Join us as we dive into the fourth installment of horror comedy month with our in-depth review of ‘The Frighteners’ (1996) by Peter Jackson.

In this episode, we discuss everything from Michael J. Fox’s charming performance to Peter Jackson’s craftsmanship and CGI innovations that foreshadowed his later work. We also reminisce about Jackson’s earlier films like ‘Dead Alive’ and ‘Heavenly Creatures,’ and touch – quite extensively! – on the tonal balance of comedy and horror that this movie tries to strike.

Tune in for all the details, fun facts, and our favorite moments. Plus, don’t miss our thoughts on incredible performances by D Wallace, Jeffrey Combs, and more!

Episode 441, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we’re going back into the past this week for the gosh fourth installment now on our horror comedy month. This time, uh, you dug out, uh, one I had kind of forgotten about the Frighteners 1996 movie by Peter Jackson.

I was surprised to be reminded that this was the same year that Scream came out. Can you believe it? Oh, this and Scream in the same year. Wow. They, I know this came out in the summer. I don’t remember if Scream was a summer movie or not, but uh, I don’t remember either. But this is also Peter Jackson.

Before Peter Jackson was getting way in over his head on things I, I wouldn’t even say over his head. I mean, he pulled it off, but gosh, the Lord of the Rings took years off that guy’s life. 

Craig: Uhhuh. Oh yeah. But it also. Made him bazillions of dollars. Yeah. Right. Why so? 

Todd: Why does the guy bother making movies anymore?

Right? Like, uh, gosh, I remember, you know, when he was doing that, he was shooting all three movies at once and while he was shooting the second one, I think he was editing the first one and they were doing script rights on the third. And, uh, all this, you know, somebody’s interviewing him while he’s on a plane doing all this, and he is like, I would not recommend doing this.

Like, yeah, never again am I gonna try to shoot three gigantic movies all at once. 

Craig: Well, that was crazy. I mean, it was, I think that it was brilliant. I think that it was the way to do it. You get everybody committed, you go and you just get it all done. I, I, I think that it was, but I, I. Can’t begin to imagine how taxing that was for everybody involved.

Yeah. And Michael J. Fox, the star of this movie. This movie I believe was also filmed in New Zealand. This is the movie that made Michael J. Fox say, no, I’m not doing this. I’m done. I’m not, I’m not gonna be away from my family for these extended periods of time. So he went back to TV and had. Great success.

Yeah. But you know, it’s, it’s, it’s fun that he’s in this it, Peter Jackson, you know, I picked this movie ’cause I was trying to think of horror comedies that I liked or that I didn’t remember very well and wanted to return to. And this was kind of one of those, I, a big draw for me was D Wallace. I love her.

And we don’t talk about her enough, in my opinion. I, well, we 

Todd: talk about her an awful lot too.

You tried to get her on the show once. 

Craig: It was a big, it was a big draw for me. We’ve never really talked about Michael J. Fox, I don’t think. 

Clip: No. 

Craig: And he’s great. And such kind of like a cultural touchstone of our generation. So that was a draw to, frankly, I had forgotten that Peter Jackson directed it until you reminded me.

Hmm. And, and going back and looking at it again. I think that it’s. It’s obvious. It’s very Peter Jackson. Yeah. For 

Todd: Peter 

Craig: Jackson. But this is before the whole Lord of the Ring Saga. And then I haven’t watched the Hobbit movies. I’ve heard they’re not as good. Oh God. But that makes sense ’cause they had to film them kind of quickly.

And it, correct me if I’m wrong, I’ll feel really stupid. But he also did the King Kong remake. Yep. Correct. Yep, he did. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: I loved that movie. I think it has its critics. I absolutely loved it. I saw it in the theater and it was the end when King Kong is up on the Empire State Building or whatever, like I, I was dizzy and scared and I, and I knew it was going to happen, but.

That final scene between that computer generated ape and Naomi Watts, I was fucking weeping. Wow. Wow. Like I was 

Clip: just 

Craig: bawling and I thought that that movie was beautiful and really super well made. And so I love that. But this is before all that, and honestly, my favorite Peter Jackson movie is Heavenly Creatures.

Mm. Have you seen it? You know what? Oddly enough I have not. Oh my God, Todd. It is so good. It’s like a true crime story, right? Uhhuh. It stars Melanie Linsky and Kate Winsley. Mm. As these two teenage girls, and it’s a true crime movie about something that happened in New Zealand, I believe, where these two teenage girls, I don’t know how much of it was fictionalized or sensationalized, but they form a very, very close friendship that kind of develops into a little bit more than a friendship, and then they conspire in the murder of one of their mothers.

It was the first time I had ever seen Melanie Linsky, who has gone on to be. A prolific and very successful actress who I am, a huge, huge fan of, and of course, Kate Winslet pre Titanic. Yeah, and it’s understated and I’m sure it was shot on a low budget and it’s dark and, and so well acted and so compelling.

The Frighteners is great. And I really like it, and I’m gonna say good things about it, though I do have some conflicting feelings, but I super, super recommend Heavenly Creatures. It’s not a horror film, but it’s dark and I think you’ll really like it. 

Todd: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody says great things about Heavenly Creatures, and I think Heavenly Creatures is the movie that really turned a lot of Hollywood people onto Peter Jackson.

And you know, when you read about it, it seems like a lot of people agreed to work on this movie because they admired Heavenly Creatures so much. I may be wrong in my recollection, but wasn’t it at least nominated for some Academy Awards? I 

Craig: don’t know. I don’t remember 

Todd: Some awards, maybe Golden Globes, something like that.

I just remember it was a very well regarded movie, and I’m pretty sure it won an award or two somewhere now I was into Peter Jackson. Before Peter Jackson was big, I really, 

Craig: you introduced me. What was the, what’s that super, super gory one that we’ve done? Dead Alive? Yeah. I had, I don’t think I had seen that before.

You brought it to the table. 

Todd: That was something that I discovered at a comic book rental stop that had all kinds of weird movies and old movies from like foreign places in Japan and the East and things like that. And they had a number of Peter Jackson movies and one of which was Meet the Feebles. Have you ever seen that?

Craig: No. That’s so funny because before you moved to China, you gave me a physical copy of that movie. Oh, did I like a, A dvd? Yeah. A DVD or something. Oh my 

Todd: God. And you still haven’t seen it? 

Craig: No, I still haven’t seen, and I don’t have any idea where it is, but I remember very specifically you gave me that and a couple others that I don’t remember, but I specifically remember that one.

It 

Todd: is wacky. It’s like if, if you took the Muppets and gave them all heroin and I mean it’s just, it’s crazy. And before that he did bad taste and or maybe it was right after that or between that. Peter Jackson’s one of these guys who, and there are a lot of them, you know, directors and producers and people who really got into film through a love of special effects.

Yeah. Practical effects, makeup and things. And so this guy was down in New Zealand cooking up masks and things in his oven and putting together movies. Bad taste, which we should almost do on here sometime. It is the wackiest. 

Craig: You may have given me 

Todd: that one too. I think I did. Yeah. I, I do remember owning Bad Taste.

I didn’t remember owning Meat the Feebles, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s, it’s about these aliens that land in New Zealand and like chaos ensues. It’s like an exercise in bad taste. It’s exactly what it says it is, but it’s very inventive and it’s really impressive that this guy kind of put it all together himself.

The special effects, all the bits and things like that in there. He directed it. He did the camera work and all that. Obviously there’s lots of actors and other people involved, but you know, the whole thing is kind of his baby and he’s doing all the stuff, and so it’s no surprise now that you know the, the trajectory of his career.

But this seems like that middle spot where as CGI became Uhhuh a thing that became his new favorite toy. 

Craig: Well, and and he’s an innovator. I mean his studio or, or company wida. Yeah. It has been historically groundbreaking, I think revered as, as some of the best CGI effects that we’ve seen. And this isn’t where it started, but I read somewhere that like, you know, as, as their effects company or whatever they were, they had one computer and j and for the effects of this movie, they had to expand to like 33 or something like that.

Yeah. But so, but then going into then the Lord of the Rings, which was, you know. People have different opinions about CGI. It’s, it’s one of those things, it’s kinda like the cat’s out of the bag. Like it’s here. We, you know, it’s not going anywhere. Yeah. And I don’t have any problem. I, I still love practical effects a lot, but CGI, when done well, can be.

Beautiful and amazing and can really realize these fantastic thing. And I think that Peter Jackson has a history of that and, and this movie, you’re absolutely correct, is kind of at the dawn of him really leaning hard into it. Yeah. And it’s not perfect. It’s 1996, but I think for 1996. Six. It looks really fucking good.

It’s 

Todd: actually very impressive for 1996. It’s hard to believe, you know, sometimes Weta, it kind of outshined ILM and, and maybe still does, does in some ways. I don’t know. You know, it just, I was always surprised that ILM as big and as well established for decades as they were, and of course they, I, I think they were among the first to put any CGI in a movie.

Still. This guy with his one computer turned 30, some computers can almost outdo the stuff that they were doing at that time. ILM had a lot of catching up to do on the CGI at some point, and it was people like Peter Jackson and Robert Ekka who were pushing the envelope with, with, you know, Robert Ekka had his image movers.

It’s no surprise that he produced this movie. It’s almost got the stamp of a Robert Ekka movie on it too. You know? It does, it does it because Robert Ekka, he does these. Fun, comedic, kind of wacky adventure. Yeah. Fast moving, but also innovative. He, he’s constantly pushing the envelope and I don’t know if anybody had really seen CGI to this degree at that time.

Now we just take it for granted. But you go to the behind the scenes of, of how this was done and you watched the videos ’cause they, they really documented it. Well, you forget that even back then. It’s not like everything could be done in a computer. Mm-hmm. You know, so it’s CGI, mixed with live action and still in some very crude ways that they made look, look really good.

Especially when you consider how they had to shoot it. So, you know, there’s like people running down the street and the people running behind them with green screens or blue screens behind them and just all this strange stuff. There’s one scene in particular in this movie where it follows these characters through a rather elaborate.

It’s, it’s when they’re walking through the, the prison and they’re going through the walls and they’re backing up and all that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. What an elaborate shot that was. And to know that this shot a hundred percent was shot twice. The background was shot once, and then these guys walking through there was shot once.

And this all had to be composited together. It had to be coordinated, rehearsed, practiced. It is insane. How good it is. 

Craig: I’m fascinated. But clarify for me, are you talking about the scene where they’re in a jail cell and like it’s a ghost movie? You guys, we’ll talk more about the plot. We’ll talk about the movie in a bit.

There’s ghosts and so the ghosts can like come in and out of Yes. Through walls and things. Yes. At, at this scene they’re in a jail cell and two ghosts are fighting the antagonist, which we don’t really know his nature at first. It, it seems kind of like the Grim Reaper, but he kind of basically follows the same rules as ghosts so he can go through walls and stuff too.

And so Michael J. Fox and his love interest Lucy played by Trini Alvarado, who I like are in that cell and like the Grim Reaper. That’s what I’m gonna call him. ’cause that’s how he’s dressed. Yeah. Like that’s how he’s presented. I’m gonna call him the Reaper. So the Reaper is after her and these other ghosts, Michael j Fox’s friends are trying to keep him away.

But of course. Michael J. Fox and his girlfriend, not really. I’m being misleading, but his love interests are. Physical and locked in this tiny, tiny cell, so the ghosts are just popping in and out through walls. I hope that’s the scene that you’re talking about. ’cause if not, I just went along. 

Todd: Are you talking about the big action scene or are you just talking about the scene where they’re strolling through the prison and seeing him in the cell for the first time.

Craig: Oh, okay. Okay. That’s, yes. That’s when they, like when the ghosts first get to the prison. Yeah. Yes. They walk through a series of walls. Okay. That’s a great scene too. And then they eventually get there and there’s a big fight, but that walk through the series of walls is. Good too. I’m sorry, you may have already said this, but you said they filmed it twice.

So what happens basically is the camera pans through a series of narrow cells and there are different people in there as the ghosts are walking through and they comment on the people that they see and stuff. Are you saying they shot that twice and then just overlaid 

Todd: them? Yeah, they had, I mean, that was the way it was done.

I mean, OB obviously computer controlled cameras and things like that, but I mean, to make this live action, it’s not like the camera’s stationary and it’s not like it’s just panning. It’s going up and it’s going down and it’s turning a little bit and dolling in and out until they finally get into his cell.

I was just in awe. You know, seeing this, that, to know that this had to be composited together that way. Whereas nowadays, they’ve got all kinds of tricks and they can do almost all of it in camera, or they might just make CGI versions of people. That’s the 

Craig: filmmaker side of you. And that’s the stuff in watching these movies and talking about these movies, that’s the stuff that I’m fascinated by, because that didn’t even occur to me.

It was such a simple scene, and I knew it had to be done with effects. But this is a ghost movie. I’ve been seeing these ghosts the whole time, and they’re walking through walls or whatever. And I think that that speaks to the quality of the movie, that it was invisible. I wasn’t, I wasn’t asking those questions.

Yeah. I was just immersed in this world and I, I wasn’t concerned about the technicality of that. Mind you, I really do try as a podcaster to be mindful of things like I, I, I, I, I pay really close attention to these movies. I, I take. Pages of notes. ’cause I want to have good stuff to talk about. Right. But the fact that some of this stuff just totally goes right over my head.

Like I said, I think it speaks to the quality of the movie. 

Todd: Oh yeah. It should go over your head. I mean, obviously if, if you’re thinking about the effects, then you’re not really engaged in Right. The film and the effects are clearly done well enough, you know, that, that they’re in, in some, to some degree seamless.

Right. I mean there are parts of this, you’re right, that are dated. Obviously our CGI now is much better. But this really ain’t half bad. Honestly. 

Craig: It still looks good. I mean the, first of all, the movie, I think I looked at IMDB and saw, oh boy, it’s an hour and 50 minutes. Like that’s long for me. The version that you sent me, director’s cut must be.

The director’s cut. Yeah. Yeah. ’cause it was two hours and two minutes, which in the moment I was like, oh, it’s too long. Looking back on it now, I’m like, no, it’s fine. Calm down.

It is a long movie though. I, I, I think it is long. It’s long. It could have been shorter, honestly. Like, I like it and I recommend it. I was a little conflicted. Everything was right. Peter Jackson and his wife and co-creator of everything. Obviously she doesn’t get the credit she deserves because she’s not out in front.

He’s out in front, but she is right there. You know, writing with him. Yeah. And working with him all the time. 

Todd: Everything. 

Craig: They have done a great job. Everything works and everything is right, and somehow I don’t love it. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Do you get it? I know know, I know. I, I, I can say to anybody, oh, it’s really good. You should definitely watch it.

I, I mean, there’s so many great things about it. Is it one of my favorites? No. 

Todd: No. Yeah, I agree. And it’s interesting because I had never actually seen this movie from beginning to end until now. I had popped in and out of it, it, it had been playing, you know, in a room where I had been. My dad liked it. I like it.

I just never sat down and watched it from beginning to end. And I remember it being marketed as this goofy kind of silly ghost movie with all these stars in it, Michael J. Fox, obviously, and there’s a lot of wackiness involved. I wasn’t expecting it to be as dark as it gets. It’s very dark. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s very Peter Jackson too.

He as mm-hmm. Absolutely will mash up the dark and the wacky. Now we did see the director’s cut, but he really wanted a PG 13 for this movie. He couldn’t get it. He tried really, really hard, but he just couldn’t cut enough to satisfy them. And so he said, all right, then we’re just gonna keep in everything.

I wanted to keep in. In fact, they went back and said, well then we’re gonna earn that R by making the final villains. Death, one of the final villain’s deaths, a bigger grocer thing. And so he did that. But 

Craig: other than that, which wasn’t even that, it wasn’t even that bad. Which wasn’t even that extreme. No, 

Todd: no.

Like this would’ve been a PG 13 today. Maybe. Today, 

Craig: yes, maybe. But when people get killed in this movie, they don’t go away. They just become ghosts. Yeah. So like the, the scene that you’re specifically talking about, Jeffrey Combs gets his head blown off, but it’s instantly replaced with a ghost head. Yeah.

So it doesn’t even really look that scary or crazy. Yeah. I thought that was wild too. This should have been a PG 13 movie and I, I don’t know, people have weird feelings about ratings too, but it, it really should have been PG 13. I don’t know what their problem was. I think if I had to guess, I would say that they felt ultimately that it was just too scary.

In general Yeah. For PG 13, because I do think that this movie is scary. It is. It’s funny. It’s not quite as funny as I’d like it to be, but it is funny, but it is also scary. I mean, and the, the lead antagonists are scary and goodness. We barely started talking about it. I, I, we were talking about the special effects and I just wanted to give the example, the opening scene.

It’s a spooky old mansion with a great spooky old mansion score by Danny Elman. Right. 

Todd: He’s another guy. So impressed with heavenly creatures. He offered to, to score, uh, Peter Jackson’s next film. 

Craig: Danny Elfman has scored like a third of the movies you’ve seen. Yeah, he’s fantastic. 

Todd: He really is. 

Craig: It’s great.

Spooky old music. Patricia Bradley in this old mansion played by D Wallace, who is like my, like my movie mom who I love and I love. She’s, she’s got long, she’s supposed to be younger I think in, yeah, I guess, I don’t know. This was 1996. She, I don’t know, I think they’ve played down her age a little bit.

She’s got long, dark hair and she’s screaming and she’s running away, and then her old lady mom is like tormenting her and 

Clip: it’s wrong. She’s too young. The sins of the flesh will ruin her.

The wicked will be punished.

Craig: But the cool thing about this is that apparently what she’s being pursued by is some sort of entity that can manipulate the environment in that like it’s, it’s like it’s behind the wallpaper and it comes out like Freddy in 

Todd: Yeah, like poke through. 

Craig: Yeah. Like you can see it defined behind whatever it is coming through, whether it be the wallpaper or the floor or a table or whatever.

And it’s pursuing her and it’s very scary. But her, the old lady blows its ghost head off and it flies away. And then that’s when we get the title and the premise of the movie is it’s in this small town. And Michael J. Fox is like a paranormal investigator, paranormal psychologist or something. Kind of a charlatan though.

Yeah. I had in my notes that he’s like. An ambulance chaser. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, he’s taken advantage of a special skill that he has. Uh, he had an accident, a car accident, which took his wife, I believe. 

Craig: Well, I mean, there’s a whole backstory that gets laid out slowly over the course of the thing. But we do find out that yes, he was in an accident and since that time he has been able to see the spirits of people who have not passed on.

Todd: Right. 

Craig: His backstory gets laid out, but he can talk to ghosts, but ghosts people when they die, have have the opportunity to go through a corridor, which is a big, like tunnel, 

Clip: uh, tube. Tube to the sea of light 

Craig: that you can go through Uhhuh, yeah. To heaven or whatever, and you have the opportunity to go through that.

But if you don’t, then you stay on earth. For whatever 

Todd: you get, like 10 years, every 10 years you get another opportunity or something like that. 

Craig: I, I think there’s one guy dies and, and I don’t remember if, if, if it’s Michael J. Fox or another ghost, but he says in a year, oh, you’ll have another opportunity a year.

That would, I mean, it’s so random. That’s one of the problems with this movie that I have, is that the rules are so nebulous. I don’t 

Todd: get it. 

Craig: I, I, I just had to at some point say, just go with it. Yeah. ’cause the rules are so nebulous. Like you can shoot ghosts with real guns. But then you can also shoot them with like ghost Ozzie, like, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

And like 

Todd: they can walk through walls and things and stuff sometimes, but then like when they’re standing out in the road and a car, a car will literally hit them. I, I, it, it didn’t make much sense. Actually, most of the movie I found a little distracting in the rules to where you’re right, it, I did end up having to just willfully and deliberately say, I’m not gonna care anymore.

There’s one part that I thought was kind of cool where Michael j Fox’s character becomes a ghost and he’s on like the third floor of a building or something, and immediately he falls down through the floor to the ground. And I thought, oh yeah. That’s something I hadn’t noticed before. Are the ghosts only able to be on ground level?

And then later in the movie, ghosts are going up and down stairs in this whole abandoned hospital, like, you know, four stories up and stuff and it doesn’t even matter. So I was like, what was that all about? I actually, 

Craig: I actually thought that that scene was kind of pivotal and I think kind of explains exactly what we’re having trouble with.

The rules are so nebulous. Now, Michael J. Fox is alive through most of the movie, but at some point in order to figure out who the really bad guy is, he thinks that he has to die so that he can go into the ghost plane or whatever. So his friend who happens to be a doctor Lucy, kills him, I guess within an injection and puts him in a freezer and she’s gonna revive him later so he can run around.

It’s 

Todd: like flat liners. Yeah. 

Craig: Right. But. When he dies and starts moving around, he immediately falls through the floor, like you said. Now, I thought that this was smart because to me it kind of justified everything else in that as a brand new ghost, he’s never been on this plane before. He doesn’t understand what the rules are, and he doesn’t know how they work.

I think that as they become accustomed to being ghosts, they figure it out more and they’re more able to manipulate and use it because like even one of his friends, the reason it’s called the Frighteners is because Michael J. Fox has these ghost friends and, and to make money, the ghost friends go and haunted a house, and then he comes in and pretends to get rid of them, and then people pay him and like, that’s their, that’s their whole scam.

One of them. Can walk through walls no problem. The other one is constantly getting stuck. I think that it’s a state of mind thing. Mm. And even the really bad guy, I think it is, just has figured it out enough that he can manipulate the physical world 

Todd: God-like control. Right. Okay. Well that would make sense.

So you’re, what you’re saying is this is sort of like a Christopher Pike remember me situation where the 

Craig: Right or, or a, a Patrick Swayze ghost situation where Ah, right. You can manipulate the physical world. You just have to train yourself to do it. And the more you train yourself to do it, the more adept you will be at it.

I think that’s what it is now. I’m coming to that now 24 hours later. Right. Watching the movie. I was a little confused. Like, what? 

Clip: Well, you know, this 

Todd: is one of those cases where tell us, don’t show us might be a better, a better thing. Like there could have just been one throw off line early in the movie, you know, where one character said to another, ah, you haven’t learned all the, the ways of it yet, or whatever, you know, that would’ve answered that for me and I wouldn’t have had to think about it again.

But the fact that I was constantly bothered by it throughout the movie until at some point I was like, well, this is never gonna get answered and it’s never gonna be solved. I feel that’s a little bit of a failing. Right. I don’t 

Craig: know. Well, and it really never is. It really never is. 

Todd: Yeah. That’s just your theory 

Craig: that Right.

Exactly. But it’s solid. That’s exactly right. It’s, 

Todd: I mean, what else could it be? I mean, because it’s all over the place. I don’t know. Like I’m with you. I feel like. The movie was good and it’s, it’s great. I mean, it’s a nice movie. It really is. There’s nothing wrong with it. Liked it. It just wasn’t great, and I guess I expected it to be greater and I don’t know why.

I think. Peter Jackson has these problems with his movies and it gets worse and worse the more money and time and reputation he has where they just get bloated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like this movie suffers from that a little bit. It is. It is frenetic pacing almost from the first, I don’t know, I’m not gonna say from the get go, but it almost feels like after about the 10, 15 minutes of set up, the movie just never lets up.

And you think it’s gonna end and it doesn’t, and you think it’s gonna end and it doesn’t and you think they’ve solved it and they haven’t and they’re, you know, it’s like, 

Craig: whoa. I agree with you. I agree with you. And like Return of the King, I mean, people have talked about this ad nauseum, but that last in The Lord of the Ring trilogies had like 15 endings.

I was like, Jesus Christ. Like get me the fuck outta here. Like, yeah, I’m so done. People complained about. King Kong too. ’cause it was long. I was into that. Like it was action heavy. It was big effects. I was super, super into it. This movie’s good and there’s not any particular part that I would say necessarily cut out of it.

’cause I like every, I like everything I see. Yeah. Just for some reason it doesn’t come. 

Todd: Is it the tone? 

Craig: I don’t know. I, I just don’t know. I just, I, I think partly it’s the tone. Honestly, I wish that it had been a little bit more funny. You’ve got Michael J. Fox, who I think does an amazing job and I think that Michael J.

Fox is one of the most charming people to ever exist. Yeah. He really is. And in this, in this movie, he’s young. And healthy and handsome and charming and everything. It looks like 

Todd: he stepped right off the back to the future set, you know? Well, 

Craig: I, I, I only disagree in that he looks like a grownup in this movie.

Like he looks like a, a young man. I read that he was first choice. Now they considered other people, but Michael J. Fox was their first choice. The other people that they considered I thought were funny. Tom Cruise, uh, at that time, I can kind of see it. Maybe Matthew Broderick, a hundred percent. Mm-hmm. A hundred percent can see that.

Johnny Depp, maybe I’m not a huge fan of Johnny Depp. John Cusack, maybe Danny DeVito. A hundred percent. 

Todd: Oh yeah. I 

Craig: guess so. It would be a different movie. But yeah. Danny DeVito, it would be a hundred percent different movie, but it would be a hilarious movie. Seriously. I love Michael J. Fox. We grew up with him.

You know, Michael p Keaton our favorite Republican, right?

Oh, what a different time. 

Todd: Oh 

Craig: man. But, but that, and then of course, back to the Future God, which I think will 

Todd: always be one of the best his movies ever made. Lic. Yeah, always. 

Craig: People are always gonna know about Back to the Future. It’s fantastic. I love him. Love him, love him. I don’t know that he was the best cast for this movie.

He’s great. He’s charming. I don’t know. I almost feel like I needed a, I don’t know. I think I needed something different. Somebody A little edgier. Something a little edgier. Yeah. Yeah, because he’s too charming and kind and pure to be this tormented. That’s true Charlatan. That’s a good point 

Todd: actually.

Craig: That’s the whole, the whole concept. I mean, there’s a whole movie that we’re not gonna talk about, but the whole premise with him is that he has been through this trauma and it’s led him into this life that he’s not really happy with and he really is a charlatan and he’s taking advantage of people. And we can get into the details of it, but I feel like I wanna lay out like what what happened was, and this was so jarring to me, this comes at least halfway, if not further than halfway through the movie.

He just seems like kind of a asshole. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: kind of like a swindler. He drives like a maniac, which still makes me mad. Like, what is wrong with you? You’re going to kill somebody. It’s so weird. Yeah, it was crazy. 

Todd: He doesn’t care. He’s just driving all over his stuff. I thought, is this supposed to be funny or does he have a mental problem?

I think it was supposed to be funny. Just made me mad, couldn’t 

Craig: it? Yeah, it was bizarre. You’re gonna hurt somebody. Yeah. I didn’t like it. Meanwhile, he’s Michael J. Fox, so he’s, you love him. You’re like, oh, he’s a good guy, whatever. But the backstory is the reason that he is the way he is, is because he was in a drunk driving accident where he was the driver drunk that killed his wife.

Now, ultimately, it turns out that his wife. Didn’t die as a result of the accident. Yeah, she was actually murdered by the murderer of the movie, which is kind of dumb, but whatever. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: it’s a little, it’s all a little contrived. Well, that explanation still doesn’t redeem him of the fact. That he was driving drunk and had a terrible accident that 

Clip: could have killed his wife.

Right. And I mean, he feels bad about it. 

Todd: He’s trying to rebuild their house, I guess, or I don’t know what happened to the house. What was the deal with the house? 

Craig: He’s well, and it was all a result of the fact, like the whole reason that they were fighting, they were that that’s what they had a crash because he was drunk and they were fighting.

And the whole reason that they were fighting is ’cause he was this great architect and he was building them this house. Ah. And the only thing that she wanted was a garden in the backyard. And instead he put a basketball court in there, a basketball court. Michael J. Fox is like five. Five. 

Todd: Yeah. But don’t forget he was Teen Wolf.

Craig: He was teen Wolf. But it’s also funny, in in the flashbacks, they put him in the douches longhaired wig. Like, oh boy, gosh. So he’s tormented. Okay, fine, whatever. And then what’s happening is in their little town, all of these unexplainable deaths are happening. Like people are just dropping dead. But eventually when they like do autopsies or whatever, they’re like, they all died of heart attacks, but it doesn’t make any sense because none of them had any heart problems.

It’s like their heart’s exploded 

Todd: or they were compressed, they said, and yeah, the burst things were bursting and they didn’t have any explanation for it. And, and what we find out is that there is this ghost that’s going around and. Reaching into people’s chests and squeezing their heart until it dies seemingly at random, but not, but not because there’s a number that appears that only Michael J.

Fox can see Uhhuh that shows on their head, on their forehead before they die. So they’re marked somehow. Mm-hmm. By the ghost. I guess he does like a ghostly carving in his forehead. Yeah. Before he, yeah. 

Craig: The revelation of this is a little bit annoying too, because the first time that he sees it, okay, so like he’s doing these scams, he’s going to people’s houses and.

And pretending to clear them of the ghosts that he sent there. And he’s not really doing anything. He’s just setting up fake traps and like pretending to trap them in like dog poop bags and put them down the garbage disposal. And that sounds really stupid and it is really stupid, but it’s played for the comedy.

And I, Michael, I do love Michael J. Fox and I think that he delivers everything. 

Todd: Yeah, great. He’s good at this kind of stuff. 

Craig: I Right. I have no problem with his performance. He’s so charming and so funny. I love him. I’ll never say anything bad about him. Mm-hmm. But I don’t know that he was necessarily the best cast.

But yeah, he’s doing all that. But then at one of these fake things, it’s the girl that becomes his love interest, which this is also very forced and strange because she’s married. 

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: In this moment. But when he goes to her house to clear out the ghost, he sees this. Number, this glowing number on her husband’s forehead.

And then almost immediately he sees a funeral procession and it’s her husband. And that starts off a whole thing. But what bothers me about the writing of this is that he blows it off like he says to his frighteners, his ghost friends, who we need to at least talk about John Aston. Please don’t let me not talk about John Aston.

Oh yeah. But he says to his ghost friends who put that number on her head that wasn’t funny. And that’s it. And then like we keep seeing numbers on people’s heads, but we don’t learn for the longest time. Yeah. That his wife, I guess that they announced her cause of death as a result of the accident, but there was a number carved into her forehead.

He saw 

Todd: it. 

Craig: Yeah. So 

Todd: he saw in the past, because we see later a flashback to it. This very same thing, play out in front of him with his own wife glowing number on her forehead, ghost reaches in, kills her. Why would this not be a thing that he has been carrying so close to himself all this time that he wouldn’t instantly know what’s going on?

You know what I mean? Or at least have some clue instead of just brush it off like you just said, or that wasn’t funny, but why wouldn’t you put two and two together? It’s right. You know, I think that we are to 

Craig: believe that he has somehow disassociated from it. Like he doesn’t remember, like as a result of the, because he kind of has flashbacks.

So you’re 

Todd: thinking the flashback was like a sudden remembrance of a thing that he had suppressed. I 

Craig: guess maybe. I guess. But the number immediately bothers him, so it’s difficult to. Reconcile him being immediately bothered buying it and saying, Hey, that wasn’t funny. 

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And, but then he also doesn’t remember, like, that’s kind of weird, but whatever.

Okay. So then I guess people kind of keep getting killed in the same way and at some point he, okay, so Ray dies. Ray is the husband of Lucy, and he dies because he was marked and he dies, but then he hangs out. Because he doesn’t go through his corridor and he’s annoying, but he’s also funny. I do enjoy the comedy that’s there.

I do enjoy it. He’s funny. He’s super annoying. That’s what, what makes him funny is that he’s annoying as hell, but he’s hanging out and he’s trying to deliver messages through Michael J. Fox to his wife and Michael J. Fox obliges for a long time. But there’s obviously clearly chemistry between him and Lucy.

This is the day of her husband’s funeral. Yeah. And she is wet for Michael J. Fox. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, to be fair, the guy comes across as a big douche from the beginning. Oh, totally. And she makes some comment. What would she say about it’s, it’s very, very early on, I think when we first meet them and they’re in the bedroom and he’s like lifting weights or something, and she’s laying in bed.

Maybe it’s when they’re seeing the serial killer movie or 

Clip: today she lives a reclusive life back in the family home. I should have fried her when they fried Bartlett. She was 15 years old. You know, she just fell in love with the wrong guy. Could happen 

Todd: to anyone. You immediately think, oh okay, this is a double meaning, but that’s it.

You know? That’s all we ever we ever see of that. But I thought that was a bit of foreshadowing and a little bit of a peek into her meant to be 

Craig: and yeah. And he is a douche and she’s, yeah. I mean it’s fine still whatever’s still, it’s just, it’s funny to me in these movies where like Ray specifically says like, I can’t be dead.

I’m only 29. So like he and his wife are in their twenties. Yeah. If you are in your twenties and you are having feelings like maybe I married the wrong person, get divorced today. You 

Todd: still today? While you still have time, take it from 

Craig: me 

Todd: folks. If you are 

Craig: doubting it. Now in your twenties, close the door and never look back.

You all can be friends, but you don’t need to be married. Well, she does. Right. And, and so that’s fine. So she’s wet for him and that’s fine. Whatever. Okay. So there’s also this backstory that there’s this Murderer Bartlett. Yes. Is his name played by Gary Busey son. What’s his name? Jake Busey. Yeah. Jake Busey was working a lot.

He was, at this time he was 

Todd: in, uh, Starship Troopers. That was what I remember him from. 

Craig: He was in a lot. And I don’t wanna call him a Nepo baby, even though I’m sure he is. Really. But I like Jake Busey. Yeah, that’s cool. I think that he’s, yeah, he’s cool. He’s got the, his dad’s crazy eyes. Got his dad’s teeth.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and he works it and, and I think he’s great. Yeah. Every time he’s in something, I think he’s fantastic. He’s in a lot of 

Todd: stuff. I mean, the guy’s just been all been steadily working even to now, you know, he was in Rust. No, I didn’t, yeah, I haven’t seen it yet, but yeah, 

Craig: I haven’t either, but No, but he’s great and he’s, and it, okay, so he, in the past, apparently he killed a whole bunch of people in this town.

He went like on a murderous spree and D Wallace, his was his girlfriend at the time. She was only like 15. They kind of based this on. Real life murders, stark weather, starkly, stark, something. Hmm. They mention it in the movie a lot. This, this guy, Jake Busey, whatever his name is, is trying to be some other serial killer’s record.

And so they go on this massacre in this hospital and he was sentenced to death, but because she was a minor and they didn’t really know the extent of the role that she played, she was first institutionalized. But she has since been released into her mother’s custody and Lucy. Is a social worker, a doctor?

Todd: Not sure really. 

Craig: She’s tasked with checking in on her and De Wallace plays. Oh my God, I’m so sweet. And my mother keeps me here and, oh, it’s terrible. 

Todd: Well, and then the mother is, seems like this overbearing mean, you know, evil stepmother basically. Yeah. She 

Craig: also says directly to Lucy, you don’t know who my daughter is, do you?

Clip: Patricia’s not to be trusted. I beg your pardon? I can have her locked up anytime I want to. Mm-hmm.

Craig: And honestly, I can’t remember. I’ve seen this movie a couple of times. I can’t remember what I thought in the beginning, but having seen it several times, the veneer is very thin. Like, yeah. Now I, right. As it turns out. We don’t find this out until the very end. There’s a whole lot of ghost stuff in the middle.

And it’s fun with this reaper, like they’re chasing it. Like that’s, that’s most of the movie. They’re chasing this reaper. And the cops think Frank is somehow responsible. I mean, not the local cops. The local cops know him and they’re kind of on his side ultimately. And I do want to go back, I wanna talk about that local cop.

I wanna talk about Jeffrey Combs. I wanna talk about John as Jeffrey 

Todd: Combs. We haven’t even mentioned Jeffrey Combs yet. I 

Craig: know. Oh my God. Uh, but ultimately what it turns out is that Patricia. D Wallace was in on it all along. Yeah. Like she was totally a cohort in that massacre. No. Now that her evil boyfriend is back in ghost form, spoiler alert, he’s the ghost that’s going around looking like the grim reaper the whole time, and he’s just continuing his spree that began in the hospital, but resumed when D Wallace was let out of the institution and started killing people again with his aid, and the first person that she killed was Frank’s wife.

Todd: Yeah. I find it very hard to believe. Again, since we’re kind of picking it apart, I find it very hard to believe that this woman was, as it turns out, as involved in these killings as she turns out to be, and nobody really. New. 

Craig: Well, she’s never allowed out of the house, but apparently I, I think, actually, I think that that’s explained.

I think that they say near the end of the movie that her mother, who seems like a crazy old bitch, but really isn’t, who is just trying to keep her murderous daughter contained. I think that she brought her home and then she found out that her daughter had killed this woman. That’s why she had the utility knife that the woman was carved with.

Right. The, the wife was carved with, she found out about that, and that’s why she’s been keeping her in the house. And that’s why I guess, like, again, I’m putting pieces together that you shouldn’t have to put together. Like it seemed like it was dormant. The, the killings were dormant until she was released from the insane asylum.

Yeah. And then they began again with Frank’s wife, who they, a a apparently stumbled upon after a car accident, killed her, carved a number in her head, but then the mother of the murderous confined her to her home. So it was only then that he took on the Grim Reaper identity and started squeezing people’s hearts to death.

I mean, that’s fine, that’s fine. But I don’t feel like I should have to 

Todd: put together that puzzle. Yeah. If you think about it too hard, there are a lot of cracks in this plot and, uh, in the way it unfolds, but you don’t really have a lot of time to think about it too hard. No, because things are just happening one right after the other.

Craig: Arley Emery, somebody else I wanna talk about. 

Todd: Yeah. So like, you know, Michael J. Fox, he goes to the cemetery and he can see all the ghosts, and so you got Arley Emery there. As the drill sergeant who I, again, having seen this all the way through for the first time, I thought that guy had a much bigger role in this movie than he turned out to have because he was just, oh, yeah.

All over the promotionals in the trailers and all that stuff. I really thought this was a wacky comedy about this guy who had to deal with all these ghosts all the time and their crazy personalities. But really, there are just a few funny ghosts, and most of it is pretty dark with this one ghost going around killing people and them trying to figure out what’s going on.

And a whole bunch of near misses and a lot of people dying. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: And Michael J. Fox is there for a lot of it, so he’s starting to get framed really. Right. And so that’s when he gets put in jail. I know I’m skipping over a bunch of stuff, but, uh, 

Craig: well, I, we’re, I feel like we’re skipping over everything, which is fine.

I mean, yeah. You get the gist. Movie. Watch the movie, the movie. It’s, it’s a good, it’s a good movie. You’ll like it. Yeah. 

Todd: It’s worth your time. 

Craig: I, I love these stories where like. When they’re writing a script, they’re like, oh, let’s write like an Arley Emery type. 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: And then they try to cast it and they can’t get somebody, and they’re like, do you think Arley Emery would do it?

Right. And he does. I mean, he, he’s just playing, you know, the same role that he played in full metal jacket, which is basically just him. Yeah. Like, I’m not mistaken. I mean, he was like a, he was a drill sergeant. Sergeant, right. Yeah. I love that. All of the frighteners, the ghosts that work with the main guy, I like them all.

I, the two main ones are kind of like a, a nerdy guy and like a, a hip, like seventies. Afro black guy and I don’t have their names down. The only reason I don’t have their names down is because I didn’t recognize them and I didn’t know if maybe they were New Zealand actors. But they’re funny. They’re, they’re really nice comic relief.

I wish frankly that there were more of them. It’s interesting that the movie is called The Frighteners and we really don’t spend all that much time with the Frighteners at all. No, and I wish that we did. I think that that would’ve been a fun movie watching them in that scene where they like scared people by levitating their babies.

But they talked to the babies first. Yeah, like that was 

Clip: so funny. That was cute. Like they got down and they were talking to the babies like, alright kid. Quit jumping around and acting like a baby. This is serious. Now we’re gonna scared of living daylights outta your parents, so come on kid. You gonna help us out?

Are you with us? See, he gets it. The kids always get, 

Craig: let’s go. The babies can see them for whatever reason. Oh, and then they do. And one of those babies was Peter Jackson’s baby and his wife, you know? And like, that was cute and funny. I actually would’ve enjoyed more of that. Like I, this could today be a limited series where we got more of kind of that fun stuff.

Todd: Oh, amidst the, the bigger mystery. Yeah. Yeah. 

Craig: And the bigger mystery is, is good and I like it, and. Uh, one of the frighteners is John Aston. Now, I know that John Aston has done a million things, but he’s Gomez Adams, right? Yeah. You would never recognize John Aston in this movie because he plays one of the ghosts and he’s like a western cowboy kind of thing.

He reminds me a lot, a lot of the grandpa from house two, and he’s fun and funny. In that way. I really, really like his parts in this movie. He’s, he’s charming. He’s kind of like, because he’s the older one and he’s been a ghost for a long time. He even talks about like how he feels like his ectoplasm is all dried up at some point.

Like again, the rules are nebulous because I don’t know if ghosts eventually like die on their own, but they can be killed. Yeah. Which I don’t understand. The grim reaper can kill them with his sife, but that kind of seems the way they only can be killed and then the si just goes away. At 

Todd: some point for a little while, I thought maybe they were ghost weapons that could kill ghosts, because there’s So John Aston’s character is a judge, right?

Yeah. And he’s kind of a dirty old man, I suppose. But I loved his makeup apparent. This is a, oh, it looks so good. This is a Rick Baker thing, and. I mean, you know, it probably took forever to put on and for sure it early gag in the movie is that there’s a dog that’s got his jaw. That’s how we’re introduced to him.

He’s walking around Jawless and eventually the jaw gets a ghost dog. Yeah, a ghost dog. I love the ghost dog 

Clip: by 

Todd: the 

Clip: way. 

Todd: But you know, the jaw gets kind of put back on, but not really. So there’s a, the one side of it is just jutting out. It’s just bones sticking out through the skin and it’s, it’s cute. I really liked his character design.

I really liked his character and then he just disappears. There’s a scene in the museum Uhhuh, where I believe, I think they go to, I can’t remember 

Craig: where he humps a mummy. That was, which I thought was Sophie funny. It was funny. 

Todd: It was funny. And that was one of the scenes where I thought either it’s just because directors cut or why did you think this was gonna be PG 13, you know, after shit like this in there, you know, this is like meet the feebles type stuff.

But it’s very Peter Jackson. But yeah, then, uh, the guy comes through with the ghost side and he cuts him in half. And he falls to the ground. And I think that’s the last we ever see of him. It is, but that’s, 

Craig: and I think that that’s important because it kind of establishes that if they get cut in half with that side, they die because the other two frighteners both get killed too.

Yes. But then, and, and we see it on screen, but I read that there were deleted scenes that you can see. I haven’t watched them, but there are deleted scenes where the cowboy. Comes back, comes back. Which I’m glad that they cut because I would’ve been confused even further. Right. Because later we see the other two frighteners who we see get killed on screen.

I was uncertain about the second one, the guy with the Afro. I was uncertain about him because we didn’t technically see him quote unquote die. I thought that he might come back. The nerdy one we totally saw get cut in half and deflate. So I, I figured he was dead. But at the end we see them in heaven, so Yeah, they are, 

Todd: they got sent.

Do you just get sent to heaven when you’re killed as a ghost like that? I guess. I 

Craig: don’t know. Who cares? 

Todd: It doesn’t matter. I was just gonna, I was just bringing it up because there’s a pretty pivotal scene toward the end where the, our drill sergeant character is shooting ghost guns at uh. The ghost, the bad one, and well, 

Craig: Michael J.

Fox does too. And Michael J. Fox. Michael J. Fox, in that same scene pulls out two Ghost Ozzie. First of all, both real characters. We still haven’t talked about Jeffrey Combs, both real characters. And ghost characters have straight up Ozzy. Yeah. That they are shooting people with Michael J. Fox gets shot with an oozy at some point.

It’s just fine. 

Clip: Yeah. At close range. That made 

Todd: no sense. He’s just like, oh, oh my shoulder. And then like five minutes later is, you’d never know he was shot, 

Craig: but Michael J. Fox shoots the Grim Reaper character with an Uzi and like destroys him. Like he’s just like several pools of mushy goo and like one of those pools of mushy goo is a face and like he’s getting ready to destroy the face before he gets pulled away because he’s a ghost and he gets pulled back to life.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. But yeah, it does. Like the, the rules are so weird, like, so you can apparently kill ghost with a ghost juy, but if you accidentally don’t. If you can get ahold of their ashes, you can take them to a church where apparently a church is a place where like a corridor is always open, I guess like this, like it’s like a subway stop, like, 

Todd: and this was the only church in the town that they could find was in this creepy old chapel.

A hospital. Like a hospital chapel. A hospital, which happens to be where the killer and the d Wallace character were working as orderlies. And they started their entire murderous rampage, 

Craig: which also happens to be within immediate walking distance of D Wallace’s House, right? Like their next door. Like to get to D Wallace’s house, you have to go through the gate.

That says the hospital, 

Todd: surely, surely you could find another church in an easier, an area that’s not as likely to be haunted by ghosts. 

Craig: Lots of flashbacks. We find out that t Wallace was involved all along, so now she’s chasing after all of them. There’s guns and shooting and fighting and crazy. And boy, I don’t even know, D Wallace is fun.

I I really enjoy her playing crazy. And Peter Jackson wanted to cast her because he didn’t want it to be obvious. That she was villainous from the beginning and he thought, well, the mom for me, t everybody’s gonna think right. That she’s innocent. And I, I think he’s right. I bought it. Yeah. And I think it was a good casting choice.

And I’m not just saying this in the hopes that someday you’ll like surprise me and pay t Wallace a thousand dollars to do 20 minutes on our podcast, but I, 

Todd: she’s a little too rich for our blood. 

Craig: She is. But the thing about her is I continue to see her in movies, but unfortunately the movies that I’m seeing in her lately aren’t great.

And I am, I, I feel bad that she, I can only imagine and I have nothing but the. Utmost respect for the fact that she’s working. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: You know, we, we all have to work. You have to work. Yeah. And if things aren’t working out as well as they once were, you know, she’s taking jobs and I appreciate that and I always appreciate her and everything that I see.

The only reason that I say that that makes me a little bit sad is because I really think that d Wallace is a. Fine, fine actress. Mm. I think that she’s very good and I really enjoyed her unhinged performance at the end of this movie. The gross sexual stuff with Jake Busey was so gross. Uhhuh nasty.

They’re like humping. Yeah. And oh gosh. And, and both of them, he’s unhinged too. I don’t know. In real life. I don’t know him. I’m sure he is a great guy, but on camera and he’s got those crazy eyes. 

Todd: Oh yeah. His 

Craig: eyes are even crazier than his death. 

Todd: Oh, for sure. And big smile, like he’s cre he, he could be creepy.

Craig: Yeah. And he’s a big guy. He’s tall and muscular and like the two of them I thought that they just played together so well. They were such a great crazy Bonnie and Clyde duo. Like they were just reveling in murder and blood and mayhem and she’s, you know, chasing Lucy with a shotgun and just screaming and it’s just insane.

And I love it all. Michael J. Fox eventually. I guess he gets killed somehow. I think D Wallace kills him. She chokes him out with a shotgun, and so he gets killed, and then he somehow as a ghost, now again, what the fuck with these rules as a ghost, he just grabs d Wallace from behind a alive d Wallace and pulls her soul out of her.

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: we’ve never seen anything like this happen before. Nope. But okay. 

Todd: Nope. 

Craig: And so then he starts pulling her up into the big tube corridor. All right? He’s like, Hey, Busey, I don’t know what his name is. Hey, I’ve got your girlfriend. And so Busey starts coming up in the corridor too, and he busey grabs d Wallace and pulls him away.

And, and, and Michael J. Fox keeps getting pulled upwards, and he ends up in heaven, and he is looking down, and Busey is like, ha ha, ha, we beat you, or whatever. And then. The,

then the tunnel turns into what I can really probably only describe as what like an endoscopy looks like

from the inside. Yeah. Like when they stick that little camera up your butt, that’s kinda what it turns into. Ah. And then these like hookworms come out of like. The intestine walls and grab Gary Busey and and D Wallace and pull them down to hell. Yeah. And the ghosts are frightening. Ghosts, the friendly ones who are in heaven, they’re like, oh, Michael J.

Fox, you know, you did good. Whatever, but it’s not your time. And they kick him back down to Earth and he wakes up and he is alive. And then it cuts to three weeks later, I don’t know, they’re Lucy and Frank are together and they’re tearing down his old house, I guess, because it, he was holding onto it because of his guilt or something.

I don’t know. It’s symbolic. Who cares? And they seem to be a happy couple. And then the sheriff. Shows up and delivers an epilogue at the end of which Michael J. Fox says, thanks for the epilogue shirt. Yeah, 

Todd: I was kind of glad he called that out because I was thinking, oh geez, not one of these again. And then he literally calls it out in the movie and I was like, oh, that was an interesting way to do that.

Clever. I thought 

Craig: it was clever that that cop I, I don’t know his name, he’s been in a million things. Oh yeah. He’s been in everything, and I always like seeing him. He’s always funny. He always plays kind of the friendly dopey guy, and he’s super funny. Troy Evans, I love him. And Lucy can see ghosts now because she’s been through a traumatic experience.

And then there’s a cover of Don’t Fear The Reaper, and I love that song. Me too. I just absolutely love that song. Me and I love every cover of it. And then it’s the end. Jeffrey Combs is a huge part of this movie. Oh my gosh. And as soon as I. Saw him, I was like, oh boy. Like, like he, I just love him. He’s so great.

And he’s the kind of actor that I love because he just goes for it every time. Yeah. Like he just dials it up to 11 every time. You can always count on him to just be out of the box. In this movie, he plays this weird, like Hitler obsessed psychologic. I, I don’t even remember P Paray Parapsychologists, something weird.

I 

Todd: think he’s an FBI agent who had been undercover with like satanic cults and things like that. And it just became, and 

Craig: he has this whole monologue at the end where he kind of reveals everything that he’s been through and it is disturbing. Yeah. Like he talks about how he was a sex slave for the Manson family for like six months 

Clip: or something like that.

Yeah. My body, his roadmap of pain. 1974 children of Lucifer, three years undercover drinking, gouts blood. 1981. I infiltrated the cult of the dead. I was involved in ritualistic cannibalism, in orgiastic dances, reaching. Painful thresholds of intense physical 

Todd: eroticism. It is wild. And it goes on for like three minutes.

Once again, I’m sitting here going and, and they expected this to be PG 13. Like what? It’s just the tone, you know, it’s very, like I said, like we said, it goes from wacky to really, really dark uhhuh, sometimes jarringly, so like this scene very jarring. Wasn’t expecting it, it was in keeping with his character.

So I’m not saying it just didn’t work, but I’m just saying, whoa, what a whiplash you get. And, and 

Craig: for this monologue, he rips open his shirt to reveal that he is covered in horrible scars. He has been carved into and burned and tattooed and like it, I mean, it’s just. It looks, it’s horrible Yeah. To look at as he’s delivering this monologue, and I think you know his part and, and, and he’s an antagonist.

He’s a, he’s a secondary antagonist. Yeah. Like he’s always just showing up to throw a wrench in the works. Like, oh, Jesus Christ, you again, like, get the fuck outta here. Like, we’ve got real things to worry about. Yeah. But he’s very frightening and menacing too. He’s a good part of the movie, but I think as is demonstrated in the way that we talked about it, you could have excised his part entirely, maybe shaved off 10, 15 minutes of the movie, and that might’ve worked better.

Now, I would’ve hated to lose him. But I do think that there are parts of this movie that could have been trimmed down, get it to a nice hour and a half. And I think that I would’ve enjoyed it more. Ultimately, I definitely a hundred percent recommend it. I do think that it is kind of forgotten and lost to time, and I don’t think that it should be.

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen Michael J. Fox, God bless him, looking more vibrant and healthy. 

Clip: Mm. 

Craig: Thank God that despite his health struggles, he’s still doing well. He’s still thriving. He has a wonderful family. He is still an American treasure. To see him at his absolute peak brings me a lot of joy and it’s a good movie.

You know, if you like Peter Jackson movies, you’re gonna see it. And I, like you said early on, this seems to be kind of a transition phase. I see Dead alive here. Yep. And I also see Lord of the Rings here. Yep. It’s, it’s, it’s a great middle ground and it’s fun and it’s worth your time. 

Todd: There are straight out callouts to Dead Alive.

There’s one scene, it’s very early on when the Afro Ghost, right walks, he’s talking and he walks straight into a lamp that’s hanging from the ceiling and his whole face is lit up. Like from the inside. So it’s like a gag, but it, that’s exactly what happens in Dead Alive with one of the zombies where it gets impaled on this light and it looks just like that, where it’s got this light bulb lighting it up from the inside of the head.

Yeah, dead Alive wasn’t far behind this movie. And you’re right. This is a big transition. And for me, it’s a big transition from not only that, but also Peter Jackson stretching out and him and Fran Walsh being like, you know what, we can make movies two plus hours long and 

Clip: Yeah. 

Todd: And never ending. That’s the part that where I start to tune out if a movie’s got too much action and not enough breaks.

I think, and I, I just, it’s like, like the Transformers movies. I just can’t watch ’em most action movies today. About halfway through, I’m already checked out because there’s just too much going on. And I felt that way a bit about this movie. I think that was the one thing, it was just, so much is crammed in here.

And I think you’re absolutely right that Jeffrey Combs character could have been excised from this movie. It would’ve been tighter. That would’ve been so much stuff that wouldn’t have had to happen, that didn’t even need to happen if he was out of it. I loved his character. I loved his performance just like you did.

But God, take that outta here. You would’ve shaved 20 minutes. 

Craig: Yeah. And 

Todd: it would’ve been so much better and it, 

Craig: it really wouldn’t have had any impact on the direct plot at 

Todd: all. No, not at all. And uh, and so, you know, I, I, this is why I don’t think I enjoyed King Kong as much as you did is because I felt like it was overstuffed.

It is just like taking the Hobbit and turning it into three long ass movies when it’s such a short, sweet book. I just feel this is also the transition from the Peter Jackson of. Of, I’m making my little movies to, I’m going to make the biggest, longest movies you’ve ever seen, and they’re gonna be filled with nonstop action.

So, you know, for that, I can see why the reviews have been mixed. I could see why maybe it didn’t go over so well, but yeah. I mean, it’s still a good movie. It’s still, yeah, it’s, there’s nothing wrong with it. There really isn’t no, nothing in there that isn’t earned. Nothing in there that’s out of place.

Nothing in there that isn’t foreshadowed in some way. Yeah. There are plot holes if you think about it too closely. So you really just, shouldn’t you just watch it? No. And like, like you’re strapping yourself into a roller coaster and just let it take you where it takes you and, and it’s fun. It is. It is nice.

We’ve still got one more coming your way and it is another. Oh, 

Clip: I’m so excited. Oh God. 

Todd: Should we even tease what it’s gonna be because it, no. Alright. Alright. We won’t. No, I want 

Clip: it to be a surprise. There 

Todd: is. I’m just realizing there is a through line for many of the movies you’ve picked for this month that I don’t even think you realized, but maybe not.

Oh no. We’re so excited about the next one. You guys are gonna enjoy it. We’ve purposely saved it for last. Alright guys, well thank you again for listening and, uh, once again, if you’ve been enjoying this horror comedy month and know a friend that, that loves horror comedies and would love to hear what we’re talking about, go ahead and send this podcast to them.

That’s the best thing you can do. Just help us spread the word so we can grow our listenership and keep us going. If you’re feeling even more generous, uh, go to patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. Get to the unedited versions of our podcast, as well as mini sos little mini reviews. We write up interviews with us and, uh, lots of little fun stuff.

We’ve got a book club going on there as well. We talk about every time. Go on patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. Five bucks a month gets you access to all that. Go to our brand Spank a new website. We’ve recently updated it just to look a little cooler and put things more in their proper place. Make it run a little faster.

That’s chainsaw horror.com. And as always, until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.