmare Elm Street movies were.
And that also came with, uh, a lot of heavy hitters from heavy metal, uh, backing up on the score and, and music that was playing on the radio. Alice Cooper did the theme song for that, the Man Behind the Mask. Funny. And so you can see where he’s almost there, it almost seems like he’s intentionally trying to create that, like it’s very commercial decisions being made here to rip off those elements at work for audiences and make this new series and it just.
It just didn’t come together
Craig: Well, I like, I mean, I, I, I loved the music in the movie. It was a lot of fun. I think rock and roll and horror go beautifully hand in,
like, I was like, I was jamming. I’m like, this is, and I, I just kind of thought that it was a preexisting song and then it, the lyrics are talking about shocker and stuff. It’s like, oh, right. I loved it. I thought it was great.
Todd: Actually, maybe all of the metal tunes on here are either written for this movie or were produced for this movie.
Like there’s a cover of Alice Cooper’s No more Mr. Nice guy here. Yeah. By Mega Death, it’s not Alice Cooper. It’s, and so, yeah, I never heard that cover before and I think it was created just for this movie. So yeah, it’s really good on the, on the music front. I mean, they were trying really hard.
Craig: Well, and I think that they were kind of trying, he was trying to establish kind of the gr, I don’t wanna get too deep or anything, but Freddy Kruger, I, I feel like he was trying to establish as.
More of a nuanced evil, so that, that very spooky, simple. I can’t do it. Yeah. But you know, the, the very simple thing, it worked really well for him. This is a different kind of villain. This is just like kind of a brutal, like a brutal right. Violent, evil guy. And I, I think that the music, not that I think rock and roll is evil in any way, but it, it just seems more suited
Todd: to him and to the movie.
Yeah. I think of it like, especially at this time, you know, this is like mainstream evil, you know? I mean, it feels exciting and, and whatever, but by this point, all this, what they called heavy metal at that time, pretty mainstream.
Craig: Yeah. Well, and I was surprised to hear you say that. A lot of it, or most of it were original songs because they feel familiar.
Yeah. They sound like you turn on, you know, the classic rock station and these are the songs that you would hear. They, they’re good. Mm-hmm. Anyway. All right, so he, okay, so here’s, he’s the scary guy and he has a limp. A pronounced limp, and that’s very important. He drags one leg all the time. Alright. And that’s important.
Todd: Did you hear about that limp? How that No. This actor, I saw an interview with him and he said he had worked out this limp. He was super, super proud of this limp. And he goes to show it to West Craven and Craven’s like, oh man, I’m sorry, but the limps already been established by that little girl.
Oh, they already shot the little girl scene. And you know, her limp was just, just basically just like dragging her left leg behind her. Oh my God. That is hilarious. He was like, okay, it is fine. But it just kind of took a bit of the wind out of my sails and I had to work with that.
Craig: Well, that would be really hard to work with because it really limits his mobility.
I and, and it, yeah, it has to be. I mean, there’s no way of getting around it being somewhat inconsistent like it is because, because sometimes he has to move, you know, like that. That leg clearly works when it needs
Todd: to. Yeah, it really does. What Wesley, when they’re having a fight all over somebody’s living room, is that what you’re thinking?
Yeah. Right. Yes. And he’s like
Craig: throwing people around and stuff. I was gonna wait until we got to it, but there is body jumping. His soul or essence or whatever it is, jumps into other people. My big question was. Why would those people limp? I know they don’t have a leg injury like you would think he would jump in a new body and be like, woo-hoo
I know. I, in fact, I didn’t really notice his limp until the girl, and then when I saw the girl limping, I was like, why is she do, wait a minute. Does he have a limp? Are they giving everybody jumps into a limp? That’s absurd. It is
Craig: absurd. And, and I, I ask the question why I know the answer. It’s to very clearly signal to the audience that it’s him in there.
Right. But I, it wasn’t necessary. Like in fact, Craven does great shots and the actors do a great job every time. He’ll do a tight closeup on their face and they will give a look or a menacing grin. That right very clearly conveys that it’s him in there now. So the li thing really wasn’t necessary, but.
Okay, whatever. Anyway, so then, and, and we find out, I think through, like we hear on the news or that there’s the serial killer out there and he kills, you know, entire families. Oh yeah. Was there an opening murder scene? I don’t remember.
Todd: Did he kill a family? I don’t remember. Well, no, it’s mostly a bunch of news footage montage, well, not even necessarily news footage of this happening, but of just horrible things happening on tv.
Like if you’re flipping through the 10 o’clock news or whatever, this is just, you’d create your own montage of horrible things going on. And it’s, the voiceover is talking about the murders. In one hand. It’s very typical horror movie stuff, right? You always hear over the radio or whatever, like it kind of sets up what’s, what’s happening, what you’re coming into in the middle of.
In the other hand, there is a lot of this. During the movie, the news narrates a lot. Of what we don’t see immediately on screen or helpfully and maybe a little too much recaps. What we just saw as newscast, John Tesh from Entertainment Tonight is like one of the anchors who shows up quite frequently in this movie.
Todd: funny. And I, and I have to imagine that this again is Wes Craven and I think he pretty much said as much, he’s trying to make a statement here. He’s talking about TV and what he sees as the bad things. It kind of does to us. It’s, it’s a little over the top and hits you hard on the head. But yeah, he establishes that really early on with all this news footage.
Craig: Yeah. And it’s showing pictures of his, the killers victims and stuff. And apparently one of them is Heather Langham. I missed that. I to, I was watching for it. I totally missed it. So then we’re introduced to our hero, Jonathan played by Peterburg, who I recognized, but then I looked at his IMDB page and I didn’t really recognize anything that he was in.
Maybe he was just. I don’t know. Lots of guys looked like him at
Todd: that time. I don’t know. I’d say so. Yeah. He’s more of a director now, like a very successful director. Dylan, he looks like one of the Dylan brothers, like Matt Dillon. Oh yeah. Kind of a little bit, right? A little bit. At least he has that football player look to him, doesn’t he?
Craig: Yeah. Well, and they establish, I mean, it it, it’s a kind of a weird balance here in the beginning. Like he, he’s at football practice and he’s kind of making jokes and like he runs into the goalpost in like a very, like Looney Tunes fashion and it’s, oh God, and, and, and then he like trips and falls over the Gatorade table.
It’s like Saturday Night Live for. 30 seconds. Yeah. Kind of some Chevy Chase stuff going on. And then his beautiful blonde girlfriend Allison talks to him. And then there are just weird parts that like they’re walking down his childhood street, but were there like ghost children like running around. Yeah.
I still don’t know what was going on with that.
Todd: It’s like night and they’re walking down the street and there’s kids running across the street behind them, but they kind of disappear. And he’s talking to her. He says, I was raised on the street, I used to live here. And he walks toward the house and I’m thinking, what’s going on?
Why is this a, an amazing thing? And then he turns around and Allison is disappeared very dramatically. Like there leaves blowing around where she used to be, you know? That’s right. And, and he enters the house and he sees someone on the ground who’s cut up. At first I thought it was Allison.
Craig: Yeah. But before he went in, he saw that parked outside of his childhood home was this great big service van with the name of the guy in huge, bold letters on it.
So like. He’s seen all this. You’re right. When he, when he goes in, he sees somebody, I think it’s his brother, like his kid brother, a kid all bloody and gross on the floor. And then I think he hears screaming and he goes upstairs and his mother and little sister are being attacked by this big bald guy.
And the bald, the, the killer like sees him and. Talks to him, right? Yeah. Threatens him too. You get away from
Clip: her. Whatcha doing here to dip shit? Huh? You wanna watch
Craig: Jonathan do something?
Craig: Get him outta his hands.
Todd: Yeah, it’s brutal. And then he jumps awake. Oh, the, the killer leaps onto him and that’s when he jumps awake.
And then it’s, it’s, it turns out it’s like a dream. But his girlfriend is there and she’s like, are you okay? You, you seem different. And he’s like, something is different. And his dad calls, I think at this time, there’s a whole bunch of great transitions here, but it really throws you off and I think, again, very intentionally.
So West Craven is just like trying to make it so that we’re never quite comfortable with what’s really happening or what’s going on here. And I was so happy to see his dad. His dad, um, was played by. He’s one of these guys who I’ve, you see in so many things, but I know you don’t know his name right.
Michael Murphy. He was a favorite of Robert Altman. He and Robert Altman were like bosom buddies and from early on in college and he was in all of his movies and he plays one of the villains in one of my all time favorite movies, cloak and Dagger. I will always remember him as Mr. Rice from Cloak and Dagger Man, what if this is the third or fourth time this year?
I’ve been able to bring up Cloak and Dagger on our podcast
Craig: and only like the 50 or 60th time.
Todd: Throughout. Yeah, probably all roads lead to cloak and dagger in my mind. We just need to do it. I just, I don’t know what it is about this guy. Maybe just because I have such a check connection with him from childhood, but I could watch him on screen all day long.
He’s just got a, a normal kind of nice face. He just disappears into these roles. ’cause he’s always just playing this guy.
Craig: Yes, he’s just that guy. Like I feel like in my mind I can picture him in a million things and sometimes he’s. A nice guy and sometimes he’s not a nice guy, but mm-hmm. I, I, like, I always picture him in like a trench coat.
Yeah, exactly. For, for, for some reason, you know, like the, you know, the tan Yep. Very simple, plain trench coat. Like, he’s just always that, like I can vividly mm-hmm. Picture him in my mind in several different things, but I have no idea what those things are.
Todd: You’re a hundred percent right. And I just love, I love the guy and he’s apparently a very lovely dude too, and he loves the fact that he is kind of unrecognizable.
He’s been in so many things, but he’s not one of these guys who walks down the street and people are instantly like, oh wait, I know you. He says, I just kind of have an ordinary face. And that’s been really fun. Anyway, as
Craig: it turns out, this dream was not only a dream, it was. Either a premonition or he was somehow dreaming it as it was happening because it has happened.
Yeah. He meets, I don’t know. I think he meets his dad at the crime scene. His dad is a cop, like a lieutenant. His dad has been investigating this. Murderer. So I, I don’t know if this is revenge or just with the guy, you know, who’s investigating him or whatever, but we also find out through dialogue, and it didn’t seem clunky to me at the time, in my notes, it seems clunky.
It seems clunky for me to drop this here. That yes, this is his family that he grew up with, but John was actually adopted at age seven after being found terribly beaten and alone. Which seems like kind of an odd detail, I guess, but whatever it does, I, I, I, I, I think, I mean, I think that they also say that those other kids, at least the other boy that was living with that family we’re foster kids too.
So, you know, yeah. There are foster families, whatever. Yeah. Spoiler alert it comes up later. But anyway, then we meet like his. Football team and his football coach, and they are a really tight team. Yeah, they sure are. Throughout the rest of the movie. Pretty much any time Jonathan is around the team and the coach.
Are there to support him.
Todd: whatever reason, Jonathan lives and breathes football. Even when, even when he’s just thinking about stuff, he is sitting at the track on the football field. I mean it’s, it’s kind of funny. There’s nothing else of his school life, one of his football
Craig: friends. Pacman is played by Ted Raey and any more.
It’s only because of this podcast, but we’ve seen Ted Ramey pop up in so many movies at this point. Like anymore. It’s like, where’s Waldo? Like I see him, ah, Ted Raey.
Todd: It was just like a flash of him at the funeral and I was like, wait a sec. I mean, it was literally a second as the camera pans by and I was like, wait a minute, is that Ted Rab and I out?
And then there’s another funeral and again, boom, he’s there. And I was like, what? The whole team is there? Like an extra in the back. Then I realized, I mean, he’s, he becomes more prominent later, but yeah, he’s part of the, he’s like a medic, right? Or something.
Craig: Well, he worked, maybe he’s the assistant coach or something.
Maybe he’s the team manager or something. I don’t know. Anyway, but, so anyway, Jonathan tells his dad about the dream and you know, I saw this happen, whatever. And he says, I know who the guy is. Of course his dad doesn’t really believe him, but I guess he humors him or whatever. And so he takes his dad and the other cops to where the killer, whose name is Horace Pinker, played by Mitch Pegge, who looks like somebody I should like, I don’t know.
He looks like Mr. Clean, he looks like mean, Mr. Clean. He’s got a bit of a Vincent Dno kind of vibe to him. Little bit. A little bit. Yeah. I don’t think I really know him from anything, but he plays a good, big, scary guy. And the thing that makes him, I mean, he’s big and, and muscular and, and clean, bald head.
So just physically he’s intimidating. But he’s also, like we’ve said before, like just like. I don’t know. Nasty. And like he relishes in his Yeah. Violence and he relishes in terrorizing people and he relishes in taunting Jonathan and other people. He’s scary in in that way too. He’s
Todd: really over the top.
Craig: he is over the top. But that’s fine.
Todd: Yeah. I’m not, I’m not saying that in a critical way. I’m just saying like that’s, this is the kind of villain that we have. He just looks like nuts. He’s nuts over the top. Crazy, unpredictable, got nothing else going for him, you know? Right, right. You don’t even know motive, like
No, we have no idea. Again, maybe we were meant to find out later. Maybe not. I personally don’t care. Whatever. If I were to find out later, fun, but who cares? So anyway, the cops go in and there’s like, it’s all set up. He’s got tons of TVs now. This is 1980, whatever. So these are like lo-fi Yeah, box TVs, like hanging from chains and on shelves, like all over.
And they’re all showing these terrible images of like the K, K, K and like atomic bombs going off and bad stuff. I feel like there’s also suggestions of maybe like ritualistic stuff around a little bit. Most of that is implied.
Todd: And then later he uses it. I have to feel that there was like maybe a scene or two cut or a shot or two cut.
Because the best we get is he’s got a little secret room. He pulls one of the cops in, he is there and he pulls one of the cops into his secret room, which the dad and son discover. But he ends up slipping out the back. Dad and son go into that secret room and look around and you just get a shot. I think there’s like a foreground shot of like a dead cat hanging.
Todd: that’s right. That’s about it.
Craig: Yeah. And so he gets away, he kills a bunch of cops. Oh yeah. He kills a bunch of pe. A lot of people in this movie violently. And that stuff is good. I mean, we haven’t mentioned the fact that this movie was shot on a relatively low budget, and when it comes to the later effects, you can kind of tell, but I would’ve been willing to just attribute that to.
The time. Right. We just didn’t really have the technology. You said earlier you could really tell what he was going for and I agree. And later, I don’t know how much later, he didn’t live all that much longer, but Wes Craven said that he would like to go back and remake Shocker because he felt like he could really do more with the effects of the day that he had intended, the effects looked dated, but they, I don’t think they look terrible.
Todd: I don’t think the effects are what’s wrong with this movie. Honestly. I would hope that if he goes back and revisited it, if he had been able to do that or somebody does, they’ll, they’ll work the story a little bit. Sure, yeah. It could definitely
Craig: be cleaned up. But anyway. Okay. So he gets away after killing a bunch of people.
So Jonathan goes back to his dorm room? Not dorm room. I think they’re in co. Maybe it’s dorm room. I don’t know, but I think they’re in college. Maybe he’s in college. I, I feel like he’s got a house or something. Maybe it’s an apartment. Right? He’s with his girlfriend. It’s a nice little, yeah, with his girlfriend Alice or something.
I don’t know I ever as Al ’cause I was taking notes, I was trying to be quick in the very first scene when we meet her. He’s pretending to have a concussion. And he’s like, who are you? And she’s like, I’m your girlfriend and I’m the one girl that you want to have babies with. And he’s like, do we have any babies?
And she says, no, we haven’t even slept together yet. And then it’s established that they live together and she takes baths in front of him. So I dunno. Yeah, I didn’t get that. That was weird. I didn’t get that at all. Maybe it was, maybe it was playful banter that I took to literally, I don’t know, whatever.
Anyway, he comes home and makes a point of relaxing in his electric. Bark a lounger that’s like a massage chair for a few minutes just to the matic, just to establish that it’s there. And he sits in it sometimes he does it several times. Yeah, he does it several times. Like, like the girlfriend gets killed and he goes to the funeral.
Then he has to come home and sit in his matic for a while.
Todd: I, by the third time I was like, this better be going somewhere. I’ll be very angry.
Craig: Well, and you knew it was because the movie’s called Shocker and they make a point that it’s like this chair is sitting and a kind of logical place that it would sit in a room, but they make it very clear that, that you see the cord like snaked around and very prominently plugged into the wall.
It’s like, oh gosh, that went right by me. And so much of this is kind of set up, but it’s kind of important, like he gives the girlfriend a movie trope. A cheap Walmart heart necklace for, oh God, her birthday that she just absolutely loves.
Todd: I’m sorry, dude. I was rolling my eyes at this.
Todd: it turns magic right here.
I thought. Really? Come on Wes. Come on Wes. How many movies have we seen where this girl gets this hard shaped charm necklace? That’s gonna mean something later. Yeah. God, it’s silly.
Craig: All right. We find out that through the news again, that the killer is still around and he’s slaughtered a whole other family.
Todd: black magic animal sacrifice, hundreds of mummified cats were found in his place. That’s right. It becomes clear. Yeah. Through the news report. John Tesh tells us all that, but
Craig: then immediately, like he comes back, like he leaves her in the morning, he comes back in the afternoon and she’s dead. She was killed in the bathroom apparently.
And within her body was enough blood to paint the walls of the bathroom. Yeah. I’ve never seen so much blood. It was insane. That must have, and and it’s not just blood. It’s like her, it’s like fingerprint streaks, like all down, like all the walls. Like she was
Todd: climbing the ceiling away from this guy. It’s like it was a mess.
It’s crazy. I saw an interview with this actress too, and she said that one of the odd, you know, they have these discussions on set. She’s like, you wouldn’t think this is an important detail, but when you have to decide what you’re gonna do when you’re shooting a scene, it becomes an important detail. And there was lots and lots of discussion as to whether or not her body would be found clothed or unclothed.
Eventually they decided on clothed because they didn’t want the idea complicating things that maybe she had been. Because she was killed, clothed, you know, that he had done anything to her after she was killed.
Craig: But you don’t even see her body after do like, isn’t she just sub She’s submerged in the tub that is full of blood.
Blood. So you, there’s an arm. So you just see, like, you see her hand and like Yeah, her blood, clotted hair like sticking out of the top. It’s gruesome. It’s
Todd: a bloody sleeve. It’s really gruesome. It’s over the top gruesome. Honestly, it’s really unbelievable. I
Craig: mean, I, I see why, yeah, it should be rated R for sure.
It is very violent, but I don’t, I, I, I guess standards were different back then. Whatever the things that I read that they ultimately cut. Don’t seem uncomfortable to these things that are still in, like, that’s, yeah, that’s the thing that always weirds me out about the MPAA. Like there’s just a, a step too far, you know, like what, right.
Where, where do you draw the line? Like the line just seems so arbitrary. Maybe it’s only because I’ve read about West Craven so much. It just seemed like they really wanted to fuck with him. Like yeah, they just would not cut him a break every time. And I don’t. Get why, you know, you never know somebody and what they’re like in real life.
But every interview I’ve seen of Wes Craven every, you know, he seems like such a soft spoken Oh, nice guy. Balance. Balance, yeah. I mean like, he just seems like thoughtful. This super, super, yeah. Yeah. This great guy and why I don’t, again, maybe they were on everybody’s back, I don’t know. But it really, it pissed him
It’s about asserting power. I mean, you know, you get, then you get people like Steven Spielberg who stars are in their eyes when, when they review his movies and he can just kind of dictate what the rating’s gonna be and they’ll be like, okay, yeah. And then even just make a new rating just for him, which they did, you know?
Craig: Alright, so the girlfriend’s dead. So the girlfriend’s dead, and then the. Jonathan has another dream about another murder, and yes, he confronts the killer in the murder.
Todd: No, but this is crazy because this is so nightmare on Elm Street. Again, Jonathan, his whole life is apparently football because he’s at the football field again, where he has apparently driven his car onto the track for reasons I don’t, I didn’t even know that was allowed.
And he’s got his buddy there from the team and he’s like, you know what to do? He’s like, yeah, man, I think you’re tripping, but I know what to do. Oh, that’s right. And he’s planning exactly the same thing. He thinks that if he goes into this dream, so he like. Induces a dream, I guess, or takes a nap,
Todd: or something like right there in front of his friend.
And sure enough has a dream about this killer threatening this woman at the top of a staircase. And, and he goes in and, and interrupts it. And then the killer again goes to grab him and he disappears because his friend has woken him up. Right? He was supposed to wake him up. It’s just so nightmare on Elm Street.
He’s ripping himself off, so it’s okay. You know?
Craig: I know. You know, honestly, I was thinking in parts like these, like, was this just a sequel, a nightmare sequel that he wanted to make that they wouldn’t let him like it, it seems like it, it seems like it so easily could have just been adapted from a nightmare on Elm Street sequel script.
Yeah. But anyway, whatever. Okay, so now he knows where the killer is and he gets the cops and he takes them there. Well, they follow him.
Todd: He doesn’t take him there. Oh, that’s right. That’s him on his own. But they are, that’s right. Watching him, his own dad has stake him out basically.
Craig: Well, they’re smart ’cause he leads.
Them right to the killer and there’s a big chase and a big fight. Like is this one on the Yeah, this one’s on a rooftop. There’s like a rooftop fight. Like jumping across Yeah. Alleys and a lot of stunts. Yeah. And it’s fun. I enjoyed it. It was, you know, again, fast paced. Yeah. My god. It happened more quickly than we’ve recapped.
It did it though. I felt like it was a little long. Oh my God. I thought it was moving so fast. I like it. Never I, I mean, I guess the girlfriend stuff, but that was establishment. I’m fine with that. Whatever. But anyway. Okay. So the big, big chase, but eventually the, the, the cops show up and they arrest the killer and he says.
To Jonathan. You like killing two. It’s in your blood. You and me. I’m like, okay. And then they set up the ex, they’re gonna execute him. And in these movies, you know, when somebody is arrested for murder, they’re executed the next day. Yeah. And so that’s when they do the no more Mr. Nice Guy cover for this like execution setup scene.
So good. As the guards are walking down to take him out, like to take the killer to the electric chair. They’re like, his last wish was a TV in his cell. That’s weird. Uh, and then, uh, his last wish must have also included candles, jumper cables,
Todd: tools to disassemble his tv.
Craig: Yeah. He has like black candles lit, black candles and like feathers.
I think like. All around him in a circle. And then the TV is mounted up on the wall. Like his last wish was to have a TV mounted on the wall. On the wall. This was
Craig: hokey. I loved it. It reminded me of Nightmare three, that TV scene where that Oh yeah, yeah. Because he hooks himself up to via jumper cables to the tv and when they come in, he’s like, he’s doing a ritual and he gets like, I don’t know, energy or whatever, and they think he’s electrocuted and dead.
But then when they pull him out, one of the cops is like, you have to do CPR and the other one’s like, I’m not doing CPR. So the one who suggested it does, and he like bites his lip off and that’s, that was a fun effect. And then
Todd: Comically, uh, gives, stretches his lower lip. It was comic. Yeah.
It’s really silly. And my, my, also, one of my favorite little, uh, details was maybe the most effeminate Catholic priest I’ve ever seen in a movie ran, ran in and went, goddamn this, goddamn this blasphemy. Throwing all the stuff around the room. I was like, oh man. Heavy, heavy melodrama. At this point, it’s, it’s like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
At times. I know. And I liked it. I thought it was fun. I don’t know, for me, I, I just thought totally. It didn’t establish the movie as Aloo Tunes cartoon through the whole way through, because what we had seen up to this point was quite brutal, you know, serious.
Craig: I know. But even the villain himself, like Pinkerton or whatever his name is, he, he’s cartoonish.
Like he is a cartoon villain. He’s a sure, you know, like, he’s, he’s just bad. He, we don’t need to know his motivation. He’s just evil. He’s a bad guy. So that cartoonish nature of it, I was on board, like I was on the ride for it. It’s, I thought when he stretched out that cop’s lip and it stretches out like two and it’s, it’s so clearly fake.
Yeah. It’s like Roger Rabbit. Yeah. I thought it was really funny. Okay. But they get him into the electric chair and Jonathan and his dad, the copper there. To witness it, I guess. And while he’s sitting there in the electric chair, the killer is like,
Clip: I was beating you real good when your mama tried to stop me with that gun that she brought into our happy home.
You saw me kill it. Don’t you remember how she screamed and how clever you were grabbing that gun and shooting me right to the fucking knee a little.
Craig: Yeah, I remember that.
Todd: They let him, I mean, come on. They let him go on and on. In fact, doesn’t somebody say something like they stop him or whatever and they say, no, no. He has a right to speak. Yeah. Apparently that whole monologue wasn’t in the original script. The actor, you know, who played this guy, said, honestly, he says, I was cast without much of an audition.
He said, I was just this big guy and I think he liked my look and what the few things I did say, but I, he said I, I felt like I arrived on set, having to prove that I could act. And once Wes Craven. In his opinion, realized he could act. He kept giving him more and more lines, and this whole monologue he wrote for him and he said, I wrote this for you because I think you can pull this off.
Craig: I liked it. I thought it was fun. It would be stupid, but well, whatever. Super dumb. Yeah. So, so then they try to electrocute him, but something goes
Todd: wrong. He’s just alive. I mean, like, he doesn’t die. The the whole thing sparks and stuff doesn’t, yeah. And there, there’s a woman doctor who seems like she’s never set foot in there.
You should really get a doctor who has some experience with these executions because she, she walks in and just like, like tiptoes around the chair and just like, it’s the most ghastly thing in the world. And then runs out in disgust when
Craig: Yeah, she touches him and she gets electrocuted and then mm-hmm.
He, he kills the guard and then they’re all looking for him and Jonathan and the cop dad eventually find him behind a door, but it’s just his body and it falls out. And his whole body like burns. To nothing leaving only his clothes scorched behind,
Todd: right? All. And his dad just goes. Jesus, that chair really kicks ass.
Craig: Sure, sure. Whatever. But then the lady doctor is not dead. They’re taking her out and she’s being driven out now like they’re putting her in ambulance. Now, maybe it’s, it’s most probably just because I had seen this before, but immediately in my head I was like, oh, that’s not her. He’s in there now. You surely didn’t think that because why would you?
Because there, right. There’s been nothing to suggest that this is gonna be a body hopping movie. Right. But from this point on, it is. He’s in the body of this lady doctor. She kills the cops, which causes the cop car to drive into a fuel truck, which causes an enormous explosion, which everybody goes to investigate.
But one cop has been thrown from the explosion, and he’s still alive, but it’s not really him. You know? Again, this killer now can hop into bodies. At
Todd: will. I sort of feel like this is why, there are times where I feel like when I was watching this, I feel like this is one of those movies that was just made up as they went along because so much of this isn’t really foreshadowed, not like it needs to be, but I expected some idea of, you know, when it just came, it just was like, whoa.
Oh, they’re body hopping. The guy can body hop. Okay. I didn’t really know what set that off. I dunno if he’s always been able to do it, or maybe that was his last thing with the tv. I don’t know. But it’s, it’s 47 minutes into this film. We are. Close to the halfway mark of this movie, which is unusual.
Usually this kind of stuff happens 15 minutes earlier. This is like act one stuff leading into act two and our act two is kicking off almost halfway through. This is why I felt like it was a little slow. Like you said, a lot of stuff happens, but everything that happens is set up to this point.
Craig: Well, yeah, that fair enough?
But it, I feel like this is where it slows down because at this point, first of all, dead girlfriend shows up as a ghost and tells Jonathan that he needs to defeat the killer with the power of their love. And come on, I know. Really dumb. And gives him the necklace that. I don’t know, whatever. It’s the cheap Walmart heart necklace.
It gives it to him. The one she was buried with. Yes. Right. And this is right. And this is all in a dream. And at the end of the dream, they fall together into the waterbed, Allah. Johnny Depp in nightmare one, like Craven was into waterbeds, I guess it was. Hey, so were you. I was, I, I enjoyed a waterbed, but so then he wakes up and the, the necklace is in the bed, but then it just becomes, okay, so the cop.
The one who had survived shows up at his door at the same time that somebody is calling him and telling him that the cop has disappeared from the hospital.
Todd: I think it’s his dad
Craig: when he looks through the peephole of the door, the cop is there, but he’s like all scratched up and stuff and he’s like, twitchy.
So he knows something’s going up. So the cop, you know, shoots his way in. There’s a big long chase. He chases him to and through a park. Yes. Where, come on, this is a long scene. Yeah. Where he jumps into several different people and I don’t remember which one was first. This
Todd: the first thing going through my mind as this cop is limping after him is Jonathan is a football player. Jonathan can run like the wind and he still stops every now and then to turn around and let this guy get a couple shots off at him as he is limping behind him. There’s no way this guy’s gonna catch him.
This guy who is openly shooting firearms in the middle of a public park. There are literally people walking around in the background. I mean, I just, it’s, it’s broad daylight, late. It’s broad, daylight, middle of the day. It’s a bold, I’m just gonna say it’s a bold scene. Will I say it’s stupid? I’ll stop short of that ’cause I’m interested to see where it goes and yeah, this is the moment where we see the bad guy literally leaving the cop’s body.
There’s a jogger, I think, who I believe is West Craven’s son. Correct. Dumbass jogger who doesn’t leave fast enough, is he okay? And then just kind of wanders over. But even
Craig: this didn’t make any sense because like, shocker, whatever his name is, seems to be kind of bound by the physical capabilities of the people that he’s in.
And Uhhuh, he shoots that jogger right? In the back. Yeah. And, and then jumps into him. Mm-hmm.
Todd: Which doesn’t make any sense at all. And then out of nowhere, the guy’s looking on and a little girl on a bike just bumps into him and says, oops, sorry, Mr. And then rides off. And a woman comes up, says, excuse me sir, did you see a little girl?
And she’s calling for this little girl, Amanda. I was like, what? Why is this happening? And then Amanda’s battling with this jogger, and now she’s possessed and she’s dragging her leg too. This might
Craig: be my favorite part of the movie. I mean, it’s, it’s really dumb, but it’s hilarious. This little girl running and dragging her leg and like grunting and making mean faces and she’s foul mouth.
Like she jumps into a bulldozer and like tries to start it and she’s like, come on, you move like this little, this beautiful little angelic blonde girl with long blonde hair. It’s funny, it’s really funny. John chases the kid a like tackles her and so then the mom attacks him and then the killer jumps into the mom and the killer as the mom.
Asks for the help of like a construction worker, and then he jumps into the construction worker and then the construction worker chases him.
Todd: By the way, the construction worker is one of, um, Alice Cooper’s lead guitarist at that time. I saw
Craig: that and I was surprised that he was, I mean, it’s not like he does a lot, but he’s in this scene and he plays the killer pretty well.
Like yeah, he acts, he acts. He’s not just standing there and he’s actually very sinister. I’m sorry, I’ll let you get to it, but he’s actually very sinister in the next. Scene where John sits down with his team of, you know, his football team and the coach who totally believe everything that he’s saying and make a plan to like take down the killer.
And then it like pans across the bleachers, like under the bleachers. And that construction worker, the killer and the construction worker’s body has just been standing there listening to the whole thing. That was spooky. I was impressed with that actor.
Todd: Yeah, it was spooky. But here’s where I was just super confused about the rules because he holds up the necklace to the girl and then he leaps into the mom and he’s brandishing the necklace some more.
And then the construction worker walks by and he z zaps into the construction worker and then the guy goes after him with the pickax and then hooks. The necklace and ends up chucking it way out into the lake. So I’m thinking well apparent. Like clearly this necklace doesn’t do shit. This save me with your love thing.
There’s nothing to it. Are we supposed to believe that that necklace was doing something during that whole. Ordeal?
Craig: I think so, but I don’t remember that part specifically. But it plays a significant part later because when the team is all meeting together, the first part of their plan is somebody has to go get the necklace.
Yes. From the bottom of a lake in the middle of the night. I
Todd: kind of know where it is. He says, oh, bullshit. And also, come on, I know that maybe mentally he thinks, well, my ghost girlfriend told me this is important. But I just felt like in the moment that necklace didn’t do anything for him, why is he really so dead convinced that he needs to go get that necklace?
I don’t know. Couldn’t, the girlfriend
Craig: kind of keeps showing up and you know, they hatch this plan and they split off and the coach and Pacman, Sam Ramey go off in one direction and he, and. Radar. I, he’s got another friend I don’t remember that’s hanging out with him.
Todd: But can we talk about something else too?
Because when he’s talking to the coach and the team and he’s explaining everything, and you’re right, they just believe him. He says an important point is you can’t force him out of the body before he uses up the life force of the person he’s in. Yeah. I don’t know. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, does that mean the girl died?
And, and the mom too. But then the construction work, I guess. But no, after he leaps out of people, they’re not dead Right.
Craig: Not right away. At least. Because Jonathan goes back to his apartment for some reason, and he finds the coach possessed in the shower and he fights the coach. And he somehow, I think, doesn’t he expel the bad guy from the coach and then No, he doesn’t.
No. See, I don’t know. Is there ever a time because in that scene he the, he, he tells, he’s like, coach, I know you’re in there, fight him. And you kind of see the coach like, oh, I’m trying to fight. But then the killer makes him like stab himself to death. I don’t remember if there is a point where he jumps out of somebody and that person.
Todd: Well his dad at toward the very end, I mean that, I think he jumps out of at least one or two people and they are totally fine afterwards. So it’s kind of weird.
Craig: Yeah, the mom maybe the mom and the daughter, I don’t think they were dead.
Todd: This whole sequence with the coach is cool. I mean the coach obviously means a lot to him and the coach seems to have some fight in him and the ghost of his girlfriend just steps out of the bathroom and is like,
Clip: Cooper, for your own safe fight him.
Don’t let him take your soul. It’s like you say coach, coach, coach. It’s like you say, I know you’re in there. Everything is a matter of Will. Will him out.
Todd: And she just kind of hangs there for a while. They’re not really doing anything. They’re just standing there watching the coach have this struggle with himself.
When he eventually stabs himself again, Jonathan does nothing. And then this thing starts to come out of, out of the coach and Allison does the care Bear stare at him? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Just big beam of light that then zaps him away. Like his spirit is like gone. Right. Or on the floor. He is crawling around,
Right. And then this is the part, this is so funny to me because like he doesn’t even know, like we don’t know what the rules are. The killer doesn’t even know what the rules are. Yeah. He’s laying on the floor and he looks at an electrical outlet and he’s like, well, I don’t know. May as well give it a try.
But he literally says that and reaches out his two fingers, which then. Inexplicably extend into like, not blades, but like the ends of a plug to plug in and he plugs himself into the electrical outlet and like electrically gets sucked into the grid, I guess. I don’t know. Again, I’m seeing this probably when I’m like 12.
I don’t know. And yeah, I don’t care why he can, he can. The movie’s called Shocker. He got electrocuted. He’s electric now. Sure. I don’t know. What really concerns me is, and I don’t know exactly how quickly this happens, the dad gets shocked. A at, at this point. And the cops put Jonathan in the dad’s squad car because not only is the coach dead, but Ramey is dead too, right?
And like Jonathan has been leaving this big trail of dead people. The, the dad is like, like a bazillion people saw you running around in the park like attacking kids. Like it’s
Todd: fair, it’s fair, it’s totally fair. You know, son or not, you gotta put on a phase at least, and, and do your due diligence. But I think Ghost Allison is ridiculous.
Craig: It is ridiculous, but again, I just don’t care. But she hangs fine, but she hang out and after
Todd: she does her beam of light at him and he’s going to the electrical outlet, suddenly like they just turn towards each other and goes, Allison just sits down and says, Jonathan, I have something very important to tell you.
Listen very carefully, and of course you know they’re never gonna get to hear it, right. That’s just such a typical movie thing. But I’m like, he can just hang out with his ghost girlfriend almost any time, any day of the week. Like she just comes and goes very nonchalantly throughout this movie.
Craig: Do we ever find out what that important thing was that she had to tell him?
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we knew either.
Todd: But I just wanna know why if ghost, if Ghost Alice could just pop in and out of every now and then and do her chest light beam, why doesn’t she do it more often to take care of this guy?
Craig: I don’t know. Then, okay, so, so the killer is in the dad now, and there’s a big chase where the dad is chasing the kid and they end up, I guess, at a TV station, there’s a huge action piece where they end up at the top of like a satellite tower.
And Jonathan like throws the killer in his dad’s body over the side and he’s hanging on by this satellite. And somehow, I don’t know how the killer realizes that he can, I guess, transmit himself via satellite. Well, that’s not how electricity works. Now, this is the only part that I was like, what? Like I, I can, I can get behind the electricity.
Okay. You know, like he did some voodoo shit and he got electrocuted in the electric chair. So now his essence is electricity. He can go into power outlets, he can jump as electricity into other people because you know, I can rub my sock on the carpet and shock somebody so sure. Like sure, he can transfer into people through electricity.
I can be down with that. But at this point where he just decides that he can go through. Satellite, the air, right. Makes no sense.
Todd: Dad is hanging over one of the satellite dishes that’s presumably broadcasting from the television station, and I think we’re meant to believe that he gets out of dad’s body because dad tricks him because he says, oh, oh my heart.
My heart, yes. And that’s when this guy says, oh, all right, asshole. I’m nationwide now. And he leaves the body and gets into, yes, the electricity of the air. Then Jonathan says, dad, I didn’t know you had a bad heart. And he said, I don’t. I knew that you knew that. Pinker didn’t. Yeah, really. He can just be tricked like that.
Yeah. Bad writing. So anyway, so there’s that. But yeah, so he gets into the electrical waves, like you said. Uh, not electrical waves, the
Craig: satellite TV satellite and, and then we hear on the news again that now there have been like these copycat crimes, but the strange thing is it doesn’t seem like there’s any sign of forced entry or whatever.
So we’re to believe that now this killer is traveling around through people’s TVs and killing them in the same way that he was before John and his football friends devise some plan dealing with video cameras, a live TV broadcast, and. The electrical plant. I don’t really understand all of it. I don’t either, but it’s the best.
He hires like a news crew to come set up in his little sister’s room where she was killed, and they’re like, what are we gonna see? And he’s like, uh, I guess you’ll just have to wait to find out. I don’t, whatever his friends, it’s so dumb. I know. It’s so dumb. His friends, it is really dumb. It’s all to set up now.
I don’t remember. Oh, oh, well he does, he swims out and finds the necklace at the bottom of the lake. With his ghost girlfriend’s help, I guess. And then I think that Jonathan is, is setting Pinkerton the killer up, but Pinkerton or whatever his name is, comes and visits him. Like he comes out of the TV through a nature program into his room.
The idea was cool. Yeah. Concurrently, John is like having this dream. He’s still at the lake, I guess. I don’t know. He’s having this dream out where all, all of the victims, well all at this point, all of the victims that we’ve seen so far are like walking dead, like walking out of the mist, warning him about something.
But Allison convinces him to go back and fight and he wakes up and he’s got the necklace on. And he sits in his massage chair Or was he already in the massage chair? No, he sits in his massage chair because this is when the massage chair comes to life and like literally like grabs him, their eyeballs.
Eyeballs come out of it. And like at first you can tell that it’s like a person kind of in like a massage chair costume, but then it just straight up turns into the killer and he can. Pop in and out of anything electric, but he can, he’s also corporeal. It doesn’t make any sense.
Todd: No, it doesn’t make, it’s, he’s electric.
Freddy, in a way. Like, you know, sometimes Freddy bends the rules a little bit too. Like he’s out of the dream and he can still do stuff. Can I ask you. Were you also thinking Cherry when
Craig: life? A little bit. A little bit. Oh,
Todd: a hundred percent. It’s even the same color. You know, cherry, Ugh. His arms would move around.
It’s so funny. Yeah, I know. I know. But Cherry was nice. Cherry was much nicer than the hold thing seems to be that he has his friends coordinate knocking out the power to the entire city at the same time that he coaxes this guy out of the TV screen. So that, I think it’s kind of like a Freddie deal, right?
Where Nancy is like, if I can grab onto him while I’m in the dream, I can pull him out. Just pulls him out and he can’t go anywhere. And maybe even without any electricity around him, he would just die like nobody really knows. It’s very unclear, it’s super
Craig: unclear, but it does set up this. Like, I feel like the whole movie was building to this scene where, oh yeah, they’re, they’re, they’re fighting in the real world and Jonathan uses the love necklace to like repel him.
And so the, the killer retreats into the tv. He dives into the TV and Jonathan says something like, Allison, give me the power to do this. Ugh, Uhhuh. And then he dives into the TV too. And it’s not like I’ve never seen this before, but I really enjoyed it. In this movie, they then fight through a series, like they’re like channel surfing, like they’re fighting, but their fight like keeps throwing them into different television programs.
And it might be historical footage of World War ii, or it might be a game show, or it might be a news, you know, it might be John Tesh, leave it to Beaver Alice Cooper Concert footage. Exactly. And And it was fun. Again, I’ve seen it’s done before. Did you ever see that movie? Stay tuned with John Ritter. I was just gonna say that.
Craig: is very much like that.
Todd: I like that movie too. And I feel like this is supposed to be kind of goofy too.
Craig: And And people can see them on tv. Like they are, yeah. Live broadcast. And not only that, but they can jump out of TVs into real people’s. And that scene where they jumped into that family’s living room.
Oh my God. And there was like a great big fat woman in rollers on the couch. Like, Hey, watch what you’re doing. And like two Dillards just like sitting in the back, like not even reacting, like, and they’re destroying this family’s house and the family’s just sitting there. I suppose you could call it commentary.
Oh yeah, a hundred percent. But I mean, it’s really just stupid. And it’s funny. I laughed. I laughed. I was having
Todd: a good time. Well, you can’t help. I mean, the tone is clear when they dive back into the TV and the woman goes. I’ve heard of audience participation shows, but this is ridiculous. Oh, but think of this.
And now imagine the first 20 minutes of the movie, they’re almost polar opposites of each other. Fair. That’s fair. And I just felt it was very jarring going to this if it had gotten gradually more insane. And I guess you kind of say it does, but I mean, it, it doesn’t feel like the theme of the movie was aiming for this.
Now suddenly it is. This, I just, I really, especially with all the goofy, corny stuff that was happening in the middle, I’m not quite sure if it was intentionally cheesy or if it just came across that way. It’s just jarring for me. It’s not a scary movie. No, it’s, it feels like in the beginning it’s setting itself up to be a scary movie and then by the middle and toward the end of it, it’s just playing Looney Tunes.
It’s just a big fight scene maybe that was really in, and Wes Craven was a smart guy. Maybe that was really what he was going for. This is his commentary on how television is and, and the kinds of things we consume for entertainment nowadays. And how Baal, you know, he, he had a lot to say about that. Maybe this is also a commentary on kind of how Freddy.
Went. Mm-hmm. So I can kind of see what he’s doing. It just didn’t work for me in the moment.
Craig: And, and that’s totally fine. I mean, I, I do, I can look at the criticisms of this and say, you have an excellent point. Everything that you’re saying, and not just you, I’m just saying anybody who has criticisms of, of the movie, I think that they are totally fair.
I just. Had fun with it. I sure. You know, low expectations. I, I, you know, whatever. And, and I do think, if I’m not mistaken, if you look at IMDB and you look at the genres that this is categorized in, I think it is first listed as a comedy. Is it? I think so, and I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure I
You’re right, it is comedy horror thriller. Well, if I had seen that before, it might have changed my whole viewing. It is goofy.
Craig: You have to just roll with it. If you are asking lots of questions, you’re gonna get frustrated because there are no explanations. Just is like everything just is, just roll with it and it’s fine.
Roll with the facts that while he is in this fat Lady’s living room, Jonathan grabs a remote control and dives back into the TV with it and they end up back in that room where they have the tell the cameras and the TV producers and Jonathan is now. Figured out guest who knows that he can use the remote control now to control the killer so he can pause him, he, you know, whatever.
And apparently now they’re bound by TV rules. I don’t know what that means, but they, he’s like, haha, I got you and you’re about to be dead, because my friends are gonna shut down all the power in three minutes. Now again, I don’t really understand why that’s. Gonna vanquish. I, I don’t understand why. Yeah.
But, okay. Alright. They’re confident. It is. Sure. Whatever. And the killer is like, well, I think your watch must have stopped because you said the same thing three minutes ago. Which is so like, I, what? I didn’t what? So he looks at his watch and he’s like, oh no. And then his friends do cut out all of the power in the whole town, but somehow he manages to get back through the tv.
But the killer how though doesn’t,
Todd: I don’t know, because he just contradicted what he said.
Todd: Like the whole point of his friends doing it before he’s able to get out was that he would be trapped there with a killer too. But he’s not,
Craig: and like it has something to do with him hanging the heart necklace on the television camera.
And then he like, oh God jumps into it. It wasn’t clear at all. And then the killer explodes. Yeah. And then he’s like stuck in the TV and John turns the TV off. But so I, again, this was meant to be the kickstart for a series, so maybe he’s trapped, he’s not gone, but he’s Yeah. Trapped temporarily. Maybe in that one tv.
I don’t know. I don’t get it. It could be, but whatever. The neighbors all gather outside to look at the stars, which I actually thought was kind of clever because you know, when you take away all of the light pollution, it really does make a huge, huge difference. Oh yeah. And all of the neighbors gather outside to look at the stars, and John is looking at the stars and he is like, aren’t they beautiful?
And Ghost Allison voice is like, yeah, they sure are the end.
Craig: her voice. Yeah. I don’t,
Todd: I just thought, I figured this ghost Allison was just gonna be a, his ghost girlfriend. I mean, maybe she is,
Todd: Maybe in the sequels that would just be her, it would be the Adventures of Jonathan and Ghost Allison fighting tv, Freddy.
Ah, then we will never know. ’cause it never got to happen. Yep. It didn’t do well. It wasn’t really until scream that I think Wes Craven came back out of his doldrums after this. Or was it New? Nightmare Did New Nightmare, I guess New Nightmare came after this.
Craig: Yeah, he did New Nightmare in like 1996, I think.
And then I, I’ve joked about it several times, but he did that movie with Meryl Streep, uh, music of the Heart or whatever. And like, I joke about it ’cause that’s not what he’s known for and that’s not what we love him for. But I think that that was something that he was really passionate about.
Todd: That’ll be our, our 600th episode.
Craig: I think. I think I saw it when it came out. I think I remembered it being like Mr. Holland’s opus with Meryl Streep. In the main role. I, I could totally be making that up, but it was Wes Craven and I, I mean, I knew it wasn’t a Horn movie, but I was a big fan of Wes Craven. I was like, he makes good movies, I’ll see it.
And I, and I, of course, I’m a big fan of Meryl Streep. She’s a national treasure, but, and I don’t remember thinking it was bad. I don’t remember thinking it was stupid, but I don’t really have any memories of it. Yeah. But, you know, good for him. I don’t know that he necessarily intended for his entire career.
To be wrapped up in horror. I think that he kind of fell into that and then that’s what people expected of him and that’s what made money. And he was working and he could deliver. Yeah, he could deliver. And he was a really good filmmaker. Right. As many movies as we’ve done, you know, of course we’ve lauded him across the board, but we’ve had some criticisms too.
He’s not perfect, but I, I think a lot of the reason that I like him, just aside from Nightmare on Elm Street being one of the most influential series in my life, he just seemed like a really cool. Guy. Yeah, he seemed like a good guy. I would’ve given anything to have had the opportunity to intern on a movie that he worked on, you know, just to, right.
Just to be around him and be in that sphere and, you know, he, he made a point of working with people that he wanted to work with and that he had confidence in, and he had interesting ideas and he wasn’t, he wasn’t afraid to explore those ideas, even if it was something off brand, like Music of the Heart and whatever.
I, I, he was just such a cool guy and I’ll continue to sing his praises forever.
Todd: Well, and you know, genre that is, tends to be very derivative and samey. Samey and repetitive and copycat. He is one of the few standout. Artists who consistently deliver original ideas, bold original ideas. And so, you know, it’s no surprise some of them are gonna hit and some of them aren’t.
You take big risks and to be a guy who was able to take these risks, like with a movie like this, he was swinging for the fences with this one, I think. I, I really think that was what he was doing.
Craig: I liked Deadly Friend. Deadly Friend was enjoyable,
Todd: but even Deadly Friend wasn’t the movie he wanted it to be.
Right, right, right, right. Uh, he got pushed into changing that, but even what it turned out to be was, was a lot of fun. You know, we had fun with it. Honestly, this movie has a lot more in common in many ways with Deadly Friend Fair than It does with Nightmare on Elm Street tonally for sure. So, yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I get what he was going for and I applaud him for doing it.
It just, it, it, it’s not the kind of movie that I. Enjoy watching for so long. It just wasn’t, after a while, ev, if I had gone into it knowing it was gonna be a bit screwball and more of a comedy than anything else in an action film, then maybe I would have had a little more patience for it and it wouldn’t have been scratching my head so much.
But so much of it was so goofy, blatantly goofy, like eye rolling goofy that I had, I was still a little disappointed that, ah, this came from West Craven. You know, there’s just a part of me that just, I expect a little more sophistication from him. But now I kind of realize maybe that lack of a sophistication was exactly what he was going for.
He’s like, this is the kind of movie you want. This is what I’m gonna give you Then,
Craig: you know. Yeah, that’s, I, I think it’s a matter of expectation and a matter of taste. It didn’t really land for you. It did for me, and especially, and I don’t think it’s great. Like, I don’t think it’s a great movie, but I had fun watching it.
It’s a little long. It should have been shorter, but, uh, I had fun watching it. And if you are a fan of Nightmare on Elm Street, if you’re a West Craven fan and you haven’t seen it, a hundred percent recommend, sure, a hundred percent recommend. Don’t expect a masterpiece, but go, if, if you’re just going into, have a good time.
A hundred percent recommend.
Todd: Well, thank you guys so much for sticking with us for 450 episodes and we hope you’re with us for the next 450. I guess we’re, when we are ais, I suppose in metal bodies beaming this stuff in and there are of. Thousand AI produced horror films that we can comment on.
Some of them, probably not any better or worse than what we, than what we watch these days. Anyway, thank you guys. We, we love you so much. Listeners, we, we are so grateful for you, for your feedback that we get for our patrons, especially who plunk down money every month to support us and allow us to do this, and to allow us to do extra things.
It’s like our book club and be a little more bold on social media and, and spread the word out a little bit more. Do our mini sos and little reviews and things that we do for them behind the scenes as as tokens of our appreciation. If you’d like to be part of that club, just go to patreon.com/chainsaw podcast.
We would love to have you there. Please consider it’s only five bucks a month, but it really does make a difference and we love meeting new people. We just do. It’s just one of the highlights of, of the last 450 episodes is just getting to make new friends. Thank you guys so much. Till next time, I’m Todd.
And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw
