Our tribute to Larry Cohen is a social commentary on companies that make products that harm people. An unknown mutant ice cream/yogurt/whipped cream concoction bubbles out of the ground and makes people crazy, but that doesn’t stop a company from packaging it up and making it into the hottest item of the century.

We saw it on the shelves as kids. Now, both of us finally get to watch it. Hear what we thought.

Episode 168, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week we are paying tribute to 1 of our fallen Legends. We were surprised to hear a couple weeks ago that Larry Cohen passed on at the ripe old age of I believe it was 82 when it was initially reported it wasn’t reported what he had died from. I think some family friends had mentioned cancer. Larry Cohen is pretty prolific. I don’t know what your history is, Craig, or how much you know about Larry Cohen.

Craig: Not much.

Todd: He is a name that has popped up over and over and over again, you know, in movies that I’ve watched. You know, I always have for many years paid attention to who the directors and who the writers and stuff are in films. And I was just surprised to find out Larry Cohen, Larry Cohen, Larry Cohen just kept popping up in so many times that I always wondered, are there multiple Larry Coens? Over the decades, like from the 60s, all the way up through now, this man is super prolific. Mostly as a writer, but also a bit   as a director. And to say that he is a horror guy is a little bit of a misnomer. He’s just done so many different things. He started out in television in the 60s, actually very interesting story. He started out as a page boy in NBC and just bugged and bugged and bugged a guy, bringing him basically script after script after script that this guy asked for until we finally gave him a job. And he did. He wrote for a couple television series, did a couple television series of his own, and basically never stopped writing. This guy   would write every single day and even though his IMDB page is huge with credits, apparently he wrote even more than that. There’s all kinds of stuff that was never produced, scripts that he sold that for 1 reason or another didn’t get made, or pilots for television series that he started that for 1 reason or another never went through. Really well known in the industry is a super prolific guy, and not only that, but a super nice guy. I’ve just been so fascinated by him just by the name and surprisingly enough I never really took the time   to go through and read a lot about him. There is an amazing documentary out about him called King Cohen that came out last year, 2018, and I highly recommend it. I actually watched it this afternoon. It’s about 2 hours long and it’s full of interviews with him and people that he’s worked with. Talks about almost every movie that he ever did and really gives you this great impression of this guy who just freaking loved making movies. Total guerrilla filmmaker style. Most of the movies he made were extremely low budget. And as 1 of the people in   there put it in this interview is that Larry Cohen the writer became Larry Cohen the director to protect Larry Cohen the writer. So that he wouldn’t be subject to the whims of somebody else making his movies, although a lot of other people made his movies. And then Larry Cohen the director became Larry Cohen the producer to protect Larry Cohen the director. This is a guy who wanted to make movies on his own terms, had his own wacky ideas for things, and basically was 1 of the very few people in Hollywood to become writer, producer, and director   of his own material for most of his career. Like I said, whether he was writing scripts for other people, he always had a project or 2 in the works of his own and you can look at it’s just extremely prolific and the movie that we decided to review today was 1 that I encountered on those shelves a lot in the horror section in the 80s called The Stuff from 1985. So I think we’re gonna talk about him within the context of this movie. Craig, had you ever seen The Stuff because I had always wanted to see   it but I never did until today.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s 1 of those weird things where, like you, I remember always seeing it on the shelves and I don’t know why I didn’t pick it up. You know, I think I must have picked it up because I kind of had an idea of what it was about and I think that that’s kind of why I never watched it because when it boils down to it, it’s about evil, alien, mind-controlling Cool Whip and… Basically, yeah. That bubbles up out of the ground and makes people crazy. Yeah. It’s a little nebulous, isn’t it? It’s   a very bizarre concept. From what I’ve read, and I haven’t read as much about him as you have, I think that his purpose much of the time was to provide some sort of social commentary. And I think that that’s what he was going for here, was commentary on consumerism and how, especially Americans, but really, you know, it’s worldwide that we allow consumerism to be a, well, potentially deadly influence in our lives. You know, I read that he said that he was inspired to write this movie by seeing all of these stories about products that would come   out that would be really sensational and would ultimately end up proving to be dangerous and and then would have to be pulled from the shelves and Nonetheless, there was high demand for these things when they would pop up. And I think that that’s what he was going for here. And the movie is described as a horror sci-fi comedy on IMDB. And I don’t know. I’m conflicted because this is 1 of those things where, you know, we’re trying to pay tribute to somebody who we have a lot of respect for because of their contributions to an industry   that we respect and appreciate. But I don’t know how kind I can be about this movie, frankly. It’s pretty bad.

Todd: Yeah, I have to agree with you. I mean, it’s all over the place. It’s a weird movie. It kind of defies description in a way, although I’ll tell you, I was getting strong John Carpenter slash They Live vibes here.

Craig: Yeah, yeah, I see it.

Todd: You know, it’s kind of of the same old era. It seems to be shot on the same film stock, whereas John Carpenter maybe had a bit of a bigger budget to deal with and is maybe a better director than this guy. Nonetheless, the film mines a lot of the similar material. There’s a grand sort of conspiracy that involves aliens. And there’s 1 guy who’s essentially this FBI agent named Mo Rutherford, who’s called in, but it’s not

Craig: like he’s a great guy. He- No, he’s a former FBI, he was kicked out of the FBI. That’s right. And now he’s working as an industrial saboteur. Like that’s his job. And he’s played by Michael Moriarty, which I was kind of excited about. Michael Moriarty was on, or maybe is still on, I don’t know, Law and Order for I think decades. Oh yeah. So he’s a very familiar face. I remember him from 1 of my favorite cheesy movies of the 80s, Troll, he was the dad in Troll.

Todd: Oh, that’s right.

Craig: As soon as I saw that he was in it, I was like, oh, that’s cool. But he is Just really hamming it up in this movie. You know, he’s got this very stereotypical Swagger Southern accent that he plays the whole thing and he just I feel like he’s almost playing a caricature of this kind of swaggy, you know, southern sheriff type.

Clip: Oh, this is some place you got here, fellas. Gosh, let me, that’s a sweaty palm. That’s 2 sweaty palms. Let me feel you. Ah, that’s another sweaty palm. Yes, sir. Hello, sweaty palms. How do you do? So tell me about the stuff.

Craig: I think it’s supposed to be funny. And there were lots of times in the movie that I was taking notes and at 1 point I wrote down, is this supposed to be funny? Like, I think that’s what they were going for at some point. Like, it was supposed to be comedic, and I just ended up feeling like, it’s not. It’s not funny. It’s really just kind of stupid. And I guess The part when I started to think, oh, this is really supposed to be funny was when the character of Chocolate chip Charlie Hobbs showed up played   by Garrett Morris If I remember correctly 1 of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live and he is a hilarious guy. I was a baby when Saturday Night Live started out, but I’ve seen his stuff. His stuff and a very funny guy and he plays this, you know, over the top, I’m sensitive about saying things because I don’t want to be disrespectful to anybody but kind of this, you know, over the top stereotypically flamboyant black guy. And I can tell that he’s a funny guy and you know he puts everything into it. It’s just the   comedy didn’t work for me and I don’t know if that’s due to me viewing it through the lens of 2019 when it came out in 1985. I don’t know maybe it is. Maybe I would have thought it was funny in 1985, but it just kind of missed the mark for me. So I don’t know. It was a head scratcher for me. I’m not real sure what you’re going for here and it’s not really landing for me, but I don’t know. I sat through the whole thing, so we can talk about it.

Todd: It’s very high concept. You know, again, I was thinking of They Live. I was also thinking Halloween Part 3. Yeah. You know, this evil corporation doing this thing that’s a little ridiculous on its face, and yet there’s something about those 2 other movies that works a little better. And they’re a bit tongue-in-cheek as well. Yeah. Halloween 3 wants to be taken a little more seriously, I think, but They Live is obviously a comedy. I think maybe just the characters are a little more charming in it, and even though they’re at times hamming it up, there’s just   something about it that feels kind of fun. This movie feels a little bit like a made for TV movie that went on really, really long, doesn’t it?

Craig: Yes, yes, it does. It feels like a made for TV movie. It looks like a made for

Todd: TV movie.

Craig: And again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I’ve enjoyed made for TV movies, so it’s not like I just have negative feelings about them in general. But yeah, it feels a little cheap, which it probably is. You know, he was probably working on a small budget. But then again, there are some big name folks. Paul Sorvino is in this. He worked with Michael Moriarty on Law and Order. He’s done all kinds of he was in Goodfellas. I think he looks like a Stereotypical gangster type and so you see him you would totally recognize him if you   looked him up. Danny Aiello big name actor makes a cameo in this and then there are just some small cameos. Gosh 1 of my favorite ones. Okay so The movie starts out just really abruptly with these random guys who you have no idea who they are. These older guys that looks like they’re on some sort of, gosh I don’t know what, like a mining site or something.

Todd: Yeah, it’s supposed to be a mining operation.

Craig: Yeah, and this old white haired guy just finds this stuff bubbling up out of the ground, literally stuff, this white stuff bubbling out of the ground, and of course, as you would, the first thing that he does is tastes it. Because That’s what I would do. If I saw some stuff bubbling up out of the ground, I’d be like, I wonder what that tastes like.

Clip: Whatever that could be. It’s mighty good.

Craig: Harry, what are you doing? Eating snow?

Clip: You out of your head, buddy. If this is snow, try

Craig: it once. You’ll find that’s a good… No, I don’t eat snow. Come on, give it

Clip: a try. That’s not snow. Try it.

Craig: And like that’s just, it goes from there. All of a sudden it’s this huge industry where this stuff is just flying off the shelves. And we see these like ridiculous commercials for it accompanied by a great hilarious theme song about how, you know, enough is never enough, eat the stuff, I don’t know, it’s very catchy. Catchy.

Clip: The stuff, the taste that makes you hungry for more. Enough is never enough. The stuff, the taste that delivers.   Enough is never enough.

Todd: It’s total 80s jingle and apparently Larry Cohen had a friend who worked in the advertising industry and he actually hired him to write the jingle and do the commercials and everything for it and it totally shows. I mean it looks like and feels like the kind of jingle you would have gotten

Craig: to Big

Todd: Red or something like that from the 80s. I thought that was a highlight of the film, actually.

Craig: Oh, yeah. The commercials were funny, and that’s what I was getting at. And I think on the cast list on IMDb, it says special guest star for these commercials. I think that everybody who appears in these commercials would have been recognizable to some people in the 1980s. There was 1, and It doesn’t happen until probably halfway through the movie, but there’s a commercial starring Abe Bogota, who was in A Million Things, but I always remember him as the grandpa from The Look Who’s Talking movies, and Clara Peller, who was the Where’s the beef lady from the   Wendy’s commercials from that ad campaign. Wow, you’re right. Oh my gosh. I can’t believe you didn’t notice that because she says, where’s the stuff? That’s right.

Todd: Dude, that totally went by me. That’s hilarious.

Craig: And yeah, so there’s all these very recognizable people that pop up throughout. And so you would expect a movie with all these recognizable people to really have some clout and some quality. But it kind of ends there. And there were things that I got excited because after they show how the stuff is becoming this big thing, then it cuts to this kid, Jason, played by Scott Bloom, I don’t know if he’s been anything else but he wakes up in his room and he’s hot and itchy and he goes downstairs and he opens up his refrigerator and   There’s a container of the stuff in there and literally this stuff is like Cool Whip or it looks like shaving cream or something. It’s kind of like ice cream but like the big draw of it is that it never melts and it but it’s moving around in his refrigerator and then his dad who’s a big jerk comes down and and yells at him he’s like no dad it’s bad it moves and his dad’s like well I’m a jerk so just go to bed and He eats the stuff. So I’m thinking, oh, okay, great. This is gonna   be 1 of those 80s movies that I love that has a kid as 1 of the central characters, like Troll or like… Invaders from Mars. Invaders from Mars, something like that. And there are elements of that throughout, but then it tries to be several other things too. And it just, it didn’t feel focused. I don’t know, like it just felt like it was all over the place. And I read that the original cut was much, much longer. And thank God somebody made Mr. Cohen edit it down significantly. And while I say thank God, because I would   not have wanted to watch 2 and a half or 3 hours of this, you can tell. It seems really choppy. It seems like there are things that we’re missing, that there are scenes that were cut, that established relationships, and There’s like a love interest, like Moe, the espionage guy, has this love interest, Nicole, who is like the marketing director for the stuff, and like they meet, and then immediately they’re just like boyfriend, girlfriend in a relationship. And I’m like, wait, what? What just happened? Like, you just met in the last scene. Like, I don’t even understand.   But whatever.

Todd: And that doesn’t even come for later. I mean, this movie moves so quickly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie move so fast and you’re right it’s simply because it’s it’s so choppy. It’s not a good thing really that this movie moves so quickly because it does seem to lack focus. It’s like there are these 3 or 4 different threads going on. They’re sort of centered around this guy doing this investigation, but he just leaps so quickly from 1 thing to another that you’re like 15 minutes into the movie and you think, gosh, I mean,   it can’t be much longer than this. It feels like I’m watching a long episode of something. Yeah. You know,

Clip: on TV.

Craig: Well, and that’s ultimately what I thought too. I thought that the concept might have been interesting and might have worked better in shorter form. Like, if this had been an episode of The Twilight Zone and it was like 25 minutes, I think that there’s some interesting stuff that could be mined from this movie and mined from the concept, but in this form, it was too much.

Todd: You kind of could have cut out the kid entirely because the whole idea, and again, hopefully, there was a lot more that made this flow better, but this whole idea that this 1 kid is the only 1 who is noticing something is really off about this stuff in the whole wide world, basically.

Craig: Right, right.

Todd: It’s kind of ridiculous. You know, he goes ape and there’s a whole, there’s a really long scene of him going ape in the supermarket and the stuff is everywhere. And it’s actually, you can tell, like it’s almost naked gun funny in a way because everywhere he turns, every single aisle, the stuff is there. Like at 1 moment you think the stuff needs to be refrigerated, but then he, after he finishes smashing the refrigerator and knocking all the stuff out, he runs down the freezer aisle and he’s knocking all the stuff from, it’s perched on the freezer.   And Then when he gets to the end of it, there’s a couple of employees who are stacking it.

Craig: On the shelves. Yeah, making a big tower out of it. Yeah.

Todd: He knocks that down and all that. Then throughout the movie, the stuff, it’s comically present every single place you can go to the point where there’s like a little Dairy Queen-esque type stand sitting outside. Yeah. And he pulls up and he’s looking at it and he goes, wow, 3 a.m. And people are still going nuts to buy this stuff. And I’m thinking, what are these guys doing? It looks like they’re just popping open the lids of this and sticking a spoon

Clip: in it and giving it to people.

Craig: Yeah. And like it comes, it’s so funny because it comes in tubs and all the tubs are, you know, they’re branded the same and it’s very simple, very 80s. There’s like individual serving tubs and then there’s like huge like family sized tubs and like just it’s everywhere and it’s also funny in the movie because these tubs of the stuff are everywhere and the characters are playing with them and manipulating them and doing things. And more often than not, it’s so painfully obvious that these are just empty Cool Whip containers. I mean, that’s all they are. They’ll   put them down on the table, and you can hear the hollow plastic thud. There’s nothing in there.

Todd: Well, and then the form that it takes on the screen, the special effects in this movie are not fantastic, but they’re serviceable.

Craig: There are places when they’re bad. Oh yeah. There are a couple of times when they were clearly doing stuff with green screens or, I don’t know, like post animation. There are sometimes when they are serviceable. There’s 1 scene in particular in a motel room when the stuff attacks. Like, and God, just saying that sounds so stupid. Like, they’re all of a sudden being attacked by shaving cream. Like, It’s stupid. But there’s 1 scene in a motel room where there’s some cool stuff going on. They used a rotating set, the same rotating set I guess that they   used in Nightmare on Elm Street for Johnny Depp’s death scene, when he gets sucked into his bed and the blood all shoots out of his bed and stuff. And you can see that they made something with that resource that they had that looks pretty good. Yeah, it did. But there are other parts that, oh gosh, it just looks terrible. Especially at the end, the final, the stuff attack scene. I don’t know, it’s goofy. I’m sorry, I’m getting off track.

Todd: No, well it’s easy to

Craig: get off track because the

Todd: movie gets off track. I mean, it’s all over the place. And then there are times, like you say, where it feels like the blob, right? It’s this. Yes. It’s this giant. There are scenes where they’re obviously miniatures of this stuff pouring down the staircase and coming inside or whatever. But, you know, it can just as easily just sit in tubs and people ingest it. And then, I don’t know, you know, it’s like, do you have to eat so much of it before it really starts to have an effect on you, you would think the whole world   by this point would basically be a bunch of zombies because at times that’s how these people are. There’s a scene when the boy comes home to his family and he’s the only 1 of his family’s refused to eat this. Meanwhile, his whole family’s kind of gone mad with it and sends him to his room because he’s, you know, refusing to eat it basically and causing so much trouble. And when he comes downstairs, there’s this pretty funny scene. Actually, I thought it was the best scene in the movie. He comes downstairs first of all and his brother’s   playing Colecovision, which was awesome. I used to have a Colecovision. Anyway, and he’s playing Colecovision. This whole family is sitting around. Each 1 of them have a tub of this. And his dad turns to him and is trying to coerce him into eating it. And there’s a shot on his dad and he’s smiling almost straight into the camera And he’s delivering almost in an announcer voice this hilarious ad for the stuff

Clip: here Jason take some You know what I said about that that was the truth And you know that there is something alive in there. Jason, I mean, there’s something alive in yogurt. It’s called benign bacteria. Yes. I mean, there’s something alive in a loaf of bread. It’s yeast. I mean, that’s a living organism. We have plenty of things that are still alive that are good for us. I know that, but that was moving. All microorganisms move, Jason. I mean, if you could see them with the naked eye. I mean, under a microscope, you can see them   move. So what’s the difference? They’re good for us, Jason. They kill the bad things inside us.

Todd: I thought that was so funny.

Craig: Doesn’t the sun even say something like, why are you talking like a commercial? So

Todd: on the 1 hand, this stuff makes people kind of this way, like, I guess turns them into emissaries of its evilness to spread around. And then there are moments where, for example, you were talking earlier about Danny Aiello’s character, and he was a former FDA, he was on the FDA board or whatever when they approved this yeah and then mysteriously every single person who was on the FDA board when they approved this resigned or left went on vacation and whatnot Mo Rutherford comes to his house and he has this Doberman Pinscher. Isn’t that right? Was that   the dog?

Craig: Yeah, that was a Doberman, I think.

Todd: Which was the, you know, the go-to scary dog of the 80s, basically. He comments that his dog really, he’s really scared of his dog. Why is your owner scared of you? And when Mo leaves, it turns out that the dog has been eating so much of this stuff that it pulls, it yanks the phone line

Craig: out of the wall and attacks him.

Todd: And then somehow he regurgitates a whole bunch. Like people will regurgitate this stuff, like it’s coming out of them.

Craig: You think they’re dead, they’re not, and it’s so bizarre. Yeah, I know, It is bizarre because it’s as though, they’re ingesting all this stuff and then it kind of, either mind controls them. I mean, I guess it kind of has to be mind control. But it also kind of controls their bodies or whatever. And the suggestion seems to be that like their bodies are literally full of it. And at some point somebody says something, I think it’s the chocolate chip Charlie says, I’ve seen what it does to people and I’ve seen the aftermath. I’ve seen what   people look like when it’s done with them and when it comes out. So like I, and at another point, Mo says to somebody, are you eating it or is it eating you? So I think that the suggestion is supposed to be that maybe it’s kind of eating people from the inside, but it’s bizarre. And it’s also weird because yes, in these moments that I think are supposed to be the scary moments, it comes out of people and it comes out of their mouths and there are these ridiculous and bad special effects. Now to be fair, they’re   practical, which I appreciate, but they don’t look that great. But like their mouths stretch way, way, way open for the stuff to come out. Why? It’s just Cool Whip. Like why does your mouth have to be like a big gaping cavern for it to come out? Like, it could just come out. But I guess that wouldn’t look as cool.

Todd: Because it looks freaky, Craig. That’s why.

Craig: I guess. All

Todd: right. I’m down. And then there are times when, like, the army ends up getting involved. Paul Cervino’s character, oh my gosh, again this movie’s all over the place, but to kind of shorten it up, Mo Rutherford ends up going tracking down the stuff. He tracks down the town where it was originally discovered and goes to the company that produces it which was originally a mining company but now all it’s doing is basically pulling the stuff out of the ground and but he meets up with that woman that you said earlier was the advertising executive. By the   way, who by the way comes across as a total slut from the very beginning. He approaches her while she’s shooting a commercial, which was the second best scene in the movie. I was watching this with my wife and as soon as this commercial shooting scene came on, she just busted out laughing. We were so enjoying it so much. They’ve got these supermodels that are hilarious walking down the catwalk. It’s supposed to be eating the stuff and she’s giving directions. I know you absolutely love it now feed it to each other. Yeah. And they’re wearing swimming suits   with furs over them. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Craig: And the models look like they couldn’t possibly be more bored or unhappy to be there. Yes! It’s so true. It was, and like, you’re right, she is giving them directions, like, ooh, you love it, oh my gosh, okay, now take another bite, and they’re like, okay. They’re half awake, like, oh my god, I can’t believe I’m doing this

Clip: you were saying I do like to see a woman with decision. Pick your favorite restaurant.

Craig: Where are

Clip: you staying? Sherry, Netherlands. Do they have room service at the Sherry, Netherlands? My limousine’s just outside. So is mine. I bet mine’s bigger than yours.

Craig: Yeah, that was funny. But as you’re saying, okay, so then they go here, and then they go here, and then they go here. Like, that’s it. Like, that’s literally it. Like, we follow Mo around as he just hops from place to place. Let’s go to the old mining place. Let’s go to the town where they found it. And, oh, there’s nobody here. OK, let’s fly to D.C. Like and that’s it. And then, you know, they spend 5 minutes in every new place and they do something, or they tour the stuff factory, or they get attacked by   evil postmen. Episodic isn’t even the right way to describe it. But like every few minutes, they’re just hopping around, going somewhere else, and they all just conveniently keep bumping into each other. Like the kid, Jason, just kind of randomly happens to show up every once in a while. So then they’re kind of like a little Scooby Gang with Nicole and Jason and Moe, but then they’ll get separated. No, no, Jason’s in peril, but not for long. We found him and now he’s back with us and Mm-hmm. Oh my god, and that’s just how it goes for   over an hour Like most of the movie.

Todd: Yeah, and then at the end of it, you know They they end up where they’re pulling the stuff out of the ground He sets off some plastic explosives to try to bury it, but of course that’s not going to work for very long and they all escape. And then as they escape, the kid’s like, where are we going to go? There’s a small town up ahead. And he’s like, no, they control the small towns. We need to go to a big city where they can’t control it. And finally it’s morning and they’re still driving in this   big semi.

Craig: Yeah, but that was so, okay, so first of all, they get to this little town, Jason’s

Clip: like. Hey look, there’s a town up ahead. I’m gonna bypass it. It’s too small, they probably control it, we’d never get out of there. Then where do we go, David?

Todd: We go to a large city and

Clip: they can’t control it, we have a chance.

Craig: And then they drive right through town. That’s not what circumvent means. I don’t understand. And then he says, we gotta go to a big city. But first, I’m going to stop at this castle. Yes. What? In the middle of nowhere. Like, and at this castle, there is an army laying in wait, like in the reeds or whatever that pops out. And I didn’t even understand. So then he goes, this is when he meets the Paul Sorvino character, Colonel Spears, who apparently lives in this castle and is protected by his own army. Yeah. Because I didn’t get,   I think that his character was supposed to be an ex-military guy. Yeah. But now he has like his own private army.

Todd: He’s got like a little militia. I think He’s like a super conspiracy theorist kind of thing, so he’s got his own little militia, I guess just sitting around waiting for stuff to happen out in the middle of nowhere around his little castle.

Craig: It’s so bizarre. I know, and like they, so Mo goes up and meets him in this huge tower in this castle, And he’s like,

Clip: well, yeah, I just thought I’d stop by to tell you that I have videotapes of you and a 17-year-old black girl. What? Like, oh, I just wanted to tell you. Like, what? Oh, gosh.

Craig: And, like, so he’s there to ask for his help, but I guess his way of going about that is to like blackmail him, threaten him. Blackmail him. But that’s okay, because then, you know, the Colonel’s like, I will help you. And then he joins the Scooby Gang, and he’s got his whole army, and then they invade the factory. Well, and when they’re shooting up everybody, like, they’re bleeding stuff. So it’s like you said earlier, it’s so weird. Like, they’ll punch somebody and their whole face will break off, and the stuff will come pouring out of it.   I just don’t, I don’t get it. It makes it not a

Todd: very gory movie. I’m not even sure why it’s rated R to be honest.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t even realize it was. No, it definitely felt like something that you could easily play on afternoon cable. There’s nothing, There’s no sex in it. I don’t recall there being much swearing in it, if any. And the violence in the carnage looks so fake that I can’t imagine that anybody would be disturbed by it. I mean, it doesn’t look real at all. And like you said, there’s no blood, you know? Just the white marshmallow goo comes out of them. Well, even the action scenes are poorly executed. Like basically Mo Wutherford, all he does is   run around and punch people in the face. They fall backwards and they’re not a threat anymore. Oh my god, my favorite part of the movie was when they were in the small town, I think, where the stuff originated or something like that, and he meets up with chocolate chip Charlie. I love saying that. And at first there’s nobody in the town, and then all of a sudden they’re attacked by this big group of goons, and they run away and they escape in a rowboat. And all these big guys are chasing them and they’re like, get in   the boat! And it’s literally a rowboat. A rowboat. There’s no boat here. And 1 of the guys that’s chasing them jumps in the water like he’s chasing them and then pushes them off and then falls in the water like, oh, darn it. And then so they float slowly away off screen in this rowboat. And then they’re just in a bar somewhere else like whoo

Clip: thank God we got away thank

Craig: God we rode to this other town

Todd: we missed that sequence when they were rowing down the river So much cut out of this movie, I’m sure. This is pretty typical Larry Cohen stuff though, you know, and 1 thing that, you know, he’s pretty admired for was he was his own guy and he would, he was a probably 1 of the, 1 of the ultimate renegade filmmakers, shot very guerrilla style. His movies were very, very cheap, but he had a knack for finding older, out-of-work actors, like, you know, people who had won Academy Awards in the past, who were hardworking, extremely talented actors and   actresses who were just older and nobody wanted to hire him anymore. And so he’d be like, well, hell, these guys won Oscars. I’m going to get them for my movie. And so he could get these people really cheap. 1 of the last people he got for his movies was Bette Davis. Back in the late 80s, Bette Davis, mid 80s, Bette Davis was on television a lot touring these talk shows and he’s watching TV and he’s thinking, my gosh, this woman, the only reason she’s out there doing all these talk shows is she clearly wants work. And   so I’ll write something for her and he just literally will sit down and write a script in several days and he wrote a script called Wicked Stepmother.

Clip: Oh yeah.

Craig: Yeah, and

Todd: this is at the time Bette Davis was really suffering from cancer, although nobody knew it at that time, but she just, you know, she never looked fantastic as she got older, but she was just extremely gaunt and extremely just kind of looked like she was maybe nearing the end of her life. And she plays in this movie and apparently midway through or so she up and left. She made some excuse that she had to go and she just didn’t come back. And I can’t remember what her excuses were, something about health or whatever, but it turned   out that he accidentally let her see a couple of the dailies and she didn’t like how she looked in them. Apparently she had dentures in and they kept falling out. And so, you know, she was just really, really embarrassed by it, and she just kind of left the movie. And so he rewrote a lot of stuff and reworked it so that they could finish the movie and release the movie, even though half of her scenes hadn’t been shot. He just gave a lot of it to the other female character and changed the plot a little bit.

Craig: I was gonna say, I feel like I’ve read about this too, and I could be wrong because I didn’t look this up, I didn’t know you were gonna bring it up, but I feel like, did he recast the role? Or rewrite the script so that her character was then being played by a different actress?

Todd: I don’t remember. No. No, he just kind of reworked the footage that he had with finished shooting the movie in a different way with a different sort of script. And he would do this, you know, he actually didn’t like to prepare a lot. And this is 1 thing that a lot of actors and movie makers said about Larry Cohen. They said 1 of the really refreshing and fun things about working with him is he had a lot of trust and gave his cast and crew a lot of control. So even though he would be writing the   script and he’d be directing it, if somebody had a cool idea, he’d go with it. Or he’d even say to an actor, like, let’s do this or let’s do that. He came out of a time when writers were very respected and for example in the TV world when you know back in the 60s when he was involved in television production he said writers were on the set all the time it was part of their job they would come to the set because there would always need to be rewrites. The writers were very much a collaborative part   of the process. Whereas it seems like now writers are very much shut out. To even get a script that’s written by 1 writer and hasn’t been doctored up by 15 in the meantime is kind of rare. And so He very much had that spirit when he was working on the movies and that’s why actors really liked working with him so much As he let them take risks and they felt like they were in good hands Oh, I don’t know watching this movie you kind of wonder a little bit, right? But yeah Michael Moriarty loved working with   him they worked together a lot and he even kind of gave Michael Moriarty his start and they ended up working really well together and Michael Moriarty had a lot of fantastic things to say about how he really allowed him to stretch himself as an actor, try these sort of things that he wouldn’t normally have tried and even this character of Mo Rutherford he really enjoyed doing. So, you know, I mean, he has that reputation. But anyway, yeah, so a lot of his movies have all these famous people in them. Some of them kind of passed their   prime or some of them, whatever, but he was able to get them really, really cheap because of it. So he could put together a movie with this sort of high production value. And the other way that he would get production value with his movies is he would just go out and steal shots. You know when you’re out shooting a film normally the right way to do is to go and get permits. Yeah. Everywhere you’re gonna shoot you have to get a permit and go. But you can always just go out without a permit and hope you   don’t get caught. And he would do this all the time, like with most of his movies, get these insane situations where he would hide cameras everywhere and just go out in the streets of New York and do this elaborate sequence where he did a couple of black exploitation movies where a cop shoots a black man in the middle of an intersection like New York City and he filmed this from multiple angles from cameras that were kind of hidden right out there in the crowd and just see how people walking by would react and that would be   included in the movie. And so like you see that in this film, even though most of these locations are a little more isolated, you could see that they had that control. You can still see this kind of, for worse, I think in this movie. But you know, whatever. It’s like he’s clearly got a very small budget he’s working with. He’s trying to do the best that he can with that budget that he has. And he’s got a rowboat instead of a boat with a motor. And so they’re trying to make it work. It ends up looking   a little silly in this movie, and I think this is probably not 1 of his best, I would say.

Craig: Well, yeah, I mean, a lot of what you said about writers kind of being shut out, I mean, I think he, from what I’ve read, he experienced that as well, And he really was more prolific as a writer than he was as a director. I mean, he was a jack of all trades. He was a writer, director, producer. But it appears, based on the very little research that I’ve done, that he was really kind of well respected for his writing and but like he did I think it was a television show called the invaders that was   pretty successful but he wrote the initial treatment for it and I don’t know you know maybe the pilot or some of the initial episodes and then eventually he was just kind of shut out and he said that had it been up to him creatively he would have probably taken it in a different direction. Now whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing I don’t know but I you know I just read that he had kind of experienced some of those things too and it’s great that some people I’ve also read that he was   quite the character. Now I don’t that could mean any number of things. I know that he didn’t actually write, in a physical sense, his stuff. He dictated everything into a tape recorder, as opposed to physically writing it or typing it up or whatever. Which is how Rod Serling worked, actually. Yeah, I was going to say, it’s not that that’s terribly bizarre, but a little quirky. But Garrett Morris, chocolate chip Charlie, was at some point, much later, asked about this film. And he said that the production was just crazy and he was asked specifically about Larry Cohen,   his director, and his response was, I was taught growing up that if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all, and he wouldn’t comment any further. So not everybody enjoyed their experience with him as much as maybe Michael Moriarty did. So for sure. But, you know, there’s nothing wrong, especially in Hollywood, with being unique and quirky and different. It’s actually nice and refreshing. So I’ll give him credit for that. This movie may not have been my cup of tea, but I appreciate somebody who’s willing to step outside the box. I’ve   certainly never seen another movie like this. He’s certainly not relying on, you know, popular or common tropes. It’s different. It’s a risk. It doesn’t work for me, but you know, more power to you.

Todd: And that was 1 thing that a lot of people said about him. Again, if you’re at all interested in this man, you should really watch this documentary called King-Koen. It’s like a takeoff of King Kong. It’s so interesting. And a lot of things that they credit him with is just having this incredible imagination. Like he was an idea guy. He had these high concept ideas, sort of before high concept movies and high concept television series were a thing. Something like Lost comes along, seems like something he would have written. Even like The Invaders apparently had a   little bit of that vibe and that bent to it and Hollywood just couldn’t take it, you know, television couldn’t take it at the time. They said, no, this is a little too out there, people aren’t going to go with it, you need to get a little more traditional. But the very first movie he directed in 1972 was called Bone and it was 1 of the first quote-unquote black exploitation movies. He had a black actor in here and it’s this whole deal and it’s it’s it’s violent, it’s exciting and whatever. The guy who starred in that now   his name is Yafet Koto, he’s not a household name but if you saw him you would recognize him from a lot of films of the time. And then later on, right after this, he did a movie called Black Caesar for starring Fred Williamson. And Fred Williamson is huge, especially, you know, got his start in the black exploitation. It’s been working forever. He’s a bit of a character himself. But they both said, look, this guy basically busted open the doors for us. He didn’t start the black exploitation genre, but he’s 1 of those people who said, I   don’t care, we’re going to do this and it’s going to be fun. And I, you know, he, Larry Cohen said, every movie is an exploitation movie. So I don’t get the whole notion of black exploitation or whatever. You have a bunch of black actors in a movie and you’re doing something about gang violence or whatever. That’s just what it is. And, you know, he did those kinds of movies kind of a bit ahead of his time. 1 movie that we did was It’s Alive, which was hugely controversial when it came out. It’s laughable now because almost   anything goes, but at that time, this notion that there’d be a movie about a killer baby was extremely offensive. He had a really hard time getting someone to distribute it, and just through his relentless persistence, it came out and it was quite successful and spawned a few sequels. So, you know, he just always seemed to be maybe just a little bit too ahead of his time in some ways but with a guy like this right who’s doing all this stuff and taking all these risks not everything is gonna hit right and it seems like this is   1 of those movies it’s just just didn’t really work

Craig: well right but you mentioned something like It’s Alive, which ultimately on paper, it shouldn’t have worked, I don’t think, but we watched it and we actually thought that it was, I mean, in execution, not amazing, but I think that both of us cried at the end of it.

Todd: We were impressed with the depth in it, actually, weren’t we?

Craig: Right, and it was subversive. And Again, with social commentary, I think that it was commentary on the dangers of the pharmaceutical industry, which was a big deal in the 80s when it came out. I think that there was commentary there also on the notion of abortion. He had something to say, and he did it in a different and interesting way. And that movie again, you know, it’s a B movie, but Cohen himself, I read a quote, he said somewhere, these big blockbuster A movies are going to fade into oblivion because people are going to stop talking   about them. It’s the B movies that do something interesting and subversive that people are going to continue to talk about for a long time. Now, I don’t know if that’s accurate, but I think that he has a point, you know, to do something that is different, that is going to have people buzzing and talking. And you know, here we are, 2019, and we’re talking about an evil ice cream movie.

Todd: Not a great evil ice cream movie but there has never been an evil ice cream movie before or since. Right. Right. There’s a movie that he did in 1976 called God Told Me To. Have you heard of this film?

Craig: I don’t think so.

Todd: I encountered it in a bargain bin type. It was like a DVD in a dollar store bin, but I read the synopsis on the back and I was really intrigued by it because it was this sound cool it’s about these you know people these murders or whatever that are happening these crazy people are killing people in the city and when they’re encountered they basically say God told me to do it and then they kill themselves and I thought oh this is interesting You’re kind of unraveling this mystery of what’s going on here. It’s a kind of   weird cult thing. And about halfway through this movie, it takes a total left turn and becomes so whacked out that it’s almost impossible to describe. And I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who’s watching it, but it’s just like, I mean, it’s just insane that anybody would make this movie. Again, very high concept and really interesting. And just like it lives, 1 thing that really struck us about that movie was that even though it had that element of the killer baby and all that, you know, we cried by the end because there was this subtext,   it was this father coming to terms with his son. And that was really touching, really emotionally touching. And in This God Told Me To, it’s also a little bit about this guy coming to terms with faith and kind of has these ideas as far as like the nature of God and stuff like that and belief and religion and things that ends up in the middle of this crazy plot that has this sort of Jesus-like character with a vagina on the side of him.

Clip: Oh my gosh.

Todd: Oh, he is just so crazy. You’ve just got to see it to believe it. Like, at the end of the day, there are just some elements in there that kind of stick with you. And so There are times when I feel like he really had a good handle on character. And I just didn’t feel like this, it just felt like maybe there’s just too much cut out of this movie. I’d like to give him that credit. You know, maybe there was, he had something, a kernel of that in this movie that just is completely lost. I   just felt like this movie was like all plot and very little substance. You know, it had this social commentary on it, which was funny and funny, and at times executed very well, but it was it, you know, it was kind of all surface and didn’t have any of that other trademark stuff that his movies often have.

Craig: Well, and I can’t say that I, I don’t know, I don’t want to be too tough on it. I can’t say that I enjoyed much of it at all, but I really felt like it really fell apart at the end. Like, I felt like the last 15 minutes, it seemed to me like they were trying really hard for the comedy at the end, and it was just falling totally flat for me. I mean, you know, they think they’ve defeated the stuff at this factory and they’re trying to get the word out to people. So they’re at   this radio station and chocolate chip Charlie shows up and it turns out that he’s infected by the stuff and his head explodes and the stuff chases whatever her name is, Nicole. And they somehow find out that the only way to neutralize it is to burn it. And at 1 point Michael Moriarty’s character cuts in half this enormous electrical wire and this was the part with the special effects that I said were really, really bad. Oh, they were horrible. He jumps up and he electrocutes it. There’s another part too where this stuff.

Todd: I know what you’re gonna say.

Craig: It jumps on his face. Yes. Then Nicole’s idea to rescue him is to set his head on fire.

Clip: It’s to burn it off of

Todd: him, yeah.

Craig: Like that. Hold on, hold on, I’m gonna set your head on fire.

Todd: I was thinking that too, I was like, oh my gosh, well this isn’t gonna end well for anybody, but nary a scratch on him or his hair piece.

Craig: Oh no. Yeah, no,

Todd: he was

Craig: totally fine. But it goes, I felt like it was totally going for the comedy at the end and it just didn’t work for me. And then the last scene was like, okay, So Mo, the main guy, approaches the CEOs who were funding the stuff and he goes to them and they tell him that they are going to rebrand it as the taste. And it’s only going to have a certain percentage of the stuff in it not enough, you know, to cause people harm or whatever. And he’s like, oh, well, I’m going to force you at gunpoint   with this little kid Jason shows up to. He’s like, we, the 2 of us are badasses, and we’re going to force you to eat cases and cases of the stuff until you die. And then they do, and then that’s the end. It just seemed like such a weird change in character. All of a sudden he’s this wicked badass who’s just totally down with killing people. Now granted, they’re bad people I guess, you know, they represent the corporate greed and blah blah, But you and your child sidekick are just gonna go around and kill people. Hell no.   It was weird. And that’s it. Then it’s over. Except for Nicole delivers an epilogue. Like, it’s so weird!

Todd: Yeah. And there’s a scene, I’m trying to think if it’s in the version that you saw where there was sort of a black market thing, like it

Craig: showed that. Yeah, yeah.

Todd: Like it’s just never ending. And I mean,

Craig: I know that’s- It’s like crack now, like shady people in alleyways are receiving shipments of it. In the 80s you would always see in the movies when they would get a shipment of heroin or cocaine or whatever and somebody would lick their finger and stick it in there and taste it. Like, okay, yeah, it’s good. This is the real stuff. Yeah, like they’re doing that with the stuff.

Todd: Because this is so appealing, right? I mean,

Craig: you can’t really, we don’t

Todd: really see the pleasure that this brings. I mean, they think it tastes great, That’s about it. It’s not like it throws them into throngs of ecstasy that we can see.

Craig: Well, I don’t know. There are suggestions, like it gives people a lot of energy and they don’t have to eat anything else. And the mom at 1 point. And they lose weight. Yeah, the mom’s

Clip: like, I’ve already lost 5 pounds this week and I feel great.

Todd: Like, so stupid. And that in itself is part of the parody, right? You know, these products, they’re supposed to do absolutely everything for you and there’s nothing bad about it and it turns out they’re killing us as we find

Craig: out so many times. It’s like, oh, Lestra. Remember, oh, Lestra. Like, here, it’s good for you. It’s really, really low fat. It’ll cause you to leak out of your butthole, but that’s

Todd: all right, don’t worry about it.

Craig: Dude, I love

Todd: the Lestra. Nothing ever leaked out of my butthole.

Craig: I’ve never tasted Doritos so good. And so guilt

Todd: free is when I was eating the Lestra Doritos. I’m glad I was born at a time anyway. No, but like, you know, that’s kind of the thing, right? It’s gotta end in this way that the corporation eventually wins out. You know, I mean, it makes sense that it’s never over because it is never over That’s part of the commentary, right? Right. You can’t ever get away from these guys But a movie like for example, they live huh just does it in a more satisfying way like at the end Yeah, the corporation does went out but he   gets to take out a whole bunch of them at the end, and he sticks a big middle finger up and is like, F you, you know? While he’s going out, and there’s just something really exciting and fun about that way of ending it, that this movie, it just didn’t, it just kind of fizzled. Yeah. You know, it just wasn’t as fun. Plus we were all just, I don’t know, but like you said, I was so ready for this movie to be over by

Craig: the time it was over definitely

Todd: another scene. Oh, okay Oh, God. There’s another scene. Oh, okay. There’s this little epilogue credits, please good, right?

Craig: Yeah, so you know How many times do we do this, Craig? We give tribute episodes for people.

Todd: I feel really guilty about it. We pick these

Craig: movies. Nonetheless, Mr. Cohen, you know, I still have mad respect for a guy who, you know, was kind of, you know, this gonzo player in the industry. And obviously he was doing something right because he was prolific. He worked all the time. People had a lot of respect for him as do I. So maybe we just picked the wrong movie. Maybe we should have done God Told Me to Do It.

Todd: Or Cue the Winked Serpent or something.

Craig: I think that we picked this 1 because it was so familiar to us being kids of the 80s and we had never seen it. And we wanted to see it. Yeah, we wanted to see it. I wanted to see it. And I’m glad I saw it. I don’t ever need to see it again. But you know, now I’ve seen it and It is what it is. I do not mean to speak ill of the dead. I mean no disrespect. I have a lot of respect for this guy. But I can’t say that I can give this   movie any glowing recommendation.

Todd: No. Me neither. Me neither. Go check out another 1. Go check out It Lives. That 1 kind of gets the flavor of what’s going on in this movie, but it does it in a much more satisfying way. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook if you just search for 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. You can also find us at our web page where you can stream our episodes live and visit all of our back catalogs. TwoGuys.Red40Net.com. Of   course you can also find us anywhere you can find podcasts. Once again, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw is who we are. And if you like what you heard please drop us a note on our webpage, you can go to our Facebook page, give us some requests, let us know what you thought of this movie. We love hearing from our listeners. Until next time, I’m Todd

Craig: and I’m Craig

Todd: with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.