Join us as we take a deep dive into the 1989 horror-comedy ‘Parents,’ directed by Bob Balaban. Or is it?

In this episode, we discuss our thoughts on the film, which was marketed as a horror-comedy but delivered more unsettling psychological horror than laughs. We reflect on the story, performances, and the movie’s eerie presentation of a child’s disturbing reality.

Was it a commentary on 1950s parenting norms or simply a bizarre horror experience? Tune in to hear our take. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share if you enjoy the episode!

Episode 443, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, we, uh, ended horror comedy month and it feels like we took a sharp turn into what a movie that builds itself as a horror comedy. But, uh, I didn’t find anything funny about it. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: I guess it, you know, I guess it’s appropriate.

So we’re doing Parents. It’s a 1989 movie directed by Bob Balaban. Bob Balaban is a guy that you will probably recognize. He was in a lot of the Christopher Guest comedies. He’s been all over television, all over movies. He’s just pops in and out of a lot of stuff. I’ve always enjoyed him and as, as an actor, I didn’t really realize that he had.

A bit of a career as a director, but he’s done like I didn’t either. 29 I, most of it’s television, but this was his directorial debut. And what an interesting idea to go with what is billed as a horror comedy, 1989, written by Christopher Hawthorne starring Randy Quaid. Mary Beth, her who used to be married to William Hurt for a while.

Sandy Dennis, a couple other people my first time seeing it, but I tell you, I had seen this movie on the shelves. Never really picked it up, but it was very curious about it. So I’m really glad that we finally got around to doing it. ’cause it’s kind of been on my list for a while. Had you seen this before?

Yeah, I know I have. 

Craig: It’s so strange. I I, I know I’ve seen it before. Really? Like, yeah, like you. It, it, it was the, the box art that I found intriguing. You know, like this fifties style, leave it to beaver style mother, like carving a big tray of meat and her husband at the refrigerator behind her, kind of looking over his shoulder.

Towards her and there’s a skull in the freezer. Mm. I don’t know. It was just, yeah. It, it looked, it was weird and creepy and I, I always liked that box art. I know I’ve seen it, but the thing is, I didn’t remember anything about it, but it was Bill as a horror comedy. And so that’s what I was expecting going in and I kept thinking the same thing that you just said.

I’m like, I don’t get, which parts are supposed to be funny. Like if this is dark comedy, it is as dark as it gets, and not really funny. I. 

Todd: No, 

Craig: but I don’t think that that’s the movie’s fault. 

Todd: No, 

Craig: it’s 

Todd: okay. I think 

Craig: that that is it’s, I think that it’s false expectations, because what I just read like in the last half hour was that Bob Balaban intended this as a psychological drama.

Oh, and then. The studio marketed it as a horror movie, and so it did really poorly because people went to the theaters expecting to see a, a dark horror comedy and this is what they got. So I, I think it just, it was, it was marketed poorly and yeah, it’s not, it’s, it’s just not what you expect. That’s not to say that it’s a bad movie.

No. It’s just not at all what you expect. 

Todd: Oh no. I will even go on record. I will say this is a fantastic movie. It’s weird. As a horror film, this is a gem. It is a bizarre, very psychological movie that did what a horror movie is supposed to do. I was uncomfortable through the whole thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I found the movie deeply unsettling from the get go.

It never let up. I almost felt like I had to take a shower when it was done, but not in the way of other films that we’ve seen where they’re just kind of really gross out and they’re just mm-hmm. You know, really exploitative and, and so, you know, you feel like they’re just, they’re just sleazy. This is not a sleazy movie.

This is a really, really well thought out, well-made movie with a lot of layers to it. And the only criticism I have is that they marketed it, it wrong. I I, I came in here with expecting comedy. I was looking for the comedy. I was anticipating it. It never came. And at the end of it I was like, well. God, great movie.

Really unsettling. Really, really dark. Not a funny thing in it. Right. So somebody really missed the mark on that. Yeah. 

Craig: Well, those expectations I think are further set by the fact that it stars Randy Quaid, who you know at this time was. National Lampoon’s vacation guy, you know? Yeah. Uncle Eddie. And, and he’s hilarious in those movies.

I, I, I think he’s great in those movies, and I think he’s great in this, but he’s, he, he’s totally against type. He is not funny. He is terrifying. No, 

Todd: he’s a horrifying person from the, from the minute he shows up on the screen, he’s just, he’s 

Craig: menacing, like 

Todd: predatory. Ugh. 

Craig: Yeah. You, you forget, I, I, I think he’s so.

Not dangerous in those fun family comedies that you forget that he is a big, giant man. And, and that’s really emphasized here. Especially because he’s playing against his son. Who is the main character? Michael is his name. I just, throughout this, I’m just gonna call them mom, dad, and son. I, I, yeah. Didn’t even bother learning their names ’cause it doesn’t really matter.

No. Like, and, and you, and you get that from the beginning too. Like this is all allegory. It reminded me, frankly, a lot of eraser head. 

Todd: Oh, it’s very surreal in so many ways. Yeah. Yeah. I 

Craig: mean, Balaban himself described it as kafkaesque, which I think is a word that we used to describe eraser head. Right. It doesn’t necessarily start out that way.

It, it kind of establishes, I mean, it’s, it’s not entirely traditional. It starts with a weird kind of black and white pan up this young boys. Face and you only kind of see half of his face at a time. And then there’s the conventional flyover of fifties suburbia and an old, old mobile being driven by this new family.

Moving into a new neighborhood. Classic setup. E every, like every other podcast starts like this, 

Todd: right? 

Craig: It’s so true. We should just record like a generic one. And then there’s a family in a car and they’re driving into a new town and we just cut it in every time. It’s exactly the same. 

Todd: Yep. Oh gosh. Yeah.

Craig: So the son is Michael, played by Brian Madorsky, who had, I think. Done nothing really before this or next to nothing. And I don’t know how old he is or how old he’s supposed to be, but he’s. Tiny. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And especially compared to Randy Quaid, he’s tiny. And I also feel like there’s something done in the shooting, like in the cinematography, that emphasizes his smallness.

’cause he’s very, very small. 

Todd: Well, apparently the, his best friend, uh, Sheila, in the movie was. So much taller than him that they actually had to do some things with the shooting so that it wasn’t quite so obvious. I mean, she was four years older than him, so you know, naturally she was a little bit taller than him, but they wanted to really de-emphasize that while they were shooting.

So they did some perspective things and kind of just had them moving quickly. And I would imagine, I don’t know. Third or fourth grade, maybe. Fifth grade. Yeah. Middle elementary school. And he, from the get go, just looks uncom. By the way, Brian Madorsky as an actor, I think this is the only thing he ever did.

That’s interesting because I think he’s good in this movie. 

Craig: Well, he was intentionally cast because he’s ki he’s very deadpan. Yeah. He doesn’t really change expression much at all. And it’s because he’s not an actor. I think I read that the director said that he, you know, he expressed himself internally.

Okay, whatever. He’s just not really doing anything. Yeah. But it’s fine. It works like it fits. Yeah. He’s kind of a blank slate. He doesn’t really openly react to things and it, it, it so works for the movie because. You don’t know. I mean, I guess you kind of know what kind of movie you’re getting into, but I kept wondering, is something sinister going on here with these parents?

Or is the boy just weird? Like, yeah, is he just having these dark fantasies and he can’t tell Fanta from. Reality. 

Todd: I have a take on the movie. Well, it kind of all crumbled by the end of it, but I guess we’ll probably, I’ll bring it up at some point here in our discussion because I feel like you need to hear a little bit about how it goes first.

Right. It’s fifties America. Right? It’s like a parody of fifties America. The house is this little ranch style house. Mm-hmm. And this little. Beautiful little suburban neighborhood. The decor in there is just mid-century modern through and through the man’s in a suit. The whole time. The woman is in these tailored dresses that you know look like she sewed them herself just straight out of Betty Crocker.

And their kitchen is too, to the point where like things are sort of prominently placed to overemphasize this fact. It almost feels like it’s made to look like a 1950s movie set. And to that extent, I could say we’ve already established, it’s not a comedy, but I. In a way, it’s a bit of a satire. Satire does not necessarily equal comedy in this case.

I feel like this is almost a satire of the 1950s. Yeah, it’s not funny, but a hundred percent everything is done up to the nines. Like everybody thinks of this era, like television and movies presented this era where whether or not it was actually true is another story. But you know, it looks like it’s fricking Leave it to Beaver.

And I love these at first. It’s like there, these parents. Almost come across as really dorky. You know, they, they go into their new house and they’re kind of awkwardly lovey-dovey to each other, and, and they are doing a barbecue in the back. By the way, I love to barbecue and I love the fact that this guy had a shaker on a skewer.

Have you ever seen that before? 

Craig: Yeah. No, I’ve never seen it, but I, 

Todd: I thought it was, I want one now. I want one now so badly. I’m like, if this ever existed, why does it exist anymore? It’s just like a. Like a salt shaker on a skewer so you can hold it over the fire. Brilliant, brilliant. 

Craig: He’s like practicing putts in the living room, and she’s baking in her apron, like 

Todd: consulting the recipe book.

Yeah, 

Craig: they’re really laying it on thick, you know, they sit down at the table for dinner. They have, you know, big stacks of meat and red wine with dinner, which, you know, again, there’s nothing necessarily strange about that. No. When, I mean, when you see. You know those stereotypical pictures of this time period of happy family, you know, like there’s usually like a Turkey or a ham or something on the table.

Like we were very meat forward in those days. Yes, 

Todd: very meat forward. It’s all about eat your veggies of course, but you gotta eat or at least you got it. Have you, by the way, a little bit of a side note, have you ever been to Disney World? 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: In Florida? Yeah. Have you been to, used to be MGM studios, now it’s Hollywood studios.

Craig: Yeah, I When it was MGM? Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. And they have a restaurant there. I dunno if you guys ate in there, called the fifties Primetime Cafe. Did you guys eat there? 

Craig: No. We were the family that packed a cooler of bologna sandwiches and left it in the car in the parking lot and went and took a lunch break. Hey, 

Todd: fair enough.

There’s nothing wrong with that. This, there’s a, there’s a theme restaurant there called The 15th Primetime Cafe, and apparently it was Robin Williams’s favorite restaurant to eat at. Because he didn’t have much of a childhood, but, but the restaurant itself is themed like you are eating in your mother’s kitchen in the fifties.

So every table’s a little separated from the others, and it’s done up like you’re sitting in the kitchen at this four Micah table and your waiter is your cousin. Oh, that’s funny. And they treat you like your cousin. Like, all right, what are we gonna have to eat today? And the menus like meatloaf and mashed potatoes and things like that.

Just everything from this era. And then they do shit with you. Like they come in and like keep your elbows off the table and like, oh, did you eat your greens? And they’ll actually take a fork full of green beans and like, open up, here’s the airplane coming into the hangar, you know, and do all this. Cute stuff with you.

And I think this is why Robin Williams loved it is ’cause he apparently, he got so excited and into it when he was there, he took the dishes to the kitchen. Like 

Craig: that’s funny that 

Todd: that was the story. But it’s, it’s a fun place to eat and it is a hundred percent like this. The decor is the same, the attitude is the same.

While we were watching this and Liz was sitting next to me, she remarked there is so much food on that table for one meal of three people. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. And 

Todd: I’m like, yeah, ’cause this is a satire, this is what TV showed us. People cooked like this is what this theme restaurant presents to you. I’m not sure that’s actually how it was, but that seemed to be the expectation that was created in the fifties, is that you have, you know, six different dishes in the middle of the table, right?

All perfectly cooked by the wife who’s following her, Betty Crocker Cook. Book and lovingly placing it all together. 

Craig: Right? And then father is like serving like, yeah, it’s right. But there’s also something about these dinner scenes, all of them, of which there are many, the pattern of the wallpaper, the wallpaper is black and white, and it’s just like white with.

Like a line pattern. I, I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s, it’s unsettling. Okay. And, and the dinner, it, they’re always lit. It seems like all of the rest of the lights in the house are off, except for a low hanging lamp that is right above the table. Mm-hmm. That casts very odd shadows. And so all of these dinner scenes are.

Strange and uncomfortable, and I, I feel like they get increasingly strange and uncomfortable until, yeah. At the end they’ve got some wacky shit going on, but we’ll wait for that. The first weird thing is, I don’t even remember how it comes up, but we find out that Michael is afraid of the dark. And so his dad, Randy Quaid, sits down with him on his bed and every time he talks, it’s creepy.

Clip: Yeah. You really like the dark, don’t you, Michael? You can be yourself in the dark, but you know, there’s one dark place that we have to be very careful in. Do you know where that is? 

Craig: And he points to his head and laughs. Mm-hmm. Oh, and, and then he tells a story about like when he, when he was a little boy, he was scared of everything.

Like monsters under the bed and in the dark and everything. But he grew up to be a big, strong man and now he’s not scared of anything. Goodnight. Big, giant, scary dad. 

Todd: Like that’s gonna help. Here’s the thing that was going through my mind. Every time Randy Quaids character opens his mouth, well, one thing that you didn’t mention but is pretty present, and I think it’s not just in the dinner scenes, but everywhere else is it seems like most of the movie is shot more or less from the kid’s perspective.

Yeah. The camera angles are low. Right? Right. Like a kid looking up at the world, and that’s pretty clear during the dinner scenes, like he picks ’em up and takes ’em off to bed and it’s literally his POVV over his shoulder as he’s being carried off. I think the movie’s doing a really good job cinematography wise.

I. Of putting you in the headspace and perspective of a child, it really pretty much throughout the whole movie. And the thing that’s so creepy about Randy Quaids performance is that the kind of stuff that he’s saying to the kid is so typical of the kinds of things that fathers say to their children.

Mm-hmm. There are little life lessons and little bits of advice and things like that, and oh, you know, suggestions that we’re gonna go off and we’re gonna do this thing, or we’re gonna do that thing. Or he’s teaching the kid about the world and about repairs and things like that. But the way that it’s delivered.

And the way that it’s perceived by us through the camera is sinister. Right. And so it was making me think, you know, I was like, God, I’m trying to remember what it was like being a kid. But I feel like maybe the purpose of of the movie and the director of this movie is really giving a sinister turn to all of the.

Somewhat normal things because maybe we’ve forgotten as a kid what it was like to just not understand a lot of shit that was happening. And to be under the subjective control of our parents and our teachers and everybody else telling us what we need to do and what we shouldn’t do, and teaching us about the world and eat your meat even if you don’t want to.

You gotta eat your veggies, you gotta eat your meat, you gotta go to bed at this time and all this stuff. Well, as a child, you know, you do feel a little. Confused a little, put out a little like everybody’s in control and in charge of you and telling you what to do and teaching you about the world and you really don’t understand everything.

And from that, I felt like this movie did a really good job of putting me in that perspective. I. I had to think back and think, is that how I felt as a child? I don’t know, but I guess some kids felt that way. Maybe Bob Balaban did at some level, and that’s what he’s trying to get across, is just the general unsettling horror of what your childhood could be like.

You know what I mean? 

Craig: Yeah. I think, and I, I, I am making assumptions. I may be wrong, but I, I think that you and I were raised by the generation that was raised, like the kid in this movie is raised Yeah. Where respecting your parents was a respect that was born really largely kind of out of fear, especially when it comes.

To fathers. Does that make sense? Mm. 

Todd: Yeah. It was always, dad’s gonna come home and really lay into you. Right. Mom’s the more friendly one. Dad’s the one who’s kind of the stern. He’s, he’s the bad cop to the good cop. 

Craig: He Right, right. He’s the authority and you don’t mess with him. And I don’t know, like, to some extent, because I, my, I know, I know that my dad was raised that way.

Yeah. And, and that, that rubbed off on him a little bit, but. And obviously I think he had learned some things and I had a great. Childhood, like my parents did a great job. It wasn’t like this. I wasn’t scared of my parents, but that’s what I was thinking about. And, and I, I, I don’t know that my dad was scared of his dad.

I just think that, and it was a different time, like men were expected to be a certain way and I, I think that the movie is intentionally. Satirizing that 

Todd: for sure, 

Craig: and trying to kinda show the, the dark underbelly of it. Not necessarily, I don’t know, maybe, but not necessarily condemning it, just taking, you know, let’s look at this from a different perspective.

Yeah. Let’s, let’s look at it from the kid’s perspective that, that may. Shed a little bit of light on it. 

Todd: Like I said earlier, satire is not necessarily comedy. I immediately got that they were satirizing this era, and I was on board with that. What surprised me, especially when you’re going into a movie that was, you know, written up as a horror comedy, that they weren’t finding any humor in this.

It was all very dark. So everything the father says has this sinister tone to it, and the boy is just flat faced throughout. He just looks unsure, if not scared most of the time. And then, you know, he goes to bed and he starts to take off his PJs. He’s got more underneath whatever, and then he leaps into bed and we get our first very surreal moment.

It’s a. It’s actually a really good shot Yeah. Of him leaping into bed, and it’s a slow mo of him falling into the covers as, as the perspective changes to shoot from above. But the covers keep going. As it turns out, they’re sinking into a pool of red blood, I guess. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That 

Todd: he falls. Down into and apparently drowns or whatever, you know, I mean, that was surprising.

I was, okay, this movie’s gonna be surreal. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, it’s not like you don’t literally see him like drown it. It’s, it’s very dreamlike. Like the bed kind of turns into a, like a deep. Pool and you see him, you know, in this big pool of red liquid with his eyes open. Like it’s, it’s a very dreamlike thing and it is apparently a dream.

Apparently he has these nightmares, right the next morning as he’s playing with his hands in a giant bowl of blood on the counter that I am not sure why it’s there. Was it blood or was it 

Todd: supposed to be tomato sauce? 

Craig: Oh, maybe it was tomato sauce. I don’t know. It looked like blood, but maybe it was tomato sauce.

’cause the mom is always cooking some kind of meat and, and I think I read that it was kidneys that she was frying up in this frying pan every morning. 

Todd: Took me forever to figure it out. But yeah, I thought it was, it looked like it 

Craig: looked like tongue. Yeah. Yeah. I thought they were having tongue for breakfast every day, but apparently it was kidneys and apparently it was real kidneys.

And apparently they used real meat for a lot of these shots, which. I mean, great for the authenticity, but those poor actors and crew, it always makes me think of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That dinner scene where they, all of that was like real rotting meat and it was like 110 degrees and they were like paring in between takes.

Uh, anytime I hear they use real meat, that’s what I think of. Um, but anyway, he tells her he had a nightmare and she’s like, well, did you take off your pajamas? And he’s. And he doesn’t say anything. That was weird ’cause it never comes up again. But she’s like, you have nightmares when you take off your pajamas.

I’m like, what? Okay. Again, is that some kind? I, I, I do. I still, I feel like that’s some sort of commentary on modesty or something. I don’t know. I have no idea. But there’s a very, a closeup scene. He looks out the window like he peers through the blinds at his dad who’s outside doing something and he shoots him with a finger gun.

So there’s obviously tension, like mm-hmm. He obviously has some kind of feelings about his dad 

Todd: and the basement. 

Craig: And the basement. And this is, I feel like this is when he meets Sheila when he goes to school. Yeah. Oh, oh. They’re, they’re the only two new kids. I think she just transferred out of a new class or a different class, but he just moved there.

And, but I loved the teacher’s game. Like 

Clip: when we have new faces, we love to learn something new, don’t we? Sheila, can you tell us something new? When you make a martini with an onion? It’s called a Gibson. Oh, that, that is new. Uh. Where did you learn that, Sheila? My mom’s bartending guy. Uhhuh. We don’t drink those things though, do we?

Michael, can you tell us something new? Um, if you take a black cat and broil it on the oven. And you peel off the skin of the bones and take it off and you chew on the bone, you’ll be invisible. 

Craig: What? Oh man. So he’s just weird. So you don’t, and, and it’s, it’s seemingly mostly from his perspective. So you don’t know if these things are as sinister as they appear to be.

Right. Because they. Don’t necessarily have to be, 

Todd: it could just be his perception. 

Craig: Right, right. 

Todd: Yeah. And that’s what I’m thinking the whole time. And you know, and it, he comes home from school and he walks in like, Hey mom. And like, nobody answers him. Nobody’s there. He just stands there in the living room, like are they even home?

And eventually his dad starts to walk up from his wine cellar. Well, his basement, when she calls the wine cellar, ’cause he’s got a rack of wine in there, and then mom just comes in from what must have been the kitchen. Oh, you’re home already. And he’s like, yeah, you know, school ends at a quarter to three.

And she’s like, oh, we’ll have to keep that in mind. Like this whole idea is that the parents have a life separate from the kids. And I get this because. I think this was the parenting style from the fifties, even pretty much up to the fifties and sixties until we kinda got the new modern parenting style, which is, you know, the kids are central to your life.

Like everything revolves around the kids. Whereas before, you know, children are to be seen, not heard. Mm-hmm. Children very much are expected to just jump in and, and adapt themselves to the family and adult situation. Whereas it seems like nowadays parents almost take the complete opposite approach and they rearranged their lives around their children once they’re born.

Mm-hmm. And so I could see that too. I could see this as being a commentary on that. You know, that was how I was, I was interpreting the movie as we went. 

Craig: Well, and I think that, that, that scene that we just talked about is a perfect example. Of his perception, he thinks that something shady is going on, and because we’re looking at it through that lens.

So do we. But yeah, nothing. Ha I mean the, the dad walks. No, the dad walks slowly up from the basement. So what he’s allowed to be down there. It’s his house. He could be doing any number of things down there. Yeah. The mom comes out of the kitchen. She’s carrying two champagne flutes. So what they can. Have champagne at their house during the day, or maybe she’s cleaning.

I don’t know. Like it seems suspicious to him, so it seems suspicious to us, but it could be a hundred percent innocent. And honestly, even though I’ve seen this movie before, I just kept thinking it’s doing a very good job of maintaining that balance. Yeah. It’s never taking it really, the step too far until, and I apologize if I’m jumping, I, I, I feel like the, the time that.

I really started to question was one time Michael wakes up in the middle of the night and walks down to his parents’ bedroom and sees something that he didn’t want to see. Now I’m sure that that has happened to millions of kids throughout history. I didn’t. I never did either. Thank God. Yeah, thank God.

Todd: But also, we could also record this and replay it. ’cause how many horror movies start out with this scenario, right? 

Craig: True. Yeah. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. This solid. But 

Craig: yeah, 

Todd: even here, I didn’t think this was sinister because he pops out. He actually, I think they’re in the living room, aren’t they? Which is weird, but yeah, maybe.

But anyway, they’re, they’ve made a little bed in the living room and they’re tussling and they’ve got half their clothes off and mom looks up and she, her, what I interpret as her lipstick, her lipstick is kind of smeared all over her face as is on dad’s face. And you’re like, oh my God, Michael. Oh no, I never, and of course he runs off and he’s.

Really upset about it. It’s really presented as very, very scary. You’ve got the slowmo in there and all this stuff, and this scene then gets referenced later on as a memory. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. And 

Todd: in his memories, he adds extra things to it that weren’t actually there. But even this, I saw. It’s the same thing. I saw this as, yeah, this is yet another one of those things.

You know what happens when you’re asleep? You know you gotta be in bed by seven 30 or eight 30, you go to sleep. It’s kind of a mystery what your parents do while you’re asleep. God, if you were to walk on in this, you know, on this stuff, like that’s even. Bigger mystery to you, it would seem very, very scary.

And it would call into question, what the hell are they doing while I’m asleep? And how scary is that? You know? So again, I was still on board with this interpretation of the film that is presenting this childhood as, as this fundamentally frightening experience. 

Craig: But, 

Todd: but you, you saw something sinister here or, 

Craig: well, I don’t know.

I mean, it would’ve been a lot of lipstick, but to be fair, she does wear red lipstick. Yeah. I, I I could see how he could interpret it as something else. The thing that you said later, it comes back as a memory. That’s the thing here, it, it, it looks kind of different from the dreams, but then the way that, if I remember correctly.

Him getting up and walking down the hallway is shot very realistically in the same way that everything else is shot. But then his view of the parents is very stylized. 

Todd: Yeah, it’s got the slowmo. Closeup. 

Craig: Yeah, it, it’s very choppy lot, lots of closeup cuts and cutting to different chins and lips and kissing and touching and so it’s all very stylized and then he runs back.

So it, it could be a dream, 

Todd: right? 

Craig: We know he has nightmares or it could just be. Him not being able to process because he doesn’t understand what’s going on. And I don’t know, it seemed kind of sinister to me, but when you said it comes back later as a memory and he adds things to it that weren’t really there, I actually interpreted it as he didn’t know how to process it at that time.

Mm. But later when he had more of a suspicion and more evidence, his memory became clearer. Oh, and what we see later in his memory is what was really happening, but. I think it could be either way. That’s just as, as I was watching it. That’s what I thought. It’s ambiguous. We dunno. 

Todd: It’s definitely ambiguous and that’s kind of how it is at this point.

I mean, everything is ambiguous. And then there’s this great scene where he’s at school and the teacher gives them an assignment in their workbook, which is, there’s a picture of a family on the top of the page and there’s a blank space on the bottom of the page. And your job is to draw a picture of you and your family and how you see your family.

I was like, okay, I see where this is going. And of course later we have a scene of the teacher grading papers and when she pulls up his picture, it looks very disturbing. Yeah, it’s got drawing all over the page and 

Craig: it’s all stuff. It’s red. Yeah, it’s all red. Disturbing enough that 

Todd: she brings it to the school psychologist, which I’d be shocked if they had a school psychologist in the fifties, but maybe they did.

I don’t know. But the only part of this movie that gave me the slightest hint of a chuckle was when they show the exterior of where his father works, which is a giant like perfectly gleaming, skyscraper, industrial looking building. And as it pans down. There are just people endlessly streaming into the front door.

And over the front door is the name of the company, which is Toco. Mm-hmm. 

Craig: I thought that was funny too. 

Todd: And then I thought, okay, this is where it’s gonna get funny. Surely. 

Craig: Right, and And I think they make herbicides. Is that right? 

Todd: Or chemical weapons? 

Craig: Yeah, because he’s talking about, right. He, he, he talks about how they can like totally decimate entire.

Yes, natural habitats and forests or something with these chemicals that they’re making. It’s basically like 

Todd: Agent Orange type shit 

Craig: for Yeah, yeah. But I also then don’t understand why they have a morgue there. Are they testing the bodies for levels 

Todd: of their. Chemicals. That was unsettling too, because I don’t know, I just know there’s a door that says the Department of Human Experiments or whatever, and inside is just a whole bunch of bodies under sheets, which were in there a couple times, and are they actually conducting experiments?

And then these are the bodies that then they analyze later. Are these just cadavers that they do experiments on their organs? It’s unclear. But it’s, it’s, again, it’s typical, very unsettling how just normalized all this is that this guy’s working on these toxic chemicals. He’s apparently doing a very good job at his company.

To the point where his boss has a moment with the sun. It’s like a moment from the graduate. Mm-hmm. Plastics. 

Clip: You know what this is Mike. I 

Todd: think 

Clip: it’s a pen. It’s an opportunity. I bet you knew this pen was made of chemicals, but did you know that if I took the exact same chemicals that make up this pen and recombine them, I could make.

I dunno, an automobile, maybe you could make an electric light. The whole world is made up of chemicals, Mike. You can make anything with them, but if you’re smart, you’ll make opportunities. 

Todd: And it’s just as bewildering and baffling to this poor little kid as it is to us, this adult trying to give him this dumb little lesson, which is stupid, but.

Sure. I mean, they’ve got this little terrarium or something, right? Where as Randy Quaid is talking about the. Chemical and about how it decimate forest. There’s this little airplane that drops it over the plants in this little tiny little terrarium. And then when we look back at the terrarium, we see that everything is just mush.

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And as Randy’s explaining it, you drop this right before a typhoon. So it basically kills all the vegetation and then the, the water comes in and tears everything and the villages and everything out. So this guy’s dad is doing what? Happened in the fifties and forties, developing chemical weapons in a very, that’s crazy.

Normal deal. With a normal job. It that just happens to be his job. It’s, it’s spooky. 

Craig: Yeah. And that guy, his boss is Sheila’s dad. The parents and Michael go over to their house, the Zellner and. The parents are getting drunk. I don’t know. Like I, I, again, I felt like this was, again, commentary on our idea of this time.

The, the Zelner mom is played by an actress who. I recognize from a bazillion things, I can’t think of her name, but you would totally recognize her. She’s done film and TV all over the place. 

Todd: Oh yeah. 

Craig: She’s the martini wife. Like, yeah, she’s, she’s, she’s always drunk, but can always keep herself together. And then when they all get together, there’s a weird vibe and the moms are getting drunk or whatever.

The dads. Spills a drink on the mom. Randy Quaid spills a drink on his wife, seemingly intentionally. But I didn’t understand Was that just to get them out of there because she was getting drunk? I’m not sure. I, I was confused. But anyway, for some, and you may have to remind me of the context of this, ’cause I can’t think of it, but it’s that night they go home and the dad is talking to Michael and he says it’s good to watch.

I don’t know what was like, 

Todd: oh God. Yeah, 

Craig: he’s, he says it’s good to watch, but you know what? Other people are watching you at school, at home, maybe even in the bathroom. Don’t let them. First loss, survival, goodnight. Like what? In the bathroom? I think that that’s a warning because the dad, and I don’t remember when it starts there, there’s increasing tension between Michael and the dad throughout the movie.

Mm-hmm. And, and I think that at this point the dad is, is kind of saying there are eyes on you. 

Todd: Hmm. You think like government eyes or do you just mean No, I think, 

Craig: I think he’s talking like we are watching you, I think is what he’s saying. 

Todd: Oh, gotcha. 

Craig: But I could be wrong. I don’t know. Again, like that’s a weird, creepy thing to say, but whatever.

Todd: I mean, it’s the same kind of thing like that a father thinks he’s imparting these lifelong great advice, but like the kid takes it and is like, what, what the hell are you talking about? That’s creepy. Right. You know, and, and I mean, he goes into the psychologist I think immediately after that. And she shows him the pick.

And she wants, she shows him a pick of two parents making a bed and says, how does you know, what does this make you feel? And he has a flashback to the parents tumbling around on the floor and he says, it makes me scared. And she’s like, why? And he’s like, well, I won’t, I can’t tell you because my parents, they can see me.

They know everything they, yeah. 

Craig: They hear everything 

Todd: and how many of us didn’t really feel that way intuitively as children, that somehow no matter what happened, our parents would find out about it. Like they just had an omniscience at least. I always felt that my parents had an eerie omniscience that I could get away with something, but not for too long.

Somebody would tell them something. They would hear from a neighbor, they’d hear from the teacher at school, or somebody would tell them, eventually I could get confronted by the sting that maybe I did what? They weren’t even there. 

Craig: That’s funny. 

Todd: And I thought that’s true. That’s good childhood. Yeah, it’s 

Craig: true.

I think we, yeah, I think kids do feel that way, but I think that it just comes because. Kids are stupid. Like, yeah, we do, we we do things we’re not supposed to do and we think we won’t get caught. And then we get caught and we’re like, how did they catch us? How did they know? They must know everything. No, it’s ’cause you’re stupid.

Yeah. And it’s, they know what you did because you left a trail or whatever. Yeah, like you, the, the chocolate is around your lips. I didn’t do it. Like how did they know, or like, you don’t think the 

Todd: teacher talks to me like, you don’t think your friend’s parents talk to me. Right, exactly. Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. And then there’s a weird scene where Mike is for some reason unknown.

He is in the. Pantry in the kitchen, which is like slatted, and he’s watching his mom work with meat. She’s constantly working with meat and it’s always super closeups of cutting and, and sizzling, and it’s always like mostly raw and bloody and soft and squishy. It’s so gross. It, it, it’s disgusting. I mean, it’s just meat.

Like it’s, it’s really just cooking. Yeah. I process, I work with, I don’t like, it’s not my favorite part of cooking, but. Whatever, but the, the way it’s shot, it’s just disgusting. It’s like Dennis Qua eating those shrimp in that other movie. Oh, it’s like his 

Todd: brother. I mean, really, if there’s a movie to make you a vegetarian, this is close to the top of the list, honestly.

Yeah, 

Craig: yeah, yeah. But, but this is another part that reminded me of Eraser Head, because while Michael is in the pantry at. The camera pans up and there’s a big string of sausage links on the top shelf that moves and wraps itself around him and starts to like, pull him back into the pantry until his mom opens the door.

And apparently all of that was just fantasy. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But it, it’s, but it’s very surreal to watch like, like what? Yeah. You never know because it’s not just. He has nightmares or he’s awake. Even when he’s awake. He’s having these weird fantasies or hallucinations, so you never really know what’s what’s going on, which 

Todd: honestly set me at ease.

It sort of solidified this idea for me that this movie is really an allegory and it’s, it’s presenting. All this stuff is creepy, but it’s actually quite normal. It’s just to this kid, it’s creepy. So. I felt like the purpose of this scene was more or less to establish that, that don’t trust what you see, just take it as a, as a commentary on the kid’s psychological state, you know, and how he views the world.

But later, I think that gets violated. I. 

Craig: I don’t know. Well, this is, I don’t know if this is the first time, but there’s another dinner scene, and again, it’s lit very strangely with weird shadows everywhere. And Michael never wants to eat and, and he says, 

Clip: what are we eating? Leftover, sunny leftover swim wine

from the refrigerator. We have leftovers every day since we moved here. I’d like to know what they were before they were leftovers. Well before that they were leftovers to be. Eat your dinner, honey. Him. 

Craig: Oh my God. And he never wants to eat, so he just goes to bed. Yeah. And then I, were you gonna talk about his next nightmare?

Todd: Yeah. He wakes up and he goes downstairs and he sees a hand in the disposal, flopping around, bloody coming out the opposite way. And blood comes down, comes streaming down the, the wall. And uh. Yeah. Then he has that vision of his parents again, except this time, you know, they’re biting each other. It’s almost like they’re vampires, right?

They’re gnawing on each other’s neck. His dad’s got his a big, the big piece of the flesh ripped off of his cheek and stuff. And I mean, I took this as, as just his, uh, memory of that intensified in the context of all of his fears. Now. I didn’t, I didn’t really take that as that was what he really saw when he was first there, but, uh, 

Craig: yeah.

Yeah, maybe not that, that definitely was a dream. So again, and it, I think I should have approached it a different way when it started to remind me of eraser head. I should have just let that. Allow me to just experience it. Like, don’t try too hard. Don’t try to figure out what’s going on. I don’t think it really matters.

Todd: Right. 

Craig: That’s the, I don’t think that’s really the point, 

Todd: except it does lay, I mean. I guess, I mean, it’s it to the end, but I guess it does, right? 

Craig: It, yeah. I mean, it turns out, of course, that something is going on. The root of it is not really explained. I, I don’t know. Anyway, there’s a whole thing here with Sheila.

Sheila says she’s quitting school. I thought it sounded like she has a bad home life. We know, we know her mom’s drunk all the time. She says something about she wants to run away because then she can never get punished again and again. It’s that whole idea. We talked about it with the. The burbs of, you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

Mm-hmm. Everything looks hunky dory from the outside, but you don’t know what was really going on behind closed doors. But anyway, they get into some mischief, which ends up with them in the freezer at, at mike’s house, the, the chest freezer that he’s forbidden from touching. Oh yeah. And it’s very scary when the dad comes home and finds them in there.

But then it just cuts to Randy Quaid telling Mike a bedtime story, and I didn’t even write it down. 

Todd: He just 

Craig: like, 

Todd: there’s a story about a kid and the kid did this thing that he wasn’t supposed to do, like go into the freezer or whatever. Again, a very typical father like thing, and the mom pops her head in and says, I don’t think this is the right way.

You know, she’s like the good cop. She’s just, just a very stark contrast to the father. 

Craig: Yeah, and this monologue, again, it sounds very mean. But it also sounds like, you know, he says something like, and then the, you know, what happened to that little boy? He grew up to be a weak, pathetic little man. Like, yeah.

That it’s such that machismo that I, I feel, has started to take away. It’s not, it’s, yeah. Well, yeah. It’s, but it’s not as emphasized today as it once, once, once was. Right. And, and in a, in a good way, I think. Mm-hmm. I mean, I, I, you know, men can be men, that’s great, but it doesn’t have to come through.

Intimidation and fear and threats and Yeah. That, that’s, and I think that’s, and it, you’re right, the mom kind of objects like, like, you’re going too far. And he’s like, am I? And just keeps going. And he even says something like, do I scare you, Michael? He says something like, well, you scare me too. You don’t look anything like me.

You don’t act anything like me. And that really, I really wondered what you thought of that as a father. Now, I could, would never suggest that you had ever felt that way, but I, I can imagine as a parent. If your child was nothing like you, you know, like Yeah. Just almost seemed like a stranger to you. That would be scary.

And this objectively, this kid is weird. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And so if we’re seeing things from his perspective, we’re not really seeing things from the dad’s perspective. And if we were seeing things from the dad’s perspective, maybe he would be a little bit scared of the kid. But you still wouldn’t say that 

Todd: Exactly. I mean, God, I was just talking about this tonight with another dad, but like on the one hand, of course you should never say anything like this to your kid.

It’s horrible and it’s usually not true anyway. But it does express a certain thing. And I will just say that this, we were, I was literally talking with another father about this. Just minutes before I popped on here. And that is that you know, your kids, they’re their own people. And you just imagine, I think when, when you’re first a parent that your kids are gonna be more or less like you.

They’re gonna be into the same things. They’re gonna have similar personalities either because of genetics and or because you rub off on them. Uhhuh, you know, in that way, but it doesn’t. It’s just really not necessarily true at all. You know, on a superficial level, like my son is super into sports. I mean, he’s eight, but like Uhhuh, he’s like apparently supernaturally good at sports for an 8-year-old.

Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And you 

Todd: can tell like he just is really into physical activity and stuff to the extent where I was absolutely not. As a kid, I was a way more bookish kind of kid who had very little to no interest in sports. The only reason I was into sports is ’cause my parents pushed me into it because they thought it was a good thing for me to do.

Same. And so, you know, that’s different. But then on a deeper level, like the way that he handles things and the way that he deals with things, and there are a lot of aspects to his personality that I, I can’t relate to because. Even when I was his age, I just did not have that same mentality. I didn’t have that same outlook on life.

I didn’t react to things the same way. And it’s frustrating as a parent because therefore you don’t really know how to deal with it. You know? I really don’t. There are times when I kind of feel that way. I’m like, you are not like me, and, right. I mean, I would never tell him anything. But beyond that. But right privately inside my head and to other people, I express my frustration at that because I don’t know what to do with it.

You know, I don’t know how to solve the quote unquote problems that come up with his behavior, because I’ve never been in that head space. Right. And I never expected that he would not be like me. So I’m not prepared for it either. So you do feel rather lost, I get. Yeah, I, I totally get that. 

Craig: And I can only imagine that that’s a hundred percent universal.

Nobody, it’s gotta be right. Yeah. Nobody knows. Nobody knows how to do it. You just do it, you know, 

Todd: and you screw up sometimes. 

Craig: Oh, totally. And 

Todd: sometimes you say destructive things you could, you know, ’cause you think you’re supposed to say this thing in this way, but you really it, it doesn’t do it. Yeah. I think that’s this father in a way.

Or it could be. It could be, right. You know, he’s doing what he thinks dad is supposed to do. Maybe that’s the way his dad treated him. But mom is like the loving, caring one who’s like, you know, no, like layoff. 

Craig: It all comes to a head when Michael is forbidden from seeing Sheila. But he does anyway. And Sheila kind of out of the blue says, how do you really know what your father.

Does. You don’t see it. You know, for all you know, they could take him off to jail every day and just let him out at night to be with his family. So Michael though, he’s been to the lab before, goes back and 

Todd: sneaks in. Really? 

Craig: Yeah. Sneaks in, hides under a table while his dad’s cutting up a person with a big sack.

But who knows what he is doing, you know? 

Todd: Yeah. But he also seems like he’s not supposed to be there, like he does. He’s looking around, around, looks shady. It’s quiet. It’s dark in there. He is the only one in there. It’s very, very shady. And it was at this point when finally I was like, oh, okay. So maybe the movie isn’t just as big metaphor.

Craig: Right. Well, and then, I don’t know, he, he takes scissors from the lab and then he drops ’em at the dinner table and the dad finds ’em, and there’s another kind of tense moment there. But Michael just goes, he still won’t eat. He goes off to bed as another dream, I guess. Yeah, he has a dream of Sheila saying she comes out from under his bed, like slides out, face up from under his bed and just says, I know what your parents do at night, Michael.

So he walks down the hall and looks in on his parents. Again, they’re just sleeping to nothing unusual at all. But then he goes down to the basement for reasons I don’t know why. And he finds a bloody cleaver on like a table and meat hooks. And a human leg hanging from one of the hooks. And the scariest part of the movie to me was when he goes back up to his room and he, it’s dark and he closes the door behind him and he is just standing there.

And I don’t remember if he flips the light on, but the light comes on and Randy Qua is just sitting there on his bed. Oh my God, that was so scary to me. Fortunately, Randy Quaid asks him what he was doing. He says, what do you have in your pocket? And he pulls out like a hostess cupcake. And so at this point, I think dad just thinks he was going down for a snack, which would make sense because he’s not eating dinner.

So he would be. Hungry. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But the next day, Michael goes immediately to the school psychologist and says something, he saw something really bad, but he can’t tell her because his parents see everything. So she drives him home, but he runs out of the car and she chases him into the house and into the basement.

And she’s like, see, there’s nothing down here. Oh, look, there’s a rat in the window cell, but I’ll get rid of that. And I don’t know what those things are called. Like those, those trough windows. What are the, I don’t 

Todd: know what they’re, it’s called a window. Well, yeah, around the basement window. Where when it’s lower than the ground, 

Craig: it’s lower than the ground.

Right. But there’s a window. Right. So she’s trying to get the rat away and a body falls down. Makes no sense. She screams, but okay. No, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would it be there? But Right. Okay. And she screams, and that scene was so funny to me. She screams for a good 30 seconds and it like follows like her scream all the way out of the house.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: But as she’s screaming and the camera pans outside of the house, we see that a car. So either dad or mom or both are arriving back. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: and there’s a whole thing where the teacher, this goes on for a little bit where the psychologist is kind of moving around the house and somebody is like locking her behind doors and eventually she gets shoved.

She gets shoved into the pantry. 

Todd: Oh my God. 

Craig: Whoever’s doing it is wearing black gloves. And then they’re stabbing through the slats at her and. 

Todd: And then she grabs the knife with her hands. 

Craig: Oh, I hate it when people do that. 

Todd: That hurt so much. Oh 

Craig: God. Yeah. ’cause he just pulls it, or whoever it is just pulls it right back out.

Oh gosh. She eventually gets, it stops all the stabbing stops and it’s quiet. So she comes out, but then she takes golf club to the head and she’s dead. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: and then there’s lots of meat on the barbecue 

Todd: uhhuh. There’s lots of meat on the barbecue, and dad comes in with mom and dinner is served, but his son is ready there with a baseball bat and swings and hits his dad right in the stomach and he falls forward.

And it’s just basically a big, I don’t know what you call, like his struggles chasing or whatever where. The boy is fighting his parents Really fighting his dad. 

Craig: Yeah. Well they tie him up in the chair and this is when the dinner scene gets totally wild because I, my guess is that the camera now, it could be different.

I, but what it looks like is the camera and the actors at the dinner table are on a big lazy Susan. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: That is spinning. So it looks like the room is spinning around them. Mm-hmm. And it’s, it’s, it’s wild. It’s, it’s a, it’s a really neat effect. But the dad says to him something like, we are different.

You’re different. You’re like us. Michael says, I don’t love you anymore. And he says, well, okay, I’m gonna untie you and you can either join us for dinner or you can run out and tell your big secret. But you know what’ll happen if you do, people will come here and they’ll burn us. Do you want. To see them burn your parents.

I didn’t think about this, but I read and you probably did too, that there, there are, there’s like theories about this movie that this is a family of witches. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Because Michael has that weird, dark, magic stuff about the black cat and he says something else about. Producing heat, like we wouldn’t need gas.

All we would need was like the corpses of some hanged people and we could cut off their hands and burn them and it would burn forever or something like that. So there’s all this weird stuff. And then the sig 

Todd: the, and they came from Massachusetts and they 

Craig: Uhhuh Uhhuh to start a new life. And here the dad says people are gonna.

Come and burn us if they find out. I don’t know. It’s an interesting theory. Yeah, whatever. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. They’re cannibals. And then the dad suggests that they could move to the mountains as long as there was a highway nearby for the accidents. And he says to Michael as he’s trying to serve him meat, I’m sure you’ll acquire a taste for it.

Your mother did. And the mom’s like, Hmm. Yeah. Now I love it. Like. Ugh. 

Todd: Oh, it’s so gross. 

Craig: So weird and creepy. But Mike stabs his dad, I thought through the heart, but apparently not just in the chest. And then the dad grabs Michael and is being very rough with them, and the mom and dad are fighting. ’cause the mom saying, don’t hurt him.

Leave him alone. He says, the dad says. We’ll have another one, Lily. We’ll bring him up. Right? And he, it’s like he’s taking Michael down to the cellar, but the mom stab, stabs him in the back. Michael runs down to the basement, which is stupid. But then. The dad pulls the knife that the mom used. I somehow he gets it out of her hand and he turns it on her and stabs her by pulling him towards himself, by embracing her.

And then they fall him on top of her and it goes, but it’s very reminiscent of their weird, gross. Bloody lovemaking. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Which I think we skipped at some point. Michael has a dream or remembers, like when he is talking to the psychologist now, his memory, they’re covered in blood and there are like organs in the bed with them and stuff.

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s real or not. Mm-hmm. Anyway, mom’s dead. Dad falls down the stairs, then that’s when there’s like this cat and mouse chase in the cellar. Eventually the dad pulls the wine shelves down on himself and the blood red wine, you know, splashes all around Latin, chanting all of a sudden in the soundtrack.

Yeah, and because the dad in stumbling around in the basement pulled down one of the gas pipes, gas is filling the house. Michael runs out the house, explodes the house, explodes, hits the burbs again, Uhhuh and Michael goes to live with his sweet grandparents. Who then plays a, 

Todd: as they’re, as they’re putting him to bed, place a, uh, sandwich stacked with meat next to him, which he suddenly turns and looks at.

And you realize probably the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, 

Craig: right? Because it’s, it’s made clear, like the grandpa or grandma, I think says he looks just like his daddy. And then it cuts to a picture of Randy Quaid with these. People, so this is, this is his paternal grandparents, the people who raised Randy Quaid.

So yeah, of course, of course they’re cannibals too. And then it goes to credits and I almost turned it immediately off. But then I saw like the credits are framed in some like funny. Uh, old fashioned, I don’t know. It looks like something that you would’ve done in middle school frame and it’s, it’s, it’s a curtain call.

The actors come out of a door and like smile and wave at the camera as their name comes up and they come out one by one to the song. One-eyed, one horned blind, purple people eater. So like it’s such a weird change in tone. And they’re all all smiling and waving. And then the parents come out and wave one at a time and then the kid comes out and waves and then the parents come out and pick the kid up by the arm and they all wave and that’s the end.

It was a weird movie. It was, I’m glad we watched it because I, I remembered nothing about it. And I think about it like it lives in my head. I think about this movie and I’m like, oh, I should watch that again. Oh man. It’s weird. I hope I remember now ’cause I don’t know that I necessarily need to see it again.

But I also think that it is a movie that you could probably watch multiple times and pick up new things. Yes. Or, or look at it from different perspectives. ’cause I do think that it’s really smart and nuanced. It’s just weird. 

Todd: It is weird, but you’re, you’re right. It’s smart. It’s very nuanced. I think it has layers here that what that that could be unpacked even deeper than we unpacked it here.

By the way, the soundtrack. Really good. 

Craig: Yeah, 

Todd: that probably made this movie even more unsettling than it already was there. It just goes all over the place and, but it’s always on and I like it and I think it’s effective. I think the whole movie’s effective. I think it’s, as a horror movie, it’s a hundred percent effective.

It goes down as one of the more deeply unsettling films all the way through that I’ve ever seen. And it left a, you know, kind of a sick taste in my mouth afterwards. So. As a horror movie. It’s great as a horror comedy if that is truly what they were ever going for. Utterly fails on that level. But if, if Bab Balaban said, I was never intending to make a comedy, that’s just the way it was marketed then?

Yeah. Wow. What a shame it was marketed the way it was. That’s all I’ll say. ’cause it, it was a bomb. I apparently, and I think it’s kind of forgotten. Right. I don’t think a lot of people talk about this movie. 

Craig: I, I think it has a cult following. I does it. Yeah. There, I read that there were a couple of directors who cited it as being underrated.

Greta Gerwig was one of them. Oh, I don’t remember who the other one was. But, uh, I do think that it has a cult following as it should. It, it very much feels like a, a cult movie. I would, I would recommend it. Just, just know what you’re getting into, because Yeah, otherwise you could potentially be disappointed.

I was expecting a comedy when I realized that it wasn’t, it was fine. I, I just tried to appreciate it for what it was, and I do appreciate it for what it is. But yeah, just, just temper your expectations 

Todd: a hundred percent. Agreed. Recommended. Watch it as a straight horror film. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share with a friend. You can find [email protected] or by Googling two guys in the Chainsaw podcast, and you’ll find all of our social media out there. We love to hear from you guys. Please send us a message there.

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