In this episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw, we delve into ‘Suddenly in the Dark,’ a 1981 South Korean horror film directed by Yeo Ban-su.

While we had wildly different takes on this, we discuss the significance of 1980s horror films, the film’s reception, and its symbolism at a stormy time in Korean cinema. We share our varying perspectives on the movie’s artistic approach, ambiguity, and psychological intensity. Tune in to hear the history of this well-regarded, yet controversial, film.

Don’t forget to leave your comments and suggestions for more foreign horror films you’d like us to review!

Episode 449, 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: We have been doing older movies lately, bouncing back and forth. We just got off a, a request from the 1980s. That had me diving back into the eighties again because I just, we did a whole month of 1981 horror films, and that was one of my favorite series of films we did, just because I find that era, early eighties, late seventies.

So fascinating for horror because it feels like horror movies were getting, I don’t wanna say. More mainstream because they’ve always been kind of mainstream, right? But they’ve always dipped in and out of what I would consider, like maybe my parents would go see it, or maybe people would be talking about it at the water cooler at work.

Horror movies always been popular, but they always haven’t been like in your face. And it feels like in the early eighties, just that, that period of time there was such a boom that everybody was jumping on board with and independent cinema was still really active. And even, you know, we talked about the Friday, the 13th movies, how Paramount was making these movies under the table.

You know, because even though they were a big studio, they were doing these non-union pictures and secretly financing them and funding them and, and putting them in big theaters. But still, these were independent. Productions, studio productions masquerading is independent productions. And anyway, long story short, I love that era and I was going back and flipping through what other 1981 movies could we do and, um, I kind of fumbled into the foreign film area a little bit and realized that we haven’t done an Asian horror movie in a while, a long time.

Yeah. We’ve done like an Indonesian horror. Might be the last time we dove in there. Maybe we did one or two J-Horror or Korean ones. But this isn’t. Arena that you and I have just not done do justice to? I think me, I, I like going to the older films as well. I, I don’t know, I just, I think for me it’s about the history.

I like to see where horror was and where it is now. I like to think about what were, what were we fascinated by in the United States back in the early eighties as compared to what was being exported. You know, how much of this was being seen in other countries and what were other countries doing at that time in horror?

Were they even doing it? You know? And I stumbled across this movie that’s pretty notorious. It’s called Suddenly in the Dark, otherwise Known as Suddenly at Midnight. It’s a well-regarded film. It’s gotten a DVD release recently and. It’s from 1981, and the director who directed it was a very prolific South Korean director, directed hundreds of of South Korean films named Yung Namco.

I’m gonna butcher these Korean names, by the way. 

Craig: I didn’t [00:03:00] bother ’cause I knew I couldn’t say them. 

Todd: Yeah, I’m, I’m gonna do my best. But, uh, Y Namco did a ton of movies and Korean cinema just to. Kind of just be brief about it has really gone undergone a period recently of explosive growth. Korean horror movies are big now.

I think Squid Games was one people, you know, recently, world Cup two, but Train to Busan was a worldwide hit. There are a ton of Jay Horror and uh, K Horror, I guess you could say, movies that have been wildly successful around the world. The host back in the early two thousands was big. Oh, I was just gonna say, did we ever do the host we, because if we haven’t, we should.

That’s a great movie. We need to, it’s a fantastic movie. J Horror was getting its day in the, in the west, I would say for a little while in the late nineties, early two thousands, I guess, with the ring and dark water and the grudge. 

Craig: What was the one that we did where it was like in this village and like the kind of bumbling cop had to investigate?

Yes. I think that was a, people’s kids were getting [00:04:00] murdered or something. I remember that. It was long, but I also remember that it was really good and kind of heart wrenching. Like he was kind of this bumbling dude, but by the end you really felt bad for him. 

Todd: Yeah, it was really ethereal and it, it just kind of has a different way of presenting the story.

Right. The Wailing is what it was called 2016. Yes. 

Craig: Yes. 

Todd: Almost universally acclaimed. I think it’s got a 90, I’m looking at it right now. It’s got a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Was is that 

Craig: Korean? 

Todd: It is. Yeah. I couldn’t 

Craig: remember. 

Todd: Yeah. Very Korean. Okay. 

Craig: Well I’m glad that I have that point of reference because I’m gonna need something to draw comparisons to to this movie.

Sure. And I think the Whaling’s a good place. That movie did a lot of what this movie was doing in terms of suspense and storytelling and pacing, but I think it did it way better. Well, like 400 bazillion gazillion times better. 

Todd: It’s definitely a newer film, but I can see [00:05:00] similarities. Yeah. Well, Korean, and I’m no expert in this by any means, but I read up on it a little bit, and Korean cinema in the seventies through the eighties was really undergoing a a tough time because politically Korea was going through a tough time.

Right, right. You know, back to the early 19 hundreds, Korea was occupied by Japan. It was absolutely horrible time in their history. The early 19 hundreds. Yeah, 19 0 6, 19. It’s just funny. It’s just funny to hear it’s said that way. 

Craig: Referred to 

Todd: as, 

Craig: yeah, because it’s like we were 

Todd: born in the ni I was born mid, late 19 hundreds.

Anyway, sorry, go ahead. Right. This Korean cinema was the thing like in starting in 1902, I think, you know, they were starting to make movies there, but as soon as the Japanese, uh, invaded, you know, they took control of everything in culture, including cinema, and were very restrictive on what could be made and how it could be portrayed, how they were portrayed, you know, and then you get [00:06:00] this little period of time around the sixties or so where things open up just a little bit, but.

Really right on the heels of that, you’ve got this dictatorial regime. You know, again, very restrictive on society and culture and artists trying to express themselves. Really had to jump through hoops and had to toe the company line, had to get their scripts approved. By the time this movie was made in 1981, I think just that year or the year before, the government had expanded the number of companies that were allowed to produce films from 12 or 16 to 20.

So I’m sure this was one of the films to take advantage of that. And this movie’s actually, in a way, kind of a remake. There’s an earlier movie called The House Made that was made in 1960. Widely acclaimed something else that also has a hundred percent ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s in the Criterion Collection.

It’s regularly listed on movies you should see before you die, and it follows a [00:07:00] very similar plot to this about a house made who comes in between a couple and things start to get complicated. This movie, which came out 21 years later and has more of a horror bent than a sort of psychological thriller bent that that movie had disagree.

Craig: Yeah, well, I mean, I was, I was mad, like I was kind of, I was kind of mad up until, I mean, I was kind of mad the whole time, but up until the last seven minutes I was like, this is not a horror movie. This is a psychological thriller. It’s, it’s an erotic psychological thriller. 

Todd: Yeah, it gets 

Craig: goofy at the end, I guess.

But you could still, but honestly, still, depending on how we wanna interpret it, you could still say that even. In the end, it’s a psychological thriller. But no, 

Todd: I agree with you, and I think that’s a strength of the movie honestly, is that it’s, it’s a little ambiguous and it’s deliberate. It’s clearly deliberately being ambiguous.

Is, is something supernatural happening here? Is this all happening in the mind of this woman? I’ve never seen the House made the 1961. So I can [00:08:00] tell you how that compares to this one. I kind of wish I had had the time to do that. This movie was controversial in that a lot of people said that it was a clear ripoff or plagiarism of, uh, that earlier movie.

And for that reason, I think it didn’t get the viewership and critical claim or critical attention that many people say it deserved. And it is now. Is now getting, so you’re looking at a period of time where cinema is starting to open up. They’re starting to relax the censorship laws a little bit. You can see that in here and that there’s a bit of eroticism that’s being allowed to be shown that probably wouldn’t have been allowed before that nudity.

So I think it’s, I think it’s an interesting movie to see. And this is, you know, it’s like going back and looking at the old Hammer films. It’s a different time period. The Hammer films predate this, but this is in a different country. Filmmaking styles were different people. I think were a little more patient, were willing to wait through a, a slower burn.

I also think personally that filmmakers were a little more careful at [00:09:00] times. Back then, they were trying for something a little more artistic. They had symbolism deliberately. And not to say the filmmakers don’t do that now, but you know, you compare like The Shining With a Modern, a more modern horror movie that’s.

Going for something similar. You’re gonna get faster cuts, you’re gonna get more quick paced stuff. You’re gonna get, they’re, they’re really trying to maintain and, and keep like in your face tension, I think up on the screen. A little more than perhaps audiences back then needed. I would argue that’s the lens I tried to watch this movie through.

I really knew this movie was gonna be an older film that was gonna be a slower burn. And so I sat down with it when I had time and the patience and wasn’t tired and really just let it wash over me and really tried to watch it like I was a critic interpreting an art film. I think the film is, is kind of arty.

And so anyway, I’m just gonna say I, I really enjoyed this movie a lot. I loved the time period. I loved seeing the style. I thought it was beautifully photographed. I thought the color [00:10:00] was really interesting. I thought that he was doing really interesting things here, cinematography, and I thought the acting was superb.

And so, uh, yeah, I’ve never seen it before now, and I’m really glad I did. I have a feeling, though, judging from some comments you’ve made that you’re gonna have a different take on it. 

Craig: Oh, no. I thought it was boring and all of the things that you said, like you thought that it was shot really well. Okay. I mean, it, it looks like a soap opera.

Like it’s, it’s clearly shot on these large, far overly dressed stages. Yeah. For the interiors and then for the exteriors, they, they’ve got a nice house location that looks cool and you know, I, the beautiful exterior. Yeah, the exteriors. Yeah, there’s like a beautiful garden on this estate that they live on, and that’s very nice.

The interiors look silly. I thought part of it is just because it’s so dated, like the movie came out in 1981, it looks like they [00:11:00] went to thrift shops and bought things from like the mid 70. I don’t know, like, well, you’re looking at it from American. It’s like, it’s like velvety, I suppose. I suppose, and that may be a cultural thing that I don’t understand.

I mean, all of the things that I saw on these sets were things that I would’ve seen in an American, even Midwestern household, more likely on in movies, but especially around this time period and through the eighties, like there was a big Asian inspired design trend in America. You, we especially saw it in a lot of movies with like rich people.

Like they would have, you know, Asian screens and all kinds. My point is there’s a big living room set. And there are like four couches in it and a coffee table and 17 lamps and 14 tables, and they’re all wicker brick, a brack on every table and shelf. Like it looks like they can barely move in this space because 

Todd: there’s so much stuff.

Well, there’s [00:12:00] actually a lot of space in the room though. I mean, I guess you’re just thinking that the tables look cluttered or something. I suppose 

Craig: it just looks visually it, no, just visually it looks very cluttered to me, and I understand that much of it was intentional, especially that Cobra statue that he had to shoot every third scene through.

It’s like, I get it. There’s a, I, I get it. There’s, there’s a snake thing in the room and it’s symbolic, I guess, and hopefully it will come up later. I don’t know. In that way, it also felt to me. Very much like a soap opera. And it felt most of the time, like it was shot like a soap opera. Like we’re, we’re looking very much through a fourth wall.

Sure. Onto a stage. In fact, I think that I would’ve enjoyed this story better on stage. I think had it been more intimate, I would’ve liked it better. I don’t know. I’m rambling. There’s, you, [00:13:00] you also said, well, it’s stylistic. You know, there’s interesting stylistic things going on. Yeah. Every once in a while he shoots through a kaleidoscope or he shoots through a Coke bottle.

Like, great. Like, that’s cool. Good job. I don’t know. There’s so, 

Todd: there’s so much more than that. There’s so much more than that. Well, tell me about it. I don’t, 

Craig: I mean, you, and that’s the other thing. Like, it’s not scary. Let me, let me set up the story. Okay. So there’s this guy, he’s, I, and there’s only like five people in the whole movie, and I couldn’t pronounce their names.

So I didn’t even bother. The husband is a scientist who studies butterflies. He is on an expedition when we meet him, and then he comes home and he has a beautiful wife. She’s just. Stunning. Like she’s gorgeous and, but apparently a little bit insecure. It took me a while. I, I thought that I recognized her.

She looked familiar to me. She did? Mm-hmm. And I, and I looked her up and she wasn’t in anything that I had seen, but she looked so familiar, so, so pretty about two thirds of the way through the movie, I was like, well, she kind of looks a little bit [00:14:00] like Meg Tilly, like, oh yeah, a little bit. I don’t know, whatever.

A little bit. But anyway, she’s the wife and they have a little girl who is really inconsequential to the whole movie. Yeah. But I just wanna point out that that little girl is a brat, and I would’ve slapped her in the face. Several times throughout that movie, he teaches at the university. He studies butterflies.

He comes home, he invites his buddies over to show them a slideshow of all the cool butterflies that he saw, and they’re all like, Ooh, butterflies. 

Todd: By the way, I love that they’re all these like middle aged guys dressed in suits, smoking and like laughing and, and he’s showing them slides of butterflies, which they’re talking about intently.

Craig: It’s so cute. I can only imagine. I hope that you have read. Something into this. Like, I hope I have that butterflies are significant in some way because I think so. 

Todd: I think so. I think butter Anyway. You want me to interrupt you? I mean, think about it. When a person is curating the butterflies, what, what is it about?

You [00:15:00] know, it’s like birdwatching. It’s like, uh, it’s like beauty. It’s like, here are all these men who are attending to these little fragile creatures and studying them intently and collecting them in their grass box. You know, it’s, it’s, I think it’s leering 

Craig: at them. 

Todd: Okay. Leering at them, showing them slot, you know, I think it’s a male female dynamic and sexual relationship.

Craig: I like that. I like that. That’s good. Alright, so they’re all looking at these butterflies and then out of nowhere. A mysterious slide of this doll. I, I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t know what the correct term is in Korean, but it reminded me of kabuki, like white face, a woman in white face, black hair, pulled back in like a white robe carrying what looks like an enormous cleaver.

Yeah, that’s what it is. Red lip, very stern. This, this image of this doll. And they’re like, where did that come from? And he’s like, I don’t know. Must have been a mistake at the developers or something. I don’t know. Whatever. Who cares? Doesn’t matter. Fine. He s his [00:16:00] wife. Yeah. Yeah. There, there’s a lot of, there’s some dirty stuff in this movie.

This scene is one of the tamest ones, but it’s, you know, kind of an erotic. Sex scene, but then he has to go away again like right away. And her friend is like, uh, your husband goes away a lot. This drove me crazy because this friend early in the movie says, uh, your husband goes away, goes away a lot. He’s probably cheating on you.

You better be careful. Men are always looking out for somebody younger and hotter. Yeah. So then the husband brings back a younger hotter girl, which is obviously very important. But after that, this woman, the wife goes back to her friend several times and says, I think he may be cheating. And every time the friend is like, no, you’re just crazy.

Like, yeah, bitch, you are the one that put that in her mind. Yeah. It’s crazy. And now when she thinks it’s happening, 

Todd: you’re like, no, dumb, dumb. Well, her reasoning is not. Unsound, but it’s kind of, it is [00:17:00] dumb her. She’s thinking, look, your husband’s had all these opportunities to cheat outside of your house.

Like he’s away all the time. Why would he be? Yeah. Why would he be doing it right here? Yeah. 

Craig: Well, 

Todd: and 

Craig: that’s an excellent question. Yeah. Why would he do that? Because what he does is he goes away for a few more days and when he comes home he says, Hey, I found this girl in the street. I brought her home.

She’s gonna be our maid now. Yeah. Okay. And like I thought. It that the wife would immediately, because she’s just had this conversation with her friend. So I thought that she would immediately be like, oh, no, but no, no. She’s like, hooray. We need a maid. It’s so hard to find a maid. Wow. Like she seems really excited about it for a second.

Well, uh, 

Todd: no, at first she, there is a very like, suspicious she’s looking at the girl. There are all these shots of her eyes and all this stuff. It’s only when the husband’s like, but we need a maid. That she suddenly, like you said, it’s like a light switch flips and she’s totally fawning. Oh my God. Thank you so much.

Let me bring you in and show you everything. You’re so right, honey. Thank you. You’re so lovely. I [00:18:00] felt like that was sort of a release. Like why is this guy bringing this woman home? What’s going on? 

Craig: Oh, he has a perfect, a founder in the street. He has a perfect lodge. Explan people said she had no family.

Yeah. Oh yeah. There’s a whole stupid backstory. Go ahead, tell it.

Todd: He found her wandering alone without parents, and it turns out later that she is the daughter of a famous shaman and they have no idea about the father what happened to him, but fire broke out. At their house. The mom died and Meo Meka is, is the girl’s name survived Uhhuh. Later I think we get kind of a, I guess you could call it a flashback of what happened, 

Craig: something about the spirit of the grandmother of the sea God, something like mm-hmm.

Well, 

Todd: like the, this is shamanistic stuff, we just don’t understand, but this is a totem. Right. You know, this is a totem. And the, the grandmother, the mother, I’m sorry, has imbued this doll with a lot of meaning to this girl and has told this girl that [00:19:00] as long as she has this doll with her, she’s going to be safe.

The doll will protect her. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: And so that is the one thing, this one possession. This girl comes here with the clothes on her back and this bundle wrapped up 

Craig: and it’s the doll from the slide and Right. It is, yeah. She’s, she’s, she’s super protective of it. Again, that bratty daughter is like trying to.

Like wrench it from her, like, mm-hmm. You somebody needs to hit that girl. I’m sorry. I do not, I I do not endorse domestic violence of any kind. I’m, I’m exaggerating. She put her in a corner, put her in a timeout, right? She’s rotten. 

Todd: It’s weird how suddenly welcoming the wife is. That’s a little, you know, I think a more modern take on this movie would keep things a little more tense here.

Maybe give some, some moments for them to have a little bit of a bonding. And I think that maybe, again, maybe there’s some cultural things we don’t quite understand here. What, what she does do is she gives this woman a, a bath. She takes her into the shower, she shows her the bath. And I [00:20:00] assume it seems like Korean.

I mean, I lived in Japan for a few years, so I know a little bit about Japanese culture. The way the Japanese baths work is like everybody takes a bath at night, but that’s the thing you do after you wash up. So you fill up a bath full of hot water, then you wash up outside of the bath with just kind of a spray thing and get all soaped up and get super, super clean.

And then you sit and you soak in the tub. And even if you’re visiting people, like for dinner, they will fill up the tub and because you’re the guest, they’ll let you be the first to go in it. But everyone’s gonna take a turn in that bath, in that same bath water. That’s so 

Craig: gross. 

Todd: Yeah, I guess the idea, I mean, understand if you’re all washed up before you go in, it’s, it’s still clean, but yeah, it’s, it’s feels weird.

Craig: But it wasn’t like it was 

Todd: in this one, 

Craig: it’s reverse. That’s what I was saying it. Right. Because it looked like a, they went into the bathroom, which reminded me of the bathroom from the substance for some reason. Like it was all tiled in white. Oh yeah. And the tub, the bathtub was full of [00:21:00] filthy water. It looked very brown.

Yeah, it was kind of gross. This 19-year-old, she says she’s 19-year-old, new maid gets in there, you know, while her new. Employer, the, the wife is in there with her and like she just acts like it’s the most luxurious thing she’s ever experienced to sit in this filthy water. 

Todd: Well, I don’t, and then I don’t, to be fair, I don’t think the water was meant to look filthy.

I have a feeling that either one of two things, one, they wanted it to maybe show up on camera a little better and maybe the way the lighting was with this. But number two, I think they were also using it to kind of, they, they put some coloring in the water to sort of obscure her body a little bit, so it wasn’t quite so nude.

That’s what I think. 

Craig: That’s fine. I mean, they do, there is. Fairly graphic new, fairly graphic new. I mean, we see her naked when she undresses for the bath. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: I understand what you’re saying. Like, she’s laying there. They don’t want it perfectly clear so that, you know, she’s just fully nude there or whatever.

But yeah, it’s 

Todd: like the, uh, it’s like the Asian version of putting [00:22:00] soap suds in there. Yeah, well 

Craig: that’s what I’m saying, like, put some soap in there, like it, it was brown, whatever. Yeah. But that wouldn’t work, man. They don’t put soap in the bath. They don’t do that. So I, I’m, fuck, I’m getting hung up on stupid things.

It doesn’t matter. But yeah, then, then the wife like hoses her off and, and the husband kind of walks in and sees a little bit and accidentally nobody really freaks out about it. Right. Whatever the point is, she has this doll and when you know, the daughter’s like, I want it. I want it. And the mom’s like, well, let her see it.

Ugh, God, I don’t know, whatever. So she opens up this doll and it’s the doll from the slides, which immediately flips her out. And she’s like, my mom gave it to me. She made it for me. She said To keep it with me all the time, it will protect me. Okay, fine. From that point on, this is a movie about a woman who is up in the head.

She just becomes convinced that her husband. Is screwing the maid. Yeah. Is the husband screwing the maid? Maybe. I don’t know. It’s [00:23:00] possible, but she is just absolutely convinced of it, and she keeps having, it’s, it’s difficult to tell, like you said, it’s ambiguous. She, is she fantasizing that she’s seeing little glances between them?

Is she really seeing things happening or is it all in her head? Is she dreaming? Is she hallucinating one way or another? It seems like she’s losing it. And the mystery, I suppose is, is this supernatural? Because it certainly is an odd coincidence that a slide of that very. Totem same. Yeah. Appeared in her husband’s thing before this girl arrived, or is it 

Todd: exactly right.

Did the husband have a relationship with this girl before? Or, you know, is there something he’s not talking about? That that, oh, oops, sorry. That must have been a mistake of the developers. 

Craig: Yeah. Where? And, and, and now it’s gone. Where did it go? Oh, 

Todd: I got rid of it. Why? Like. I [00:24:00] don’t think the main thrust of the movie here is, is this supernatural?

I think that’s a layer of it, but I think the real thrust of the movie is, is she crazy or not, or is she being, is she being gaslighted? Because I was really up in the air about it. Even still, I think I’m kind of up in the air about it. I mean, we can talk bit by bit about each of these elements later, but after finally the woman does this horrible thing.

Alright, God, how do we talk about this? I don’t know. I mean, I feel like we’ve set 

Craig: it up, like at this point we kind of set it up. At this point the maid is The maid is there, you know, the, the wife is suspicious. Yes. The maid. I mean, you could say that she’s acting kind of suspiciously. You could say that.

Well, but you just don’t know because it could just be, it could just be the woman’s perception. Yes. Like he, the, the, the filmmaker does go out of the way to film the maid in such a way that it looks like she’s giving, knowing glances or, you know, like Yeah. You’re not sure if she’s smiling or, yeah, 

Todd: she seems [00:25:00] shady, but it could just as easily be totally innocent.

It could be naivete. At first you think, okay, well this is like this girl that kind of believes in supernatural things. Like she’s got this doll with her. She’s only 19 years old. She’s lost her mom, who was a shaman. You know, that’s gotta be, I mean, you think about Carrie, you know, she might be a little messed up in the head.

She might be a little simple. In fact, at one point the husband and the wife kind of mentioned that she seems a little simple within the context of later the husband saying, well, you know, she’s not, she’s a little smarter than she comes across because she’s really good at collecting these butterflies.

I’ve got her going out collecting specimens and she’s really smart about it. 

Craig: Well, and the, the wife is also obsessed with how hot she is and like Yes. I, I don’t know, like, you look great that even her friend says that to her, like, when? Yeah, but the friend is over and the friend sees the maid and she’s like, oh, is that her?

And the wife’s like, yeah, she’s so beautiful. And the friend’s like, whatever. She’s all [00:26:00] right. Nothing, you know, like, no better looking than you. And the wife’s like, oh, I don’t know. Like, but, and it’s true. They’re, I mean, yes, the, the, this young woman does look younger than the other woman, but they’re both 

Todd: beautiful.

It’s not like they are. But I think some of this is contextualized in the, both the history and the culture and what I do know about Asian culture. Obviously Korean’s a little different from Japanese, is a little different from Chinese, but there’s sort of this real. I think unhealthy focus on youth here in China, you are considered an old maid.

If you’re over 30, women are obsessed with getting married by the time they’re 30. Oh boy. If they are 31 or 32, their parents are panicking. They’re panicking. They don’t think guys are, guys aren’t gonna be as interested in them. They keep their age a secret. They lie about their age. It’s insane. And to a certain extent, this exists over in Japan as well and in Korea.

So this is actually reflecting a very real, [00:27:00] maybe you think, you know, from a Western perspective, she’s being overly paranoid. But the very first conversation that we’re in, that we’re listening to with between her and her friend, her friend says, literally says, as soon as you’re over 30, you’re as good as 60.

Right? Yeah. She’s laying this out. And so I think it’s very natural that this woman, as beautiful as she is, is going to be extremely paranoid about her husband, who’s a university professor, bringing this young girl home suddenly in the house. And cheating is, I mean, cheating’s common everywhere. I don’t want to, I don’t want to dog on any particular culture, but 

Craig: I know, and like I can, I, 

Todd: I feel like I’ve seen, 

Craig: you know, you’ve seen this 

Todd: set up in a bazillion American movies.

Sure. In a way you kind of, me, I mean, before we started recording, even though it’s very, it goes in a very different direction. The hand that Rocks the Cradle is kind of like this movie too, right? Kind 

Craig: of. Yeah. You know, you bring, you bring someone 

Todd: into the house and uh, 

Craig: right. 

Todd: To do a job, and then all of a sudden, you know, there’s, there’s suspicious things or you’re suspicious of what [00:28:00] might be going on.

Craig: Well, and that was something that I was curious about too, and I don’t expect you to be. An expert on any culture, but you do have more worldly experience than I do. This was weird to me. I mean is, and, and again, this was 50 years ago almost, but it was odd to me that they brought a young woman into their house and.

One of the weird things that the mom hears right away is she hears the maid talking to that statue saying, oh yeah, I really love it here. It’s really great, and I’m gonna be here until we die, or something like that. Yeah, right. But, but the, the husband at some point is like, oh, I really like me, oc and we should keep her here until she marries.

Is this I, I, I mean, I know in Colonial America, young women when they were of age, if they were not married, would often go into work in other people’s households until Yeah. They were married and then they would Is this Yeah, because it was very strange. It was a very odd dynamic. Like they were not, [00:29:00] they weren’t cruel to her.

No. But they were also not kind to her. Well, I, they ordered her around as though she were a servant. I think they treated her like help and as suppose she 

Todd: is. She is. I mean it’s, I mean they weren’t, this is, no, this did not shock me at all. It’s very common here for people to have. I like literally and, and you don’t have to be rich, you know, it’s just like somebody from the countryside, someone from the village who needs a job and is coming to the city to get work and what can they do?

Well, they know how to cook and clean and take care of kids. You’ll have them over at your house and generally you’re part of the deal is you’re giving them a place to stay. Like they’re literally living with you like a member of the family. And that’s today, you know, that happens here today in China, we.

Could have gotten an IE to help us raise Kenji, you know, and we hired an IE off and on, you know, to, to help with certain things or like, as a babysitter, things like that. It’s very common. This part of it didn’t surprise me at all that this might happen maybe back in, in the eighties, you know, to pull a complete [00:30:00] stranger in, you know, who’s like an orphan or whatever.

It might even be seen as a nice opportunity. Like, we don’t have to pay her as much, or we don’t have to pay her at all. Or at least just like feeding her and, and clothing her and giving her a place to stay. Like that’s good enough. So, yeah, you’re not gonna like start buddy buddying up with her. You’re just gonna, you’re still gonna be like, get me my coffee and make me the food.

And, 

Craig: you know, I don’t want to criticize any other culture that I don’t fully understand. But for better or worse, that’s exclusive to the very wealthy in America. 

Todd: Oh, for sure. 

Craig: I, I think, and I don’t know how I feel about that, but if it’s a, a good arrangement for people, great. More power to you. But I said that they weren’t.

Overtly kind to her, but not overtly cruel. But I feel the wife eventually starts being very antagonistic towards her. Like looking at it through a modern lens, like this woman would have grounds for a 

Todd: lawsuit, to be honest with you. I agree [00:31:00] with you how open she is after a while about some of this stuff, but honestly, I, I don’t know, man.

I was in her head the whole time and I was going back and forth. I really wasn’t sure if she had grounds to be paranoid or not, because the girl was just shady enough that. I did wonder if, even if nothing’s going on with the husband, does this girl have some other motives? You know, is she pretending?

’cause there are just moments and this is why I thought the acting was so great. I thought the wife’s acting was very convincing. I didn’t think it was melodramatic. I thought it it, you know, this is another one of those movies as he long lingering shots on people, real long closeups on their faces and their eyes.

And I thought it was really strong in that way, but I thought the young woman and I was surprised to see that this actress didn’t hardly do, didn’t do anything else, really just one other movie besides this. ’cause I thought she rode that line of, am I just simple and quiet and don’t really understand what’s happening or am I actually like secretly listening, [00:32:00] secretly peering at what’s going on.

You’re talking about the young, the young one. Yeah. Yeah, there’d be those moments where, you know, she peeked outside a door and looked around and was listening in on the other conversation. Yes. And I was waiting for that like evil smile to be like, okay. But it just was shy of that, you know? It was just shy of that.

Ah, that I just, 

Craig: just barely, like, it seemed like she definitely gave knowing looks or kind of like, ha ha. Got you. Kind of, but again. It could just as easily have been innocent. Yeah. Yeah. I, I feel like you just mentioned that, you know, these kind of shady things are happening. I feel like we should just real quick detail some of the weird things Yeah.

That seemingly are happening. Like the wife is having, like, she has these kaleidoscopic dreams about the doll and the maid seducing her husband and then like steamy sex between the [00:33:00] maid and the husband. And then there are other little things like at one point, seemingly unprompted, she goes and ransacks the maid’s very dirty room.

I don’t think I would hire a maid who had a room that was so gross, like that just had stuff on the floor. Yeah. And, and she finds her husband’s lighter and she confronts them both, like, why does she have this lighter? And he’s like, I, it doesn’t work. I threw it away. She must have picked it out of the trash.

And the maid just stands there, like, I dunno, I’m sorry. And, and then the husband walks away and the wife is playing with the lighter and it lights, or does it again like, yeah, we don’t know what we’re seeing. We don’t know if we’re seeing. An objective perspective or if we’re seeing Uhhuh. And so what if it does?

Maybe he thought it died and he threw it away and he did. Exactly. It’s so ambiguous, right? It doesn’t matter what else. I I don’t, there are other things too. I suppose 

Todd: it, while she’s having these dreams, sometimes she wakes up and she goes downstairs and she thinks she hears suspicious sounds from [00:34:00] the girl’s room.

Like it sounds like the girl and the husband are in there, but she doesn’t open the door. The husband is still supposedly gone because she’s alone in the house. She, no, the he’s not, the husband’s 

Craig: not gone. He’s, he’s there at this point in time. Be, but he’s, she’s also concerned because he’s not, she says to her friend, her friend comes back here in just a second.

She says to her friend, and we never. I don’t remember how she said it, but she basically said, we never have sex anymore. Yeah. Because he says he’s up all night. He’s up all night working on his thesis, on his, so he is there, he’s in the house. I mean, that’s part of the problem, but, but in this, he’s just not, he’s not in her bed.

Todd: Right. But then, at this moment that I was talking about, she goes upstairs to, to check his office and he’s not there. So then she comes down and she’s definitely gonna open the door to the room, but then he surprises her from behind and he says, oh, I just went for a walk. Mm-hmm. Could he have, in that moment when she went upstairs and checked on the office, snuck out of the room and like, now is he pretending that he, you know, he just went out for a walk?

It’s so possible. It’s possible. I’m not sure. Every one of these things is very ambiguous. I think there’s the other bit where it starts to kind of escalate, right? Where the young girl Mechi is inside the kitchen and she’s preparing coffee for the husband to go upstairs, so she makes the coffee, the wife goes somewhere else.

When the wife comes back, she’s visualizing in her head Mechi and her husband making out in his office while she’s delivering the coffee. So then. She comes back in downstairs to the kitchen area, the door’s closed. She goes into the kitchen and she starts to feel very, very faint, and we’re like, what’s going on?

Why is she feeling faint? She, at one point, seemed to believe that maybe this woman had poisoned [00:36:00] her coffee because she’s watching her from the living room and she sees her pouring the creamer into her coffee and not her husband’s coffee. She asks her about it. She’s like, well, your husband takes it black.

So she wanders into the kitchen. She’s feeling faint and weird, and then she looks over at the stove and sees that the, the, the gas is on, like the stove is off, but the gas is still on. And so she flips it off, throws open the door, and then the girl comes back down and she says, what were you up there for so long?

She’s like, oh, I, I’m, I’m just delivering the coffee. She’s like, look over here. Does anything look weird to you? And she looks at the stove and she says, oh, the gas is on. And she’s like, no, the gas is off. This is what it’s like when she’s, when it’s on. She’s like, oh, oh, oh. I didn’t know. I thought it was the other way.

Craig: Yeah. You’re conflating a couple of, you’re conflating a couple of instances. There is the coffee thing where she watches the maid make the coffee and she sees her, you know, it could be creamer, but it comes out of like, it seemed like a folded envelope pouch, like it looks like poison. It looks like she’s putting poison or drugs in it or something.

She’s using the paper, yeah. To get it in there. Uhhuh. Yeah, and you’re right that you, when the maid takes the coffee up to the husband, then she has this whole fantasy about them. Making out and having sex and, and those kinds of things. But I, I think that it’s later. I think it’s later that night. ’cause I think Mechi is in bed when she goes down the, the, the wife.

It’s moments later, like goes into the kitchen. Yeah. And, and the only significant thing that happened before that is that we had said that she had kind of crossed her husband in the hallway or whatever, but there was another time when she woke up in the night and she walked up to the door and she looked, she thought she saw her husband go into Maki’s room.

Yeah. And she started to turn the knob, but like she chickened out. And then she looked through the keyhole and again, through this kaleidoscopic thing, you see them doing the nasty or whatever, and then she passes out. But then she wakes up and the husband’s like, oh, I was working in my room and I heard a thud and you passed out.

And I brought, so it’s all of these, it could be, it could be not. For a long time. Yeah. Meanwhile, the woman is also obsessed with this totem, the mom. Yeah, she is. Because, because Maoi keeps it. And it is weird. She keeps, she has it with her everywhere she goes. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And it’s not like it’s a cute little baby doll.

It’s like a wood, it’s like a foot and a half, two foot tall wooden statue that she just carries around and props up everywhere. And it’s like, oh yeah. I keep it with me everywhere I go. ’cause it protects me. It is creepy and weird, but whatever. Uh, people are weird. So it builds up all that suspense. And I, I definitely want to get to like what that builds to.

But real quick, we just mentioned several very intimate scenes. Mm-hmm. This movie, I don’t know, like may, you had said earlier that this may have been during a time when the sensors were. [00:39:00] Being a little bit more lenient and people were pushing the boundaries a little bit more. These nude scenes and sex scenes and the sex scenes are between this very average middle aged man and these two beautiful women, and he just basically has to stand there.

Uh, they’re all over him. Well, they’re all over him and they kind of ride around, but definitely, you know, booby shots. Definitely lots of moaning and stuff. That stuff like the, whether it was fantasy or reality, I mean, I presume between the husband and. Why, if it was meant to be reality, but whether the stuff between the maid and the husband was fantasy or reality, it was erotic.

I would say it was reminiscent of like early nineties American thrillers. Like yeah, it was hot sliver or fatal attraction, or not fatal attraction, basic instinct. You know, something like that. Like yeah, erotic. I was a little grossed out at the longer than I [00:40:00] needed shot of him aggressively sucking the maid’s nipple.

That’s not, that’s not something you see on a, in American movies. Yeah, very often. Too bad. Yeah, but I was a little bit bothered. You’re so disgusting. I don’t know why we’re friends. The, it did bother me a little bit that. I, the camera, the director, whomever it was really seemed to lear at that young woman a lot.

Like, oh yeah, it just seemed like, like there were a lot of shots of like, her, like upper skirt or like Yeah. Shooting like towards her vagina, 

Todd: like it was, but the, the wife was always present or thinking of this. It was all through the wife’s eye. Even when that girl was laying down on the, on the sofa, on the couch, spread eagle.

But it starts, it starts out so weird as a, as a high shot from above. Where, [00:41:00] where it’s not, it’s not so l it’s only when the wife comes into the room that you see from the wife’s perspective, she’s seeing a little more, you know, between the skirt type thing and being a little scandalized by, so I mean it’s act or the husband comes in and then the wife comes in, but.

I think that’s the whole point of the movie. It’s not about us leering at this girl. It’s about this wife being so obsessed with this youth and the danger that it possibly poses to the family. Again, that the iconography for this is that. Are those two cobras that are heart shaped. It’s this dichotomy of this, this, it’s this dangerous love.

You know, it’s two cobras coiled up in a heart shape with it looks like they’re both attacking a rat down below. You know, it’s symbolic of a, of a, of a, of a shady love triangle. You know, you could say the danger of of love, you know, you get in a relationship with somebody and suddenly it gets tried or, or there’s temptations there.

And now it, she’s in this [00:42:00] dangerous situation where this woman is potentially a threat to her, and it gets up in her head. And not only could she not stop thinking about the two of them making out, but she cannot stop thinking about how this girl is young and beautiful, and her body is gorgeous. 

Craig: That was the one scene, the one that we were just talking about that I just, I couldn’t wrap my head around because up until this point, and ultimately I think that the lady was probably just crazy.

I don’t know, but I think she was just nuts. But in this scene, I feel like the wife comes in, sees the maid spread eagle. I mean, she’s wearing a little skirt. It’s not like, well, she’s fallen asleep 

Todd: with her beaver out her legs open. I mean, it’s not like she’s spread eagle or something. It’s like she’s kind of on her side and her legs are open, 

Craig: but the wife walks away and is out of the room, and then the husband comes in and sees the same scene.

And while the wife is still out of the room, he reaches for the girl. And it looked like [00:43:00] he was reaching for her cooch. He touched her leg and. 

Todd: Like her ankle. 

Craig: I, it looks to me like he was reaching further than that. No. Now maybe I’m just disgusting. I don’t know. He’s, he’s 

Todd: too far away for that. Yeah. You were hoping.

I think that 

Craig: Well ’cause No, ’cause the woman, ’cause the wife walks in is like, what are you doing? And he like, 

Todd: recoils like he, he, he says, what’s she doing here? Why is she sleeping here? And then they wake her up and yell at her. It’s so good for him too, because like you really think this guy’s either really, really good at gaslighting her or he’s just completely innocent.

But I’m never, still, I’m never quite sure like, why would he touch this girl’s leg? Yeah. 

Craig: I’m not sure about that at all. I, the, there may very well have been something going on between the husband and the maid, but regardless, think the wife over shadowed was losing it. Yeah, yeah. Now all the su, all the supernatural stuff, like it comes to a head.

Like the woman, she, you know, she tells her husband what she thinks is going on [00:44:00] and he’s like, you’re crazy. And she tells her friend, I think this is going on. And her friend is like, you are crazy. Like people just keep telling you are 

Todd: crazy. You need to go, go to a psychiatrist. He starts to dial one earlier and gets a wrong number.

I mean, like, yeah. It’s very much what she doesn’t want to hear. It could also be gaslighting 

Craig: over and over and over again. What? Right. But why would her friend be doing it, like. Her friend who was the one who said, watch out for your husband. They cheat all the time now. She’s like, no, you’re crazy. Let me, you’re right.

Call a psychiatrist or whatever. You’re right. Um, but whatever, it doesn’t matter. Eventually she becomes so paranoid that she sets up a trap. She sets up a janky thing in the attic window and tells the maid to clean the window, and she does, and she fall. The maid falls out of the window and dies, and of course.

While she was cleaning this window, apparently she had this doll, had this doll on her and it’s Yeah. And it’s down there 

Todd: too. Or did she? I don’t know. The doll’s there. Who knows? Yeah. It’s hard to [00:45:00] know. I, I hated the woman, but at this point, that was the worst, most cruel thing to, for her to set up her death.

That point. I, I lost a lot of empathy for her. 

Craig: Well, the other thing is, at, at some point in the movie, the husband thinks she’s crazy, but she says, I wanna fire her. Yeah. And the husband’s like, well, I think that’s dumb, but if you want to go ahead. Yeah. And she’s like, no, I guess it’s fine. 

Todd: Like, yeah, 

Craig: just fire her.

You don’t have to. 

Todd: I agree. That’s what I was thinking. I was like, it’s the classic divorce versus murder. Plot. That’s, you know, like, like if you don’t like your spouse, just divorce ’em. Don’t murder them. Just 

Craig: get a divorce. Right? Yeah. Anyway, so anyway, she sets this girl up to get killed. The girl does get killed.

Now she’s being haunted by this totem. Yeah, she tries to get rid of it. I don’t know what she does with it. She throws it out the window. She throws it in the woods. Her daughter finds it in the garden, brings it back. She takes it out and she wraps it up and tries to sink it in the pond. The dog [00:46:00] brings it back.

It’s, she’s freaking out about it. She tells her husband, he’s like, no, you’re crazy dolls. Don’t do that. And to prove it to you, I’m gonna put this doll on your bedroom bureau. And you better not move it. Or I’m going to put you in the looney bin. Yeah. And by the way, I’m leaving for the night. See you later.

Yeah, I’m leaving for four 

Todd: days. We knew what was happening. This is burnt offerings. 

Craig: Yeah. He leaves her in the house with this doll and then there’s a whole sequence of the doll is menacing her or isn’t it? Right? Like the doll is moving. It’s changing location. It’s popping up in windows. It’s changing sizes, Uhhuh.

Um, sometimes it’s just the doll. Sometimes it’s like a ghostly, humanized. When it was the ghostly, humanized version of the doll. And when I say that, I mean it’s, it’s the girl, an actress. That’s, I that’s what I was gonna ask. I didn’t know if it was meant to be the maid or not. I couldn’t tell. 

Todd: I’m pretty sure it was meant to be the maid.

Yeah, she’s, her face is all white. But yeah, I think 

Craig: so too. But. Yeah, she’s in the white makeup. She’s dressed just like the doll. And, and sometimes like that image is kind of superimposed over the doll, so it’s both of them and it, you know, the ghost thing is chasing her with that enormous cleaver and like he, and it’s very haunted house and it’s a dark and stormy night.

Now, the only thing that had me a little bit intrigued in this, because for the most part, this whole haunting part just felt like an afterschool special to me. Like, it, it just felt like, ooh, scary ghost story. Oh, yeah. 

Todd: I liked it. I, I mean, I thought it was very much of its time, but for that, I, I dug it. I thought it was effective.

Uh, 

Craig: it was okay. The thing that troubled me was that they made a point of her, the mom. [00:48:00] Calling her friend, the same friend that we’ve seen a bazillion times and saying, please come over. Mm-hmm. I’m all alone and I need somebody. And initially the friend says she will come over, but then she calls and says, I can’t go out.

It’s raining. Like she, she does have an amazing perm, so I get it. Why she can’t go out in the rain. But I, I really, really thought that the way that the movie was going to end Oh, was that the wife was going to attack and kill and kill the ghost, the friend, yes. Only to find out that it really was the 

Todd: friend.

And then the husband would find that I thought it would be her husband coming in, but yeah, same deal. Yeah. I, I also thought that actually would’ve been a pretty cool ending. 

Craig: I would’ve liked it better. I mean, the ending is fine, I suppose, like this battle goes on for a while. 

Todd: Like five minutes. Oh, 10 minutes.

And it, it deliberately calls out a couple movies. Like there’s a whole shining moment. Yeah. Where she’s hacking her way into the bathroom and then when she goes into the butterfly room, the [00:49:00] butterfly case gets broken and it’s the birds, you know, those butterflies are coming out and attacking her. Oh yeah.

I kind of enjoyed that actually. Uh, and you don’t know if it’s real or not. Like you just don’t know if this is real or if this is all in her head. But there’s no question that this woman is running around the house smashing things up to smithereens. Oh, she’s destroying the house, right? Yeah. And they end up in the bathroom.

There’s a struggle of legs. There’s, you know, they’re like all on top of each other and she wife gets a above this doll slash ghost woman and stabs it. And there is blood. There’s blood that goes over her face and on the wall. And she looks down and the doll is dead. Right. It’s got a knife in it and she collapses.

And then the husband comes home in the daytime and walks into the living room to find the wife sitting on the floor dressed up like the doll. Sitting up with that cleaver in her hand. Just like the doll? Yes. And the doll’s in front of her. 

Craig: And just kind of a crazy. Vacant look on her face. Yeah. Like, like she is possessed or just gone like, I don’t know.

Or gone. Yeah. I, I actually, I, I, I kind of liked that ending, but that ending would’ve felt more appropriate to me in an episode of Tales From the Crypt. I know I say that all the time. All I mean by that really is that I think that this would’ve worked better in short form. Oh yeah. I didn’t need an hour and 50 minutes of it.

This could have been a tight 25 minutes, and I think it would’ve been fun and spooky. 

Todd: I agree. But that’s all it would’ve been. I don’t think it would’ve been as intense. You didn’t find the movie intense. I found the movie. Intense. I was really in this woman’s head. I was really questioning the whole time.

Is she imagining it? Is she not? I was scouring every scene for clues. I was looking for ways that the filmmaker was c clueing me into, you know, is this real, is this not? And I was. Both Maddened and delighted [00:51:00] by the fact that I was never sure. I never found a tell. There was never a moment in this movie. I think there’s not a moment in this movie you can point to and say, well, because of this thing, you know, for a fact that she’s crazy and that nothing was going on, or vice versa.

I just don’t think there’s a moment in the movie that you can identify, and I think that’s really hard to pull off that degree of subtlety and ambiguity over an hour and a half. If this had been a Tales from the Crypt movie, and by the way, I, I totally agree with you. It played like an episode of, like an extended episode of Tales from the Crypt.

I mean, it’s a similar kind of plot. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: Most of the tales from the crypt stories have, but it just would’ve been simple and cheesy and it would’ve needed a twist ending, and I don’t think you would’ve had so much. I, I just don’t think it would’ve been as masterful. 

Craig: I, I don’t think it would’ve kept me, it would’ve been less ambiguous, I think.

Yeah. I think that it would’ve been more clear that there was. Likely something supernatural going on if you condensed it necessarily. So 

Todd: yeah, for sure. Yeah. But I don’t know man, I, this movie had a lot of things going for it. [00:52:00] I liked the color schemes. One of the things that the colors are symbolic. They have this term here in China called, he’s wearing a green hat, and that basically means a guy’s wife is cheating on him.

The color green is symbolic of. Extramarital affair, cuck holding or that kind of thing. And so I thought it was really interesting early on, there’s a whole sequence of moments when she’s first imagining that this woman might be cheating on her husband. It’s like you said, it’s like shot through a, almost like shot through the bottom of a Tumblr, but everything’s very green except for some red to symbolize the lust.

Like there’s a red rose, the girl’s robe is red. At one point the bed behind the dad and the maid making out the sheets are red, but actually their sheets are green. And then it cuts to the woman having this dream lying in bed. There’s a shot from above where her sheets are green, and then the next morning she goes into her husband’s office and whereas the [00:53:00] rest of the of the house is decorated with this big, bright red carpet that’s quite expansive, his office has a.

Green carpet in it. You know, I thought that was really interesting how I used those colors in there to symbolize the adultery and then the stark red, which, uh, symbolizes a lot in Asian culture. But obviously we’re talking about love, we’re talking about lust, we’re talking about romance. I just felt like a lot of anxiety here.

Between male and female, between a husband and wife, a lot of that anxious tension whi, which by the way is so present in Asian culture. I mean, I, like I said, to an extent it’s, it’s a part of every relationship. But of course it’s really intense here. Like people are very worried about this. Uh, it’s just a, I can see probably in the sixties as well, up through the eighties, you know, in Korea when mores are changing and things are opening up and women are starting to be given more opportunities or, 

Craig: yeah.

Todd: I can imagine this in a, in a time period where it probably really spoke to people. 

Craig: Yeah. And I, I, it could speak to anybody I think, [00:54:00] but I think that there’s a lot, and this is coming from not a very worldly perspective, but it seems that in other parts of the world, there’s a lot more stigma around.

Infidelity and divorce, and it seemed there’s a lot more shame associated with that. It’s just so prevalent in America that we just don’t even bat an eye like, oh yeah, well, that’s the way things go. But I, you know, when you’re talking about colors and stuff, I just, I didn’t feel watching the movie that it warranted that kind of scrutiny.

Like, I don’t, and, and, and I don’t know, maybe it does, and honest, like, I didn’t like it. And to be perfectly honest with the listeners, I wouldn’t recommend it. I, I didn’t have a good time. I thought it was boring. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. When I feel that way about something and I come in thinking Jesus Christ again, like, why do I let him pick movies?

I don’t when will I ever learn? But then when I come in and I hear you talk about it, [00:55:00] and I hear the things that you appreciate, and I’m being a hundred percent serious, it makes me think about it. From a different perspective. And it, it makes me happy that you enjoyed it. Like, like I’m, I’m glad, I’m glad you enjoyed it.

I’m, I’m, I’m happy that you picked it out and you were, you know, excited about seeing it and you found something to enjoy in it. And I’m, I’m glad for you and May maybe, I mean, I, I can’t imagine why, but maybe there are some listeners who lean more towards your taste than mine. And if that’s the case, then you should, if you were like, I don’t want to compare it to Vampire Rose Libo, ’cause it wasn’t like that, but if, if you like that, like Todd likes these weird things, then sure.

Check it out. It’s so funny. 

Todd: I would never put this in the same category as Pyrus Lesbos. No, not, it’s absolutely not. It’s, 

Craig: I, I only, I only put it in the like, weird [00:56:00] crackpot genre. This isn’t as exploitive or anything. It’s a little bit exploitive, but not to that extent. It’s just something that I would never, ever choose to watch.

Todd: I think this is an arty film and I, you know, it’s not my job or my desire to try to convince you that every movie I pick is really great and you know that. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: But we could not be more po and I’m glad Yeah. That you maybe found a, a, a few more things to like about it during the course of our conversation, but we could not be more polar opposite about this movie.

I thought this movie was really well made, very carefully made, very thoughtfully made. I was into it the whole time. I thought it was very psychologically dense. I thought it was highly symbolic, almost. Too symbolic in a way, like it did, it ventures at times into a little corniness, like how artsy maybe it’s becoming, but you know, that’s my take on it.

I, I, I think it’s maybe sometimes a little too artsy for its own good, but I don’t [00:57:00] really knock that against the movie. I like movies like that too. I like symbolism being used and imagery being shown again and again to prove a point. You’re right. Maybe there were a few too many shots through that heart snake thing, like we got the idea, but just in case here are a couple more.

And then at one point that statue like almost literally attacks her, right? Yeah. At least it falls on her as though it does so, and I was like, 

Craig: thank God. Like, 

Todd: thank God they 

Craig: finally paid that off. Right. So, I mean, and it’s not, she just kind it, she just, it’s. Statue. She just, it is not even a statue. It’s like a taxidermy.

It’s like two cobras wrapped around. Yeah. Like you said, like a muskrat or something. But it’s, it’s not like a stone statue. It’s like taxidermy. And she like falls into it. So like these snakes are face to face and like her head falls in between. So it’s like wrapped around her neck. Yeah. And she just like struggles with it on the ground.

It’s not like it’s moving or anything. She’s just like, ah. But it was funny and I was glad it paid off. 

Todd: Yeah, the house is full of taxidermy actually, which kind of [00:58:00] makes sense because he’s uh, this professor who’s in biology or whatever. But there’s a lot, I think there’s a lot we could unpack there too.

Like with the butterflies with the birds, they’re constantly birds in the house. She sees a crow outside and throws a rock at it earlier and we know what that symbolizes. You know, that’s the same over here. It is there, you know, kind of a bringer of doom. I thought it was interesting that every time she’s prowling around at night, there’s always a shot framed with that owl in the foreground.

The night bird is there watching while she’s out watching, and I did after a while wonder if that was supposed to clue me into the fact that maybe she’s dreaming. I think there’s a lot to unpack here, probably more than we could ever do justice. That’s how good a movie I think it is. I would recommend that if you like older films that are a slower burn, you like this time period in particular, uh, it has slight J elements.

To it. I would recommend you watch it if you like these psychological thrillers that are a little more ambiguous and a horror that you’re not quite sure if it all takes place in their head or not. This is right up there with the [00:59:00] best of them. I think it’s just, you gotta deal with an artsy movie. You gotta deal with a different culture and a different time period.

But same. And if you’re uncultured 

Craig: swine 

Todd: like me, like you

else, you’re open to this stuff. I know you, I’m, this is not a dig at you at all. I get it. I get it. I’m probably the same reason why I, maybe I’m, I don’t know. Like you like those. Hammer horror films, the Vincent Price movies and things, but they’re not generally your cup of tea. No. Whereas I eat those up all day long, you know?

Yeah. That’s kind of in a similar vein maybe. 

Craig: No, and I do, I I think it’s good that we, in some ways at least are that our tastes are, are different. Divergent. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. If, if we, well, I mean, it’s just, I appreciate being exposed to new things, but I think that it’s also, you know, as, as, as far as the podcast goes, people tell us that they appreciate that we do a wide variety of things.

So I’m, I’m glad that you bring these things to the table. 

Todd: Well, thank you guys so much for, uh, joining us this time around. If you like this movie or haven’t seen it and end up going to watch it, we’d love to hear your comments. Go ahead and weigh in on the discussion on our website, chainsaw horror.com, or go to our social media.

Just type in two guys in a chainsaw podcast and you’ll find that there. We would love to hear what other. Foreign films that we are overlooking. Some J horse, some khor. Liz keeps telling me we need to do more Indonesian horror, and I fully agree with that. We should have her on the show to help explain some of it to us.

Yeah, drop us a note, let us know what we need to do and we’ll put it on a request list. We’ll definitely seriously consider it and uh, hopefully it’ll be on an upcoming show. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.