Tara and Andrew Versus The Scarecrow Video Movie Guide

What’s this, you ask? Another episode in one week? Has the world gone mad? The answer to that question is obviously yes, but that is completely unrelated to anything having to do with the release of this special Halloween episode.

Did you know that there are twelve* movies in the Ring franchise? We didn’t, but now we do, because we watched Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Like with last Christmas’s Saw episode, it seemed like a good idea at the time [citation needed] but once we were six or seven movies in, fatigue started to set in. How many times can you watch a creepy ghost lady come crawling judderingly out of a television before you start stifling a yawn? About four, if our extremely rigorously conducted scientific study is to be believed— keep an eye out for that in the next edition of [ACADEMIC JOURNAL TBD].

For those not familiar with the series, Ringu is about a mysterious videotape that curses anyone who watches it, dooming them to die in seven days time. A reporter investigating some of these deaths gets wrapped up in the curse herself (himself if you’re one of those book-readin’ sorts) and tries to figure out a way to free her/himself from their impending doom, with… oh, let’s just say… mixed results. And then they made seven more movies about it. The story is based on a series of books written by Koji Suzuki, which range from good to great, although we should note that we haven’t read the most recently translated book yet. Still, the guy has a good track record, so it would be a surprise for it to turn out to be dogshit. The movies diverge from some pretty important elements of the books almost immediately, which is a bummer, because from Sprial onward things start getting pretty weird in a good way.

Anyhoo, if you’re interested in seeing the trailers for everything that we’ve watched for this episode, we’ve got you covered— not all of these are subtitled, unfortunately:

Ring 0

Ringu

The Ring Virus

The Ring

Rasen

Ringu 2

The Ring 2

Rings

Sadako 3D

Sadako 3D 2

Sadako

Sadako vs. Kayako

also, if any of the Super Furry Animals read this we would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t sue us back to the stone age. thanks in advance!

• we realize three-quarters of the way through the episode that there’s actually a couple of Chinese horror movies about Sadako, but we were already at our tipping point for movies where a Sadako comes clambering out of televisions, so the merits of those will just have to remain a mystery for the ages. sorry!

Hello, everyone! Here’s a special episode for you all wherein we talk about our experiences with the newly created virtual horror/genre film festival Nightstream, which we “attended” (as credentialed press, no less!) earlier this month. We love horror movies, even though a large number of them end up being stupid as fuuuuuuck (case in point— I ( Andrew) have Friday the 13th, Part 3 playing in the background as I’m writing this, and it is astoundingly stupid) in one way or another, so the opportunity to see a bunch of new horror and horror-adjacent movies before they were widely released was a no-brainer. We love film festivals— the Seattle International Film Festival being cancelled this year was a bummer, but a necessary one, given the plague rampaging through our country. A virtual film festival is a very different experience, obviously, but the folks behind Nightstream managed to construct an experience that was as close to the physical thing as either of us could have wanted. We watched fifteen movies over the week Nightstream, and in this episode not only will you be subjected to our hot takes on those movies (whose trailers we’ve included below, where we could find them— The Night, Lucky, and Honeydew are missing here), but also the birth of our a cappella careers.

Enjoy(?)!

Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist

It Cuts Deep

Anything for Jackson

Bloody Hell

Ema

May the Devil Take You Too

Queen of Black Magic

Frank & Zed

Mandibles

Black Bear

Bleed With Me

Rose Plays Julie

Boy, that’s a bad trailer. If you get the DVD version of Faithless, you’ll find, as we did, that the designers of the DVD decided to play the trailer first when you tried to choose the option to watch the movie, which seems like a questionable design choice. It seems pretty likely that you’ve committed yourself to watching a movie if you’ve purchased or rented the DVD, but maybe they were just wanting to give people one last out, or something? Not the best call, because it resulted in a very confusing minute and a half where we were like, “This can’t be how the movie starts, can it? Is… is Ingmar Bergman bad?” The answer, thankfully, is no— his script paired with Liv Ullmann’s directing makes for a much more compelling movie than this trailer would let on, and it’s in Swedish and properly subtitled, so the awkward heavy-handed dubbing seen here is mercifully absent. The movie is about the havoc adultery can wreak on a family, so there are a few plot threads here that are vaguely similar to last week’s episode, as the alternate title of this episode and the fact that it’s a movie written by Ingmar Bergman would suggest, things are quite a bit more emotionally brutal here than they were in Le Bonheur.

Here’s a brief introduction to the movie that Ullmann did at a screening of Faithless that happened at the Toronto International Film Festival a few years back— it’s well worth checking out, if you have fifteen minutes to spare:

This is the last of our current six-episode run, but we will be back in a couple of months with a new batch of episodes that are pipin’ hot and fresh from our word ovens and look, we’re going to keep using that as a euphemism for our mouths, so you all had better just get real comfortable with it. You’ll be hearing from us again relatively soon, though— we have a horror-themed special episode in the works that may bring the wrath of Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals down upon our heads which will theoretically come out on Halloween rather than Christmas. Theoretically. It’s like a cliffhanger, sort of— will we get our shit together enough to watch (as of the time of this writing) nine more movies in an as-yet-to-be-identified franchise and edit our incoherent ramblings into a moderately more coherent discussion of the series in time for the best holiday? WE WILL SEE.

This week we're watching Le Bonheur, one of Agnes Varda's contributions to the French New Wave cinema movement, and let us tell you, it is a delightful time. Le Bonheur means "happiness" in French, and just stop for a second and think about all of the movies that have had the word “happiness” in their title. Todd Solondz's Happiness. Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katikuris. Sensing a trend? You know the old saying, the first time you notice something it's a coincidence, the second occurrence that you notice is irrefutable proof of a trend that you really shouldn't even bother looking further into by searching for other movies with the word happiness in the title on IMDB. We’re all familiar with that old chestnut, right? Right?

Le Bonheur isn't as grim as either of those movies, thankfully, but the title definitely is... shall we say.. misleading. It’s about a French family who seem to live a pretty idyllic life, and then one of the members of the family does a thing that fucks that all up not very much for some of them and a whole whole WHOLE lot for others. We hope you like what happens in this week’s episode, which focuses on a similar situation with about a hundred times the intensity.

Also in this episode:

We talk about how great Patti Harrison is! She’s a trans comedian who has been in a bunch of different shows, and who has made several pretty excellent videos for Seriously.TV that are on YouTube. To wit:

So, yeah. She’s the best, pretty much, and if you disagree… we don’t know, burn in hell or whatever? Yeah, that seems about right. See ya next week!

First off, we’d like to apologize in advance to any chuds who might be listening to this podcast— we get into a bunch of leftist talk about how we shouldn’t be letting companies grind us all into a fine paste in the service of making as much money as they possibly can. Sorry, fuckers! Just kidding— we’re not sorry at all! In fact, while we’re at it:

• ARREST THE COPS WHO MURDERED BREONNA TAYLOR ALREADY FOR FUCK’S SAKE
• DONALD JOHNALD TRUMP IS AN UTTER DISGRACE TO THE PRESIDENCY AND HE AND HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS ARE CRIMINALS DOZENS OF TIMES OVER WHO SHOULD ALL BE SHOT OUT OF A CANNON INTO THE SUN
• BEN SHAPIRO ISN’T AN INTELLECTUAL, HE’S A WHINY-VOICED LITTLE DIPSHIT WHOSE A CAPPELLA COVER OF “WAP” FUCKING SUCKED
• BEING ASKED TO WEAR A MASK ISN’T A SUPPRESSION OF YOUR FREEDOMS, IT’S AN ATTEMPT TO KEEP YOU FROM SPEWING VIRUSES ALL OVER THE PLACE AND SHOULD BE ALSO USED AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO TALK LIKE TOM HARDY’S VERSION OF BANE FROM THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, LIKE, ALL THE TIME AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU FOR NOT RECOGNIZING THIS ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY

Anyway, Matewan is a period piece that was a serious labor of love for John Sayles about the Battle of Matewan and it’s got James Earl Jones and Chris Cooper and a young Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy in it, and if you weren’t immediately turned off by the idea of a non-fictional period piece set in West Virginia in the early twentieth century you’re a better person than either of us, theoretically.

Also in this episode:

We talk about the Ghoul Boys, better known as Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej from Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural / True Crime, which is a YouTube series where the two of them explore unsolved crime cases and visit allegedly haunted locations. We don’t blame you if you’re rolling your eyes and doing the slow jerk motion right now, because there are roughly seven million TV shows that do this sort of thing, but what sets Buzzfeed Unsolved apart from the pack is that Ryan and Shane are both very funny and have a great chemistry together. Shane comes at the supernatural stuff with a severe skepticism that avoids running into un-fun killjoy territory, and Ryan is a true believer who gets freaked out by the most innocuous stuff, and they are a fucking delight. Here are a couple of episodes that are good entry points:

Who the fuck amongst us knew that Annabelle was a fuckin’ Raggedy Ann? Andrew didn’t. If you did, please, feel free to heap scorn and shame upon him.

JAZZ IT

Buzzfeed Unsolved aside, the two of them started a new production studio / YouTube channel with one of their friends from Buzzfeed Tasty, Steven Lim, called Watcher, where they branch out from spooky stuff and do things like visit massive soda stores:

or pit highly rated dishes from restaurants up against a version of the same dish that in some cases has been in the family for generations:

or have a puppet professor lecture about weird stories from history while having two contestants compete for a small trophy filled with jelly beans by trying to guess what wild turns the story they’re learning about will take:

In summation, they’re fantastic.

Lastly, at the end of this episode we make a plea for you all to consider supporting not just your local independent video stores, but also charities that are dedicated to helping people of color and the LGBTQIA+ communities. There are tons of worthy charities out there, but here’s a few that we’ve donated to recently:

The Marsha P. Johnson Institute: “The Marsha P. Johnson Institute (MPJI) protects and defends the human rights of BLACK transgender people. We do this by organizing, advocating, creating an intentional community to heal, developing transformative leadership, and promoting our collective power.”

The Transgender Law Center: “Transgender Law Center (TLC) is the largest national trans-led organization advocating for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures. Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation.”

The Center for Black Equity: An organization focused on “breaking barriers to accessing employment and opportunity through equipping community leaders with the tools, experiences, and knowledge that enable them to unlock the leadership and problem-solving potential of themselves and others.”

Showing Up For Racial Justice: “SURJ is a national network of groups and individuals working to undermine white supremacy and to work for racial justice. Through community organizing, mobilizing, and education, SURJ moves white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability.”

We know that times are tough and weird right now for a lot of people, but if you’re able to donate, please consider it— every little bit helps.

Enigma! The movie so nice, it kept Andrew from falling asleep during it— twice! High praise, indeed! Enigma is a spy / code-breaking drama from 2003 about a guy who is loooosely based on Alan Turing. And we do mean loosely. That’s not important right now— what’ s important is that this movie was produced by Lorne Michaels and Mick Jagger. What the fuck, right? It’s a pretty unremarkable movie in spite of this— honestly, would it have killed them to cut away from the code-breaking “action” for five minutes to insert a It’s Pat sketch or something? Just a lengthy shot of a turntable playing the first side of Their Satanic Majesties Request? Could it have been any more boring than what actually did make the final cut of the movie? The answer, of course, is yes but they still should have done it because it would have been funny. Why don’t we have lucrative film deals in Hollywood yet? Totally inexplicable.

Not sure why they went with a boardwalk caricature art style for their poster, but oooookay. Also, it’s admittedly been a couple of months, but why is the ball made of money? So many questions!

Episode two of six! Collect `em all!

Hey, do you all like martial arts? Football/Soccer? People mistaking snakes for belts? Tango fighting? Movies that end on a “joke” about the antagonist of the movie having several appendages amputated against his will? No? Well you better GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE THEN, because that’s what you’re in for with this week’s episode about 1983’s Hong Kong action/sports/comedy film, The Champions. Enjoy!

Also in this episode:

Taskmaster! It’s great! It’s a British comedy / variety show where comedians and TV hosts and such are given ludicrous tasks and compete against one another to see who can complete them the “best”. There are several seasons of it, and all of the first six (and part of the seventh at the time of writing this) are uploaded on their official YouTube channel. Here’s a couple of clips to whet your appetite. gross.

A task to make some VERY exotic sandwiches.

Tim Key is the best.

The full first episode, in it's entire entirety

Oh shit.

oh fuck

How do we do this again?

Uh… MOVIES!

Just what is a movie, though? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a movie as— aw forget it, this isn’t working. Hey, everybody! We’re back and we’ve got six new episodes for you all, piping hot and fresh out of the podcast oven… which is our mouths? Nope, too gross.

We’re back! In this episode we watch 1999’s What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted?, a movie that we had never heard of that is a sequel to Once Were Warriors, another movie that neither of us had seen or heard of. It’s about street gangs and family drama in New Zealand, and there are weird tonal shifts and abrupt endings and characters who are retconned into existence only to be killed almost immediately so that they can get the plot rolling. Which is weird, right? It’s not just us who think that? Shouldn’t the death of a character in the movie carry some sort of emotional resonance with it, and not just be like hey who’s that guy wait he’s dead now who cares? What we’re saying is that the producers of this movie should have created a time machine to travel into the future to read this blog post about their movie and then hired us to punch up their script and then gotten mad at us when we put werewolves in it.

Other stuff:

We reference Tom Scharpling’s bit from the Best Show about jokes. Here’s the clip we’re talking about, which we probably have linked to before in a previous blog post at some point but who gives a fuck, because it’s so great:

We also discuss clips from the Korean TV station SBS’s show Animal Farm, which are usually your run of the mill “Hey, look at this animal doing this funny and/or weird thing” but which also tend to have excellent titles, such as:

Cat Actually "Talks" To Give Her Treats?! *LIT*

Maltese Dog Walks Backwards AF Without Rear Sensors

Cray Chicken Beats The Hell Out Of Doggo With A Fly Kick LOL

In conclusion, this is clearly the best YouTube channel ever, thank you for coming to our TEDx talk.

Yeah. All eight Saw movies. We watched them, for some reason. And then we took a looooooooooooong time to edit the episode, and then Andrew thought that it would be funny to release it on Christmas, and hurriedly got his shit together to crank this bad boy out. Again, you’re welcome. By the way, it should go without saying that you owe us for this one. We’ll be sending someone out to all of your places of residence to get our compensation shortly.

SO. The Saw franchise. Making this episode seemed like a great idea before we actually sat down and started watching them. Let’s just get this out of the way up front— they’re all pretty much what you expect them to be. Dumb, needlessly gory, not actually all that scary. What you might NOT expect is that the back story for the series starts getting ridiculously byzantine after the second movie, and by the end of the fourth movie that train has completely fucking derailed. We’re talking boxcars laying by the side of the tracks that a family of opossums has claimed for themselves, goods strewn about the countryside, a train conductor hurriedly changing into the clothes of the passenger he knocked unconscious so that he can blend into the crowd and escape the scene of the accident, travelling as a drifter from town to town, never telling anyone his real name, solving crimes and helping people in need— wait, what were we talking about again? Watching all of the Saw movies? Really? Are you sure? It doesn’t sound like something anyone who valued their free time and mental well-being would do.

j/k, it’s a pretty gross movie.