2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

Happy Halloween! We wrap up our fifth and final Halloween episode of the season with The Witching Season, a micro-budget, Halloween-soaked horror anthology that began as a web series and plays like five connected episodes.

We talk about how the segments share a cohesive look, consistent cinematography, and clever little callbacks (radio/TV clips and visual nods) that tie everything together.

We break down each short, from the slasher to the killer stuffed animal tale, the alien abduction, the longer “writer in a haunted house” meta-story that later became a feature, and an urban-legend-style closer. We end by discussing uneven payoffs, overall ambition, and the news of a funded Part II.

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Automatic Transcript

The Witching Season (2015)

Ep 512, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Happy Halloween, Craig.

Craig: Hey, man. Happy Halloween.

Todd: We made it.

Craig: How’s it treating you?

Todd: Oh, so far so good. I, I bought a couple Halloween decorations at the store, a little ghost and a little pumpkin. They’re sitting on my table, and I’m about to head out to the Philippines, and we’re gonna see how much Halloween they do there.

I- in Beijing, there’s Halloween horror nights. I’m going there with some buddies, and that’s always fun. They’ve, uh, boosted that this year. There are now seven walk-through haunts, so-

Craig: Nice …

Todd: that’s pretty huge for, you know, few years ago, this place was just kinda getting going on this thing, and now seven haunts, and they’re starting to look pretty professional considering what I saw last year.

I’m, I’m very excited. Nice. I even know someone who’s working in one of them. So, uh, yeah, should be a good time. A little bit of Halloween, uh, in Beijing. A little bit more than I experienced in Thailand, that’s for sure. I kind of assumed the opposite but, you know. As much as Thailand’s into horror, you’d think there’d be a lot more Halloween going on.

Yeah. But maybe we’re a few years out from that yet. How about you?

Craig: Oh, man, I’ve been enjoying it for a while. I, uh, I, I had to go to a dollar store for something in real early October for, for something for school, and they had just put out all of their Halloween decorations, and I went nuts, and I bought so much cheap crap.

Todd: You can do that on Halloween, right? The cheap crap’s the best. Yeah.

Craig: Oh, yeah. Like dollar, $1.50 skeleton skulls, so many skulls, spiders. Wow. Like every- I bought so much. I spent like, I don’t know, like $75 at the dollar store on cheap crap, and I decorated my classroom with it. And I love it because that’s Halloween to me.

Halloween isn’t fancy. No. Halloween is tacky. It’s supposed to be. And I, I like cheap, tacky Halloween decorations. I think they’re fun. They make me happy.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And so my classroom is covered in them. There’s, you know, like three-foot tall plastic, uh, s- skeletons in orange and green hanging in my big windows, and ghosts hanging around and, uh, it’s, it’s great.

That’s awesome. I’ll, I’ll send you some pictures. But yeah, I’m, I’m, uh, you know, I’ve got this new classroom that I love, and, uh, this is really the first time in my almost 25-year career that I’ve, like, decorated for the holidays ’cause I ac- you know, my, my space feels new and, and good, and it’s fun to decorate, so.

Todd: Yeah. That-

Craig: I’ve really been enjoying it. Yeah. And, and the weather is finally getting cold. Where I am, it’s really weird because it’ll be like in the low 40s overnight, but then by mid-afternoon it’s the 80s. So- Wow. I’m wearing a sweatshirt out in the morning, and then by the time I’m coming home from school I’m sweating, but it’s, it’s nice.

Oh my gosh. The leaves are finally starting to change. It’s, it’s really nice. I’m really, uh, I’m, I’m really settling into the season. I, I’m already through my annual reading of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Like, I’m

Todd: in

Craig: it. Oh.

Todd: That’s fantastic. Oh, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Oh, yeah, it’s funny. You know, I do an annual reading of Dandelion Wine.

Craig: Nice.

Todd: Two Ray Bradbury books. And, uh, book club’s going well. Having fun there, aren’t we?

Craig: Yeah, and we’re reading an interesting Halloween book. I don’t know. I ha- I, I’m reserving my judgment.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: But yeah, it’s a 31-chapter book, one day for each day of Halloween. Told from the perspective of, I think, Jack Th- Jack the Ripper’s dog.

Uh And but then also there’s, like, all kinds of, like, Lovecraftian stuff going on. It’s, it’s interesting. I’m a little more than halfway through. That’s fun. But yeah, book club’s going great. Having a lot of fun with those guys, talking about books and movies and all kinds of stuff. It’s a good time.

Todd: Yeah, it’s very cool.

Well, we’re here on our fifth and final Halloween episode of the season. We picked these movies out pretty far in advance and realized we could do five this month instead of just four if we timed it all right. So, uh, here we are with the fifth one. This is The Witching Season. It’s a horror anthology.

Thought it might be kind of fun to do a wh- to end things on a horror anthology.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: You know, we’ve got quite a few horror anthologies out there that we haven’t hit yet that have… We’ve got a long list, actually, but this one is very Halloween themed. I was a little nervous about it, only because I noticed, yeah, it’s one of these, like, lower budget movies.

It doesn’t seem like it’s… It’s definitely hasn’t hit the theaters. Right. Not that I’m aware of, anyway. But it’s up on streaming and stuff, so thought we’d give it a go. So this is the first time I had seen it. How about you, Craig?

Craig: I thought that I had seen it before, but I don’t think that I have. And I think probably the reason that I hadn’t seen it before is because I was under the impression that it was a feature film that was an anthology, but it’s not exactly, at least not depending on where you get it.

Todd: Supposedly, yeah.

Craig: It started out as a web series, independently, uh, produced. The, this guy Michael Ballif, Baylif, and, and a guy that he works with, you know, I guess, I don’t know if they’d been working together or they just k- kept working together after this, but a guy named James Morris- And it was a, uh, a, a web series.

And then I think that it did well enough or, or got enough attention that they did like a Kick- u- uh, a Kickstarter or like an Indiegogo or, or something, and they raised enough money for a physical release. And I think that when they did the physical release, they just stitched them all together. And so again, depending on where you get it, I found it on Tubi, where it’s listed as one season of an anthology with five separate episodes, and the episodes are separated out with, with opening and, and closing credits.

But nonetheless, an anthology that feels very much like… You know, there are some anthologies, V/H/S comes to mind, those where you get such diversity in the different directors that even the V/H/S movies are th- you know, each one has kind of a theme, but they can vary wildly in style from segment to segment.

Todd: Right.

Craig: These feel like parts of a whole.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Th- this feels more like Trick r Treat, right?

Todd: Yeah. It, it does in a way, ’cause the, because of what

Craig: ties it together. The one that we really liked.

Todd: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: Right. And, and the stories don’t overlap as much here as they do in that movie, but there is some overlap and the style and, and, uh, many visuals and, and things of that nature are, are consistent throughout.

So it, it feels like it was made as a cohesive whole and, and works that way even though there is no wraparound at all.

Todd: Yeah. It, it… Because, um, in each story there’s a little hint at the previous story.

Craig: A little callback.

Todd: Usually it’s like a little visual thing or-

Craig: Something you hear on the radio or on TV.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. And the last story in the group has a woman at one point flipping through TV, her TV, and she’s hitting a clip from each of the television clips that we’ve seen in all the previous stories. Oh,

Craig: really? Right. That’s funny.

Todd: Yeah. Did you notice that? No. Yeah, that was kinda interesting. So I mean, there was some effort to tie this together, which is cute.

And I guess supposedly, I have no reason to doubt it, I guess this was filmed over the course of several years. According to IMDb, 2015, then 2016, then 2017, so like three years went by. It, it feels like all this was filmed in the same night, honestly. You know, there’s quite a bit of consistency with the neighborhood involved and the cinematography.

Actually, I was very impressed with the cinematography. It’s all very consistent amongst the episodes, the lighting, everything like that, which, you know, I wouldn’t expect from a very independent micro-budget indie type movie that was obviously shot on video, you know? It looks good, honestly, for what it is.

Was pretty shocked by that.

Craig: Yeah. It looks like m- m- it’s made… You know, it looks like it’s, it’s shot on a budget.

Todd: It’s cheap. Yeah. It looks cheap.

Craig: But it’s, it’s skillfully shot, so it’s… You know, it looks like whoever’s behind the camera is doing a good job and they’re considering framing and lighting and, and, and all of these things.

It’s not shoddy. It’s not just thrown together. Right. But you can tell they didn’t have a lot of money.

Todd: Yeah, exactly.

Craig: It, it’s, it’s not shiny.

Todd: No, it’s not. It’s very limited on locations. It kinda looks like it was shot and some homes were borrowed, you know? For sure, yeah. Very mu- on location. The actors are-

Craig: They’re fine

Todd: fine in them. The one actor, James Morris, is in almost all of- at least he’s in, like, the last three, and he’s very much featured in one of them He apparently was the director of three of the episodes as well. So, uh-

Craig: Right …

Todd: yeah, I’m sure we’ll talk about him and everybody else as we get through them. I feel like maybe just one at a time, yeah?

Craig: Yeah, yeah.

Todd: But overall, kind of nice Halloween feel for the whole thing. The whole thing takes place on, obviously on Halloween. That’s, that’s the point, I think, of all of the stories. So that much, uh, you know, it kinda fits our bill for-

Craig: Oh, yeah …

Todd: a horror anthology that’s Halloween-y .

Craig: It’s very Halloween-centric, like just dripping in jack-o’-lanterns and witches and, you know, everything Halloween.

It’s, it’s just absolutely dripping in it. M- I, I think they all… A- And, and the fall also, you know, the, the fallen leaves and, and all that stuff. It’s seasonally perfect . Um, I, I have to say overall too that I was pleasantly surprised. You know, as, as soon as it began and I kind of saw, I’m like, “Okay, this is low budget,” I think that had I gone to put it on before, I might not have, just because I saw that it was a series and, and maybe a little bit lower budget.

Right. But by the time the first segment was over, I was like, “Okay.” I was like, “All right, this might be better than I was expecting.” And overall, I think it was.

Todd: Yeah. You know, I’ll tell you, I was getting shades of another anthology that we did, the one that had the segment of the Terrifier character in the last one.

Craig: Wasn’t it All Hallows Eve, I think?

Todd: Yeah, I was getting shades of All Hallows Eve here, in that I felt it was similarly shot-

Craig: A little bit,

Todd: yeah … in a very low-budget style. And we did that years ago, and I’m pretty sure we came to the conclusion that it was super uneven. Some of the stories we didn’t really care for at all, and we agree that the strongest one by far was the Alt- Art the Clown segment at the end, which of course led to the Terrifier series with- Right

Art the Clown now being this huge sensation. But e- every, every segment except for that, it started to make me think of that. And honestly- As I got to the end, I felt like this was almost superior in terms of, uh, consistency and story quality and the way that everything was presented.

Craig: It’s a… I- it’s been so long since I’ve seen that movie, honestly, I don’t even remember what the other stories were.

So it’s, it’s, it’s… I rem- I mean, I remember there was something satanic going on, like, in the tunnels under the subway or something. That’s, that’s about all I… That was weird.

Todd: I remembered there being an alien segment that was just kind of head-scratching.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And this one has one, too.

Craig: Yeah. A- and I would say that’s maybe at least among the weakest of them.

See, the thing is these are all really short. They vary in length from anywhere around, I think, 10 minutes. Th- that one we just mentioned about the aliens may even be shorter than that. It’s really short. But, uh, they vary from between, like, 10 up to 30 minutes, but 30 is the longest by quite a long shot. So they’re really short and the stories are very simple.

So- Yeah … if you have… If you want there to be any element of surprise, you shouldn’t listen to this.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Because, uh, unless we just wanna say the premise, which, you know, I, I suppose we could just do, but they’re, they’re so brief, there’s, there’s not a lot to them.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So anyway, fair warning as always, blah, blah, blah.

All right.

Todd: Yeah. Well, the first one. What was the na- what was the title of the first story?

Craig: I don’t know. I missed the title of the first one.

Todd: It wasn’t given, was it?

Craig: I don’t, I don’t remember seeing one. I saw one on all the other ones, but I didn’t see one on that one.

Todd: I didn’t either. All we got was The Witching Season with, with an intro that is in front of all of them, which is kinda cool.

It’s got lots of little shots of Halloween stuff around town, very quiet morning time, I guess, around a place that’s decorated for Halloween. And by the way, if you go to their website… Did you make it to their website?

Craig: No.

Todd: Their The Witching Season films- Uh-huh … you can see that these guys are basically… I mean, what they say in their About Us page is that they are a Utah-based production company which specializes in creating Halloween-themed content 365 days a year.

Craig: They’ve done a couple feature films since this.

Todd: They have, yeah. I’m kinda curious about them actually.

Craig: One of them expands upon one of these shorts, like-

Todd: Exactly …

Craig: bec- because of the success of these- They used it as proof of concept or whatever and made the, the feature film. Which is interesting, and we should talk about when we get there because I, I, I just kept thinking, “Really?

Like, an hour and 48 minutes of this?”

Todd: Of this, right?

Craig: But yeah. But anyway, the IMDb says that the first episode is called Killer on the Loose. I didn’t see that.

Todd: Oh, I didn’t either.

Craig: But you’re right, everything very, very Halloween-y, Halloween decorations everywhere. And then it’s basically just a scene, any scene from any slasher with silent masked killer.

So it’s very Michael Myers, it’s very Jason. I would say more Michael Myers than Jason, but-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: just kind of a menacing, quiet man in a mask chasing a woman.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: First he’s chasing her through the woods, and then she runs into a house, and then he’s standing outside the house, and she… Ah, he tries to come in, and she runs around.

And it goes on for a while. And I was, you know, I, I was sitting there thinking I, I see what they’re doing. I mean, this is any scene that you take out of the second half of any of the Halloween movies, but they’re doing it well. And that’s what I was thinking. I was thinking, “The suspense here is good.” Like-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: I was genuinely kind of on the edge of my seat, and I, I don’t know exactly what to attribute that to, but I was. So I felt like it was doing a good job at what it was trying to do.

Todd: Yeah, I think it was well filmed, you know? T- there’s just a girl running, like you said, and it’s mostly shaky cam. But, you know, she comes into this house, and I think it’s a little appropriately confusing.

We find out later. But, like, she comes into this house, and she’s, like, on the kitchen floor. You know, I’m thinking stuff like, “All right, you’re running from this guy, and you saw him outside the window. You’ll keep him within your eyesight at least,” you know? “Don’t go down on the floor w- away from the windows.

Lock the door behind you when you’re coming in.” The guy just kind of opens the door and walks in, and she’s hiding around, and she’s terrified. She’s hiding behind the television. The guy comes in, and there is Night of the Living Dead playing on the screen. Of

Craig: course.

Todd: Which makes sense. Number one, it’s common, commonly used because it’s free.

Craig: I, I was gonna say, I even thought like, “Yes, we see this all the time. It’s free, and everybody knows it, and it’s spooky, so people use it all the time.” Uh-huh. I thought that it was used really well here. Like-

Todd: Yes …

Craig: he, he allowed it to score the scene.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: I thought it was so smart.

Todd: It really was. It’s a little baffling what’s happening here because it’s already playing on the television when she comes in, and there’s nobody else around.

There’s a big roaring fire in the fireplace and everything And as she backs away, she steps on the controller. It pauses it on the screen to the point where the woman is running, and she looks at it and she seems entranced by it. Then she hides behind the TV as the guy comes in, and then he looks around for a while, doesn’t see her.

So then it’s like he unpauses the screen and starts watching it as she gets away. And like you said, now that it’s unpaused, it’s underscoring the rest of the episode, which was cool. She runs upstairs, and then he’s downstairs, and she gets in a closet upstairs, and he comes up the stairs, and he’s still in his mask.

And he comes into the room and he stops and takes off his mask, sets it down turns towards what we haven’t seen, which is the rest of the room, and there’s a woman lying dead- Uh-huh … on the bed. Her throat’s been slashed. She’s bleeding from her wrist. Everything’s kind of been cut up, and he seems to maybe be a little surprised.

So this is the twist. Then the woman comes leaping out of the closet at him, tackles him to the floor, and stabs him a bunch of times, and it’s like she’s really good at this. And the expression on her face i- is not of a scared woman who suddenly overcame her attacker, but she has a extreme degree of confidence.

And that’s when we are hearing over the radio that this, this, uh… Or maybe it’s the television downstairs that’s kicked on- Uh-huh … right to the news segment.

Craig: Yeah. Right.

Todd: And it’s that there is a woman who has been, uh, who has escaped from the mental asylum and has already killed and is running around, and their police are on the lookout for him.

So it turns out she’s actually the killer-

Craig: Right …

Todd: and she has killed this couple now. Yeah. Because we see a, a photo frame of the man and the dead woman there on the… You know, it’s a clever twist. I liked it. I agree with you. I thought it was well-filmed and s- and appropriately suspenseful. But in retrospect, like, I’m not sure why she was so freaking out.

Craig: Todd, she’s crazy.

Todd: Well,

Craig: I- She, she escaped the loony bin. She’s loony.

Todd: Okay.

Craig: All right. But I, I, I honestly think that’s just it. I, I actually th- You know, there are more details. Like, at one point when she’s running away, she looks down at her wrists, and you can see that it looks like she’s escaped bondage.

Been cut. And, and-

Todd: Oh, that’s what it is.

Craig: Yeah. It- it’s like she had something really tight around her wrist, and you can still see the, the marks. And I thought that was really clever, and it didn’t occur to me, but it says later, you know, she was institutionalized or whatever. So I assume we are supposed to believe that she was res- in restraints wherever she was.

Everything kind of adds up. I didn’t see it coming, but in hindsight, aside from… Okay, I can understand why she’s just kind of acting crazy. She doesn’t wanna be f- caught by anybody. Like, maybe- Mm-hmm … she thinks that the guy with the flashlight is the people who are coming to get her, like from… or the police or whatever.

Hmm. Maybe. I don’t know. What I’m not sure I understand is when did she kill that girl? Because she starts- Yeah … all of it starts outside the house, so she had to have killed the girl

Todd: Gone

Craig: outside Earlier? Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, that part, I mean, she could have killed the girl, gone outside, and then sees the guy coming.

You know, she’s trying to get away- Okay. All right … and she sees him coming. Okay. What I didn’t understand was the guy’s actions. I mean, it’s very slow. Like, he’s-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: he seems to be stalking. You know, he’s got a big knife in his hand. I don’t know, what, are we, is he coming home from a party or something maybe?

But- Is it

Craig: a

Todd: prank

Craig: on his girlfriend? I, yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t get it really.

Todd: But, but he’s really walking slow through the house and, I mean, but, uh, you know, as a story it works, and it was interesting and well-filmed, and there’s a nice little twist at the end, and there we go. And we kind of expect a little twist at the end of all these, and we got it.

Craig: Yeah. I, I liked it. It might actually have been my favorite. I may change my mind later, but,

Todd: um-

Craig: Hmm … it made me smile at the end, like, “Oh, that was clever, and you got me.” Like, I pr- … I was like, “Oh, you got me. I didn’t see that coming.” I didn’t know where it was going- Yeah … but I didn’t see that coming, so I liked it.

Me

Todd: neither.

Craig: The second one is called Princess. Mm-hmm. And it’s about this mom and this little girl who move into a new house, and in the middle of the night the girl hears, I don’t know, it sounded like wheels rolling across a floor, some kind of rumbling or, or something. And so she goes down to the basement looking for mice.

Yeah. She’s like, “

Are there any mice down here?” Like, who are you talking to?

Todd: I know. But

Craig: she, but she goes down there and then she hears whispering from a cardboard box in the corner. Yeah. And she goes and opens it, and it’s full of stuffed animals. And she starts pulling them out, and one of them is this creepy ass, like, Easter Bunny or something

Todd: Weird looking bunny thing. I couldn’t believe this was produced, but, uh, it’s the creepiest doll in the bunch.

And when mom comes downstairs and asks her what she’s doing, she’s like, “Oh, I thought I heard mice,” blah, blah, blah. Mom’s like, “Now, you know those be- probably belong to the girl who lived here before, and how would you feel if, you know, you had somebody pawing through your stuff?” And she’s like, “Well, but I like this one.”

She says, “Well, you can pick one to keep.” And so of course she picks the creepiest one.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And I felt like this one was pretty slow burn. You could kinda see where it was going. It’s a creepy doll story.

Craig: Right.

Todd: So she’s got this little rabbit, and Mom is by herself and, uh, she’s talking to someone on the phone.

She gets off the phone, she’s gonna do some laundry, and she decides to chuck the rabbit in the laundry as well. I thought this was kinda funny, where Mom comes back and almost slips on the floor because there’s water and soap all over the floor. Mm-hmm. And she looks down and it’s, the door’s open.

Obviously the bunny has gotten out.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Mom’s just a little baffled by it. I like that. And, uh, when she goes to the girl’s room, she’s talking to the-

Craig: The girl is, right …

Todd: it’s so typical.

Craig: You know? It plays, right, it, it plays the child’s play game. Like y-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: we’re, we’re supposed to wonder for about three or four minutes-

Todd: Oh, like more like 10.

Craig: Y- is it, is it, is, is the bunny really evil or is the girl cuckoo? Because it could go either way for a while. ‘

Todd: Cause the girl herself is pretty distant and, uh-

Craig: Um, could go either way. But eventually The rabbit is evil. I remember these. I, I feel like these type of stuffed animals were just before us, because I think that there were a couple around when I was a kid.

They would have, like, those tacky, like, velvet or velveteen fur, but then those hard plastic faces. And it’s, it- it’s creepy in and of itself. But then it gleefully watches what at first I thought was an infomercial for knives, but I think it- Yeah … was it act- was it, or was it a cooking show?

Todd: Ah.

Craig: I, it’s not well done.

I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter. They were… The, the… But what the segment was about was how sharp these knives are. They can cut through anything. Anything. And, and that’s, and that’s why I thought it was an infomercial, and it may have been. Because, God, I mean, it’s, it’s so cliche now to, like, talk about those infomercials, but they were real, and I remember watching- Yeah

them all the time. And I remember watching the guy cut, you know, through the leather boot. And then-

Todd: And the tin can …

Craig: thin slice that tomato. Yeah.

Todd: Oh, thin slice the tomato. Always a tomato. Man, you’d think tomatoes were the most challenging thing to cut the way they went on those tomatoes with those knives.

Craig: I think they were trying to demonstrate that you could, like, saw a tree down and it would still be sharp enough- yeah … to finely shave your tomatoes. Thank God. I

Todd: know.

Craig: But yeah, it’s a whole gag. He’s like, “Hell yeah, it can cut through bone. Toss me that chicken.” And, like, it- it’s, it’s very silly.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But it’s, it’s also funny.

Like, I… There is tongue-in-cheek humor throughout, and there’s a lot of these… Not a lot, but periodically there are these TV segments, and they look like cable access or local.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And so they’re bad, but they’re intentionally bad, and it’s funny. I don’t even remember what segment it is. There’s… Maybe it’s the last one.

But there’s a girl who’s watching a public access Halloween special, and I’m like, oh my God. I remember vaguely when those existed, and I, I wish they still did. I, I’m sure you can find something on the internet. But, but anyway, the, the rabbit watches this scary thing and, and the camera work is great, ’cause the rabbit’s not really doing anything.

Todd: No.

Craig: It only looks menacing because it’s shot and lit that way, but it looks great. And then it starts running around and you get, like, red rabbit POV.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And it’s evil and it, and it goes and gets the knife and it… You think it’s gonna kill the mom, ’cause it goes in where the mom is, and it raises the knife up above her All shot from its point of view, of course.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But the twist is that the daughter grabs it before it can plunge the knife and fights it.

Todd: Fights it. It’s, it’s pretty bold, isn’t it, for this low-budget production to try a, a killer doll thing? They’ve gotta be really careful.

Craig: I love this. This is old school killer doll because-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: there are no animatronics, there are no special effects really.

It’s just this little girl. You know, somebody throwing the doll at her, you know? Uh-huh. Like, her just rolling around with it, and I love it. It’s old school, and I thought it was great. I thought it was a lot of fun.

Todd: I love the bit where the mom is sleeping and you see the knife just flop over onto the bed, like the doll tossed it up-

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: so that it could climb. And, and then slowly this doll peaks… I was like, “Oh, wait for it, wait for it. Somebody’s raising the head of the doll over the edge of the bed.” Yes. You know?

Craig: So funny.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Loved it. The girl gets ahold of the very, very sharp knife and chops its head off Right … and, and, and takes it down and, and throws it in the garbage can outside and-

Todd: You know, I, I feel like there is something wrong with this girl.

I mean, she’s very nonchalant about most of this, you know? It doesn’t really affect her like you’d think. And then after she dumps it outside, she just comes into the room and goes, “Mommy, can I sleep with you tonight?”

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: Lays down in the bed, and it, it does fade to black for a little bit.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And I thought, “Is it over?

What, what’s going on?” And then it comes back up.

Craig: It just fades back in, yeah.

Todd: And just fades back in. I guess it’s just supposed to be later that night. The panda from her room st-

Craig: The- she has a great- … raises up over the- … big stuffed panda, right. Ah. And it ra- Somebody, somebody lifts it up into frame. I thought that was hilarious.

I, I did see that coming, and I thought that it was- Did you? … hilarious. Yes, I knew. I had no idea. Well, I didn’t know it was gonna be exactly that, but I knew it was gonna be something with that panda because it was featured prominently in the background- That’s true … throughout the whole… And there was at one point where she was kinda sitting in front of it that I thought, I was thinking, “There’s somebody in that panda.”

Like, it, it’s gonna move and… But it didn’t until later, but it did eventually. No. It was cute. I thought that one was cute.

Todd: It was cute. It was a little long.

Craig: Maybe. That one, I… You know, all of these are just TV-14, so they’re, they’re pretty tame. Mm-hmm. I feel like I could show these to my high school kids pretty safely.

I like, I liked that one. It was funny. This next one is one we’ve already referenced. It’s called Not Alone, and I don’t know, I actually kind of like alien movies. Mm-hmm. Like alien abductions and, you know, like that found footage one that we watched w- that was, you know, really low budget ’cause it was found footage.

Was it called- Uh-huh … Alien Abduction, I think? I like that stuff. It kinda freaks me out. So I, I kind of… And I could tell because the, the very first thing, he’s got, like, it’s just a guy asleep in his apartment, but he’s got a, a TV on, I think, and it’s the Halloween night broadcast, and the first thing it talks about is a story out of the neighboring town about a ghost that possesses stuffed animals.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Which was cute.

Todd: We even saw the doll’s head in the beginning, the, as the camera panned across the ground. There was, like, a smashed pumpkin. There was, like, some trash overturned, and then you see the doll’s head as it’s coming up to him. And I lo- I like those little touches that tied them together- Sure, yeah

that

Craig: you

Todd: had talked about earlier. That was kinda nice. Yeah, I, I think it was on the radio, not the TV-

Craig: Okay …

Todd: was this radio program. And, and I say that because I started to realize as this segment was beginning that the radio was flashing 2:45, and I think it was doing that in the previous two segments as well.

Craig: Huh.

Todd: That they were all taking place at the same time. I don’t know if the idea is the same night, but in any case, it made me think about something we could… this way comes, ’cause isn’t there a sequence when he’s with the boys, at least in the movie version, isn’t there a sequence when he’s with the boys in the library and he goes, “3:00, the witching hour”?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So this must have been-

Craig: Oh, yeah, he has a big monologue about 3:00, yeah.

Todd: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you’re right. So he’s got the radio program about that, and then the radio program’s gonna have a guy on who’s ta- it does have a guy on, actually, who’s talking about his encounter with an alien. Yeah, I don’t remember exactly what he says, but he starts to describe it, about how he saw some bright lights, and then there was this figure.

And then it, it starts to fade out and buzz away because there’s this growing light outside coming through the windows. Again, a great low-budget way Yeah … of doing this. You just shine a really, really bright light through the window. We all know what this is supposed to be, and the idea of it is pretty terrifying.

I mean, I completely agree with you. I think the reason why alien abductions are a little scary is it’s, it’s the one monster that you kind of could believe maybe does exist.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And when we were growing up, it was a threat. They were ta- they were talking about this shit all the time. So it hits a chord with me anyway.

But anyway, he, he kind of, like, is, feels like he hears it, but then he sits up like, like suddenly everything is quiet again, like he was dreaming that.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And he sees a shadowy something in the

Craig: corner of the room. He sees a dark figure in the corner of his room that looks… I mean, you couldn’t help but think it was the silhouette of a person.

Now it looks like somebody, like, completely enshrouded in black. You can’t- Right … there are no distinguishing features at all. But you certainly see a silhouette that looks like a body and a head, and it looks a human-ish to me.

Todd: Yeah. It does.

Craig: But he sees it, and it’s like he’s laying there… I have to say that everything that this short does, it does perfectly fine.

It’s just so short, it just left me wanting more. I, I-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: I, I wish there was more to it because, you know, he just, he, he stares and stares at it until eventually it does move. Like, it, it tilts its head, and that s- and that scares him out of bed. But then he’s still questioning it, as you would, I suppose.

Todd: Right. But he-

Craig: Like, you, you, you would think, I suppose, that your mind was playing a trick on you

Todd: I guess. Well, he pulls a bat out from under the bed and he slowly approaches it. This is building an appropriate amount of tension. We, we feel like something’s gonna happen here.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And then, uh, he sees the light switch.

I thought, “Oh, he’s gonna flip the light on and it’s gonna be gone,” you know, something like that. But he swings his bat at it, hits something, and then when he turns the light on, it’s a coat rack?

Craig: It’s a coat rack, yeah.

Todd: Come on, didn’t this guy know he had a coat rack in the corner of the room?

Craig: Right.

Todd: What? It was just baffling.

Craig: Yeah, it’s not a big room. There’s nothing else in there.

Todd: No.

Craig: Except for a huge snake in a, uh, in a cage or whatever.

Todd: Oh, that’s right, the s- huge snake in the cage. Uh, i- isn’t it weird that this coat rack is in the corner of the room there? I don’t know. It-

Craig: I

Todd: don’t know. Whatever, I mean- He’s got a house, not an apartment.

That’s fine, you know? Sure.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: He goes into the bathroom and he washes his face, and there’s a… This is a bit of a long sequence, too, and I thought this is gonna be one of those tricky things where the camera pans down then it pans up and there’s something behind him Is there? Not really, I don’t think.

Not that I

Craig: caught Well, he, he- no, like I, I, I think that he has another brief scare about something. I don’t remember what it is, but he goes to bed and he sits on his bed and we’re, we’re looking at him, like we’re facing him as he’s sitting on his bed, and then he goes to lay down, and there’s a shadow on the wall that moves behind him and, and we see the shadow of something big and inhuman, something monstrous attack him, but only in shadow.

Yeah. We don’t actually see it happening. We just see the silhouette on the wall and, and not even y- you know, it’s not like we’re watching it play out. We see little bits and pieces. It’s, it’s quick. A- and we hear him screaming and stuff, and, and then when the struggle ends, his blankets, like, deflate. I don’t know how better to say it, like- Yeah

it, it, it’s like he disappears from, from underneath them and they just settle onto the bed and he’s gone, and that’s the end.

Todd: That’s it.

Craig: The, the, the, the suspense that’s built is good. It’s just so brief. It, it like you don’t really have time to get into it before it’s over, and then it’s like, “Oh, okay. Well…”

Todd: Yeah, and then okay, so it took him. But that’s like the beginning of a story as far as I’m concerned, you know? It’s not the end.

Craig: It would be a great cold open for a movie. That would be a great cold open.

Todd: It would be. It was, uh, really well done as a cold open, honestly. This is what made me think of All Hallows’ Eve, ’cause I remember specifically they had a sequence that was almost exactly like this, to the point where I feel like they were maybe copying it.

It’s just an alien that comes in, attacks a person, drags them away, and it’s done. And I remember us thinking that’s the weakest one in that movie, and I feel like this one’s the weakest one in this movie as well. I mean, as, as well done as all the suspense is-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: the payoff’s kinda…

Craig: Right. Exactly. Not because it’s poorly made necess- technically, technically it looks good, but I don’t know, it’s kind of a letdown for me.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Uh, but it’s real- it’s short, unlike the next one, which is long. And, and it’s called They Live Inside Us, and that immediately sounded familiar to me. Now, I, I had looked up the movie just to kind of solve the mystery of why it was broken up into episodes, but I hadn’t really read anything about it, but that title, as soon as it popped up, I was like, “That sounds familiar.

I’m pretty sure that there’s a movie with that title.” And there is.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: And it is based on this. So apparently it is just an expanded version- Maybe even with the same actor? I don’t know.

Todd: Mm-hmm. I looked it up. It’s the same team.

Craig: Great. Good for them. But I really thought, I don’t know that I want an hour and 48 minutes of this.

In fact, this felt a little long to me. Mm-hmm. The, the, the 30 minutes felt a little long to me. And I could see how you could make it longer, because what it’s about is this author who I guess for inspiration wants to go write in this haunted house. And he tells… The, the legend behind the haunted house is some guy murdered his wife there on Halloween night.

He stabbed her to death and then he shot himself, and he’s like, “I’m gonna write a horror screenplay here.” And the whole thing that he does is every- Like, he’s got a list of horror movie monsters. And he’s just… It’s just kinda like, you know, eeny, meeny, miny, moe- It’s a little silly … what he’s gonna write about.

It’s funny- Um … I thought. It-

Todd: There’s a lot of humor in this one, I think.

Craig: Uh-huh. But basically he writes, or he begins writing these different screenplays, and I, I, I think the first one is a slasher and then he does a, a scary clown one and he does a scary scarecrow one. And, and so I can see how you could expand on that premise.

You could have him write more stories. You could expand the stories that he wrote I just don’t know that I need to see that.

Todd: No. I agree. It was cute at the beginning because it’s cute the idea that this guy, I mean, he’s clearly a new writer, right? And the whole notion that he needs to break into a haunted house with a history to get inspiration is cute because it should be so unnecessary for most people.

And then he’s got his notebook with, like you said, all of his very basic ideas in there, which is just a long list of monsters that he just kinda decides to start going down.

Craig: It’s a funny list, too. Yeah.

Todd: It’s funny. Oh, it’s just, it’s just cute. I love the idea that he starts out and what he starts writing is a woman running from a masked killer, which is almost exactly like what we saw in the first one.

Craig: I know.

Todd: Just a different mask-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: and a different woman. And I thought, “Oh, this is clever. They’re calling back to that.” And so, you know, he’s writing this and it’s very, very typical, and then it just gets to a point where she retreats into a tent and kind of in a weird wa- Like, who would, who would try to hide in a tent when they’re running away from a guy chasing them through the woods?

But she goes into a tent, and then she sees that there’s a sleeping bag in the tent, and she moves the sleeping bag aside, and it turns out the killer’s there. And he slowly sits up towards them. And then a shot of him and his head looking at the computer screen, kinda baffled and like, “Nah, that, that shit doesn’t work,” you know?

Tears it up, deletes it all, and decides to go down and do the same thing, which again, s- all of these start out exactly the same way. It’s just like some amateur writer with one idea that he’s just riffing on, right? Mm-hmm. And so the next one is the same girl in the same outfit, but now she’s running from the clown in exactly the same fashion.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And he, she hides in the clown’s tent, right? I was laughing at this. I thought, “Oh, I like what they’re doing here. It’s, it’s really kind of fun,” and it’s also a getting in the mind of this writer.

Craig: I wasn’t sure what they were doing because that girl… Okay, so she’s running from this clown. She goes into a tent.

She doesn’t realize that it’s, like, his torture tent until she does. Yeah. But then when she realizes it’s the torture tent, the clown comes in, and she’s hiding from the clown in plain sight. In

Todd: plain sight. Oh, don’t you think she’s doing that every single time? Oh my God, it’s funny. There’s a table with no cover over it that she’s hiding behind that that clown absolutely can see.

Craig: Oh my God. Oh. I was like, “What is happening? She’s right there.” You couldn’t help but see her. There are only three things in the room, and she’s one of them.

Todd: But Craig, the clown is crazy, man.

What I saw in this was just a writer doing a bad job, you know? Right. And so that’s, that’s how I interpreted that. Everything that was kinda wrong with each of these bits that seemed a little fantastical

Craig: was just- Oh, it was so funny though because she was crouched under this table. covering. She was like a little kid, like, “You can’t see me.”

Like, like if she can’t see him, he can’t see her. Boy, it was really, really funny. Yeah, meanwhile, the house is haunted, and- Yeah … the writer is, like, hearing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies for some reason. I don’t know. But he, and he keeps hearing things, but whatever. He, and we see that there’s, like, a lady ghost walking around, or I presumed it was a ghost.

But he keeps writing and he writes another one. He writes about, um, uh- A

Todd: cornfield …

Craig: a cornfield. Yeah, scary g- Yeah. And that story ends when the girl who’s running from the evil scarecrow just gets hit by a guy in a truck.

Todd: Yeah. Who’s eating cake.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Then he looks at the screen and he’s like, “Eh, what?”

Almost like he can’t even believe what he wrote.

Craig: Right. And then the last one he starts, he sets in the house that he’s writing in. And I mean, this is kind of clever. I don’t know that I think that it was executed particularly well. And, and maybe they do better. Maybe with more time and opportunity to flesh it out, maybe it works better.

Here, I don’t know, I didn’t really get it.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So he starts writing, and it’s as though he becomes a character in the story, and he stops writing and he, ’cause he hears the music again, and he goes downstairs, and he sees this woman who has featured in his mind- Mm-hmm … in all of these screenplays that he’s been writing, but she’s really there.

And then, like, he runs to her, and then he runs to the phone and calls the police and is like, “I just killed my wife.” And I’m like, “What?” And he’s like, “What?” And he looks at his, and he looks at his hands, and he’s holding a knife, and he’s all bloody, and he’s got blood all over himself. What happened? I don’t understand.

That lady wasn’t the writer’s wife, was it?

Todd: No. I mean, i- in the beginning there was, uh, some monologue, right? A voiceover where he was talking about the history of the house, and he said that in that house, a man had killed his… stabbed his wife to death and then shot himself upstairs, and they didn’t know why he did it.

They thought i- maybe he was crazy. Maybe he worked himself to death. Ever since then, people say that the ghosts continue to linger in the house, perhaps recreating-

Craig: Okay …

Todd: their murder over and over and over again. I mean, it is, it is expressly laid out in the beginning, but the, the sequence goes on for so long that it- it’s easy to forget the details.

Craig: So, right. That makes a lot of sense. So he didn’t actually kill anybody. He just got caught up in this, like, it re- it, like, it hap- like, history repeating itself, like a haunting. Yeah. He just kind of got caught up in that? Okay.

Todd: I think so. Or maybe, or maybe he is the ghost.

Craig: Maybe he is the ghost. Oh. Uh-huh.

Okay. All right.

Todd: I thought that’s how I interpreted it. He was the ghost.

Craig: That makes more sense. Okay.

Todd: So, you know, I actually thought it was pretty clever.

Craig: Yeah. The computer throws me off, but who cares? Whatever.

Todd: That’s true. That’s true. I, I don’t care. Well, yeah, ’cause then l- later they show a typewriter on the, you know, as they’re- Oh, okay

panning out and, and it comes back. You know, maybe it just, as he recreates the murder over and over again, the tech gets better, you know?

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, maybe, you know, ghosts, they move with the times. Who knows? I don’t know. I, yeah, I mean, I thought it was fine. I didn’t love it. I thought it was kind of a clever idea, and I did like the concept of him writing these stories and them being silly and them playing out for us to see.

I thought that was cute- Yes … and I liked it. It reminded me of that movie that we watched where it was just those two actors, one of them a man and one a woman, and they just told each other stories. It reminded me of that. Oh, that was a lovely movie. Yeah. And I thought it was really cute And then there’s the last one, which is really short and is basically just kind of an urban legend type story where a girl, she’s not even home alone, her mom is home, but she’s- Yeah

at home on Halloween night, I guess, ’cause she hurt her leg. I didn’t even realize that until halfway through. She, she’s sitting in her bed for the first half of it, and then she finally gets out of bed and she’s on a crutch, and I’m like, “Oh, I guess she’s hurt.”

Todd: Yeah. Surprised me too.

Craig: So in, in the very beginning when we first meet her, she’s on the phone with a girlfriend who’s, like, out at a party or something, and she’s like, “Are you coming over later?”

And the girl’s like, “Yeah, I’ll be there later. I’m hooking up with this guy, but I’ll be over after that.” And then she talks to her mom for a minute, and then her mom pisses off some trick-or-treaters because she doesn’t give them candy because they’re teenagers. I’ve said it before, I will say it again, if teenagers come to your door, just give them some candy.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like just let them have it. Like Why

Todd: are we, why are we hogging Halloween for the little kids? Where’s the cutoff for this? I…

Craig: We do not need to gatekeep. Like, I, and I get it, like, teenagers get a little lazier. They don’t wanna look stupid or whatever, so they may not go all out with their costumes or whatever, but if they’re out there, they are clinging to a part of their childhood.

Just let them enjoy it. They’re not gonna get to do it for very much longer. Yeah. So just don’t be a butthole like this lady-

Todd: I totally

Craig: agree … and call them names and send them away So there’s the possibility that somebody could just be messing with this girl because the mom pissed them off, but I didn’t think that for a second.

Todd: No. No, not

Craig: at all. They just, they just established that it could be. But there’s some weirdo standing, you know, you don’t really see much of him. He just looks like a shady figure standing across the hall looking at her, and she texts her friend, “Is that you?” It’s the title. And this, the, the friend’s like, “What are you talking about?”

And she’s like, “No, seriously, is that you?” Like, context, bitch. Like, come on. Like, she clearly doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

Todd: Right.

Craig: Oh, s- qu- asking the same question over and over again is not helping. But anyway, so she j- it, seriously, is it you? But apparently it’s not, and she hears the doorbell ring, I think, and the mom answers the door and then goes silent.

I’m not really sure what happens after this.

Todd: I have no idea. I have no idea. I’ve, I don’t even remember that bit. I just remember s- now she looks across the street. Nobody’s there. So she hears a noise. She gets up out of bed with her crutch, and as she walks to the hallway, there is a legitimately freaky, creepy looking creature thing all in a shroud with long-ass fingers and stuff against the wall at the end of the hallway.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And it kinda turns around and looks at her, and she runs back into her room and gets in her bed. Then the typical thing of she’s shut the door, but then the door starts shaking. The

Craig: lights flicker and go out.

Todd: She has just the pha- cellphone, and then when she shines her cellphone light around the room, you see the door’s actually open.

She ends up on the floor. I don’t remember why. She falls out of bed or jumps out of bed or something.

Craig: I don’t know, but I think she’s going to try to call or text her friend, and the light of her phone, if I remember correctly, lights her face.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And we see that that thing, whatever it is, is behind her.

Todd: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. There’s a jump scare. That jumps her, that scares her out of bed.

Craig: Right. Right.

Todd: That’s what gets her onto the floor.

Craig: And it just, it grabs her and drags her away.

Todd: That’s it.

Craig: The end. Like, the camera, the camera stays on the door for a long time. I’m like- Something else gonna happen, but it doesn’t.

Like it just- Yeah … it just lingers there for a long time, and that’s the end. Again, this one, much like the Alien one, it’s fine just standalone. I don’t know that it necessarily works standalone. No. The, the fir- the first one feels like it’s cut out of a bigger movie, but the twist at the end kinda puts a nice bow on it, so it feels kinda wrapped up.

And, you know, I don’t expect all of my storytelling to be wrapped up in a nice, neat bow. It’s fine, but it just didn’t do much for me. Again, it was perfectly, you know, technically it, it looked good. Everything looked good. It was suspenseful It was just a little lacking for me

Todd: Isn’t it kind of an unspoken promise of these anthology movies that they’re gonna be kinda like mini Twilight Zone episodes?

That they’re all gonna have a twist at the end? And I don’t know why we feel that way, but that just seems to be the pattern, and so I feel like that’s our expectation going in, and it’s fulfilled by the very first two. So to have that third one with the alien where it just, “Oh, the alien attacked and he’s gone,” okay, it just feels unfinished.

And then this one that they ended it with, of all the ones to end the film, you know, you kinda almost wanna start it out with your strongest one and end with your strongest one. Right.

Craig: I thought the same thing.

Todd: Yeah. This one’s just, it- again, there’s like, there’s really no twist, which is fine, like you said, but it does seem to defy our expectations a little bit in a bad way, and then kinda end us on a bit of a downer.

Craig: I don’t, I don’t know why it is. I, I, I think that you’re onto something when you say that for whatever reason, there are certain expectations about these anthologies, and I think that if I had seen either of these, either the alien one or this one, just as a short on its own on YouTube-

Todd: But yeah, no problem

Craig: comple- yeah, I wouldn’t have had, I wouldn’t have taken issue with it at all, I don’t think. There’s just something about it being h- and, and again, that’s how they were initially released.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Um, so, you know, maybe we’re, I, I, I’m arguing myself into a corner.

Todd: But wouldn’t that have been disappointing, though?

I mean, you know, if you backed this on Kickstarter and those first two were the way they are, and then you see that alien one and it’s super short and it’s just, “Uh?”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Gotta wait months for the next one to come out, you know? I don’t know.

Craig: Yeah. But I, I don’t wanna be too hard on it because honestly, of all of the ones that we’ve watched this Halloween season, none of them have been, you know, like I’ve enjoyed them, but I haven’t loved any of them.

I think of all of them, I think that this might be maybe the most ambitious, and I always appreciate that.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I, I do think it’s ambitious. I do think that these were… I think these guys, I don’t know a lot about them, but I have a feeling they’re a lot like us. I have a feeling that they- Yeah … are nostalgic for a period of time that we are nostalgic for, that they are nostalgic for the Halloween that we are nostalgic for.

And I think they wanted to capture that, and I think that they did a good job of it. I don’t think it’s amazing. We- we’ve 100% seen better, but I liked it overall, and, and I would encourage people to check it out. It’s, it’s certainly not a waste of time.

Todd: No, not, not at all. And, and you’re absolutely right.

All you gotta do is go to their website, and you’ll see. I mean, they call themselves Witching Season Films. It’s a Halloween theme. Kind of off of what we have done in the past where we’re like, “If you wanna turn something on in the background- Sure … these guys have it.” They have four things they call Halloween Atmospheres, four volumes of this- Oh

at least 30 minutes each-

Craig: That’s awesome …

Todd: that, that are on YouTube, that are basically just the beautiful images from the beginning of the movie. You know, the, the, the pumpkin in the cornfield and the- Oh, I love

Craig: that …

Todd: the thing hanging from the tree and all that. It’s really, really quite nice with some music behind it.

You- that’s something you could turn on in the background of your Halloween party, honestly, or just do it throughout the day. I love the spirit of that, and they’re also clearly very well shot. So yeah, and, and there’s a sequel that just wrapped.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Todd: Yeah. They ha- they put up a Indiegogo campaign for The Witching Season Part II, and it was fully funded at, like, $16,000 and change.

And the latest update on there is the 24th of last month. It says that principal photography is wrapped.

Craig: That’s amazing. Good for them. Good for those guys. Good job, guys.

Todd: Yeah. So yeah, so they’re gonna, they’re gonna… We’re gonna have something else from them, and I’m, I’m think maybe next Halloween, w- if that’s when it’s released, we might end up pulling that up, you know?

It’s, it’s very promising.

Craig: Absolutely. I would 100% check that out.

Todd: Now, w- is this the best one this season? I don’t know, man. My prize still goes to Hack-O-Lantern. I thought that was charmingly fun and cheesy and silly and- Crazy. Crazy. I will be revisiting Hack-O-Lantern- Mm … on a regular basis-

Craig: It was- …

Todd: like I revisit Death Spa.

But this one, will I watch it again? Probably not.

Craig: Probably, maybe not

Todd: Fun though. Good fun, and, uh, Happy Halloween to everybody else out there.

Craig: Happy Halloween.

Todd: Thank you so much for, uh, sticking with us this month. We hope that you enjoyed it. If you are a patron, you got a bunch of treats this month. We had a number of, uh, minisodes back there on Halloween cartoon specials from TV.

We did four of those, and, uh, you can find those on patreon.com/chainsawpodcast, only if you’re a patron of our podcast. For just five bucks a month you get that, close to 70 minisodes that are up there now banked, as well as access to our book club. We already mentioned that we’re reading some great books there, and that’s been going strong.

We’ve been doing a lot of books in that too. Didn’t we count up to over 50? More than

Craig: 60. More than 60.

Todd: More than 60, that’s crazy. So yeah, get you some of that if you’re interested. Patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Otherwise, just go to chainsawhorror.com and you’ll see all of our episodes up there, as well as you can contact us there through Facebook or all of our other channels.

Happy Halloween everybody, and until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We continue our October Halloween lineup with 2009’s remake/reimagining of Night of the Demons, comparing it to the campy 1988 original we still have a soft spot for.

We talk about what made the first film iconic—Angela’s weird energy, the dance, the poster art, and practical effects—and why this version feels like a bigger-budget copy-and-paste with less charm. We break down the New Orleans setting, the party vibe, the confusing character/space staging, and the juvenile “push the envelope” moments, plus the underused cast (including Shannon Elizabeth and Edward Furlong).

From the basement skeleton reveal to the safe-room exposition dump and chaotic finale, we cover why it’s not terrible—just a bit forgettable and disappointing compared to the original.

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Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Night of the Demons (2009)

Ep 511, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: All right, we are week four, approaching Halloween here with our, uh, October fest of Halloween-themed movies, and I’m really liking our selection this year so far. It’s hard to believe 2009 was, uh, 15 years ago.

Craig: I know.

Todd: Oh, my God. But, uh, here we are. 17 years ago, actually, wasn’t it?

Yeah.

But it’s a remake. This is Night of the Demons, not to be confused with the ’80s version of Night of the Demons that, uh, you and I did many moons ago. Mm. This is the 2009- Reimagining, remake, whatever you wanna call it, directed by Adam Gierasch. It was remake of the ’88 film by Richard Tenney, which we’ve done, and, uh, I held a special place in my heart.

I remember the original movie, and we- I think we talked about this when we did it, had a really, really freaky poster of, uh, Angela transformed into a demon that-

Craig: Oh, yeah …

Todd: that was up in, like, every video store. I- it feels like they must have just given those away by the scores. And, and then I remember watching the film as a kid, really enjoying it.

And then when we went back to see it as adults, we’re like, “Oh, man, this is, this is cringey, bad material,” but it was so bad it was fun.

Craig: I was gonna say, I don’t remember. I vague- like, I, I vaguely remember liking it or, or at least finding it charming in some way.

Todd: Oh, yeah. Very, very charming in the way that a so-bad-it’s-good movie is really charming.

But yeah, no, dude, it was like the acting is horrible, the writing is, is hilarious with just absolute corniness. If I remember correctly, that was the one where Linnea Quigley bends over.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Uh, she’s in, like, a tutu, and she’s shopping, and you get that long shot of her, of her crotch.

Craig: Yeah, and that’s super early.

It’s like, it’s just a couple of minutes into the movie. So you know what you’re getting into right away. Yeah, I do. I remember that.

Todd: It’s silly. It’s a silly movie, but it’s fun.

Craig: I don’t know. M- maybe it’s just in light of having watched this movie. I, I think maybe I’m looking back at the original with rose-colored glasses a little bit.

I guess I should have either re-watched it or listened to that. God, I, I have no idea how long it’s been since I’ve heard that, that episode that we did on it. I, I just remembered feeling… You know, I, I, I remember specific things that I rem- that I liked about it. I, I really liked Angela’s dance. I thought, you know, that’s kind of iconic, and you see it all over the place.

Todd: Right.

Craig: I did like, like, the demon design. Like you said, like, Angela’s face is really scary. It looks great on the poster. It’s, I don’t know, uh, it’s got, uh, kind of a playfulness about it, almost like a- It does … like a- Big time … like a, a Deadite kind of vibe to it, and that like-

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And, and I like that in demons.

I like that when demons kind of revel and have fun and they’re evil. Like

Todd: Right.

Craig: I think, I think that’s cute. So I like that about it. I, I remember I, I loved the super, super cheap-looking opening sequence, like the credit- Yes … sequence, like the really cheap- The cartoon … animation.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And it was very Halloween-y and ghosts and black cats and-

Todd: Great song.

Craig: Yeah, so all these, you know, little things that I remember about it. I, I imagine that if I were to rewatch it again in its entirety, I could pick it apart a lot more. But I had those fond vibes of it. The reason I picked this one, we’ve kinda been going back and forth. We, we laid out a, a, a Halloween lineup pretty early this year, but we each picked our own choices, and this was one of mine And I think that I picked it because lately to go to sleep I’ve just been putting on pretty much any horror movie on Tubi, and then one of the things that I like about Tubi is that they just, you know, I, I, I’m sure you can change the settings, but my settings are when one movie gets over, it just rolls right on over to the next one.

Todd: Ah, yeah.

Craig: And it’s like, “If you liked this one, you’ll probably like this.” And one night I woke up in the middle of the night and this movie was on. And I don’t remember what part of it was, but I- it was v- I, I think it was early on in the, the party scenes, which obviously we’ll talk about in a second. But at 3:00 in the morning, right out of sleep, I remember thinking, “Oh, this is fun.

It’s got a great Halloween vibe.” You know, it’s a, a remake of a, a movie that we look at fondly. It’s got, you know, it’s a really interesting time in horror where they’re doing a lot of remakes, and you have the sexy, squeaky teen focus. And like, you know, Shannon Elizabeth is in here right out of the American Pie series, and she was in Scary Movie also, and I like her and she’s hot, and it looks like it’s got a bunch of other hot chicks in it and-

Todd: Right.

Craig: I thought, “This, this, this will be great. It’ll be fun.” And, and I had seen it before. The, what I remembered about it was that it was bad but fun.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: And now I think that I was right on one of those counts.

Todd: I,

Craig: I

Todd: think,

Craig: um- So my, my, my memory was half right.

Todd: Yeah. Not, not nearly as fun as the original.

Craig: It’s not great, but it’s interesting. Like, if you’re a fan of the original, I think it can almost be fun to watch to be like, “How did you mess this up?”

Todd: Right. Like, you had, you had so much to play with here. Like, you, you know- Yeah … the or- like I said, the original was pretty much anything Richard Tenney did.

God bless him. We love, like, Witchboard and all those. Th- they’re fun. W- g- Witchboard and Witchtrap especially, they’re fun, but the acting is horrendous.

Yeah.

But in that fun way that, you know, we like to see bad acting in our low-budget, low-rent horror movies. The dialogue is ridiculous. You remember there was that, the bigger guy in there who was the jerk who just called every woman a bitch every time he turned around?

And then that weird-ass scene with Linnea Quigley and her lipstick in the nipple that-

Craig: Yeah, I liked that.

Todd: Just comes out of left field. I know, right? Just comes out of left field like, why? Where did this co- okay, I guess this is what’s happening now. Just a lot of stuff thrown at the wall, and pretty simple premise, pretty simple plot.

There’s a lot of directions you could’ve taken this, and this is what we got, is a little disappointing.

Craig: Yeah, it’s… And that’s the, the best way I think to describe it. It’s a little disappointing. Like, it’s not terrible. There’s just nothing inspired about it. Like, it, it’s not inspired at all. Yeah. It, it just kind of feels like…

Ironically, it feels like a cheap copy and paste, which I, I say it’s ironic because this movie had 10 times the budget as the original. Mm-hmm. Somehow the original with a million dollar budget managed to be far more-

Todd: Successful? …

Craig: interesting to look at. And yeah- Oh, yeah. That too. And, and, and successful in its, in its efforts than this movie which had more like a, a $10 million budget.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Um, and, and, you know, some of that has to do, you know, with the time period and, you know, I, I think the technology in 2009, y- you know, they, they had access to some CGI, which, you know, looks fine. I- it’s, it’s relatively limited, and for 2009 it looks fine. I mean, it looks like cheap CGI basically, but it looks okay.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But the practical effects in the original somehow look better than these. Yeah. That’s

Todd: weird.

Craig: I don’t get it. And, and the actors in this. I, I mentioned Shannon Elizabeth. I’m a fan of hers. I, I, I don’t think that there’s any universe in which anybody would go on and on about Shannon Elizabeth’s acting skills.

That’s, that’s not why we love her. She’s, she’s gorgeous first and foremost, which is I think why she got her break into filming. And, you know, in the American Pie movie, the original, you know, she was eye candy. That’s it. That was the joke. You know? Like- Oh yeah, yeah … the joke was that just she was just this super hot unattainable male fantasy.

That was the whole thing. And, and then she kinda built a career on that, and good for her. I’ve, I’ve seen her in stuff. I’ve seen her in interviews. She’s a smart girl. She’s not a stupid girl, and she’s a cool, interesting person. I, I think that she… I don’t think that she lives in the States anymore. She lives, I wanna say Australia, but I, I, I could be wrong.

I don’t know. But I wanna say she’s, like, vegan or, or… And really passionate about that. If it’s not vegan, it’s something like that. It’s something hippy-dippy. Hmm. But at the same time she’s really super passionate about it and serious about it, and, like, she’s a serious person. But she can have fun with herself too.

So I was excited to see her in this, and it’s not great. Like, I don’t know if it’s- Because there’s just, the movie doesn’t do much with her. Like, she’s Angela. Like, Angela is the- That should be- I… No, she’s the icon from the original. She should be the centerpiece of this movie, and she’s not.

Todd: No. She’s not.

Craig: The other people in the movie are, you know, most of them are fine to look at. The girl that plays Maddie, I don’t remember her name. Hold on, I can look it up. I got it in front of me. Monica Keena. I’m pretty sure she was the lead in Freddy vs. Jason, and we liked her in that.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: You know, there’s basically three girls and three guys, and the three girls are all beautiful.

I could not, for the life of me, nail down what age they were supposed to be.

Todd: Right.

Craig: They’re clearly out of high school, but they could be anywhere from, like, 24 to 35. I have no idea.

Todd: Right. But,

Craig: but the other two girls, so there’s Maddie, who I mentioned, and then there’s Suzanne and Lily, and then there’s, there’s Angela also.

And then there’s three guys. Two of the guys, Dex and Jason, are very, very typical, you know, same age group as the girls, good-looking guys. And then you’ve got Edward Furlong-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: who they try… Now, okay, now I get why they cast Edward Furlong. He’s famous, he’s genre famous. This is the ’90s, so it’s not that long after the huge success of Terminator 2 and, and, you know, he did Pet Sematary 2.

Like, this is a guy who had a huge career ahead of him, and it just didn’t work out.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I think that he struggled with substance abuse and alcoholism and, you know, God bless him, I think he cleaned up, but he put his body through a lot. And it’s just weird to have him in this- I don’t like commenting you know, negatively about people’s looks because I’m no stunner.

But neither is Edward Furlong. And in this movie, they treat him like he’s just one of the other hot people, and he’s not. Like-

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: Like, Monica, who is arguably the coolest of the girls… Now, it kinda depends on what you’re into. If you’re into boobs, you’re gonna be into Suzanne, ’cause she’s got them for days.

Right. Got some of the biggest tits I’ve ever seen. So if you’re into that, you’re gonna go for Suzanne. But Maddie is more my type. She’s like the cool girl. And the whole movie, or at least from halfway, the halfway point on, she’s like pining over Edward Furlong. I’m like, “I do not buy this for a second.”

This girl would not give this guy. Not only does he look like Edward Furlong, but he’s a loser. Like he’s a huge- Yeah … drug dealer loser, and this girl is chasing him around like a puppy dog. I’m like, “This is stupid.”

Todd: Yeah. And also, this whole thing, his whole setup is so weird because you think there’s some thread that’s going to be through this film.

There is a lot of time spent with him in the beginning where he arrives at this like dingy- club or whatever and is ushered upstairs into this godfather’s, like the local mafia guy, whatever’s den, where he’s getting blown by this girl while he’s talking to him. And there’s this whole deal where it’s like, “You, you owe me this money.”

He’s like, “Oh, I d- I can’t afford to pay you back.” And he’s like, “Oh, you will, like double, and you’re gonna have to do it, like, tonight or else you’re gonna die.” So, like, he has this mission, that’s how it’s set up anyway, is that he’s going into this party that he’s not even invited to-

Craig: Right …

Todd: so that he could deal enough drugs on the sly to all the people there to win back his money.

I mean, this is a setup for a thing that you think is gonna be a, some driving factor, at least for this character in the movie.

Craig: No, it just has to get him to the party. That’s it. Yeah. It doesn’t make any difference. And that scene- It doesn’t matter … no, it doesn’t make any difference. Like, he brings it up.

Like, he brings it up several times. He’s like, “Oh, I’m in big trouble. If I don’t die in here, that guy’s gonna get me.” Like, who cares? Nobody cares. Like- … they, that, that, that whole scene, that, that whole blowjob scene is tacky. Yeah. And like, I get… Like, I think that they’re trying to push the envelope. I think that they’re trying to push- Mm-hmm

the envelope beyond the, you know, beyond what the first movie did, ’cause you already mentioned the, the lipstick in the nipple scene. You know, that was that shocked me. It shocked me the first time I saw it. I had certainly never seen that before and-

Todd: Nobody in the world had seen that before.

Craig: No, I thought, I thought it was a cool effect.

I thought it was clever. I thought it was creepy and spooky. I thought it worked really well. And, and I… But it was pushing boundaries, and I think they were trying to push boundaries here. But it was just, especially in this scene, just the most juvenile way to go about it, and that’s… Like, the whole movie kinda felt like it was made by 14-year-old boys.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, and this, the, you know, what, what? Are we supposed to think this guy is so cool that- He just has a girl hanging from his dick all the time and like, like so they sit there and have this like one-on-one interview while he’s being blown and the time that I watched it to, you know, for this I was watching it with earbuds in and like in the sound design they’re sucking and slurping like- Oh, right

I certainly didn’t, I didn’t hear that, you know, when I was just watching it on my laptop or whatever but-

Todd: Hmm …

Craig: gross. Like I, nobody needs that. Like it’s just- … so stupid. And right, and it, and it just serves, you know, to get him to this party. And, and that’s it. Like, like you s- there, there’s no plot to this movie really.

Todd: Oh, no.

Craig: There’s some stupid background exposition that who cares which is also, you know, moves away. They changed that. I, I, I don’t remember the, the original movie was, it was some haunted mansion like Hull House or, or something. I, I don’t know.

Todd: Right. Right.

Craig: This moves it to New Orleans and sets it in a different mansion and it’s got its whole, uh, own backstory.

It’s like the Broussard family mansion in New Orleans and it is shot in New Orleans I guess ’cause n- at the time New Orleans was giving amazing tax breaks for film production companies or whatever. And whatever, I mean New Orleans is an excellent set piece for a horror movie. I’m down with that and, and- Yeah

you know, tons of great, you know, old historical spooky mansions and they pick one. You know, this is actual, at least the exteriors are shot, you know, at this actual Louisiana place. And it opens in 1925 and you just get some quick demon footage and you see a lady hang herself from a balcony and when she hangs herself her head falls off and rolls down the stairs.

And that’s how it opens and we get a lot more explanation of that later. It’s ultimately stupid like But whatever. Anyway, then we jump to Halloween, 85 years later, and it’s… Is it Bourbon Street? Is that the big street in New Orleans?

Todd: Uh-huh, yeah.

Craig: It’s a big New Orleans Halloween party and parade, which looks fun.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: And we see Angela, Shannon Elizabeth, organizing, you know, sending out invites via the internet for this big party at this mansion, and she, she too, for reasons unknown, has to make a bunch of money.

Todd: Right.

Craig: I know, but-

Todd: Right …

Craig: so, so that’s why she’s throwing this party. And then we get introduced, we get introduced to the three girls who I already mentioned, Lily, Maddie, and Suzanne.

Lily and Suzanne are both dressed as slutty cats.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Maddie, I can’t really tell what she’s dressed. I, I feel like she has, like, a couple of fake scars on her face.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And that’s it. Like, I don’t know what she’s supposed to be.

Todd: Yeah. I’m not sure either.

Craig: But the movie opens up really promising because you get this great Halloween stuff at, at New Orleans, which is debaucherous and, and crazy and fun, and then you get, you know, like, a great street with kids trick-or-treating and stuff.

And these little kids ring the doorbell at this house, and it opens up, and it’s Linnea Quigley in- Mm-hmm … her outfit from the original movie being the icon that she is in my eyes. I don’t know how other people view her, but I just think she’s hilarious and- Yeah,

Todd: we

Craig: love her … y- and, and her, you know, like, she is doing the whole ditsy thing here, and she turns around and bends over so the camera can leer at her crotch just like it did in the original, which I love.

That’s probably my favorite part of the movie.

Todd: Linnea Quig- Quigley’s crotch was our favorite part of this film.

Craig: The, the two seconds that she’s in here. It’s a

Todd: direct call to the original.

Craig: Yeah, I mean, if it’s not the exact same costume, it’s a replica, and she looks- Oh, yeah …

Todd: the

Craig: same. Like,

Todd: She does look the same.

What would that be? 20 years later.

Craig: Yeah, 20 years later, and she looks, she looks great. Sure, her body is still banging. She l- still looks fantastic.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: I wish they would’ve just cast her again.

Todd: Honestly, why didn’t they?

Craig: It’s a great throwback to the original and, and you know, look that up on YouTube ’cause it’s worth seeing. I don’t know if you really need to see this movie in its entirety, but that, that clip is for sure worth seeing. It’s super cute. Great throwback.

Todd: So you’re right. The setup is promising. They take us into the party.

They spend a lot of time on introducing us to all of these characters. I was looking at the clock and realizing, “My God, just how much time is passing by before anything happens besides…” And, and this is what I liked about, you know, the original movie being dumb and silly just has a lot of dumb silliness before the demons start coming out, and that’s fun.

This movie just has a lot of, “Here’s this guy, and here’s this person, and here are these two people, and here’s what… Now we’re gonna go into the part…” And, and, and after a while I realized at the end of all this, I don’t really know who’s who.

Craig: It… Oh, it was so hard.

Todd: I can’t really tell one person from the other.

Nobody, except for maybe Edward Furlong, nobody really has any defining character traits that set them apart. There are no stakes being introduced here. Again- The

Craig: relationships don’t really matter.

Todd: Yeah. It’s just nothing. It’s a bunch of nothingness. Just get us into the party and let some stuff happen, and it’s quite a while before anything starts to happen.

The movie is trying to be hip, you know, with the cinematography, and the lighting, and the zooming in, and the music and all that, in that very ’90s way. Uh, well, early 2000s way, whatever you wanna call it. But at the end of the day, there’s no substance behind it.

Craig: No.

Todd: It’s just, here we are in this house with a bunch of people having a party.

Yeah. And then, yeah.

Craig: To be fair, it looks like a great party. Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: I, a party that I would be way too old to go to, but it, it looks like great fun. It’s, you know, uh, it’s, it’s crowded. There are a lot of people. There’s loud music. You know, it’s in this old mansion. It’s decorated the way that I want Halloween to be decorated.

Like, it looks kinda spooky, but also kind of cheap. Like, there’s, like, cheap dollar store paper decorations around, and, um- Mm-hmm … you know, atmospherically it’s good. And you mentioned the music. It’s, like, y- kinda, I don’t know how I would describe this music, kind of like hard house music- Mm … like, with a, with a rock edge to it.

But again, I was listening to it with my earbuds in, and the songs are hilarious. Uh-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: they’re so funny. There’s one that’s called Zombie Girl. All of the songs, I guess all songs- Oh, you somehow referenced the- … are original songs. But yeah. But they’re, they’re all very, they’re all very Halloween-y. Ah.

There’s one called Code Blue that’s all about necrophilia. It’s like-

Todd: Oh my God … “

Craig: I wanna fuck-”

Todd: How did I miss- “…

Craig: a

Todd: dead head.” How did I miss this?

Craig: Um, there’s, there’s one song that’s called Invasion of the Ball Snatchers, and it’s all about these aliens- … that wanna steal people’s balls and put them in formaldehyde in jars.

I guess- Oh, God … I

Todd: guess you were just so bored, you know, by what’s happening on the screen that you just start looking for interesting stuff in the background. Oh my

Craig: gosh. The music was hilarious. And you know, Shannon Elizabeth as Angela has, like, an introduction moment where she, like, makes an announcement from the stairs and she’s like

Clip: Come to a place like this To everything dark and twisted in the human soul

Craig: This could have been a great kind of iconic moment- Yes … and it’s just kind of blah. Like- Oh … like, okay. Thanks girl, go away. Turn the music back on. Like, come on, you’re Shannon Elizabeth. I don’t know. Be sexy, something. Like it just…

She, she really seems, and I hate to say this too ’cause I am a fan of her, but even though I don’t think she’s a great actress, it, it just really feels phoned in. Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: nobody really seems like they give much of a shit. Like…

Todd: Yeah. Well, this is another stark difference from the original, is that Angela in the original movie is weird as hell.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: She is bizarre and strange from the beginning. She’s the one who’s all gothed out. I mean, in this movie it’s just like everybody in early 2000s, it’s like everybody’s gothed out ’cause that’s the thing. So that doesn’t make her distinctive at all in this film. But in the original film, she’s the weird quirky goth girl who’s throwing the weird ass party that nobody’s…

It just seems to be for, like, five people, and she does a weird dance. She is an icon in that movie. Yeah. Here she makes this little entrance that could’ve been great and wasn’t, and now she’s just one of the group for the rest of the movie. Pretty

Craig: much. Like, I think she’s a little bit older than them, and the girls are intimidated by her ’cause she’s like a man-eater or whatever, and that’s fine.

I mean, it’s Shannon Elizabeth. She’s gorgeous. You have to capitalize on that. But i- in the original, Angela wasn’t sexy. No. In fact, she was kind of an outcast. Like, she was kind of a loser. Like, nobody really knew why they were going to her house.

Todd: Right.

Craig: It’s not like that actress. I mean, her performance has become iconic, but it’s not because it’s good acting- No

but it’s because she commits to it. Like, she goes for it 100%, and that is fun. Whereas here it’s just, oh, she’s a sexy girl. Okay. Or like, who cares?

Todd: Yeah. And they try to like… There’s just really lame efforts to make her like that ’cause it’s all just spoken. Like, I’m just thinking about the time when Matty goes into the bathroom, and she opens the mirror and closes the mirror, uh, gets some stuff out, and then a hand breaks through the mirror and grabs her.

She runs out and gets somebody else and brings them back in, and of course the mirror’s intact again. And she- they’re like, “Oh, you know Angela, this must have just been some elaborate trick that she played on you,” or “that she’s playing on us.” And again, this was not like a thing that they committed to or even, even really alluded to outside of that, that Angela might have tricks up her sleeve.

Craig: Right.

Todd: That she organized this party, and it’s gonna be weird, and maybe we can’t trust everything if she’s behind something. You know, which is an aspect of the original movie that keeps it interesting. Here there’s none of that. There’s that little drip of it, but again, it doesn’t commit to it at all.

Craig: No.

Todd: So disappointing. Especially, God, especially when you’ve seen the original. It’s especially disappointing to compare the two.

Craig: And it’s also a little bit confusing too, because I, I guess this house is just haunted all the time. I, I don’t know. Because nothing has happened up to this point to, like, release the demons.

You know what I mean? Like- Right. Right … this is certainly a supernatural thing that has happened. And, and the hand coming through the glass is, you know, not a, an original gag, but I mean, it worked. It’s a, a good jump scare. It looks good, whatever. But where does that come from? Ultimately, the, the party gets shut down- Mm-hmm

pretty quickly For some reason that I don’t understand, Colin, Edward Furlong the drug dealer, has to get down to the basement. Like, all of a sudden-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: everybody else is gone except for our main characters, the group who have stuck behind, and Colin’s like, “I have to get to the basement.” And Angela’s like, “Okay, I’ll show you.”

Like, wh- wh- why?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Why are you going down to… What is in the basement?

Todd: I honestly had to read Wikipedia to figure that out. Apparently he hid some drugs there earlier that he was going to get.

Craig: Okay, ’cause I totally missed that.

Todd: Now, I still don’t remember why he has to go get there. I don’t know why he… I don’t remember seeing a scene where he had hid them.

Craig: Me either.

Todd: And so it feels like there’s some editing issue here, that maybe there was a, something that wasn’t cut in that needed to be cut in.

Craig: Well, they clearly needed to get them down to that basement because-

Todd: Well, yeah, ’cause we had to get the, we had to find the hidden door.

Craig: Yeah. Well, that’s another thing that I love.

Like, I don’t remember how long ago this was supposed… So it was 18… No, I guess it was 1925, so really, you know, 85 years ago that this happened. And we get the backstory in, like, these sepia-toned flashbacks that are-

Todd: That

Craig: look- … pretty lame … really

Todd: cheap. Yeah. It’s really pretty bad.

Craig: It looks like those old, like in, like in old silent movies where they would, like, play a gramophone in the back.

Todd: Oh.

Craig: And, and, and right, right, right. And, like, really choppy film and… But anyway, you know, and it’s revealed over time, but basically the backstory is this woman, this Evangeline Broussard, who lived in this mansion, and she was shunned or something, and then she threw a party and she invited these people over, and I don’t know, they did a seance or something and demons.

I don’t know. Something stupid.

Todd: Yeah. Exactly.

Craig: But anyway, the, the point-

Todd: And then they were missing

Craig: And then they were missing Nobody could find them. Right. They- Yeah … nobody could find them. So Furlong and Angela go down into the basement. I don’t remember what they’re looking for.

Todd: But within seconds-

Craig: I know.

And she says, she says something about how l… He’s like, “There are so many doors down here,” or something, and she’s like, “Yeah, there’s even supposed to be, like, a tunnel to the property next door.” And why they start looking around? Like, if he hid drugs down there, surely he knows where he hid them.

Todd: Yeah. Go to that spot, grab ’em, and leave.

Craig: Right. But it’s as though they’re searching for something, and he looks on a shelf and he’s like, “Wait a second, this looks like a door back here.” He’s like, “Help me take these shelves down.” Now, these are just, like, like, floating shelves on, on a wall.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And they start taking stuff off the shelves. It then cuts to the other side of the door-

that they open Which is clearly just a door behind these floating shelves. So we are to believe that these seven people went missing and nobody ever looked in that door that was like-

Todd: Right.

Craig: What? Yeah, and so there’s just, like, seven skeletons laying in a circle, and Angela’s like, “Come on. Come, guys.

There’s skeletons down here.” And so they all go down there and they’re like, “Do you think these are those seven people that were missing?” Well, yeah, probably.

Todd: What do you think? One, two, three, seven. Yeah, probably.

Craig: And they can’t call the police ’cause their cell phones don’t work, and somehow they find out that the gate is locked, and they can’t get out, so they’re stuck there.

And does Collins… I think maybe Collins steals something from one of the corpses or something. I don’t remember. Yeah. But I do remember that Angela’s… She looks at one of the skulls, and she’s like, “Is that a gold tooth?” And she reaches for it. And I’m thinking, “Are you gonna **** steal it? A gold tooth?” Like, what are you gonna do with it?

Like, y- like, you’re gonna pull it out of a cor- Like, there’s- … there’s a corpse on the ground and you’re gonna pull a gold… What, like, are you a pirate? Like, what is happening?

Todd: Right. I

Craig: don’t understand. This is your first

Todd: instinct? This is the interesting thing about this whole room?

Craig: Like, right, like, ooh, I, I need that gold tooth.

I mean, I guess she, I guess she needs money. I guess she’s gonna pawn that gold tooth. Uh-huh. I don’t know. But anyway, she reaches for it and the skull bites her.

Todd: Oh,

Craig: man. And, but, and somebody… I feel like there’s one guy who’s dressed as a doctor, and I don’t know if it was him that said it, but I hope it was. ‘Cause somebody says something like, “Must be a reflex thing. They are skeletons.” There’s

Todd: nobody… Oh my God.

Craig: Oh, boy. The- Okay, so see, but now it would make more sense if that mirror thing happened now because now it would make sense that the demons are woken up. Before that, it doesn’t really make any sense.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And at this point, the demons are woken up, and, like, Angela immediately starts acting funny.

Like, at first she just kinda starts acting like she’s a little out of it and a little bit sick a- a- and, and they realize that they’re all stuck there, and so they’re kind of settling in, and eventually she excuses herself to the bathroom. And in the bathroom, like immediately when she looks in the mirror, her head does this weird fast shake-

Todd: Mm-hmm

Craig: which they do multiple times. It’s like i- it’s a transition that they used to use a lot before CGI could do good transitions. So she’ll, like, shake the head back and forth really fast. It gets blurry. It gets blurry, and then, and then when it stops, it’s transformed into something else. In this case, it’s transformed into a, a demon face.

Uh-huh. And then it shakes back, and she’s her again, but, like, she looks in the mirror and smiles and comes back out. And so now we know that she is a demon. And then it kinda becomes chaos from then on. And I guess if I’m going to give it any credit In terms of pushing boundaries, it does a little bit.

Now, I’m not particularly impressed by the way that it does, but it does, I guess.

Todd: Right. There are a few scenes. I’m just gonna say right now that almost from here on out I found the mu- movie either confusing or just… I mean, I just got bored because there’s never really a sense of where they are in the house, how they are in relation to each other, what’s going on.

I feel like it’s just a succession of scenes in which people get att- well, like, one person possesses another person, possesses another person.

Craig: Right, right. Like, it’s spread like a disease, basically.

Todd: Yeah. You know, there’s a problem I have sometimes with, with modern action movies where everything is just done in close-ups and, and fast cuts.

There’s some big action scene happening in front of you, but all you see is just this, this fist connecting with a cheek, and this kick, and then somebody flies across the room, and you see a close-up of them hit the wall, and then… But you never get a sense of space. You never get to see somebody approach somebody else, or where somebody could run to, or somebody being backed into a corner or whatnot, because everything is happening in close-up with really, really quick cuts.

I felt like this movie was a lot like that. They’re running from demons, and demons are jumping out from here and from there and chasing them. But seems like there are times when they can be in a room quietly investigating something right after they were chased down the hallway by a demon.

Yeah.

Then a demon pops out, and the whole time I’m thinking, “Just leave the house at least?

Maybe go into the yard?” I just got bored.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And so all of those moments where things, like, did kinda… You know, there are scenes, like you said, there are some scenes where suddenly there are two people in a room and a thing happens that’s pretty shocking.

Craig: Right.

Todd: But I never really knew how those two people got into that room, where that room is in relation to anyone else-

Craig: Right

Todd: you know, that kinda thing.

Craig: Right. I, I would guess a lot of that probably… I, I’m, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, I’m sure, but just because they were s- shooting on sound stages, like, the set pieces probably weren’t connected.

Todd: Right. Yeah.

Craig: Like, so, like, so for example, you know, there, there’s kind of at the bottom of this big staircase, there’s kind of a living room where they hang out for a while, and they play Truth or Dare, and there’s a whole, like…

The guys get all googly-eyed when two girls kiss, but then they make them kiss and, like, they make the two boys, two of the boys kiss.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And they make such a big deal out of it. Straight guys are such pussies. Like, just do it. Like, get over it. Nobody cares. But that was kinda funny. But then while they’re also playing Truth or Dare, Angela spins on one of the other girl’s boyfriends and, like, kisses him super, super hard.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And that makes the girl jealous, so she grabs her boyfriend and takes him off to a bedroom. Well, now apparently Angela kissed a demon into him. Now, I don’t know… I, I think- He wipes some blood off of his mouth, or she wipes some blood off of her mouth.

Todd: Right. ‘

Craig: Cause it seems like it gets transferred through blood, which is also further disgusting because then, pardon my French, but I’ve been waiting to say this since yesterday, he butts the demon into that other girl.

Todd: Yeah. This is a first for our podcast. You know, you think you’ve seen it all.

I’ll never forget this scene as long as I live.

It’s

Craig: pretty crazy.

Todd: It’s a very, it’s a very porny sex scene.

Craig: Except for that they’re fully clothed-

Todd: That’s the weird part … for a minute. Like, it kind of pans around and behind them, and I’m thinking, “Really? We’re gonna do this?” But it’s like his pants are on. I guess there’s an opening in the front.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: But it’s real close on her face, and you can ima- I mean, you know, she’s really into it, and it’s, you know, it could be pretty hot.

And it is, feels a little hot there for a few minutes. And then-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: and then as it kinda comes around, like you see him demon out, and then almost without a break in the action, right, suddenly she’s demoning out.

Craig: Well, first she looks a little bit surprised, and then she says, “Wait a second. Wait a second.”

Right? It’s like, “This is the wrong hole.”

Clip: Baby? Baby. Oh, if you’re gonna put it in there, you’re gonna need to use-

Craig: He thrusts and she screams so loud that they hear it outside. That’s dirty.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But then, then she’s a demon too, and once she’s a demon, then she’s into it again.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, and, and tentacles are coming out of her boobs, like- Oh my gosh

it gets crazy.

Todd: It was a bit much, actually. Honestly,

Craig: like- Yeah, it is a bit much. That- See, that’s what I mean. Like, like they’re, they’re trying to push the envelope and they are, but like…

Todd: It’s not clever.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: I,

Craig: it’s a little, it was a little much. It was a little much. I, I, I, I think that I even could have just done without the, “Well, if you’re gonna put it in there,” like I could have deduced that myself. Like, I- Right … I, I, I don’t think I needed it drawn attention to precisely what was happening.

Todd: It was a little too on the nose- Right

of a comment.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Yeah. And then she gets the tentacle boobs, which is great for like a one-time gag, but I feel like they come out an awful lot.

Craig: Oh my God, a lot. And it’s not just her. The, the other girl, Suzanne with the big boobs, she, uh, has tentacle boobs too.

Todd: She had them too? Okay, thank you. I thought, is there more than one girl with the tentacle boobs even?

Craig: Yep.

Todd: It’s just a feature of these demons, I guess.

Craig: Like,

Todd: they’re like- If you’re, if you’re a female possessed by this demon, you get tentacle boobs.

Craig: Yeah. And, and they’re like, you know, like monkeys have what they call them, like, like prehensile tails that can, like grasp and stuff, like these, like these te- They’re like octopus tentacles.

Like they can grab you and pull you and stuff.

Todd: Right.

Craig: Oh, it’s pretty crazy. Oh. Okay, so there’s that, and then the guy that’s dressed as a doctor and the drug dealer and the cool girl are outside looking for… And, and this is, this comes from the first movie, I, I think, that somehow they’re sealed in there.

Like they, they can’t get out. There’s only one gate and it’s locked and they can’t get out.

Todd: Well, the original movie was better in that they go outside and literally there is no gate anymore. It’s like the whole place is one big wall that they can’t climb over. With this, it’s just a locked gate, which I would think that of all the effort you’re taking inside the house, like just figure out a way to get over or around or through- Get over it

that locked gate. Yeah, climb over. Surely there’s a way to- You know, climb it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I c- I couldn’t sort why that would keep them in.

Craig: Yeah, and then there’s a scene… Well, before even they get out there, there’s a scene where Shannon Elizabeth fellates a wine bottle, which I guess some people get off on that kind of thing.

It just seems like a cheap, like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: don’t make Shannon Elizabeth do that. Like, come on. But anyway. Then they try kind of to recreate the Angela dance, but-

Todd: Oh …

Craig: it doesn’t have any of the charm of the original. Like it’s, like Shannon Elizabeth just does a sexy dance for a few seconds, and then it’s like she’s seducing big-boobied Suzanne and, and they’re dancing together, and then they’re floating, and then she full demons out.

And I feel like this is the first time you see her full demon face. Right. And I do like the d- I do like- Like the design of it, it just doesn’t look particularly well executed. It kind of looks like a mask that she could put on over her head. I don’t know. But anyway, she rips Suzanne’s face off, and then right after the homage to the dance scene, we get the homage to the lipstick scene.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It plays out pretty much the same way that it plays out in the first one. It just goes further. Yeah. So, so Lily, or so Dex goes- Dex is the guy who’s– No, it’s not Dex. It’s, um, Jason, I think. Whatever. The one who’s dressed as a doctor. He goes to the bathroom to pee, and he closes the door and he starts peeing, but then she appears behind him, and she’s s- like, being seductive.

She looks normal. She looks like herself, but she’s being really seductive. And she’s like, “Will you fix my whiskers?” And hands him the lipstick, and he starts to go put it on her face. She’s like, “No, not there.” And then she pulls down her top and her boobs are out, and then she takes the lipstick and sticks it in her nipple, just like Linnea Quigley did in the original.

Now, I don’t remember in the original. I feel like in the original, Linnea Quigley pulled it back out from under her skirt, didn’t she?

Todd: Uh, doesn’t it come out her mouth?

Craig: I don’t remember, but what I know is that it was not nearly as graphic. It’s really, really graphic in this. Like, you don’t see her lady parts, but it’s all squishy and bloody and slimy.

It’s disgusting.

Todd: Is blood pouring out of her crotch? Yeah. If I remember correctly, the Linnea Quigley nipple thing happens. She’s by herself.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: She’s by herself in a closet. It’s, it’s a, the weirdest thing because she’s performing for no one. She’s just dragging this lipstick from her lips down across her chest and then down around one nipple and down around another, and suddenly she’s pushing it into your nip- the nipple, and we’re– you’re like, “What?

W- what is happening?” In this one, she’s performing this for the guy, right? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And so he just kind of backs out of the room with a, “Well, that was weird,”

Craig: kind of attitude. This, this, this scene is hilarious. He stumbles out of the bathroom and into the room where the other two are, Maddie and Colin.

Clip: There is some freaky stuff in this b-

Freaky. Yeah. Uh, Lily, she, uh-

Oh, God. Did Lily and Dex get into a fight?

Is she into magic or, or anything? You know, uh, like sleight of hand and stuff?

No.

Okay, uh, she… There might be something wrong with her then.

What? What, what do you mean?

Uh, she, she’s acting, um… She, she sort of took her, her shirt off.

There wa- there was, um… There, there was blood. What? And, uh, you know, you know, I, I don’t, I don’t wanna talk about it.

Craig: Oh my God. Is she hurt?

Clip: I, I don’t know. Uh, I, I saw, um, I, I, I saw, uh-

Craig: What? Well, what did you see?

Clip: She stuck a lipstick in her boob and it fell out of her pussy.

Craig: Okay?

Oh, God. Oh. And that’s such a… It’s such a, a silly and juvenile and crass word.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But it’s so funny. It’s so funny. Oh. In that line. I just laughed and laughed. I laughed out loud at that line. It’s so funny. Ugh, so they- Oh, God … go looking for her, but they don’t find her, but they do find No-Face Suzanne, who attacks her.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And they run away, and this… It just becomes a big chase from this point on. Now first, Colin remembers that, um, what’s- whatever her name, Angela, told him that there’s a tunnel in the basement. So they head down there and they find a shotgun, and first they lock themselves in the corpse room, but then they find the tunnel, I think, and they go running through it.

And it really bothers me when things lead nowhere, and literally this- Hmm … tunnel leads nowhere. Leads nowhere. Like, they, they make a point of planting the seed early in the movie that there’s a tunnel down there.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And then they get back down there and they’re like, “There’s no escape,” except, “Oh, wait, there’s this tunnel.”

And then the only reason to get us into that tunnel is for it to serve as a set piece because it doesn’t go anywhere, and it makes me so angry. So they go in there, and they’re… You know, they walk around for a little while, and then they end up and they’re like, “Oh, crap, it’s a dead end,” and it looks like it just collapsed.

So I guess we’re meant to believe that the demons or something have power to make the tunnel collapse. Okay, whatever. I was hoping that they were gonna find something cool- Yeah … at the end of the tunnel. Mm-hmm. No. They’re just stuck down there so that we can see the demons crawling towards them on the ceiling in a cool tunnel shot, and that’s it.

That’s the only reason they’re in there.

Todd: Yeah. It’s a setup with no real payoff. You could have made it there… The demons are chasing them, and then the, the demons immediately cave it down in front of them. You know? It just, just-

Craig: Something …

Todd: something could have happened there except-

Craig: But no. They, they just fight.

They have a fight and, you know, like, vines come out of the walls, and they have a gun, and he shoot… You know, the doctor shoots one of the other demons, a big hole in his head, but it just heals immediately and they just r- they just leave. They, they, they- They just run out … run back out the same trapdoor they went through.

Todd: Yeah. And then somehow they’re in a new room, which is the maid’s room, right? There was, like- … a maid in the backstory

Craig: Yeah, that you see for a second. You see for one second her painting something on the wall, and that’s it

Todd: Yeah, and it turns out she’s drawn symbols- Protection spells … all over the walls.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, and I don’t remember.

Craig: This was in- Did somebody happen to know them? This was infuriating too. Yeah. Like, they’re like, “Oh, it’s protect-” It, it- They’re like, “There are weird symbols on the wall. What could it be?” And then Maddie, as though she, like, just magically speaks whatever ancient language this is, just fucking reads the whole thing.

I know. She’s like, “Oh yeah, these are protection spells, and it says as long as we stay in here, then they can’t hurt us.” And, like, she reads a whole bunch of stuff. It’s not- Oh … in English. Yeah. What is happening? Like, it doesn’t make any sense.

Todd: This is where-

Craig: It’s not even really words. Like, it’s just symbols on the wall.

Todd: Yeah. Again, they have just run away from a bunch of demons who are coming after them, but what is it, 10 minutes in this room? Where they can just sit and chill and, you know, tend to their wounds and read the wall symbols and things like that, and glean all this information.

Craig: Right, and I don’t know if she gleans the information or if she’s just known all along and she just now tells us that, oh, you know, Evangeline’s story is she made a deal with these demons, and there had to be seven of them, and that’s why she invited these seven people.

And- Oh … they all got sacrificed, but they needed these demons who, like, got kicked out of hell for trying to overpower Lucifer or something. You know, they needed this opportunity to get out, but they had to have one living host. And when Evangeline realized that they had to have one living host after all those sacrifices, she hung herself, and that’s why…

Like- All of this- This is a lot

Todd: of-

Craig: And this is in, like, the last 10, 15 minutes of the movie. Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: who cares?

Todd: At this point, it doesn’t even matter. I think there’s one bit that she says, I think it’s here, right, where it’s something about as long as they can last until 6:00 AM or something like that- Right

the demons will go away. Like, what is the point of all… I, I don’t get it. It, it just neuters, to me, the whole movie. What, does this happen every night?

Craig: Right. I think it’s a Halloween thing, but apparently it can happen every- any Halloween. Who knows?

Todd: It’s just a lot to dump on you at once through this weird exposition tactic, and it doesn’t help us really except apparently now you’re thinking, “Well, if they can just last a few more hours, I suppose they’ll be okay.”

Craig: Well, right, and the movie has backed them… They’ve pa- the p- the movie has painted itself into a corner because they are now in this safe room where the demons are outside but can’t get to them, so the demons just have a little orgy for a minute.

Todd: Yeah, that was weird.

Craig: And, and then Angela shows up at the door while the boys are asleep and, like, taunts Maddie, and Maddie’s like, “Shut up, bitch,” and slams the door on her, and that’s it.

And then they wake up and it’s, like, the sun… Which happens first? The walls start bleeding at some point.

Todd: The walls start bleeding, and they’re washing the spells away that are protecting the room. She knows this apparently. And so they’re like, “Oh, my God, it’s, it’s washing the spells away.” So they start trying to redraw the spells on the wall.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: What?

Craig: The, these ancient foreign runes.

Todd: They just know how to draw them now? They know where they go, and- Uh-huh … I mean, it’s pretty quick thinking, but, uh- And

Craig: it works.

Stupid.

Todd: Really dumb.

Craig: Right, and then the sun comes up, right?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: The sun comes up, and the birds are singing, and they’re like, “Well, I guess we did it.”

Todd: Uh-huh Yep. And then for no reason at all, the Edward Furlong guy is like, “Wait, I think there’s something wrong here,” and chucks a rock or something through the front window, and shatters.

And real- and it turns out outside there’s actually still dark.

Craig: It’s still dark. It was all a trick,

Todd: right. It’s still dark. They set our clocks ahead or something.

Craig: Right.

Todd: I mean, I don’t know why he had this idea that it was a trick.

Craig: I don’t either.

Todd: I don’t know why they didn’t just try going outside anyway.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: I don’t know why they’re hanging there for a while questioning what was going on.

Craig: Yeah. Right. So, so they’ve been tricked, but they’ve, they’ve been lured out of the room and so they’re standing at the front door, and they turn around and the demons are all gathered on the steps behind them, and Angela’s, like, suspended in midair and- Uh-huh

it’s, it’s kind of a, it, I don’t know, it, it’s kind of a funny ensemble shot. But-

Todd: Pastiche.

Craig: Yeah. Pastiche. And then a Night of the Demons song comes on. It’s like, “The demons come alive on Halloween.”

Todd: Uh, there’s gotta be a soundtrack to this movie that I probably need to track down. I mean-

Craig: You should. And if you find it, share it with me, ’cause it’s hilarious. Like, it would be fan- oh, it would be great at a haunted house or something. It’d be so good.

Todd: I missed… You know, my new TV here in this apartment, it s- has trouble sometimes with the s- I have to crank things up really, really high just to get sometimes audible audio, for some reason.

So, you know, I should start, I should start doing what you do and put headphones in and listen through my laptop, ’cause I missed so much of this.

Craig: Yeah, this one was for sure worth l- putting the earbuds in. There’s a lot going on. Um, but, but, but they, they, they get Jason, the doctor. Angela rips his guts and he immediately turns into a demon.

And then Maddie and Colin run back into the room where they should be safe, but there’s a tub full of blood there now, and- Uh-huh … one of the other demons jumps out of it and attacks Colin. And then for some reason that I don’t understand, Edward Furlong falls through the floor, and then through every floor-

Todd: Right

Craig: until he’s back in the basement. And then, I don’t understand this either, so he falls through the floor and instead of just going downstairs, she finds a rope and climbs down the rope- … three stories. Why?

Todd: Right. Just run. I have no idea.

Craig: I mean, I could, like, she, I, I can understand, “Well, I can’t leave the room.

I can’t go out the door because the room is protected.” Bitch, you’re going out of the room anyway. Yeah. You’re just going through the floor.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It doesn’t, ugh, it doesn’t make any sense. Okay, so she find, she gets down there and his leg is hurt, and I guess because he has an open wound, he then turns into a demon.

And I swear to God, the last two guys, Jason and Colin, when they turn into demons, it’s the same mask, and it’s a cheap, lazy one. They look exactly the same. But she stabs him with a rusty nail, and then she goes back to the safe room, I guess, and finds supplies- … to make a bomb? Or, like, or, or she fills a bunch of bullets with rusty nails or something.

Todd: I don’t know what that was. I

Craig: don’t

Todd: know. It’s so… It’s just thrown in so quickly.

Craig: Well, she holds them off with that shotgun for a while, and then there’s-

Todd: Uh-huh …

Craig: more titty tentacle stuff, and she’s, she’s still just trying to hold out for dawn, and eventually- Honestly,

Todd: it’s a big mess. It’s a huge mess. I can’t tell what’s going on.

I, um, it’s a bunch of close-ups of special effects.

Craig: I don’t know. At least it happens fast, yeah. And eventually she empties her gun, and they’re like, the demons are, like, chanting. They’re like, “Seven we are, evil we are.” And then, you know, God knows why, I guess she decides that because that Evangeline chick killed herself and that ended it, she makes a noose out of a rope and runs and jumps off the balcony and is hanging there dead.

And the sun comes up immediately. If she had held out for two more seconds, it would’ve been fine.

Todd: It would’ve been fine, yeah.

Craig: But the sun comes up, and the demons go poof like the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: and their ashes, you know, go back down to the cellar and reform skeletons.

And then it cuts back to the girl hanging, and it turns out she’s alive. She has pulled a Veronica Sawyer from Heathers, and she has jerry-rigged this noose so that it’s not really around her neck. It’s around her waist, apparently. But this also infuriates me because the reveal, she, like, opens her eyes like she’s alive, and I’m like, “Okay, I know this trick.

I saw the trick in Heathers. That’s fine.” But then when she goes to, like, let herself down, there’s no tension anywhere in the rope. Like- …

Todd: nowhere.

Craig: Like, the rope that’s supposedly attached to her back is loose too.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So what she’s suspended by, I have no idea.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But she dro- she drops to the ground.

Todd: How she put this together so quickly is, uh, mind-blowing as well.

Craig: Uh-huh. Well, I mean, she also made a bomb out of nails. Yeah, that’s true. So she’s, she’s innovative, I guess. I don’t know. And then she says something really stupid like something about demons, not so smart, and she, she walks out of there all beat up and bloodied up and these, you know, rent guys are… They’re like, “We’re here to pick up the sound equipment.”

She’s like, “It’s inside.”

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: And walks away.

Todd: She leaves.

Craig: The end.

Todd: It’s another one of those weird things that kind of bothers me too, where these supernatural beings can be tricked-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: so easily. When there’s this thing, like we have to possess bodies and there, there’s gotta be an eighth one or whatever, this person can pretend to be dead and it foils their plan.

I never buy that shit when it comes in these movies. Unless there is like a s- explicitly w- some world building that happens that kind of establishes that there’s something about these demons they can’t really, they can’t really get into you. Right. You know, into your head or into your mind or, or sense and feel what’s-

Craig: Right

Todd: the nature around them. Anyway, that’s a, that’s a minor point. It- she walks out and I was just like, “Thank God it’s over,” ’cause I just, I was pretty bored for, for half the movie.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Because it just became one big long chase, and I couldn’t really tell what was going on and… I mean, I could tell what was going on, but I-

Craig: Right

Todd: it’s just a big long chase, you know? And, and-

Craig: Right. And then the- there’s a stinger after the credits. I didn’t even bother to watch it. I just looked up what it was.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Uh, it, it just goes back to that same guy in the club. Y- apparently, finally by the end of the movie, the girl has finished him off, and he comments on it.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And that’s the end of it. But, you know, I, I think the reason that this movie is so disappointing is because I wanted it to be good. The original is, is so campy and it’s kind of a cult classic, and you would expect if somebody was gonna remake something like that, you would expect it to be… And now I don’t know anything about this filmmaker, so I, I, I have no idea what was going on in his mind.

But you would expect that if you were gonna remake this movie, or at least you would hope that it was gonna be done by somebody who was doing it because they loved the original and-

Todd: Right …

Craig: um, they, they either wanted to really pay homage to it, or they w- really wanted to pay homage to it by doing something new and fun and creative with it And this just doesn’t really.

It, it, it really feels more just like, I would say a cash grab, though I can’t imagine that this made any money. It feels more like a nostalgia grab. Like w- we’ve got a built-in… You know, this is a cult movie, so there’s a built-in audience for it. Let’s throw it together and… I don’t know. It just doesn’t work for me, and I feel bad even saying that because it’s not a terrible movie.

We have seen far, far worse.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: It’s just by com- I m- if you’re gonna s- If you’ve not seen either, watch the first one. It’s better for every reason.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Even though it, it’s not a good movie either, but it’s fun. No, it’s campy and

Todd: silly-

Craig: Yeah … but it’s fun. But it’s fun. Mm-hmm. And I don’t know. I mean, if you had never seen the first one and you never had that context, like in 2009, if 20-somethings saw this movie around Halloween, I mean, I guess there’s some fun to be had.

Mm-hmm. There’s attractive people in it, fun music. It’s got a fun Halloween vibe. Just by comparison, I, I guess my expectations were too high, and ultimately I was a little bit let down. It’s not terrible- Yeah … and I don’t, I don’t wanna say, “Oh my God, stay away from it. It’s awful,” because it’s not. It’s not that bad.

It’s just not… It’s forgettable. It’s forgettable.

Todd: I toss it in the same bin that, uh, honestly a lot of these direct-to-video, cheap-feeling horror movies go, or especially this time, you know, this early 2000s or whatever, where… E- except, it, this one has the additional problem of being a remake-

Clip: Mm-hmm …

Todd: to a, a beloved movie, so you expect more care would’ve been placed into it, and it…

They were trying. It just didn’t, it just didn’t work. You’re right. L- they, they took these iconic scenes and they, they put them in there, and they tried to update them and make them more edgy And those on their own, I suppose, are fine. Uh, they seem to be trying a little too hard-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: like we said, and that’s a little cringey.

And the rest of it’s just, yeah, it’s just competent filmmaking, and the effects are fine and whatnot. And, and it’s, it’s another horror movie where demons are chasing people around a haunted house. There’s nothing really inherently wrong with it. Just like you said, it’s disappointing.

Craig: Yeah. And, you know, again, throw it on your Halloween party playlist.

You know, i-i- in terms- Mm-hmm … of background stuff, sure. There’s enough to l- Like, there’s, there’s big boobs and, you know, lots of blood, and demon faces and stuff. But it, it’s a slog to get through if you’re just sitting it, is sitting down to watch it.

Todd: Mm-hmm. Yep. Well, that’s all I got to say.

Craig: Me too.

Todd: All right.

Well, thank you guys for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. We h…

In week three of our Halloween series, we finally tackle the long-requested 2013 analog horror/comedy WNUF Halloween Special, framed as a found VHS tape recording of a 1987 local newscast and a live call-in seance.

We dig into how convincingly it recreates the era—VHS degradation, nonstop regional commercials, and corny local-news Halloween coverage—and why it works best as nostalgic “party atmosphere” rather than a sit-down scare.

We break down the funniest bits in the opening news segments, the repetitive ad structure that undercuts tension, and the ultimately chaotic haunted-house special involving a rude host, paranormal investigators (and their psychic cat), an exorcist, and a cult-driven finale.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/09/WNUF-Halloween-Special-vintage-tv-ad-t-shirt-by40sadistartdesigns-for-poltergeistsandparamours.com-3590243786.jpg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

WNUF Halloween Special (2013)

Episode 510, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Week three of Halloween. Spooky season here on Two Guys and a Chainsaw with our specific Halloween episodes. Just when we think we’ve found about all the Halloweeny themed episodes that we can, we’ve been doing this for what?

Six, e- t- 11 years? Is this our 11th year? Yeah, I

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: It is. It’s our, it’s our 11th year, man. We, we try to do this every year, and we always find something. This one is the WNUF Halloween special from 2013. This one has been on our list for quite a while. I think every year somebody recommends it for us to do, and we came really close to doing it last year, but we swapped it out last minute, and this year we’re able to, to get to it.

Y- you know, I hadn’t really heard about this before. Honestly, this was something that our listeners had clued me into And aside from that, this isn’t like a thing that ever popped up for me on Netflix or anything like that. It’s not something that was coming through on lists for me. It’s listed in Wikipedia anyway as a comedy horror, analog horror film produced basically by one guy.

One guy directed it and enlisted a bunch of people to also direct little bits and pieces. And when I first saw this, I thought, “Oh, this will be fun to do,” because it looks surprisingly like, uh, the concept maybe anyway. It’s like found footage mixed with, um, maybe Ghost Watch. So we sat down to watch it.

It’s my first time seeing it. Craig, had you seen this before?

Craig: No. I remember you bringing it up several times, and like you said, we just, it, it didn’t make the cut for whatever reason. But this was really kind of the first time that I looked into it. And you said found footage. It, it’s… I mean, I think it’s kind of meant to literally be like a found VHS tape.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: We talk about this all the time, I mean, not all the time, but regularly, about how in our homes growing up, VHS was our media, and you would have tapes that would have multiple movies on them or tapes that you had taped off TV or whatever. And this appears to be that, like something that would be from somebody’s home media library.

A- and, and it happens to be a recording of the nightly news followed by a s- a special both on Halloween night.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I thought that that concept was really clever. And so even going into it, I was kind of excited about that concept, and still am to some extent. I, I don’t know. I, I don’t, I… I’m not sure what I expected and, and I like, ultimately my verdict on the movie, I’m not really sure, ’cause it depends on what you’re looking for, and I, it almost, it depends on like how you approach it, like…

Right.

So I’m interested to hear what your thoughts were.

Todd: I’m gonna go off of what you just said earlier about this being an actual tape that was found more or less. Uh, the… Did you ever go to garage sales and just buy random, like, VHS tapes that people had- No … just to take them home and see what was on them?

Clip: No.

Todd: No? I, I did that every now and then. I was, I think, you know, if it was like a quarter or something like that. And, you know, people would just sell stuff in garage sales, and you’d just kind of secretly hope that you could take it home and maybe there’d be some porn on there or something. Never was, but it was always stuff like this, which you’re right, was s- this is e- exactly like something my sisters and I would have popped in because it’s got commercials and everything.

It’s something taped off a TV. In fact, the producers, I say his name, Chris LaMartina, they actually went to a VHS, like, they have these little conventions or something. And they dropped tapes of this just unceremoniously, just l- left them on tables and tossed them out of windows onto the street and stuff, trying to create a little whisper campaign about it, hoping that people would find it and check it out and w- and wonder about it and talk about it online or something.

Craig: And I like that.

Todd: It’s such a great idea.

Craig: I know. I think it’s a great idea, and if I found something like that, I, I would think it was really cool. I, so yeah, I like that whole concept of it. And honestly One of the things that I’m gonna give this movie a lot of credit for is if I did find a VH tape, VHS tape like that, and I popped it in, I, for the most part, like for most of the duration of this movie, I don’t think that I would question its authenticity-

Todd: Right

Craig: at all. That is why the movie appeals to me on a certain level because it is so familiar. Now, I don’t know how familiar-

Todd: Mm …

Craig: this is gonna be to a wider audience or, you know, not, you know anybody outside of the United States. I have no idea. I live in rural America. The commercials and stuff are so authentic.

Like- Yeah.

Todd: They really are.

Craig: I, I, I never would’ve questioned… It, it, towards the end things start to get a little crazy, but up to a certain point it just feels very real. So that’s what I’m saying. Like, if you’re approaching it as, you know, like, “Ooh, I’m excited for a fun Halloween movie,” well- Mm … bad news.

Todd: It’s gonna be a lot of, uh, Bill’s Carpet Barn- Yeah. … or Token’s Arcade and Chesterfield Shopping Mall ads that you’re gonna be watching instead.

Craig: A lot. A lot.

Todd: Tons. Tons.

Craig: But if you’re looking at it like they approached a project and they wanted to do it really well, they did. Like- They did … they did a really, really good job of doing, I think, what they were trying to do.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I may as well just get it out of the way now. I actually think that this is excellent as atmosphere. Like, again, at your Halloween party- I

Todd: was just gonna say that … put it on. I was gonna preempt you and you fricking did it anyway. Yeah. I was literally, like one comment before your comment I was gonna say, “Craig, I’m gonna preempt you and I’m just gonna be like, if you wanna have this on during your Halloween party, it’s the perfect thing.”

Yeah. God. It is. It’s atmosphere. The whole movie’s just atmosphere, and that’s the atmosphere it is. It’s a tape that you just popped in that had been recorded off the TV in 1987. It’s not really spooky Halloween atmosphere.

Craig: I mean, it gets a little spooky sometimes. Yeah. But honestly, like, like what the whole movie, I don’t even know how long it is, an hour and 23 minutes, so it’s short anyway, but like the actual footage of the special.

Like, I actually think that the newscast in the first 10 or 15 minutes or whatever is kind of the funniest part of the movie. Yeah. We can come back to it. But like the, like after that is this special, like this live special that they’re doing, and if you were to cut the movie so that it was really just the footage from the special without commercials or anything else, I think it would be like- 15, 20 minutes maybe If even

Todd: that.

If even that.

Craig: So the vast majority of the movie is other stuff. Yeah. Mostly commercials.

Todd: I will give them a lot of cred- Now, I, some of the commercials are quite obviously pretty silly. L- you know, you talk about authenticity, you would have probably believed that it was a real thing. I think there probably would’ve been a point fairly early on where you would’ve been like, “Some of these commercials are just too on the nose and too silly to actually be real.”

I mean- I

Craig: know, but some of the real ones were like that.

Todd: Oh, yeah. I mean, your local TV commercials of, like, the local car dealership and stuff like that usually did some pretty wacky things. No, no, I get you. They used a lot of stock footage, you know, to put these together, and they shot the whole thing on actual VHS, and then apparently, like, copied it over two or three times to really degrade it.

Craig: Right, which gives it that authentic feel. Like, we would w- we watched things like this. Like- Oh, yeah … I, I look at it now and I’m like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that this was just the standard of the quality of what we were watching- Right … all the time.”

Todd: It was, though

Craig: I know. Especially those tapes that you watched over and over again.

I do remember, like, certain tapes that we would watch over and over again. Eventually, like, the very top or the very bottom of the streen- screen would, like, start to stretch, like, far left or something. Mm-hmm. So, like, everybody would have, like, weird pointy side heads.

Todd: Yeah. That’s true.

Craig: Or, or like, eventually, like, the tracking would start to roll, and you would have to, like, try to, like, manual adjust the tracking to keep it from rolling.

Uh-huh. Oh man, we’re old.

Todd: I know.

Craig: But the… I like that about that. It’s nostalgic for me- Yeah … but I feel like it’s nostalgic for a very specific- Yeah … generation. Like a, a 10-year period. Those of us who specifically grew up in the 1980s, this is going to be really familiar, and just that familiarity is appealing to me.

It w- and, and I was really impressed. Like, the things- Yeah … you’ve already said, the authentes- authenticity of the content, but also the way that it’s presented, it really… Like, it feels like, uh, again, uh, let’s keep a cliche count. It, it feels like a time capsule kind of. Like, it, it- Right … it feels legit. It feels like you popped this tape into a VCR-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: and that’s what you’re seeing.

Todd: Yeah. Uh,

Craig: throughout, throughout all of it. And, and the quality of the, the commercials, like, some of them look like they were made with, I don’t know, whatever they were making cheap commercials with back then. But it looks like the filmmakers took the time to authenticate it.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yes, it looks cheap, because it looked cheap back then.

Todd: Yeah, yeah. It is

Craig: 100%. But it looks authentic to the time, which I liked.

Todd: That said, I was really hoping for something more. I was really hoping that as the commercials went on, maybe I would see some, some themes or, surfacing- Yes … or maybe something happening in the background of some of them, something that would s- Right

tie them together to a larger narrative, or maybe some little Easter eggs or something like that And, uh, and there isn’t any- No … as far as I can tell.

Craig: Not that I… Me either. Right, and I was looking for that too, and I thought that that was, I mean, I guess maybe that wasn’t what they were going for, but I did think it was a missed opportunity.

Like especially- Hmm … since some of the commercials you see multiple times. Yes. The same one.

Todd: Yes. And to be fair, and, and thankfully, some of them when they come on for the second time, there’s a fast forwarding.

Craig: Uh-huh. Like

Todd: somebody is fast forwarding through the tape.

Craig: But you certainly see parts of it several times.

Yeah. And I kept thinking that too, I’m like, “Something’s gonna be different.” Mm-hmm. Like, there, or, or there’s gonna be some hint or… I, I, I expected maybe them to get darker as the movie went on- Right … like to suggest something strange was happening, but they don’t.

Todd: Yeah. They don’t at all. Ugh, and, and there are a, a lot of them, and that was the other thing this reminded me of, just how chock-full of commercials television used to be.

Uh-huh. I mean, we bitch about, and I bitch about YouTube and Tubi and all the time, but honestly, it was, it was even worse when we were- Oh my gosh … watching TV. You know, 10 minutes would go by, you’re cut to like five minutes of commercials. Another s- didn’t even seem like another 10 minutes would go by, and you’re cut to a lot more commercials, and this, this was authentic in that way too.

Craig: Yeah. Yes, yeah. Oh. It, it really was. It, oh, it was crazy. And, and the commercials, even though some of them repeat, they’re, they’re fun because they are-

Todd: They’re fun ’cause they’ll, they’re nostalgic …

Craig: they’re nostalgic, and they’re like local and regional commercials. So super low budget, but, a- and so because they’re local or regional, you can believe that they’re real, they’re just not things that are in your area, you know?

Right. But, but they seem, but they’re familiar. They’re the types of commercials you would have seen for like, like you said, like Carpet Barns, but also like, oh gosh- 1-900 numbers, like 1-900-MONSTER and-

Todd: Yes …

Craig: I don’t know. There’s so many of them. I, I re- there’s a really funny one near the end for some weird off-brand wine cooler.

Like-

Todd: Yeah. There’s one for tampons where two girls are playing tennis, which is such a cliche tampon commercial. There’s one for a pumpkin carving kit. So some of them are actually Halloween. Most of them are not.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Most of them don’t have anything to do with Halloween. They’re just normal commercials.

But some of them, again, like those local commercials would do, would be like, “Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. It’s Halloween. I hope you’re enjoying yourself.” “Come down and buy a car. We’re go- we have a spooky sale going on.” You know, that kind of thing. But then there were the drug commercials which brought me back.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: There were several of those. But one of my favorites was there w- it was like some kids playing spin the bottle.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: And, uh, this guy comes on and is talking and he’s like, “It looks like it’s just a game, but it’s really a game of death.” And then you see that the bottle’s like aiming at different drugs.

Like, like they’re spinning the bottle to see which drug they’re gonna take.

Craig: It’s like syringes, yeah.

Todd: Yeah. Playing with drugs is playing with death. Sponsored by Parents Against Partying.

And there were just some little things like that in some of these that made you realize it was pretty silly.

Craig: Well, it really is laughable now. Mm-hmm. But those… That’s what the commercials were like.

Todd: They really were.

Craig: They really were like that.

Todd: We can’t say that enough. We probably said it too many times, but yes, these are very authentic commercials.

They will take you back.

Clip: They think it’s no big deal, just harmless fun where everyone gets a turn. But they never bothered to check the rules and think they can stop any time they want There’s many ways to play, but they all lead to the same result. Game over. Playing with drugs is playing with death

Craig: Seeing that one reminded me, like, i- it’s crazy how that was the big bad thing.

Like, “Drugs are gonna get your kids, and they’re gonna ruin your kids, and they’re gonna ruin…” They’re like the fear tactics that, that are still being used today. Like, it’s not necessarily drugs today, but it’s still the same thing. Yeah. You still see these commercials. They’re so crazy and stupid, and hopefully 40 years from now people will be laughing at them, but-

uh, it’s wild. Anyway.

Todd: Well, it’s also the local news station, right? And that’s pretty much almost gone-

Craig: Mm-hmm …

Todd: the way of the dodo, to be honest. Everything is syndicated. Everybody’s just broadcasting the big news or whatever. But, uh, you used to have your… And in some markets you still do, but it’s pretty rare now.

Used to have your local anchor people who were not always the- Yeah … most professional, but they were trying their best, and they have these corny jokes that don’t land at all but are h- hilarious for that. And in this case, they’re dressed up for Halloween. She’s like a witch. He’s like a vampire. They’ve dressed the set behind them in Halloween, and they’re giving the news, and most of the news is also kinda Halloween-y.

And I liked this bit, and I know you wanted to talk about this, and I agree. This part in the beginning is almost more entertaining and interesting to me than the, quote-unquote, “main narrative” that begins afterwards when the actual special begins.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It’s the news, and they tease this special where they’re gonna go live to a hau…

I mean, it’s very Ghostwatch. “We’re gonna tonight go live to a haunted house and investigate it with some paranormal researchers, and where this horrible thing occurred, and nobody’s been in this house in 20 years since these horrible murders happened. And we’re gonna go live and see if we can scare up the ghosts.

But first, here’s the news.” And it really runs the gamut, and it’s all Halloween-themed, and I loved it.

Craig: Yeah. It was And super legitimate. Like, this- was the funniest part, but it still felt real. I was gonna say it reminded me, I, I was trying to look while you were talking, I was trying to look up the name of the actress.

I can’t remember her name, but Fred Willard, the anchor guy reminded me of… That’s his name, right?

Todd: Oh, yeah. The actor Fred Willard? The com-

Craig: Yes … comedic

Todd: guy? Yeah, uh-huh.

Craig: Mm-hmm. And, and it reminded me of the kind of back and forth that he had with, gosh, I can’t think of the name of the actress. She also played Effie Trinket in the Hunger, Hunger Game movies, but I can’t think of her name.

In the Pitch Perfect movies, they were commentators, and they had- Hmm … kind of this back and forth thing. Mm-hmm. And he’s good at that. He did the same thing in Best In Show. Like- Yes, yes … he’s really funny at that kind of back and forth. And this guy kind of reminded me of the Temu him.

Todd: Yes. Exactly. He’s not funny, but he’s trying to be.

He’s cracking- Right … jokes that are just dumb.

Craig: And the, the, uh, his co-anchor was really funny too. Like- … obviously c- you know, kind of a, a stiff, you know, she’s in a, you know, a 1980s woman news anchor like blazer, skirt suit. But she’s trying to be fun for Halloween, you know? Like- Uh-huh. And they’re cr- like you said, they’re cracking corny jokes and laughing at each other.

Clip: Hey, Deborah, what’s a vampire’s worst nightmare? Oh, I don’t know, Gavin. Sunlight? Mm-mm. Tooth decay. Oh. And local dentist Dr. Stanley Allen knows plenty about that subject.

Craig: But that, I think, was the most fun part.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: And like, yeah, all the, they, they, they do a live tour of a haunted house and go to a pumpkin patch at High Pike Farms.

That’s a funny coincidence.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Wasn’t High Pike the, an actor in, like, one of the last movies we just did?

Todd: Yeah, in Hack-O-Lantern, the first one we did this season. High Pike. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a apparently a lot of little references to horror actors or horror l- B-movie actors or directors in here. I, I noticed a couple anyway, and then I went online and I saw a few more listed in the trivia.

Yeah, uh, they had these little packages that were so cool too, that are typical for this time. There’s the local policeman, Sergeant Barnhart or whatever, and he’s going to tell you that you need to be safe and inspect your candy. And he’s got these like, all these rules, right? Make sure that you wear bright clothing, have your flashlight, and then he talks about inspecting your candy so that you don’t end up eating a razor blade or a needle infected with the AIDS virus.

And as hilarious as that sounds now, this kind of shit people were literally saying. Like- Right … people would put razor blades in your candy. I

Clip: know.

Todd: Again, I’ve- we’ve said this a million times, but how in the world do you get a razor blade in an apple without anybody noticing? I just… The idea that people would randomly just do this shit, or put a needle infected with the AIDS virus

Craig: Yeah

Todd: Just to randomly fuck with kids.

Ugh.

Craig: Yes, but those little segments were-

Todd: Oh, they were so much fun … they were so

Craig: funny.

Todd: Even, even the ones that’s not, are not supposed to be funny, I was cracking up so hard. Like the horrible tragedy that had happened this year where this little Asian boy dressed up as G.I. Joe, wa- seven-year-old shows up at the doorstep of an Army veteran who has PTSD, and as soon as he answers the door he thinks he’s like a Viet Cong soldier and shoots him dead.

I couldn’t help but laugh when they showed the picture- I know … of this little kid in his outfit.

Craig: And I had kind of forgotten about that. I guess there are some that are probably a little over the top.

Todd: Oh,

Craig: my God. But honestly, like, they, the, the people, the actors in these segments, these news segments play it so straight.

Yeah. Like, it could be real. Like, it see- Ugh … it seems, oh, that’s, that’s ridiculous. Surely they wouldn’t put that on the local news. But then you see the performances and you’re like, “Well, maybe.”

Todd: Some of them, some of them for sure, although some of them I think are quite bad. You know, what I said a couple weeks ago when we were talking about the authenticity of somebody being interviewed, you know, in, in the last found footage movie we did.

Mm-hmm. And, and there were a few segments in here where I was like, “This actor c- is not convincingly being interviewed.” You know? Uh, when, when they interviewed, they said, “We, we’re, we need to make sure that we’re fair and balanced, and so amidst all the celebration and stuff we’re interviewing a local church group.”

And-

Craig: Oh …

Todd: they’re very much against Halloween and, and think that it’s the realm of Satan, and there’s a whole package on that as well. And God, the interview with that woman was god-awful. It, it didn’t, that didn’t work for me at all.

Craig: And it was dumb. It was like a whole is Halloween Satanic? I guess this is, like, an anti-Halloween cult, right, or something?

Todd: Yeah, or, like, a local church group or something.

Craig: Called Harvest or something. Yeah. And, and the woman’s like, “There are goblins in the candy.” What? What? But-

Todd: People be praying all night at the Baptist church. I thought that would be something

Craig: But it’s important. It is, isn’t it?

Todd: It is kind of. I mean, it is. It, it does come back.

But I just thought it would come back in a more, I don’t know. I thought there’d be bits of it dripped here and there, like breadcrumbed out. The dentist interview with the local dentist who was doing trade in your candy for, uh-

Craig: For money, and you would get a dollar for every pound of candy. Rip.

Todd: Imagine.

Craig: Keep your candy.

Todd: This guy. What is he gonna do with all that candy? That’s what I wanna know.

Craig: Eat it.

Todd: I, I didn’t find him- Obviously. Hand it out next Halloween. I didn’t find him to be very convincing as an actor either. He took me way out of it a little bit. I don’t know. I thought

Clip: it was funny.

Todd: I mean…

Craig: See, because when you put…

I love it when you put non-actors, just random people off the street, I love when you put them on camera and they have something to do, because they don’t have any idea what they’re doing.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And so it, it always looks awkward and silly. And- Yeah … so I think, I, I thought it was funny.

Todd: Okay.

Craig: Oh. I, I, I mean, yeah, silly, but I don’t know.

I thought… I, I mean, the whole idea of it is stupid but again, these were the things that we were being told. Like, we were legit told to watch out for the razors. We were, like, “Don’t eat candy, your teeth will fall out.” Like, ugh.

Todd: There was the big satanic panic as well, and later on- Yes.

Craig: For real?

Todd: Later on that g- there’s a package that gets cut in about that.

You know, they’re talking about, uh, local Satan w- devil worshipers and things like that, satanic activity happening lately. They talk about it so offhandedly like it’s just common knowledge, everybody knows it’s happening, but none of this shit was really happening. But God, it was on the news all the time, and talk shows, and-

Craig: All the time

Todd: Oh, it was crazy.

I also loved the commercial about the… It was, like, from the oil company, and they were like, “We’re helping to clean up the environment. Clean up the air.” That was hilarious. “Clean up the water from unavoidable accidental oil spills.”

Craig: We’re all in this together. That was funny. Unavoidable accidental oil spills.

That was hilarious. I did like that one. I, well, I also liked how, again, this was good production on their part. The commercials early on are family-focused and family-friendly. Like, during the news segment-

Todd: Hmm …

Craig: it’s kids Halloween stuff. Right at the very end of the news, there’s a trailer for a movie called, like, Doggone It.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: I, I, I don’t even remember what it was about, but it was very dog-centric, but like- Yeah … a silly rom-com with a dog, very family. But then as the night goes on, then it starts getting into the 900 numbers.

Todd: Strip club.

Craig: And, right. Uh, which, which again, gave it some level of authenticity. But anyway, they sign off, unfortunately.

They reappear very briefly at the end. But they sign off, and then the special begins, and it’s, it’s advertised as, like, the first ever live call-in seance, and they talk about the- they’re gonna be in this house, and it’s got some history with, like, a, this… It’s, like, the spirit board murders or something happened there.

Todd: Mm.

Craig: And we’re introduced to the producer, Veronica-

Todd: Oh my

Craig: God … who is basically just, like, on a headset in a van for most- Yeah … of the movie. But she shows up with a chainsaw Again, these little Little things? Yeah, these little production moments were so funny to me because I could see you doing this.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like, I could see you on the mic walking up to the van with a producer coming out with the chainsaw and you being like, “Veronica, what are you doing?” Like, this is so you.

Todd: I take that as a compliment.

Authentically dorky. You know, trying to spice up something to make it sound interesting, I l- I was a journalist, you know that. I worked for radio more than I worked for television, but I worked at a radio station. We did a live call-in show called Area Scene. Is that still going on, by the way? Do you know?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: And down the road in Marceline, Missouri, I think I might have talked about this here before. I’ll talk about it again. We- we’ve got 500 episodes. Probably you haven’t heard this. The, down the road in Marceline, Missouri was Disney’s hometown, and they were pr- premiering a new VHS tape of Disney cartoons, like the Mickey cartoons that had not been re-released for like 20 years called Spirit of Mickey.

And they decided, the Disney company did this whole thing at the town where they were, you know, gonna have a little parade. They were gonna premiere it in the, the theater where Walt himself and with his brothers used to go see movies and all that stuff. And they had invited journalists down the day before to like walk them through how they could cover it, and they had vans there to take us from one event location to another on the day so that we could get everything in we needed to.

And we had the bright idea, we’re like, “Look, this time actually overlaps with our normal call-in show, so let’s make this a live thing.” So you know, I just had a cell phone and I was frantically trying to find people to interview and, you know, I kinda had to set up people the day before during that, that media tour that like, “Oh, this guy who’s there was like an expert.

He was doing like a biography on Walt Disney,” so that’s why he was there. And I was like, “Oh, maybe can I interview you tomorrow while we’re on the bus to tell me some facts about Walt Disney and la-di-da-di-da?” So I kinda had to figure out a whole bunch of shit just like this to fill the time and make it interesting, you know, as we were going live.

And you’re right, this is the kind of stuff you have to do, honestly.

Craig: Well, right. And when I say it’s right up your alley, like especially like what this guy is doing is he’s doing a feature like a Halloween special on a local, like a famous local landmark. Like it’s- Right … this old spooky house where these murders took place.

Like you would eat this up and have great fun with it.

Todd: Oh, yeah

Craig: This guy’s kind of an asshole.

Todd: He is.

Craig: Like, not even- It’s- … it’s not even kind of. Like, he is an asshole.

Todd: It’s so funny how much of an asshole he comes across, and they establish it really early, don’t they? Because they’ve got a little crowd of costumed revelers outside the front of this house, and he’s just doing filler.

You know, just interviewing each of them. “Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts?” And every time somebody responds anything like, “I believe in ghosts,” he’s almost making fun of them. Like, “Really?”

Craig: Oh,

Todd: yeah. “So that’s what you believe,

Craig: huh?” Super condescending, right. My, my favorite then, but he goes, like he’s super…

Especially there’s one girl who’s kind of bubbly and nervous, and he’s like super condescending to her and telling her to calm down and stuff. And then right after that he’s like, “Let’s go to the vampire.” And he goes to this guy dressed as a vampire in the back who looks horrified, and he’s like, “What do you think about these murders?”

And the vampire’s like, “Somebody died in this house?”

And just looks horrified. And the guy’s like, “Uh, yeah,” and just walks away. Oh, this is gonna- Oh, boy. I thought that was hilarious. And, and then they give a bunch of exposition that ultimately, who cares? But I guess, what? Uh. There was a family that lived there, and there was an evil Ouija board and-

Todd: Yeah. Boy found it, got obsessed with it, and it told him to do all these horrible things like steal and vandalize and whatever, and even commit murder.

And he ended up, like, axing his parents or something like that.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And then the house had been boarded up for 20 years, and now they’re opening it up again for the first time

Craig: What happened to him? Did they say? I don’t remember

Todd: I don’t remember. I honestly don’t.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know.

Todd: Who cares? It doesn’t really matter.

He disappeared. Yeah, whatever.

Craig: Because then Claire and Lewis arrive. Oh. Now these are, these are obvi- They’re supposed to be, like, the local Warrens, I think. Yeah. Or, like, the regional… Like, they’re like psychic investigators or whatever. Mm-hmm. And, and she’s the psychic, and he, I guess, is just her partner, and then their third partner is their cat, which is so funny.

Todd: The psychic cat.

Craig: The cat is psychic, too. Oh, man. And it helps her.

Oh, gosh. I don’t- Yeah … find that really any more or less believable than ch- than she’s psychic. Like, if, Yeah … if she’s psychic, why can’t the cat be psychic? Sure. Exactly. Why not?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But it’s, but it’s hilarious. She can communicate with spirits, and Frank the butthole guy- Right … tells her she has a very pretty pussy.

Todd: I know. Oh, there are little moments like this.

Craig: As much as this guy is an asshole, like you knew this guy too, right? Like I’m sure- Yeah … at some point, you know, working in production, you’ve known this guy.

Todd: Oh,

Craig: yeah. I am guessing this guy, like he was probably drunk, would be my guess.

Todd: Right. He was probably pulled out of a, another job he’d rather be doing- Uh-huh

to do this instead. Yeah. He’s probably not getting paid extra for it. He’s bitter to just be there, honestly. I know, and I knew this guy, 100%. I’m not gonna name names, but- I literally knew a guy just like this.

Craig: But, but basically this is when they start doing, you know, they’re gonna tour the house or whatever, and before they even go inside, there’s some disturbance.

Somebody shouts out something.

Todd: There’s a little flicker of something in the window, and he’s like, “Oh my God, did you guys see that? There was something in the window. Okay, we’re gonna cut to a commercial, and we’ll be right back.” And by, by the way, we’re 40 minutes into the movie right, by now. We’re all, uh, yeah, like halfway through And finally we’re getting to what is ostensibly the main narrative or the thing that we’re all looking forward to, because this is the thing I thought shit was gonna go down.

And it’s interesting because we go through a series of events in the house, and after every event, we cut to commercial. So it doesn’t really build much tension because just like TV was, as soon as, as soon as some tension is built, you get interrupted- Mm-hmm … to these lame-ass commercials, and then you come back, and because it’s live, like five minutes have passed, and they’ve sort of sorted what just happened, and now everything’s kind of back to baseline in, in some way.

So it’s got very little time, because of its structure, to really have a satisfying horror narrative, I think-

Craig: Right …

Todd: you know, that we’re emotionally engaged with.

Craig: Even worse, because it’s live television, any time something exciting happens, they immediately cut to commercial.

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: that’s

Todd: what I mean.

Craig: So, so every time you come back it’s like, “Hey, something crazy happened off-camera.”

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. “And here’s the result,” you know? “Oh, okay. Thanks.” Yeah. So we, we missed all the really good stuff.

Craig: Pretty much, but that, but you- you’re right. Like, it feels, I don’t know what the right word is, stagey or episodic. Like it’s just- Yeah … one, like one setup to the next, but disjointed, so yeah, it cuts the tension.

And it doesn’t… I mean, I guess the stakes are ultimately kind of high. They go… It’s also silly, but they, they go in and he’s like, “What are you feeling?” And she’s like, “I need a minute.” He’s like, “What do you m- mean, what do you mean you need a minute? It’s a live show. How you feeling right now?” And she’s like, “Oh, I feel something.

Uh, is it bad?”

Clip: There’s someone here. It’s ter- it’s terrible feeling. It’s terrible. It’s overwhelming. It’s overwhelming and, and terrible. It’s horrible. It’s full of malevolence. It, it’s not Donald It’s not his parents. Oh my, oh my. It is, it’s pure evil Now, Claire, Claire, are we in danger here? We’re not safe And maybe that will translate to some good ratings.

Todd: It’s, he’s pushing it along, you know, ’cause they’ve got, they’ve got- He’s trying

Craig: his hardest-

Todd: Mm-hmm … to push it

Craig: along because it’s boring, but-

Todd: And he’s trying to kinda play up the things that otherwise, you know, aren’t really happening. The cat runs upstairs and the, those two follow the cat, and now we get introduced to Father Joseph Matheson, a respected Catholic priest and exorcist.

And he’s a weird dude. He’s just, like, nervous and strange and- He

Craig: seems very anxious, right?

Todd: Yeah. He says he’s never… He admits, actually, he’s never actually performed an exorcism. You, you know, it’s not like he’s specially trained in exorcism. It’s just a, like, one of the things in their toolbox that they all kind of, priests all need to be able to deal with eventually.

And, you know, then they go to commercial, and then after the commercial it’s like, he’s like, “We’re back and we found some proof.” Like, upstairs the wo- they, they believe they found some definitive recordings, EVP recordings in the house. Well, okay. So last thing we knew, they were running upstairs after the cat.

Now, again, after just five minutes of commercials, we’re in a spot where they have recorded something off-camera, and they’re playing it back where he asks the house if there’s anything there, and there’s a voice that says, “Leave.” It’s just kind of a mess.

Craig: It’s not super clear.

Todd: Yeah. Again, it’s like he’s like, “Uh, did you hear that?

Did you hear that?” Frank’s like, “Eh, play it again.” Sure. And then they’re like, “Did you hear it?” He’s like, “I heard something.” And then he’s like, “Okay, yeah. Well, I got to admit I definitely heard ‘leave.'” Like, again, he’s just trying to move it along. And then they decide they’re gonna go to the basement, right?

Craig: Yes.

Todd: And as they’re walking to the basement, there’s a noise back from where they were.

Craig: Cut to commercial.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They go back, the tape’s been smashed. Cut to commercial, and now they’re back, and it’s almost like that didn’t even happen. They’re already set up for a live call-in seance.

Craig: And the s- the psychic guy is kinda pissed.

He’s like, “Who’s gonna pay for my stuff?” And Frank’s like, “I, I told you we’ll talk about it later.”

Todd: Exactly. And this is, is so lame, this, this seance. There’s just some candles on a table and they’re just sitting around and they’ve got the, the call-in number at the bottom of the screen. But again, this is exactly how I would expect this to actually go.

They’re having a hard time getting anybody to call in, and everybody who calls in is just, like, a jokester. The first guy who calls in is like, “Iron Maiden rules!”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And the second person who calls in is like, “Hey, can you reach my grandmother and tell her she’s a bitch?”

They never get anybody who actually asks a question.

Craig: No, but one of them, like, doesn’t somebody call and s- say you’re going to hell or-

Todd: Yeah, it’s like those, it’s like those anti-Halloween people, yeah, calling in.

Craig: Yeah. And there was a little disturbance outside the house. Somebody was heckling or something outside the house, too.

So there’s been two heckling things at this- Yeah … at this point.

Todd: That’s true.

Craig: Oh, God. Who, who cares?

Todd: They, then they hear the cat meow and they leap up and, oh God, there, there’s the cat. Cut to commercial, right? And then as soon as you get back from the commercial, guess what’s happened? Cat cat is a bloody mess on the floor.

And,

Craig: and the camera cuts to it, and the host is like, “Oh God, don’t, don’t show that. Don’t sh-

It’s… And I don’t know, it, it looks like it kind of exploded or somebody hit it with a- … comically large sledgehammer or something.

Todd: It really is just a splat. But the Burgers are understandably freaking out, and they run out and we never see them again. And it cuts to the… You know, ’cause they don’t know what to do, so they cut to the producer and she’s like, “I really want to apologize for what you guys have seen tonight.

While we get things sorted, why don’t you watch this, uh, video from our local dentist?” The, the candy program. And again, for the second time-

Craig: Doesn’t she also… Yeah, we, we do see the dentist one again, but doesn’t she also have a package about devil worshiping?

Todd: Yeah, that comes next. Mm.

Craig: And animal mutilation?

Yeah. Like, was that just filler? Were they plan- I don’t remember if they were plan- it just-

Todd: I think it’s one of the things they planned to, to do to fill time, ’cause they knew shit wasn’t gonna happen in the house. But then once we g- once we see our thing on devil worship, we come back and now it’s just Frank and this, and this priest.

And Frank is like, “Perform an exorcism. You gotta perform an exorcism. Perform an exorcism.” And he’s like, “That’s what you’re here for.” And the priest doesn’t wanna do it, and he’s like, “You need to do it. That’s what you’re here for.” I mean, he’s really pushing him. Finally he’s like, “Okay, fine. I’ll perform an exorcism.”

He’s like, “That’s great. Now, when we come back from these commercials, Father Matheson will perform an exorcism.” But one of those ads is for the Burgers’ book, and that’s kinda fun That couple’s book

Craig: Oh, yeah

Todd: Yeah. Again, that Lorraine Warren.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Then they’re back in the basement, and it’s just him and the guy, and he says to, asks him to start the exorcism, and he gets, like, from, “In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Wait, what was that? There’s a noise, and it’s upstairs. And so they run up the stairs and they find they’re locked in the basement. And then the producer says they’re gonna send another camera in, and then they go to commercial. I

Clip: know.

Todd: And then when they come back, it’s the producer. She’s like, “All right, we’re gonna send our intern.”

I love that bit. We’re gonna send our intern in with a ca- like, you know what’s gonna happen now, right? And we get the camera’s eye view from the intern as he walks through, and all you can hear is just this very nervous breathing. And then-

Craig: And he, he gets killed, doesn’t he, right away?

Todd: Yeah. Like, the camera kind of s- swipes over, and you see this sort of, this flash of, like, the lower half of a person with an ax who suddenly comes out of a room and, and axes him.

Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, and then the camera goes down, and then cut back to Frank and the priest, and the priest says he’s just an actor.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like, they had hired this guy, and he, and he pees his pants.

Todd: They really showed us that, didn’t they?

Craig: Oh,

Todd: yeah. Yeah.

Craig: And the door opens, I guess.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: And Frank, I thought, got hit with an ax.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And then it goes to commercial, and then it, right in the middle of the commercial it goes, it cuts to technical difficulties, and then static, and then it comes back. It’s, it’s a different point of view. It’s, it’s, it’s not their cameraman. Somebody else is behind the camera, ’cause it, like the angles are all askew and stuff.

But, like, Frank is tied up with his mouth taped closed, and all of the guests that they’ve had all night are there and dead. Uh. And it turns out it was those religious cultists from- Uh-huh … earlier. The ones who were, like, anti… The ones who were all gathering at the church for their prayer thing or whatever.

They’re here, and they kill them all.

Todd: God told them to do it, I guess. He cuts- they cut out Frank’s tongue. It’s the only real on-screen anything that we see happen. You know, that’s, that’s, like, a little disturbing bit, and then it goes to static again, and then it cuts back in to what must be weeks later. I think it’s, like, two weeks later or something, and it’s the newscasters again.

It’s, like, their m- nightly broadcast, but this is all normal now, and the guy is just like, “Yeah, so, uh, s- it’s been two weeks, and we d- we, we’re all broken up and shaken by what happened. Nobody knows where Frank is or, or those other people, and investigations are continuing.” So that tells you, right, that whatever that little clip was of Frank and the bodies-

Craig: Uh-huh

Todd: it’s like that’s cut in by someone else, right? Like-

Craig: Huh. I didn’t think about that …

Todd: like, we’re watching the videotape that belongs to maybe the, the murderers.

Craig: I didn’t think about that. I don’t know. ‘

Todd: Cause otherwise-

Craig: Well, I… No, I, I don’t, I don’t know, because I feel like the crazy woman- Who’s either right in front of the camera or right behind the camera.

Right before it cuts out, she says, “From all your friends at WNUF, Happy Halloween,” and then it cuts to static. But I guess you’re saying if they don’t know where they are, then they must not have seen that footage.

Todd: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

Craig: Hmm. I don’t know.

Todd: Like in what- I’ll

Craig: have to think about it … it,

Todd: I thought ’cause it was surrounded by the static, right?

So it’s almost like, uh, the tape got-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: like something got cut in and- Could be. Yeah. And then there’s, it’s so cute, right? A- again, kind of making fun of the, of the news. So he says this real somber thing, and then it kinda moves over to her, and she’s like all cheer. It’s like, “Well, the holidays are coming up soon.”

Yeah.

Craig: Christmas is right around the corner.

Todd: And cut.

Craig: And then the tape cuts to static, yeah, and that’s the end. I don’t even remember, were there credits? I don’t even remember if there were credits or not.

Todd: No credits. Not at all.

Craig: It, it was cool. Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: as a, like, as a project, I think it’s really cool. And I think that they set out to do something very specific, and I think they executed it really, really well.

I think they- Yes … were really successful in what they set out to do.

Todd: I agree.

Craig: It is not a sit-down, like- I don’t know, like- Get out your popcorn.

Todd: It’s not one of

Craig: those … yeah, I mean, I, like, if, if you want to have the kind of movie night where you put on a movie just to kind of have on while you talk, then, then yes.

But if you all wanna r- like, really sit down and watch a good movie, I wouldn’t recommend this. It, it, it- Yeah … ultimately, g- if you’re just sitting down and watching it start to finish, ultimately, I- it feels tedious. But I think in bits and pieces, it’s interesting and, and cool to look at. So again, like I said from the beginning, it just kind of depends on how you approach it.

I like it as an oddity.

Clip: Yes.

Craig: Um, and I would recommend it, I would very much recommend it in that capacity, especially for people who are familiar with that era. I think it’s really interesting and nostalgic and, and cool in that way. But it’s not, I don’t know, it’s, it, it’s, it’s not a super exciting experience.

Todd: It’s not. And, and it’s not really That creepy. I mean, it’s not scary. It just can’t be. I just don’t think that, you know, the narrative, it doesn’t really- it’s not enough, and it’s broken up too much. And ultimately, like you said, it’s really good for what it is, of what it’s trying to be, but it’s not like a movie you’re gonna sit down and it’s gonna freak you out and, you know.

But it, but it’s, it’s, you know, it’s got the Halloween vibes big time.

Craig: It does. Mm-hmm.

Todd: And there’s a sequel. Did you know that?

Craig: I did. I, I, all, all I know about it is that it’s more geared towards the ’90s, so-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: similar in concept, but just more ’90s. But yeah, that’s all I know about it.

Todd: Apparently, the director decided to do that after he had finished Call Girl of Cthulhu Which I think we need to put on our list.

But, uh, yeah, he did that and then, uh, this one, the sequel’s called Out There Halloween Mega Tape, and supposedly it’s better. The response, the reviews say that it was, uh, d- okay, I, I’m just reading right here, Dread Central and National Scene. National Scene commented that, “It was much more polished than its predecessor,” and that it was, “structurally innovative and deeply re-watchable.”

Craig: Oh, cool.

Todd: Yeah, so it kinda makes me wanna see it. Maybe next Halloween we throw this one on the list, you know?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Maybe-

Craig: I would like to.

Todd: Apparently that one follows, it’s a little bit more of like a Ricky Lake type or Jerry Springer type show, and they’re doing a live investigation of some alien encounters.

Craig: Oh, I love that.

Todd: It sound all ve- all very ’90s, yeah, so could be f- could be fun. So l- let’s do that one next, next, uh, year.

Craig: Okay. Sounds good.

Todd: Well, guys, thank you so much. We’re still knee-deep in the Halloween season. Uh, whatever you are going out there to do, whatever you’re dressing up as, whatever other movies you’d like us to check out, drop us a line.

You know the drill, just Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast is all you have to Google. ChainsawHorror.com is our website. You can find our Facebook page, you can find our, our Instagram. Uh, you can also find our Patreon, Patreon.com/ChainsawPodcast for just five bucks a month. Chat with us back there. Get in our book club.

We’re doing Halloween books this year. It’s not too late to get in on the next one that we’re doing. It’s really, really fun. We chat about those, uh, every couple of weeks on a live Zoom call. And, uh, yeah, book clubs are fun. Reading’s good. Reading’s good. Don’t just watch. Read. But you can also listen to our uncut, unedited, uh, recordings that have a lot of personal stuff that we leave out, in case that interests you, and all the other things that just don’t make the cut here, and you get that before the actual episode comes out.

So it’s just a little something extra we do for our patrons, as well as minisodes. We got a whole… We’ve got over 60 minisodes backlogged up there on the site. Yeah, it’s a lot. I didn’t

Craig: know that.

Todd: And this Halloween we’ve been doing a bunch as well. We’ve been doing, uh, classic Halloween-

Craig: Specials …

Todd: cartoon specials, yeah.

It’s been our theme this year. So Patreon.com/ChainsawPodcast gives you access to all of that, plus our undying gratitude. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We kick off Halloween week two with 1998’s Halloween H20 (“H2O”), the franchise revival that leans hard into the late-’90s slasher wave (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) and largely ignores the earlier sequels.

We talk about why the movie feels so different from Carpenter’s first two films—more jump scares, more comedy, and a less-mystical Michael Myers—while still appreciating Jamie Lee Curtis’s return as a traumatized, alcoholic Laurie Strode living under an assumed name.

We break down the opening with Loomis’s nurse, the tense rest-stop sequence, the teen cast (Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams), the Janet Leigh cameos and Psycho nods, and the finale Laurie vs. Michael, including the controversial “definitive” ending and how the next sequel undermines it.

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Automatic Transcript

Halloween H20 (1998)

Episode 509, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Halloween week two, baby.

Craig: I know. I’m excited.

Todd: Yeah, me too, man. You chose this week, and we chose Halloween H2O. Or as I learned when I was looking it up online, it’s H2 zero. Get it? ‘Cause it’s 20 years later. This came out in 1998.

You know, when the original Halloween came out in 1978. This one was, like, a pretty big revival of the franchise, which I think, uh, had ended with, what, the fifth one? Was it The Return of Michael Myers? I think- Sixth one. Oh my God.

Craig: I think it was The Curse of Michael Myers, I think. Yeah.

Todd: Was that even in the ’90s?

Maybe very early ’90s, wasn’t it?

Craig: I don’t remember.

Todd: But this one without… N- none of the rest of them except for, I think, the first two, right, involved John Carpenter?

Craig: Right.

Todd: Obviously, the third one involved him. He produced it and, uh, did he direct that, too? I don’t think he did. No,

Craig: he didn’t

Todd: direct

Craig: it. No. Mm-mm.

Todd: He produced it, but they were planning on going on, like, a, you know, Halloween is the theme of the series, but they were gonna have more of an anthology bit. And then it turned into, like, the people just wanted to see Michael Myers again, so then they just made, like, what, three more, I guess. And then they laid it to rest, ’cause it was kinda getting stale, I think, and a little weird.

Craig: And it wasn’t doing well. The last ones hadn’t done well.

Todd: Yeah. You know, Michael Myers, he’s a guy who, for me, I was never that into. I’m more into him now as an adult than I was as a kid. As a kid, I didn’t see the hook. You know what I mean? Jason had his hockey mask. His hockey mask and his machete. I mean, technically he didn’t always, but you know, when I was a kid.

Jason had his hockey mask and his machete, and he’s this brutal, hulking guy who just appe- I mean, you know, there’s a whole language to that film that ended up developing, and it went in some fun directions and played with it a little bit, but it was mostly the same thing over and over and over again, which is why I’ve said before I was never really that into Jason, either.

Michael Myers was even less because for me, it’s just a guy in a white mask. Even less of a hook. I don’t know. It just didn’t have the pull that Jason did. I didn’t really get the fascination with him. I saw the first one. I thought it was scary. Had no interest in seeing all the rest of them. Now as an adult, I see it psychologically different, and I have a strong appreciation for the first movie.

First movie’s just a work of art. John Carpenter’s so skilled at creating and maintaining tension there, and there is a language in that film, and I think the one after it- That he developed that I think just kinda got lost through the rest of the series. And you know what, God, now s- then, uh, H2O came in 1998, and we were all like, “Oh, the return of Michael Myers.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Michael Myers movie.” I know I saw this. I don’t think I went to this theater to see it. I think I saw it when my friends rented it. I was in college. And, eh, I thought it was interesting. It was very much in the flavor of all of the slasher movies that were becoming revived at this time, right?

Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. It was just the late ’90s became horror revival slasher time. And so at the time I was excited to see this, but I remember watching it and I remember just being eh about it. And all these years later, I hadn’t seen it again, I didn’t really remember why I was so eh about it.

So, uh, it was fun to watch it again and be able to discuss it this time around. What’s your history with it, Craig?

Craig: Yeah, I was excited about it, too. It was, it- I think that it was really smart to jump on that Scream bandwagon because the plot or, you know, or, or the characters fit so easily into that mold.

I mean, Scream really is, is, uh, very much like Halloween, where you’ve got a quiet masked figure stalking teenagers.

Todd: True.

Craig: And those… And, and it was wildly popular and made tons and tons of money, and they were making sequels, and they were doing well, and I think it was really smart Jamie Lee Curtis, you know, she’s spoken about it differently.

Of course, when it came out she was very positive about it. Well, she was promoting it. But in later interviews she’s less kind in talking about it, and says it would’ve been better if she would’ve produced it. And it really sounds like she, uh, she’s said that she wanted to come back and do it at the 20-year mark as a gift to her fans.

She’s also said outright that she did it for the money, so whatever. I’m sure it was some combo. Both, I guess. Right, exactly, right? Like-

Todd: A gift to my fans with a big fat paycheck.

Craig: Yeah, sure. Why not? Who cares? But, but she was willing to come back. The last ones hadn’t done very well. I saw them and I didn’t…

They were fine, but they were… I, I felt like they were trying too hard with the world building. Like-

Clip: Oh …

Craig: it, it, it became that Michael Myers was the conduit for some cult, like some ancient Celtic cult or something. And-

Todd: I didn’t even get that far …

Craig: it was this centuries-long thing, and it had all been building up to him, and they were all very invested in him, and, ugh, it was a whole big, it was a whole big cult thing.

Todd: Sounds, sounds like some serious retconning going on there.

Craig: Yeah. Well, and they killed Laurie off offscreen, and like gave her a daughter, and then they killed off the daughter, and then there was a granddaughter. And like there were things that I l- there were things that I liked about it, like Danielle Harris wa- starred in two of them, I think.

I don’t remember if she was Laurie’s daughter or granddaughter, I don’t remember. But I like her, and they were decent, fine slasher movies, but they were getting a little silly. So when Jamie Lee wanted to come back, that’s what I was excited about For whatever reason, I don’t agree with you that Michael Myers is just a guy in a white mask and doesn’t have his thing.

I think there’s a l- a lot going on with him.

Todd: Oh, no, no, no. L- let me correct that. I, I said wh- when I was a kid- You felt that way … that was what I thought. Yeah. Nowadays as an adult, I have a stronger appreciation for him. I see what makes him special now.

Craig: Well, I, to be fair, w- much like you, I was not as into him as I was the others.

I still watched the movies, but I wasn’t as excited about them as I was, you know, when sequels to those other franchises would come out. But this one I was excited because Jamie Lee Curtis was coming back, and at that point in time she was doing pretty well. You know, her- Yeah … she was doing very well and, and she had successfully branched out into things beyond horror and was doing action movies and dramas and thrillers and-

Todd: True Lies I think was just a couple years before this.

That was huge.

Craig: I loved that movie. Um- Me too … and-

Todd: It hasn’t aged well, but let me tell you, it was a fun movie .

Craig: Yeah, I loved it. A- and I think that she really had kind of established herself as a, not serious, but you know, a, a serious actress with some range, and I thought it was cool that she was coming back.

I didn’t think that she ever would And I remember liking it. I mean, it’s, it may as well be a Scream sequel really. I mean, even if you just look at, if you look at the, the poster, there for, like, from the time Scream did it, for the next 10 years, every single one of these movie posters looked exactly the same.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: Um, it was, it was just your, your principal characters’ faces-

Todd: Mm …

Craig: you know, in, in some sort of, on some sort of dark background, in some- All looking like cool- In, in some configuration. Right. Right. And it looks exactly like that, and, and it’s got a major Scream influence. But I thought it worked well, and it’s got…

There’s a lot of cool stuff about it. This is what… I was trying to think about it, and I didn’t take the time to do any kind of investigation, but would you… Do you think this is kind of the first legacy sequel, where-

Todd: Ever?

Craig: Yeah. Well, I don’t know. Where, I mean, where you take a property that was successful that had been gone for a long time, in this case 20 years, and then you bring back the main actress.

I just couldn’t think of any time that it had happened. It happens all the time now.

Todd: Well, you kind of have New Nightmare. I mean, it’s not like this movie-

Craig: Yeah, New Nightmare was before this, I guess. Right before.

Todd: Y- Little- Yeah, right before. And it kind of falls in the same vein. And I guess when you call it a legacy sequel, it’s one that kind of goes back to the source, right?

Craig: Mm-hmm. ‘

Todd: Cause, ’cause New Nightmare kind of went back to the source, kind of forgot. It didn’t disallow all the movies that came in between, but it more or less just referenced the first couple or first one. And this one in the same vein, it seems like it’s referencing the second one. Like, it’s looked like more or less a sequel to the second one.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: While maybe leaving a little room for the others as well.

Craig: Yeah, it basically ignores all the others. She still says, Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, but she’s living and working under an assumed name. And the only person I think who knows the truth is her teenage son. She says in this movie that she staged her death.

So the fact that she had died in the earlier, that, that could be explained by the fact that she staged her death, but- Right … you know, they were planning a sequel anyway, but it was gonna be direct to video, and it didn’t have anything to do with Laurie Strode. But then Jamie Lee wanted to come back, and of course they jumped at that opportunity and wrote scripts with her in them and s- and took bits and pieces from the previous scripts.

So it went through all kinds of incarnations, but In one of those incarnations, they did have a scene where a student in Jamie Lee Curtis’s class would do a report on the Halloween murders, like a, ugh, a book report or something.

Todd: Wow.

Craig: And it would tell the whole story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, and up to…

And it would say, “You know, but Laurie Strode faked her death and is presumably living under an assumed name somewhere else, but her daughter died.” And that would be when Laurie, Jamie Lee Curtis, would find that out and would run to the bathroom and have an emotional breakdown, ’cause she just found out that her daughter died.

They decided to cut all that, and I think that that was probably the wisest choice. Like- It’s

Todd: probably going a little too far, you know, into

Craig: the- Right. Just let it go … like trying to make it fit.

Todd: Let’s just… Yeah. Yeah. They, they already did more than they needed to, honestly.

Craig: It’s interesting because that kind of sets into motion what will become one of the most interesting franchise timelines.

Th- because this, this franchise is like a multiverse. Like-

Todd: Yeah. It is …

Craig: there are so many, you know, Michael Myers, I guess, except for Part III, which doesn’t really have anything to do with him, but he’s in it because in that movie, Halloween and Halloween II are movies that exist in the world.

Todd: Oh, that’s true.

Craig: But they’re just movies. So anyway, Michael Myers is the through line. But you’ve got like the f- the continuity of one through VI, excluding III. But then this one, which is VII: H2O, ignores that. So then you’ve got a new timeline that’s just I, II, VII, VIII. And then you’ve got the whole, what’s the tril- the Rob Zombie timeline, which is total remake.

That’s

Todd: II, right?

Craig: There’s two of those, and then you’ve got the Da- uh, God, what’s the guy’s name? David Allen… I can’t remember. Re- the new ones. The guy that did… Yeah, the new ones. The, the ones that started in 2018, and those are just Carpenter’s original and then boom, boom, boom, those three. So there’s like three or four different timelines.

And honestly, one of the things that I liked about this movie, and spoilers obviously, I thought that this was cool that it came back to the original characters after 20 years and ended it definitively, and I really kind of wish that it had just stopped there.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Especially ’cause the next one is terrible.

Ah. I, I, I kinda doubt if we’ll ever get around to doing that one, but the next one’s the Michael Myers reality show-

Todd: Oh …

Craig: se- sequel. Oh my God.

Todd: I don’t even know what that one is.

Craig: It’s bad. And they kill Laurie off super unceremoniously in the first five minutes. I, I guess, I don’t know, Jamie… I, I’ve been reading conflicting things.

Like, she said she would only come back if they killed Michael off, but the producer, he specifically wanted it in the contract that Michael couldn’t be killed off because he wanted to continue producing sequels, as he ultimately would. And I don’t know, I guess they compromised and they were gonna shoot two different endings or, or they were gonna shoot the ending where Michael dies, but there was a loophole that it ultimately really wasn’t gonna be him.

And I… Like, I’ve heard different accounts, like Jamie Lee Curtis knew that from the beginning that there was gonna be a loophole, or that she didn’t and thought that this was gonna be it. I mean, ultimately we know that it, it’s not. It, it goes on, even this timeline goes on for one more movie. But there’s, there’s a little part of me that kinda thinks, “Gosh, if it had just ended here, that would’ve been a nice…”

I don’t know. I kinda like… Anyway, I’m ju- I’m getting ahead of myself clearly.

Todd: Nah, it’s okay.

Craig: All that to say I actually really like this movie and I still do. It’s a definite throwback to that very specific time.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: Um, but I liked those movies then and I still do. I, I, I like, I still like them, so.

Todd: It is so ’90s slasher.

It’s just taking… And I guess that is one thing that, one criticism I have of the movie, and I’m gonna point out specific parts of it, and it’s not really a criticism because you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to stay true to the original director’s cin- cinematography style or the way that his pacing or anything like that.

You’re gonna make a sequel, shake it up. It’s fine. So it’s not really a criticism per se. It’s just a glaring difference. If you’re a big fan of the first two movies, this movie’s gonna feel a bit jarring. And then again, also the subsequent sequels are gonna feel jarring too. You know? So what am I trying to say?

I, I just, I just think it’s interesting how different these movies are in the way that they really are geared to appeal to that particular ’90s aesthetic as far as pacing, as far as the characters go, as far as the cinematography goes, and everything that we were so engrossed in at that time. The director, Stephen Miner, has been, you know, directing horror movies since, uh, the second Friday the 13th.

Mm-hmm. In fact, that was his first dir- It was his directorial debut. Friday the Th- 13th Part II, Friday the 13th Part III, House, which we love. I love that movie.

Mm-hmm.

We did Warlock. That was goofy fun, but was a big one for us when we were kids, and another one of those ’90s, well, late ’80s I guess, horror movies.

Really bridged the gap there that we watched on t- a lot. And then he went off to do a bunch of other things that weren’t horror at all. He did, like, Forever Young with Mel Gibson-

Mm-hmm …

which I remember being really nice, but I haven’t seen it in the longest time. TV with The Practice and Dawson’s Creek, all this stuff, and then came back to horror with this, and then immediately followed it the next year with Lake Placid, which we also did.

I think that was our Betty White tribute, right?

Mm-hmm.

S- so, so yeah, this director is, is, uh, well-seasoned in horror and other things. It was, uh, it was probably a smart thing to have him be the guy to come back and do, and do this one. I think it was pretty successful, right?

Craig: I think so. I don’t remember. I didn’t look up the numbers, but I do think it did pretty well and, and I’m not surprised.

Like I said, those movies were really popular and Kevin Williamson, the guy who, you know, was one of the main writers on the first couple of Screams, worked on this. He ended up only getting a production credit, a, a producer credit because I guess the writing rules that time said you had to have been credited for at least a third of it to get a gr- a writing credit.

Ev- So even though he worked on it, and his influence I think really comes through. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting because it is so ’90s, but it’s also interesting to hear you say how different it is from the original because I just feel like Scream felt like such a throwback to specifically Halloween, that type of stalker.

You know, I, I think of, I think of Ghostface inexplicably lingering around public spaces. Like I re- Yeah. I, I remember- Just standing there … you

Todd: know, like- Nobody notices him except that one character, and then he’s gone.

Craig: Right. Right. I mean, so far as I think at one point in time he’s, like, in the video store with them, and like really nobody notices.

I feel like that came from Halloween. So this almost, I don’t know, it just feel, it, to me it feels like a natural progression. Yeah, it’s got, you know, uh, Scream modernized it, I guess, and it definitely had a more modern aesthetic, and, and this definitely leans heavy into that aesthetic. But it just, I don’t know, the vibe of it fits so comfortably into what it is.

And, and it is, and it is very formulaic e- especially to its benefit or to its detriment, I’m not really sure, because they do lean heavy into that ensemble cast of good-looking people. You know, you’ve got the big star in Jamie Lee Curtis, so she gets a prominent space on the poster. She’s the Neve Campbell or the, an, o- originally the Drew Barrymore.

A- and then you’ve got a cast of beautiful young people, in this case introducing Josh Hartnett. I, I had completely forgotten that this was Josh Hartnett’s first movie because he went on immediately to become a huge heartthrob in these types of teen movies and was all over the place. And, and then Michelle Williams, I didn’t realize that this director had worked on Dawson’s Creek, if that makes sense.

That’s probably how he knew her. And, and, you know, she was a teen star at that point. But she’s an, either an Oscar nominee or an Oscar winner now. Like, she’s a very well-respected actress in Hollywood. Janet Leigh in here, you know, got a mother-daughter scene, which is really cool. And then another thing that makes it super, super ’90s is that you’ve gotta have silly comedy in it, too.

So s- check and see if LL Cool J’s available.

Todd: Right.

Craig: Because if he is-

Todd: He’s the

Craig: one … we’re

Todd: gold. God, how many, how many movies did LL Cool J play the comic- I know … relief for at this time?

Craig: Oh, gosh.

Todd: But that’s where it’s different, right? That’s what I was referring to. It’s got far more- Yeah, yeah … comedy in it.

Craig: A lot.

Todd: Plus, of course, you know, I mean, obviously the Scream franchise is, the Ghostface killer is a costume. You know, it could be anybody in there, and we know that it’s, it’s a mortal, and there’s a question, there’s a mystery behind it. Who’s doing the killing? Whereas in the, all the Halloween movies, there’s really just no question.

It’s this one guy. It’s Michael Myers. We know from the beginning, you know, escaped mental patient with a history, and that’s it. So I think those are pretty significant differences tonally. The only other tonal difference I guess I would say is that I feel like John Carpenter was really good about creating Michael Myers as almost this mystical guy.

We knew he’s a person, but is he really? Because he just seems to have almost the supernatural ability to pop in and out of frame inexplicably. Whereas in this movie, we just see him moving around a lot more. And I- almost to the point, not that he’s running, but there’s, there’s moments in here that we’re gonna talk about that I’m, I feel like, ugh, that just doesn’t feel like the Michael Myers I know.

It does feel like the Michael Myers I’ve seen in the sequels since, but it doesn’t feel like the Michael Myers that John Carpenter had in the first two movies. So that’s, that’s all I’m referring to, and we’ll, we’ll talk about that when we get there.

Craig: Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Todd: You know what I mean?

Craig: Yeah, I do know what you mean.

Well, I, I, I feel like we should just dive into it, ’cause I feel like I’ve got more… We, I, I think we both have more specific things to say, but it’d probably be better in, with some real context. So it also, the movie goes out of its way to give us throwbacks to the original. It, it opens up with Mr. Sandman, the song, which features prominently in the second movie, and I, I can’t remember if it gives us…

It, it does give a… It, it tells us that it’s October 29th, 1998. It, it’s a, you know, suburban street where it’s all Halloween, and a mom, like, stabs a huge butcher knife into a pumpkin and, you know, it’s, uh, setting the mood right away. But this nurse’s house has been broken into, and I believe, w- is this the same actress?

This character was Dr. Loomis’ nurse in the first or second. Right. Yeah. And I think it’s the same actress. I could be wrong. But somebody has broken into her house, and so she gets the boys next door, one of them being Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Todd: Uh-huh. That was funny.

Craig: That was funny. It’s also funny that he’s, like- I don’t know, like 50 now.

God, we’re so old. Oh.

Todd: He, he’s a kid in this movie, like a kid.

Craig: Yeah. And, you know, the, the, the kid goes in and looks around, but the… And, and the office is a little bit disheveled, but nothing else has been disturbed, and he goes and tells her that, and the two boys go next door, which is their home or whatever.

And she goes in and she looks around, and she sees that what is missing is Laurie Strode’s file. And then Michael, we see that he’s there. She doesn’t, but he steps into frame behind her, but she is scared that something’s up, so she runs next door and she finds the next-door boys murdered, and then-

Michael finds her, and it’s… You know, all of this, I wanna say the Kevin Williamson open, where you’ve gotta have this- Yeah, it kinda is … you know, this setup for this great first kill to introduce what’s going on.

Todd: And this close call where they almost find

Craig: her, right? Yeah, the co- And just in time. I mean, ’cause they’ve called the cops, but the cops come to her house, and by this point she’s next door.

And so the cops are right there, and she’s screaming for them, but they can’t hear, and she gets her throat cut.

Todd: Yeah. Now, can you help me with this a little bit? If I remember correctly- Isn’t Michael Myers a, like isn’t he kind of a one-trick pony with a knife or does he al- also use other implements to kill people typically?

Because I remember him as just being a knife guy, but he uses some different implements in this movie.

Craig: Yeah, I, I, gosh, I don’t… The whole skate through the face thing was, you know- Yeah … obviously- That was really out there. I mean, it, it looks, it look- We didn’t actually see him do it. I guess ’cause- We just saw the aftermath, but i- it looked good on screen.

I hadn’t really thought of that. Maybe he hadn’t found his knife yet. Oh,

Todd: maybe.

Craig: Any- anytime he walks by a big block of knives, he, he’s always sure to grab one. Um- Yeah, true. Maybe, maybe he just hadn’t found it yet. I don’t remember. What I also am not sure, do they ever tell us where he’s coming from? Why is it 20 years later and he’s just now showing up?

I feel like that- I don’t

Todd: think we ever

Craig: know … that question gets asked a lot, but I don’t think it ever gets answered.

Todd: I don’t believe it does. There’s no like, “Ah, Michael Myers has escaped from the institution.”

Craig: No. No, because they think he’s dead.

Todd: Right. Right.

Craig: But they never found a body. They, they think he, he, he burned up in the hospital at the end of part two, but they never found a body.

Todd: He’s just been hanging out quietly.

Craig: Yeah, and people, I, more than once, people say to Laurie, Jamie Lee Curtis, like, “Don’t you think he, if he were coming for you, don’t you think he would’ve come by now? Why would he have waited until now?” Like, they ask the question several times, but they never answer it. I guess he just-

Todd: Well-

Craig: was taking a break …

Todd: they k- they kinda answer it in that, like, again, we’re jumping ahead, but why not since we’re talking about it. Her big revelation seems to be looking up and seeing that, and realizing that it’s her son’s 17th birthday- Oh … when she was killed on her 17th birthday.

Craig: Oh, yeah.

Todd: I don’t know if that makes a hell of a lot of sense, but that’s what they say.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: I mean, what was he doing for these 20 years? He was literally like, “I just gotta wait for, for that kid to turn 17. In the meantime, I’m just gonna chill and not do anything.” Just doesn’t really seem to be in, in his character, you know?

Craig: How would he even know she had a kid? Because she faked her death-

Todd: True

Craig: and then went off and had a kid with, I don’t know, some drifter or something.

Todd: Who

Craig: knows? I don’t know. At some point, at some point she tells her son, she’s like, “Oh, you got a birthday card from your dad. I guess he, like, took a break from the methadone clinic or something like…”

It’s weird.

Todd: Oh, it’s so easy to just write in things to try to- But, but how

Craig: would he even know?

Todd: Yeah, how would he know? He w-

Craig: He clearly didn’t know where she was because he had to break into Loomis’ nurse’s house to get the file.

Todd: Pretty lucky he just happened to be there 17 years later-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: right after his son was born.

Craig: It’s a… Yeah.

Todd: Coincidence.

Craig: Right. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that’s okay. Who cares? Yeah. So then we catch up with Laurie.

Todd: There’s a lot of, I mean, aside from that initial kill- There’s a lot of exposition here where we’re getting introduced to Laurie, we’re getting introduced to her son and his friends, and the fact that now she’s a headmistress at a private school out in California with a different name.

I don’t know, though. I would think if that you’re trying to be low profile, you wouldn’t wanna be, like, the headmistress of a school.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Not in California. I don’t know. It’s a quiet school. It’s a small school apparently, so she’s out there, and then she has a guy that she’s involved with at school. Maybe it’s a little bit of a secret or something, or maybe they just kinda got started.

Craig: I don’t know. I can’t tell.

Todd: At first, they make it sound like it’s illicit.

Craig: I know.

Todd: But I, I… It’s not. I guess it’s-

Craig: They’re just sneaking around … I know. They’re just sneaking around. I guess it’s just ’cause it’s an office romance, and, like, I don’t remember what the dynamic- Mm-hmm … is. I think she’s his boss, isn’t she?

Todd: Uh, yeah, yeah, she is, ’cause she’s the headmistress, and he works there. Adam Arkin is the actor here.

Craig: He’s really familiar.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I was, I was bothered by his performance, though, because as the movie went on, I felt like they were trying to make him seem shady, and I couldn’t figure out why. Right. I couldn’t figure out why because we know that Michael is the killer from the beginning.

Like, there’s n- I guess in one of the scripts, it wasn’t going to be Michael. It was gonna be a copycat killer, or it was gonna be one of the teenagers who we haven’t talked about yet. There’s John, the son, played by Josh Hartnett, and Molly, his girlfriend/love interest, played by Michelle Williams. But then there are two others, Charlie and Sarah, who don’t really have anything to do.

They’re just around. Is, and at one point it was going to be Charlie, but it’s not. We’ve seen Michael from the beginning, and we also know that Jamie Lee Curtis, Curtis is Laurie Strode. The other people don’t know, but we do. They don’t keep that a secret from us. Yeah. This isn’t like, okay, spoiler for, like, 10-year-old show coming up.

This isn’t like that Exorcist reboot. Did you watch that, the TV show?

Todd: No, I didn’t see the TV show.

Craig: Oh, gosh. You’re gonna spoil it for me too, huh? Yeah, I’m gonna spoil it for you too. Go

Todd: ahead. It’s fine.

Craig: I’ll- It stars, uh, Geena Davis, and it’s about this family, and the daughter becomes possessed. Well, it, about, I don’t know, a, halfway through the season, you find out that Geena Davis is Regan from- Oh

the original Exorcist.

Todd: The original.

Craig: Uh-huh. But this isn’t that. This isn’t that. We know it’s her, and we know it’s Michael, so I thought it was weird that they were casting suspicion on other characters. Like, what? Is he helping out? I don’t get it.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But anyway, you know, the whole setup, I guess, is that though- She is very successful.

She is still irreparably damaged from-

Todd: Right …

Craig: this trauma that she’s been through, and sh- she’s struggling with alcoholism, and she’s having nightmares. She sees Michael everywhere she goes. She’s overly protective of her kid. Like, little Josh Hartnett just wants to go to Yosemite with his class, but she thinks that’s a ridiculous ask.

Clip: What the do you think you’re doing?

Mom, I’m really uncomfortable with you saying that

word. Well, then don’t put me in the position, John. Do you know what day it is? Of all the days for you to pull this shit. What do you think you can do? Just wander around town? I don’t ask you for very much. Just give me one day.

Mom, I’ve given you 17 years.

And I need you to be responsible. Do you know what that means? Responsible? Responsible.

Don’t talk to me about responsible,

Mom. I just need this one thing.

Mom, I am not responsible for you That’s it. That’s enough. I can’t take it, Mom. He’s dead. Michael Myers is dead

What do you want me to say?

That it’s over. That we should try to get on with some attempt at a happy existence, Mom ‘Cause all the shit that’s going on in your head is leaking out on me, and I can’t take it anymore

Craig: And so there’s a lot of tension there.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: That’s kind of the setup, and th- that’s it. And then she’s afraid Michael- That’s it

she’s afraid Michael’s gonna show up. Everybody’s like, “No, you dum-dum, he’s dead.” And then he does show up, and she’s like- Yeah … “

Todd: See?” Could you, could you imagine telling this woman for 19 years, “Come on, it’s okay. He’s not gonna show up,” and then like the 20th year it’s like, “Oh, shit.”

I

don’t know how I feel about that, honestly.

“It’s been 20 years, Mom. Oh, geez. Don’t you know that’s a nice even number? You’re 17 now.” Oh, God.

Craig: And that glosses over a lot, because there’s stuff going on, but I mean, that’s the gist of it. Yeah. And then, you know, and then Michael comes back and chases them around. I mean, that’s basically the gist of it.

There’s other fun stuff, like as I mentioned before, Janet Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother-

Todd: Oh, she’s

Craig: so good … the actress who played, I think Marian Crane in, in Psycho, here plays, I think Jamie Lee Curtis’ secretary.

Todd: Yeah, Miss Tate. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And-

Todd: They have some good moments. I l- I mean, when we first see her, it’s kind of a quickie where they’re kinda running through and she’s rattling off all the problems at the school and, and they’re getting ready for the trip as Jamie Lee Curtis is walking through the office before she shuts the door on her.

And she says something about, “Oh, and the d- and the drains are clogged in the women’s bathrooms, but we think we have a solution.”

Craig: Mm-hmm. And

Todd: I was like- Cute … “Oh, that’s funny.” And then later they have a heart-to-heart moment, which has no purpose except just to give her a little bit of a cameo.

Craig: And to give them some screen time together, which is actually really sweet.

Todd: Yeah. Super sweet. Could you imagine your mom being in this just iconic movie, and then you becoming a famous actor, and then being able to just share a moment with them in a

Craig: movie? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Todd: And I love it. She just approaches her. She says, “You know it’s not my place, but if I could be maternal for a moment.”

And she’s like, “You know, just calm down, relax,” or whatever, and then she walks back to her car. The theme from Psycho gets briefly quoted in the score, and I’m like, “They were having so much fun with this.”

Craig: And her car is the car that she drove in that movie. The same car. Yeah. It’s, it’s a- Oh … it’s a fun l- And it wasn’t even supposed to be her.

Like, she was second choice. It was supposed to be P.J. Soles who played- Oh, really? Yeah, who played, uh, Jamie Lee Curtis’- Oh, yeah … best friend in, in the original, and she was not gonna be playing the same character. I liked her. Just the same actress. But they, but I don’t know. She, she never, she never responded, I guess, is what I heard.

They’re going for trying to make it super character-driven, but in doing so it almost pushes to melodrama. Like, I really like Jamie Lee Curtis, and I think she’s giving it her all, and I see- what they’re trying to do. She is damaged, but she also just comes across as a bitch.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like, like, uh, I, I get it.

Like, but do you really need to be such a bitch? She yells at some waiter. It’s just, like snapping at some waiter to get her wine that she can chug while her boyfriend’s in the bathroom and-

Todd: I actually like that bit.

Craig: And then she, and then she confronts her kid in the street outside during the day. Now, he’s not supposed to be there.

He has snuck off the grounds that are apparently like a prison. That, that was so weird to me. I know,

Todd: right? Why, why can’t they, these kids leave? What’s going

Craig: on? Right, like just jump the wall. Like this is, it’s very strange. But they al- they also make it seem like it’s impenetrable. Like that, that front gate that LL Cool J guards- Uh-huh

it, like if, if it is closed, nobody’s getting in or out. Like- Yeah … it’s like Fort Knox.

Todd: Like Willy Wonka’s factory- … in there, man.

Craig: Oh, man. I don’t know. But she, okay, so Jamie Lee Curtis also yells at her kid, and that’s where she, she, you know, she’s screaming at him and she’s like, “Just give me one day.” And he is like, “Mom, I’m not responsible for you.

Michael Myers is dead.” And then he says, “All that shit in your head is leaking out on me, and I can’t take it anymore.”

Clip: If you wanna stay handcuffed to your dead brother, that’s fine. But you’re not dragging me along, not

Todd: anymore.

Craig: It’s very melodramatic.

Todd: It is really, yeah, saying things that people will never say, in ways they’ll never say them.

Craig: Right. And for ultimately like it not to really matter because she’s right, but this convinces her that she’s wrong even though the second they drive away, like they walk away from this fight that they just had in the street to reveal that Michael Myers is right behind them in his death wagon that he stole.

His

Todd: death wagon. It’s a very distinctive car, isn’t it?

Craig: It reminded me of The Creeper’s van. Yes. Now, it’s not really that big, but it reminded me of that.

Todd: I was thinking exactly the same thing. Oh, that he stole from that couple. Not that

Craig: couple. It’s not a couple. That’s a mom and a

Todd: daughter. The mother and

Craig: the child.

Oh, my God. I actually, this is a scene that really has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It’s just when Michael originally leaves from killing those people in Illinois, he pulls out in a dark-colored sedan, much like the one that he drives in the earlier movie. So I guess maybe he’s been dr- you know, I don’t know, living in this car.

I don’t know. But- Somewhere on his way to California, it breaks down, gets a flat tire, and there’s this scene in a rest stop that I think is the scariest scene of the whole movie.

Todd: Hmm, yeah. It is, ’cause there’s a child involved And you kind of think they’re probably not gonna go there, but you never know.

Yeah

Craig: It’s just suspenseful. Like, we don’t know these people. Like, this mom and this daughter pull up in this really odd-looking vehicle that looked like something that a serial killer would drive, and they, the g- little girl has to pee really bad, and so they go up to this rest stop in the middle of nowhere, and as they walk up to it, the camera kind of pans back and shows that Michael’s car is there.

And then the mom puts the little girl in one stall, and she goes in the other, but then the mom realizes they’re not alone in there. She sits her purse down in the stall, and somebody really quick grabs it and startles her, and she looks up, and it’s Michael Myers out there, like, in his mask and everything.

And it w- I, I guess it’s just really situationally scary. Like, we know that they’re in the middle of nowhere. We know that Michael Myers is evil incarnate and that if he wants to do anything to this woman and her child, they’re helpless against him. And her, you know, her daughter is in the stall right next door, like, humming a little song.

Meanwhile, she’s terrified, and eventually he just goes away and steals their car, and they’re fine. But I actually thought out of the whole movie, that was the most tense and suspenseful moment.

Todd: Honestly, it was, yeah. Well, it’s early enough in the movie that you’re not quite sure what’s going on and what the stakes are and who’s gonna get killed and who’s not, and also it’s just this innocent victim, which you kind of…

They’re usually the ones who die, right? It’s usually the random people that just come for a scene for a kill and then go that you’re thinking the odds are high maybe they’re gonna get it, and this mom and her daughter? That would suck. Yeah, so I thought that one was, was way more suspenseful than most of everything else we saw.

And you know, like for example, the LL Cool J bit, I would say that there’s still Michael Myers sightings happening up until he starts literally just into the campus and, and, and starts killing everybody, right?

Mm-hmm.

But then this thing with LL Cool J at the front, they do the John Carpenter thing where he’s in the back, and then he’s not in the back.

But then they start doing this thing where he’s in the back window, but he kinda… LL Cool J’s talking on the phone with his wife with this stupid thing that he’s, like, trying to write romance novels and… Okay, whatever. He, he just needed some shtick, I guess. And as he turns away from the window, Mike Myers rolls into the window, just like, zoop, like from around the corner, almost like Bugs Bunny.

And then as soon as he turns back around to it, he just r- roop, rolls right away just in the nick of time. Like, that is kinda stuff we don’t normally see from this guy. We usually see him pop in or pop out, or the camera kinda frames it so we’re not sure if he’s gonna be there, he’s gonna be not But this Mike Myers does a bit of ducking and dodging.

Craig: That’s true.

Todd: A little too much for my tastes, you know what I mean?

Craig: Yeah. Especially when nothing comes of it l- as- Yeah … like in that moment. The whole thing is he just needs to get in the gate. Well, he gets in the gate.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: We see him walk right behind LL Cool J, and LL Cool J doesn’t notice him, so he gets in.

So what’s he just creeping around for? What- Like, if he’s not gonna kill him, what are you doing?

Todd: I thought it was gonna cut back to this scene or we were gonna see him later dead, but no, later on he comes popping in like, “What can I do? How can I help?” I’m like, “Oh my God, he’s alive?” We just had him being slightly menaced from behind for a while.

What was the purpose of that?

Craig: That’s one thing that I, that’s one thing that I will be a little critical of the movie of. Like, it relies a lot on jump scares. There are so many jump scares.

Todd: Oh, there’s a million jump scares, to the point where it’s almost a parody of itself.

Craig: I- yeah. Yeah, it’s too much, and, and they never amount to anything.

Well, they very rarely amount to anything.

Todd: It’s like her mother surprises her, her f- her boyfriend surprises her. The boyfriend.

Craig: Everybody

Todd: is s- Everybody’s surprising each other with a “da” kind of cue.

Craig: God, so many jump scares.

Todd: Well, she ends up, uh, revealing herself to her boyfriend, I guess you could call him, and, uh, he’s not, doesn’t really take her seriously at first and then he does.

And then, uh, he’s like, “Oh, I need a drink.” And so she goes to get a drink, and I think it’s during this conversation that she looks up and realizes, “My son is 17. He must be coming back now.” And I’m like, “Okay, that’s a huge leap, but okay.”

Craig: I, yeah.

Todd: I, I, again, I’m not really sure why she was any more worried about him this year than any other year.

Yeah, she keeps seeing him in the background, but w- we’ve established that these are like figments of her imagination, and she knows it.

Mm-hmm.

Right? She blinks and it goes away. There’s even kind of a cool sequence where it looks like Mike Myers is walking towards her, and she blinks and he doesn’t go away, and she blinks, he doesn’t go away.

She blinks again, and you’re thinking, “Dude, this is the real guy,” but it turns out to be her boyfriend jump scare, right? So I mean, it’s no different than any other year for her except that her son is 17. I think it’s a big leap. Anyway, she goes and she finds that they haven’t actually left after all with the group because her son, like an idiot, not very good at covering his tracks, left his bags in his room.

So she’s like, “Somebody’s not on the trip. Oh my God, let me call.” And so she’s gotta track him down. In the meantime, her son and his girlfriend are getting menaced at exactly this moment.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And that’s another long chase scene.

Craig: Yeah, they got… I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis actually did give, at the last minute, gave the son, John, permission to go.

Like, his little outburst about being handcuffed to her dead brother or whatever changed her mind, and she gave him permission to go, but he had already made plans with his friends to stay behind. And so he didn’t tell her, but they stayed behind, and they’re throwing a super… I, I’ll go ahead and say it anyway.

I was gonna say a super lame basement party- … but whatever. It was just as cool as any basement party I’ve ever thrown, so

Todd: Yeah, don’t be too cocky there,

Craig: Corey.

Todd: Did you even bother to make a sign like he did?

Craig: They… I, I was worried by the number of candles that they had down there. That just looked like a fire waiting to happen to me.

But yes, they are being menaced. The other two- the other teenage couple, who again, I- are only there as fodder, do their job as fodder. You know, it’s, it’s established that there’s a dumbwaiter so we can play with a dumbwaiter. That’s fun.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Those two, the other random couple, go up and down the dumbwaiter getting chased by Michael.

The boy gets killed. Okay, so they’re in a k- they’re in a kitchen, like, on a lower level of the building, and the boy uses the dumbwaiter as an elevator to go upstairs to get something, and he gets killed, but he gets killed off screen, and then the dumbwaiter comes back down And his dead body’s in it, and then Michael starts chasing her around.

It really bothered me that she gets in the dumbwaiter and she gets upstairs. Michael gets one stab in her leg, I think, before she gets up there. But she gets up there, and then she cuts the rope on the dumbwaiter and crushes her own leg in it. Like, are you stupid?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: What are you doing? Pretty

Todd: dumb. Like,

Craig: pull your, like make sure all of your limbs are clear of it-

before you cut the rope. Oh, God, I don’t know what was gon- she thought was gonna happen. And then does she get killed? My mom called me at this point in the movie, and my remote wasn’t working. It wouldn’t pause, so I was trying to pay attention to the movie and talk to my mom on the phone at the same time.

And I think, does she get killed on screen or does she get killed off-screen? They find her later.

Todd: No, no. He pulls her out and jumps on top of her body and stabs her a bunch of times.

Craig: Okay.

Todd: So yeah, that, that happens. And then the other couple comes h- comes back, sees the blood smear. Again, typical Halloween.

Craig: Is this some kind of joke?

Todd: I guess. I mean,

Craig: it’s Halloween. There’s huge blood… I know, but there’s huge blood trails- … all down the hallway. You guys, knock it off.

Todd: I know. So he jumps out, and they start to get the best of him for a while, and then they, they do the smart thing. They fricking run out of the house, leap across the backyard, tear down the back street, and they’re running for quite a while before they stop.

And I’m like, “All right, this, this couple actually did something smart.” Of course, they’re stopping. They stop for about two seconds, and in true to fashion, suddenly he’s there. And he leaps out at them from the bushes. He starts chasing them some more. And this is where it gets very un-Michael Myers for me, because they end up at this, like, like a little gate that leads into the front door of this place.

Right. And she’s got the keys to it. So she’s got her keys, and she ends up fumbling. There’s a whole deal of her getting the keys. She unlocks it. She closes it. And I guess it kinda locks, but also she drops the keys, and he comes towards her. But he gets the keys, and now they’re backed up against the door.

And he, his arm is sticking through, just wildly swiping at them.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: Like, he’s, he’s at least two feet away from them, but he’s wildly swiping at them like he’s a, I don’t know, like a toy, a wind-up toy that’s stuck. I thought, “This is so distinctly not him.” Like, usually at this point he just disappears, right?

And suddenly… I mean, he’s not usually that stupid. Then he crouches down and picks up the keys and starts fumbling with the keys to get in the door. And I don’t know, man, I just, it just felt very It felt more like Scream here than it did a Halloween to me I don’t

Craig: know. I don’t know. It, it

Todd: felt very-

Craig: When Michael Myers is

Todd: swiping wildly at people and fumbling with keys.

Like, come on.

Craig: I mean, the dude drives. He, he, he drove, he drove in the first two movies, so it’s not like he’s-

Todd: Yeah, but it takes a little bit of the mystique out of it. Also, can I say another thing?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: I remember distinctly from at least the first movie, maybe the second movie, we don’t really see his eyes, right?

His mask is just black where the eyes are.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: His eyes are there, we just never see them. We see a lot of his eyes in this movie. A lot of his eyes.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: That also, ah, you know, kinda bothered me.

Craig: Yeah, I thought that that was some sort of an attempt to remind us of his humanity, which I don’t … Which I think is kinda stupid.

I, I think the whole point of him is that, like, he’s pure evil.

Todd: Yeah, he’s evil incarnate. He should be kind of … We know he’s a human, but he’s almost supernatural.

Craig: But since you mentioned the mask It looks pretty terrible in this movie. Yeah. And, and it’s also inconsistent. There are, there are a couple of ti- y- like they, I don’t know.

They started with one mask, and then they decided it didn’t look good, and so they got replicas of masks that they had used before and used them for a while. And then they decided they didn’t like them either, and so they, they made another one, and then they went back and tried to fix some things that they’d already shot with CGI.

And so there’s different mask looks kind of throughout. W- One of them looks so just blah and kind of washed out. I just hate it.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: But then it also bothered me because at times, the mask seems to change expression, and that really bothered me too. Yes.

Todd: It fits too tight, you know? It’s, like, narrow, but it’s a little too tight-fitting and yeah, it seems to

Craig: move.

I re- I… There’s one time, it’s that time that you were just talking about where they ran away, and, like, this part bothered me too because they re- like you said, they run for a long time. And they pause for a second, and he somehow jumps out, like, in front of them. Like, what?

Todd: Yeah. It makes

Craig: no sense. How did he know where they were going?

But they fight for a while, and she ends up, she, Michelle Williams, ends up hitting him in the head with a rock. And he falls to the ground, and then he looks up, and the mask is angry. Like- … how does the, how does the mask get angry? I don’t understand that. Oh. Um, and we also skipped one part that was a big part that they showed, I remember they showed in the trailers, where it’s Michelle Williams sitting in a classroom, and Jamie Lee Curtis is the teacher now.

But Michelle Williams looks out the window and sees Michael Myers out there, and then the teacher distracts her, and she answers a question. She looks back, and he’s gone. It’s a big throwback-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: to Jamie Lee Curtis.

Todd: Doing the exact same thing.

Craig: I don’t remember what they were talking about.

Todd: Frankenstein.

Craig: Well, yeah, Frankenstein here. In, in the first one, whatever the teacher was talking about was poignant and, and relevant to whatever was going on, but it is here, too. This is where they are really heavy-handed-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: about telling us what this movie is about.

Todd: Right. In the most typical way possible. A teacher giving a surprisingly poignant lecture in the classroom.

Craig: Right. And Michelle Williams, uh, what’s her… Jamie Lee Curtis asks her some question about Frankenstein, and Michelle Williams gives a very poignant answer for a high school student.

Clip: But I think that Victor should’ve confronted the monster sooner. I m- he’s completely responsible for Elizabeth’s death. He was, he was so paralyzed by fear that he never did anything.

It t- took death for the guy to get a clue.

And why do you think he was finally able To confront his monster?

Well, I think that Victor had reached a point in his life where he had nothing left to lose. I mean, the monster saw to that by killing off everybody that he loved. Victor finally had to face it It was about redemption.

It was his fate

Craig: Mm-hmm. And that’s the big conflict that Jamie Lee Curtis is going through. Like- Yeah … she has to face her monster in order to be, to find her redemption. So all of this has been building up to this point where, like you said, they’re in that little cage. But Jamie Lee Curtis rescues them at the last second, and she and Michael come face to face, uh, like a porthole window.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: They share a moment of eye contact, and she looks away, and then he’s, he’s gone. But I feel like she runs around with those kids and the boyfriend, and I remember that there’s stuff that happens here, but it all feels insignificant because ultimately- Yeah … she just gets them out of there. Like-

Todd: Yeah.

She gets them out of there, and we never see them again.

Craig: Never see them until the end.

Todd: They’re no help to her. They’re not under threat.

Craig: That’s what I was saying, like, th- they Scream-ified the movie by giving us this cast of teenagers, which makes sense. The original was a cast of teenagers, too, and that’s fine, but these teenagers, they’re irrelevant.

Like- Yeah … if you took them out of the movie, it would just make it shorter. That’s the only difference that it would make.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Because it’s all just leading up to the final confrontation between Laurie and Michael.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Uh, which I think is probably what the fans were wanting anyway. And Jamie Lee Curtis has said that for her, the movie starts when she escorts those kids off the grounds and tells them, “You go on, go down to the, the Barkers,” or something.

You know, it’s a throwback to when she, a throwback to when she sent the kids that she was babysitting down the street to the Mackenzies or whatever. She’s like, “You, you all go down there. I’ll be right behind you.” And then she sends them away, and then she grabs an ax and heads back in. And the m- the, the Halloween theme, the dun, dun, dun.

Like, you know, like it- Mm-hmm … it swells as she marches back in there to face him.

Todd: This is the moment.

Craig: And that really is. That, I mean, that really-

Todd: Last 10 minutes, really.

Craig: I kn- yeah, but it’s the very end.

Todd: Yeah, yeah-huh.

Craig: And just like with the newest ones where we, I, I don’t know about everybody else, but I was willing to wait through three movies to see the final showdown between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

I, I f- I was disappointed, and this one is k-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: pretty disappointing, too.

Todd: It is. It’s just kind of a little bit of a lame back and forth and fight. Then he falls from a, from a great height just like before.

Craig: Well, I did like the scene, kind of, it went on for too long, but in the cafeteria where she’s kind of under the tables and he’s above her, that, there was some suspense there.

But then she runs, like, to a kitchen, pulls out a huge drawer full of knives that scatter on the floor, and she just took- keeps tossing them at him. Like, it’s almost comic.

Todd: It is, actually.

Craig: Like, she’s just, like, she’s just tossing knives at him, and they’re just ricocheting off of him, having absolutely no impact whatsoever.

Todd: Uh.

Craig: But yeah, she finally stabs him and pushes him off a balcony. Again, callback to the original, and he’s laying there seemingly dead, and she goes to stab him again, as well she should.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: But-

Todd: Like a freaking idiot. LL

Craig: Cool J- But LL Cool J comes in- … and is like, “No, no, no, he’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.”

Todd: Oh, my God.

Craig: And I was ready… Like, I’m, not literally, but in my mind I’m screaming at the screen, “Just keep stabbing him,” like this is-

Todd: Don’t stop …

Craig: like, don’t listen to LL Cool J. LL Cool J- He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Todd: Mind your business.

Craig: You have been through this before.

Todd: We have. Oh, my God. So then there’s the st- the, the police and everything, and they, they zip the m- the guy up in a body bag, and she somehow gets a hold of the van, right?

That is driving his body bag.

Craig: Somehow she grabs a knife and one of the cop’s guns.

Todd: Oh, yeah. And is like, runs-

Craig: Is like, “Get back.” “

Todd: Get

Craig: back.” “Get back.

Todd: Let me do this.”

Craig: Which I thought was also hilarious because she could have just slipped into the van. Yes.

Todd: And she could have… You know what’s better than driving him away in the van?

Is just jumping in there and stabbing him through that body bag. Just finish.

Craig: Or shooting him with that gun.

Todd: Do both, right? You don’t have to drive down the road. Oh, my God. So then we get a whole other scene, which you can see coming a mile away, where of course he unzips himself from the body bag and they have a tussle inside the van.

And then, you know, she… He ends up k- tossed out of the van, and then he’s in front of the van, and then she goes to run him over, but as she hits, he’s standing, and as she hits him, of course, he just splays across the windshield and they get another moment where they’re staring at each other through the, through the glass.

And then of course instead of hitting a tree or anything effective happening, they end up going off the road. She tumbles down. I mean, s- it’s a huge dramatic thing. I don’t know how she got out of there in one piece.

Craig: She slams on the brakes. He flies out through the windshield, so she hits him again and then they- Yeah

go, they, they, down the cliff. He ends up pinned to a tree. Now, I remember when this came out liking this and f- F- I don’t know. My little teenage heart found it, like, touching- Oh … that she had this moment of compassion for her brother. You know, he’s there. I also found it strange at the time that he’s kind of out of it, ’cause he’s pinned against this tree, and she calls his name more than once, and then he, it, it, like, he wakes up.

Like, he was unconscious and he wakes up, and he kind of feels at his head like he’s confused-

Todd: Right …

Craig: uh, uh, for a second. But then he looks at her, and they have this moment of eye contact, and he reaches out for her.

Todd: Ugh.

Craig: And she reaches out for him. And it’s hard to impossible to tell if he’s reaching for her looking for help or if he’s still just- Trying to grab her

trying to get her.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Yeah, right. And she kind of, you know, she’s kind of crying, and she reaches out to him, but she’s also not stupid, and so she takes the ax and cuts his head off.

Todd: Yeah. Pretty definitively.

Craig: Dun, dun, dun. The end. Should

Todd: be the end.

Craig: Yeah, and his, and his head goes flying But God, I mean, part six picks up exactly where this leaves off and they retcon it.

I mean, not really. I, I guess they had this planned, but turns out that wasn’t really Michael. The real Michael Myers had swapped clothes with-

Todd: Oh, God … a

Craig: paramedic, and somehow made him unable to speak, cut out his tongue or something, put him in his clothes and mask and switched places with him. And so in the next one, Jamie Lee Curtis is in the insane asylum because she’s racked with guilt for killing an innocent man, and Michael shows up and kills her in the first five minutes.

Super stupid.

Todd: Okay.

Craig: Super dumb. But this one… The… Okay, the only other thing that I wanted to say that I didn’t say before is that ultimately the ones that started, the trilogy that started in 2018 were more in line with what Jamie Lee Curtis wanted to do here. Jamie Lee Curtis wanted Laurie Strode to be a mess, like just destroyed by what had happened.

Todd: Yeah. That’s a better setup.

Craig: And I think Kevin Williamson convinced her, “No, you need, she needs to have more to lose, so let’s make her successful,” and, you know, she, n- she’s not just protecting her family, but sh- she’s got a life and all that. And, and so she went along with it. So we, we get, I think, what was ultimately more of Jamie Lee Curtis’s vision in the later ones.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And I think that works fine. I liked those movies okay. But if I were going to pick up any Halloween movie to watch just for fun, it would probably be this one. The first one’s great-

Todd: But it’s slow and suspenseful. Yeah. This

Craig: is- And, and it is. And it’s, it’s more like i- if you’re gonna watch it, you really should sit down and watch it.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: This one I feel like-

Todd: Action-packed. It’s candy.

Craig: I- right. Exactly. It’s candy. Like the first one is a good film, like you should pay attention and appreciate it. This one’s just easy and it’s short. It’s the shortest of all of them out of the whole franchise at, at 86 minutes. It’s a quick ride. Jamie Lee Curtis looks great and is, you know, I, I think, as she always does, she’s giving it her all, and there’s fun.

You know, if you are our age, as I think many of you are, and you grew up in this time, it’s a great throwback to that time and those actors that we were growing up with, like Josh Hartnett and Michelle Williams, and it’s just cool to see them as kids knowing, you know, what they’re doing now and that they’re still successful and working.

And it’s, it’s a very specific time capsule, but it’s very palatable, and I’ve kind of wanted to g…

We kick off Halloween season by diving into 1988’s direct-to-video oddity Hack-O-Lantern, a surprisingly decent-looking but truly terrible, wildly entertaining Satanic cult slasher loaded with Halloween atmosphere, costumes, parties, and plenty of gratuitous nudity.

We talk about how the movie’s “so bad it’s good” charm comes from its community-theater-level acting, baffling plot turns, random musical dream sequence, and over-the-top grandpa cult leader performance, while still delivering serviceable gore and nonstop seasonal vibes perfect for background viewing at a Halloween party.

We break down the major story beats—Tommy’s cult grooming, inexplicable killings, a chaotic party climax, and a twist ending—then share why this scrappy DIY mess feels like classic late-night cable Halloween viewing and a fun way to start our month of Halloween picks, plus details on upcoming episodes and Patreon extras.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/09/hack-o-lantern-poster-scaled.jpg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Hack-O-Lantern (1988)

Episode 508, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Oh, buddy, it’s Halloween season.

Craig: Oh, it’s exciting. It always is exciting. I mean, we’ve been looking forward to it, talking about it forever. I’m glad it’s finally here.

Todd: Me too. I love it every time of year, no matter where I am in the world.

It’s a little bit of America I can bring with me to wherever I am. Out in Asia, they don’t do a lot of Halloween. Japan’s where you gotta go for the Halloween celebrations. I think I mentioned that once before that I single-handedly brought Halloween to Japan 25 years ago.

Craig: Yep, yep. I

Todd: remember. Yeah. You’re welcome, Japan.

So here we are, and, uh, we have a nice selection of Halloween goodies this year. I’m really excited about what we’ve chosen, especially this first one, which has been on my list, our list, for a very long time. And knowing that it was just, like, a straight to video deal, I, I really kind of dismissed it as some piece of crap that we would get to at some point, maybe if we didn’t have anything better to do.

I envisioned it as this shot on video, kind of like that turkey movie we did once.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: For, uh, Thanksgiving. You remember that?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So I don’t know why I had this in my head that 1988’s Hack-O-Lantern would be more or less like that. But actually, it’s shot on film but was put direct to video. And oh boy, is it a trip.

Craig: Yeah, it’s something.

Todd: I guess, I didn’t realize this, but I guess it got some play- Recently from, uh, those guys, Red Letter Media, who do the funny commentaries on movies and things. So that whole Star Wars breakdown about why the new Star Wars movies were lousy. Yeah, I, I like those guys. I really like their breakdown of the first, the, the prequel Star Wars movies.

They really make a lot of points, and they’re really funny. Uh, they have a big following. Uh, you got- Have you never, uh, listened to them or-

Craig: It’s not- … seen

Todd: their stuff?

Craig: The RiffTrax guys?

Todd: Red Letter Media, not the RiffTrax guys.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think so.

Todd: You’re right. They did a RiffTrack on this as well, and it is ripe for it.

This movie’s its own RiffTrack. I cannot believe that I- This is the first time I’ve seen it. I’m so excited. Had you seen this before?

Craig: I don’t think… No, I’ve definitely never seen it before, and I don’t think I’ve even ever heard of it. And I’m surprised just ’cause, like, Hack-O-Lantern’s a great title. Yeah.

That’s fantastic. And 1988, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s prime, you know, prime time for us. But no, I’d never heard of it. And I expected it to be bad, but I, but m- but more so than bad, I expected it to be really low budget. Like, I, I, I think you suggested too. But I, I think that what we saw… I’m not positive ’cause you just sent me a link and I didn’t question it and I watched it, but I think what we saw had to have been, like, a restoration.

Like, I know that there has been a 4K restoration, and I feel like that must be what we saw ’cause it looked really good. Like, I was surprised by how good it looked, and I was surprised by the… I mean, the cinematography is certainly serviceable. Yeah. I mean, i- if not, if not, downright okay. I was surprised by how good it is.

Now, the acting and, and the writing is an entirely different story, but it, it looks… I was surprised by how good it looked. And because I was impressed… Ah, impressed might be exa- an exaggeration. But- But because of my reaction to the, the quality, the technical quality, I was surprised that I hadn’t seen it, you know?

A- and you said that it’s streaming, I think, on Tubi. Like, it’s never popped up for me, or at least I don’t think it has. I mean, maybe I’ve overlooked it. I don’t know

Todd: It’s directed by an Indian guy named, uh, Jag Mund- Uh, I always butcher these Indian names, I’m sure. Uh, Jag Mundhra or Jag Mundhra, uh, who, uh, just has ba- basically done low budget movies.

He’s done quite a few of them, like 31. Mostly, I think, direct to video. Either horror movies or kind of sexual thrillers, things like that. He only died about, uh, 15 years ago, so, uh, this was his fourth movie direct to video. He did a number of other films after this. It all seem like direct to video films.

And the writers, one of them was a ghostwriter who did scripts on spec, like 65 of them. 13 of them were actually produced, so he’s usually credited under an assumed name in, uh, in his movies. But uh, he also wrote, uh… The story guy, not, not necessarily the screenplay- Yeah … person. The story guy is, uh, Dave Eisenstark, who would, uh, called himself Buford Houser for his films.

But Creepozoids was what he wrote under that pen name before this. We’ve done Creepozoids. That was the one we interviewed Linnea Quigley on.

Craig: That’s right. That’s what I was thinking. Yeah, and it also was not very good.

Todd: No. Oh, man. Consistency is the name of the game here. Yeah, uh, the, the screenwriter hasn’t done anything else at all besides this movie, so I mean, that, that tracks.

Craig: Well, good.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I think whoever that was learned from this experience that they probably had other talents- … that they should work on. Not this.

Todd: Career choice, right. It’s funny you mention the cinematographer. Pretty good. The cinematographer was the cinematographer on Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.

Craig: Well, I really enjoyed that one as well, so.

Todd: Yeah, we really did, and at least one or two of the other, uh, gals in this were in that movie as well.

Craig: Oh, really?

Todd: I think Vera in here was on, uh, S- Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.

Craig: Ugh.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I need to watch that again. I’ve only seen it that one time that we watched it together 100 years ago.

I need to-

Todd: Ugh …

Craig: That’d be a good one to pull out this time of year if you haven’t seen it. Yeah.

Todd: That’s a good Halloween style movie, uh, one of my favorites.

And so yeah, there’s some connections here to a bunch of other low budget shot to video stuff, uh, mostly by the women and by the people I’ve mentioned here.

Otherwise, the guys in this, uh, only a couple of them went on to much more. This movie, A Polish Vampire in Burbank, which a few of these gals were also in before this. Have you seen that one?

Craig: No

Todd: I saw that a long time ago, like when I was in, I think when I was in college. Because at the time, and we’re talking 1983, that movie was the most successful independent film ever, ever.

It was like shot for $2,500 and went on to make like a couple million.

Craig: That’s wild. I’ve never heard of it.

Todd: It was one of these cases of a guy who just, you know, shoestring budget, independent film, very niche and very genre, just made it big. Not with the general audience, but just made tons of money, I think, in the, the, the straight to video market, some of the midnight stuff, cable, things like that.

So for an aspiring filmmaker, as I was back then, I’ve always remembered that movie as kind of a, a tale of what you could possibly do. So yeah, so I mean, there’s little connections to other movies here. This movie isn’t out on its own in a vacuum. Because while I was watching this, I was also thinking of Scary Movie, one of those movies we did for Halloween as well.

Do you remember that one, about the kid who was super scared and went through the haunted house and-

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, that movie had this flavor. Very independent, very low budget, very w- competently filmed, but as far as story, as far as acting and everything else, it just looked like a production that just a town came together for.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: A bunch of amateur actors, you know? I was getting that flavor from this, and that’s part of what I liked about it.

Craig: Yeah, the, the rural setting of it also was kind of reminding me of one of the Halloween movies we did. Uh, Night of the Scarecrow, I think.

Todd: Oh, yeah. Mm.

Craig: It was kind of giving me those vibes, just because of like the local color and it being so small and such a small cast.

I mean, there are lots of… I guess there are extras, ’cause it all kind of culminates in a big Halloween party, which is a little disappointing after all of the build-up.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But yeah, I mean, it, it… Aside from the fact that there’s tons of boobs in it-

Todd: Uh-huh. Tons …

Craig: it, it feels like something that would’ve been on network television around Halloween time.

Like-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: it, it kind, it kinda has a movie of the week kind of vibe to it. And it’s bad. Like- It’s

Todd: terrible.

Craig: We should just, we should just say outright, it is a really bad movie. And I kind of, I, I try not to read too much about these things, ’cause I, I, I don’t want my opinions to be swayed one way or another, especially if I don’t know anything about them anyway.

But I had kind of seen something that suggested that maybe it was kind of a so bad it’s good kind of movie, and I think if you’re going to appreciate it, that’s what you’re going to appreciate it for.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: How successful it is in that way, ah, I mean, like I’ve, I’ve definitely seen better, but it’s funny and there are elements of it that are funny to watch or, or at least worth it talking about.

But I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve said it. I used to say it all the time. This for sure is one of those movies that you could just put on in the background. Like if you- Mm … are cultivating a, a playlist to have on your television at your Halloween party where people are gonna be milling about and talking and you just want atmosphere in the background, this is great.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: Put it on the list.

Todd: This checks all the boxes.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It is just dripping with Halloween atmosphere from start to finish. Takes place during Halloween. There’s a satanic cult-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: involved. There is, like you said, a Halloween party. There’s tons of costumes. Just-

Craig: Pumpkins galore …

Todd: ah,

Craig: yeah. Boobs.

Todd: So many boobs.

Craig: There’s a music video.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: Like this thing’s- Yeah … got it all.

Todd: Satanic cult, right? I would say it’s the kind of movie that y- like you said, for sure, I think this movie would’ve been a blast with you sitting next to me. Sure. It would’ve been a blast with a room full of friends where you can just collectively laugh at it.

I’ll bet that Rifftrax is out of sight.

Clip: Oh, I’m

Todd: sure it’s great. And, uh, I, I might actually get that one. I, I love Rifftrax. I, I listen to them all the time. But you’re right, there’s something about it that’s also kinda slow and boring, a little plodding at times. But then you’ll have a moment, kinda like in Pieces.

You remember in Pieces where there’s that moment where for no good reason at all just Kung Fu guy-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: Bruce Lee impersonator just leaps into the screen and does a whole shtick and then leaves.

Craig: I think vaguely.

Todd: This has a moment or two like that too where there’s just some weird shtick that just happens for n- no good reason except you have to think it was really important to this guy to put it in his movie.

Or his friend who’s acting in this movie. Ah, and we’ll get to that too, I’m sure.

Craig: Well, I think they were just… Yeah, I think a lot of it was probably just stretching for time because there’s nothing to this movie really. No. Like-

Todd: Well, there’s a lot of people

Craig: I guess there’s a lot of people, but there’s not a, a whole lot of…

God, there are too many people, frankly. Who cares- Yeah … about all these stupid people? And r- not a whole lot happens, but the setup is funny. Like, it, it is, like, in the country, like out in the middle of the country, and this weird grandpa visits his- … I guess daughter’s family, but he’s really only into this one little blonde boy named Tommy, and he’s there to give him a pumpkin ’cause he’s a pumpkin seller.

That’s his job. And he also, he also said, “I would give you something else that’s really special. You can’t even look at it.” And Tommy’s like, “Okay, whatever.” Tommy, I guess, ac- is, is carving the pumpkin that his grandpa gave him, and his mom… God, there’s so many things to talk about. We gotta talk about his mom.

But she’s, like, hanging the laundry or something, and she’s like, “I told you to wait for your daddy. You’re gonna cut yourself.” But then she doesn’t do anything, and so then he does cut himself with the huge knife, and he’s, like, licking of his own blood. And she’s like, “We’ve gotta clean this up.” And he’s like, “No, it tastes good.

Grandpa says it’s good for me.” Okay. Oh, God. I’m getting into too much detail, but eventually the dad goes to confront the grandpa. The grandpa is having a cult ceremony in his barn, and they kill the dad and burn him up in the car. And that’s the whole- That’s the whole- … that’s the whole setup.

Todd: That’s the childhood trauma that leads us to today.

That’s, it’s pretty typical.

Craig: But we gotta talk about the mom and the grandpa, but the grandpa especially. Now I don’t know this guy. What, what is his name? He is a character actor who had done some other things. I think-

Todd: Hy Pyke, I think.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And I haven’t seen anything that he’s been in, but I guess he had a s- teeny tiny little part in Blade Runner, and he’s done some other stuff.

Todd: Vamp.

Craig: He is wild.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: He’s funny, he’s odd-looking, and he’s so over the top. He speaks, like I guess it’s the country so they all have Southern accents, and his Southern accent is so thick that sometimes you can’t… I couldn’t even understand what he was saying sometimes. And in the beginning he’s young and he has black hair.

I mean, it’s the same actor in both obviously, but they- With like a toupee … like they try to make him- Yeah … yeah, like a, like a black toupee and eyeliner. And then when he’s in the cult I think he’s just like in a red robe, but when he burns up the dad in the car he looks like an old Italian grandmother.

Like- … he’s wearing like a black like scarf around his head, thick black eye makeup. I swear to God he looked like a stereotypical mafia grandmother. And it was so campy. I didn’t know what was going on. And then he’s campy throughout the whole rest of the thing, but never in that way again. So he is something, something special.

Todd: He’s a campy mess. It, I, I feel like the whole movie really revolves around him. And he’s one of these guys who just pops into every other scene for no good reason except to-

Craig: Mm-hmm …

Todd: leer and… He, he’s the head of this cult. What are they doing? I don’t know, culty stuff. They just have rituals in his barn.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Him and like six other people. What’s their goal? Mm.

Craig: At some point in time, like, I think Tommy is supposed to be, what? I don’t know

Todd: A child of Satan or something? ‘

Craig: Cause, like, they’re grooming him ’cause he has three grandkids, but he’s not really interested in the other two. He’s only interested in Tommy.

Like, and, and he says that Tommy’s the chosen one.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And gosh, is it b- is it be- is it before or after the dad is dead? Oh, it’s after he’s dead. The grandpa comes over and visits, and then he leaves in his car, and then the mom magically appears in front of him in the middle of the road-

Todd: Yeah. Teleports, basically

Craig: to have a talk with him, and it’s revealed through a flashback that the reason that he’s only interested in Tommy and not the other two kids is because he’s really Tommy’s dad because he had sex with her on her wedding day?

Todd: Yeah.

Clip: You are a beautiful and alone woman who hasn’t had a man for 13 years.

Don’t you think it’s about time we did something about that?

No! Stop hurting Tommy. Stop ruining his life.

Learn, my sweet. You must learn. You cannot stop what is meant to be. No. You have no power here. The force of nature will conquer all.

Todd: Oh, my God. Gross. It’s so disgusting. I mean, it’s his, her dad. I, I remember if he says it to her, if he sa- oh, he says it to his father.

Yeah. “Tommy was never yours. He belongs to something greater than you could ever imagine. Bye, Bill.” Yeah. Uh, but we don’t really know what’s so great. Um, he, child of incest, I guess.

Craig: I guess. I don’t know.

Todd: The devil’s child. Well, he gives him this amulet. It’s… He gives Tommy this thing, and we don’t even see what it is till Tommy opens it up, uh, later in his bedroom.

And we get a nice transition to present day where, uh, suddenly, like you said, he showed up. Tommy is now a full-grown adult. He’s living in the basement. All the other kids are full-grown adults. They’re all living at home still.

Craig: Yeah. This is weird. Also, they say it’s 13 years later. Now, I would guess that that kid, Tommy, when we first saw him, was, I don’t know- 10

between the ages of 10 and 12 maybe. This is supposed to be 13 years later. Tommy looks like he’s 40 now.

Todd: He looks like a 40-year-old. He looks like Joe Piscopo, and he’s very angry, and his hair turned black.

Craig: And he… Yes. A- his hair turned black- … and he’s… I, I didn’t even thought about that. That’s funny. And he’s just a angry loser who hangs out in his mom’s basement and, like, only comes out to brood and-

Todd: Fight with people

Craig: and he just sits down there and lifts weights and listens to music. Oh, my gosh. So funny.

Todd: But he’s still got a good relationship with Grandpa. Grandpa comes by to visit. He’s like, “It’s not just any Halloween. You don’t know your own strength. The ceremony will begin at sundown.”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And Tommy’s like, “Yeah.” I love this bit.

Remember, his grandpa drives off. This is before Mom appears in front of him.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And then Tommy just turns towards the camera, takes off his sunglasses and just stares-

Craig: It was so strange …

Todd: glaring right at us.

Craig: It was really weird.

Todd: But yeah. Then we get the little, uh, the thing you mentioned, the flashback.

Craig: She says something about, “You’ve been bothering me ever since my husband’s been gone.” And he says something like, “He’s never been gone. He’s always been right here with us,” and he shows her a bone that he wears around his neck.

That was so funny. Oh,

my God.

Todd: That was hilarious.

Craig: Yeah. It… That was funny to me, but it was…

I was still grossed out by the revelation that- He’s, like, trying to bang her

Todd: Yeah

Craig: She’s also something else. She’s got, like, long blonde hair down to her butt Wow,

Todd: neat

Craig: And she’s, she’s, she’s crazy. Yeah

Todd: She’s crazy Gosh, I don’t know She’s a, she’s an interesting actress. She’s got one speed this whole thing, and this is on the verge of tears or in tears the entire time

Craig: Uh-huh.

Yeah. What’s… Like, calm down. It’s been years and years. Ah, God, I don’t know

Todd: We might as well, we might as well say. C- she’s played by Katina Garner. Katina Garner was in a movie called Wacko a couple years before this, which is on my list of things to do. Kind of along the same lines as Pandemonium, it’s supposed to be a ridiculous hor- a horror comedy spoof of slasher- Huh

movies by Great and Clark, which means it could be fun. It’s gonna be corny. It’s gonna be cheesy. But I really, it’s… I really want us to do it soon. Yeah, so she was in that. She was also in The Polish Vampire in Burbank, a couple other movies like The Tomb and Cannibal Hookers before this. And then-

Craig: She’s got a great look.

I can see how, you know- Yeah … especially in a melodramatic role I think that she would be really funny. It’s just, ugh-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: she’s weird in this

Todd: She’s weird in this

Craig: We, we catch up with, uh, the sister, Vera, in a, in the bath- Mm-hmm … and her friend It’s Beth comes and it… Or Beth, it- Halloween is Beth’s favorite holiday, and so she’s going to celebrate it by scaring her friend who’s naked in the bathtub with a big fluffy fake spider.

Just so, just so that we can see Beth in the bathtub all covered in soap except for her breasts, you know-

Todd: Perkiness …

Craig: right out there. Yeah. Right? And bathing herself and singing a generic song. I- Uh- I- I really love in movies when people just sing songs like- Just random stuff …

doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Like, there’s no melody or like- Yeah … it’s obviously not a real song. It’s just they can’t sing a real song ’cause they don’t wanna pay for it, so just sing something. Who knows? Like, people do that- Yeah … in real life. They do it all the time. I have never found myself- All the time … I’ve never found myself soaping up my legs and just composing a little.

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Todd: When you sing in the shower, you sing with purpose, right?

Craig: I do.

Todd: You’ve got a song- Yeah … in mind.

Craig: Yeah, absolutely.

Todd: A real song. That’s right. Not a fake one. Well, Vera- Oh,

Craig: yeah …

Todd: Vera has loads of bubbles all over her. She gets up, Beth surprises her with the spider. She’s like, “Oh, Beth, you’re crazy.”

And Beth hands her a robe, which Vera puts on over her completely soapy sudsy body.

Craig: I noticed that too. With… I- I thought, do people, do women really do that? Like, do they not- What? … rinse? Like, what? It’s

Todd: a mess. It doesn’t matter because in the next shot she’s all dry, so it doesn’t-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: apparently

Craig: it didn’t- Perfect.

Her hair. Yeah, it’s great.

Todd: She was, uh, she’s Karla B., and, uh, she was the one who was in Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama as, uh, Frankie. She was also in a movie called Necromancer before this one, and in a couple other horror movies after this, The Jigsaw Murders and Terror Night. She hasn’t done anything since 1989.

So these two are, like, really, really good friends, and we’re gonna be following them a lot in this m-

Craig: They’re kinda always together.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And then we go back to Tommy, the weird basement creep, who’s down there listening to music and won’t answer the door for his mother. And then he puts on his earphones and lays down in his bed and falls asleep, and we are treated to an entire dream music video.

Uh, which again, is just something very special, and I was asking myself- Who are these people? I, I couldn’t tell if they were the other actors. Like if he was having a dream and everybody- Right … it was like a, a Wizard of Oz type thing. Like, and you were there and you were there. But no, I think it’s just a bunch of randos.

Yeah. And they sing a whole… They, it, it’s a whole song.

Todd: It’s a real rock band named DC LaCroix or at least, ah, the, the lead singer is named DC LaCroix and that was also the name of their band. This is a, a crazy little sequence isn’t it? You’ve got magic and laser eyes and-

Craig: Yes, uh- All kinds … a, a, a, a woman…

First she’s just dancing and then- … and then she like starts shooting lasers out of her eyes and- … and then everybody else in the band disappears except for Tommy and he’s like playing guitar and, and this woman is dancing all around him. She’s very scantily clad. She’s like straps and stuff all over and eventually she like pushes him down or lays him down, I don’t remember, but she stabs him in the head with a pitchfork.

And, and then, and then pulls his head off and holds it up with her glowing eyes and that’s- The end and he wakes up. That’s it. Yeah. It doesn’t have any other connection to the rest of the movie at all, but it is something to see.

Todd: It’s another one of those moments.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also funny because at first, like when it’s the band, there’s a lead singer, a lady lead singer of the band, and she’s singing and playing and blah, blah, blah.

But then everybody disappears and it’s as though the dancing woman takes over the vocals, like she starts moving her mouth. The voice doesn’t change.

Todd: Right.

Craig: It was funny. I liked it. That was one of my favorite parts.

Todd: The song is pointed. You’re The Devil’s Son is the name of it.

Craig: I couldn’t tell if it was son or spawn, but yeah.

Todd: Tommy’s freaked out. Roger, his brother, is now a deputy, and he’s working the Halloween party tonight. It must be a slow day in this sleepy town where they’ve assigned one of the three deputies in the whole place to, uh, just sit around at a Halloween party later.

Craig: I was also confused by this because at first I thought the mom was throwing the party, ’cause I thought the sister said something about the party being important to Mom or something. I don’t know. But it’s not. It’s like a whole town party, right?

Todd: Yeah, the kids in town, I guess. Yeah.

Craig: Seems like it. I don’t know.

But yeah, Roger, he’s, you know, the good son now.

Todd: And he’s comforting his mom.

Craig: Yeah, and, God, and all of it’s so dumb. And like grandpa shows up again to interrupt Tommy and his girlfriend-

Todd: Yeah. …

Craig: uh, to tell Tommy, “Hey, you need to get rid of her. You, you gotta be pure for the ceremony.” Like what? “

Todd: I’ve come by the store to pick up some candles for your ceremony.”

The

ceremony.

Jesus, Grandpa, give it a rest.

Clip: What do you call yourself doing here?

I don’t know, just, uh, having a little fun, you know. Yeah.

Ordinarily, I’d say screw her brains out, but I don’t think that little witch has got any. But where is your head, Tommy? You know you must be pure for tonight. Knock this off and preserve that energy And as for you, sweetheart, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get his little butt home, and I mean right now

Todd: You are- Oh, my

Craig: God.

Grandpa, I’ll be there. Calm down

Todd: You’re killing everyone’s vibe, man. And Vera comes home with Beth to talk about the party, and that’s when she says she’s 18. Vera is 18? Apparently. None of these people look any younger than 30.

Craig: Well, she’s 18 and she’s a virgin, but she’s bummed out about it, so she plans on boffing Brian, her boyfriend, later while everybody else is decorating for the party.

I thought that was such a funny plot line. Yeah, but later this afternoon while everybody’s decorating for the party, I’m gonna… I’m like, “Okay, let’s…” Just squeeze it in between lunch and-

Todd: Yeah. But Roger says he’s gonna go talk to Tommy for Mom. There’s a lot of banging on the basement door yelling down, “Tommy, what are you doing down there?

Tommy, you can’t be living like this,” from Mother. So then Roger goes over and decides he’s gonna do the same thing. “Tommy! Tommy, open up!” Comes downstairs into the basement and Tommy is super aggressive, busy furiously exercising on his equipment- Yeah … down there.

Craig: Before he answers the door he has to pause for a second to do some pull-ups.

Todd: And

Craig: then he

Todd: answers the door. Tommy sits down and is like, “What’s going on, man? Why, why are you like this?” Eventually Tommy… Roger sits down and says that. Eventually Tommy jumps up and says, “Hey, let me show you something,” walks over to this door, and there’s this huge reveal where he swings open this door under the stairs and he has a full-on ritualistic shrine in there to the devil.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Wi-

Craig: With a bunch of candles. I don’t think you can- Lit

Todd: candles? …

Craig: light candles- You can’t really do that … in a closet like

Todd: that. Not really. Not really. You think maybe he just lit it and kind of assembled it right then and there just, just minutes before- I

Craig: don’t know … before

Todd: Roger came down … it seems very

Craig: intricate.

Todd: Super dramatic. Maybe it’s magic. Then Roger’s like, “Christ, Tommy, now I know why Mom is so worried about you spending time with Grandpa.”

Craig: Next scene. I know. It’s like- …

Todd: what

Craig: was the point of showing him that? Like-

Todd: Ah.

Craig: It’s, “I do too have something going on in my life, look.” Like, oh, boy. Oh, boy.

Todd: In case we didn’t get the memo that, uh, Tommy is just as into this as Grandpa is.

Craig: Yeah. And then Tommy, by the way, his girlfriend, y- she had a moment in the convenience store where other people, like, ogled her and commented that she had a tattoo on her butt- And then Tommy, like, brings her back to his house, doesn’t wanna hang out with her. So she goes and hangs out in the pool by herself.

And then, and then we see her swimming around in the pool in a bikini bottom and some sort of sheer top. And so her boobs are out. And then not just that, s- she immediately gets out of the pool, walks into the house, and slowly takes off everything- … and just twirls around a couple of times for us to look at her naked body.

Yeah.

Hit my nail. And then, and then gets in the shower, and then the killer shows up. But I’m sure you can tell us about this girl. I know this girl. She’s one of the few of the people in this movie that kind of had a career- …

Todd: before,

Craig: during, and after.

Todd: This is Gianna Fine. Yeah. She, uh, she went straight from this movie into the adult film world.

Many, many, many films under her belt. 287 of them, to be exact. She has a great body. She has a great look. I freaking love her hairstyle in this. She’s got that very punky look.

Craig: Yeah, ble- uh, platinum bleach blonde, spiky. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. She was doing porn before this as well, so it, it, she- I think she had kind of a bit of an on and off again career in that, but, uh-

Craig: Mm-hmm

Todd: pretty solid it seems like if you look at her, like maybe on for a couple t- weeks and off for a couple weeks. ‘Cause she was pretty solid all the way through the mid-’90s.

Craig: Yeah. I read a little bit about her. It’s just funny ’cause if you go to her IMDb page, she looks like, you know, your aunt or your mom or something.

Like she’s- She does

Todd: now.

Craig: But yeah, she, she had a successful career, and she, you know, she, like you said, she does, she has a beautiful body and she- It’s on full display here. She hears something outside and goes out thinking it’s her boyfriend, and at first she doesn’t see anybody, but then this guy in a mask, like this weird devil mask, pops up in the window and she’s like, “Oh, Tommy, you’re so crazy,” or whatever.

And she lets him in, and he’s in a full, like, costume. Like, it looks like a decent Halloween costume. It’s a full, like, robed thing and a devil mask. And she- Yeah … I guess thinks it’s her boyfriend and invites him in and is like…

Clip: So come and get it, you devil. Come on. Don’t you wanna see my costume? You’re gonna love it, you know.

I’m Lady Godiva. Wanna play my horsey?

Craig: Oh my God, it was so funny. And then she just, like, sprawls herself out on the couch. I don’t even remember what she says. She’s like, “So are you gonna surprise me?” And she says something like, “Go easy,” or something, “Last time you left marks.” And then she closes her eyes and he puts a pitchfork through her head or, or I don’t know, some sort of-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: spiky gardening tool.

Todd: Spiky gardening tool. Not quite a pitchfork. One of those, uh, what do you call them?

Craig: I don’t know what they’re called …

Todd: those things you use to till the ground with.

Craig: Yeah, they’re like long-toothed rake, like, like three-pronged rake-like things. I don’t know. But that’s his MO. He kills a lot of people with that.

And, and, you know, those effects, they… I think that the director or, or cinematographer or editor or whatever combination was wise not to linger too long on those shots.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: They, they show you… You see it. You see the weapon- Blood … you know, impaled in these people’s faces and the blood and I thought it looked good-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: on my computer screen. I thought it looked good. And I thought it was, it was smart not to linger on it too long. You know? You, you see it long enough to see that it’s there, and then the camera cuts away, and I think that was probably-

Todd: For the best …

Craig: smart. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, so this was Tommy killing his own girlfriend, huh?

Craig: I guess so, and I don’t know why.

Todd: I don’t either. I thought surely there’s, like, some setup or some switcheroo or something, but then, uh, as soon as, uh, he comes home, we see, we see later a shot of Tommy coming home and he packs his things up and one of the things he does is pull out one of those masks.

Makes a big point of showing it off for the camera.

Craig: Yeah, and it’s… I mean, there’s a couple of things that happen in between there, but n- not really anything important. Like, for a second the grandpa shows up and, like, starts hitting on Vera, his granddaughter. Gross. And her boyfriend Brian jumps in to stand up for her.

Mm-hmm. And then sh- Brian and Vera go off and start, like, fooling around, and Tommy comes in and beats him up a little bit. It’s right after that that we see that he has a mask, and then he immediately goes to kill Brian. So it’s not like there’s-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: yeah. It’s, this is not a whodunit, at least at this point.

We know it’s him.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. He kills Brian and dumps him in a grave or something.

Craig: And that scene was so weird. Like, again, I, I, I still don’t know why he killed his girlfriend. I guess he’s killing Brian ’cause Brian was trying to hump his sister. Like, who cares? Get over it. You’re all grownups. Like, move out.

Yeah. Go away. Um, and, and he kills Brian in broad daylight in the middle of a giant cemetery.

Todd: Everywhere. Which apparently is- Just outside their house- Yeah … and within walking distance of everything else.

Craig: It was cra- it was so funny to me, like, so Brian finds them making out, you know, half-dressed or whatever, and he, and he throws-

Todd: Tommy.

Tommy throws Brian

Craig: out … Tommy finds them and throws Brian out. And then the next thing we see, it’s, he’s halfway in the middle of this giant cemetery, and he has put on a shirt and a jacket. And apparently the last thing that he did was to close his pants and close his belt. Like, I just thought it was so funny- Might be the first-

that he had been walking for a while- … with his pants open. And then it’s right in the middle of broad d- broad day, and I feel like he just hears something.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And he starts running as fast as he can.

Todd: He kinda turns around and looks behind him, but there is no way anybody’s hiding in this cemetery.

Craig: No.

Todd: This isn’t a creepy cemetery in the woods. No. It’s a big, bright city cemetery with no trees and wide open, middle of the daylight with these short little graves. There’s no way he’s being pursued through this cemetery by something he can’t see.

Craig: No, but he takes off running as fast as he can and ends up just falling in a freshly dug grave that inexplicably is full of bones.

Human bones.

Todd: How do they bury people in this place? What? Get some coffins Get some coffins, you country bumpkins.

Craig: Oh my God. Not on there. I mean, uh, apparently they’re just burying people one right on top of the other too, ’cause there were a bunch of bones in there Like

Todd: multiple skulls, yeah.

Craig: Oh, boy. And then the guy just, Tommy I guess, in the costume just hits him over the head with a shoulder…

or his shoulder, a shovel. And, and again, the shovel goes into his head. You see it for a second, and then it cuts away. But like really, that guy was so stupid. Yeah. If he hadn’t been running and looking behind him and fallen himself, he would’ve been fine. Bro, it’s the middle of the day. Like- …

Todd: walk

Craig: to the police station.

I don’t know.

Todd: 100%. 100%.

Craig: Oh, boy. God.

Todd: It’s super dumb. You know what kind of movie you’re getting definitely. Well, you kinda knew from the beginning, but especially by now. There’s no real rhyme or reason for what’s happening.

Craig: And nothing matters, ugh,

Clip: ultimately.

Todd: The whole setup is nebulous. It’s really weird, okay?

So this guy who is destined for Grandpa’s ritual or something, but he’s- he seems to be cool with it. So, uh, he’s just as weird as Grandpa is, just as satanic and mean, and he’s running around killing his own girlfriend. So, like what’s happening? It… Well- And why?

Craig: I don’t know. And then we cut back to Grandpa’s cult in the barn, and it’s not just him.

He’s got like three or four friends who are in the cult with him. We never really see them, but when we do they just look like normal, average, middle-aged people who just- Yeah. … you know, are in a cult.

Yeah.

But they’re, they’re in there and they’re robed and they’re on this big pentagram and he’s like, “The hour of Satan has arrived.”

And then he’s like, “Prepare the sacrifice.” And they have this hot naked blonde And they brand her on the ass with a pentagram. Now I am confused. Was the, was the girlfriend’s ass tattoo the same thing?

Todd: Yeah. It was supposed to be a brand. I mean, it’s black. It’s more like a tattoo than a brand, but yeah.

Craig: So is she connected to the cult?

Todd: I guess.

Craig: Or was she?

Todd: So why was she killed? I have no idea.

Craig: I don’t either. And then this other girl, at first I thought it was the same girl because they both have that platinum blonde hair, but I think that this girl’s hair was longer.

Todd: This girl’s, uh, the same actress that also plays the stripper at the party.

Craig: Oh, okay.

Todd: The stripper at the party has a mask on to obscure it, but yeah- Oh … this is the same, the same gal.

Craig: I didn’t know that.

Todd: Not the same character, I think. Sh- they just had the same actress playing.

Craig: Hmm.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: All right. Well, they brand that girl on the ass, and then Roger takes Beth to the graveyard, uh, to investigate something.

Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t-

Todd: I, I just know Beth is gonna be late to this party. That’s all I know.

Craig: Oh my God.

Todd: She’s supposed to be there by 7:00. Super dark.

Craig: It is already, and they run into some kids who look like cult members, but they’re really not. They just dropped their candy, I guess, as they were walking through the graveyard.

Todd: Ah.

Craig: Okay, whatever. Yeah. So they leave. So Beth and Roger decide to just bang right there on a grave. Oh, listen, good for them. It’s Halloween, they wanna have a good time. They just met today. Like, they have spent 10 minutes together. But, you know- Yeah … it’s Halloween. It’s, it’s, like-

Todd: It’s inspiring. Graveyard, good old night.

Craig: I know. And, and there’s, like, a, a corpse hand and, and she grabs it.

Todd: She said, “Your hand, it’s so cold.”

Craig: And he’s like, “I, I’m, I, well, I’m about to get real hot,” or something like that.

Todd: Now, how they can go through this whole rigmarole on this grave and then stand up, get dressed, get back on his motorcycle and drive off without her or him noticing that there is a hand sticking out of this grave that she put her own hand in?

Craig: Well, and also when we see it, it is a huge mound of dirt. Yeah. Like, it’s not like they were just laying on the flat ground. Like, they were laying on a big hill. No.

Todd: That’s not an easy place to make out on. It doesn’t

Craig: even make any sense. They should’ve rolled off that. It also doesn’t even make any sense because they come back to it later for no reason- Yeah

other than for Beth to show Vera where she her brother.

Todd: Yes. That’s, like,

Craig: like-

Todd: Like, she had to make

a point

of it … that’s the

Craig: only reason they go back there.

Todd: Yeah. Oh, I love that bit. I love that bit.

Craig: Oh my God. And when they go back there it’s a huge mound, and it turns out that the person buried under there is Brian.

But that doesn’t make any sense either because we… The last time we saw Brian he was in a six-foot hole. So why is he now buried three centimeters- … at the top of a huge mound of dirt?

Todd: Oh,

Craig: boy.

Todd: It’s a really good question, actually. But, you know, it’s the same as, uh, zombies. Lucio Fulci, those zombies two inches below the earth so they can

Craig: burst out.

Yes, true. Yeah. I also thought that it was… Okay, two funny things. First, we finally get to this Halloween party, which, you know, th- they’ve been building up to. They’ve been decorating for it for the whole movie, and then we get to it and it looks like a high school dance. Like, it looks totally lame.

Todd: It’s pretty lame, but they have a live band.

Craig: They do, they do have a live band, and everybody is in costume.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So that’s, that’s fun. But it, there’s a woman in a red dress and a white fur stole and, like, a masquerade mask, and we track her through the whole party until she beckons some guy who comes over and dances with her for a second and unzips the back of her dress.

And I was like, “Where is this going?” Well, where it’s going is that she then does an entire striptease where she takes off all of her clothes. Mm. Like, I- Mm-hmm … I did not s- I did not see this coming. And I still-

Todd: I didn’t either …

Craig: I still don’t understand really what was happening. Like, did they hire a stripper for the party?

‘Cause it really seems like she was just getting into it and getting naked for the fun of it. I-

Todd: Right.

Craig: And then immediately- Wow … after that happens We cut to outside the party where a guy stumbles out and says to all the people just gathered there standing around outside, “Hey, did you guys see that stripper?”

And then goes into a full comedy routine for, like, five minutes.

Clip: And boy, you know, she reminded me of one of those girls from the girly magazine. Did you ever see those girls in the girly… Like, my favorite part in there is, is the naked girl. I love the naked girl. But now I got a favorite brand-new part: the little memo right underneath the naked girl’s picture.

‘Cause the things they say about themselves, they’re not quite accurate, are they? I mean, they say things, for example, like, “

I’m just a conservative girl.”

Todd: This guy’s a master of physical comedy. He’s, uh, he’s something.

Craig: The… Oh, boy. This r- watching this scene made me think of moments in real life. C- like, this is the kind of thing that happens in real life. Like, you’re out there just hanging out with your friends or whatever, and then some drunk asshole stumbles out and thinks that they are hilarious and gives you, like, a whole routine, and you just have to stand there and look at them and be like, “Uh-huh.”

Oh, boy.

Todd: Oh, no, they think it’s hilarious. They’re all laughing- Oh, yeah … at this story.

Craig: They’re laughing and laughing.

Todd: There’s nothing funny about this routine. He’s playing a turkey. He’s writhing around on the ground. He… Oh my God, is it bad. It’s so bad- It goes on

Craig: for a long time …

Todd: it’s embarrassing to watch.

That’s how bad it is.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Poor Bill Tucker. I wonder what he felt when he was out in the audience watching this for the first time.

Craig: Oh, boy. Oh.

Todd: Party comedian, Bill Tucker. So he gives his little thing, and now… Oh yeah, so then we’re back in the house-

Craig: They find Brian on the grave, yeah …

Todd: with the girls. Yeah.

And the girls are, like, getting ready for their h- for their thing. And I just love this transition because the girls are talking about how, “Oh, so-and-so hit it off with Roger,” and she’s like, “Did you do it?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I guess we did.” She’s like, “So tell me, where did you guys do it?” Cut to they’re in coats, they’re outside at the graveyard, and she’s pointing, “Over there.”

She had to walk her to it. And, uh, yeah, you’re right. So she’s showing her the grave. She sees a hand in there sticking out. She’s like, “Ah, ha, ha, very, very funny, Vera, putting this fake hand out here.” And she pulls it up and ends up pulling her boyfriend out of it.

Craig: Yeah, and she’s really upset, and she’s like, “I’m gonna get Tommy for this.”

Todd: Oh, my

Craig: God. Okay. So she goes to Grandpa’s satanic barn-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: and interrupts the ceremony. I would call the police, by the

Todd: way.

Craig: Yeah, she… Yeah. She, she tells Beth, “Wait outside. This is family business.” And she goes in and she interrupts the satanic ceremony, and Grandpa, uh, says that she has to pay the price for the sacrilege of disrupting the ceremony or something.

I don’t know. “

Todd: You’ve intruded on the ceremony of blood, and now you must pay the price for your sacrilege.” Ah. He hands Tommy a knife, and he’s gonna stab his sister. Like, what kind of weird up

family is this? And if Grandpa is so evil, why did he wait this long to off all of his grandchildren? It’s just-

Craig: I know

so dumb. Like, it’s not like it’s… It, it’s not like it’s Tommy’s 18th birthday or anything. This guy is in his mid-40s. Like, I don’t… What were you waiting for?

Todd: I know, right? Oh, my God. And then, so she’s kneeling on the ground begging him, “Tommy. For God’s sake, Tommy, I’m your sister.” And Grandpa’s like, “Don’t be a fool, Tommy,” as Tommy hesitates.

And he goes, “She’s my sister.” Mm. And now Tommy has failed the master. He lets his sister run out. He runs out, and Grandpa turns around, walks back towards the camera, and he looks very sad about it.

This is a masterclass in community theater acting

Craig: It’s really funny

Todd: Every bit of it is melodramatic- Yeah … and hilarious.

Craig: It is pretty funny.

Todd: And I, and I say that with a smile. You and I have both been in community theater.

Craig: Oh,

Todd: yeah. And, uh, you know, I’m not disparaging that at all. But it’s, it’s just horrible.

It’s just melodramatic, over the top- Yeah … terrible dialogue, stupid situation.

Craig: It’s pretty funny.

Todd: And now Tommy, who’s gone through, what, 40 years of his life in anger and building up to this moment, within s- a split second, I guess, you know, he could kill his girlfriend, he could kill his sister’s, uh, boyfriend, but killing his sister was a bridge too far.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: It broke the whole thing. So you’d think it’s kind of over by now, right? ‘Cause what the hell’s Grandpa gonna do? Yes. I don’t know. It’s not like they’re summoning demons or anything, you know? I

Craig: know.

Todd: A- anybody could just take this guy out. If he bothers you, just tackle him to the ground.

Craig: Right. And he, he, he says like, you know, very solemnly like, “I know what I must do.

I have no choice.” I’m like, “Okay. I, I mean, I don’t know what you need to do, but I, I guess we’ll find out in the next 10 minutes.” And then a lady dances with a snake. I guess this- Mm-hmm … is back at the Halloween party. There’s- Yeah … like a – They

Todd: hired a snake dancer … snake dancer … as well as a stripper. We get to see her for no reason at all, just Halloween atmosphere.

Craig: The devil costume shows up at the party, and I thought, “Okay, that must be Grandpa. He’s-” carrying out whatever mysterious mission they’re carrying. I don’t know, but it’s not Tommy, so it must be Grandpa.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And he k- he kills a lady in the bathroom. That was such a weird scene. Oh my God. There’s a lady in the bathroom, and the devil thing comes in, and she’s like, “Help me with my corset.”

And so, like, he starts helping her, and she’s like, “Make it tighter.” And so he starts pulling it tighter, and her tits start to pop out, and then he stabs her. That’s it.

Todd: I thought this was gonna be like he squeezed her to death or something. I think it was just an excuse for them to really zoom in on her tits almost popping out.

Craig: Almost popping out. Oh, boy. Gosh, what else? And then the, the, the cops investigate the barn. What, what was funny to me is the brother, Roger, is at the party when the grandpa shows up, and then the next time we see him and the rest of the cops, they’re out at the barn. Like, what are you doing out there? Like, nothing’s happening out there.

Like, get back to the party.

Todd: The girls ran into the party and got Roger- Okay, okay … and Roger left with them, and then he got the police, and they went to the barn. But of course, no one’s there. The girls are back at the party crying, and they go into the women’s room, and they see the body in there, but they think she’s just drunk.

Even though her eyes are open, she’s just staring out into

Craig: nothingness. Yeah, and she’s made up like a corpse. I mean, I guess it is Halloween. We’ve talked about this. Yeah, I guess. If you’re gonna kill somebody, do it on Halloween.

Todd: But even Roger’s made it back there by now.

Craig: Well, Beth gets strangled. Beth gets killed.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I was kinda surprised by that.

Todd: Yeah, it surprised me too.

Craig: But yeah, she gets, she gets strangled and then s- hung up in a closet, I guess, in the bathroom or something. And then Vera runs out, and she runs into the devil costume. But then Tommy also shows up also in the devil costume.

Todd: I was so confused.

There are two people in a devil costume. I guess one of them’s Grandpa and one of them’s Tommy, but d- I have no idea which is which.

Craig: And they’re fighting.

Todd: It’s supposed to be a big dramatic fight sequence, but it looks so bad.

Craig: The grandpa gets killed.

Todd: He falls.

Craig: For… He falls down, and then Roger runs in at this point, and Grandpa’s on the ground, and Grandpa’s like, “Roger, the power is in the blood,” and he, I don’t know, touches his face or something.

And so then Roger pulls out his gun and shoots the other person in the devil suit as they’re running away. But when they get outside, they take off the mask, and it turns out it w- it wasn’t Tommy, it was the mom.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Okay.

Todd: Ugh. So What? How did Mom get the mask? What is Mom doing? Why is she at the party? Uh, did she know Grandpa was gonna be there?

Did she know he was gonna be in a mask, too? Like, what, what… How is Mom involved suddenly? But you forgot about the animated red dot that shows up on, uh, Roger’s forehead when Grandpa touches it. That seems to be important. Yeah.

Craig: Oh, boy.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So

Todd: it’s the one with long blonde hair, and God, it’s so labored. I’m thinking, “Where is Tommy then?”

And suddenly Tommy shows up. He’s also in the cemetery. She stumbles to her dead husband’s grave and falls down on it, and I’m thinking, “God, is this over yet?” And oh, no, here comes Tommy, and he comes over to comfort her. He’s clearly a changed man. They confess their love for one another, they cry together, and they fade out.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

I only wanted t- to keep my family.

Todd: I’m sorry.

I love you

Clip: Tommy.

Todd: So is she dead now? I don’t know.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Is she’s dead? She got shot.

Craig: Who cares?

Todd: Whatever. Now we fade in and there’s another ritual happening in the barn.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And the person who’s leading it turns around, and it’s Roger as the high priest.

Craig: Yep. “

Todd: We welcome the night.” Fade out.

Craig: The end. Yeah. Twist

Todd: ending.

Wow.

Craig: Yeah. Good boy, you know, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Roger is the- … the, the evil Satan cult leader now.

Todd: A finger to the head with that red dot. That’ll get you every time, man.

Craig: It will. You gotta watch out for that. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah, no, it’s terrible. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a awful, awful movie. But there- You know, like, if, if you’re, if you’re looking for…

I- you picked this one. We have, you know, thought about and talked about and planned out what we wanna do over the rest of the month for Halloween, and I think we’ve got some good ones picked out. But you picked out this one, I’d never heard of it, and you said we should just go ahead and start with it.

And I’m glad you did because I think that this is a really fun way to kick off the season.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It’s, it’s stupid. It is. It’s stupid and funny and fun and light and like- And

Todd: baffling-

Craig: Uh … in

Todd: all the right ways. Yeah. I, I love it. I think I’m gonna be thinking about this movie a lot. This might be one of those I revisit every, uh, every now and then for Halloween because it is just that goofy, and it’s got a lot of boobs in it.

I’m not gonna lie. That part’s appealing.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know. It’s, there’s… And, and like you said, it’s, there’s so much Halloween to it, like Halloween decorations and so much talk of Halloween and people in costume and

Todd: it- Halloween party, bands playing music …

Craig: as bad as it is, it, I feel like it, it in some weird way kind of is emblematic of the crazy fun, unexpected…

Like, that’s, that’s… Halloween for me is fun-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: first and foremost, and this is fun. It’s, it’s mindless. You don’t have to pay any attention to it really. It’s just kind of a ride, and I think it’s worth seeing i- if, as long as you go in knowing it’s bad and, and just enjoy the ride.

Todd: Well, I’ve said this before about other Halloween movies similar to this, is Halloween to me is scrappy and DIY.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: You know? Halloween is putting your costume together yourself, putting out the cheesy decorations, just going to the nines with the fake spider webs and the fake… Whatever you do to your lawn, wherever you’re going, it’s just, it’s just a mess of just whatever people throw out there, and that’s what I love about it.

It’s just the scrappiness of it. It’s not polished, and, uh, your local haunted house or two put on by the Shriners or the Lions Club or whatever is also scrappy and unpolished fun. You know, it doesn’t make any sense either. It’s just a mishmash of stuff.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And, uh, that’s why I think a movie like this just totally captures the spirit of that season, and it puts me in the mood.

You know, when the weather is cold outside and this is happening, boom. Yeah. Hack-o-Lantern is, is a go-to Halloween movie as far as I’m concerned now, and I just wish I had gotten to it earlier. As a kid, I might’ve really enjoyed it. I mean, even without the boobs, I probably would’ve- … had a good time with this.

Craig: It does. You know, it also very much, you know, from very early on, es- with the first bathtub scene, I’m like, “Oh, gosh, this really takes me back to Ron DeScheer and Up All Night.” Yes. This is exactly the kind of thing- Yes … exactly the kind of movie that you would’ve seen on Up All Night l- in the, you know, at 2:00 in the morning on a Friday or Saturday night.

W- you know, you’re 11 years old, and your parents are asleep, and you’re watching movies with boobs. Mm-hmm. And like, it, it just, it, it re- and, and it’s terrible, but it’s sexy and funny. And yeah, it’s, it’s a nice throwback to that. It was a fun, it was a fun watch.

Todd: Well, thank you guys so much for listening, and Happy Halloween season to all of you, no matter where you are in the world.

I hope you’ll join us in the spirit of the season this month, as we have five Halloween movies coming to you, so four more after this. They only get better or worse from now on. That’s the only promise we can make to you. Go to chainsawhorror.com to have all the fun. We also have a really great lineup of stuff planned for our patrons this Halloween season.

We’re gonna go a little bit more all out with the minisodes than we usually do. I have some posts and things lined up, some special surprises in store, maybe an audiobook or so, like I did a couple years ago. I may bring that back this year. If you wanna get in on all that fun, plus get unedited episodes the minute that we record them on the phone, plus join our book club, we’re gonna be reading some Halloween-themed books this year as well.

We’re in the middle of one right now. Just, uh, drop us a line at patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. And for just $5 a month, there’s no better month to jump in, uh, and enjoy the spoils of Halloween at Two Guys and a Chainsaw. Until next week, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We return with a tribute episode honoring the late Reggie Bannister, the longtime anchor of the Phantasm series, by diving back into 1988’s Phantasm II.

We talk about Bannister’s unique career and background and how Reggie evolves here into a more action-hero figure. We break down how Universal’s higher budget and studio demands changed the sequel’s tone—more linear, more action-driven, recasting Mike, and adding love interests—while losing some of the original’s dreamlike surreal horror.

We discuss the road-trip structure, psychic subplot, mixed lore elements, standout practical effects, memorable set pieces, and the ending’s reset, plus where the series goes next and why we might revisit later entries like Ravager.

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Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Phantasm II (1988)

Episode 507, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we come to you with another tribute episode. It’s been a little while since we’ve done one, ha- no, we did a tribute episode a couple episodes ago, didn’t we?

Craig: Yeah, but I bet our listeners won’t find this one much of a surprise if they keep up on the news at all.

Todd: Yeah. Today, we are mourning the death of Reggie Bannister, very prolific actor in horror, who is best known for his breakout role in Phantasm, one of my all-time favorite horror movies. So we decided that since we hadn’t really done much else in the Phantasm series in all these years, that we would dive back in there as tribute to him with 1988’s Phantasm II.

I had seen Phantasm II in high school, and I remember at the time thinking, “Whoa, this is quite different from the original in tone.” And so, uh, I was curious to see if my impressions of it this time around matched what I remembered, and I think, yeah, it kinda did. It really did match how I, I remember, and I can’t wait to talk about that.

What’s your history with this movie, Craig?

Craig: Uh, I really didn’t grow up watching this. I, I wish that I had given myself time to go back and listen to our original discussion on the first one because it’s been so long. And, and I feel like it was, you know, not long before that that I had watched the whole series from start to finish pretty much all at once.

So when I was introduced to Phantasm, I, I mean, I knew f- like, the orb and the Tall Man, the imagery was stuff that was familiar to me. I just hadn’t actually seen the movies. Mm. And once I finally got around to seeing them, I watched all of them. At that point, I think the first three, maybe the first four were out.

I know that Ravager wasn’t out yet. I remember that Ravager came out later, and I saw it later. But I kind of, I kind of knocked them all out at once, which is a different experience, I think. It’s, it’s an interesting series. I’m, I’m a little surprised that we haven’t come back to it. In hindsight, I don’t know.

I think this was the right choice. It might have been interesting to do something like Ravager, which, you know, Reggie Bannister, he was the, pretty much the anchor of this series along with Angus Scrimm, but I think Ravager came out even after Angus Scrimm had passed away. Reggie Bannister really was kind of the anchor of, of the whole series, and, and it spans almost four decades, so- Yeah

it might have been kind of interesting to look at the last one. But this one has some interesting backstory, and fan opinions are mixed, and so I think we’ll have plenty to talk about.

Todd: Yeah, we cer- we certainly will. I think Ravager came out in 2016. That was the only one except for the first two… Well, I guess the first two and that one got a theatrical release, and the rest went straight to video.

So I guess we’re talking the third one and the fourth one went straight to video. I think that same year is when Reggie Bannister was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: He acted quite a bit- Up to that point, and then he had a couple movies after that, and then I think just, uh, retired from acting to take care of his health.

And, uh, I think we knew last year that his health was deteriorating.

Craig: He’s been unwell for a while. I, I think that his, his family or, or whoever is in control of his estate was, uh, was even reaching out to fans, I think, to help finance his living situation and his healthcare needs. I mean, he’s, he’s been in bad shape for a while.

So this didn’t really come as a big surprise and, and that’s sad that he was unwell and that he’s passed, but he had a really unique but cool career. Like, he’s one of those… Phantasm, I feel like isn’t as well-known as, let’s just say, the Evil Dead franchise, ’cause I feel like that’s kind of the best comparison with Bruce Campbell as Ash.

I mean, he’s kind of the Bruce Campbell- Yeah … Reggie Bannister is the Bruce Campbell of this series. And this is another one of those unique series that follows a direct continuity start to finish. There really aren’t lots of contradictions. There’s evolution and some things change along the way, but it’s a, it’s a direct continuity following Reggie Bannister’s character, Reggie, and, and the other central characters with the central antagonists throughout all of them.

So he may not have been an A-list guy, but he certainly had like, you know, a storied career, uh- Yeah … and, and r- really cool connections with, with Don Coscarelli. And so it’s, it’s cool to be able to kind of talk about him and celebrate. This was such, so special and meaningful to him and, and he was always, uh, really appreciative of the support that he got from fans.

This is something that he really embraced, so to get to kind of celebrate him after his passing feels good.

Todd: Yeah. It’s kinda sad. He was, um… Well, it’s, it’s good. It’s great, actually, because he got into acting after a pretty rough time in the military. He was in the Vietnam War. He was drafted. He, he was against it, but he got drafted, so he became a, kind of more of a frontline soldier.

I think he was a radio operator for an automatic weapons specialty group. And because he was around these weapons so often, big weapons, like, he ultimately got some hearing loss- And, uh, he was exposed to Agent Orange. So I think he, when he retired, he got some disability and, uh, also took his GI Bill from the military and decided that the next thing he was gonna do was use that money to study acting.

So, uh, it’s really cool that he could transition into this, and very lucky that very early in his screen acting career, you know, basically within two years he got that role in Phantasm.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: He didn’t really get another role until nine years later with this movie.

Craig: Yeah, he had kinda quit. Like, I think he had intentionally kinda quit.

Todd: Um- W- yeah. Didn’t he even spend some time embalming bodies in a funeral home in the meantime? Yeah. This is crazy.

Craig: Yeah. A- and, and he was a musician, too, and he was in other stuff. I mean, this is what he’s known for, and a lot of the other stuff that he was in, he appears in, like, horror or indie cameos.

Todd: Small roles usually.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I, I remember seeing him in Wishmaster or one of the Wishmasters and-

Todd: Yeah, the first Wishmaster. He was a pharmacist in that. We did that one here. We did Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: The Initiation, one of my all-time favorites. Yeah,

Craig: yeah.

Todd: He was in that.

Craig: And he’s really recognizable because he’s n- got a unique look, and he’s not a glamorous Hollywood leading man type.

He’s much more of an everyman kinda guy. But over the course of this franchise, he got to… His character got to evolve from kind of a dopey sidekick to, you know, a badass chainsaw, sawed-off shotgun-wielding, leather-wearing action hero kinda- I mean- And, and, and that starts here, but by, by the last one, he’s, like, a post-apocalyptic, like, Mad Max-type character.

Like how much- Wow … you know, how fun. H- you know, no wonder he embraced it. How fun to get to see a character in a story through that kind of evolution. It’d be awesome.

Todd: Very Bruce Campbell in that way, huh, like you said earlier.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Just, like, almost a very similar type character, but his own unique spin on it.

You know, Bruce Campbell’s got that smarmy, good-looking, badass kind of look, and this is the everyman kinda forced into doing what he can but taking it up with enthusiasm. I, you know, uh, there’s such a stark contrast between the first movie and this movie. And unlike you, I haven’t seen the others in the series, so I remembered when I was a kid seeing this movie and thinking, “Ugh-” It’s kind of disappointing because it doesn’t have that dreamlike, ethereal, surreal quality of the original.

One thing I just love about the original movie is just how weird it is.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And that weirdness translates into, for me anyway, into a very unsettling terror, and I think this is why it’s just one of my all-time favorite movies is because it’s a rare movie that I just feel the way I feel when I’m watching Phantasm.

Craig: I feel like this is an excellent example of the price you pay for studio. Y- you know, w- when- Right … when you get a studio involved, when a studio is in charge, yeah, they’re gonna give you a lot more money than you’re going to get otherwise. But they have a lot of control and expectations, and this movie comes almost 10 years after the original.

I guess sequels were doing well, making money, and Don Coscarelli’s former lawyer or something worked at Universal, I think, and was a big fan of horror and, and just kind of pushed this through, and they gave it a, a much higher budget. W- what was it, like $3 million, I think?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: For this, which I don’t remember how, b- but the, the first movie was very, very low budget.

But it came with demands and a more linear storyline and moving away from that more ethereal, dreamlike… And, and what I, I remembered in the first one was an uncertainty about what was happening and what was real and what wasn’t real because you were kind of jumping in and out of dreams and reality.

And to be fair, it was a little confusing, and I think that there was an attempt in this movie to make it more linear and a little bit less confusing, which is fine, but you’re right, I think it takes away from some of the charm. The other big change was that the studio, for sure I know, wanted to recast both of the leads.

Now, I didn’t read anything about Angus Scrimm. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to recast him, but they wanted to recast both of the principal leads, and Coscarelli had to fight. I mean, both of the original actors had to audition, and Coscarelli was basically given the Hobson’s choice, like, you know, you can…

It’s one or the other. Either way you’re gonna lose somebody, but he picked Reggie Bannister, and so the other lead, Mike, is played by a different guy in this one, which I can understand why fans of the original didn’t like that But the studio wanted somebody more recognizable, and so they passed on Brad Pitt and picked this guy, and-

Todd: Yep, and then they went right back to, uh, the guy from the original for the, the, the f- the subsequent sequels, right?

Craig: They did. I, and I, I don’t know why. I, I imagine probably based on fan response. But yeah, he played… The original guy came back. And I remember reading the IMDb trivia about the first one when we did this, the first one, like 10 years ago.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And I remember reading that he was still kind of salty about it.

Well, that was 10 years ago. Who knows if he’s still- … salty about it. But I, I mean, I get it. It would be… I would be mad, too, if I was the one guy who got recast. Um, but the, the, the guy that they recast does fine. I, I think it’s just, especially since, you know, Angus Scrimm and Reggie Bannister both came back, this new guy, I think, just, I don’t know, didn’t have much of a chance.

His name’s James LeGros. And I knew I recognized him, but I couldn’t figure out what it was from. He has been in a movie that I’ve seen. He’s in a, uh, adaptation of Macbeth called Scotland, Pennsylvania. It’s a modern-day retelling set in the ’70s, the 1970s. And I haven’t seen it in its entirety since the ’90s, but I remember really liking it.

I show some clips of it in my class when I do Macbeth. But the one thing that I r- I, I recognized him for sure from was he was in one episode of Friends-

Todd: Oh …

Craig: where he was a guy who went on a date with Phoebe. And he was super obnoxious, and she a- she’s like, “So what do you do?” And he’s like, “I write erotic novels for children.”

“They’re wildly unpopular.” And then his, his other good line was, “I also have a PhD.” And she’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” “Yep, a pretty huge…” And then she cuts him off. I always- Oh … thought that was a funny line. Funny.

Todd: He got the good lines at least.

Craig: Yeah. So if you are a Friends fan, he’s, uh, that guy. And he’s fine, and he did beat out Brad Pitt.

And they threw in a couple girls for no good reason. Yeah. Okay, there’s girls in it now too. And those were the studio’s demands. And they did it, and it’s fine, but it certainly is a move away from, I think, some of what made the original interesting and, you know-

Todd: Scary. I would say scary too, because I don’t find this movie quite as scary.

Honestly, because the, the first movie is really all about these people, and stuff is happening to them. Now, the kid gets very investigative because he’s freaking out about what’s happening in the cemetery and what’s happening with the, you know, the stuff and the, and bodies are disappearing. So he, you know, he gets wrapped up in a thing that he feels that he has to explore, and then his brother ends up kind of getting involved.

But in general, they are just victims and there, there’s, things are happening that they can’t explain. The Tall Man keeps visiting them and, and all this. They end, end up do, I think, having a final scene, right, where they’re in the-

Craig: Mortuary or whatever. Yeah …

Todd: mortuary. And the explanation is just totally bonkers.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It’s just totally bonkers and I love it. It’s just the weirdest crea- most weirdly creative thing. So you also have these orbs that are flying through the air, which are pretty unique also. I mean, I don’t think horror did anything like this before. And what’s the deal with the orbs, you know? There’s just so much strange stuff happening, but it’s scary and the Tall Man is scary and he’s menacing, and there’s just this threat and you don’t know what’s going on.

And I just love that movie to death for it. This movie picks up right where the one, the other one left off.

Craig: Exactly,

Todd: right. At least it finishes out the scene for us, right? Basically, the Tall Man has one of his goons come through the mirror in one of those, like, Friday the 13th style endings, right, where suddenly Jason appears and, and grabs them when they think they’re safe.

Coscarelli thought that the first movie was just a complete story and he loved the ending, and he only wrote this movie because of money and because he was pressured to do it. But he said once he f- figured he could just start from the ending of the first movie, things started to fall into place.

Craig: Yeah.

And he was inspired by Salem’s Lot, the Stephen King-

Todd: Mm …

Craig: novel. At the end, the very, very end of that story, the main characters go on, like, a vampire hunt, like a, a road trip, hunt

Todd: Yeah

Craig: And, and when I say the very end of the story, it’s like the last couple pages. Like, they just- Yeah … they decide- It’s just like-

they’re gonna go off on this thing. And that was kind of what inspired this. And I, and I think that is fine. I think that that’s a, a fine way to go with it, and I f- I’m pretty sure it kind of carries through the rest of the movies. I think all of the rest of them are kind of road movies. If I remember correctly.

I could be wrong. It’s been a long time.

Todd: You’re right. It’s fine to do, and, you know, it’s a great way to continue a series when you’re being asked to continue it, but it definitely changes the whole character of the film. So now it’s these two on a vigilante mission against The Tall Man, who takes a while to appear, and the c- the notion is that he’s now going from town to town doing this thing and leaving empty towns, I guess, behind him.

Craig: Yeah, which is weird because in the original, wasn’t, didn’t he have some history in the town where they were? Like, he had been there for, for a long time or something?

Todd: I don’t remember exactly.

Craig: I- I don’t remember exactly either. But what was interesting, well, to me, about the first one was every- everything that was happening was so weird, and you kept kind of seeing new, even more weird parts of it up until the end, where things aren’t really explained except for you know that there’s another dimension and he’s, like, taking bodies out of these cemeteries and crushing them down into these little troll like people.

Troll-type creatures. I call them Dinks because they remind me of the Dinks from Spaceballs. Right. So that’s what I called them in my notes. But… And that’s what they look like. They look like little people that just, like, waddle around, and they’re, like, in monk robes and hoods. It’s funny. But he’s turning them in- he’s turning corpses into these things, and then these things are like his minions, and they’re, like, taking, I don’t know, these squashed down people to another dimension.

But why? I don’t kn- like, and I don’t feel like it really ever explains that. Yeah. And it doesn’t really matter. I think kind of one of my problems with this one, the sequel, is that we still have all of those elements, but it doesn’t really expand on them or explain them any further.

Todd: Right.

Craig: Like, it’s still, it’s still there.

It’s just there’s really nothing new. Okay, sure, there’s a new fancier orb that’s gold instead of silver, and it’s cool.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But beyond that, there’s not really any expansion of the lore except for, and I- you’ll have to remind me. I don’t remember if this was part of the first one. In this one, it’s introduced very early on that Mike is now psychically connected to this random girl.

Todd: Ugh.

Craig: And because they are psychic They have the power to defeat the Tall Man, and they just have to psychically find each other.

Todd: Yeah. It’s unfortunate.

Craig: And they do. And one of my favorite parts of the movie is that when they find each other, she’s running through a graveyard, and she falls into a grave, and Mike’s in there.

And so she falls into the grave and in love in the same second because they’ve never met before- … except for in their psychic dreams. And they just start- Right … making out the second that they meet. I thought that was great. Like,

Todd: I guess there’s a lot of, a lot of psychic sex- psychosexual tension-

Craig: Foreplay.

Yeah, there was a lot- … that’s been building over the years. There was a lot of, a lot of dream foreplay. It was good. But yeah. Okay. So there’s that, that psychic element of it, and then we mentioned that there are, like, love interests for each of the two male leads. Then this other girl shows up kind of out of nowhere, and I don’t really have any idea what’s going on with her.

Todd: That’s one of those sort of surreal elements that I guess kind of got by the studio or something, which didn’t want anything like that. At one point, when they’re hunting through one of these bombed out towns, one of the mor- one of the many morgues that they’re going to be exploring probably throughout the whole series, I imagine-

Craig: Yeah, one of the giant marble mortuaries that they went-

Todd: And then they go into, like, usually, like, the embalming room or something like that, and he sees a body, a woman’s body on the table.

He’s a little fascinated by it, but, you know, she seems dead, and he walks around, and you’re waiting for her to come alive or some crazy something to happen. But actually, he just flips around real quickly, or maybe it’s just as he’s walking out, she’s completely gone. And so you’re left wondering, did he dream her?

Was she really there? Is this some weird supernatural thing? You just never really know. A little bit later, he’s kind of daydreaming. It seems like he’s sort of falling asleep in the car as he and Reggie are driving to the next town- And either in his dream or maybe he gets a vision, I guess it’s in a, in a dream more or less, he sees her as a hitchhiker that they drive by.

And then he wakes up or kind of comes to, and he turns to Reggie and he’s like, “Oh, hey, how are things going? I, I had this weird dream. I saw this girl.” And then she pops up from the backseat and goes, “Oh, he- hey, hello. My name’s Alchemy. But you can call me-”

Craig: Kimmy for short.

Todd: Kemmy for short. Okay.

Craig: Oh my God, Alchemy?

Come on.

Todd: Ugh, so weird. And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, I just picked her up back there. I hope you didn’t mind.” And so I thought immediately this girl’s trouble, you know?

Craig: Obviously.

Todd: A mysterious trouble girl.

Craig: But it’s so random, and she’s just kind of around for the rest of the time.

Todd: Well, not only is it random, but it’s also…

It get- It’s, it’s almost like he’s just trying to check the boxes of the studio notes, right? He’s like, “Well, I guess I gotta give Reggie a love interest, too.” And so she and Reggie just get real comfortable very, very fast.

Craig: And she’s super into him.

Todd: Oh, big time. Big time into this balding middle… What does Re-

Craig: Middle-aged…

Yeah.

Todd: What does, what does, um, Mike say to him? There’s one of my favorite lines in the whole movie was when he turns to him, they’re, they’re a little, uh, down.

Clip: Reg, who are we kidding? I’m a 19-year-old kid. You’re a bald, middle-aged ex-ice cream vendor.

Thanks, Mike.

Craig: Yeah. What are we looking at?

Todd: But yeah- That’s funny.

I forgot about that … she was, she’s got a type, you know? So she was really into him, and they have this sort of sex scene with her underwear on.

Craig: And hi- he’s fully clothed, which- … I, I get is, is, is- How they get- … possible, but … how they get in these situations, I

Todd: don’t know. I mean, it can

Craig: happen- You know …

Todd: but, you know.

Craig: It’s, but it’s also hilarious. Like, I just kept thinking it was so funny because she’s very, she’s very beautiful, and I would guess at least 10 years… And she’s super into him. I, I read somewhere that she asked the director, Coscarelli, I guess, “Why, what is my motivation for- … wanting this guy?” And he was like, “Oh, you’ve got a bald fetish.”

And so then I guess she just totally played that up, and the sex scene is hilarious ’cause she’s- That explains it … super into his bald head. That, and rubbing it and- I know. And she’s just, like, rubbing her boobs on it and smacking it. I, God, I don’t remember where I read this. I was trying to look around, but I, I read that she was so into it, she was smacking his head so hard that it turned his scalp all red, and they had to like- Makeup

more than once apply makeup to his scalp- … to cover up the red from her smacking it. It’s a funny scene. That’s great. Oh, my God. I, ’cause I, I feel like the charm of the original comes through in little moments. And, and they’re those funnier moments when it’s u- and usually smaller moments, like between Mike and Reggie.

Like, when they’re talking or conferring or, or even, you know, putting together their silly, though effective, arsenal and, and outfits that they wear. I mean, like, it was really funny to me every time they would suit up, and Mike would be in a welding hat, and he’s got a, you know, the homemade flamethrower, and they’ve got the f- four-barreled sawed-off shotgun.

Like, the, the humor there and, and the kind of silliness, and a lot of that I think is attributed to Reggie Banister. That charm still comes through.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It’s just not as consistent. Yeah. And, and I do think it’s that studio stuff that makes it not as great. And, and all the psychic stuff, like, I don’t understand.

Again, it, it’s really never explained, I don’t think. No. Why Liz is calling out to him psychically, “Mike, I know you’re out there. I need you. Soon my grandfather will die, and my visions will become real.” What are you talking about?

Todd: Right.

Craig: Like we, we don’t know this girl.

Todd: How is this random girl getting visions of the Tall Man now?

Is, it’s-

Craig: And what does her grandfather have to do with it?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I, I- And there’s

Todd: a lot of scenes

Craig: And eventually her grandfather does die and we go to his funeral. And like, I feel like the Tall Man is there and, and then the, the grandfather disappears out of his coffin, and then is just like popping up around places.

I, I really didn’t understand what was happening.

Todd: Yeah. I read, and now this was news to me, but in my research, I don’t know where I read it, but it said that there was an element of the first two movies that was so confusing that they dropped it from the f- from the following movies. And that is this idea that the Tall Man appears to everyone else as a normal undertaker, but to people who are psychic, they can see him as he truly is.

I did not get that impression from the first movie in the slightest.

Craig: No. I mean, I guess retroactively I could look back and say, “Okay,” but I don’t know. No, I didn’t get it.

Todd: Well, there are other… He’s got like minions or s- or there are… Maybe they aren’t. I don’t know. There are other undertakers doing things in this movie.

Craig: Seemingly, right. I also thought that was weird. I was like, “Did they only have Angus Scrimm some days?” Because in those scenes where… And, and there are two of them, and they look exactly the same. I don’t know- Yeah … if they were, I don’t know if they were twins or just actors who were made up to look the same, but there are two of them.

And I didn’t know… There was one scene in particular where one of those undertakers has Liz, the blonde psychic girl, like in a crematorium. And I just kept thinking, “Why isn’t this Angus Scrimm?” Are they otherworldly? I mean, they, they seem a little pale with like dark circles around their eyes, but they also seem to be human.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Unlike Angus Scrimm, who seems to not be.

Todd: Yeah. You know, everyone else is attacking them. Those are the little munchkin things. These undertakers really aren’t doing a lot of aggressive stuff. It’s like they’re coming in when, when they’re incapacitated or they’re… That maybe they think they’re dead And they’re wheeling them in.

Like, there’s that one scene where they wheel them into the furnace room, and then she comes alive. Yeah. And then he goes after her, and she gets the best of him. Then, then there’s that big scene in the hallway.

Craig: That’s what I was gonna say. Because one of them is trying to attack Liz, I think. I don’t remember if this is…

They’re in mausoleums so often. Like, mausoleums all across the American Southwest. I don’t know.

Todd: Massive old school- Yeah. … like, Gothic mausoleums.

Craig: I don’t know if this is at her grandfather’s funeral. And, like, sometimes she’s in one by herself. Sometimes they’re in them together. I don’t know. But at some point she is being chased around by one of these undertaker guys, and what ends up saving her is the spheres come out.

There’s also a random priest. Yeah. I don’t even know if he’s worth talking about ’cause he doesn’t do anything. His sphere death is notable, so I guess we should talk about that. But at this one point, the… I was not confused, I guess, but the spheres come out, and you can kind of see, like, sphere vision. Hmm.

Yeah. But it goes, it goes through the hand of the undertaker. Once he’s pinned to the wall, another one comes around the corner, and it seems like it’s gonna, like, kill him or whatever. I don’t know that I understand the spheres. Right. Are they just, like, motion sensing? I, I guess they don’t differentiate between good guys and bad guys.

It’s just whoever is around.

Todd: I, I- That was confusing, wasn’t it? I… The minute- Yeah … the spheres are attacking this guy when they seem to be aiming for the others. It’s like they ducked out of the way just in time. The sphere gets his hand, but now that it’s, it’s gonna go after him, and then the other one comes around, like you said, and that’s the gold Rambo one, right?

Which also has, like- A laser? A

Craig: laser?

Todd: They really up- Yeah. They really up the tech on these spheres in this one, I’ll tell you. It’s got a laser. It could, like, burn through doors. You know, the other thing about the spheres that was kind of creepy in the original too was that they just kind of fly through the air, but you don’t get the sense that they’re gonna stop, change course, turn around, float for a little while, wander up and down the hallway like they’re patrolling, like they have some personality.

Whereas these spheres do, or at least the Rambo sphere seems to have this bit to it. I mean, it kind of comes in almost like a, a droid from Star Wars when the two kids are hiding.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And, and it’s got this laser scanning of the room and stuff. I mean, it’s, it’s a big difference.

Craig: Yeah. I… You find out later in one of the movies that there are little brains in each one of those.

Todd: Oh my God. Okay. Wow.

Craig: There’s a little human brain in each one.

Todd: There’s-

Craig: That, that’s all I remember. I don’t remember names.

Todd: There’s some things you don’t even wanna know, you know? There’s some things you don’t wanna explain.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: But this is just emblematic, again, of how I think this second movie just totally changes the character of the original.

I mean, the second movie is just so action heavy and so much like, “We’re gonna go and hunt down the, the Tall Man and stop what he’s doing.” And in the beginning especially, i- it’s almost like even though you don’t see the Tall Man, I mean, the impression is the Tall Man’s on the run. And that, in a way, neuters him a little bit, I think.

Even though when he does appear, he’s got full control and nobody can really get him. He just-

Craig: See, but another problem of mi- yeah. Another problem of mine is you said it’s action heavy, and I suppose it is, but nothing really happens. Like, they’re just constantly, I guess, one step behind him until they’re not anymore.

Todd: Right. Nothing happens to advance, like, the story beyond-

Craig: Right … “

Todd: Oh, the Tall Man’s out there doing these things. We’ve gotta get him. Oh, we just missed him,” or, “Oh, we just had an encounter. Now we move to the next place.” Right. You know? It’s just like a chase.

Craig: In Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, there’s this one scene where they’re just talking about, like, they’re having deep philosophical conversations about the TV shows that they watch.

And Gordie’s like, “Have you ever noticed on Wagon Train they never get anywhere? They just keep on wagon training.” And like, that’s what this movie felt like. Yes. Yeah. They just kept on wagon training. And then it, it, it seemed like the town, there was… They kept naming this town, I don’t remember what it was named.

Not Pierogi, but that’s all I can come up with. Something like that.

Todd: Pierogi, sure, prob-

Craig: And, and it was like, it was Anesthesia or what was her name? What was that girl’s name? Oh, Apothecary. Tommy, Kimmy. Ap- Apothekimmy. Apoth- Apothecary. Whatever her name is. It was, it’s like it’s her hometown or whatever, and when they get there-

Clip: Looks like a ghost town.

Things sure have changed since I left. Oh

yeah? How long has that been?

I don’t know. Must be 10 years now.

We’re gonna have to find a place to hole up.

You know, my uncle owns a bed and breakfast on the other side of town, and, uh, you guys have been really nice to me, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind giving you a room.

That’d be great

Craig: And, and they’re talking about how everybody’s staying inside ’cause they’re all scared, and then there’s some mention of how the Tall Man is harvesting everyone in the town. What? Why? What is happening? Is this a special town? Is Apothecary or whatever her name is, is she really from here?

Like, there were just so many story elements that didn’t go anywhere. Yeah. I, so I just didn’t understand really what was happening. Because ultimately none of those things really matter. It kind of just turns out ending the same way the first one did, with a showdown in a mortuary. Yeah. Where they seemingly win.

Todd: Right.

Craig: I don’t, I don’t intend to, to jump to the end. There’s more to talk about, but- Yeah … it’s just kind of a big road to nowhere.

Todd: It is, yeah. So like, once you’ve introduced… The joy of the first movie is all these weird elements, and it’s just a big mystery and you don’t know what’s happening. And even when more elements are introduced, it, they’re just more questions than anything.

All the way up to the end where it’s explaining that, “Oh, by the way, there are these two, like, giant tuning pins inside the mortuary that between them lead to this fan- this world that j- doesn’t look like much of a world, just a big ass wasteland.”

Craig: Mars. Yeah, it

Todd: looks- Yeah. Like, why would you need to sh- shrink people down to send them into this wasteland, you know?

Kind of weird. And then I think he kinda gets the better of the Tall Man by stopping the tuning forks, right? Doesn’t he put his hands on both of them, which somehow breaks something?

Craig: I don’t remember that.

Todd: That’s what kinda sets off their advantage. And that’s kind of juxtaposed nicely with Reggie himself as a guitar player.

He has his tuning fork he keeps bringing out.

Clip: Oh, yeah.

Todd: It, it all kind of seems to fold together into this interesting thing where you’re like, “There are layers here we’re just not understanding and, and are not being given to us.” But you know, there feels like there’s a weird David Lynch-esque type vision behind this that is just inaccessible to us, but I’m really enjoying this ride and it’s creepy as hell.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: This movie just, like you said, it doesn’t provide any new information. All we get are these new elements, but sadly, not in a real creepy way, just a very practical way. Okay, these are the patrol balls. They’re not that mysterious anymore. They’re just like, like cyborg orbs that w- can even use their lasers to blast through doors and scan a room when they’re looking for somebody.

These little munchkin monsters You know, well, okay, so he’s shrinking them and sending them away, but also apparently they are also minions that he can keep here to help protect him and what he’s doing. And so they’re just goons. You know? They’re just goons that pop out every now and then. Uh, just when there needs to be some action in the movie, suddenly from around the corner, three or four of these things come and attack the person.

Okay.

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: And then the, it’s said specifically in the movie that they have been going from town to town, and that the Tall Man is leaving these traps for them along the way.

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: Okay. So like, what, they just miss him every single time? The, the Tall Man leaves a, a little vision behind to go like, “Fooled ya.

I’ll see you at the next town.”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: You know, like You don’t know. What? Okay. But it just loses a lot of the m- mystery and horror.

Craig: Well, and that was w- one of the traps… So he says that. He says sometimes he sets traps. And then they show us an old cemetery and, like, these dug up graves. So, like, evidence that he’s been there or whatever.

But we know that this is fake, I guess. And then they find a boarded-up church, and they use their chainsaw to get in there. And there, he f- there’s a naked- Mausoleum … corpse. That’s, that… Yeah, mausoleum. That’s when he first sees and- Elizabeth? But then later after that, after she finds… No, the other one.

Arcadia or- Oh, oh, right, right

Todd: I

Craig: can’t remember what her name was. Arcadia. Gim- Gimmy. Apothecary. Yeah. Kim- a- alchemy. Alchemy. Yeah.

Todd: Alchemy. Yeah, that’s right. Sorry.

Craig: That’s when he first sees her. But then after he sees her, then he’s still looking around in there and he sees just, like, a huddled figure, like, under a, like a shroud or something.

And as he gets closer, it’s Liz, who he’s seen in his dreams before. And sh- I don’t remember exactly. Does she have… I think she has tape over her mouth? And he’s like, “Don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m gonna save you,” or, or something. And then he notices, I think, something, like, moving around under whatever she’s draped in.

Her back.

Todd: Yeah, like under her… She’s in a cloak.

Craig: Yeah. And so he, like, he pulls the cloak away and I swear to God, a miniature version of the Freddy snake from Nightmare on Elm Street 3-

Todd: Yes …

Craig: comes out and talks to him. Now I don’t remember the timing, but they look so much alike.

Todd: Oh, it looks so similar. “

Craig: Come east if you dare.”

Like, why is this Tall Man taunting them?

Todd: Right.

Craig: Like, why? Why, why are either of them messing with one another? Now in the first one, if I remember correctly, all they were doing was stealing corpses. Is that really that big a deal? Like- True … is that really bothering you so much that it’s worth throwing your life away to go on this…

Like, just let them have their corpses. And like, sure- … I guess that the Tall Man killed their family. Like, s- I don’t even remember what happened to the older brother. I don’t remember if he died or… He comes back. This is the only movie he’s not in. But, uh, I don’t remember what happened to him. Something happened to him, and then in the beginning of this movie, the Tall Man kills Reggie’s entire family, like blows up the whole house.

Like, there’s a huge house explo- Right. But that’s only ’cause they were messing with him. Like Yeah. Leave the guy alone. Let him and his dinks collect their corpses and send them to Mars and everybody will be fine. Calm down.

Todd: You’re kinda right about that. And, well, you know, in comparing it to The Evil Dead, the biggest, most jarring difference is that Bruce Campbell is a reluctant hero.

Craig: Right.

Todd: You, you just get the distinct impression that he’s a badass. I mean, he’s fed up with things, but he doesn’t exactly go seeking out the Deadites. They’re just constantly menacing him. It’s just like one long story of him just trying to finally be rid of them. This is them actively going after this guy who, like you said, uh, might as well just be doing what he’s doing.

He’s not, like, causing an apocalypse. But then again, is he? Because if he comes to these towns and everybody’s afraid, and they’re boarding up and they can’t come out, he must be doing something else.

Craig: Well, and he’s taking living people this time. I don’t remember if he… Well, not exclusively. He’s still taking dead people, but he takes the grandmother too.

See, I didn’t understand that whole part. I didn’t- Oh, I didn’t either … understand the grandfather kind of being a zombie for a little bit. And, like, he shows up in the grandmother’s bed, and then the next time we see the grandmother she’s a dink, and that was really a hilarious scene. Yeah. Liz has to fight her dinkified grandmother, and then she, like, knocks her out with a big vase, and, like, the dink goes flying across the room and she goes, “Sorry, Grandma,” and then just runs away.

That was so funny. I laughed

Todd: out loud at that.

Craig: Sorry, Grandma. Oh

Todd: my God. So hilarious.

Craig: Oh, God. It, it, it sounds, I’m sure, like we are really tearing this movie apart, and, and I think that that’s fair.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It’s fine. It’s entirely watchable. I’m disappointed that Angus Scrimm isn’t in it as much. Like- He’s not.

Yeah … he just kinda, he just kinda pops in and out and doesn’t really have a lot to do. And I don’t get that. He’s the best part of the first movie. If anything, I would’ve thought that he would’ve gotten more screen time, but he just kinda pops in every once in a while to say something kind of menacing-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: and then just go away.

Todd: It really does beg the question if he’s really the catalyst. Like, you get the idea in the first movie that he’s the guy pulling all the strings. Like, he’s the god of… He’s in charge, you know? In this movie- I don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff moving around and happening without him.

Craig: Oh, yeah.

Todd: I mean, maybe he’s behind the scenes where we can’t see, controlling it, or maybe his minions and, are just so effective that he doesn’t need to be there monitoring them the whole time, telling them what to do. But you just don’t get a sense that he’s an active presence in most of what’s happening.

So they’re hunting The Tall Man, but they rarely see The Tall Man. I mean, God, if I was The Tall Man, I’d just kinda stay out of their way. I mean, no need to pop in every now and then. You’re always one step ahead of them anyway, laying traps and whatnot.

Craig: Yeah. I, I mean, he really doesn’t show up as a major threat until the final act, and then he’s not really around a lot then because after Mike and Liz have some sort of weird dream date where they talk to each other without moving their mouths, but like- Oh, that was so

Todd: weird.

Craig: It’s the most, it’s the most chaste thing I’ve ever seen. Like, they’re lying in a bed together, fully clothed, on top of the blankets, and then they wake up and just… I guess they’re dreaming, so they can talk to each other without actually talking. But they don’t do anything.

Todd: I thought they were just psychically communicating with each other like they had been over distance, except this time they were next to each other.

Clip: Lips aren’t moving We’re dreaming

Todd: Wow.

Clip: This is great

We’re different, Mike. That’s why he wants us, ’cause we’re the only ones who can see what he’s doing. I prayed so hard that you’d find me, and you did

Craig: I love you. I don’t know. After that, and after that weird sex scene with Kimmy and Reggie, then the Tall Man shows up and, and grabs Liz through the window. He’s a big fan of doing that. That’s like his MO. Yeah,

Todd: that’s his MO. Yeah.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: He d- I did get kinda tired of that, honestly. It, it was awesome the first time it happened, and then the second time- Yeah

you’re like, “Oh, okay.” And then the third time it’s like, “Uh, is this gonna be a thing?” ‘Cause now it’s lost its impact.

Craig: Right. Yeah, and so then they have to go find her and, and Reggie tells Kimmy, he’s like, “You drive south.” And she’s like, “Will I ever see you again?” And he says, “I’ll find you if I’m able.” Okay.

Whatever.

Todd: They really do just ditch her, don’t they?

Craig: They do, and I didn’t think that we would see her again, but she does show up again. But-

Todd: I thought she’d come in as like a, you know, big savior at the end of one of the s- one of the, you know, final battle or something like that. She’d kick open the door.

Craig: See, and I was still super suspicious of her, so I thought that she would show up and be like helping the tall guy or whatever, but she doesn’t show up until the very end. But there’s a big… They chase the hearse, and Mike flips the car, and there’s a big explosion, but somehow they still make it to the c- the mausoleum/crematorium.

There’s a scene, I, I loved that scene of Reggie and Mike standing in front of the like burning car and the fla- you know, they’re- Mm-hmm … lit by the flames. And they’re like, “Let’s go kick some ass.” Yeah. And they suit up in their makeshift suits, and they break… For reasons I, unknown, Mike sees an embalming station and is like, “I’m gonna put some hydrochloric acid in this embalming fluid.”

Oh, God. And he makes some comment. He’s like… I don’t even know, like what, what was his thought process? Like- Let’s see him try to, let’s see him try to- Embalm somebody with this … see what he does to that body or whatever. Like why? Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. And they find what Mike deduces is a keyhole, and he’s like, “We gotta catch a dink,” or something. They- Well, we gotta- They have to, they have-

Todd: They catch the ba- the orb.

Craig: Yeah. Well, they… Okay, right. They have to catch one of those orbs I guess. And they do. I mean, we already talked about the way that they get the sphere, we already talked about how it gets the, the mortuary guy.

And it, he, to, to escape the second one, he’s pinned, his hand is pinned to the wall by one. To escape the second one, he cuts his hand off. So after they dispatch him, they go back and they get the orb, and Mike, again, just deduces that the orbs, as long as they’re embedded in flesh, don’t move, I guess.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Okay. And so- If you say so … good, good

Todd: thing of figuring that out, and they use it as a key.

Craig: And they do use it as a key. Meanwhile, Reggie is having his hero fight with some huge guy in a gas mask who has just popped in every once in a while.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I, I don’t know who he is. We have no idea who this guy is,

Todd: why he’s wearing a gas mask.

Craig: Or why randomly, somewhere in the middle of the movie, he was pushing around a smoldering coffin. I don’t know what that was about. Mm. It was like it had burned, and it was still smoking, and he was p- uh, again, I don’t know. But there’s a huge chainsaw fight, and it’s funny ’cause Reggie has a little tiny chainsaw and the other guy has a great big huge chainsaw.

I really dug that. It’s very phallic and silly. That was funny. I thought it was funny. And it’s a whole action thing where at some point, like, Reggie, like, leapfrogs over the other guy and his chainsaw, and eventually he saws the guy’s cr- crotch. And then they all get together and they use the sphere to open the lock, and they find the tuning fork yet again.

Todd: Almost get sucked in.

Craig: And, and, and then the Tall Man shows up. Yeah, they- And then- … almost get sucked in, ’cause I guess it’s sucky now.

Todd: Right.

Craig: Oh. Yeah. And M- yeah, so and Mike and Reggie almost get sucked in there, and there’s, like, a slimy, big, like, c- crawling at them. Crawling towards them. But-

Todd: Elizabeth shows up, and the Tall Man’s there …

Craig: and he ties her to a thing, and he’s gonna embalm her with the acid, and he doesn’t even know it’s acid. But Mike, once he gets Reggie out of the tuning fork, I think, he somehow gets one of the spheres and launches it at the Tall Man, and it gets him right in the face.

And instead of blood coming out, it’s all this yellow gook that shoots out of him. Yeah. And, and then there’s a hole in his head from the sphere, and, like, a long, like, pincher- Like a claw? On, like, a tentacle Like a great lab, crab claw or something comes poking out. Yeah, like a long claw or something comes out.

I, I don’t remember… I do remember that in part four especially, they really get into the nature of who and what the Tall Man is.

Todd: Okay.

Craig: And I can’t imagine that you mind spoilers, and this is only to the best of my recollection anyway, but he, he used to be… Well, there was a man that looked like the Tall Man back in, I don’t know, the late 1800s or something, and I think he was a scientist.

And he built that tuning fork thing. I think he was trying to explore other dimensions, and he went through it, but when he came back out, he was different, and he was the Tall Man. Hmm. So there was an original guy that looked like that, but I think that whenever he went in there, he changed and became something else.

And if I remember correctly There’s not just one. Like- Oh. He’s kinda like that guy from The Matrix.

Todd: Oh, like Agent Smith?

Craig: Yeah, he’s kinda like Agent Smith from The Matrix. Like he- He cloned

Todd: himself?

Craig: He- well, he’s really more like an avatar. Like- Oh. You can kill one, but if you kill one, another one will just step right in.

Oh. Um, a- and I, and I think in, in four, at some point in time there’s like a… You see like a whole army of them or something. I don’t know. But we don’t know that at this point. At this point, all we know is he bleeds yellow gook and he’s got tentacle claws coming out and, but, uh… And, and they fight a little bit, but Mike, I think Mike, I don’t know, somebody ends up stabbing him with the huge embalming needle and flips the switch to pump the acid into him, and he kind of dissolves, I guess, from the inside.

He melts and his eyes explode. It’s all practical effects, and there are tons of practical effects in this movie- Yeah … and they look good. It’s great. Greg Nicotero was one of the guys. I don’t remember, uh, the other main guy who worked on it. It’s another p- But these are great practical effects, and I guess this took a long time, and Angus Scrimm had to be in the makeup chair for hours at a time to get the various stages of this decomposition.

But anyway, he melts away and, and they run out of the mortuary, and surprise, surprise, Kimi is there in a hearse to drive them away, and they drive away as the mortuary burns, and somebody literally goes, “Woo-hoo!”

Todd: Yeah. Oh

Craig: my God. And you

Todd: think it’s the end again?

Craig: Yeah, but I, I mean, I think you anticipate that there’s… Because of the great kind of shocking Friday The 13th jump scare at the end of the first one, I anticipated there had to be something, especially since it had wrapped up so quickly. Like, as, as great as those practical effects of the Of, of the Tall Man melting away were.

It felt anticlimactic. It, it, it- Mm-hmm … it reminded me a lot of the end of Poltergeist III, which is a movie that I’ve mentioned to you lately that I would like to do. But the ending of that is somewhat similar for different reasons, interesting reasons. But it just felt anticlimactic. So I was expecting something else, and you get something else, but I don’t know.

Todd: I don’t know either. It just kinda resets everything in a way. Kimi, is that what we’re calling her? Alchemy?

Craig: Yeah. Uh.

Todd: Whatever. She’s driving, and Reggie’s n- next to her, and in the back is Mike and, and Elizabeth. And Reggie calls back to him to check the, the… ‘Cause they’re in the hearse, I guess, and he calls back- Mm-hmm

to check the coffin, and he says, “Oh, there’s nobody in the coffin, thank God.” And so then Kimi closes the… There’s, like, a rising and closing door. Like any hearse would have this. It’s like a limo, right?

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: right. Like, there’s a little door to separate the back from the front so that, to, I guess, to give the corpse some privacy when you need to.

And and they get their privacy, and Reggie reaches, you say, says something to Kimi. And Kimi reaches up to her hair or something and pulls a big chunk of hair out, and some of her flesh comes off, too. And, and this is when you’re like, “Okay, yeah, she is trouble, isn’t she?” And then in the backseat, the… So they’re screaming, and I think there’s flying all over the road.

And in the backseat, the two of them are back there and realize something’s wrong, and they’re looking at each other, and they’re like, “This is just a dream. We just need to realize it’s just a dream.”

Craig: Well, the, the car, the car comes to a stop, and Reggie, all bloodied and battered-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: plasters, gets plastered up against the window in the back- Uh-huh

and, like, falls, like, falls to the ground.

Todd: Falls to his… It looked, like, dead, right? Like-

Craig: Yeah … you

Todd: messed

Craig: him up. And the hearse drives away. Yeah, the hearse drives away, and you see an aerial shot, and he’s just laying there in the road, presumably dead. Not, I mean, obviously he’s not, ’cause he comes back, but…

So the hearse is driving away, and that’s when, you know, the, it’s just a shot of them in the back of the f- hearse face-to-face, and he’s saying to her, “This isn’t real. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.” And she says, “It’s just a dr-” And then Then

Todd: the Tall Man- The, the- … springs up in the window of the car and goes- Yeah

“No, it’s not.” And then reaches in like he always does s- through the window and pulls them out.

Craig: Somebody does. Something pulls, yes. They get grabbed through the back window of the hearse and pulled out.

Todd: That’s true. It’s not him, is it? ‘Cause it’s, they’re pulled out of the back window. How many times are people gonna be pulled out through a window?

Craig: I think more- I think so … as the series goes on.

Todd: They’re gonna have to top the four times that happened in this movie. I mean, my God. Up the ante

Craig: I’m pretty sure that part three, much like this one, picked up exactly where part one left off. I think that part three picks up exactly where this one leaves off.

Well,

Todd: it had better, you know? I mean, come

Craig: on. But I, but I also think that they have a tendency of just ignoring certain things that happen in different, like- Kind of retconning stuff … yeah. Like Gosh, I don’t remember specifically. But they- do they even mention… What, what is the brother’s name? Like Jordy or- From the first one?

Yeah. They barely mention him in this one at all, and then he becomes a main plot point and character again in the next one. So I think they kind of just pick up and- Interesting. I, I don’t remember if these two girls, Kimmy and, and Liz… ‘Cause I know they drop the whole psychic thing in the next movie. Huh.

So I don’t know if Liz is- Psychic Liz is still around in the next one. I don’t remember. But I would be interested in revisiting them a- and, and particularly Ravager. I don’t remember any of them well, but I do th- remember that Ravager was one of those deals where it cuts back and forth between different timelines.

And there- I think there are three timelines, but the ones that I remember specifically are in one of them it’s basically… Do you remember when they were going to make a sequel to Army of Darkness and it was gonna be Bruce Campbell waking up in, like, a post-apocalyptic world? Yep.

Todd: Yep.

Craig: That’s basically what one of the timelines is.

It’s Reggie in, like, this kind of post-apocalyptic landscape where there are these huge, you know, spheres that have destroyed entire cities and, and all that kind of thing. But one of the other timelines is it’s just him as an old man in, like, a convalescence home and, and Mike, again played by the original actor, is visiting him, telling him that all of those adventures that they had had are just in his mind.

Todd: Oh, boy.

Craig: And, and I, and I don’t think that… I, I think in the end of the movie you, you know, you’re, you’re meant to question w- did any of this really happen or did- was it all just delusions in this elderly man’s- So I would be, I, I would be interested in going back and watching the other ones because even…

I feel like this is, like, kind of the commercial one, and because it didn’t do particularly well. It made back its budget barely in the United States, and then I think it made, like, 7 million internationally or something like that. So, you know, th- they didn’t lose money on it, but it wasn’t the hit that they were hoping that it would be, and that’s why the next two sequels were direct to video.

And then you said Ravager got a theatrical release, but I think it was really limited. I don’t think it played many theaters. Hmm. So I think because this was the only one that was studio-backed, they were able to go back to more of their kind of creative, weird, do-whatever-we-want kind of vibe.

Todd: I see.

Craig: And I would be interested in revisiting those.

And, and maybe for the show, maybe not. This, this piqued my interest in those again.

Todd: Yeah, I would like to. I mean, I think at some point we should probably just finish out the series. I’m, I’m, I’m interested. Although As I kind of remember from, again, when I saw this as a kid, I, I’m, I’m still a little disappointed.

Honestly, I guess it’s more of a sci-fi thing, isn’t it? And that’s fine. Obviously Don Coscarelli can take this story wherever he wants, and the original also has these strong sci-fi elements to it. By the end, you realize that it’s It’s definitely got sci-fi in it. But I feel like this movie just, it just wasn’t scary.

Craig: It wasn’t

Todd: really. It was just kind of a big adventure thing. You know, it’s fine.

Craig: It was still fun. I mean- Yeah, it was still fun … it, honest to God, I’m, I, I, I would say this whether we were doing it as a tribute episode or not. Reggie Bannister is having a lot of fun, and I think the guy that played Mike is having a lot of fun, too.

A- and to be very fair, you know, I’m glad that they brought the original guy back. I think that that was the smart choice. I, I think this guy legitimately is a better actor, and that’s not to say that I think that he’s an amazing actor, but I think that he’s better than the other guy.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But I get wanting continuity.

I get being of a fan of a movie and, you know, wanting the original people back. I totally understand that. But it’s, it’s still fun. It- I, I still f- found this movie fun to watch. Is it a great movie? No. But there’s, there’s enough w- with Reggie Bannister and, I mean, even just Angus Scrimm, even though you don’t get to see him that often, he’s great.

Yeah. I, I don’t wanna make it sound like it’s terrible ’cause I don’t think it’s terrible. I don’t think it’s as good as the first one, but sequels rarely are. But at the same time, I, I don’t think that you should just disregard it. I don’t, I… Especially if you liked the first one and have any interest in seeing how it continues.

I think it’s, I think it’s worth it.

Todd: Yeah. I don’t think it’s bad. And I have to say, I remember from the first movie not being particularly impressed with Reggie Bannister’s acting.

Clip: Hm.

Todd: In this film- Totally fair … s- something’s happened between the two. I think he’s great. I think he feels comfortable in his skin.

I feel like he has a good, solid take on his character. I b- I thought he was very believable in what he did, and I thought he was charming to watch on the screen. Like- Yeah … legitimately charming. More than anyone else in this movie. Well, you know, except for maybe the Tall Man, but again, we don’t see much of him.

Craig: He’s got kind of a Clint Howard vibe kind of, I would say, in that- Yeah … he’s, he’s, he’s likable and kind of easy to root for. Because I see myself in an actor like him far more than I see myself in, you know, a big Hollywood… A- and I think that’s, that’s appealing- Hm … to me and probably to others, too. But, but you’re right.

I don’t know. His, his acting is a little hammy, but I think that’s appropriate. And, and like you said, charming. I, I really liked him, too.

Todd: Well, RIP Reggie Bannister. You will be missed, and, uh, we are looking forward to exploring some more of your oeuvre as we continue. Guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Find us at chainsawhorror.com. Leave us a voice message there by clicking Talk To Us, and we would love to hear you give us a request or d- say whatever’s on your mind to. Go and write a review for us on one of those podcast review platforms. We would love to see your positive reviews up there.

And, uh, also head on over to patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. See what we have to offer back there for only five bucks a month. We do our complete unedited phone calls just the minute we finish them, uh, for our patrons so that they can get a sneak preview of the episode in its complete and unfiltered glory before it ever goes out each week.

We have mini-sos up there. We have a book club that’s ongoing and quite fun, and lots of, uh, fun, interesting discussion behind the scenes that could all be yours for just five bucks a month. We appreciate your support, and we certainly love our patrons, as well as all of our listeners. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Clip: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

THE DOG DOESN’T DIE! Don’t worry, folks.

With that out of the way, we dig into 2025’s Good Boy, a low-budget haunted-house horror told largely from a dog’s perspective, and talk about why it’s basically 75 minutes of being up close with Indie (and why that’s either a feature or a bug).

We cover the film’s SXSW buzz, long shoot with an untrained dog, and surprising box office success, then unpack what worked for us: the eerie atmosphere, subtle shadowy scares, dream/vision sequences, and the ambiguity around whether the cabin is haunted, the family is cursed, or we’re just watching death creep in as the owner grows sicker and more unstable.

We also discuss pacing, the fox trap subplot, the muddy “reaper” finale, and why the dog-centered viewpoint makes the story uniquely unsettling—plus, yes, the dog doesn’t die.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/11/good-boy-poster.jpeg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Good Boy (2025)

Episode 506, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, this week we have decided to go with a pretty new movie, Craig’s choice. This is a dog of a film. Good Boy. Oh, was that bad? That was pretty bad. Sorry. This is Good Boy from 2025, last year, starring a dog. And I knew why you picked this from the very beginning.

You just wanted to see a dog for an hour and 15 minutes.

Craig: Yep.

Todd: And that’s basically what it is. We are looking up very, very up close and personal with a beautiful little dog named Indie. I believe this film premiered at South by Southwest, got a very good reception, went to theaters and stuff all over the world.

Eventually, I think it’s in streaming now. It was shot over the course of three years, I think about 400 days over the course of three years, just because the main actor, who’s a dog, wasn’t a trained dog. It was just the writer-director’s dog, but he insisted on using it because he liked its expressiveness.

It took a long time to shoot, but only cost about $70,000, and grossed to date, I think, over 8.7 million at the box office worldwide. Nice. So that’s pretty doggone good. Had you seen this before we watched it for this, uh, this, this episode?

Craig: Yeah. I remember reading about this at some point before it came out, and I was…

You know, you’re right. I’m just, uh, I’m a dog person. I like dogs, and so I was just… The fact that it was, you know, about a dog was interesting to me. But what was more interesting was that it’s shot kind of… I don’t know. It’s not shot from the dog’s perspective. It’s not like POV most of the time. Right.

But the narrative is from the dog’s perspective, basically. I mean- Yeah … we’re riding along with the dog, and so I was, uh, intrigued by that. And so, yes, as soon as it became available to stream, I watched it, and I really liked it. And I talked to our friend Heather about it, and she saw it, and she liked it.

And I’ve had it on my list of movies for the podcast for a long time, but we’ve just never gotten around to it. And I, I just kind of picked it at random this week, and I’m interested to hear what you think of it. ‘Cause watching it again, the first time, all I really remember about it, you know, is, is kind of the basics of the plot and that it’s from the dog’s perspective, and that I liked it.

I remembered that. I didn’t remember a whole lot of the details, and watching it again, I kept wondering what your reaction to it would be- … ’cause though I know you are an animal lover in general, you’re not exactly a dog person. Like, and I wonder if you kind of have to be a… A- again, that’s why I prefaced it with I know you’re an animal lover in general.

You just tend to be more of, if, of a cat person, I guess if you, uh- Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, if I have my choice, I’m more of a cat person. Right. And that’s purely selfish reasons. Like, uh, if I’m gonna have an animal, and I, I grew up with cats, so I’m a little biased that way too. Gosh, until we moved to China, I’ve always had a cat in the house or two from when I was a kid.

We had a cat named Taco who was a You know, lovely member of the family and had her own quirks, and then, you know, when I went off to college she passed away ’cause she was getting old and had a bacterial infection and that took her. And then, uh, yeah, later, you know, my parents got two other cats, and then when I got married, Vic and I had cats, and we had to give them away before we came to China.

I gave them away to my aunt. But I understand. You know, I’m an animal lover. I love animals, I love pets. But for me, selfishly, cats I can manage because cats don’t require a lot of attention.

Craig: That’s right.

Todd: And dogs require so much attention, they might as well be another child in the house. In fact, sometimes cats don’t want you to give them too much attention, and I kind of like that about them.

I like that they’re independent and-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: you know, they’re, they’re quirky.

Craig: They are independent and they’re… Yeah, and they’re far- They’re, like, they’re way more low-maintenance than dogs. Yeah. They’re just a lot… Uh, y- you know, I remember back in, you know, the days when I left the house, if you would need to leave for, like, a weekend or whatever, you could just leave a big huge bowl of food and a big huge bowl of water or, like, leave water in the bathtub or whatever, and cats are fine by themselves for a few days.

Dogs certainly not, which is one of, one of the only issues that I have with this movie. It’s about a dog, and he locks that dog up in the house and never takes it to the bathroom.

Todd: That’s a very good point, right? We never see that. We never see him really taking him for a walk, to the bathroom, anything like that.

And

Craig: that’s a, that’s a big, that’s a big part of your life if you have a dog in the house. Yeah. Like gotta be taking him to the bathroom on the regular.

Todd: Managing some oth- some- something else or someone else’s pooping and peeing schedule all day long, that’s just a bridge too far for me. I had a kid. I have a kid, and thank God we’re past that phase where we have to do that.

He can go on his own now. It’s fantastic.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: And I figure… And I felt like as soon as, as soon as Kenji was potty trained, I’d almost felt like my, my work as a parent was half over. I don’t want to sound like a, a- You’ve

Craig: given him the essentials.

Todd: Yeah, that’s right. It’s, it’s important. The stuff that’s not gonna embarrass him on a first date.

Everything else, whatever. You know, I don’t want to sound like an i- like an, an asshole, but there’s little that is more off-putting… I shouldn’t say off-putting. Frustrating, not the right word either. Just kind of a bummer Whenever you’re hanging out with friends with dogs, at any given time they’re gonna chime in with, “Oh, you know what?

I gotta go ’cause I gotta take the dog out.” “Oh, this, this spontaneous thing that we came up s- with sounds like a lot of fun, but unfortunately we can’t do it because I gotta get home to the dog.” You know? You- y- that, that kind of thing is just such a part of a dog owner’s life that I just, I don’t… I can tell I couldn’t tolerate it.

It doesn’t, it doesn’t fit with my life, just like, uh, a lot of things don’t. Smoking-

Craig: That’s one of the main reasons for having a dog is so that you can do that.

Todd: Well, I, I can see where getting out of the situations is pretty, yeah, it’s pretty handy for that. Don’t, don’t get me wrong, having a kid works the same way.

Craig: Right.

Todd: I’ve used that excuse many a time. But, uh, but it’s a real thing, you know? You’re, like you said, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta do these things on a regular basis with the dog, which makes him more maintenance. But

Craig: yeah. I get it, ’cause I was just gonna say you and I have, like, very different lifestyles.

Like, you’re always on the go. It would make a- a- and you live in the city, and it would make no sense really for you to have a dog. You’re not home enough. I’m home all the time, and so, like, I really appreciate the companionship, and it’s really nice to have a little creature that, like, loves you more than anything and just wants to be, like, super loyal to you.

Right. It’s, it’s, like, all the good parts of having a kid without all the bad parts. Like, I don’t know. I do still… My- I have to wipe my dog’s butt so- Yeah … I go even a step further than most dog owners.

Todd: I

Craig: see. So I, I, I get it, but I… That’s what I was saying. Like, I’m just curious if the movie hits the same way whether you’re, like, a dog lover or ambivalent about dogs.

Todd: I thought the concept was strong enough that I was entertained, and I was kind of glued to the screen to see how they were gonna pull it off. And I was also curious to see if the story would be a little different because it was from the dog’s perspective. I kind of wondered to a c- certain degree… I mean, to a certain degree we’re in this dog’s world, right?

Because we’re, we’re down to his level for most of it.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: This movie makes you highly aware that a dog’s life is really a lot of just standing around, nothingness, staring at nothing, being interested in tiny little things that happen because they’re not going to work, they’re not talking, they’re not watching TV, you know?

They’re, they’re just there in a place where there’s just not a lot going on for so much of the time. And so I wondered if it was gonna insert other things like, well, maybe the dog’s senses. Maybe it can hear better and, you know, we all know dogs can… Can’t they see, like, a different spectrum or is that not true?

I think

Craig: so.

Todd: So, you know, is, is that gonna be a part of it? Is this gonna truly be from the dog’s perspective? And in a way it was, and in a way it wasn’t. You know, it didn’t really go that far, which is fine. Honestly, when we did Wolf, they did that to a certain extent, and I thought that was fascinating. And we’ve seen other horror movies where you’ll get a, an animal’s perspective from time to time, and you’ll see through their eyes, and the different colors of the ultraviolet spectrum, or the heat sensing or something like that that they have, which adds flavor to the plot.

This plot didn’t need it, but also it made the movie a little boring, I thought. Pacing wise, I… A- And it was only an hour and 13 minutes, which thank you, by the way. We love short movies.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: But it was a long hour and 13 minutes.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And that’s really because it is a lot of creepy atmosphere and not too much else for most of the running time.

Long, long shots of the dog staring at something, and so I don’t know if I would watch this a second time.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: But I actually did enjoy it the first time through, and by the end of it, I felt like the story was rather simple.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And that’s, that’s okay. It’s fine that it’s that simple, but it felt a little long and slow for me.

I don’t always need an action-packed thing. I’m not, I’m not that guy, right? And I was in the mood enough to have the patience for it tonight, so I enjoyed watching the movie. I think Todd, in an- on another day, might have been checking his watch an awful lot during this.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So depends on what mood you’re in, I guess, is what I’m saying.

Craig: Yeah. I, I, I totally get that, and you’re right. I mean, it, it feels like a solid hour and a half. It, it feels like a feature length. It, it doesn’t fly by. Um, and, and all the things that you said are correct. You know, because we’re, we’re really just with this dog and his owner for the vast majority of the movie.

Like, there’s a few other people, actors that pop in occasionally, but it’s mostly just the dog and his owner, whose face we almost never see-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: throughout the whole film. I mean, it, it’s, it’s very… A- And the other adult people, we… I don’t recall if we ever see any of their faces, at least not before the end.

They’re either voices on telephones, or they’re… There’s the guy in the woods who’s, like, wearing a camouflage mask thing. Like, it’s very focused on the dog, and you’re right. Like, dogs don’t talk, so they can’t tell us what they’re thinking or feeling, and they’re also limited in what they can do. Like, you said that it just shows that dogs sit around and stare at nothing a lot.

Well, I think that that’s true. But I also think that it shows that they are observant and curious because –

Todd: They have no choice?

Craig: I mean, maybe it’s… It- Well, I was gonna say, maybe it’s by nature, but what else is there to do?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But, but I, I, I also j- I, I thought that that was- An interesting perspective, ’cause there were times when, like, the dog would see something sus, and I’d be like, “Don’t go in there.

Don’t go in there.” But I’m like, he’s a dog. He’s just curious. Um- Yeah, he’s gonna go in there … my dog’s a big scaredy-cat, I don’t think would ever do anything like that, but, but, but that, that perspective interested me, and I did not mind for one second watching that dog because it’s just the, like, the cutest-

Todd: It is

Craig: dog.

Todd: Yeah. It’s a very pleasant dog to watch. It really, really is.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And you can tell, like, to be honest, the dog has one expression.

Craig: Kind of.

Todd: But they’re using music, and they’re using, you know, editing techniques and things that we, we all know. You know, you can say, you can show the same shot of a person staring off into space.

It’s what follows the shot or what comes before the shot that reads your interpretation of what they’re thinking, right?

Craig: Right.

Todd: Mm-hmm. Are they looking at a sandwich, or are they looking at a bomb? You could read the same thing off of someone’s face just by the mise en scene. You know, it’s, I think it’s what they call in French.

So yeah, y- I mean, ultimately you are watching this dog doing kind of the same expression, going around to things. And, and again, uh, probably this is also part of the filming, but maybe it could be argued that this is also part of looking at things from a dog’s perspective. The dog seems surprisingly not as rattled by some of the things that you would think, well, would certainly rattle a human.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And I thought about that, and I thought, “Well, yeah, that kinda makes sense, though,” right? Because the dog doesn’t understand the world, so, you know, it doesn’t… No dog really knows all the rules of the human world and knows what should be amazing and what shouldn’t be.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: If it saw a baby fly through the air, a human would be like, “Holy shit, why is that baby flying through the air?”

A dog might just be like, “Oh, I never saw that before. I guess babies fly through the air.”

Craig: Right.

Todd: There was that aspect, too, that, uh, as I was watching, I thought, “Oh, that’s, that’s actually kinda cool that we’re in this horror scene. There’s a dark, strange figure.” And instead of your typical horror movie where the protagonist is running away or hiding or screaming at their friends, it’s a dog who is going to be more apt to, depending on how it feels, bark at it as it’s, as though it’s a danger or, like, just investigate further.

And this dog is more of the investigative type, it seems, for a lot of stuff. And so that perspective was kinda nice, too, ’cause it allows us to linger, and it’s like, “What is that dark… What is it? Is it… It’s coming closer. What’s it gonna be?” You know, that kinda thing would, that often the camera’s gonna cut away before we get to, to figure that out.

And unfortunately, that wasn’t played with to the degree I thought it could’ve been played with. But yeah, I mean, it’s a solid… It’s a, it’s a very typical kind of ghost story about a haunted house, and it’s so simple-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: that I wondered if I was missing something. I, I was very confused for a lot of it, to be honest with you.

How about you?

Craig: There are things that are confusing about it, I think. I, I mean, but even the things that are confusing about it, some of the choices that make it confusing, I actually liked because I thought that they were unique and creative. I thought that it was creative that w- we’ll be seeing a scene with the dog in the same perspective as we have, but then the dog will wake up.

So apparently- It’s dreaming … we are privy to the dog’s dreams.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: The first time it happened, again, I’d seen it before but I, I re-watched it last night and Alan watched it with me, and I, I said, “Wait, was that a dream? Was that a dog dream?” Hmm.

Todd: I had the same feeling.

Craig: And then also, then later the dog, like, starts having visions, I, I think.

Right. And we’re privy to those also. A- and it was kind of confusing, but I also found it spooky and suspenseful and interesting. But y- I suppose that you’re right. To a degree it is a typical haunted house story. This guy, Todd, he’s moving into his late grandfather’s cabin, like, out in the woods because I think he’s really sick.

Did they ever say specifically in the movie what his illness was?

Todd: No,

Craig: they didn’t. I mean, it, it could’ve been… I mean, he’s coughing up blood and he’s in really bad shape, so. Could’ve

Todd: been lung cancer. We’re not

Craig: sure. He… Something- That was my guess … yeah, something like that … ‘

Todd: cause I think cancer’s referenced at some point, but-

Craig: He’s really, really sick and at one point he leaves for a whole day, and when he comes back he’s got a bandage on his arm that looks like it was a port So I wondered if that was maybe chemo.

God. Um, like maybe, I-

Todd: Right

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Doesn’t he come up from the basement or something too, just before that scene where we see the

Craig: bandage? Well, he comes home. He, it, the dog is upstairs, so yeah, he’s coming up the stairs, but he’s been gone that whole day.

Todd: I kid you not, I wondered at that point if he was on drugs.

Not that that was his whole problem, but that he was abusing drugs in order to deal with his illness or something, you know?

Craig: Well, I think it’s… I don’t know. I, I suspect that it’s intentionally ambiguous.

Todd: Yeah, I think so too.

Craig: That makes a lot of sense because of course a dog would have no idea what’s going on.

Now, his, he would just, the dog would just notice s- strange behavior. They wouldn’t know necessarily that the person was sick, except for the fact that Todd’s sister, Vera, who we only hear over the phone until the, like, last few seconds of the movie, she’s worried about him for a couple of reasons, but one of those is she’s worried about his health.

She asks if Indy has been acting weird at all because she has read that dogs can detect, uh, in fact, early detect disease like cancer and stuff like that.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So she’s worried about his health. So there’s obviously something wrong with him, but she’s also worried because their grandfather died in that house alone.

He also had a dog that we find out later went missing when he died, and I guess he was also sick and maybe kind of crazy. And so she is worried about him being in that house. I don’t know if she initially says that she’s worried that it might be haunted, but that’s kind of what seems to be implied.

Todd: Yeah.

Was the uncle a fan of horror movies or was he a producer of horror films?

Craig: I think he was just a fan because- Okay Todd says he finds a whole bunch of old videotapes, and some of them are just, like, self-recorded things, like the grandpa just talking into a camera. The grandpa, by the way, was the only actor I recognized.

His name’s Larry Fessenden. I recognized his picture on IMDb, and I looked him up, and he’s been in small roles in lots of things that you’ve probably seen. I couldn’t name one, but- … lots of things.

Todd: He’s one of those guys. Yeah.

Craig: Right. One of those guys. Some of them are those self-tape things, and the rest of them are just old horror movies, like either black and white, or he watches them on a black and white TV.

I… ‘Cause it’s always black and white. And then those horror movies are just kind of on in the background for most of the rest of the time.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I- which I thought was kind of atmospheric and cool. But the stuff that the grandpa says on the tapes gets progressively weird, and weird stuff is happening around the house from the very beginning.

Yeah. I mean, Indy starts noticing weird stuff around the house from the beginning, and it seems like kind of typical haunting, and we should continue to explain, you know, what’s happening. But ultimately, I question the nature of the haunting.

Todd: Right.

Craig: So I wanna talk about that eventually. But yeah, initially it seems pretty typical, right?

Todd: Yeah, and, and I agree with you. I question the nature of the haunting, too. I think, I’m just gonna say this now, I think there could be an interpretation here that the house isn’t haunted, that all of this is just in the mind of the dog Ultimately. You already mentioned their neighbor who, oh, you know, when they went out and about warned them of f- fox traps-

Craig: Right

Todd: that he had set up in the area. This is something that I thought was gonna be significant and really wasn’t, I don’t think, unless I’m mistaken.

Craig: Well, I think the dog gets caught in one later.

Todd: He… Oh, you’re right, he does. I- oh, was that what that was? Okay. Oh, now that makes sense. I think it’s around the same time that we hear over the phone about the previous owner’s dog missing that our dog is every now and then seeing glowing animal eyes, and you know animal eyes glow.

Mm-hmm. It could really be anything. Could be a fricking raccoon.

Craig: Right.

Todd: But I feel like because we’re starting to see these glowing animal eyes, I’m being led to believe that maybe there is a ghost dog out there somewhere.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: And so that was something that I thought about, but then there’s a point later on in the movie where he sees these eyes and a fox comes running out, and I thought, “Oh, maybe this was just a fox the whole time,” ’cause, you know, it had been set up they were foxes in the area.

Craig: Right.

Todd: It was interesting. You know, it’s, it’s like the movie does a lot of making dread and terror about something that could totally be explained away, like, that very moment, like the glowing animal eyes in the woods.

Craig: Sure.

Todd: There’s a lot of that happening when they go out to the woods and when they go around.

Craig: Well, and in the house, the dog is, like, seeing… And it’s really subtle. In fact, if you’re gonna watch this movie, I really recommend that you watch it in a dark room- Yeah … because some of these spooky things- They’re

Todd: shadows …

Craig: like, the dog just kind of sees… Yeah, the dog sees an odd shadow in the corner.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: And if you’re watching it in a bright room, it’s very difficult to tell what you’re supposed to be seeing.

Todd: There’s a lot of this, and there… and a shadow will… a dark figure kind of shadow will appear behind the dog.

Craig: Like a, a dark silhouette just kind of in the background.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Sometimes blink and you miss it, but there’s definitely something spooky going on.

The dog is definitely… I, you know, I don’t know about, I don’t know about the eyes because though, yes, we do later see a fox and, and you’re right, in the wild, animals’ eyes glow like that when they reflect light. But you also said we also think, wonder is there, like, a ghost dog. Well, is there? Because-

Todd: There could

Craig: be

because I, I said the dog dreams at one point, and I d- it’s a scary dream. Like, it’s having nightmares. It’s having nightmares of, like, weird ghostly hands grabbing at it and stuff. But then there’s another part where this may be the part where the guy leaves and the dog’s home by himself all day and night and never goes out to the bathroom.

But it, it’s like sitting, looking out the window for the guy, I think, and out of the corner of its eye and, and we kind of see it out of the corner of ours as well. It seems like another dog runs past- Yes … uh, an entryway or something. Mm-hmm. And it almost looked like the same dog. Like, I, I- It did … I was like, “Is it, is it seeing itself?”

I was, I was confused.

Todd: Me too.

Craig: I guess he follows, uh, the dog or what he thought he saw up the stairs and kind of looks around and, and I don’t remember if he hears something, but he, or smells something. But he’s drawn under a particular bureau and, and, and pokes his nose under there, and sees or finds a bandana like the other dog was wearing around its neck.

Indy starts to reach for it, but like right before he gets to it, he has like a vision.

Todd: Yes. I didn’t get this at all.

Craig: And the vision, I don’t remember exactly what happens. I didn’t take notes. But it’s a violent vision with, I think the dog ends up dead.

Todd: Yeah, and-

Craig: Yeah, like maybe the dog rearing up against something.

Todd: But then there’s like a human in it as well. There’s like a, a hand That I thought was gripping the bandana, just the bandana, and did the dog disappear or something? And the bandana falls from that hand, but it’s not just a dry bandana, it’s like a bloody mess.

Craig: It’s soaked in blood, yeah. Yeah. And the dog is scared and runs out.

Todd: Right.

Craig: I don’t remember at which point it was. There was a point in the movie, because in addition to all these other things, scary things that are happening, Todd is getting worse. And not only is he getting more sick, but I… Again, it’s ambiguous. My interpretation is that his illness is making him lash out.

Todd: Yes, I think so.

Craig: But I, I think that you could also interpret maybe that he’s being haunted or influenced or possessed supernaturally. Like, the influence… See, here’s the thing. Is the house making him sick, or is it just a coincidence that his grandfather also died of a sickness and people thought he was crazy in the house?

Todd: I think there’s a third interpretation. There’s more probably. But I think the genius of this movie is that it is so ambiguous. I think that’s actually what makes this movie work, that we’re never very clear on what’s going on. And I think because it’s being told from the perspective of this dog, it’s only more confusing because everything’s a little muddied by the confusion of this animal and its reactions.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: These visions that the animal is having, and I don’t know if the, if the movie could also be positing that just animals have visions and daydreams and psychoses like we do as humans as well. And at the end of the day, I did kind of wonder if this muddy spirit was just a sort of personification of death coming for him.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Just like it came for his grandfather. It’s not really about the house It’s not like it lives in the house or haunts the house, it just haunts the person as they’re dying. But the person himself, I don’t think, unless there is a moment at the… Th- there’s a moment at the very end, I suppose, where I feel like the p- person sees death for the first time, and that’s when we start to see the person’s face actually, right?

The owner’s face, Todd.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: I’m not sure that’s a coincidence-

Craig: No …

Todd: that when it sees the sp- specter or seems to see the specter finally, we finally start to see his face. Because I sort of feel like at this moment, I know I’m jumping way ahead, but I sort of feel like at this moment he sees death coming for him and this is the end.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Whereas the dog is seeing death lurking about this whole time. Yeah. But also maybe the remnants of the spirits of the previous dog and owner as well, right? So

Craig: Right.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Right. And I, I think that y- it could be interpreted in that way, that it’s just death personified, a grim reaper of sorts. It could just be the disease, like a, a metaphor or-

Todd: Right

Craig: some kind of incarnation of the disease and, and maybe it’s a hereditary disease. Mm. It could be like a curse on the family. The only thing that we know is that we hear it several times, generations of that family have lived and died there. And when he goes to the graveyard, he’s like, “Oh yeah, here’s all my, uh, relatives.

Gee, they all died young. Head-scratcher.” Like

Todd: Right. And they’re all buried here.

Craig: But it could just… Right, it could just be a, a hereditary thing. Who knows? And a- again, I think it works that it’s ambiguous. The point I was trying to make is because of his illness or curse or whatever it is, he’s becoming increasingly unreliable.

Mm-hmm. For example, leaving the dog locked in the house all day and night without coming home, behaving strangely. That night after he comes home, you know, he creeps up the stairs like a big creeper. Th- that part was very suspenseful, but I also felt like it was cheap.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Then again, I mean, I guess if we’re just looking at it from the g- dog’s perspective, he doesn’t know what that shadow is.

Todd: Right.

Craig: So it’s very creepy as it’s slowly coming up the staircase, but it’s revealed to just be the owner. But he falls into bed and clearly is not well. Again, I don’t know if he had just received chemo or if he was out shooting up drugs- Yeah … which I think is just as likely, but he’s not well. And when the dog tries to comfort him, he scolds it and eventually yells at it violently and, and kinda throws it off the bed.

So he’s becoming increasingly unreliable. The dog seeing all this spooky shit around the house. There came a point where I was like, “Dog, you just need to, like cut loose. Like, get out of there.

Todd: Leave the house.

Craig: You gave it a good go, you know? Yeah. Uh, when he first moved in and he was talking to his sister on the phone and he was talking about those videos that he saw, she hears a bark and she’s like, “Oh, was that Indy?”

And he’s like, “No, I’m watching one of those videos, and it’s Grandpa and his dog, Bandit. Don’t you remember Grandpa had a dog?” And one of them says, “Yeah, he always had a bunch of dogs, but they always ran away.” No shit.

Todd: They were the smart ones.

Craig: Yeah. But apparently Bandit is the only one who stayed, and is now a spirit guide or something.

Todd: Right.

Craig: I

Todd: guess.

Craig: Ugh. But yeah, it was, uh… There came a point where I was like, “Indy, you gave it your, your best go. Maybe it’s time to let it go.”

Todd: Well, at this point, I mean, he does, uh, run out of the house probably around here, right?

I think at one point Todd is, like, banging his head against the wall.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: He’s being weird.

Craig: Yeah, and then he gets… I don’t remember if he gets dragged into another room or if he just goes into another room, but the door slams and the dog can’t get in. So yeah, he runs out and goes for help.

Todd: Okay, I didn’t get that, but you’re right, he was going for help, and that’s when he gets caught in the fox snare, right?

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: Although, in my viewing of it, I didn’t see it that way. I thought he was being supernaturally chained or something from this thing that he kept seeing in that log, right? Wasn’t it, wasn’t it in that same log he’d been looking in?

Craig: It might’ve been. I don’t remember. But yeah, and I can understand why you would be confused, especially on a first viewing, because we really only kind of get the dog’s perspective of it.

Like- something grabs him and, and drags him into the darkness, but then the next thing we see is he’s chained to a doghouse back in the yard at, at, at Todd’s house.

Todd: Yeah, and he’s saying, “Stay.”

Craig: Yeah. I think that we didn’t see that the guy who sets the traps, who’s not a bad guy, he just happens to also live there and is a hunter, I think he must have found the dog and brought him back, and Todd was chaining him up so that he couldn’t go back in the forest.

Hmm. But it’s also keeping him out of the house and, uh, you know- He’s freaking out … we’re approaching… Yeah, we’re approaching the, uh, the, the finale here. He- I guess he hears, you know, the- Todd is sick and coughing and kind of freaking out. The lights are flashing. It’s all very spooky, but he’s chained to his doghouse, and then all of a sudden that mud monster, which he’s already had to fight the mud monster once, now the mud monster comes for him again.

Todd: By pulling his chain.

Craig: That was the scariest part of the movie for me. I am not a big fan of putting dogs on chains. I, you know, I understand different people have different circumstances, and as long as you care for your dog well and they’re not just living their life on a chain, that’s a different story.

But I have, I have negative feelings about chaining dogs like that, and this only reaffirmed that. Like Yeah, the mud monster could come … it was so scary to me. Yeah. Well, I, well, it was just so scary- … to me that, like, that monster grabbed a hold of his chain and was just slowly, slowly pulling it. A- and when a dog is on a chain s- like that, they’re just at the mercy of the chain- Yeah

basically, and that scares me. I don’t like it.

Todd: In my other interpretation of this, I see this as the dog is just chained up, and he’s fighting against the chain, and in his vision, there’s something pulling on the other side. The reality is it’s just anchored to the ground But the dog sees it as a monster, some- something pulling against him, keeping him away.

Again, I don’t know if that, you know, you could say that, but I mean, v- visually on the screen we literally see, you know, the- Yeah … these mud

Craig: monster hands pulling- Monstrous hands coming out of the dog house, pulling it, slowly pulling it, and we see the dog, you know, digging in its feet and, and trying to pull out of the collar and whatnot.

And eventually, I think what it does is it lunges at the house-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: and kind of tussles with the monster inside until the house overturns and it’s able to break the chain free. And then it’s dragging that chain for the rest of the time, but it doesn’t matter ’cause it’s not very long. I think he makes it upstairs.

Well, first we see Todd laying on his back in his bed, and he is in bad shape. He can barely breathe, like he’s just wheezing and, and kind of trembling. But then he hears something, and he looks up, and it takes a while, but slowly he begins to notice footprints, muddy footprints coming towards him, and sees a flash of the mud demon.

Yeah. Which, by the way, is all CGI, right? I mean, that’s all-

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Craig: But it looks okay. It’s, it’s dark enough that it… I, I thought that it actually looked pretty good.

Todd: Yeah, it looked fine. The dog doesn’t get in the, the house from the front door, though. It goes into the cellar.

Craig: Oh, that’s right.

Todd: Right.

And as it’s passing down the cellar, w- we see the skeleton of Bandit.

Craig: Yeah, and Bandit opened the door for him, right?

Todd: I guess. Yeah.

Craig: Because the cellar door, it- it’s one of those… Gosh, I don’t even know how to describe it. Only

Todd: from the inside kinda.

Craig: Well, I mean, you have to, you, you have to… You could open it from the outside, but you have to lift.

It’s one of those big double doors that you have to lift almost up off the ground. Yeah. Um, and he looks at it once and it’s closed, and he looks away and he looks back and it’s open.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And then when he goes, you know, down just a few steps, we see the skeleton of the dog, but we know that it’s Bandit ’cause it’s wearing the Bandana

Todd: So did that bandana in the bedroom not exist?

Craig: I g- I don’t think it did. Oh. I mean, I guess a dog can have more than one bandana.

Todd: That’s true. That’s the bandana that got lost, and they replaced it- Yeah. … with the other one. Yeah, that could be very well. Fair enough.

Craig: You’re right, but Todd s- is seeing the thing coming towards him, but I don’t remember, it, it, it seems to be really close, but then it’s not there anymore, and instead, Indy, the dog, is there, and crawls up with him on the bed, and it’s like a friendly reunion, and he’s like, “Oh, Indy, hey, what’s wrong?

What’s wrong?” And in just a second there, I was thinking, “He sure is acting awfully healthy-

Todd: Right …

Craig: for as sick as we just saw him.”

Todd: Right.

Craig: And also it took me a s- and, and Alan, who’s watching it with me, also had to kind of point out to me, you realize this is the first time we’re ever seeing his face.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And it is, and it’s because he asks Indy, I think, “What is wrong?” And then I think he sees in the reflection of Indy’s eyes himself behind him. There’s a lot of very intense close-ups on the dog’s eyes, where you see things reflected in them throughout the movie. Mm-hmm. But when he turns around, when Todd turns around, his dead body is laying there.

So yeah, you re- you, you, uh, suggested it earlier, but I think that we don’t see the owner’s face until he’s already dead.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Which is an interesting choice, kinda cool

Todd: And the figure now appears, right, and grabs him and pulls him through the house and all the way down into the basement.

Craig: Yep.

Todd: And Indy is chasing him and trying to save him, but he gets pulled into this giant cavernous tunnel that is down there.

It’s like the entrance to, I don’t know- Hell. … it’s, it’s weird. Yeah. It’s… doesn’t look like something that actually exists in this cellar.

Craig: No, it looks ancient. Yeah.

Todd: Mm-hmm. It

Craig: looks like a, the entrance to a temple or, or something, all stone and-

Todd: Which made me wonder if it did exist or if this again is just like a-

Craig: Right

Todd: a vision.

Craig: Or was it always there? Is it always there? I mean-

Todd: Right …

Craig: weird stuff. It… the dog has been hearing weird stuff from the cellar, but-

Todd: Oh, is this an Amityville II?

Craig: I don’t know. Disappearance thing. I don’t know what’s going on down there. Yeah. But yeah, he goes down there and he just, I mean, he just sees the big opening basically and he hesitates for a minute, but then he runs in, and he actually drags Todd back out.

Is he all covered in mud at this point already, I think? And-

Todd: He gets covered in mud. Yeah, it’s kinda like mud covers over him, or maybe it did just before he got pulled away. I don’t remember exactly. But yeah, that’s when he looks at him and he says, “You’re a good boy, but, uh, you can’t save me.” And then he just, like, disintegrates into skeleton nothingness and maybe the skeleton gets pulled back into the tunnel.

I’m not sure. Definitely there’s a transformation here where he goes away. And so the dog’s just sitting there. And I’m thinking, you know, this is, this I guess explains Bandit’s death.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: That if this exact same thing happened to the owner, Bandit was just sitting there waiting for his master who’s never showing up, as dogs are known to do, right?

Dogs

Craig: are- Yeah. Well, and also presumably he was trapped down there.

Todd: That too, right?

Craig: Because those doors were closed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and they didn’t find… The, the, the hunter guy, the neighbor, was the one who found the grandpa, but he said they never found the dog. Well, the dog was down in the basement.

Well,

Todd: they didn’t look too hard, did they? I mean, that cellar-

Craig: Yeah, no …

Todd: is accessible. ‘

Craig: Cause it was right there by the door. Yeah, like you would s- you see it immediately as soon as you open the door.

Todd: Yeah. And then, I mean, this basement’s accessible from the inside of the house as well, right? Or else he couldn’t have gotten dragged down there.

Craig: Right,

Todd: right. So, you know, it’s- They didn’t look very hard.

Craig: No. No, no. But then, yeah, so, so Indy’s down there by himself, and then in the mor- I think it’s the next morning- Yeah … Todd’s sister shows up. She was co- she was coming to visit. We knew that. But she shows up, and we hear her. W- we ca- we’re just looking up from, from kind of from Indy’s perspective, looking up at the cellar door, and we kind of hear her, and she’s distressed, and she opens the door.

And of course, when she opens the door, the first thing she sees is the dead dog. Now, There shouldn’t be any reason that if it had been Indy, that he would’ve decayed that much. But if I were looking for a dog and I found that skeleton, m- probably my first thought would be, “Oh, no,” too. And I think that was her first thought, too.

But then Indy kinda shows himself, like he kinda walks into the light or whatever, and she calls to him. I think at this point she probably already knows that her brother is dead. Mm-hmm. I think that she’s loo- I, I think that she’s looking for Indy. I don’t think there’s any other reason why she would be looking around- Yeah, I think she’s

Todd: found-

outside … Todd. Yeah, for sure.

Craig: Right. Yeah. So she’s relieved to have found him, and she calls him up, but he looks back several times and is very hesitant before finally going up, and then it cuts to black. And then as the credits roll, it just kind of shows Indy with his head out the door as they are driving down the road away.

A- and you mentioned before how, you know, there have been instances of, of dogs literally waiting for years and years, you know, for their, their owners or masters to return. And I don’t know, as a dog person, like, dogs are so, so loyal, and- … I felt sad. I felt bad for poor Indy. I, I do think ultimately that we’re meant to understand that one way or another, this was just death.

And as good a boy as Indy was, dogs may not understand it, but you just can’t fight that. Like- Right … y- you know, you, you can’t save everybody indefinitely. But it was kind of interesting to look at it through a, a, a dog’s perspective, somebody who wouldn’t understand, and it would be frightening and confusing and scary.

Now, the physical manifestation, I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t know if it was a real thing, if it was just the dog’s perception. There are little things like why was whatever it was messing with Indy at all when he was chained up to the doghouse?

Todd: Right.

Craig: I guess if I wanted to rationalize that, I would say, well, it was afraid that the dog was going to try to interfere, so it was trying to stop it, but that kind of seems like a stretch.

Regardless, you know, I really don’t mind the ambiguity. In fact, I think it’s probably wiser to leave it ambigu- ambiguous rather than to over-explain it. Yeah. But re- regardless of all of that- I don’t know. I, uh, I thought that it was quite different from anything else that we’ve seen in just in its … I hesitate to call it a gimmick because that makes it sound cheap, but the way that he ch- the director chose to approach it, I thought was, you know, interesting and-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: fairly well executed. I think it was wise to keep it at, like, an, an hour 12. In fact, I think it probably could’ve been more like 50 minutes and-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: I think it, it could’ve been tightened up a little. I understand. Alan was a little bored, too, and he kept saying, “How much of there is, is there left?” And I kept saying, “It’s only an hour long.

Calm down.” But yeah, I think it could’ve been trimmed down a little bit, but I really enjoyed watching it, and I think it’s … You know, you don’t have to be a dog lover to appreciate the technique or at least what he was going for. But I think especially if you’re a dog lover, it’s not gonna hurt-

Todd: Yeah … ‘

Craig: cause you’re not gonna mind watching this really cute dog for an hour.

Todd: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you don’t have to be a, a dog lover to, to enjoy this. Uh, and, and I’m just gonna repeat what I said earlier, you know, which I think is, dovetails nicely with what you said. I think the ambiguity of the movie is its strength. It’s not just a strength. I just think the movie wouldn’t have worked as well if it hadn’t been so ambiguous what’s going on.

And even the director has said that, he said that he got the idea initially for a horror movie around a dog’s point of view after seeing Poltergeist, where the, the dog in that movie is, like, the first to sense the presence of ghosts.

Craig: Mm.

Todd: And he realized it was kind of a trope across horror and other haunted house movies.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Apparently, he was also thinking of The Shining as well, in that, you know, there’s supernatural elements happening, but you’re … It’s still left kind of ambiguous whether or not this is a psychological thing in the characters’ minds or whether they’re genuine. You know, it’s just kind of- Yeah … open for interpretation.

So, um, yeah, it was, it was well conceived. It was different than anything else we’ve ever seen, I think. I don’t think there’s really another movie quite like this.

Craig: Yeah. It’s different.

Todd: Yeah. And I can see why it, it did well So yeah, go- I would also recommend you go check it out

Craig: And the dog doesn’t die. I think we should have just said that from the very beginning.

Todd: Nah.

Craig: I, I, I did read that, like, you know, like, when the movie was coming out, there was a huge influx of people googling, “Does the dog die?” Uh.

Todd: Yeah, so many people would just, like you included, I think, would give this movie a hard pass if they had to watch the animal die.

Craig: Oh, absolutely. I would be mad that I watched the whole thing if the dog died at the end.

It would break my heart.

Todd: That is so funny to me. I just do not have the same… I have the same, uh, you know, if the dog dies or a human dies, it really just depends on the circumstance for me whether or not I’m gonna care a lot, you know? It just-

Craig: Yeah, the humans- … I usually don’t care, but the dogs, it bothers me.

I- in fact, that’s the first thing that, like, w- without being prompted or without even saying, “No spoilers,” anybody that I told about this movie, I was like, “Oh, yeah, you should watch it. The dog doesn’t die.”

Todd: I’d have been so mad if you told me that, by the way. Oh, okay.

Craig: I’d wanna know. Well, I’m glad I didn’t then.

Todd: I don’t need such trigger warnings for animals. Well, thank you so much for recommending this, Craig. Thank you guys all for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Please write us a review everywhere that podcasts are can be reviewed.

You can go and leave us a message as well at, uh, chainsawhorror.com. Click the button up there that says Talk to Us. Just leave us a voice message right there in your browser. You don’t need any special software. You don’t have to sign up or anything. It’ll just send a, a little voice message right to us.

If we hear that, we’ll play it on the air. You can send us a request that way. You can send us a request just by googling Two Guys and a Chainsaw podcast and hitting us up at any of our social media channels. Those requests get voted on by our patrons. We have a Patreon, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. For just five bucks a month, you can get complete access to our unedited phone calls that produce this show every week, including all the juicy tidbits that we leave out for the general public and all the personal stuff that’s going on in our lives.

We also have a book club back there. Patrons get to vote on what our next request is going to be from the requests that we receive. We just generally have a lot of fun back there talking to our patrons, and if that kind of access interests you, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast gets you down that road. Until next time, I am Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We dive into 2008’s Lake Mungo, an Australian found-footage/mockumentary that surprised us with how authentic and well-acted it feels, more like a traditional documentary than a jump-scare horror film.

We walk through the central tragedy of 16-year-old Alice’s drowning, the family’s grief, and the subtle escalation of eerie evidence—dreams, noises, strange photos, and hallway camera footage—before unpacking the film’s major twists.

We talk about how the movie plays more as a drama about mourning and uncertainty than a straight ghost story, why some turns feel contrived, and why the final montage retroactively makes the whole experience linger.

We also touch on the ongoing appeal of true-crime and mock-doc horror and what makes this one worth watching.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/09/lake-mungo-poster.jpg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Lake Mungo (1996)

Episode 505, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week was my turn to choose, and I went into just my list of things that I was curious about that is, uh, post-2000, ’cause I thought you’d might appreciate a more recent film. And this is 2008’s Lake Mungo, which I had heard about, never seen before, but it comes up every now and then.

People talk about it when they talk about creepy, unsettling movies that really bothered them or, or hit them hard. And they talked about twists in it and maybe an ending that was a little unsettling or ups- upsetting. So it had always been on my list for that reason. I believe this has been requested at least once over the years.

Craig: I think so too.

Todd: Yeah, I didn’t go back to check our request list. I mean, it would be, it would’ve been years ago. Our, our request list, some of the things on there- It’s long … have been on there for a while. Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty long. So whoever requested it’s gonna be very happy that we’re doing Lake Mungo today.

This is the first time I had ever seen it. How about you, Craig? You said you’d seen it before.

Craig: Yeah, I had seen it, like, gosh, you know, 2008, right? That’s when it came out, I think. Seems like a long time ago, but I remember reading about it. I don’t know. I feel like people were talking about it for a little while.

I didn’t see it until later than that, and I just happened to come across it on some streamer. I recognized the title, and it sounded intriguing based on the description. It’s a found footage kind of mockumentary, I guess-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: you would say. And it sounded intriguing. So yeah, I had already seen it, and I was surprised that you picked it.

It’s not your typical choice, but I think it’s a good one.

Todd: Yeah. You’re right. This is… Usually I’m going for older stuff. We’ve got such a… I feel like we have an obligation to hit just these o- old ancient movies that there are just so many, but every now and then I surprise you.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: This one, uh, I was surprised by this movie because I didn’t know anything else about it, and I went in to look it up and found out that the writer-director, this was basically his first feature film And he really hasn’t done much since or before this.

He did some shorts and, uh, he was in the script and continuity department for Late Night With the Devil. That’s about it. So I was actually kinda shocked. This is an Australian movie, and the first thing that struck me, I don’t know, about 10 minutes into this is just how incredibly well-acted it is. It is really well-acted.

We’ve done other movies like this before. Well, we’ve done other found footage movies, and we’ve done some documentary, mockumentary-type films. The one I was thinking of the most was that UFO one.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Remember what it’s called? What was that called? There were two versions of it.

Craig: I don’t know. I feel like maybe it was Lake something or-

Todd: It was, um…

It was one where it had been done, like, in the ’80s, and it had been shot just on a shoestring by a bunch of… By a theater troupe, basically, and they didn’t really get much play or distribution for it. And it, it would’ve just sort of been lost to history except somehow the pre-release copies, I think the VHS copies that were sent to rental stores to try to get people to rent them, somehow they got copied over and copied over and got into the hands of some UFO people and distributed as though it was real.

And, uh, that became such a mythological thing that the original producer came out and said, “No, and you know, this isn’t real. I made it.” And because of the popularity of it, they were encouraged to remake it-

Craig: Mm-hmm …

Todd: in the early ’90s. And we watched that remake, and we ended up going ahead and watching… I think we independently were just so intrigued by it, we ended up going and watching the original, and we found the original so much better just because it had that air of authenticity that the remake didn’t.

It was because of the acting ability of the people in the… Well, I, I, I shouldn’t say acting ability. A- acting experience. It seemed like the acting experience of the people in the remake went against the authenticity of the film. It just felt more like people acting.

Craig: Yeah, I remember.

Todd: And especially for the new one, they had inserted little bits of interview, like they were interviewing people about the footage, and especially the interviews came across as really, really fake.

And it, you know, as an actor and a guy who’s… You know, for me, like, I do these, like, dumb mobile game ads, and they take a lot of different forms, and one of the forms that they’ve had me do a lot is that I’m the boss of some game company, and they’re interviewing me. Like, it’s like a clip from an interview showing me talking about our philosophy behind the game design.

And I often find that the hardest, to act like I’m just sitting there genuinely answering questions off the cuff from somebody even though I’m actually reading a script. Hmm. It’s so hard to come across as natural in that way. So I sympathized with and wasn’t even surprised that even the more seasoned actors when they came in and they were doing this interview style stuff, they just came across as fake.

It’s, it’s, it’s trickier than you’d think to act natural in that scenario. And this is all interviews.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Everybody here is interviewed, and the actors are really, like, they didn’t do much after this. They didn’t do much before this. The director deliberately chose people who are very low-key and, and low-profile.

And God, they’re convincing. Don’t you th- Did you not think so?

Craig: No, I did. I just didn’t really think about it very much because I, I feel like I’ve seen this type of mockumentary before. I, I, I think I saw something recently. I couldn’t remember it, so I was trying to look it up while you were talking, but I think it was called Strange Harvest: Soul Murder in the In- Inland Empire- Whoa.

which is a whole mockumentary. Uh, it’s from 2024.

Todd: That’s a mouthful. Yeah. But I’ve heard of Strange Harvest. Yeah, uh-huh.

Craig: Yeah. I didn’t know that I realized that it had a subtitle. I think I just found it under Strange Harvest. But it was much like this. Aside from fantastic things happening that seem out of the realm of possibility, it, it seemed, like, real.

Like, you could accidentally stumble upon it on television or whatever and, you know, think that it was real, and that’s kind of how I felt about this one too. So I guess that speaks to their authenticity, like, it feels real.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: I, I think that I’m also just currently… I’ve been watching a lot of documentary, well, I guess documentaries and also, like, documentary series lately, like spooky creepy ones.

Mm-hmm. And so I’m just kind of immersed in that format-

Todd: Wow …

Craig: right now. So I think it was- … it felt immersive and like that. This is the type of movie that I can watch with Alan except for I- it’s risky. Like, either I don’t tell him it’s not real- … and then risk him getting mad at me when he finds out that it’s not.

Or I tell him it’s not real, and then he’s not really all that invested in it.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But, you know, he can sit through this ’cause it’s the type of format of some stuff that we watch anyway, so… And I think that those types of shows, like- Gosh, Netflix I’ve been watching. I watched… These are recommendations, by the way, if you’re into dark stuff.

I just watched one called Toxic Love Story that was one of the twistiest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Wow. I kept being like, “What? What?” But then after that we started watching this show. There’s a whole series of them. I think we watched Worst Neighbor Ever, and then there’s also like- Oh,

Todd: yeah

Craig: Worst Ex Ever and Worst Roommate Ever and, like, all these. And they’re all these horrifying tales of-

Todd: Right …

Craig: things that have happened- True … in real life.

Todd: True things, right?

Craig: Yes. But it, but it is. You know, these are the actual people that experienced it in most cases.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Uh, of course here you’ve got actors, but I guess all that to say, I suppose I agree with your assessment that they were that good because it felt very-

Todd: Yeah, I was really surprised.

And, I mean, consistently real across the board, like every single actor I, I believed. And just like you said, if I’d come across this on television, I would 100% think it was the real thing. Now maybe I just haven’t seen enough of these to know that just people can be really good at this, but I’ve seen some bad ones, you know?

I’ve seen some ones that just didn’t seem very real at all or that just didn’t have so much interview footage in them. This is very, very traditional documentary. This feels almost, you know, like a Ken Burns type documentary. It’s got lots of footage overlaying interview with… You know, so there’s a lot of voiceover.

There’s no, like, omniscient narrator or anything. It’s just all the voiceover of the people who are being interviewed and their answers to the questions, and they’re narrating the story as it happened to them. I also found the footage really convincing. I thought that it, it, it really follows the disappearance…

Well, it follows the death of a girl named Alice in, uh, Ararat, Australia, which is a real place, and it was actually filmed there. She’s a 16-year-old who goes swimming with her family at some dam. And as they’re getting out of the water she’s not there, and they immediately conclude that she might have drowned, and they send to call the police.

And the divers come and, and go in the water, and eventually by that evening they, I think… or the next day, I can’t remember, they do end up pulling up her body. And it’s pretty heartbreaking for them. And it moves pretty slowly. You’re just kinda wrapped up in this tale, this family that had this terrible tragedy happen to them.

That’s like the first 10, 15 minutes. There’s nothing spooky- Mm-hmm … there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. And so I did find myself wondering, where is this gonna lead, and when is this gonna get spooky? Ultimately, I feel like the movie did not meet my expectations, but I think that was in a very good way.

Because it’s a little bit unlike a lot of these things we’ve seen before b- because it’s not trying to be sensational, in your face, jump scary- Mm-hmm … type stuff. It’s really trying to come across as something authentic, and in that I believe it really succeeds. I was thinking also of Ghostwatch.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Again, not exactly the same, but that movie, you know, has moments where there’s the footage or there’s the interviewer or something happening, and then suddenly, boom, there’s something happening-

Craig: Right …

Todd: to them right then and there. Or you see something in the background and, you know, that jolts you- Right

or whatever, and this really doesn’t have that And I think that’s a strength of it. But, you know, it wasn’t what I was expecting, I’ll tell you that, when, when I just, you know, when I heard the hype around it.

Craig: Yeah. Gosh, I was just thinking, I mean, you don’t have moments in the movie where a ghost jumps out at you or anything, but there are…

I think it was Ghost Watch or… But, I mean, it’s typical of these types of movies where they’ll show you something, and then later they’ll show it to you again and point out something that you missed the first time. Right. And I feel like that’s kind of typical of these haunting movies, but this one does it pretty well.

I, I think what makes this different than some of the other mockumentaries that I’ve seen like this is that often they seem very real up until a very specific point where something really crazy happens, and- Right, right … you know, the ghosts do appear or the monsters or the aliens or whatever and, and they’re captured on, on camera.

This is far more subtle. Like, this almost could… I- it is in the same category, I would say, as something like Blair Witch, where if somebody didn’t know this was real start to finish, they might think it was. Just didn’t know it was real- Yes … excuse me.

Todd: Yeah, yeah. If this were presented as real, there’s nothing so fantastic about this that would make you go, “Oh, come on, we know it’s not real.”

Craig: Yeah. If it were I mean, if it were, if, if it was presented to me that way, I would still obviously be skeptical.

Todd: Skeptical, yeah. Me too.

Craig: But Yeah. But, yeah, you, you never know. So, you know, obviously this whole family is very upset by having lost their daughter and, and sister. And another thing that sets this apart from the stuff that you would, I think, tumble across on, on cable television is…

A- and I feel like this is always a tell if it… Is when they show more than you would actually see in a documentary about real people. Because when they show this girl’s body, they don’t, you know, blur the images or anything. It’s, it’s, it’s very… And, and of her face, like- Yeah … bloated and mangled. And typically, I think maybe even just out of respect, uh, I don’t know, or just basic human dignity, they would not show that, I don’t think.

So when I see stuff like that, I’m like, “Eh.” And in the last one that I- the one that I mentioned earlier, the one from 2024, it’s, it’s about a serial killer kind of. I don’t wanna spoil anything, but there came points where they were showing the grotesque aftermath of the murders with the victims. I’m like, “No.”

No real show would ever show this stuff. So- Right … that’s kind of a tell on it as well. But basically, things s- I guess there are some kind of bizarre things from the very beginning. Like, right after the dad identifies the body, on the way home the car stalls, and they have to drive home backwards all the way.

That

Todd: was weird.

Craig: That was weird, and I didn’t know if it was supposed to suggest that something weird was going on, like something didn’t want them to leave or I don’t know.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But they also start hearing noises from Alice’s room. The mom’s having dreams about her. The dad says, and I don’t even think he thinks he was dreaming.

He says that he went into Alice’s room one night and sat down

Clip: Before I could kind of work out what I was doing there, Allie walked in and she went over to a desk and started sharpening a pencil and then she looked like she was checking for a text message on a phone. And, you know, I was completely freaked out.

She was completely oblivious to my presence. And then I don’t know what happened. I must have, um, moved the bed or, you know, squeaked my shoes or something, but she went completely rigid And I knew then that she knew I was there. And she slowly turned around and she looked me right in the eye fully for, you know, what felt like forever.

And then she just came at me and stood up and said, “Get out, get out.” And I just, you know, got up and went out as fast as I could.

Craig: So he left, and like that’s the end of the story. I’m like, that’s-

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I, I, yeah. Matthew has like unusual bruises all over his body that the doctors can’t explain. Mm-hmm. And, and finally Matt, we find out that Matt is into photography, and he takes this whole series, like a time-lapse series of the fence in his backyard.

And ultimately in one of them on one particular night, an image of Alice seems to appear in front of the fence.

Todd: And then another guy who’s taking pics of the dam, a guy who goes out surveying things. I get the sense that the father in this is also like a surveyor.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: I, I don’t know if it’s really clear.

He’s taking pictures of the, around the dam as they’re going out for one of their tests or their surveys or whatever, and he happens to notice a figure in the background that looks a bit like Alice. And so now the mom is convinced that Alice is alive.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And now Jim is doubting that he identified the body correctly because Alice’s mom refused to look at the body, so it was really up to Jim to identify it.

Even though we saw these photos of this bloated corpse, Jim’s thinking, “Well, you know, I mean, maybe I just in my heart knew that it would be her, and so my brain just kinda told me it was gonna be her, so I jumped to the conclusion that it was her- Yeah … without really giving it scrutiny.” And I thought these elements were really good.

Now, it occurred to me about halfway, three-quarters of the way through this movie that this movie is just as much about how you deal with these kind of situations, you know?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: The stages of grief and of doubt and denial and things as anything else. And the, the director himself came out and said he doesn’t even see it so much as a s- I mean, this is bullshit.

But he said he doesn’t even see it so much as a ghost story. He, he really intends for it to be more of a drama that is really examining the different facets of grief. And I could, I can definitely see that aspect in it. I was feeling it as I was watching it, and that is, I think, what made it feel so natural.

And so when these twists happen, they’re more… We say subtle, right? But I just say they’re more realistic. Like, this isn’t a, “Oh my God, suddenly we saw an image in a thing. We must be haunted.”

Craig: Right.

Todd: Now we’re starting to doubt maybe she’s actually still alive in some way, shape, or form and, and hanging around for reasons we don’t know.

So now we’re doubting ourselves and we- we’re hopeful. We want to believe she’s still alive, and so they g- they go through that. Because as I’m watching this movie, I’m thinking the same thing I’m thinking throughout all these found footage movies is, all right, somebody put this documentary together.

That’s what’s being presented to us.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: So it’s not gonna be like Ghost Watch, where suddenly in the middle of this documentary there’s something so extreme and so revelatory that just, like, blows everything out of the water. So in the context of that, how is this ghost story going to resolve? And so I thought it was really smart how subtle and how centered and focused around the family’s grief and their natural doubts and, and reactions to that, that this movie ended up being.

Craig: Yeah. I, I, I agree with you and I, I particularly, you know, in this part where the dad starts to second-guess himself, I mean, I, I don’t know that you could help but second-guess yourself. I don’t even know if you could, you know, just live with the fact that your wife might second-guess you, you know, whether you second-guess yourself- Right

or not. I, it makes perfect sense that, uh, y- as sad and devastating as I’m sure it would be, they would have her body exhumed, which they do, but it was her. Like, they do DNA testing and, and it, it, it is her. So then, then they do start to wonder if maybe it’s a haunting, and-

Todd: Right …

Craig: and Matt sets up a camera in the hallway, and it catches what appears to be, like, a specter or a ghost crossing the doorway.

And all of this just keeps up, and it unfolds in a very documentary way, you know, just like these, these events are being narrated to us basically sequentially by the people who were there. So- Mm-hmm … then we meet this new guy named Ray, who is a radio psychic.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I think I kind of mis- yeah, I think he’s a radio psychic.

Like, people call him- This is very

Todd: dated …

Craig: I don’t know, right. But he’s Al- he’s well-known in the area apparently.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: And so they call him, and he meets with June and does, like, hypnotherapy with her or something, and under hypnosis, I think she, like, sees Alice in her room, and Alice looks sad. And, and then they do a seance and, like, nothing happens during the seance, but when they watch the video back, Alice’s face kind of appears.

Anytime I see this, like, the camera footage is low quality.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And in order to zoom in on these supposed images, they have to zoom in pretty close, and it’s usually in the dark or in, like, a dark corner or something. So yes, it typically vaguely looks like Alice, but I don’t know. It’s also very, you know, soft focus.

Mm-hmm. If it didn’t happen repeatedly, it could almost just be a fluke, you know, like some fluke of the light or, or something. But it does happen repeatedly, so they set up more cameras, and then there’s more instances of her showing up.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And then’s when the first big twist comes, and that’s where things started to get a little bit iffy for me.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. Uh, this is where I was like, “What?” Although it does kind of follow the flavor of these modern-day documentaries where you’re like, “Really?”

Craig: Yes, right.

Todd: Like, this person did that? That is-

Craig: Right …

Todd: that is bonkers. The Withers video, right? The-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: there’s a couple… Well, there’s a couple who was at the dam the same day that the photo was taken, and so I guess the idea is that once this couple learned about this photo, they were, like, going back through their footage of the dam.

And they’re like, “Oh, we saw that guy who took that photo in there. Oh, so we must have been there the same day. Let us peruse through our footage and see if we can see anything in there.” And sure enough, they see this figure, but for them, it’s very clearly Matthew.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: It’s not Alice at all. And now Matthew’s interview, Matthew says, “Well, actually, I was there, and I was wearing Alice’s jacket And actually I was responsible for all these other images, including the image For all of it in the backyard.

He did it all. And I mean, like, you’re, what is wrong with this kid? You know, like what was he hoping to do? And the movie doesn’t even explain it. Matthew’s real vague

Clip: Mum kept, uh, talking about, she was always talking about getting Alice exhumed, and she was really, um, she was really keen on this idea that Dad had misidentified her body.

And so I knew that without more evidence it wasn’t gonna happen, so I Am I the photograph?

Todd: But ultimately, June is devastated. The mother is devastated by this, and she’s like, “Oh, I don’t really know why he did it. He’s not really clear on it, and I’m not gonna push him.” So that was interesting.

Craig: I know. It- gosh, I don’t know.

It just… At that point I was like, “What?” And I guess you’re right. I, I have said that many times recently, watching these real-life things, like it’s just… But it’s weird to listen to him narrate it as though it were real, that, you know, the, the, the images were showing up or whatever, and then just to be like, “Oh yeah, I faked it all.”

Like-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: Oh.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Okay, and, and, but he and Ray are still hanging around together and go leave- Go on a work trip … the house or something and, and leave some cameras just running in the house. He’s like, “Oh, I’d get at least 12 hours,” something. Okay, whatever. And then there are new images of Alice on the camera for-

Todd: So-

Craig: I think

Todd: why would he even do that? You know, I, I would think the jig is up, right? Like-

Craig: Yes …

Todd: why would he imagine, “Well, maybe there is actually a ghost even though I’ve been faking it this whole time. Let’s leave the cameras going”? Is it just because they legitimately heard bumps and had weird feelings about the house that he was just reaching kind of a- Oh.

I don’t know. Or like his guilt for doing that led him to try to prove that it actually happened? I, if

Craig: I don’t know. But for some reason the mom wants to go back and review all the old footage that has already been proven to be fake or whatever, but she’s going back over it and in the video that we originally saw with Alice in it, she’s like, “And then I noticed in the corner there was somebody else in there.”

And sure enough, zoom into a different dark corner and there’s a silhouette of somebody else. And she’s like, “And I knew it wasn’t Alice because it was our neighbor, Mr. Tuey.”

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I, and I was like, “I don’t know how you could tell that because it just looked like a black vague silhouette to

Todd: me.” It does.

And this is a huge leap, right? Okay, so a neighbor broke into your house and you didn’t know? Right. You know, like while you were l- there? Who would do that?

Craig: It’s almost frustrating in hindsight, like we had seen that. Like, that had been one of the major pieces of evidence of, you know, Alice’s ghost or whatever, and that silhouette had been there all along.

Our attention hadn’t been drawn to it. Yeah. And now all of a sudden it is. And now… And again, here comes huge twists number two- … that comes so far out of left field. It’s wild.

Todd: Yeah. She’s like, “Well, what is he doing in here?” So- She goes into her room. She’s like, “He must’ve been searching for something,” and she finds her daughter’s safe?

Craig: Some- like a lockbox or something, yeah.

Todd: I guess, and pulls it out, and starts going through it, and she finds her diary and some videotape, and realizes what she was looking for. And when she plays it, it’s a sex tape-

Craig: Yes …

Todd: of Alice and her neighbor, and is it her neighbor’s husband or wife?

Craig: Yes.

Todd: It’s like a threesome.

It’s

Craig: the couple next door. Yes, it’s the c- it’s like a… Yeah. It’s a kinky threesome with the couple next door whose kids she babysat. And at first I was like, “Well, gross,” but, you know, big deal, whatever, until I realized she was supposed to be 16. I was thinking she was older for some reason. Yeah. I was thinking she was like 18, 19, but no, she’s 16.

No. So that is gross and creepy. But, like, this guy came out of nowhere, and they’re like, “So we tried to find the Tuoys, but we couldn’t. The end.” Like, what?

Todd: And we’re done with the Tuoys now.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Like, are you kidding me? Is it really that hard to find this couple? Like- Right … it’s a family. They moved six months ago.

Oh my God, so weird. So- We

Craig: never hear about them again, really.

Todd: So

Craig: weird. And they ask Alice’s boyfriend, like, “Did you know about the Tuoys?” Like, “No, I didn’t know anything.” “I, I thought we were fine.” It’s- Now- So weird …

Todd: I think that the concept is solid, though. The family has to now come to terms with the fact that they didn’t know Alice 100%.

Nobody knows anybody 100%.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Your closest family members, there’s an inner world that they’re living that you don’t have access to and never will.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And so this kind of thing could happen to any of us. You will discover something mildly shocking or extremely shocking about any person, no matter how close they are to you.

And I’ve often thought about this, you know, in death. Like, you know, you die suddenly, and you leave behind a whole house full of stuff. You know, who knows what embarrassing things y- when people are going through your stuff. I… That actually guides my life. This principle keeps me on the straight and narrow.

I’m like, “I don’t want anybody to be going through my hard drives or, or be going through my drawers or anything like that.” And when, you know, because I died in a car accident tomorrow, and be like- … “Oh my God, this changes our perception of Todd entirely.” You know what I mean? So I get this. I mean, I understand how this could happen.

Now, it’s a clever twist and it, realistic at its concept, but you’re right, it’s a little weird and a little far-fetched that this family can’t be found. That would be a huge… I mean, a normal investigation would be like, “And now we put out an APB,” and there was around the clock search across the country to every p- you know, police station to find these people because they created child pornography.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And they were having sex with a minor. I mean, this is a big deal. It’s a big deal. Way bigger. Yeah.

Clip: I don’t know. It’s Australia.

Todd: And the parents will

Clip: be furious. Wouldn’t those parents be up in arms?

Craig: Right. They are. Oh my God. Yes, well, especially because, like, Matt says he’s so mad because he feels like the dad that she was sleeping with or whatever was responsible for her death because he thinks that she killed herself-

Todd: Because of her guilt or-

Craig: because of the guilt or whatever, which- Mm-hmm … hadn’t even occurred to me that this might be a suicide, but apparently he thinks that now.

Todd: That’s understandable.

Craig: And then out of no- again, we never really hear about them again, but randomly, God, this is so weird, I guess the mom is just constantly going through her stuff.

Randomly the mom is going through Alice’s calendar and finds Ray the radio psychic’s business card in there, and it turns out that the two of them had met before, and he just didn’t tell them because he wanted to protect her privacy. She’s dead. I don’t, like this doesn’t make any- Oh … sense to me.

Todd: That’s so much bullshit.

I, I did not believe this for a second that-

Craig: No, it was stupid. It made me wonder how they filmed this and, like, how it was written. Like, d- did Ray know when he was filming those earlier, earlier scenes that he actually knew this girl?

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: I don’t know, but- … apparently he did, and he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, she met with me, and we talked about a whole bunch of shit.

I just, I was trying to… I didn’t say anything ’cause I was trying to protect her privacy.”

Todd: Come on. What kind of a dick are you? But also, I mean, it could be explained away that this guy really is a bit of a dick, and it also casts some question onto him and his character. Does he have something to do with this now?

Is he hiding something as well? As improbable as it is, I mean, I watch Tiger King. That, that gets weird and wacky and goes off in all kinds of crazy directions. You’re like, “How could you- That’s

Craig: true …

Todd: make these decisions?” It’s not 100% out of the ordinary for a very out of the ordinary kind of experience, I guess.

Craig: Fair enough.

Todd: Life gets weird and complicated. But still, ironically, if this were presented to me as fiction, I would be like, “This is bullshit. This is bullshit. I don’t buy it. It’s fake.”

Craig: Well, right. And the only thing that comes of that really is that she’s having these weird dreams, and I don’t even remember what they are at this point.

Todd: But they would be relevant enough for him to bring up in some capacity- Yeah … when he’s helping the family. Totally. Come on.

Craig: I mean, just the fact that she was acting weird, right. And then seemingly out of nowhere, Jason, Alice’s boyfriend, just decides to tell the mom about some cellphone footage that one of Alice’s friends had or something from a trip that Alice and her friends took- to Lake Mungo, which I guess, I don’t know a lot about it.

It’s a, a dry lake in Australia, and I think it’s got some history, but I don’t know much about it. They found, like, ancient dead people there or something.

Todd: Yeah. Something like that. They did.

Craig: Like, the oldest human remains or something.

Todd: Yeah. It’s pretty significant. Like, a 40,000-year-old woman, and then later another man.

Uh, so yeah, I mean, it’s pretty significant, but-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: it doesn’t have anything to do with this story.

Craig: N- no, but it’s, you know… They, they, they go there, and it’s, it’s just fairly typical footage of young girls just goofing around in the desert or whatever. But they notice that though everybody else looks super happy, Alice, you know, looks forlorn.

A- and there’s footage of her- Thank God. It was caught on footage, some of her burying something- … under a tree.

Todd: They’re lucky.

Craig: So they go to the desert and find that tree.

Todd: There’s only one. It’s so easy.

Craig: Oh my God.

Todd: Oh, yeah. They’re lucky.

Craig: And they dig it up, yep, and there’s a bag, a plastic bag with Alice’s ring and necklace and watch and her phone.

Todd: Are you about to say what I was g- I think you’re gonna say? I don’t know. I love how they pull out her phone. It’s a little Nokia, right?

Craig: Yeah, yeah.

Todd: Now, it’s a Nokia. I don’t think it had a screen on it. I don’t think a phone- No … like that could record video ever.

Craig: I don’t either.

Todd: But anyway, they dig it up and the dad plugs it in.

It was like, “It was low on battery.” I’m like- Yeah … “This battery should be dead.” Yeah. “What are you talking about?” Oh

Craig: my gosh. I know. I remember that.

Todd: It’s, like, a magical phone that you buried, that she buried months ago. It’s still-

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Then again, that, those were the days. Phones lasted longer ’cause…

Craig: God. And there is video footage on her phone.

Todd: Oh.

Craig: And it shows her, like, shooting footage around the desert in the dark, and she’s scared, I guess. And she encounters what appears to be a, a person that when the camera zooms in, appears to be her dead- Mm-hmm … face that… And, and the dad recognizes it ’cause he was the one that- Identified her, and we recognize it from the photos

Todd: Now, can I just say that if you had this encounter and you were freaked out, and maybe you’re even mentally unstable, who knows, do you think your first instinct would be to bury your possessions?

Craig: No. What is the… I don’t get that at all.

Todd: Somebody says some throwaway line like, “Oh, well, she was preparing for death,” or whatever. No, like, she came home.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: She came home from the trip-

Craig: And acted

Todd: normal … and just said that she lost her stuff and acted normal for a while. So that doesn’t ma- I, I think that’s so contrived.

Craig: Yeah, and they think, they, they, they, they believe, the whole family believes that she saw her own ghost and knew the future was coming to get her.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But I guess that that’s all Alice’s spirit wanted because then everything calms down. They don’t hear things in the house anymore. They start getting along better as a family.

Like-

Todd: I guess … everything’s- They start communicating a little better. Yeah. I hope Matthew stopped screwing around with

Craig: photos and- Stopping all the weird …

Todd: videos. Jesus.

Craig: Yeah. And, and because of that, the mom says that she thinks that Alice just wanted them to know who she really was. I guess she really wanted her parents to see her getting banged in that video.

Todd: Right. “I just want you to know-

Craig: Oh, God …

Todd: I was banging the neighbor.” Oh, my God. Oh, my

Craig: God. I mean, and the, I, I guess really contextually w- we shouldn’t laugh. It’s abuse. It’s child abuse. It’s just… It- a- and I think that they said even that part of the reason that the police didn’t pursue the Tuohy’s More is because that they would’ve argued that it was consensual.

Again, I don’t know what-

Todd: He’s 16, though.

Craig: Yeah, I know, but this is Australia. I don’t know what the age of consent is in Australia.

Todd: Oh, you’re right. You’re right. It could very well be. I don’t know. I’m gonna look that up.

Craig: But anyway, gross, whatever. So they start to feel better. Ray comes and visits them. I guess they’re friends with him again and, and they decide to move to put it behind them, and they pack up the house, and we see all the footage of them packing up the house and stuff.

And then June, the mom, has her final confer- consultation with Ray, and again, he kind of puts her under hypnosis and, and walks her through the house. But we see it played kind of side by side, clip by clip with his consultation with Alice about her dreams, and it appears that they align.

Todd: Yeah. That’s an interesting idea.

Craig: Yeah. Like Alice- Yeah … Alice sees her mom walk… Alice is sitting on her bed in, in her dream and, and she sees her mom walk into the room, but it seems like her mom doesn’t know she’s there. And then the mom talks about walking into Alice’s room, but there’s nobody there or something. I don’t know. They align.

Todd: I as- I assume this is this concept that Alice, Alice’s ghost from the future basically haunted her So this is supposed to be like she had a vision of the future where her mother would be coming into the room and-

Craig: Right …

Todd: unknowingly her- she is there as a ghost in the room and, and, and the ghost… I, I actually wrote a story once about this idea.

I thought it was super original, but I’ll bet there, there’s, this has been done before about being haunted by your future ghost trying to warn you about what’s gonna happen, but it is going to happen or else the ghost wouldn’t be there, so it’s just fated to happen anyway.

Craig: Interesting. It is an interesting idea.

Todd: It wasn’t as sophisticated as this, but I thought it was a clever concept. I’ve yet to see it. I’ve, I’m throwing it out there in case anybody wants to steal it. I mean, obviously it’s been done in this movie some way, so you know, it’s not super original. I wrote mine in, uh, 2000 and, uh, s- it would’ve been around the same time as this movie, I guess, 2006, 2007.

There,

Craig: there must’ve been something in the air, yeah.

Todd: I guess so.

Craig: In 2007. But yeah, I, I, you know, I guess the mom, when she walks into the bedroom, she doesn’t see anything. She sa- you know, Alice in her tape says, “I don’t think she knows I’m here,” and the mom in hers says, “Alice isn’t here.”

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And, and so they leave.

So, like, it seems like the family is at peace. I mean, that Alice foresaw this in her dream is spooky and, you know, kind of … It begs the question that I think the final twist attempts to answer.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: But again, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of frustrating because they, you know, they drive away, everything’s great, whatever, and then it goes back to the family photo, the very first family photo that we saw of the parents and Matthew standing in front of the house.

You know, th- this was the first thing we saw when we were introduced to the family. But now the camera zooms into the dark window in the background. Alice’s ghostly specter appears in the window. So I guess Alice was there all along.

Todd: Yeah. Well, then it does a, a clever thing where then the credits start rolling, and after every two or three credits it shows another thing that we saw and shows us that Alice was there.

Oh, that’s right. So, like, it shows that photo of the backyard w- that he had faked with him on the left side, but then it zooms in on the right side and you see there’s actually Alice there against the right side of the photo And I think it does the same thing with the dam one and, and something else. So it’s leaving us with this impression that it’s layers upon layers of deception.

Yeah. Even in these deceptive things and these things that we’ve been looking at this whole time, she was also still there.

Craig: She was there.

Todd: I think it’s, it’s so understated that it works so well, and I really like this ending. And I think it’s because of this that people were talking online about how unsettling the movie was.

This would be the kind of thing that… I mean, look, I don’t believe in ghosts, so I’m very skeptical about all this kind of stuff. If some- if something like this was presented to me as real, I’d be like, “They’re faking it.”

Craig: Right.

Todd: But, you know, otherwise, it’s real enough seeming that if you believed that this were possible and you wanted to believe it, this leaves you with a, a, a sense of creepiness that, I don’t know, it stuck with me a little bit longer than I thought it would, the movie.

It got me thinking. And I think some of it had to do with, again, like, the family’s grief felt so real, and the twists and turns of their brains trying to cope with this, and the weirdness of some of the relatives and the different ways that they coped with it, like the kid faking photos.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: The weirdness of the n- of the Ray kind of, like, not bringing it up because he had some weird…

You know, everything about it is just so strange that it actually felt kind of authentic. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause real life just isn’t usually so tight and clean as a Hollywood movie.

Craig: That’s true.

Todd: And, and people are messy and people are odd, and we even do things and we’ll go back and go like, “Why did I even do that?”

You know?

Craig: Sure.

Todd: So there was enough of that in the movie Just at the right level that I just absorbed all that as a s- general sense of creepiness and, and I really liked it. I mean, I didn’t find it scary, but I did find it unsettling. And, and for that I, I, I thought it was worth the watch.

Craig: Yeah, IMDb says that Jordan Peele has said that this is a movie– one of the movies that scared him the most.

I, I, I didn’t find it really that… I didn’t find it scary at all. No. It, it was f- you know, I don’t feel guilty anymore about forgetting to give spoiler warnings. People know what we do .

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: Right, right. Um, but, but really if you’ve listened to the… I, I, I feel like the twists are kind of what keeps it from being- Interesting

mediocre. I, yeah- Yeah … I mean, that’s, that’s what makes it interesting. And like if you already know that going in, I mean, uh, like I said, I’d seen it before, so going in this time I knew the twists. I remembered that, that the brother was faking it. I remembered that she was in some weird sex thing with the neighbors.

I remembered all of that. So, eh, it, it w- it, it- Yeah … it loses its shine after the first watch. But, you know, I, I think it’s good. I, I get why people were talking about it, too. I think it’s well done and well made. It’s for this type of movie, and if you like this type of movie, I think that this is a good one.

I think that you would like it. I don’t… Aside from the fact that ultimately I just found it difficult to believe, I don’t really have any cri- criticisms of it. But like you said, I mean, I… Even the ones that I mentioned earlier, uh, in, in the podcast, these, these stories that did happen in real life, like, I find them unbelievable, too.

Yeah. So if, if those things can happen, some of them, the ones that I’ve seen recently, are fucking way wilder than this . It’s true. So- It’s true … so I guess if those kinds of crazy things can happen in real life, I’m like, you know, I’m skeptical about the supernatural, but I don’t know. You know? Who knows?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So I’m skeptical, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s spooky, it’s creepy Whatever. Yeah, I, I, I give it two thumbs up. I would, I would definitely recommend it, though if you haven’t seen it and you’ve listened to this at this point, apologies for spoiling

Todd: the fun. Don’t bother. By the way, I did just look it up, and the age of consent in Australia is between 16 and 17, so it’s not quite as scandalous as we- Yeah

as it would’ve been in the US.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Still pretty young, though. I don’t know.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Still. Well, there you have it, Lake Mungo. Are we toward the end of the barrel as far as these kinds of found footage or mockumentary-type horror movies? There can’t be too many more out there that we haven’t already seen, could there?

Craig: I don’t know. I told you that, that one I just watched from 2024 was pretty good and, you know, good enough that I think we should talk about it at some point.

Todd: We should.

Craig: They’ll- people- they’ll- I, I… No, I don’t, I don’t think we’re at the end of them. In fact, I think that they will grow in popularity because I think true crime, especially bizarre true crime stuff and these types of documentaries, are really popular right now.

Like- Well,

Todd: that’s true …

Craig: the ones that I’ve mentioned are in the top 10 on Netflix all the time. There, there’s a huge audience for these. I’ve been eating them up. Another– I think I already mentioned it, but another one, Maternal Instincts, uh, I recently watched. Like, th- they abound. That’s true. And because that audience, because that audience already exists, I can’t imagine that filmmakers wouldn’t capitalize on it, and I think they would be smart to.

So no, I don’t think that it’s I, I, I do not think that the well has run dry on these at all.

Todd: But it does run into that problem, right? That, like, what could you come up with that’s crazier and weirder and more shocking than all of these real dr- documentaries end up being. You know what I mean?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: We- for a lo- for a while, Liz and I were really addicted to those, like, religious sex cult documentaries and, you know, you just couldn’t believe-

Craig: Yeah

Todd: the stuff that people would do and to each other and were willing to go along with. I mean, it just blows your mind. You know, like I said, you see it in a fictional movie and you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna buy it, you know? You’re like, “Someone needs to write this better.” It’s only when you see it in real life that you’re just like, “I cannot believe it.

This is un…” It, it’s so shocking. Uh. It’s ironic, but kinda funny that way. So in, in the other sense, y- it’s a pretty high bar to cross-

Craig: Right …

Todd: to come up with something like this, that’s not just gonna end up being, like, a ghost story or an alien story or something that, where we’re really asked to suspend our disbelief, you know?

Craig: Ooh, well, there you go. I mean, that’s, then that’s, that’s where this movie- That’s where it’ll be … v- you know, well, do you go the, the route of this movie and go with something if you have any inkling of belief in the supernatural that is potentially plausible, or do you really go way over the top? I mean, I suppose anything is plausible.

You mentioned aliens. Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: sure, I guess aliens could come, and if they did, I’m sure somebody would catch them on their cellphone camera. But, you know, for me- … there, there’s, there’s a line. I think the ghost line, I can almost… I, you know this. I told you I saw Blair Witch before it had come out, that it was not real, and I totally thought it was real.

So- Right. I could, I can be convinced. But you’re right, I do think, uh, people who are, i- i- if people are gonna continue to make these mockumentaries, the bar is pretty high in terms of h- how far you can, uh, press our willing suspension of disbelief. Anyway.

Clip: Yeah, I suppose so.

Todd: Well, check out Lake Mungo if you haven’t already, and let us know what you thought about it.

Just find us online and drop us a note. Let us know some of these other horror d- mockumentaries that we might be missing that would be kind of fun for us to do, whether involving aliens or ghosts or murders or whatever. We’re always on the lookout for new and interesting stuff. Find us at chainsawhorror.com.

Google us at Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast. Find our Patreon, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

This week we pay tribute to an actor that means so much to both of us, Tim Curry, and his performance as Darkeness in Ridley Scott’s “Legend”.

We reflect on how much he meant to us across roles like Rocky Horror, Clue, Pennywise, and extensive voice work, including how his stroke affected his career and why his memoir is worth reading (even if it’s brief and private).

In celebrating his legacy, we discuss Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985), including its troubled production, stunning practical sets, and Curry’s iconic, physically demanding Darkness makeup.

We compare the director’s cut and theatrical cut, focusing on how Jerry Goldsmith’s score versus Tangerine Dream radically changes tone, pacing, and character complexity, and we break down key scenes like Meg Mucklebones, Lily’s seduction/dance sequence, and the differing endings.

Check out BOTH cuts, as well as more of Curry’s work over his many decades in the business!work.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/08/legend-movie-poster-scaled.jpg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Legend (1985)

Episode 504, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we’re doing another tribute episode and I have to admit this one’s a bit of a difficult one for me. Um-

Craig: It has been a rough week.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like it’s been an emotional week for me. I don’t know about you but man, it was a rough week for me.

Todd: You know, I don’t usually get so emotional as to cry when a celebrity dies, but this week for only the second and third time in my life, I, uh, I did shed some tears.

First of all was Dolly Parton And that was horrible. Yeah. But-

Craig: Wept like a baby.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: We’ll talk more about that later.

Todd: We’ll probably record a little something for our, um, patrons.

Craig: For our patrons,

Todd: yeah. Yeah, to talk about Dolly Parton. Not really horror related, but darn it, that’s what our patrons get.

Sometimes they get life stuff.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, and I’ve got a lot to say.

Todd: Just turn the mic over to you for that one. This one is a man who I’ve been telling everyone for years since I was a kid is my favorite actor of all time. Tim Curry died at the age of 80?

Craig: Yep.

Todd: Uh, what can I say? I… Uh, he’s been with me since my childhood.

The roles that he has performed on screen have just captivated me throughout every decade of my life. I just saw a little bit of myself in this man. The more I got to know him, the more I thought, “Wow,” uh, he f-… He sounds a little bit like me in terms of how he approaches life, skittered through his career, and just really just done interesting things, just goes around and does the stuff that interests him and is quite good at what he does, and, uh, was pretty generally beloved all around.

I-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: much like Dolly Parton, I can’t think of a person who had any complaints about Tim Curry.

Craig: No.

Todd: And, uh, obviously, one of the most iconic movies, uh, in, in America of the last 50 years, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. God, so many, so many movies. A- Rooster in Annie, huh, Wadsworth in Clue, the concierge in Home Alone 2.

God, he was in Muppet Treasure Island and the Three Musketeers. Right. The Hunt for Red October. He played Pennywise. Huh, talking about horror, probably my favorite Pennywise is still him. And- Yeah … he scared a whole generation of people, and I really think turned the world against clowns single-handedly with that role.

I know. You said that. We’ve said that a lot. We did that on this show. We also did The Worst Witch on this show one Halloween.

Clip: Oh, right.

Todd: And he had a turn in there that I was surprised by, but you grew up with, that was just goofy and silly and fun and very Tim Curry. Yet he went on also to do hundreds of roles almost in, in-

Craig: S- prolific

Todd: yeah, in voice work, th- things that I didn’t even realize. And that was where he– I feel like when you, when you read his autobiography Which I did. You sort of feel like that was a thing that he discovered a, a passion for and really settled into that through life, and then sadly had his voice taken away from him for a while and with his stroke.

Was still able to do some acting in some movies- Yeah … and was still able to do some audiobooks and things like that, but certainly not to the degree that he had before, and that had to be frustrating for the guy. But man, he kept a good spirit about it all, kept a sense of humor, bright mind. I’ve seen so many interviews with him even over the last several years, not just because he died this last week.

And it just so happened that I had been doing a lot of traveling this summer, and one of the three or four books that I had going while I was on the plane and resting in the various places I was, was his autobiography Vagabond, his memoir. Mm-hmm. Which you had recommended to me, and I’m glad you did. You had recommended I listen to the audiobook, but as much as I wanted to hear his voice, I don’t– I just prefer to read things.

I don’t… As a guy weirdly a guy who records audiobooks, uh, doesn’t really like audiobooks too much. That’s me. So it was so strange that two days later after I finished it finally got the news of his passing.

Oh, wow!

It was very weird. It made me not want to start the auto-autobiography, which is next on my list.

Oh my God, I know. I know. I don’t want her to be that third person yet. Ugh. So anyway, there’s so much to say about Tim Curry, but I’ve done enough talking. Uh, Craig, I know he means at least as much to you as he does to me.

Craig: Yeah. Like, you know, our– I think our s- stories are similar. I, I grew up watching him.

Clue was one that my friends, when I got into college, all my friends had grown up with and I, I hadn’t really seen it. I, I had seen bits and pieces of it here and there. I didn’t really see that one until college, but it was, it was Stephen King’s It. Stephen King’s It was my sick day movie always. If I had a sick day at home, i- you know, that was one of them.

That, and The Goonies and Troll, that was kind of my, my go-to marathon. But also from the movie that we’re talking about today, Legend. I loved this movie growing up as a kid, and it was one of those that I don’t think that we ever had for whatever reason. You know, my dad would tape things off HBO or, or illegally copy things from the video store occasionally but we never had Legend and so when it would pop up on HBO or wherever it would pop up it was so exciting and Alan and I were watching it together last night and he said the same thing.

He said when he was a kid and he would stumble across this movie w- at whatever point in the movie he would stumble across it, th-that was it. Whatever else was going on ended and you sat and you watched Legend. And of course we’re gonna have a lot to say about the movie but you know I, I, I think he’s the best part of it but like Dolly Parton, like Paul Reubens, like God protector Cassandra Peterson, I, I mean these really honest to God are my childhood legends and my heroes.

You know? These are the kind of people that I… Uh, uh, I, I recognized it then but I don’t think that I coulda– have articulated what it was then. I recognize now that it’s these people Are all, were all unapologetically themselves. They absolutely refused to apologize for who they were and, and they just, you know, lived out loud and, and I…

Yeah, I, I, I listened to his audiobook which listeners, I recommend if, if you like audiobooks at all because he, he, he narrates it himself and he’s so charming, and that’s, I think, part of his appeal. He’s charming, he’s mysterious, he’s sexy, he’s a little bit sinister. I mean, he’s just s- got so much charisma.

He’s enchanting. Of course, in the wake of his death I’ve seen a lot of clips from him. I’ve seen a lot of tributes and, and whatnot, but I saw him in an interview probably midway through his career. He was still young, but not Rocky Horror young. And, and some, you know, very stiff-necked looking anchor woman, “You’re just so charming.

When you, when you play the devil, it makes a girl wanna go straight to hell.”

Todd: Oh. And I

Craig: get it. You know, he often did play dark, sinister characters, but s- And he just had a seductive nature about him. And beyond that, if you … As you know, if you read his memoir, he was humble. So incredibly humble and grateful for all of the experiences that he had had. It… And, and he cautions early on in his memoir that he’s probably not going to spill the kind of salacious material you might be hoping for in a memoir.

You know, he doesn’t talk, I think at all, about his love life.

Todd: No.

Craig: And if ever there were scandalous things going on behind the scenes, like feuds or anything, he doesn’t really address that. I mean, he just seems really grateful for the experiences that he had, and to hear him talk about them from his own perspective is just, it’s fascinating, it’s entertaining and, and it’s just comforting hearing his voice because Career reflects, you know, his voice is one of his greatest tools.

One of many- Yeah … because I just think that he was an astounding, astounding actor. But Beyond that, just seemed like a really good guy. Was always generous with his fans. You know, we, we’ve dreaded this day. We’ve talked about it. We knew it was coming eventually and we had hoped that it would be a long time from now but we knew it was coming because he hasn’t been well for a long time.

I don’t remember when he had that stroke, but it’s been a long time ago. But even within the last year, even though he wasn’t well, he was still going to cons and, and festivals and, and holding panels and he spoke slowly and not as clearly as he once did, but he was all there mentally. You know? It, it had an effect– a physical effect on his body and slowed him down, but his mind was still sharp as a whip.

And I remember recently… The most recent one that I heard, he did a panel with Leslie Ann Warren, one of his co-stars from Clue, and you know, they were both there and I think that she anticipated having to do most of the heavy lifting, but ultimately she said that she could barely get a word in Because he talked so much and had, and so many stories and so many people had questions for him.

And he talks in his memoir about how he loved his fans because they were people who looked to characters like Frank N Furter and thought, you know, “If that person,” alien whatever it is, can be loudly who they are then I have permission to be loudly who I am.” And he really admired that in those people and wanted to give back to them too.

So I could go on and on and on. If you haven’t read the memoir and you’re a fan of Tim Curry’s, do yourself a favor. It, it’s certainly worth your time. Yeah. I mean y- I’m gonna … Uh, yeah, I, I shed a tear too. Hmm. It, it, it feels like a big loss. It real- And you know maybe this comes with being the age we are, but it really feels like we’re losing our heroes.

But Tim curry also felt, you know, multi generational and he kinda felt like he belonged to all of us. It, it feels like kind of a communal mourning. All of my friends were talking about it and were sad and, you know watching his movies with their kids in these last few days and – Yeah So obviously, his legacy will stand and You know, he was living comfortably.

He, he was sad that he couldn’t do the things that he could when he was physically able and he really enjoyed gardening but you know, he also was in a position where he could afford help and he had people who he… Had garden for him and he would sit in his chair- …and give them directions . Give some

Todd: directions

Hmm

Craig: He was– That was another thing that was so inspiring was, you know somebody who could have wallowed in their own, you know loss. He didn’t. He still felt like he had a lot of life to live and it was different now but he wasn’t gonna let that bring him down or at least that’s the way that he spoke about it and that was inspiring as well So just a great, great guy.

I’m sad that ,you know I, I, I’ve been saying for a while especially once I found out that you had never seen this movie, I’ve been saying for a while we’re gonna do this movie even if it’s when he passes We’re going to do it eventually. So I’m — I really am very excited to talk to you about it And I’m kinda glad that we got the sad stuff outta the way and now we can just celebrate At, at, at least You know?

I haven’t talked to you about how you feel about the movie yet. But at least I think we can agree in celebrating Tim Curry and his performance in it

Todd: Yeah. I agree. You know talking about memoir real quick I, I was a little disappointed. I, I was very grateful for having something from him talking about his life but I did feel that is pretty surface and it was over awfully quick

I wanted a little more detail into him and his character but I just think that he’s more of private guy and he gave about as much as he willing to give and Like said for that I’m grateful If you’re on the fence about reading it and long books scare you Ill tell you that y- you wouldn’t have that problem so that’s, that’s good part of it i think

Craig: Well and and not surprised to hear that because doesn’t speak much A- aside from his childhood and his relationship with parents.

He’s pretty open about that

Todd: Hmm

Craig: But yeah later on he talks friendships dear friendship s and and some acquaintances and it’s … You know? I’m always amazed by the six degrees of separation when it comes celebrity culture and how,- Mm …. sometimes they all kind of know each other and whose paths have crossed whatnot and that fascinating.

I’m interested in that kind of stuff and I’m interested in trivia and what he

does Is he runs through his career Or – Yeah …..or The biggest highlights of it basically gives you behind scenes perspective nd I found that be very interesting Rocky Horror for a very long time, ’cause that was a huge part of his life, which I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that he was playing that role for years and years and years-

Todd: Hmm

Craig: and it was, you know, really defining for him as, as an actor. But he talks at length about Legend II, and I found that interesting. Ironically, I guess because it’s one of his most iconic roles, Pennywise, he barely talked about It at all.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And he kind of , and he kind of said something about that like, “I know it’s one of my most iconic roles, I just don’t really have much to say about it.”

Todd: Like Yeah. He really did. And, and he was almost, I don’t wanna say disdainful about it. He wasn’t disdainful about it but there was a certain kind of like puzzlement or like a m-… I don’t want to say exhaustion- Yeah …but something that kinda came through where he was almost sounded like maybe he was a little done with being recognized for being Pennywise.

Craig: Well, he was so gracious, you know, in terms of his fans but I, I– He did kind of express suppr-… He was surprised that that was the one that… ‘Cause, you know, it’s an evil, terrible character and, um, he was surprised that so many people connected with It. But, but he was grateful-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: and appreciative of the fans.

It was… Just didn’t have much to say about It .

Todd: No, it was funny So interesting. Well we had a lot to say about It. You can go back and listen to one of our previous episodes on that and-

Craig: Did we ever even do part two? I don’t remember.

Todd: Yeah, we did part two but we didn’t do part two of the new It. Yeah. We did part two of the miniseries.

Yeah, so anyway Legend. You’re right, I had not seen this. I, I like that we’re talking about this in this way. I think this has happened once or twice where one of us has seen a movie since kind of grown up with it and the other one for some reason it just passed them by. And

Craig: s- It’s very rare as of this point.

This- It’s

Todd: weird, right?

Craig: This could, this could be the last one.

Todd: As, as surprisingly a film like Legend because it was in my face a lot. You know it was on TV a fair amount. Uh, I don’t even think I saw more than two seconds of a clip of it believe it or not. Y- you know I, I knew of the poster was always beckoning me from the shelves of the video store.

It actually looked like the kinda thing that my sisters and I would watch because this came out around the same time as The NeverEnding Story. Well also like Goonies and some other things but like there was a bit of a, of a fantasy resurgence in the mainstream movie world and-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: so some big movies were going in this direction and- Jim Henson, yeah

j-… Yeah Jim Henson, uh, Labyrinth and whatnot.

Craig: The Dark Crystal.

Todd: Y- yeah The Dark Crystal too and I was really surprised to s- to hear that Jennifer… But not surprised really to hear that Jennifer Connelly was originally offered the lead female role in this.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: She turned it down but ended up working on Labyrinth anyway.

I guess I just kind of intuitively knew over the years that the movie just didn’t really latch on except for people who grew up with it I think. Kinda like The NeverEnding Story I suppose. That’s not a movie you hear m- too many people talk about nowadays.

Craig: Anymore, yeah.

Todd: Yeah so, uh, unlike I dunno a lotta the other movies that came out around that time.

Labyrinth I think.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Labyrinth is probably more fondly reviv- But I think a lotta that has to do with this one had a bit of a troubled production Ridley Scott had just come off of Alien and stuff. And then he did another movie that wasn’t quite such a big hit

Craig: Blade Runner

Todd: And, uh, he wanted to go into another big production on something that’s fantasy related, some epic dark fantasy adventure for adults.

Reached out to an American novelist William Hjortsberg to write this original screenplay for it. And he did, and, and he put this thing into production. My God, the… Th- there was just massive, massive production behind this. It

Craig: w- It’s

Todd: crazy It’s insane. One of the-

Craig: Yeah, it’s huge …

Todd: one of the biggest sound stages at Pinewood Studios was made for this giant indoor set of a forest.

It did end up burning down midway through the production before they’d even finished all, shooting all their scenes in there. I mean, it was like-

Craig: That was one of my favorite stories from Tim Curry’s memoir

Todd: Yeah, right?

Craig: Was when, was when the set burned down, and his mom saw it on, on the news, I think, and called him and was like, “Timmy, were you smoking?”

And like

And, and then, then there was some other point in his life where something burned down, and his mom called and asked him if he’d been smoking. I kinda thought that was such a funny story whether it’s

Todd: true or not. That was funny. Seems like a thing- Seems like a thing that ran through his whole life was, uh, trying to keep his mom at bay with the smoking and the drugs and things.

Yeah.

Craig: Like, “What did you do?”

Todd: But, um, you know, he, he pulled in the same people who worked with him on Alien and Blade Runner. You know, all these big fantastical sets, and as I watched the movie I was just struck by how gorgeous everything was and how detailed it was. Couldn’t believe this was filmed indoors.

It just doesn’t have that… It has an otherworldly look to it- Mm … but it doesn’t have that otherworldly because I’m on a stage indoors look that say The Wizard of Oz has, you know?

Craig: Right.

Todd: So it’s just, it’s just gorgeous, and I mean, the whole production’s crazy. I sat down and I watched the director’s cut.

Wasn’t my o- my choice, it’s just what I had, so I, I watched it, and as I was finishing it up I thought, “I better contact you, Craig,” because the director’s cut came out in like 2003 or 2002. You definitely didn’t grow up watching the director’s cut, so I was curious what you were gonna watch. We decided that we would w- watch both of them so that we could compare.

Like I said earlier, to come full circle, I’m really glad that, uh, I’m in this position because not only am I seeing this movie for the first time, I’m not colored by my childhood memories of it. I’m also not colored by the theatrical version.

Craig: Right.

Todd: You know? I get to see them in the opposite order that a lot of people have grown up with it in and seen it in, so I might have a slightly different take on all this than you do.

We’ll see.

Craig: Yeah, I can only imagine you will. Okay. So yeah, I grew up with it and I loved it. It was… I consider it in the same kind of ’80s children’s fantasy genre as those movies that we’ve already listed like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal and The NeverEnding Story, that kind of thing. I, I can’t imagine probably that our listeners haven’t seen this movie, but you hadn’t, so I don’t know.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But if you, if you haven’t, gosh, I, I don’t like movie spoilers. I, I know some– Our friend Heather l- likes movie spoilers. She likes to know what’s gonna happen before she sees a movie.

Todd: Yes, so does, so does Vic.

Craig: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t understand that, but whatever. To each their own. I don’t like movie spoilers, so if you haven’t seen this, I would say watch it before you listen to this, and that’s my general advice.

But- Mm-hmm … so anyway, I grew up with the theatrical cut And didn’t know until it existed that there would be a director’s cut. And when I heard that there would be a director’s cut, that was the first time that I had learned… You know, I’m never surprised to hear that movies get edited, you know, in the process.

Of course, there’s stuff that gets left on the cutting room floor and so then later you get director’s cuts where they can put in whatever they want. So, you know, that’s nothing new. But this was the first time that I had learned that the score that I had grown up with was not the intended score, that they had done an entire symphonic and choral score that was now gonna be on this thing.

And I thought, oh, how cool is that? Because I love movie scores. So I ordered it. I think I pre-ordered it, which I don’t usually do. And it came and I put it in and I started watching it and I was like, “This is a different movie.”

Todd: It really is.

Craig: It, it’s a completely– The score makes such a difference.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Now, this has been a long time ago.

It’s been a long time ago but it also, I hadn’t seen it in a really long time so I was excited to see it again and I’m like, “I’m so excited to s-see it again and I’m gonna see it the way it was intended.” And I put it on and I watched like the first 15 minutes And I turned it off and put, and, and put on the theatrical version.

You poor guy. And then I just went, and then I just went and watched all of the extended scenes and stuff on YouTube. So I really think that this is the first time that I’ve seen the director’s cut start to finish. Now, this is why it’s gonna be– I’m very interested too because this time I wanted to, you know, go in with an open mind direct- you know, director’s cut.

This is what the director wanted. And it’s good. Both movies are good. They’re both stunning to look at. I just feel like whoever… You know, they, they changed it. First of all, the original cut was like two and a half hours long. This, uh, director’s cut that we watched is right about two hours, and then the theatrical cut is right at about one thirty.

I think whoever made the decision to cut it and to rescore it was 100% right because I think that the theatrical cut drags, and I think that the way that it’s paced and the score, which is a beautiful– It’s an absolutely beautiful score in the director’s cut. It, you know, it’s, it’s orchestral. There’s, there’s choral stuff going on there.

It’s, it’s gorgeous, but it changes the tone entirely. To me, the director’s cut feels more like a classical almost British –

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: fairy tale epic.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Whereas the theatrical cut feels like an ’80s fever dream.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I like that more. And with the extended runtime, I think it with the tone because when you trim it down those scenes

Because there are comedic scenes throughout the movie, but in the director’s cut they’re kind of few and far between. And so- Right, they’re spaced out … when they h- whe- wh-when they happen it’s kind of jarring. Like why all of a sudden is this cute and funny now? Wh-when you condense it you don’t have so much space between those scenes and I just feel like it works better tonally.

Plus I just love the, the, the score um- … in the theatrical cut. Uh, it’s… Y-you’ll have to remind who did it. I should remember but I ca-… All

Todd: I can come up with is Wagner. Tangerine Dream. Tangerine Dream- Tangerine Dream …. was the, you know, the sound of the ’80s. It’s a German band that, uh, scored a ton of ’80s movies and once you start hearing their scores you know what we’re talking about.

They’re th- they tend to be a little ethereal. They’re very synthy.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: The Keep, Risky Business. God Firestarter I think was scored by them. Legend obviously Near Dark had a nice score by them as well. I’m gonna kinda ride the middle here because I completely agree with what you’re saying to the extent of this is what makes the two movies different.

Jerry Goldsmith’s score works really well for what Ridley Scott, I think, ultimately wanted, which was a timeless classic. He wanted a dark epic fantasy tale th- that I think is like a little more adult oriented and I feel like that’s what he For

Craig: sure. It’s, it’s scarier too.

Todd: It’s so much- I think …scarier and, and a little more brutal and also the n-, the thing about the director’s cut is there are scenes and things left out tha-…

Of the theatrical cut that reduce the complexity of the characters. I would say that when you’re watching the director’s cut, you realize ev- almost every one of these characters is flawed in some way.

Craig: Oh yeah.

Todd: The princess comes off as a little more entitled and bitchy.

Craig: For sure.

Todd: Uh, Tom Cruise’s character comes off as a little like unsure and clueless and, and he’s got issues.

He, he’s also a little bit on more of a journey, I think, in the director’s cut because h- he’s not so good at stuff in the beginning and he has to try harder to … For example, he has to try harder to dispatch the witch whereas the theatrical cut, the witch scene is so short that it, it almost seems like it was second nature for her t-.

Him to just be able to cut her head off, you know?

Craig: Correct me if I’m wrong ’cause I didn’t go back and double check but I felt like o- there was difference. Tom Cruise is the hero of the movie and he eventually kind of gathers a band of elves to help him. But if I remember correctly, in the direct- You know, in, in the theatrical cut, the elves just kind of find him and they learn that they need a hero and they’re like, “You’re good enough,” whatever.”

“You’re the

Todd: guy,” Yeah.

Craig: Y- And y- yeah, and then they just go off together.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: In the director’s cut They’re mad at him

Todd: Oh yeah, they’re pissed.

Craig: They’re pissed at him and they’re ultimately in the movie good guys but they’re also… In the director’s cut i- it’s very clear that they’re dangerous. Yeah. And in fact I think, I think Gump puts Jack to a test and I’m pretty sure that if Jack fails the test Gump is going to kill him.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: And e- and then when, when Jack passes the test Gump is like furious that he didn’t get to kill him.

Todd: Gump comes across as much angrier and testy as well in this, you’re right. And I think that’s what I liked about the director’s cut. I really liked that it w- didn’t simplify everything so much because I saw it first Right?

Craig: Right.

Todd: S- so now I go and I watch the simpler version, it makes it seem more like a tale for children. Uh-huh. But I think it’s more appropriate for children. It’s less dark. It has darkness in it. Literally Darkness. Darkness is one of the characters played by Tim Curry. In fact, Darkness shows up pretty early on in the first movie.

He shows up early in the director’s cut as well but we don’t see his face and we have a very- You don’t see him, right … short scene with him whereas one of the things the studio said was, “We need to see him early.” And so we see him early on. And again, that’s a pretty typical thing to do for a kids movie.

You see the good guys, you see the bad guy, you see what the bad guy does and what needs to be fixed and then they go off on their adventure and then they pile on some friendly helpers to help them and then they go and dispatch the bad guy. Whereas the director’s cut isn’t quite as simplistic and it feels a little more adult.

And to me, I don’t know, it feels a little more timeless. I feel like maybe in another 20 years when the people like us who grew up in the ’80s are starting to fade away into obscurity . Hopefully it’s longer than 20 years. You know, and people are not remembering this movie from their childhood but they’re going back and watching it, I just have a prediction That people are gonna gravitate a little more towards the director’s cu- especially with what has come after.

You know, all these complex tales like Harry Potter and, uh, the long ass Lord of the Rings things. We have more of a tolerance and more of an expectation I think for a little more of this complexity in our fantasy. Whereas-

Craig: Yeah, I don’t.

Todd: Yeah. I know. I know. And, and but I’ll tell you, I freaking love the Tangerine Dream score in the simple other movie.

Isn’t

Craig: it so good?

Todd: It is. And, uh, i- it… But you’re right, it, it’s so crazy. This is a perfect example about how, how a score can completely change the tone of a film. It just makes it a lot more lighthearted and-

Craig: And dreamy …

Todd: dreamy. And, and that supports the visuals too. There are lots of times when the visuals are dreamy and stuff.

And also, you know, more ’80s. It

Craig: definitely does.

Todd: And we like the ’80s stuff. So, uh, there’s my bias showing there too. S-… But, but at the end of the day, I’m going to come down hard on the director’s side. I really just, I really do like the director’s cut a lot better, full stop. Although I will acknowledge 100% it’s a little slow.

It could have been trimmed a little bit. There were some moments where I was, I was a little bored.

Craig: Yes. And, and, I mean, ugh, I’ll just come out and say I think if I were recommending it to somebody who hadn’t seen it before, unless I knew they were a real cinephile, i- if we’re just talking about somebody who wants a, a fun movie to watch, I would 100% say theatrical cut.

Yep. I, I think it’s more fun. I think the pacing’s better.

Todd: I think that’s fair. I think we kind of said the same thing about the Clive Barker movie, right?

Craig: I don’t remember which one it was. I feel-

Todd: The one with the guys under the ground. Uh, we gotta, we gotta say the name.

Craig: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Nightbreed.

Nightbreed.

Todd: The Night- Nightbreed, right? Uh, we kinda said the same thing, that the director’s cut in that case really was more for like diehard horror guys or Clive Barker fans, whereas the theatrical cut seemed to be a better choice.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Even though, like Legend, it, it bombed as well, so.

Craig: Riiight. Yeah. And d- Well, I guess th- Yeah.

A- and, and you know, then if you’re i- a fan of the, the theatrical cut and you’ve seen it already and you’re curious, I mean, it’s, it’s definitely worth, you know, the… I, I find the theatr- or excuse me, the director’s cut certainly worth satisfying your curiosity. I mean, a- and, and again, I’ve said it before but I just want to reiterate, the score, the original score is gorgeous.

It, it really is stunning and appropriate. I don’t know, I just prefer the other, and it’s probably because I’m looking at it through th- the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. But, you know, and again, I, I imagine that if, if you’re listening to this, you’ve probably seen the movie. But if you haven’t, it is a fairy tale.

It’s a beautiful kind of epic fairy tale. The, the visuals are stunning with beautiful, uh, huge ethereal forests with towering tree trunks and, and bright sunlight coming through the, the foliage, you know, illuminating fields of flowers. And then you’ve got, you know, the, the dark sets as well. Like in the theatrical cut, it opens in kind of the dark forest, and you see the animals all running around and then this very scary goblin.

All of the characters except Tom Cruise who plays Jack, who he’s, I guess like a forest nymph?

Todd: I guess.

Craig: Which is what I would say. He’s not mortal, I don’t believe. I think Mia Sara is the only mortal or human. Maybe mortal’s not the right word. Human. He’s, he’s not human. He’s something else. And, and Mia Sara is a human princess from a kingdom that we never see, but she likes to hang out in the forest and amongst the normal people.

But the, the origin- the … Excuse me. The director’s cut opens up with this very scary voice which is Tim Curry’s voice altered a little bit, and I think brought down. It sounds to me, if he was doing it by himself I, I don’t know how he did it ’cause it, he brings it really low in the register.

Todd: No, they did, they did modify it.

He mentioned that in his, uh, in his biography. But he fought to have it not modified so much.

Craig: That’s … Yeah. He y- he also didn’t wanna wear as many prosthetics as he had to, but, uh, ultimately I think was really pleased with the way that it turned out.

Clip: I am the lord of darkness. I require the solace of the shadows and the dark

of the night Sunshine is my destroyer

All this shall change. Tonight, the sun sets forever

There shall never be another dawn

Craig: Um, then he meets with his goblin minion Blix and says, “You gotta go hunt the unicorns because the unicorns make the sun rise, and I wanna rule the world.”

Todd: Yep.

Craig: The theatrical cut opens with a scroll- Ugh … a text scroll.

Todd: So yucky.

Craig: I kinda like it. I don’t know. Of course you do.

Uh, it, it … I know. But it kind of … Like, it gives you… Again, it, it makes more sense for children even though I don’t know that young children necessarily could read the whole thing, but it just kind of establishes the story. Like, it tells you, we are in a time when – … I didn’t write it all down, but th- there’s powers of light and powers of darkness, and the powers of light are i- embodied in the unicorns, and there’s a boy in the woods named Jack, and he’s a protector of the unicorns.

Like, it … So it kind of- … sets up the whole thing for you before throwing you right in. But, uh, the way that Blix is going to find the unicorns is because they can be baited by innocents. So I guess Alan, as we were watching it said, “Um, how did the Goblin know to follow around Jack and Lily?” And I said, “I don’t know.

They’re innocent. He figured it

Todd: out” Questionable.

Craig: But, uh, yeah, I don’t know. That’s it. I don’t know how … I took s- like copious notes, and I don’t know how much we need to get into the plot. But Jack shows Lily the unicorns, which he’s not supposed to do because I guess it’s, like, against the rules of magic in the forest, and she, against his protest, goes up and touches one of the unicorns.

And while she’s doing that, the unicorn is distracted, so the goblin Blix is able to shoot it with a poison dart and eventually cut off its horn which at least temporarily throws the whole country into a dark winter.

Todd: Now, there’s still another unicorn, right? I mean, he doesn’t cut off both. Didn’t one get away?

Craig: One does get

Todd: away. I was very confused by this.

Craig: Yeah, he only gets one, and that becomes an issue becau- I don’t know. I mean, people who have complaints about the movie say that, you know, the story has holes, and it does, you know? I, I guess, you know, it’s fantasy so whatever the writer wants to happen can happen.

But I, I, I guess when this unicorn is killed, ’cause I, I think that taking its horn kills it, we see its motionless body covered in snow later so I, I, I think it’s supposed to be dead. Yeah. I don’t know. I … That caused enough of a disturbance to make it go into a dark winter’s night, but later Darkness appears to the goblins and says, “Did you kill both of the unicorns?”

And at first they say yes, and he’s like, “Well, that’s bullshit because the sun’s coming up,” and they’re like, “Oh yeah, there’s still another one”. And he makes them go get the other one. So-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: I, I think that If you want to try to explain it away, they thought as long as he had a unicorn horn, because it is magic, like the goblin starts using it like a magic wand and like shooting fire out of it and causing- Yeah

humorous ruckus, um, with the other goblins. I guess they just thought that was enough, but it wasn’t. He has to have both And eventually they, you know, they, they get the other unicorn and Princess Lily in the process. And so then Jack is on double duty, not… You know, I think most importantly what Gump and the other fairies and, and dwarves and elves are concerned about is the unicorn, but Jack is also trying to save his princess.

It’s, it’s all, you know, it’s all very kind of typical fairy tale.

Todd: It really is.

Craig: And that’s how it plays out, but it’s beautiful to look at. The elves and dwarfs or whatnot are the comic part, and one of them is played by Billy Barty. I think his brother, there are two that are brothers, I can’t- Brown Tom and Screwball And I think that the guy who plays Brown Tom is a, a famous little person actor.

There’s lots of little people actors in here. And they’re kind of the comic relief, and that does k- kind of, especially in the theatrical cut, ground it as a kids movie.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But beyond that, beyond that, I just kept saying to Alan, “My God, they just do not make movies like this anymore for kids.” They just don’t.

Todd: No, they don’t. T- they lighten it up a lot more now. Yeah. They try to kind of make you know that everything’s still gonna be okay all throughout.

Craig: Yeah. We, we are not beholden to any rules about what movies we pick, but I have said since we started talking about this, I think that this is a horror movie. I mean, there are so many moments where you could pause the frame and you could just not…

Anybody who looked at it would say, “Oh, this has to be out of a horror movie,” because there are horrifying elements of it.

Todd: There really are. I was watching it and I was thinking, “Oh, I’m going to show this to Kenji sometime.” And then I’m … After, after I finish it, well, and I finished the director’s cut, I was like, “Eh, I don’t think he’d like this.”

He’s a little scared- It’s scary … of things. And, and I try to push him to, you know, y- you got to confront life, and fiction is sort- somehow is, is how we do it, and we don’t necessarily want to avoid scary things all our lives or we can’t deal with things. So I’m not overly protective of what he sees. But I was just watching this and I thought, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff in this that…

There’s, um… I think it’s, it’s early in the theatrical cut, but much later in the director’s cut when they’re actually showing the Lair of Darkness. That’s a freaking scary place.

Craig: Heck yeah.

Todd: There are giants in there that are chopping people up alive.

Craig: I know, and cooking, barbecuing them.

Todd: Oh my god. Oh my god.

And they’re, they’re showing it. I mean, it’s, it’s shocking.

Craig: People are getting pulled away screaming and, like, seemingly thrown into the fire. But something else that I noticed, having watched it twice in one day Is the good guys might seemingly be hurt or killed, but they never are. The good guys never get hurt or killed in the movie.

Right. It, Brown Tom seemingly gets shot in the head to the point that it looks like blood flows down his face, but it turns out it’s just his wine that he kept under his cap One of the other elves or whatever they are who was posing as a goblin, but we find out later he wasn’t really a goblin, he was one of the elves.

He gets pulled out of the dungeon and carried away by one of those giant gross orc-like guys, and he’s screaming and screaming and screaming, and then it seems like he gets cut up and cooked. But then later we find out he’s not dead because they pull him out, like he’s been put into a pie, but the pie hasn’t been baked yet-

and they pull him out.

Todd: It’s such a, such a fairy tale thing. I thought that was really cute.

Craig: Yeah. It, it, it pulls its punches a little bit.

Todd: Did you recognize him, by the way?

Craig: I did recognize him, but I didn’t … Was he from Gothic?

Todd: Yeah, he was the guy in Gothic.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Mm-hmm. He’s been in a bunch of other stuff too, but he was very featured in that one.

Yeah, so crazy. So yeah, it’s spooky, it’s scary. And

Craig: then of course Tim Curry is terrifying.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: That’s the one thing that I will give the theatrical cut great credit for. I do think that it was the right decision to keep his identity in shadow until much later.

Todd: So you mean the director’s cut is what you’re

Craig: saying?

Yeah, yes. Excuse me. That, yeah, the director’s cut. I, I like the theatrical cut where you see him, I mean, not really in his f-

Todd: He looks different.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, he’s kind of lit in green a little bit. Y- you don’t see him in his- He’s got glowing green eyes, dark. Interestingly, so Tim Curry had to go through hours of, of m- makeup and, and he was wearing like 18-inch iron framed lifts in his shoes, and then those horns which initially were really heavy, but it was causing really great strain on his neck, so they e- eventually made them with fiberglass and said that it was almost surreal how you would pick them up to move them, how light they were.

Like, because they were so large, but they had almost no heft to them. So Tim Curry, who’s like a 5’9″, 5’10” guy, like my height, so very average in height, ultimately, you know, from tip of horn to bottom of hoof was almost 13 feet tall. And he’s in, he’s in full body prosthetics and full face prosthetics including, you know, crazy contacts that, that covered his eyes that he ab- initially objected to and were very painful, but ultimately he thought they looked good.

The, the process of getting into the makeup was one thing, but then it also took, I think, at least an hour if not more of soaking in a bath so that all of the adhesive could be, you know, softened enough to be taken off safely. At one point he had a panic attack In that process and became so impatient that he just started ripping the, the makeup and the prosthetics off.

And in the process ripped off a lot of his own skin. So much so that they had to… I th- I don’t remember if they halted production or if, or if Ridley Scott just gave him time off

Todd: Yeah, he gave him time off. They were able to shoot some other things while he waited but yeah, he was in the hospital and he had some time off after that

Craig: But I guess ultimately that influenced his decision because he had to find ways to shoot around him and kind of keep him in shadow or not seen.

That influenced his decision to want to keep him, you know, kind of concealed until the end. But ultimately like you said, the, the, the f- the company or the production or whatever wanted to see him earlier so we ultimately did see him earlier than the theatrical one. But he’s horrifying too. I, I think- Mm-hmm …you know, one of the great

He’s never called Satan, he’s never called the devil but I mean, that’s obviously what it is in this fantasy world and I think one of the greatest cinematic depictions of the Devil in stop

Todd: Yeah

Craig: He looks amazing. And the other thing that’s amazing about it to me is that he is still able to act through all of that and I was just blown away

Todd: It’s incredible.

A- you wouldn’t recognize him but if you’re familiar with Tim Curry there’s a l-… You can recognize him but i- eh, not really. I mean, you know, hi- his mouth, he’s always had a very I would say expressive mouth

Craig: Yes! God

Todd: And that’s their… Rob Bottin did the makeup for this. He had just come off of uh, The Howling and stuff.

We talked about extensively about him when we did our episode on The Howling and just how great that makeup is. He, you know, he did a really good job of putting appliances on his face instead of like more or less a big rubber mask-

Right …

so that his m- face would move and we’re in his face a lot

Mm-hmm And

he…

You can’t tell that’s makeup. It really does look like a creature, a d- the Devil. Uh, uh, the everything on that face moves like skin would move. It’s fantastic

Craig: Same with his body. I mean, you don’t see his full torso very often but when you do it looks real . Like it looks like a real buff- Muscular …you know huge, huge dude.

And Mia Sara This was, I think her first big screen role or maybe big screen starring role. I, I knew her first, I think from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off which was also heavy in our r- Mm … rotation when we were kids.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And she’s gorgeous. She’s gorgeous. She was absolutely gorgeous in Ferris Bueller. She’s gorgeous in this.

I think she’s perfect for this princess role.

Todd: Yeah, she’s great in it.

Craig: I think she’s fantastic. In the director’s cut she sings

a lot Hmm.

Todd: You weren’t, you weren’t a fan huh?

Craig: It’s not that she doesn’t do a good job. It was fine. I just found that to be a completely like “We just don’t need that.” Like.She says-

Todd: Sort of like Cheer Up Charlie and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. It’s like slows the movie down. We don’t need

Craig: a little song.

Uh yeah well I actually I love that but no. I mean sh- I think she says to Tom Cruise more than once like, “Shall I sing for you?” And every time I was like nah. I- I’ve heard it.

Todd: Oh God.

Craig: But I do love her and she’s great in this. And I think that you see it a little bit in the theatrical cut but it is more in the other that she is certainly flawed. She’s selfish and y- you know like she just- Selfish princess. Yeah She … She is very much a princess and, and she does what she wants and she doesn’t think about consequence and this really kind of all her fault.

Um- Mm-hmm To, to, to her credit when she finds out because she overhears the goblins talking about it after the place has fallen into winter. She overhears them and, and f- finds out that it was her fault because she wasn’t supposed touch the unicorn then she vows to make it right. And ultimately though she is almost successfully seduced by darkness She does.

She comes around, she helps out.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But then the ending, which we do not need to jump to, th- that’s another difference between the theatrical cut and the director’s cut is the ending is very different.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: Like, it… Ulti-… Like, it doesn’t look that different, but the implications are drastically different.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: That we’ll, we’ll get there. What else did you wanna talk about? I mean-

Todd: I wanna talk about on their journey, there’s that witch, Meg Mucklebones.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Oh my God.

Craig: That’s the part that I remember being the most scary from when I was a kid, and returning to it as an adult, I forgot that it is a tiny little part of the movie.

Todd: It’s so tiny, but it is scary as hell. I was scared. Yeah. She looks straight outta The Evil Dead almost, really. She’s got… Oh, well, Tom Cruise’s character, what’s his name again? I can’t remember. Jack. Jack. Of course, it’s Jack. What am I saying? It’s a fairy tale. Jack ends up in the swamp, and he’s got a armor that the little fairy gave him, shield, and the sword and all that.

And he’s going through the swamp, and he stumbles onto this spot where this big witch hag rears up out of the muck. And my God, she is… Got this long green nose. Her makeup is scary as heck. Hunched

Craig: back. She’s all slimy and ugh.

Todd: Awful eyes. D- sc- really scary eye-.

Craig: And it’s kind of almost hard to tell what she is.

First of all, she just pops up out of, like, she was under the water. She seems huge.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Now, Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise on his own is a small person, and he spends most of this movie in a crouch. So, so he’s, he’s small, but she just towers over him, and I can’t… You kind of never see the bottom of her body. I don’t even know what she is.

No. I don’t know if she’s some kinda, like, serpent or-

Todd: Well, I guess …’

Craig: cause you never s- you never see legs. I dunno. And the way she pops up is really scary. I didn’t read or see anything about how it was done, but oh boy, it looked good.

Todd: I saw some behind the scenes stuff of appliances and stuff. It’s pr- it’s pretty good.

It’s great makeup. It’s really, really scary. She’s practically on top of him. He’s just h- whole… There’s just a shield between them. I really like how this goes down in the director’s cut ‘Cause this is a moment, and this is a moment that really tests Jack. He’s scared. He’s got her shield there. He’s really trying, and he gets the idea that he’s going to distract her by calling her beautiful, which she kinda only is half buying.

Clip: What a fine fat boy you are, Jack. You

don’t really mean to eat me, do you, ma’am?

Oh, indeed I do.

But that would be a shame because someone as fair and lovely as yourself, Miss Meg, deserves far better than scrawny me Don’t you think?

Yeah. Think we fair, do you, Jack?

All the heavenly angels must envy your beauty.

Todd: But she keeps kinda looking in his shield and… I liked all this, and I felt like it deserved a long scene like this- Mm

and it says a little something about Jack’s character. You know, he’s still fumbling through this. He still d- isn’t really the hero that he needs to be. But that doesn’t u-… It doesn’t end up working, and eventually she kind of lunges at him but he managed to have grabbed his sword, and he swings it around and lops her head off.

Whereas in the theatrical cut, this is all quite quick. She kinda comes out, she’s kinda on top of him, and there isn’t much of this back and forth. Eh, he just kinda swings his sword around and cuts her head off. And I thought that was kind of unfortunate.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, ’cause it is. It’s a, it it’s a scary character and she’s not…

It, it seems like she would deserve more time. H-

Todd: honestly, what I … ‘Cause I… You know, when I went to watch the theatrical cut, I was trying to predict in my head what they cut out, and I was like, “Well, they sure as hell cut out that whole scene.”

Craig: Y-

Todd: I was like, “That was too scary to put in the final movie. Uh, it didn’t appeal to kids.”

I was surprised it was still in, which just goes to show, like you said, they don’t make them like that anymore.

Craig: They certainly don’t. And I was also surprised, and I only learned this yesterday in preparing for th- for this, that, that that character is played by Robert Picardo, who I recognize and who I know has been in a million things.

And I started to scan through his IMDb, but it was so long that I gave up even before I got back to the ’80s. But what I remember him from is Innerspace. He was the cowboy in Innerspace. And-

Todd: Oh, no kidding.

Craig: Yes. And, and the fact that he’s Meg Mucklebones in this, I was also…. I don’t know why. I, I always thought that Tim Curry, Darkness’s main goblin minion, is named Blix.

And I find him very scary, too.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: And, and he only speaks in rhymes. Gosh, I wrote some of them down, like, “Mortal world be turned to ice. Here be Goblin Paradise”. And, and he has this really scary voice. But I, I always thought of the character as male, and found out that it’s played by a female, an, an actress, Alice Playten, who, who also voices Gump.

Wait, is that right? She voices somebody else. I think may- I don’t remember who it is. I, I read about it and I forgot. I think it’s Gump. David Bennett played Gump, but, uh, his voice was dubbed, and I think it was her. She did two voices, that’s all I know. But all of the prosthetics, all of the goblins, it all looks good.

It is reminiscent of parts of it, especially the little goblins, like Blix and his two little counterparts Very reminiscent of Labyrinth, but somehow Labyrinth is so much, it w- and don’t get me wrong, I love that movie as much, but it’s so much lighter. You know, there are fun songs and stuff. Aside from a few comic scenes with the goblins and, and the elves or whatever they are.

This movie’s pretty darn serious and, and gets really dark. Like another big part that w- that I remember so strongly from when I was young is the seduction scene. And I think both Tim Curry and Mia Sara are great in it but it starts, you know, before Tim Curry even reveals himself, Mia Sara is alone in this huge- God, it’s massive

it’s, you know, it’s, it’s darkness’ lair that you’ve u-… Yeah. And there are giant furnaces everywhere and giant pillars and before she even gets there she’s running through enormous … You know, I don’t know how much of that was done with set pieces. I think a lot of it was and I’m sure that then there’s a lot of, you know, I don’t know if it’s matte stuff or, or how they put all that together.

But it’s epic in its visual scope.

Todd: No, this is the kinda thing that you appreciate now because, you know, most of this would all be done on a green screen-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: now and this is all practical. By the way, I think uh, their glitter budget alone- … had to have been several million . Their everything is covered in glitter e-d-, oh even Tom Cruise is fricking covered in glitter

Craig: Tom Cruise is so very glittery.

And I, I haven’t said anything about it yet and I wanna come back to Lili’s dance but I am not a big Tom Cruise fan but I was back in the ’80s. Like I really have just been so off-put by him as a person with-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: the whole Scientology thing and he just seems very shady and, and I dunno.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But he’s weird and it just kind of, I, I can’t look at him the same way.

That said, in this I think it’s great. You know, he’s Tom Cruise before he was Tom Cruise. Mm-hmm. Um, and he’s still got that kind of wet behind the ears thing going on that I think makes him good in this movie.

Todd: Yeah, I’d say so. I mean, he did have Risky Business out before this but you’re right. And it’s not his favorite performance either.

In fact, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like it at all.

Craig: No. He’s not a big fan. But I actually, if I’m, if I’m ever going to say anything nice about Tom Cruise, I actually kinda like him in this movie . Not that he’s amazing but like I, I really di- He

Todd: plays the part well. The, the part asks for this-

Craig: Yeah. A innocent, naive- Yeah

Todd: exactly

Craig: Like you said before, he kinda goes through a journey where he’s not the typical hero.

He’s not just great at everything. He kind of stumbles through and makes his way. And, and To- and he’s young and small and he hasn’t had his teeth fixed yet and so he looks, you know- A woodlands creature. His, he, he was going through a phase in his life where he was growing his hair out- … so, uh, it’s, he didn’t have to wear a stupid wig.

It works. But what did you think? ‘Cause I, I told you before I knew that you were gonna watch them both, I knew that you had just watched the theatrical cut, and eventually I said, “You gotta at least watch the first 10 or 15 minutes of, of the theatrical cut to get a feel for it.” But I also recommended that you watch this dance scene.

And this, I don’t know, this, this scene stood out to me so much. Like, it, it, it feels iconic to me. I don’t know if that’s… What were your thoughts about it?

Todd: I wondered where the dance was going, you know This is in the big dining hall where she’s still alone and hasn’t met Darkness yet, but, uh, he’s got, I don’t know, like a minion or a shadow or something like that who has come to dance with her.

And it’s… If I’m not mistaken, the dancing was a little bit longer in the director’s cut, wasn’t it?

Craig: I think so.

Todd: I liked it. I- I

Craig: think so. It’s, it’s, it’s fairly long in both

Todd: While I was watching it in the director’s cut, I thought, “This is nice. This is really clever.” And then by the time they’re done dancing, you know, she’s drawn into it and she’s enthusiastic about him.

The seduction is complete and now she is this shadow. She is now in that same dress and that, y- she’d just become what she was dancing with. I, I loved that part of it.

Craig: The gown is so great. Like, it, it, it- The gown is fantastic … like a Cher/Bob Mackie kind of look. Yeah.

Todd: Like,

Craig: I, I, I have no idea how old Mia Sara was when she made this, but she had to have been very young.

Mm. But i- she looks gorgeous, and this gown has a slit down the front that goes down I think, like, to or past her navel. Yeah. And she’s in this big headpiece, and it’s all black and lace, and kind of like Kiss of the Spider Woman kind of- Yeah, yeah … thing. And, and, and she, you know- Glitter … she’s got black lipstick and- Yeah.

All, all the glitter and black lipstick and black eyeliner and… It, it… Al- When we were watching it, this is one of Alan’s favorite parts too, and he said that, you know, he kind of … He, he loves the, like, the duality of it. Yes. It was kind of like her shadow self- Yeah … and she was embracing her shadow self and-

Todd: Like coming over to the dark side in a way.

It’s, it’s really good.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Between the two scenes though, I really like the director’s cut better. I, I felt that the Tangerine Dream score was a little like, “La la la la la la fairy tale”. Oh,

Craig: I liked it.

Todd: And the other one felt just a little more, like, deeper and apropos to what was happening for me.

Craig: Fair.

Totally fair.

Todd: But yeah, it was great. Great sequence, great notion, great idea, and then finally she turns and she, she faces this mirror, and this hand comes through and this hoof comes through, and that is Darkness’s big entrance, at least in the director’s cut. So first time we see him, his face.

Craig: And again, I, I think that this is better.

Like, you get the same scene, you get the same reveal in both versions, but it has more impact in the director’s cut because you haven’t seen him before. Yeah. It kind of, in the theatrical cut, it’s not as much as a reveal because aside from the fact that he’s, you know, bright red, we’ve kind of only seen him in shadow before.

Now we see him in full light. We’ve seen him before, so it’s, it’s not that big a deal. But it’s, it’s great either way, him coming through, stepping, his giant hoof coming through the mirror and then his horns preceding him by like three feet. It’s, it’s amazing. It’s a great reveal, and she’s horrified. And then they, I, you know, I think, I’m sure a lot of this is editing and direction and, uh, everything, but they have some great interplay

Clip: Two.

Eat.

I’m not hungry.

You lie.

Just to please me.

I do nothing for your pleasure.

All I wish is for you to sit and talk with me.

Sit?

Here? Yes

Craig: Please I prefer to stand. Silence! It cuts, it cuts back and forth here at the end a lot between them alone and then Jack and company sneaking in and, and figuring out a plan and setting up the plant. It keeps cutting back and forth between that. But the stuff between Tim Curry and Mia Sara is great.

Really is. He’s doing his best to be charming and to control his temper. She’s initially very frightened but then ultimately kind of becomes defiant and is I think, you know intentionally trying to goad him and push his temper, and he loses his temper at places and then composes himself. And when he composes himself like you said there are so many y- you know closeups on his face I don’t know how that man does with his lips what he does.

Todd: I know, right?

Craig: And, and I was telling Alan last night, I was like, “I don’t know if it’s intentional,” like, uh, he is, is so in control of the articulation of his mouth that it’s intentional or if that’s just the way he talks. But it’s… I don’t know how to describe it. I’ve never seen anything like it. Me neither.

I’ve never been– I’ve never seen… He does the same thing with Pennywise. Yep. There’s so much mouth work going on.

Todd: Pennywise, uh, Frank-N-Furter.

Craig: And he’s got these huge teeth.

Todd: Mm.

Craig: And somehow he still manages to do all of that with his mouth around it. It’s crazy, and, and he’s so, you know, he’s, he’s at, at the same time charming and, and he’s tempting her with, with material things and jewels and, and power and all of this stuff, and i- he’s scary as hell, but he’s also hot.

Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: Man, he wouldn’t have to try too hard to convince

Todd: me.

Craig: And she’s great. She, she plays very well against him. Hmm. But ultimately, the good guys set a trap. Tom Cruise remembers Lily’s sparkly necklace from the beginning and that, and, and Darkness has said more than once that sunlight is his destroyer. So they set up a, a whole thing of reflective plates that they stole from The Murder Kitchen.

Todd: The Murder Kitchen- Yeah … yeah.

Craig: And, and, and there’s, there’s a great scene. Lily’s final bargaining chip,…

This week, we dive into 2018’s Stree, a hugely popular Indian horror-comedy inspired by the “Nalay Ba / Come Tomorrow” urban legend, and one of the first mainstream Bollywood hits to lean into folklore rather than cheesy haunted-house or revenge-ghost formula.

We talk about the film’s charm, likable buddy dynamic, romantic-comedy “meet cute,” and its role-reversal premise where men are the ones being hunted by a vengeful spirit during a village festival.

We break down the lore, the standout musical number, and the cast—Rajkummar Rao’s committed tailor performance, Shraddha Kapoor’s perfectly mysterious presence, and Pankaj Tripathi’s scene-stealing exposition.

We also unpack the ending twist, sequel setup, and why this feels more spooky campfire tale than graphic horror.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/07/stree-movie-poster.jpg

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Automatic Transcript

Stree (2018)

Episode 503, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, this week was my turn to pick the movie, and I may have surprised Craig a little bit with this one. Maybe a little bit, maybe not. He knows I, I like to do things kind of outside of our, uh, normal purview or just really old stuff.

This is a newer movie, so I thought you’d like that. It’s from 2018, but it’s definitely outside of our purview. It is more in the Bollywood area, and I don’t know, have we ever done… Except for one. We did one Indian horror movie before this, I think, right?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Yeah, we did one in a shopping mall for Christmas.

It was, um- Yeah.

Craig: Uh-huh. I remember that.

Todd: It’s funny, I, um, I recently was dating an Indian woman for a brief time, and, uh, when she learned I was doing a horror podcast, she said, “You have to see this movie, Stree. It is wonderful, and it’s had sequels, and it was really, really popular when it came out, and you’re gonna love it.”

So she sat me down and had me watch this, and that is why I knew about it. So, uh, this is 2018’s Stree, and it was very famous and big when it came out, ’cause it was a bit against the grain of a lot of the other Bollywood films that had come across thus far. There had been horror movies in, in Bollywood, but, uh, they, they tended to kinda fall under two camps, you know?

They’re mostly just, like, cheesy haunted house-type stories or revenge-type ghost stories, and this was the first thing to really kinda break out of that mold and be a movie that’s actually based on an urban legend. And so, uh, it was a huge hit. It had some very big stars in it and, uh, spawned, uh, two or three sequels.

So, uh, here we are doing it. And yeah, so this is my second time watching this. And Craig, had you even heard of this before?

Craig: You told me about it when you saw it. Okay. I, I just remember you tell- well, I just remember you saying it was interesting and you thought I’d like it and we should do it at some point, but that’s been a while ago.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Um- Yeah … so when you recommended it, I, I remember that, that you had mentioned it before, but that’s it. That’s all I knew. I didn’t know anything about it. You said that it was Bollywood, and I have some expectations there. Mostly I kind of expect a musical number, and there is one. Right. And w- actually, there’s two really if you count-

the credit sequence, which you should, ’cause it’s great.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And, and that’s different. I mean, we’ll talk about it when we get there obviously, but you know, that’s something that I’ve come to expect from the Bollywood that I’ve been introduced to, so that was nice. But yeah, I didn’t really… I didn’t know anything else about it.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I didn’t know that it was based on a legend. I, I had no idea even what type of movie it was going to be. You also, I think, mentioned that it was a horror comedy, so I was going in with that in mind, but that’s about it.

Todd: Well, it’s worth mentioning that because we don’t do many of these movies, I’ve learned a lot about Indian movies fairly recently, and we often say Bollywood when we’re referring to Indian movies, but India’s a huge country, and it has many different regions, and a lot of people are producing movies in different areas.

Uh, I think that the Indian film industry might even be bigger than the Hollywood film industry, if you can believe that. Worldwide, they have a pretty big reach. Of course, they’re huge in India, and India’s a very populous place, and so there are film traditions in India that many of us in the West are, u- unless we’ve really sought this out and become fans of, of Indian cinema, we really don’t know a lot of this stuff.

Right. And so there are famous directors in India who are at least as famous as Steven Spielberg. This woman I date is 38 years old, and I mentioned Steven Spielberg to m- her, and she said, “Who’s that?” Mm. If that gives you any indication of just how separate those two worlds can be for us, you know?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So but when we say Bollywood, we often mean Indian movies, but actually India produces films in lots of different languages. Hindi movies are tend, are Bollywood. There’s Telugu, which they call Tollywood. There are Tamil films, which is Kollywood. There’s a Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali

And many of India’s biggest, most recent blockbusters were not Bollywood films at all. Oh. They weren’t Hindi films. Yeah, they were from some of these other areas. So it’s really complex and really complicated. I, I couldn’t explain any of it to you ’cause I really don’t know much. But, uh, if you’re interested in Indian cinema, there is a ton to dive into, and, uh, I, I think it’s worth your while.

The stuff I’ve seen I’ve really enjoyed. They’re really good filmmakers. They’ve got tremendous actors, beautiful cinematography, and like you said, often music, and that’s what they’re most r- well known for.

Craig: Yeah, and I don’t… Y- yeah, I didn’t know, uh, all of those different regions had their own version.

When, when I think Bollywood I g- like, I equate it with Hollywood. I, I mean, like- Right … big budget, like, you know, really well made, a- as I think that this movie is, or at least it appears that way.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: Uh, you know, it’s, it’s beautifully shot. It’s, it stars beautiful people. It, it seems really well made overall, so that…

I, I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t even really look into it. I assume that it, it’s… It seems like a big budget movie. Is it?

Todd: Yeah. It’s, it’s a big budget movie, and, uh, and it has some big stars in it. The, the main star who plays Vicky in here is Rajkumar Rao, and he right now is one of Bollywood’s… considered one of its, their best actors.

And, uh, one thing that she explained to me is that unlike most Bollywood superstars, like Bollywood is a- actually a little like Hollywood in a way that, like, there’s dynasties there, and a lot of people become actors because their parents or their grandparents- Hmm … were in the industry, you know?

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And most Bollywood superstars are like this way, and this is one of the very few guys who was able to build his reputation almost entirely on acting ability.

Craig: Oh, nice.

Todd: Uh, he didn’t have family connections or even what you’d consider conventional, like, leading man looks, although I think he looks pretty nice.

Craig: Yeah, he’s handsome.

Todd: And he’s known for really, like, not always playing the same role, you know what I mean? A, a lot of, uh, actors get typecast into playing a certain kind of role, and he’s known for really just disappearing into the role that he’s in. He’s played a lot of different characters. So, uh, he’s kinda known to be, like, an actor first and a movie star second.

And, and he actually learned sewing for the movie. He spent, like, 20 days with a tailor to learn how to sew just to play this role as a, of a tailor in this film, so pretty committed dude. And then contrasting that, there’s a mysterious woman in here, and, uh, she is Bollywood royalty. Her name is Shraddha Kapoor.

And she’s the daughter of a veteran actor, Shakti Kapoor, and he’s famous for comic villains, over-the-top performances. He’s been in hundreds of films. But she, uh, has developed a reputation that’s almost the opposite: quiet and more girl-next-door roles. Her characters are more approachable, maybe a little more mysterious, not these over-the-type things that her dad is, is, is known for doing.

And so… And that’s makes her casting really perfect for this, actually, because that’s kinda who she is in the movie. You’re never quite sure who or, or what she is. So those are two of, you know, two of the main actors that I’ll just kinda point out right now, and there are a few others in here that I’ll point out as well that, that my friend, Dee, uh, had explained to me when, uh, when we were watching it, so.

Craig: Uh, yeah, you know, I, obviously I am not familiar with any of these actors, but both of those, the two, I guess, romantic leads, and there is kind of a little romantic comedy going on in this otherwise- Mm-hmm. Ki- I mean, it’s, it’s not an incredibly unique… I, I mean, it’s basically a full-core movie, you know, based on this legend of this vengeful female spirit called Stree that they have these traditions around yearly at, at this festival in their village.

I, I don’t remember if it’s a traditional religious festival, but Stree apparently comes every year at the same time during this festival, and so traditionally they paint some words all around town, or I guess on their doors or right outside their homes, that says, “Come back tomorrow,” or something like that.

Todd: Yeah. “Ostri.” Ostri, it may, basically means woman. Ostri, come tomorrow.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And the legend is, yeah, the legend I guess is that if, if you don’t do that, she, like, steals men, I, I guess from their homes. She’s, she, like, lures them out. I mean, there’s a whole lore about her that we learn about it slowly over time.

I don’t know how slowly we want to reveal it on the podcast. Right. Right. We can- Um, but, like, I, I guess the whole thing is she will call a guy’s name three times, and she’s so alluring that by the third time they almost always turn around or always turn around or something, and then she takes them away, leaving behind only their clothes.

So- Yeah … you know, it, it’s a legend, and it’s a superstition, but people in the village adhere to the rules of the superstition.

Todd: Yeah. And the cool thing is this is based on an actual urban legend that went viral in the ’90s in India, and it’s famous there. The, everybody knows it. It’s called Nalay Ba, and Nalay Ba literally means come tomorrow.

And w- in the ’90s, people genuinely painted Nalay Ba on the outside of their houses in some of these villages in certain regions in India where they were taking this seriously. Like, it went viral. I guess especially in Bangalore, they believe that the, a witch would be wandering through the neighborhood at night knocking on doors, and if you answered or you acknowledged her, she’d lure you outside and kill you.

And so the answer to this is almost bureaucratic, right? Y- y- you put “come tomorrow” on the door, so the witch would come, and, “Oh, okay, I’ll come tomorrow.” And then tomorrow the witch would come, and, “Oh, okay, I’ll come tomorrow.” Kind of like a, a cool looping joke. It’s funny And so the film changes it to Hindi, which is Ostri Kal Ana, which is O Woman, Come Tomorrow.

And that phrase apparently became like a pop culture phenomenon after this movie. Oh,

Craig: that’s funny.

Todd: But I guess the director said it, he’s not just adapting this particular le- Nale Ba legend. There are many regions in India that have a similar folklore of ghosts that call your name or spirits that- Yeah

imitate loved ones, women who lure men. You know, we even have, like, the vampire. Like, it’s the same thing, a ghost that can only enter when invited. You paint a protective symbol on your house. There’s lots of different regional traditions into one mythology here, and a lot of it crosses over, right, with stuff that we believe in the West as well with some of the, some of our Dracula legends- For sure

and myths and things. Yeah. But apparently, like I said, one of the very first Indian movies to do this, as opposed to corny, over-the-top haunted house movie or, or some kind of just ghostly revenge story.

Craig: Well, I, I mean, there, there is. There is that ghostly revenge story, and that’s what I’m saying. Like, we’ve seen it before.

I, but I don’t want to make it sound like it’s y- just cut and paste something that we’ve seen before. It’s just- Right … we’ve seen this type of movie before. It’s not terribly unique in that regard. Then there’s also this little, you know, romantic interest between those two actors that you mentioned, both of them adorable.

I mean, you said that she kind of comes from a dynasty or whatever. I mean, even if she didn’t, I can only imagine that she could make it on her own ’cause she’s stunning. Like, she’s- Yeah. … stunningly- She really is … gorgeous. And, and, you know, a, a good actress, at least based on what she does here. And he’s, I think, very good-looking too.

There’s one part in the movie out of nowhere where she rips his shirt off literally for, like, one second. Like, she rips his shirt down- … and he pulls it back up so fast, like… I, I, I was like, “Why, why are you so quick to cover up?” Like, “Why are you- … why so modest?” But good-looking guy, and, and that’s cute and goofy, and it’s a comedy.

Like, there’s a whole lot of things going on here. But overall, I think the thing that I liked about it was that it… I don’t know. It’s charming. Like, the whole time that I was watching it, I kept thinking, “Oh, this is cute. It’s cute. It’s cute.” Yeah. Like, the guy, the, the main guy is cute.

Todd: He’s so likable.

Craig: Yeah, he’s super likable.

Like, he’s kind of a bumbling… I mean, he… I, I think he’s a good-looking guy, but he’s kind of like a bumbling every guy. He’s nervous around this girl. Comically nervous. This mysterious girl that he meets, and his friends are kind of lovable doofuses. Mm-hmm. I mean, flawed but ultimately funny, and, like, the three of them palling around together, all of that’s very cute.

Yeah. And then the ghost story I don’t know. Something that fascinates me about it too is just kind of the difference between this as an Indian film compared to American films, ’cause it’s just so different. Mm. Like, I, I feel like there’s not… Even our horror comedy, uh, I don’t know. There’s, there’s something different about the overall feel of it.

I mean, because even the ghost story part, I wouldn’t say it’s scary. It’s more like- Right Campfire tale kind of, I, I don’t know. There’s a-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: I don’t know. Do you know what I’m saying, though?

Todd: It’s PG. Yeah, I know what you mean. It, it’s very urban legend, and not in a way that is gonna… I don’t know. You’re right.

There are scary moments in here because the idea is scary, and it does take some people on the screen, but none of it’s graphic. And you’re right, the whole vibe is very campfire tale-ish, I guess you could say.

Craig: You know? Yeah. I mean, it’s Haunted Mansion type stuff. Like-

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: Yeah … stuff that-

Todd: Ghost stuff …

Craig: yeah, for, I mean, would be appropriate for a PG or PG-13 audience, and that’s fine.

In fact, I think that contributes to the charm of it, and maybe that is in large… Maybe it was… See, the thing is, I don’t know if there, do they have hardcore horror movies in India? Is it, you know, you used to say when you lived in China that there were really strict rules about what could and couldn’t be shown in film.

I just don’t know culturally the difference. Like, if, it seemed like this was intentionally PG-13-ish, but I don’t know if that’s because it was also intended for a wide audience, because it was and had one, a huge one. Like you said that this has several sequels. I think that there’s only one direct sequel to this, but I think that this, like, is the Iron Man to their equivalent of, like, a Marvel universe over there, right?

Yeah. I think there’s this movie, and then there are two other supernatural movies that are tangentially related. Like, there may be a couple of crossover characters. And then ultimately, there’s a Stree 2 that is like the Avengers that brings… It’s like a buddy movie of all those creature movies, I think.

Todd: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right.

Craig: But my original point was I’m not sure if this is typical of Indian horror or if it’s l- on the lighter side because it was intended for a broader audience. And I suspect maybe the latter is true. I just don’t know. But either way, I think that you could easily watch this with your adolescent kids at least.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And maybe even some younger kids, too.

Todd: It’s true. And, and again, I’m not an expert in this, but I did do some research. And Stree is obviously pretty mild by horror standards. But India does have a long history of horror. For much of it, a little bit like China, like you referenced China, it, it leaned campy because of censorship and, and even, like, low budgets and, and I think also audience expectations factor into that as well But in the last 10 to 15 years, there has definitely been a wave of genuinely dark and disturbing horror movies.

I have a few on the list that I want us to get to. One of them that immediately comes to mind that was really popular more recently was Tumbbad. Have you heard of that one?

Craig: I don’t think so.

Todd: It’s another folk horror movie, and it’s supposed to be kind of like Pan’s Labyrinth or, or The Witch creepy. I don’t know if, you know, how bloody or whatever it is, but, but yeah, there’s a, there’s a number of Indian films, uh, that, that are definitely more hardcore than this.

But do they get as hardcore as, like, slasher Freddy type stuff? I, I, I don’t think so. I think they len- tend to lean more creepy and scary in that way Than flat out like, you know, gore fests, people torturing people kind of stuff.

Craig: I think I’m just struggling to articulate the vibe of the movie because it’s pretty light.

Yeah. Like, and a lot of it happens in bright daylight in the day. The main character is Vicky. Like you said, he’s a tailor, his dad’s a tailor. It tries to establish, like, he has this conversation with his dad like, “Gosh, Dad, don’t try to define me. I haven’t decided what I’m gonna do yet.” And then he immediately goes to his job as a tailor where we learn that he’s, like, this virtuoso, like he’s the best tailor anybody’s ever seen.

Todd: Almost magical.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. He’s like, “It must…” They’re like, “It must be a gift from the gods.” Like he’s, he’s the best tailor.

Todd: He can tell a person’s measurements just by looking at them. It’s so cute. I love how that scene lines up because you’re right, it goes immediately from him talking about how he wants to be this free spirit, and suddenly he’s sitting behind a machine going to town with a line of women in front of him, and just casually tossing out their measurements just by having them do a turn.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Oh,

Craig: gosh. It’s so

Todd: cute.

Craig: Also super hot. Like seeing, seeing this s- this hot guy, like, working his magic on the sewing machine, so hot. Like, if this, i- if this were an American film, he would either be gay or this would be super gay coded. But that was also- It’s true … but that was also something that was hot about it was that it was because, like, I felt like culturally him being a tailor was not a feminine thing at all.

Like, it was a really- Yeah … reputable thing for him to be, like, following in his dad’s professional tradition. Like, it was a cool thing too. Like, he was well re- like, he was respected in the, like, neighboring counties- Right … ’cause he was so talented. And to see him there, like, doing his thing, oh man, that was hot.

Todd: Now that, now that you mention it, I’m thinking about it and it’s like, you know, we kinda have the same thing in the West, right? Like, I’m trying to think every time a tailor is portrayed it’s almost always a man, right? But it’s usually some stodgy little person in the back room. You wouldn’t think of them as being like, you know, this is, like, a profession that- Or like an

Craig: old guy with

Todd: a thick

Craig: accent.

Like-

Todd: Yeah, and a tape ruler out all the time. Yeah. Right. Glasses. Maybe s- maybe slight British. Yeah, you’re right, this, this really, uh, is very different and it’s very appe- it, he makes it look cool.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: He makes tailoring look- Awesome.

Craig: Yeah, and there’s, like, there’s a pop song that plays over the whole first s- couple of scenes, and I think it’s called, like, I’m a, the Tailor of Your Heart or something.

And the- … the, a- at least the translated lyrics that I got were very pointed about how he’s the tailor of love or something. Mm-hmm. It was very cute. I’m very curious about the translations because sometimes I felt like the translations, like, the comedy didn’t translate, I felt like. Maybe. I watched it, you can get it on Amazon Prime, and I was watching it on Amazon Prime with their subtitles, and every once in a while the subtitles would just drop out for, like, a second.

Hmm. So somebody would say something and there would be no subtitle, and then it would come back and I wouldn’t know what they were talking about, but-

Todd: Oh, no …

Craig: no, I mean, it would, that was, like, one or two times. But, uh, I was curious about whether or not I was getting it the exact way I was supposed to be.

But nonetheless, he is approached by this beautiful girl, this mysterious girl. Again, like you said, it’s comical how he responds to her. Like, he just can barely even speak in her presence. And she asks him to make her a dress for the festival, and he says it’ll take, I don’t know, three weeks or something, and she’s like, “No, I need it faster than that.”

Mm-hmm. Um, and she acts like she’s offended and she’s gonna go away, and he says he’ll do it in two days. And then she totally hints that she wants to meet him later, and he’s not getting it at all. And so it’s very much like a, a meet cute and establishes

Todd: His naivete.

Craig: Yeah. But it, I mean, this is obviously gonna be the girl that he’s gonna be chasing after.

It’s gonna be that type of movie too, and it is- Mm-hmm … very much, at least for the next half hour, 45 minutes. It’s a long movie also. It’s over two hours.

Todd: It is. Feels long too, for two hours. Yeah. And I think there were some criticisms that, that the movie maybe was a little too long when it came out by some of the critics, but, uh, I mean, it moves.

There’s always something happening, or there’s some byplay, or there’s some guys talking and it’s kind of funny or cute. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of wasted time in here, but some of it’s spent on, like, comedic purposes or something like that. He’s got these two goofy sidekicks, the comic relief people, right?

Jana and who’s the other one?

Craig: B2 and Jana are his friends.

Todd: Yeah, B2 and Jana. Yeah. And, and then the minute they’re introduced you’re like, “Oh, these are the comic relief.” And so, and he tells them about the girl, and they’re teasing him about the girl, and then they go to the f- they, there’s some music playing while they ride all three on their motorcycle.

Craig: That was hilarious.

Todd: That was so funny. Through the… The- these guys are really, really good friends. They hang out a lot.

Craig: It’s goofy. It’s like a goofy little buddy movie there for a second, and they do it a couple of times. Yeah. But just to see- It’s true … all three of them on one motorcycle is funny.

Todd: Yeah. And I like how the movie really did kinda keep it tight.

I mean, there’s a lot of people in this movie, like there are a lot of extras, and there are a few people who kinda come and go. But at its core, it’s really just about, like, four or five people-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: which I really appreciated. And then this festival begins. It’s like a four-day festival, and it looks beautiful.

I, I mean, it’s nighttime- Oh my gosh … and there’s lights everywhere. Yeah. And he meets this girl again, and, uh, uh, she’s like, “Is the dress re-” No, she wanted the dress on the last night of the festival.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: They had planned to meet up for some reason here, and she asks him how it’s going, and he’s just, like, stuttering.

The guy can’t even barely get a sentence out the, when he’s talking to her, and she’s like, “Are you all right?” I mean, it’s just It’s super cute. And now is this the moment at which she asks him for a list of things?

Craig: He, well, he asks for her phone number and she says she doesn’t have a phone, and he’s like, “Well, how do I get in contact with you if I wanna talk to you?”

And she’s like, “Just think of me.” So- … it seems like there is something going on, and she, she gives him a note and said, “But don’t open it until tomorrow.” Mm. And that’s when Bitu and Jana are walking home, and they run into some guy. I kept calling him the expert because he keeps touting himself as the expert on Stree.

Todd: Rudra.

Craig: Okay. He tells them there are three rules, and I’m paraphrasing them briefly. He kind of goes on for a while. But the first rule is, don’t go out of the house alone, and this applies to men, ’cause it’s men that she goes after. He says, yeah, number two, travel in packs like wolves. Don’t go out by yourself if you have to go out.

N- and number three, when she calls, she’ll call your name once. When she calls your name the first time, take off your shoes and keep walking. Don’t turn around. When she calls your name the second time, keep walking. Don’t turn around. And then he says, “And then the third time,” and the guys are like, “Just keep walking.”

And he’s like, “Nope, nobody can keep walking the third time. Everybody gives in by the third time.” Um, so, so basically you can’t win. He says, “But for some reason, if you do,” number four… He said there were three rules, and then he’s like, “Number four-” The

Todd: most important

Craig: thing. The most important thing And then he, like, gets a phone call or something and leaves.

Todd: I

Craig: laughed out loud. And, and they, and the… Me too, and the movie plays that gag at least one or two more times. Like- … there’s other times when he’s telling people, “And most importantly,” and then he gets interrupted again. It’s funny. I don’t think we ever find out what the most important one is.

Todd: I feel like this guy steals every scene he’s in.

He, he’s played by Pankaj Tripathi, and he is, uh, one of India’s biggest, most well-known character actors, and he is literally famous for making exposition entertaining. So he is often cast in these roles where his main job is really just to explain things that are essential to the plot, and, uh, that’s really what his role is in this movie too.

Craig: Pretty funny.

Todd: Yeah, I think he’s pretty funny. He’s kinda like the J.K. Simmons, you could say, of, of Indian cinema and, uh, and I love that old joke of, “And the most important thing… Oh, wait. Oh, sorry, gotta go. See ya.” And leaves, leaves these two guys in the dark, in the woods where he told them they should not be.

And that’s the cool thing about this, this plot too, I think, is it’s, it’s a total reversal of the typical male/female roles in horror movies. You know, usually it’s women who are in danger and in trouble.

Craig: Right.

Todd: A- a- and here it’s the men who have to watch out and who are, who are in trouble. And, and in Indian culture too, you know, it’s, it’s really still very traditional where women are not supposed to be walking out alone, particularly at night, and you know, it is legitimately dangerous in some places too for, for women to be walking- Mm-hmm

alone at night and things. And so now this kinda flips it over, and the filmmakers did that on purpose, of course. They, they thought it would be interesting just to get men a little bit of that experience. Freaks these guys out, of course, so they walk around and, and of course they hear sounds and think they hear them, and, and they end up running off, and they end up running right to a party so conveniently.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And then we get the big Bollywood musical number of the movie, don’t we?

Craig: Yeah, which is great.

Todd: I loved it.

Craig: I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. I thought the song was super fun. I would listen to it. And I, you know, I don’t know how these things work, but if all of those people who were singing, if that was their real voices, like including, like, the main people.

Like- Uh-huh … the main guy and his two doofy friends all sing, and they all have good voices. Like- Mm … everybody is, everybody’s a pop star. The girl, I mean, the, the main girl who’s, like, performing at this party, everybody joins in, but it starts out as, like, this girl’s performing at this party. Uh, I don’t think that she is a character in the movie.

No. I wondered if she was maybe Britney Spears in India or something. I didn’t- Yeah. But she’s very beautiful.

Todd: I wondered if she was someone famous too. I have no idea.

Craig: No idea, but she’s great. It’s very entertaining. I liked it a lot. And then near the end of it, Vicky, the main guy, goes outside to pee and intentionally pees on the street invitation, and immediately all the lights go out.

This was kind of a funny scene that I think maybe I looked away for a second when the lights went out, ’cause when I looked back, all the lights were out and the music was off, but they were all still dancing. Uh-

Todd: Yes. They gotta finish the number first.

Craig: That was funny.

Todd: Yeah, but he pees on the sign and it alters the words on the signs.

The words. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So instead of s- O Street Come Tomorrow, it just says O Street Come

Craig: Oh, I didn’t know that

Todd: Yeah, so that’s, that’s all his fault. Uh, so yeah, there’s darkness and there’s some bedlam in there, and then we get kind of our f- first, uh, scary, scary moment of the movie where-

Craig: Yes. Well, yeah, there’s a big scary knock at the door.

When they finally answer the door, it’s just a woman, and it turns out she’s a prostitute-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: who is there for one of the other guys. But here again is another moment where everything was so coded. Like, it seemed like they were intentionally trying to muddy the waters.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Uh, it, it was like because she was just there for friendship, to be paid for her friendship, and it was obvious what was happening, but the innuendo was-

Todd: Thick

Craig: yeah. It was really weird. And, like, I just don’t know about… I didn’t watch the version that you provided me access to. I, I watched it on Prime. So I don’t know if you and I saw the exact same thing, but I was just really interested in different, like, Indian norms when it comes to film. Because this only comes to mind because of that.

I didn’t know if that was for censorship issues, but throughout the movie, any time anybody smokes, there was a little message down in the bottom corner of my screen that said, “Smoking kills.” Was that in yours?

Todd: Uh, no. That might be your Amazon thing. Again, I

Craig: didn’t know if that was- That’s interesting … I didn’t know if that was an Indian thing.

I, I… Surely it’s, maybe it’s an Amazon thing. Maybe. I don’t think so, but every time anybody was seen smoking a cigarette, whether it was in the background or a main character, ’cause Vicky smokes, any time in the very bottom there was a little tiny note that said, “Smoking kills.”

Todd: We’re gonna put it in the movie, but we’re also gonna warn you about it.

Craig: The innuendo to me reminds me, it’s almost like John Hughes- teen-

Todd: Hmm …

Craig: kind of innuendo. I mean, John Hughes in, like, Pretty in Pink m- may have gone even, uh, I don’t know, any of those, there was some maybe even more crude innuendo than it is here.

But it kind of reminds me of that. Okay, so- Well, ’cause- Another example is, is… Go ahead.

Todd: Oh, I was gonna say because it’s also kind of played for laughs too, right? I mean, the innuendo itself is kind of a joke.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: They’re, they’re also really playing up Vicky’s naivete, I would say, and inexperience with women supposedly, right?

They’re-

Craig: Yeah … they’re,

Todd: they’re poking at it with this innuendo, I think.

Craig: Well, right, okay, ’cause the hooker shows up, noth- we don’t see anything, nothing happens. But Stree is also there, and ultimately pulls the guy who had brought the hooker there, pulls him out of a window. Nobody sees it happen, but they presume that’s what happens because his clothes are left behind.

The next morning, the prostitute comes to Vicky’s house- … demanding money because she thinks it’s his fault, because everybody blames him for… They figure out that he’s the one that peed on the message and that’s, it’s his fault that that guy is gone. So she demands the money. The dad, because the, this prostitute is kind of causing a scene in the street, Vicky’s dad comes out and pays her off.

But then the dad feels like he has to have a sex talk with Vicky. This is another example of that that just feels weird to me.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: Because Vicky is at l- least in his early 20s, at least. Yeah.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: And this seems like a talk that you should maybe, I mean, if you’re going to have this talk at all, maybe be having with, like, a 15-year-old.

Todd: I think- I don’t know … it’s a comedy. I, because of course dad here thinks he’s paying off this prostitute that Vicky-

Craig: Right, he- …

Todd: may have had. Yeah. That’s the joke. And so he’s gotta come in and give him this birds and the bees talks. And I feel like the tone is that Vicky is just sort of humoring him. Like, he doesn’t need this talk, but he’s humoring his dad.

Is that the feeling you got?

Craig: I, yeah, I, yeah, I think so.

Todd: Yeah. That his dad’s just kinda silly because he’s, doesn’t need this. But yeah, so he gets his little birds and the bees discussion, but again, this is thematically significant for later And so I liked that it was in there. I, I really liked how everything kinda tied together.

I think every setup in this movie pays off, and I don’t think there’s a lot of extraneous stuff in here. Every scene, you know, that you’re wondering, “Well, why is that there?” Or, “Maybe this is just there for humor,” or something like that, ends up having a little bit of a payoff or reference later. And, and this is one of them, I think.

Craig: Right after this, they open the letter that the mysterious girl gave Vicky and told him to open the next day. And there’s comedy about, you know, he’s reading into it that she’s totally into him. But really, it’s very obvious that she asks him for a list of totally random things that could only be ingredients for a spell or a potion.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like, there’s no other expl- I don’t remember what all it was, but it was random stuff. It’s

Todd: hilarious stuff. Yeah, like, I- it would be like the equivalent of like eye of newt and, you know- Yeah … one of them’s like the hair of a white cat or something like that. Uh-huh. It’s just, it’s so funny. And again, that’s the comedy here, is that he hasn’t, he doesn’t seem to get that.

And we, of course, by now are figuring, “Oh, this woman’s a strea. The strea in disguise doing something.” I mean, she’s some kinda witch. You know? Who knows what her, her plan is, but we’re wondering if she’s really good, and this is just further confirmation of that. And her friends kinda catch into it a little bit, too, don’t they?

They say a couple things, but he just kinda brushes it off.

Craig: R- well, kind of. I mean, yeah, th- B2 especially thinks that she’s either tied to Sri or is Sri.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And

Todd: it

Craig: does make him suspicious too. It makes Vicki a little suspicious, especially when she takes him to the woods.

Todd: Yeah. Second night.

Craig: Yeah, he gets over it pretty quickly when she says something about the dress, and he was like, “Oh, I should have measured you in the shop.”

And sh- she’s like, “I thought you did.” And he’s like, “Yeah, but I messed it up or something.” Yeah. He is either a really good player or he really bumbles into this because- … she’s like, “Well, take my measurements now.” And he’s like, “Well, I don’t have my tape measure.” And she’s like, “You don’t need it, do you?” And he’s like, “No, I don’t need it.

Do you mind?” And then he takes her measurements with his hands, and it’s one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen.

Todd: It really is. By the fire out in the woods. Oh my God. It’s so great. And, you know, he doesn’t wanna believe that she’s a witch. You’re right, like by now he’s nervous. This, it’s n- he’s not stupid.

The idea’s been planted in his head. This mysterious woman keeps popping in and out. His friends point out that these are spell ingredients or whatever, but he’s still like, the level of enthusiasm, I mean, I can’t blame him. I’d, I’d kinda like to believe that it’s all just a big coincidence, she’s just an odd bird.

‘Cause then after this, what, she sorta disappears, right? Seems to just vanish. He leans out to kiss her, closes his eyes or something like that, and then opens them and she’s gone and the, the fire’s out and things are creepy for a moment. But he does meet her another time, and he’s brought her the things.

Did I get things mixed up?

Craig: No, I don’t remember. I was just… I lost my place in my notes.

Todd: Or was that when he met… Maybe that’s when he, he brought her the things. ‘Cause he’s got like, “I got, I got the hair, but I, I don’t know i- Yeah, yeah … you know, what shade of white, so I got you a whole bunch of different colors.”

Craig: I think so. I think it’s after this that Bitu and Jana are in town and they split up for some reason.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And Sri gets Jana.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, you know, like this scene and others are reasonably suspenseful. It’s shot in a really cool location in this village with these narrow streets with kind of tall stone buildings.

And when all the lights go out and he’s kinda being pursued by this phantom thing, it’s just kind of a shrouded figure that I feel like here it still almost looks corporeal. As the movie progresses it looks more like a floating ghost-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: type thing. But I mean, it’s following around, and I think ultimately it gets him, right?

And he gets dragged away, and only his, uh, clothes are left behind.

Todd: Yeah, I was shocked.

Craig: Yeah, ’cause this guy, you know, was one of the main three guys, but-

Todd: Yeah, and he’s just kind of a lovable goof. You didn’t expect him to get taken, so that’s a surprise. So now the town’s up in arms by this point. Rudra, the librarian, has organized a group of people.

He’s giving pep talks, I think, on the streets. Th- there’s people complaining about their husbands going missing. The, what’s his name? Jana’s mom is crying and stuff. And Vicky goes to the roof to meet the woman, and there’s a moment where he has, I don’t know, was it a vision? Was it an actual encounter?

Craig: I d-

Todd: He thinks he sees Stree.

This, this ghost does seem to show up behind him.

Craig: It’s a fake-out.

Todd: Yeah?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: I think so. He thinks… I mean, the movie’s obviously leading us, again, to question this woman, because he cl- closes his eyes and screams, and when he opens them, you, the woman’s basically shaking him, the mysterious woman. “Hey, hey, are you okay?

Are you okay?” Now, now she’s there suddenly, right when he thought he saw the Stree. Oh, that’s suspicious for us, but-

Craig: Yeah, and then he asks her specifically about the Stree, and she doesn’t answer, and then she disappears.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Like, he looks away for a minute, or he, like, goes to check on a bum or something, I don’t know, and when he looks back she is gone.

Todd: It seems like confirmation for us, and for him.

Craig: I guess. Well, he and the boys, if they… They need to learn more about Stree, I guess, so they go back to that expert guy, and he gives more exposition. So she was a woman who fell in love with somebody, but for some reason the townspeople didn’t want them to get married, so they killed them both.

And Stree then has been wandering the streets looking for a man so that she can fill out her destiny of getting married or something, I don’t know. And he says, and they’re like, they’re reading in a book, and they’re like, “And the way to defeat her is…” And he turns the page, and then he starts reading something else that doesn’t make any sense.

And they’re like, “Wait a second.” The pages are turn- are torn out. So another one, hilarious. “And the way to defeat her is,” turn the page. It’s, damn it. Oh, my God. Oh, God. Funny. Yeah. But luckily Vicky sees an illustration of place in the book that he recognizes, so they go there.

Todd: Yeah, it’s like an old fort or something, yeah?

Craig: I guess.

Todd: Uh.

Craig: That they’ve never noticed before, even though it’s in their town? I don’t, I don’t know.

Todd: Yeah. They’ve never visited it at night when it, when it counted. During the festival, you know. Don’t forget, it’s all, you know, during the festival that all this activity’s going on, so they seem to think that’s the place to go to find her.

So they go there as a group, and scary stuff happens. Then, then the, the mysterious woman shows up, and that’s when we learn that she’s not the Stree

Craig: Right. Okay. ‘Cause the Stri is, okay, it scares the two, the one friend who’s left. Janna comes back at some point, but he’s, like, mind-controlled by her, by Stri at least some of the time.

He’s, like, feral. Yeah, he’s like- Yeah … a feral zombie some of the times. Some of the times they just have him tied up and he’s just himself, but sometimes he’s crazy, I guess. But the other two guys get scared out, so it’s just Vicky in there, and the Stri comes to him, and I- he turns around, but she doesn’t kill him.

In fact, they almost have kind of like a moment.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, like, gaze into each other’s eyes or whatever, and that’s when the mysterious girl shows up and, I don’t know, throws ash on her or something. And we find out then that this girl, her whole mission in life is to defeat the Stri because the Stri killed her something.

That was one of the places where the subtitles dropped out and I didn’t know what happened.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: Do you know what happened?

Todd: She’s the Van Helsing of this story, isn’t she? She’s like the- Yes … Stri hunter.

Craig: But did you… Who was it? Who, who, who is she avenging? Do you know?

Todd: Oh, God. I, yeah, I don’t remember. I’m sorry.

I do not.

Craig: Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Who cares? She’s avenging somebody, and that’s her whole purpose. That’s why she’s been coming back every three years or something. She only comes back during the festival. Oh, that’s when they find Janna and they take him back home. But in the middle of the night, he gets out of bed and all the lights in the city go out, and when they wake up the next morning, all the guys are gone.

Or not all of them, but a lot of guys. Mm. And, like, women are howling in the streets ’cause their husbands are gone and stuff, and it’s because someone erased the messages on, on the walls.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And it was Janna, so he’s, you know, possessed by her or something now. The remaining men set up a reward. They will give a certain amount of money for every missing man returned.

So Vicky and, and- … the expert and I guess B2 and myst- mysterious girl need to figure more out, so the pages from that book are gone, so they have to find the author of the book

Todd: Who’s conveniently nearby. And,

Craig: and yeah, he’s a weird hermit who lives next door.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And they go to him- Oh … and he gives them a whole story about only one man can douse the fire, and he’s gotta be all of these different things. I don’t remember. Like, there’s a whole litany of things he has to be. And the last of them is that he’s a cour- uh, he’s an artist, and he’s a prince, and he’s, I don’t know, all these things, but he’s a courtesan’s son who is also a bachelor.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And they immediately figure out that Vicky meets all of the criteria, except he’s like, “Yeah, but I’m not a courtesan’s son, so sorry.” And they’re like, “Oh, wait, yes you are. Everybody knows except for you.”

Todd: This is the best.

Craig: Oh,

Todd: man.

Craig: Oh, yeah- So funny … your mom, by the way, your mom was a whore. Everybody knows except for you. You,

Todd: you didn’t know? You didn’t re- oh, God, everybody knows. Then he goes to his father, and his father’s like, “Yeah.” Yeah. And, and this is why I said the earlier sex talk kinda comes back around because he’s gotta talk to his father about sex now, and turns out his father’s not the innocent, sweet little man that, that he came across as when he was bumbling through a dumb sex talk.

Yeah.

Craig: It was so funny to me, and he says something really rude to his dad. I don’t remember what it was, but something rude. But the very next morning he wakes up and he apologizes, and he says he’s sorry, and he goes and he talks to Mystery Girl, and he’s like, “You know what? I’m over it. It’s fine. Who cares?”

Todd: Right. That was fast.

I mean, when the whole town’s known forever, uh, you, you can only be in denial for so long.

Craig: He’s like, “My dad’s still a good guy, so whatever. Who cares?” Um, which I thought was funny. I, I, I just, I, I mean, I mean, nobody wants to hear something disparaging about their mom, I guess, but I just thought maybe that was kind of a cultural thing, too.

I kinda feel like in America we’d be like, “Eh, so what? Who cares?”

Todd: Right.

Craig: Right. So mom got around when she was younger, who cares? Like Yeah. Uh, but anyway, yeah, okay. So the expert tells Vicky that he’s the prince, and Vicky’s like, “Okay, fine, I am, I guess. I’ll save the town, whatever.” So to, to save the town you have to give her her wedding night, which he’s very nervous about because he thinks that that entails sleeping with her, which maybe it does.

But My- Mystery Girl assures him, she’s like, “Don’t worry about it because even though she’s really strong on her own turf, if we can lure her somewhere else, I know how to beat her.” She’s very vague. Like, she never says what she’s going to do. She just- No … keeps being… She’s just very reassuring, like, “It’s going to be fine.

I know what to do. Don’t worry about it.”

Todd: Right.

Craig: So they set up a whole wedding, I guess in his apartment or something- Uh-huh … and write instructions for Sri on the walls, like, “Come to this particular place.”

Todd: There are arrows.

Craig: Yeah. I

Todd: love this bit.

Craig: And they get him all dressed up, and he looks very handsome in his wedding outfit, and, uh, Sri follows the directions.

Friend Jana is freaking out and distracts the rest of them so that Vicky is all alone, and Sri calls to him, and then when the other friends go looking for him, he’s gone. But he shares his location on his phone, which I thought was gonna be a trick. Like, I thought that was, like, Sri tricking them. But no, it wasn’t.

It was just he got abducted by Sri, and now he’s in a cave where he’s prepared to her, I guess, if that’s what- Yes.

Todd: That seems like it, right? He understands what she needs. I mean, essentially the idea is that, you know, the town disrespected her somehow, and so she needs to get her love and respect back, and gets that by finally getting that marriage or that union that she was denied because the town killed her and her

Craig: husband.

Well, yeah, and I mean, I, you know, I was just very crude a moment ago, but it’s actually pretty wholesome. Like, it seems like that’s what he thinks. Like, he thinks that she wants to consummate it, so he strips down to his boxers and, uh… But it, that’s not what she, like, she’s not interested, and he puts his clothes back on, and they actually have another moment where it seems like he can kind of s- see her for who she is or was.

I mean, she still looks kind of ghostly, but she’s not as horrific as she appears to other people. And again, they kind of have another moment before Mystery Girl shows up again and disables her again pretty much in the same way, by throwing ash on her.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: She’s disabled. The girl is like, “Here, Vicky, you have to take this knife and you have to kill her.”

But he doesn’t want to because he feels like she has been unfairly judged and she was wronged in the first place.

Todd: We’re just making it worse.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, and there should be some other way And that’s when she wakes up. This part was, I hope, intentionally hilarious because she wakes up and she’s the, the ghost, and she’s just flying around just shrieking incessantly.

And then she flies up right in Vicky’s face and is just right in front of his face just shrieking. And Vicky and Mystery Girl are, like, having a conversation, like, “What are we… What should we do?” Mm-hmm. And she’s like, “You have to look lovingly into her eyes,” and so he’s kind of fake. It’s really funny.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It’s stupid-

Todd: Uh-huh …

Craig: but it’s kind of hilarious. And eventually he just screams at her and tells her to shut up, which works for a second.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But Mystery Girl says, “Okay, well, if you don’t wanna kill her, I guess we have to cut off her braid, and that will deprive her of her power.”

Todd: It’s like a Samson thing.

Craig: “Okay, I, I guess, if you say so.”

Todd: I feel like this Mystery Girl wants… Ultimately, she has ulterior motives here, and we kinda see that, I think, a little bit at the end. But, um-

Craig: Yeah, but we don’t know that at this point, and,

Todd: and- No, so that’s why this is weird, right?

Craig: Right.

Todd: But I think it makes sense later. Now, it, I don’t think this was her ultimate plan, but when she realizes that Vicky’s the only one who can off Stree, Mystery Girl’s gotta convince Vicky to go to, you know, plan B.

He’s like, “Okay, that’s acceptable,” and he cuts it off, and Stree disappears.

Craig: And, and she, Mystery Girl, grabs it and, and puts it in her coat or something. And they go out together, and they’re talking, and I, I think Vicky says, “She’s not dead.” Mm-hmm. “We’ve taken away her power, but she’ll probably still c- she’s still around, and she’ll still come back next year.

But all she wants is love and respect, so maybe if we flip the script and, you know, show her the respect she deserves, then she won’t-” hurt people or something. I don’t know. But anyway, all of the men that she, s- Stree had previously taken come out of her temple or whatever it is.

Todd: Yeah, that’s what keeps this movie light.

Craig: Yeah, ev- everybody’s fine. Everybody’s fine.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And Vicky and his friends get the reward, I think, for bringing all those folks back. And mystery girl is leaving, like she’s just waiting at the bus wearing the dress he made, and there’s cute-

Todd: Goodbye stuff …

Craig: goodbye between them. And I mean, it is cute. I mean, it’s, it’s innocent and sweet, and she leaves and he realizes he doesn’t even know her name.

And I think I thought that that was the end. It seemed… Was that the part where it seemed like the end? I don’t know.

Todd: Felt like this would be the end, yeah.

Craig: But then we cut back to her on the bus.

Todd: Yep. A- and she pulls out Stree’s braid.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: There’s something overlay. I can’t remember exactly what’s said kind of in the voiceover, but she, I believe, attaches Stree’s braid to her own, right?

Craig: Yeah, and she says, I’m pretty sure she says, and when I say she says, this, like you said, it’s in voiceover, but it’s her. It’s, it’s, it’s her voice. I think she says that she would have done it much sooner if she could have, but the protector of the city had to do it.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: And then she disappears from the bus.

So it’s like she never really leaves town. I don’t really understand what’s happening. Now, okay, now it also seems like the movie is over, but then it comes back and it says one year later, and we get Stree point of view coming towards the village. And outside there is a statue of Stree, and there’s a sign next to it, but instead of saying, “Stree, come back tomorrow,” or whatever, it says, “Oh, Stree, protect us.”

And that’s the end Now I like that. I kinda like that turning it on its head and, and respecting her and making her a protector of the town. I like that. Mm-hmm.

Todd: Me too.

Craig: But I’m not really sure I understand what’s going on with the girl, the mystery girl.

Todd: I, I feel like the mystery girl is trying to get her power.

Craig: So is the mystery girl a separate thing that just wants the Stree’s power?

Todd: Yeah, I think she not only wants Stree disabled, but she wants her power too. And so when she got the braid… I mean, I think that was also what might have been behind a lot of the hoodoo stuff that she wanted the guy to get for her.

Craig: Okay.

Todd: Yeah. Um, because, you know, that doesn’t ever get quite explained either. But I feel like, I feel like this is setting it up for a sequel, and I don’t know the contents of the sequel.

Craig: It’s weird. I, I read a little bit about it, but I intentionally avoided spoilers ’cause I, I, I might actually be interested in seeing it.

But like I said, I think that there are two other kind of separate but sort of… Like, I know in the next one chronologically, the one that came out next, Jana is in it. Mm. He’s a side character. He’s connected to the new main characters, and I think it’s maybe a werewolf movie. I don’t know about the, much about the third one, but then I read that in the fourth one, which is Stree 2, which just came out in, like, 2023 or something like that, it kinda joins forces.

And I did read a little bit about how, like, there’s a new, in the village, this same village, there’s a new threat, but it’s a male threat and it’s, like, a patriarchal kind of thing. Hmm. And so the village has to, I think, call on Stree to protect them and help fight it. And then I read that it expands on the lore and makes Sri’s origins broader than just a local thing.

Like, it’s tied to, again, they’re trying to kind of, I think, expand this Marvel-esque universe of these movies, so it’s, it’s kind of expanding the lore to make it all connected or whatever, which is cool. And I think that they’re, it, it sounds like they’re popular, and I liked this one. It was different.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It’s difficult to compare to anything American, you know? The, the stuff that we usually watch. I so enjoyed that musical number, and I typically do, the few that I’ve seen, these, these big budget Indian films when there is a musical number, and they just are kind of, not entirely out of context, but-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: they don’t necessarily contribute anything to the plot or, you know, they’re-

Todd: Right …

Craig: they’re just there for entertainment value, and I like that, but there really is no American equivalent. Like-

Todd: I …

Craig: we don’t have that.

Todd: I liken it, in a way, to your typical Hollywood musical, where people just burst into song and everyone is now a dancer, and the whole town gets together and everyone’s dancing in cue, in synchronization, except- Right,

Craig: but the movie is otherwise not a musical.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, except in Hollywood movies, those songs are used to advance the plot.

Craig: Usually, right.

Todd: Whereas all of my experience, yeah, usually, whereas all my experience with the Bollywood films is these songs are, you know, thematically related to what’s happening in the movie But it’s not like at the end of the m- of the song something has happened.

This is just like a big song and dance number, and it’s a song about love. Or, you know, a song about whatever, and it stands on its own, and if you were to pluck it out, the movie would still be totally comprehensible.

Craig: Yeah. I enjoy it. I, I think it’s super fun. Oh, yeah. It’s, it’s bright and colorful and a lot to look at, and fun choreography.

And like I said, you know, the, this, the song was a lot of fun. I, it’s a song that I would listen to. And, and then there’s another one over the credits too- Yeah. … which, uh, unfort- yeah, Amazon insisted on… I, I couldn’t stop it from skipping over.

Todd: Oh, God. Are you serious?

Craig: Yeah, I was mad.

Todd: Oh, boy. That was a good song.

Craig: I didn’t get to see the whole thing, but, you know, it just looked like goofy fun, like the cast in fun costumes doing fun stuff, and it was produced. And I don’t know, I, I enjoy that kind of thing. I, I, I can imagine that there are people who would find it, for lack of a better word, so foreign just because it’s so different than American cinema that some people might not get it or, or potentially might even find it off-putting.

I, I don’t at all.

Todd: No.

Craig: But, but they’re… It’s difficult to compare to an American film. I can’t say, “If you liked this American film, you’ll like this,” ’cause it’s, it’s just so different.

Todd: But I mean, ultimately it’s not that weird. I mean, y- y- you think- No,

Craig: it’s not weird. It’s just different …

Todd: you could think of it like suddenly a music video is stuck in the middle of the movie, you know, in a way- Yeah

is kinda how it is. Like if you were watching Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors, and at some point during the, you know, sequence where they’re going into hell and trying to find Freddy, the Dokkan Dream Warriors music video pops in. Sure. And that plays out, and then it cuts back to the plot- The movie

and continues along. It’s, it’s fun. It’s… I love it. And I was actually kind of sad there weren’t more musical numbers in this movie. I mean, there are other songs, but they’re playing as part of a montage or something or like a small portion of it over something else. And typically, these Bollywood movies, which by the way, they can be three, three and a half hours long.

They’re, they’re usually pretty long because of all the music that’s stuck in there.

Craig: Mm.

Todd: In this case, it’s shorter just because they only have one of them. I wouldn’t have minded seeing two or three more, but again, it would’ve, it would’ve put the running time even longer than it already is, so. You gotta have the patience for that, yeah.

Craig: True. I al- uh, again, I’m trying to kinda think of, uh, comparisons to American things. I think if this were an American film, the m- the main cast would’ve been teenagers.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Here they’re, I guess, 20-somethings or maybe even older 20-somethings. They look like adults. I feel like in America these would’ve been kids or at least 30-somethings playing kids.

Uh-

Todd: Right. That’s what I was gonna say. This one’s more honest.

Craig: It, it does, yeah. I don’t know. It feels a little more kinda like an American high school plot, but whatever. I recommend it. I think it’s fun. I, I never would’ve seen… It, y- it’s subtitles and they speak really fast. So Yeah. You’re gonna read quickly.

You are going to read. Uh, so be ready. Get your glasses. I had, I had to put up my glasses for this one. But, uh, it’s worth it. It was cute. Uh, I enjoyed it. Alan walked by as I was about halfway into it and he said, “How is it?” And I said, “Ugh, it’s long.” And he said, “Well, the fact that you said that tells me you’re enjoying it, you just wish it wasn’t so long.”

Mm. ‘Cause I wasn’t really complaining about it, and that’s true. It is a little bit long for my liking. I, I feel like it could’ve been trimmed.

Todd: I agree. I agree 100%.

Craig: But it’s well made and the characters are likable and it’s, it’s got- Charming … charm.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. It’s, it’s a charming movie. And, and you could, I mean, if you’ve got kids who…

I, I, it’s, it’s, it’s more fun than anything else. It’s more of a spooky Halloween vibe than a ax murderer gory kinda vibe.

Todd: Oh, 100%, yeah. Uh, y- you’re right. It’s a Halloween ghost vibe-wise than, uh, than, you know, some kind of, like, really-

Craig: Nasty. It’s not nasty at

Todd: all. Yeah. It’s not nasty. It’s not gross. I, I loved it too, and I thought that our listeners would enjoy it as well.

It’s fun to bring a movie like this that maybe not a lot of our listeners would, would have seen, although we do have some Indian listeners and, and you know, we, some of them have in the past really chatted with us a lot online and, uh, recommended some Indian movies for us, I believe. And, you know, that’s a good time for me to say if you are familiar with, uh, Bollywood horror or any other Indian horror films that you think we should watch, drop us a line.

I mean, thank you for listening to this. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and let us know in the comments on any of our places. You know, just search Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast, what other Indian horror mo…

We return with a tribute episode honoring Sam Neill, reflecting on his legacy from Jurassic Park to Possession and Dead Calm, and how his passing at 78 hit us.

For this tribute, we dive into John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994), the final entry in Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy,” and a Lovecraft-inspired, reality-bending horror film built around books, belief, and cosmic dread.

We break down Sam Neill’s performance as skeptic insurance investigator John Trent, the film’s surreal structure, meta ending, and plot-heavy descent into Hobbs End, where fiction bleeds into real life.

We also highlight Carpenter’s signature direction and score, the stacked supporting cast (including Charlton Heston and David Warner), and the standout practical creature effects that make this one a pretty good.

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Automatic Transcript

In The Mouth Of Madness (1994)

Episode 502, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, it is time for another tribute episode. We haven’t done one of these in a little while. Seemed like there for a bit we were doing one every other week. This July, last month, Sam Neill died at the ripe old age of 78 years old. New Zealand actor that probably most people recognize immediately from his big role in Jurassic Park.

Although he was in quite a bit of stuff. Hunt for Red October before that, Event Horizon we will see one of these days. I mean, we’ve seen it, but we’ve gotta do it- Yeah … here on this show at some point. And he got his start in horror, actually. Well, I mean, he got his start on the stage doing other stuff, of course, but as far as international breakthrough roles, he was in the third Omen movie-

Craig: Right

Todd: playing Damien. And then, uh, in 1981 was in Possession, which we did on this show, which was a very intense film that I still think about an awful lot, and I think his performance in that was absolutely fantastic. So yeah, so, uh, fast-forward several roles later, here we are in the Mouth of Madness, 1994, a movie I’ve seen a few times before this.

When I was a teenager, this had recently been released on video, and I think we probably rented it two or three times, and I know I saw it at least once or twice from a sleepover with some friends. And the thing that I remembered the most about it from that time was that I pretty much nodded off about halfway through each time I watched it.

I don’t think as a kid I really appreciated it as much as I do now. It’s definitely not that kind of fast action, spooky, jump scare horror movie that I was expecting, you know, when we were renting movies for these sleepovers. A little slower, a little long, a little bit of a, I don’t know, you could say cerebral in a way.

It just takes its time. I call it maybe a little more adult horror movie, I would say, based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, which has his own mythos and his own style, too, and I feel like more or less this movie stuck to it pretty well. How about you, Craig? Uh, I’m sure you’ve seen this one before.

Craig: Yeah, a bunch of times.

But I think you’re getting jaded in your old age. An hour and 34 minutes is not long .

Todd: It feels long, man. The movie-

Craig: I didn’t think the movie felt long at all. Really? Like, I… Yeah. Ugh. Not at all. I still think it

Todd: felt long . I guess that’s just me.

Craig: Oh, gosh. I mean- I mean, it’s, it’s fairly action-heavy and, like-

vision-heavy. You think so? Uh, yeah. The, the… In fact, as I was watching it last night, because I, I told you this, but I, I… I’ll say it now for everybody else’s benefit. I, out of nowhere one night, decided I was gonna watch In the Mouth of Madness. I, you know, I was just scrolling, trying to find something to put on so I…

to, to go to sleep at night. And I came across it. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, so I put it on and I watched most of it. I did fall asleep before the end, but that was my goal. And then I woke up the next morning to a text from you that Sam Neill had died, and, and that was so weird. It was so weird to me ’cause I hadn’t r- I mean, we’ve talked about doing the movie before.

Yeah. But I, I hadn’t really given it much thought. I, I hadn’t really given Sam Neill much thought. I mean, I’m, I’m a fan. I’ve always been a fan of him, but I hadn’t given him a lot of thought in a long time. I knew that in fairly recent past years that he had had cancer and that it was bad, and they didn’t know if he was gonna make it through that, but he did, and I think that he’s been cancer-free for a little while.

So I was surprised. I was kind of shocked to learn of his death, though, uh, y- I think you said he was 78. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s a, a pretty good run.

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: it is. Um, I’ll, I’ll feel fortunate if I make it that far, but he seemed, you know… Cancer can get anybody, but y- despite that, he seemed vital and, and healthy and, and he was a cool guy, so sad to see him go.

Most people know him from Jurassic Park and of course I do, too. Dr. Alan Grant, I mean, it’s an iconic… Those are iconic movies. It’s an iconic character. I think he kind of cemented a legacy there. I, I, I think, you know, probably generations of people, our generation and our kids are gonna know who he is from those movies.

I knew him before that because inappropriately I grew up watching a movie called Dead Calm-

Clip: Hmm …

Craig: with him and Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane, and they’re basically the only three people in that movie and it’s more of like a psychological sexual thriller. Again, completely inappropriate for kids. But I grew up watching it.

And it’s a great movie, and he’s great in it. But I think that he’s been good in everything that I’ve seen him in.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Um, and beyond that, he just seems like… Well, I mean, he’s handsome and talented. He’s got those things going for him. But he just seemed like a really affable, kind, thoughtful person. And what I’ve seen, you know, people say about him, you know, people who’ve worked with him, it just seems like he was a very down-to-earth-

Todd: Scandal-free.

Craig: Scandal-free, you know, kind of a family guy. I mean, there’s cool stories about his family. I guess when he was a, a teenager or, or in his very early 20s, I don’t remember, he was very young, he and a, a young lady got pregnant and the, the baby was put up for adoption. But he looked for his son and, and found that his son was looking for him.

And as when his son was, like, 25 or something like that, they reunited and, and developed a, a, a solid relationship that was ongoing. And he, you know, he was just a cool guy. He owned a couple wineries. I think he was really chill.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: But I think that he was just a good guy and a cool person to work with.

Laura Dern played opposite him, played his romantic counterpart in the Jurassic Park films, specifically the first one. And I don’t think at the time, I think looking at it in hindsight, some people have kind of questioned the age difference. I think she was only in her very early 20s, and he was already, I think, in his 50s.

So pairing them as a romantic duo was potentially questionable. However, she said that she just had the most wonderful time with him. She released a statement after he died, a very heartfelt and sentimental statement You know, commenting on their bond and, and how that would not change and stuff. So I, I, I think he was just…

I’ve just been a, a fan. It’s, it’s nice. You, you said scandal-free. And who knows? You never know what’s going on in people’s personal lives behind the scenes. But by all appearances, he really seemed to be a good guy, and it’s nice to have people that you can kind of look up to. And he, he was always that kind of guy for me.

You know, that’s, that, that’s what I aspire to. W- when I die, I just want people to say, “You know, he seemed like a pretty chill, good guy.”

Todd: Yeah, exactly

Craig: right. Some- somebody, somebody good to be around, no major scandals, not an asshole. That’s what I aspire to, and I think he accomplished it.

Todd: I- it seems like it.

You gotta die before that stuff comes out, you know?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Before people look too carefully into you. I– You had mentioned him and Laura Dern’s Bond earlier, and I– just reminded me that he was shortlisted for, uh, James Bond-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: following Roger Moore. Timothy Dalton ended up winning out. But man, he would’ve made a good Bond, I think.

Craig: He really would have.

Todd: Really. He would. Uh, I would’ve liked to have seen him in that. But yeah, I mean, the dude’s got a hundred and s- um, almost 160 IMDb credits to his name. He was working right up until the end. He was filming something in Hawaii, I think, around the time that he passed. So yeah, he, he had a good run.

We’re gonna miss him. We’re, uh, anxious to talk about this movie because one of the reasons we chose this one, we could have chosen Dead Calm, but we decided that this one really focuses heavily on him as a big central character. And I have to go back and say that, you know, you said this is action, fairly action-heavy.

Craig: Oh, yeah.

Todd: When I said it was a bit yawning. And I just wanna say, I think there are different kinds of action, right? Mm. Like, there’s action that moves the plot forward. And in this case, there’s action– There’s a lot of action in this movie, but it really just takes, most of it takes place in the characters’ minds.

It’s a lot of visions and scenarios where you’re not quite sure if what you’re seeing is real or not. And so I think for me as a kid, and especially even just going back and watching it now, that’s the thing that kept this movie a little less scary than I would like it to be, I suppose. A little less, um, what I consider action-heavy because at the end of the day, it– Well, it’s, it’s not just about a guy going crazy and seeing visions.

And the– There are other people also going crazy and seeing visions. In fact, it’s like, sort of like the whole world is gonna end up this way ultimately. I- in many ways it, it’s reminiscent of, I think, even some Dario Argento movies that we’ve seen, and stuff from Italian cinema in many ways. I can see a lot of parallels between just the plot structure and the visual language, the cinematography, the usage of color, and I applaud John Carpenter for doing this because when you’re dealing with Lovecraft, this is the kind of stuff you have to delve into.

And this is, uh, based on not any particular Lovecraft story, I think, but, uh, it was written by, uh, Michael De Luca, directed by one of our absolute favorite directors, John Carpenter. John Carpenter was originally selected to direct it, and then a couple other people turned it down, and then it kind of came back around to him, and he agreed to do it eventually.

And he directed it and scored it, and I think it’s pretty recognizable as a Carpenter-type movie. You know, it’s got a lot of his, uh, fingerprints on it, his signature look, his signature style. I th- I’ve always enjoyed John Carpenter. I feel like he has a kind of no-nonsense way of doing filmmaking that is still very interesting and very fun.

He tells really fun, bold stories. I like that he unapologetically just goes out there with his ideas, and most of the time I think they hit their mark, and some of the times they don’t, and that’s pretty typical of every artist. So, uh, I just really like the guy. I really like everything he does.

Ultimately, I did enjoy this movie a lot more as a adult than I did as a kid. I think I just appreciated it more. I understood a little bit more what was going on, and the stakes felt a little bigger to me as an adult than they did as a kid Because as a kid, I came away from this movie thinking, oh, it’s really just about a guy kinda going crazy and ending up in the nuthouse.

But as an adult, I realize a lot of what the movie was about passed me by maybe while I was half asleep at a friend’s house at 2:00 in the morning after chowing down on cocktail weenies and, and sodas. We didn’t, uh, we didn’t have alcohol at our parties in high school.

Craig: Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s not based on any one particular H.P.

Lovecraft story, but it, it definitely is inspired by that universe and, and directly references it multiple times. There’s an author who’s central to the plot. His name is Sutter Cane, which is a very thinly veiled reference to Stephen King. He’s like… He, he’s, he’s Stephen King. Right. Uh, e- except, except he writes almost exclusively, like, Cthulhu universe-type stories, and all of his books, the, the titles of the books that we see are all references to other Lovecla- Lovecraft stories.

And there are two or three instra- instances in the movie where somebody reads directly from one of his books, and I think every time it’s almost verbatim something from Lovecraft, tailored slightly to, to fit the needs of, of the plot, but almost directly from Lovecraft. And ultimately, there are Lovecraftian, like, creatures in it and stuff.

This was, I guess, Carpenter’s… He, he considered it the final film in his Apocalypse Trilogy, he called it.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: The Thing being the first one, Prince of Darkness being the second one. I haven’t seen Prince of Darkness in a really long time. I remember finding that movie

Todd: boring. Hmm. Me too.

Craig: But I haven’t seen it in a really long time.

But I didn’t find this movie boring at all. In fact, when I was watching it, I was thinking, “Wow, it’s gonna be hard to talk about this plot if we wanna go through it point by point,” because it’s plot-heavy. Like, it moves really fast. I’m just shocked that you found it slow. And, and the other thing that I’m shocked by is that you said that most of it happens in characters’ heads.

Like, that’s a take. Like Yeah. That’s, that’s a, a fairly subjective take. I suppose. Uh, I, I mean, that’s, that’s one way of interpreting it, I suppose. But I feel like aside from the fact that telling us that our narrator is crazy or at least perceived as crazy in the opening sequence, which it does The story is then narrated from what seems to be a pretty logical and objective point of view, and I think that that’s the point of it.

Like, we’re supposed to be, like, the, his character, John Trent, and, and he is, like, an insurance firm investigator. Like, he investigates claims or whatever. And so his character is very level-headed and always looking at objective truth and, and evidence and explanations. Like- Very skeptical … that’s his job, that’s his char- y- right, and he’s a skeptic- Yeah

of course. That’s the lens. We’re viewing it through his lens, and so it’s all presented in here’s what I see, here are, you know, here’s how I can interpret what I see through the lens of reality. Which is kind of the point because then at the end, I mean, that’s kind of the whole point of the movie is this existential, you know, what is reality?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But to say it, I, I, I think to say that it happens in his head is a little misleading

Todd: Okay. It happens to him and him alone. Sometimes him and this other girl alone, or this other girl alone. And so much of it is very dream-like, very surreal. You- there’s dream within dream within dream sequences in this movie where something will happen to him and then he wakes up, and then something else happens and he wakes up from that.

I mean, that happens two or three times in here. So I feel like Carpenter is really trying to blur the lines a little bit. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. By the end of the movie, you can be like, “Oh, yeah, this stuff really did happen to him.” But how much of it did? How much of it happened to him, and how much of it was influenced by these things?

I mean, there’s no question there’s something happening. There’s no question he’s being influenced. You know, this is, this is the Lovecraft thing. And actually, this is why I really appreciate the movie now. I think Carpenter did a pretty excellent job of doing a Lovecraft-type movie-

Craig: Oh, for sure …

Todd: which would almost read better on a page than it does on the screen, except he does it so well on the screen that also he does a good job of it.

I, I’ve played… I, you know, I, I’ve only read a few stories of Lovecraft. I think you, you’re kinda the same, right? Like-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: w- we’re not really steeped in this, but I am still sort of steeped in the after lore, I suppose.

Craig: Right. Same.

Todd: He created a universe, and now there’s been a lot of stuff, people adding to that, people developing their things in there.

I’m such a nerd that, uh, I have friends who are really into gaming, and, and I’m talking like tabletop gaming and role playing and things like that, Dungeons & Dragons type-esque stuff. And I’ve been in a few of these Call of Cthulhu type sessions. I’ve played quite a few of these Cthulhu-based board games.

Some of them are really, really fun. And, you know, they all, they’re always like this . Like, there’s an insurance… Just the fact that he’s an insurance investigator made me smile. Because who would ever think that their main character of their show that’s gonna go into horror or whatever would be, like, an insurance investigator, you know?

It, it’s not often that interesting things happen to those people, I suppose. Although, when you think about it, actually probably a lot of interesting stuff happens for insurance investigators ’cause he’s kinda like a detective in a way, right?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And there’s so many times in these Cthulhu board games, in these Cthulhu role playing games, and I can then only assume in H.P.

Lovecraft’s work, when a, the main character is an insurance investigator.

Craig: Well, that’s what I was gonna say. Like, a- again, I, I am in the same boat as you. I am more well-versed in the stuff that’s inspired by Lovecraft than I really am in Lovecraft himself. But, you know, in the stuff of his that I’ve read and the stuff like Re-Animator and other, you know, lots of other stuff that I’ve seen that’s inspired by his work, this seems typical.

You’ve got A narrator who is an average Joe, who then gets thrown into this crazy irrational world, and we kind of see it through their eyes. Like, we, we just did Color Out of Space, right? Right. So the, the WPA guy i- is that guy. You know, he, he’s telling the story, “Oh, well, here’s the weird thing that happened.

I’m a rational, you know, water guy.” Right. And, and then, uh, in, again, it’s been a long time since I’ve read the story that inspired it, but Re-Animator is told, like, it’s not told from the crazy doctor’s perspective, it’s told from, like, a normal- The

Todd: intern or whatever

Craig: the- Yeah, the intern- Or the student … or a student or something.

Students,

Todd: universities, yeah, uh-huh.

Craig: So, so this is fairly typical. So you take kind of an average Joe and, and throw them into this illogical world. And, uh-

Todd: Yeah There’s something to investigate. There’s, like, a mystery to solve. A- and that works well for an insurance investigator. I mean, they’re always being sent out to solve the question of, is this le- legitimate claim or is this person fraudulent?

And we open up with him being crazy, but as soon as, uh, as we pr- jump into the past, it’s a flashback sequence, uh, we learn that he is just the hottest, best, most perceptive and slick insurance investigator that his buddy has ever seen, you know? He’s just top of his game. He can detect bullshit a mile away.

Clip: Trent, you are beautiful. Everybody says you got the best nose for con in the business. But to see it firsthand, I mean, to watch you work is incredible. Well, it wasn’t hard, Robbie. The guy’s wife liked me. Besides, he was an amateur. It’s just too easy with amateurs. See, you try to figure out who’s professional and who isn’t, and, uh, that’s when it gets fun when you’re Run into a pro.

You know, most of my salesmen couldn’t sniff out a phony claim if their noses were nailed to it, but you, man- Out of my way … you never miss.

Todd: And so he’s the ideal candidate for a guy who’s gonna be tested and is gonna be questioning reality.

Craig: Yeah, and Sam Neill plays that very well. Like you said, I agree with you.

I think he would’ve made a great Bond because he’s just very charming and smooth. And yeah, I buy him as a slick guy that you can’t get anything by. And that’s set up in kind of a cheesy way, but, but the prologue or, or the opening, I mean, is important because it establishes that we see him initially getting pulled into this, like, secluded, gothic almost looking, um-

psychiatric facility.

Todd: Nuthouse.

Craig: Yeah. And I mean, it’s like Arkham or something. I mean, it’s not- It’s crazy … as dark and gothic as, like, Arkham Asylum would be, but it’s reminiscent of that.

Todd: I know. As soon as I saw him in this l- situation, realizing this had to be a location, you know? I mean, it had to be a practical location.

I was like, “Where is this filmed?” It was filmed in a water treatment plant, which … And it, I guess it kinda makes sense. I don’t know, it’s got these tall ceilings, this weird, like, tower-like structure in the middle of a bit of an atrium and- These long corridors with these… I mean, what a crazy-ass building this is.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It was really cool.

Craig: And it looks fantastic. I mean, there’s a lot of great set pieces in the movie and, and some of them, like actual locations. This is one of them. There’s another really cool one later. But he gets… The another thing about this movie, gosh, like, I don’t know. I, I thought that this was gonna be a movie that we were both gonna nerd out over because there are so many things to nerd out over.

Mm. Like, y- I mean, the, the fact that John Carpenter directed it and scored it, I mean, that alone is, is huge. Sam Neill is great, but then there are so many other great and recognizable people in this movie. Oh my God, yeah. Like, even in small roles. Like, when he, when he gets dragged into this asylum, the guy that checked him in is played by John Glover, who we’ve seen.

He was in… He was the smarmy guy in Scrooged. He was in Gremlins 2. He was the smarmy guy in Gremlins 2 . He’s always the smarmy guy in something.

Todd: Wasn’t he the smarmy guy in Office Space or, or was it just a guy who looked a lot like him?

Craig: It was a guy that looked like him. Uh- Oh,

Todd: God, yeah … but he- I imagined him in Office Space.

Craig: I think I also just recently saw him in something, I think it was called The Ward with Pete Davidson. I think he was in that recently. But he gets in there and then, and then the doctor that comes in to, I don’t know, assess Trent, Sam Neill, is David Warner- Yeah … who we’ve seen in a bazillion things.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Waxwork, right? Wasn’t he the- Right, one of

Todd: our earliest ones that we did. Yeah, Waxwork.

Craig: Uh, yeah. And he was Billy Zane… Gosh, two Billy Zane mentions in one episode. Billy Zane’s, like, lackey in Titanic, I think. Like, this guy’s been everywhere.

Todd: Wasn’t he in Company of Wolves with Angela Lansbury? I was thinking

Craig: he was in that.

I think so. That sounds right. And I mean, while I’m looking at the IMDb page, just

Todd: to- Might as well. Rattle it

Craig: off. Uh, Bernie Casey, I don’t even remember when he shows up and I’m like, “Hey, there’s that guy from Lean On…” Or no, from… Maybe he was in Lean On Me too, but he… I think he was in Revenge of the Nerds.

He was Dean Warner or something in, in, uh, Revenge of the Nerds, I think. Charlton freaking Heston is in this movie. Like-

Todd: Oh my God, when he showed up, I was like, “Oh my God.” And he’s got a small role. It’s so nuts.

Craig: Nobody’s great in it. He is. He plays, like, Sutter Cane’s publisher.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: And Sutter, Sutter Cane is the biggest author in the world in this, in this movie- Right

which, which really isn’t, you know, much of a stretch. I mean, Stephen King really is huge. But I would imagine that the biggest author in the world, the top-selling author in the world, would have this kind of executive-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: publisher, you know, like, i- in a sky rise office. And, and Charlton Heston just, I mean, just is a presence.

I di- I didn’t, you know, necessarily agree with all of his politics and stuff like that, but you can’t deny the guy is a, a screen legend. And then there’s other people that pop up too, like Wilhelm von Homburg is one of the residents of this small town that they end up in, and he was Vigo from Ghostbusters II.

Mm-hmm. I am V- Vigo.

Yeah. God, I love that movie. The, there’s a, a little inn, and the little old lady innkeeper is Frances Bay, who is this little old lady, again, that you’ll recognize from virtually everything. She was Adam Sandler’s grandma in Happy Gilmore.

Clip: Mm-hmm. “My fingers hurt.”

Todd: Oh,

Craig: I love that movie. And then the, the romantic interest, Styles, she works for the publication company, and she, when they send Trent on this investigation to find their main author, ’cause he’s gone missing, she has to go with him to make sure everything’s on the up and up or whatever.

She’s played by Julie Carmen, who I don’t know from a lot, but I certainly do know her as Jerry Dandridge’s sister in, uh, Fright Night II.

Todd: Hmm. Yeah.

Craig: Which, have we done Fright Night II?

Todd: No, we’ve only done the first one. I… You know, I’ve never- Oh, man … even seen Fright Night II, actually.

Craig: Oh, well, you would like it.

Todd: I would. I bet I would. I love the original.

Craig: Sexy vampireesses, and she is, uh, the lead one, I believe.

Todd: She was all over TV, yeah, it’s

Craig: every- Yeah, I mean, but it’s just chock-full of people that you’re going to recognize. And, and gosh, just overall it’s well done. I actually think of this- I’m surprised that this movie isn’t more esteemed or, or well-remembered than it is.

In our book club, our, our, our friend Joan was just telling me last week how she had never seen it before, and she was inspired to see it by the passing of Sam Neill, and she thought it was great. I don’t even know how y- many of our listeners will have seen this movie. And I’m not trying to jump to the end or anything.

There’s a lot to talk about. But maybe, maybe if you haven’t seen this, I definitely 100% think you should. Yeah. And it might be more fun… I mean, we’ve already talked a lot about the essence of it, but as, as we get more into specific plot points, it might be better if you, if you watch it first and then come back.

Todd: Yeah. I, I think so. But I think ultimately it… You’re right in a way. I don’t wanna say it hasn’t stood the test of time. It’s just not as well remembered as so many of John Carpenter’s other films, which is odd considering its pedigree, I think is what you’re kinda saying. And not just its pedigree, but, but it’s legitimately a good movie.

I think, in a way, maybe because it, it’s a horror movie, number one, from the early ’90s, that wasn’t a slasher, didn’t spawn a big franchise or anything like that, and I don’t think ultimately brought a lot new to the table. There’s not like a hook in here that’s gonna be like, “Oh my God, that’s that movie where that one thing in it, like, blew my mind.”

And so I feel like it probably got lost in the shuffle along with a lot of other things.

Craig: Well, I think it maybe, I think it may be a little bit cerebral. I think that even in the world of horror, and you and I have alluded to this and admitted that this is part of what keeps us away from it, is that Lovecraft himself is a little bit heavy.

Yeah. And not academic, but it’s not a, it, it’s not light reading. Lovecraft is not light reading.

Todd: No.

Craig: And so there’s that, and then ultimately it’s a, it’s a movie about reading. It’s a movie about books.

Todd: Right.

Craig: So if you’re not a big reader- That’s true … that might not appeal to you. But I do think that it’s really unique in its premise, and I think it’s really clever in its premise.

But you kinda, I mean, you have to get to the end- To unwrap what the premise is

Todd: Right. And I don’t think it’s spoiling anything of our conversation to just say this is very typical Lovecraftian stuff, which is not in your face horror jumping out at you, jump scares, final girl running away kind of stuff typically.

What we’re talking about is there’s this notion that there’s another plane of existence, like a dimension around us that is imperceivable and imperceptible to us because we are so small. Humans are just nothing. We’re like ants to the greater, older beings that inhabit this universe, and they’re bigger, and they’re more powerful, and they can be nastier in a way that we can just swat a bug away and not think anything of it.

That’s what we are to these creatures, and occasionally they poke through to our world, and most of his fiction and most of the stuff that kind of comes after it is the stories of when that happens Or if there are entities in this side deliberately trying to push through, through certain channels and, you know, occult channels and occult ways.

And that’s kind of what this movie is about. And so it is a deep, lingering, s- unsettling unease that these people, I would say, traverse through more than, “Stuff’s happening, they’re running away. This is happening and they’re running away. This is happening, they’re trying…” You know what I mean? And I think, again, that’s

It’s just different from a lot of other horror movies where you’re expecting jump scares every five minutes. I mean, w- when you, when you look at it, a lot of this is Sam Neill reacting to things that are happening to him, but in a very measured way you know? And maybe it’s because he’s skeptical or whatever, but, like, his character, like some crazy shit’s happening, like, right in front of him, and I would be just flipping out and running for the hills.

And there are times when he’s just sort of like, “Oh, this is interesting. Let me check it out more.” You know? And there’s so much

Craig: of the- I think we watched different movies. Really? Because I

Todd: d- Okay … because s- because he

Craig: was the w- I… There’s nothing- He’s

Todd: remarkably calm through this.

Craig: He’s only remarkably calm until stuff that defies reason begins to happen.

He’s constantly looking. He thinks it’s all a hoax-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: from virtually the beginning. N-

Todd: He thinks he’s seeing things probably too and, and stuff, and so, yeah, I’m-

Craig: But, but even before th- he doesn’t really see anything that couldn’t be logically explained in some way until the last third of the book when virtually everything is revealed.

And at that point- Right. He goes crazy … he does start freaking out. Like you t- you, you talk about measured responses. I w- and I… My first thought was, “Oh, you mean like screaming maniacally? That is the measured response?”

Todd: By the end. But, but I mean, we go through an hour and 15 minutes before we get to that stuff.

Craig: But right, but that’s up until the point where he actually starts to see things that cannot be explained.

Todd: Right. But it takes a while to get there.

Craig: W- sure. The, the movie takes a while to get there. Yeah. I just don’t know that he takes a while to get there once… I mean, he… Okay, so what… So all right. So Sutter Cane is this huge l- literary giant.

Literary maybe not the right word, but popular writer. Writes horror novels, hugely popular, but he’s gone missing and so they hire this insurance investigator, I guess, to find him because whether… They don’t really care whether he’s okay or not. They don’t really care whether he comes back or not. But they are on deadline for his next book, and they gotta get it out, and so they want him to get the book.

So he starts doing investigations Even before he gets called in to do this, there’s a strange event where he’s talking to a f- somebody about this author for some reason, and a maniac with an ax bursts through the window, the plate glass window of the restaurant that they’re eating at, and the guy leans over Sam Neill and says, “Do you read Sutter Cane?”

Immediately after that, he gets called into this thing, and we also find out that that guy who attacked him was Sutter Cane’s agent and the only person who has read the new book that’s supposed to be coming out.

Todd: Right.

Craig: Sam Neill starts investigating, and part of his investigation is he starts reading all of Sutter Cane’s books.

And in doing that, then he kinda starts having weird nightmares. Or nightmares or, I don’t know. Styles, the, the lady who works for the publication company, she tells him that part of the reason that Sutter Cane’s books are so popular is because they have strange effects on people. It affects people’s sleep.

It affects people’s, like, concept of time or something. I don’t know. She explains it all, but it sounds like it’s, like, a trippy experience, and Trent is intrigued that people would want to feel that way. But when he starts reading the books, he starts kind of experiencing weird things, too. Like, he has this weird moment where he walks by an alley and he sees a policeman beating a vagrant, and then he re-experiences that a couple of times through what ultimately appear to be dreams, but the cop is, like, disfigured and, uh, Lovecraftian kind of in his fantasies.

And so the lines between reality and, I don’t know, unreality are, are blurred. Ultimately, he figures out that if you take apart all of the covers of all of this guy’s books and cut them up along these lines on the covers, it forms puzzle pieces that form a map that lead you to a town that appears in his books called Hobb’s End that doesn’t appear on any regular maps, but it must exist, so they’re gonna go look for it, and they do.

Todd: Yeah. And, and, uh, the publisher sends Miss Styles along with him. They’re gonna try to hunt them down. So they go on a car ride, and it’s through just fields and things. And again, they’re-

Craig: And there’s-

Todd: They’re having

Craig: visions and- I was just gonna say she is kind of having visions, but it’s on this car ride, and I could see how people could find this boring, but I find it interesting.

He’s talking about why … And I, you know, this could just be a conversation between anybody about why people like horror. It’s a conversation that you and I have had dozens of times.

Clip: You’re the Cane lover I just like being scared. Kane’s work scares me. What’s to be scared about? It’s not like it’s real or anything.

Well, it’s not real from your point of view, and right now reality shares your point of view. What, what scares me about Kane’s work is what might happen if reality shared his point of view. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re not talking about reality here. We’re talking about fiction. It’s different, you know? A reality is just what we tell each other it is.

Sane and insane could easily switch places if the insane were to become the majority. You would find yourself locked in a padded cell wondering what happened to

Craig: the world. Obviously foreshadowing what’s going to happen and ultimately what we’ve already seen.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And that’s one of the things that I like about this movie, is that it’s not overly intellectual in its approach, but I think that it’s an interesting approach to the idea of existentialism and what is reality.

And it basically, it posits that reality is subjective and that we may not be in control of our own destinies, which is You know, again, you know this, but I’m reminding the people who might be listening who might be new to us, I’m an English teacher, and so I teach stuff like Kafka and, gosh, I can’t think of any other existentialist off the top of, of my head.

But we talk about how, how much of reality is perception, and we get into existentialism and nihilism and all that kind of stuff. So this is interesting subject matter for me. I guess if you don’t find that particularly interesting, I could see how you would find the movie boring.

Todd: Yeah. I, I mean, and it’s core to Lovecraft’s universe really.

The, it’s all based around this idea that our perception of the universe is limited. You know? Like, we can only see three dimensions. We can’t see ultraviolet light like dogs and other creatures can. You know? There’s a whole realm of the senses outside of what we’re able to experience, and that’s where the more interesting stuff is, the stuff that’s bigger than us, the bad stuff, at least bad to us stuff.

And if we were to be confronted with it, our minds just can’t really comprehend it, and so they snap, and that drives you insane. I mean, almost every- Right … Lovecraft thing ends with somebody going insane because they’ve had an encounter with one of these creatures. Yeah. And so yeah, like, that’s kinda the core of the whole thing.

And, and so it- it’s, it’s very true to form in that way. And you’re right, it presents it in this nice little bite-sized way that people can, can digest. I guess maybe I didn’t find it so interesting because this is nothing new to me. This isn’t mind-blowing philosophy and concept, so I, I did find this kind of, yeah.

I, I’m like, “Okay, that’s, that’s cool. I get it,” you know.

Craig: There’s definitely a big… Yeah. There’s definitely a big talky moment here, and there’s talky moments later, too. There’s a big, not exposition dump, but a big scene where when they eventually do find Sutter Cane, he talks for a long time about the nature of reality and all that stuff, too.

So it definitely does have those slow down talky moments that could potentially break the pacing, I suppose. But on this car ride, she starts seeing weird things. She sees a young kid riding down. I mean, this, it’s pitch black at night. Sh- all she can see, uh, are the lines on the highway. She sees this kid ride by on a bike, and then just moments later she sees the same bike, but it’s, like, some weird decrepit old person on the bike.

And then she tries to wake Sam Neil up ’cause he’s sleeping, and she’s not looking at the road, and then she hits the old guy on the bike. And, and the old guy speaks in a kid’s voice, and he’s like, “They won’t let me leave,” or something like that. I don’t know. Very ominous. They keep on driving and she has more kind of hallucinations, and it almost seems like she’s driving through some sort of portal or Stargate.

I don’t know. There’s like flashing all around her, and at some point she either opens the door or looks out the window and it looks like the car is, like, flying above the clouds.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But ultimately she just comes out on the other end out of this covered bridge, like an old-fashioned wooden covered bridge.

And then Sam Neil wakes up and is like, “Oh good, we’re here.”

Todd: Yeah. It’s daytime. It’s very jarring.

Craig: And then they go looking around this town, and what’s interesting about this town… Now again- Ultimately, he thinks that this is a, an elaborate hoax that they have set up because everybody… It, it’s, it’s super quaint.

They drive into, like, the town square, which is like, you know, Children of the Corn, Something Wicked This Way Comes, like quaint Midwestern downtown, and he even comments. He’s like, “Oh, this is cute.”

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But there’s nobody around. It’s like a ghost town, and we see, like, a bloody ax, but they don’t see it. She sees, like, a group of kids chasing a dog, but she asks him if he saw it and he doesn’t.

So there’s something weird about the town. They go to this little inn, and as soon as they go to the inn, she realizes not that she’s been there before, but that she’s read about it. She realizes that everything in this town is stuff from his books, and she knows it down to the detail. She knows that there’s a creaky board on, in the floor.

She knows what painting is supposed to be hanging on the wall. She knows, you know, who the innkeeper is supposed to be, all of this stuff. But again, he thinks it’s either just a coincidence or maybe Sutter Cane is writing about this town, so he was inspired by these people or whatever. But it just keeps getting stranger as time goes on.

In fact, he says, “It, you, you know, it’s gotta be fiction because if I were to open this window,” they’re in the hotel room, “If I were to open this window, there should be, like, Byzantine cathedral out there.” And he opens the window and there’s nothing there. He’s like, “See?” And she’s like, “Nope, you got the wrong window,” and she opens it up and-

there it is.

Todd: Big Byzantine church. Yeah. That’s funny.

Craig: Which again, apparently this church was an actual location that was just this huge, weird Russian cathedral in the middle of nowhere.

Todd: Right?

Craig: That was a crazy location. Yeah. It was wild. Looked really cool.

Todd: It did look cool. Yeah, I mean, he goes up to the church and they look like they’re interested in going in, but then suddenly there’s some commotion behind them and all these guys are coming up in trucks.

And she senses danger and they run away, and these guys leap out of their trucks with guns. And they go up to the church and they’re banging on the door and, and they’re asking, I think, for the author, right?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And then these, these big Dobermann come running around which, you know, at this time the Dobermann were the big-

Craig: Uh-huh

Todd: scary dogs of the era. Late ’90s, early ’80s. All right, late ’80s, early ’90s, Dobermann Pinschers were the worst. They come around and so then there’s kind of this battle, and the doors swing open of the church, and there’s this little kid in there. And I don’t know if it’s supposed to… Was it supposed to be the kid from the bike?

Craig: No.

Todd: Okay.

Craig: We don’t know what’s going on at this point. This, an angry mob is trying to get th- their kid back from the author- Mm-hmm … and the author is there. Sutter Cane is there. He appears in the doors of the church or whatever, but then he sics the dogs on them. And they, the two main folks, run away and go back to the hotel- Again, he thinks it’s a big prank and they’re all in on it, and it’s all acting or whatever, but she says, “No, this is the plot of his new book playing out in real time.”

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And she’s- she says, “The reason I know that’s true is because it was supposed to be a hoax. We were trying to hoax you, but none of this was in our plan.”

Todd: We just sent him away and told him to stay quiet.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Yeah, that was the o- that was the extent of the hoax we had planned.

Craig: Right. And she says, “In this book, this book is about a town that gets taken over by an evil force, and it starts with the kids,” and that’s what we were seeing, I guess.

Mm-hmm. “It starts with the kids, but then it spreads to everybody, and it’s a, it’s about people turning into other things,” like these tentacled things or whatever, Lovecraftian things. And she is totally invested and believes this now, but he is still skeptical. I don’t remember why they separate, but he goes out to a bar where the main local who was at the church with the gun is in the bar and says something along the lines of, “What’s weird is I can’t remember which came first, us or the story,” or something like that.

And then he puts his shotgun under his chin, and Trent says, “Don’t, don’t do that.” And he says, “I have to. He wrote me this way,” and he blows his head off. So I guess at this point, Trent either knows something is going on or at least wants to get the heck out of there, so he tries to get out, but he can’t get out.

Every time he tries to leave town, he just ends up looping back in. And, and then he, like, drives through a mob of mutated townspeople, and Stiles, uh, is there, but I think she’s kind of one of them at this point.

Todd: She has a whole moment where she goes into the church. She encounters some kids, and there’s some freaky-looking kids who say, “You’re my mommy.

You know what today is? Today is Mom’s Day.” And there’s an upside-down cross in there, and she sees… Eventually, both of them end up seeing the author, the author himself.

Craig: They, i- yeah, they end up, I think… I don’t remember how. It’s all very… I, I, I think he, like, blacks out and just wakes up in this room.

Todd: Yeah. I think you’re right, actually.

Craig: And she’s there, too, and the author’s there, and he’s, like, writing. But it’s not just a room. It’s a really weird… It’s surreal. It, it almost-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: I don’t know. It’s

Todd: hard to

Craig: explain.

Todd: It’s like a, an area of the church or something, I, I suppose. Mm-hmm. Like, that’s his headquarters or something.

Clip: You can edit this one from the inside, looking out.

It’s funny, isn’t it? For years, I thought I was making all this up. But they were telling me what to write

Power to make it all real

Now it is All those horrible, slimy things trying to get back in

Todd: You know, like into our dimension, in… Like, his, his writing is the conduit through which, you know, people will read it and it will enable the demons or the, you know, the otherworldly creatures to get through. And that’s visualized here by this pulsing door behind which is, uh…

You know, it’s this black stuff. You know, I, I’m thinking about that now, too. Wasn’t there another Carpenter movie where they had to visualize some creatures trying to break through, and Carpenter was like, “The best I could do was this, just cutting in these bits of the pulsing door,” and he was afraid it, it’d end up maybe looking a little cheesy.

Do you remember that? What movie was that? No.

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t remember.

Todd: There, there was a whole thing about it. It’s like the second time… Oh, oh, um, it was The Fog. I think it was The Fog. Anyway, look, I, I get it. There is stuff happening to them, but it’s all just so surreal, and it’s so unclear if they’re- But, well, he-

in a dream world or if they’re in the real world.

Craig: They’re not in a dream world. What he says is, you know, again, there’s this whole discussion about what is reality, and he basically says that for so many people, religious faith is reality because they read it and, and, you know, he, he says, “More people will read my work than will re- and read it and believe it.

And if when they read it and believe it, that makes it real.” And he kind of blows Trent’s mind by say- basically saying, “You are a pawn. Like, I wrote you. You are just a character in my book.” And of course, Trent wants to reject that. But he’s like, “Yes, you know, you’re a character. I needed you. I needed somebody.

You are going to be my courier,” or something like, “You’re, you’re going to deliver my manuscript to the publisher so that it can be published and, and put out there in the world.” And then he’s standing in front of that door, you said, that seems to be, like, holding back whatever. But instead of opening the door, he reaches both hands up to his face and tears the, the

Todd: The fabric of reality,

Craig: really . The fabric of reality as- Yeah … right, as though, as though it is pages of a book. Like, he peels it back to reveal on the other side words, as though it’s pages, and just a black abyss beyond. And then as it tears open, he disappears w- within the tears and it, and it’s this big open rift.

And Trent walks up and looks into it, and Stiles reads from the manuscript. And again, it, it comes mostly from, from Lovecraft, but it talks about looking into the black abyss and the, the unimaginable terrors beyond staring back at you and, you know, uh, pouring upwards towards our world and blah, blah, blah.

And then so he sees these things. We don’t see them initially, but as they come through into our reality or his reality or wherever they are- He’s in this giant tunnel and, uh, he’s running down the tunnel, and these things are behind him. And this is shot in a really interesting way, and I remember, you know, soon after this movie came out, I saw a making of somewhere- Hmm

or I saw it in Fangoria Magazine or something. But this was a huge special effect. I noticed that Gregory Nicotero was on the effects team of the film. But what they did was they built this huge, uh, piece. It was basically like a wall that was covered in all of these different creatures that could move.

Some of them moved and articulated on their own, but it was like 18 feet tall, I think, and I don’t remember how wide it was, but it was huge. And it was all on a track A- a- and it had to be pushed. A- as Sam Neill ran in front of it, it was pushed from behind to be following him. And the way that we see it initially is the camera is facing him as he’s running towards the camera, and we can just kind of see it in soft focus in the back.

But it cuts to some close-ups of the various components of it, and it looks really cool, and it’s a really cool practical effect. I don’t know. Again, it’s just one of the many, many things that I like about the movie. But it chases him, you know, and he trips and falls, and just as it’s about to overtake him, he wakes up in broad daylight, you know, in the street right outside of town.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And a kid on a bike, you know, rides by. I didn’t realize it was Hayden Christensen in his-

Todd: Oh …

Craig: film debut.

Todd: I did not know that.

Craig: I, I would- I read it. I never would’ve noticed. But basically, he’s like, “Uh, yeah, I’ve never heard of Hobbs End, mister. Highway’s that-a-way.” So he goes and he gets on a bus back to town, and then it becomes apparent right away that Sutter Cane is still fucking with him.

Um, appears to him on the bus, turns everything on the bus blue. A- and again, it’s at this point that he’s… that, that Trent is really losing it. When he wakes up from his dream of talking to Sutter Cane on the bus, everything… You know, Sutter Cane says, “Oh, by the way, did I ever tell you my favorite color was blue?”

And then he snaps, and Sam Neill wakes up, and everything on the bus, including all the people and stuff, is blue, and he screams and freaks out. Yeah. And then I don’t… All I really remember, uh, he, he, he freaks out and he burns the manuscript and totally destroys it.

Todd: Yeah. Then he goes to the publisher and has finished telling his story, and the publisher’s like, “Well, that’s a pretty fantastic story.”

And he’s like, “Yeah, you, you know, you can’t publish the book. You can’t… Nobody can read it.” And he’s… “And I burned it, so nobody will.” And he says, “No, that’s not true. You delivered it to me, like, w- like, a month ago.” In fact, uh what does he say? It’s

Craig: on the

Todd: shelves. He says, “It’s just… It’s on the shelves now, and the movie’s coming out, like, in three weeks.”

Yeah. And also, he mentions Styles, and he’s like, “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I never sent you there with anybody. You, you know, you went on your own.” So it calls into question whether she even existed, I suppose, or is this him messing with her, too? You, uh, you know, it- it’s just all… You, you don’t really know But, uh, he’s going crazy, and he even goes to a movie theater, and he’s watching the movie, and we see the movie.

Oh, I’m sorry.

Craig: Well, that’s, that’s, that’s the very, very end. Before that, he goes out and he sees that people are, you know, everybody’s … There’s hysteria, people in lines to buy the book, and you can- you overhear newscasts about how there’s this global epidemic of psychotic outbreaks, and people are attacking other people violently, and it’s, you know, terrible, and people are dying, and blah, blah, blah.

And he sees a kid on the street coming out of the bookstore, and he asks … And the kid, his eye, like his pupils are split. We’ve seen this in people before. It’s the effect that, that reading this has on people. His pupils are split, and he’s like bleeding from his tear ducts. And Trent asks him, “Do you read Sutter Cane?”

He’s like, “Yeah, I love Sutter Cane.” And he says, “Okay, well then this won’t surprise you.” And he pulls out an ax, and he kills the kid with an ax.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Wh- which is what gets him locked up in the mental institution, where he’s telling his story to this psychiatrist. And he says, “It’s getting pretty bad out there, isn’t it?”

And this psych evaluator or whatever is like, “Uh, yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” blah, blah, blah. But when the guy, the evaluator goes back out into the hospital, we don’t really see what happens, but we hear. We’re, we’re with Sam Neill in his cell. We hear viol- the lights go out and violence- It’s like bedlam out there.

Yeah, somehow. Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s bedlam. But he just stays in his cell, and the next morning he comes out. I don’t know if he was spared because he’s, you know, drawn crosses all over his cell or whatever. But he walks out and, you know, the world is basically just on fire. And that’s when he walks to a theater where he sees a poster for the film In the Mouth of Madness, which of course I did not pause and zoom in to look at the credits, but if you do, you’ll see that aside from the names of the stars of the movie, which are the character names from the film that we’re watching, everybody else, the director and all the other technical people are the actual people who made this film.

And he goes in and he sits down with a thing of popcorn and he watches the movie that we’ve just watched.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So it’s all very meta-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: I suppose suggesting that the movie that we are watching really happened, and we’re gonna invite these Cthulhu demons into our

Todd: world. Yeah. It’s like a, it’s kind of like a ’90s ver- Like, I feel like maybe John Carpenter’s whole, like, Apocalypse trilogy is, was maybe a bit inspired by Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy.

I, I thought a lot about The City of the Living Dead.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: Remember that one where the whole concept was that these zombies are kind of breaking through from other dimensions and taking over the world, and by the end of it, it’s, was supposed to be complete bedlam as well? Just felt like that. Again, uh, it’s a great movie.

It’s, it’s really well done. I think it really communicates a Cthulhu feel. It’s a good translation of this whole genre of literature that Lovecraft has created. It’s visual. It’s this guy breaking down after- Yeah, we

Craig: didn’t talk a lot-

Todd: Okay, go ahead. Yeah, what were you gonna say?

Craig: I was just gonna say, we didn’t talk a lot about the effects.

There’s, there’s a lot of really, really good practical effects. Very effects-heavy. Makeup effects, creature effects, and like I said, Greg Nicotero was on the team. I think this… I don’t know where in this ca- his career this was, but it was when he was still going by Gregory Nicotero. Yeah. So I have a feeling it was probably fairly early in his career and, and those effects do look great.

They’re, you know, like the Cthulhu effects, like the little, the sweet little old lady innkeeper eventually grows tentacles and, and eventually is a whole tentacled beast that chops up her husband, and that was done with miniatures and stuff. Like, really cool Gosh, the, the types of practical effects that you rarely see anymore unless people are very intentionally doing it.

Yeah. Um, you just don’t, you just don’t see that kind of stuff anymore and is it seamless? No. Does it look photorealistic like The Odyssey that I just saw yesterday? No. But it’s a really cool art form that I really appreciate and so… And it’s done really well. And I have a feeling that a lot of people haven’t seen it, so if you like that kind of stuff, for sure check this movie out.

Todd: Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, Sam Neill, we’re gonna really miss you, man. I’ve really enjoyed, uh, seeing you on the screen in s- all these movies you’ve been in. You were fantastic in this movie as well. You know, uh, the camera’s really in his face a lot, and portraying a person who’s s- you know, slowly going crazy, it can devolve into camp pretty easily, and he manages to really get this across up in s- extreme close up in a way that I felt was very convincing.

You forget, you know, that movies are not filmed in sequence, and there’s long pauses between individual shots. So an actor really has to be consistent and work themselves up for each take and be consistent from scene to scene even though those scenes might be shot, you know, weeks away from each other.

One day he could be skeptical man, and then he could be popping into a scene where he’s supposed to be going crazy. And, you know, to be able to pull that off smoothly and convincingly is no easy task. You’d think it would be easy. I don’t think it is. Like I said, John Carpenter’s a bold director, and he puts that camera in their faces, and he’s gonna get it.

Mm-hmm. And part of the joy of watching the last, you know, 15 or so minutes of this movie was just seeing this guy slowly break down and go crazy.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And, uh, he did it convincingly, so a fantastic actor.

Craig: Yeah, I agree. I think he’s a fantastic actor. You know, h- could we have ever anticipated that we would ever be doing a Sam Neill tribute episode?

I think we probably would’ve saved Possession. Uh- Yeah … and, and if you really wanna see a tour de force of acting, you should really check out that movie. That movie is heavy. Like, the subject matter is really, really heavy and intense, and it requires some incredibly skillful acting on the part of Sam Neill and his co-star.

Todd: God.

Craig: That movie will stick with you for a while in a, in a rough way, so

Todd: Yeah, that’s one of those movies that punishes the au- its audience, you know? Like, it’s really, it’s really hard to get through. It’s, uh, it’s painful.

Craig: But it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s skillful and, and amazing. But, you know- Or watch Jurassic Park or Dead Calm.

If you haven’t seen Dead Calm, that’s another one that I think a lot of people haven’t seen. And Ag- Event Horizon, you know- Oh my God … Todd, y- y- we, in, in talking about what we were gonna do with Sam Neill, it was difficult to choose. We ul- we ultimately picked this one because it’s, it’s bold on its face.

Horror, not that Event Horizon isn’t, but De- uh, Dead Calm is a little bit more of a thriller. I would still consider it horror nonetheless. But we could have picked any of those.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, and you should watch them all, and I can’t wait to get to the others. I can’t believe we, uh, uh, you know, I can’t believe we haven’t done Event Horizon yet.

Yeah, me

Todd: neither.

Craig: Dead Calm was a little bit more on the fringe of what we do, but I still think totally in keeping, and I would like to do it. So hopefully we’ll get around to those sooner rather than later, and Sam Neill will for sure be greatly missed.

Todd: Thank you guys for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend.

Find us online, chainsawhorror.com. Our Patreon page is patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. For just five bucks a month, you get complete and unlimited access to all of our unedited episodes, including all of the stuff that we cut out and, uh, all of our little personal bits and things that we talk about before and after our recordings.

If you like that, if you like, uh, reading horror novels with us during the book clubs that we do and, and have a discussion every couple weeks by Zoom call, feel free. Just five bucks a month gets you that at patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. But however you find us on all the social media platforms, just, uh, let us know what you thought of the show.

Drop us a positive review out there. Help us spread the word. That’s the best thing you can do for us and helps us keep going, doing what we do. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We dive into the brand-new 2026 Amazon release ‘They Will Kill You,’ filmed in Cape Town, and talk about why the trailer (and Patricia Arquette) pulled us in.

We break down the movie’s hyper-stylized, Tarantino/Raimi/Rodriguez vibe, martial-arts-heavy set pieces, and throwback gore—plus how much we admired the practical effects and cinematography. We discuss Zazie Beetz carrying the film, the thin sister-family drama setup, and the central premise: a satanic, ultra-wealthy cult in The Virgil building whose members can regenerate after being “killed.”

From the samurai-sword bloodbath to the sentient eyeball gag, the fire-axe cafeteria fight, and the pig-headed devil ritual, we debate whether it’s fun homage or too derivative, and who we’d recommend it to for a movie night.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/07/they-will-kill-you-movie-poster.jpg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

They Will Kill You (2026)

Episode 501, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week we are doing a brand new movie, 2026, They Will Kill You. Was this a Netflix one or was this a Shudder one? Yep, it’s an Amazon one. So yeah, this one, uh, was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa. I thought that was interesting. And just came out in March of this year, so it’s pretty fresh.

You, uh, picked this one. I had never even heard of it, ’cause I’m really not up on the new stuff. So, uh, let me know what, what, what were your thoughts, uh, going in? Had you seen this before?

Craig: No, but I had seen the trailer for it in the theater. I see so few movies in the theater anymore, but honestly, I don’t even remember what movie I was seeing.

But I remember seeing this trailer and I thought that it looked cool for a big horror movie. But the big draw for me was Patricia Arquette.

Yeah.

Craig: I’m just a big fan of hers. I, I always have been. She’s always been cool. I don’t know how old she is, but I feel like we kind of grew up with her. I think she’s probably a little bit older than we are, but-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: but she was always just kind of that cool chick in movies, but also in life. Like- She’s kind of the epitome of like I don’t give a fuck. Like she just does whatever she wants to do and she just is who she is and she’s a cool person and I like her. So I was drawn to that and then it’s been kind of a low-key summer for me ’cause I’ve been recuperating from a relatively minor surgery but I’ve been spending a lot of time at home and watching a lot of movies and this popped up on Amazon and I remembered having seen the trailer and so I watched it.

And when I was watching it, there were just moments where something would happen and it’s, it’s more than something would happen. It’s like the dynamic would change. I would just get a huge smile on my face- Uh-huh … either out of amusement or, “Oh, Todd’s gonna like this.”

Like

Craig: And, and thinking about you specifically but anybody who’s kind of into horror and the kind of things

I, I don’t know. I thought that this would appeal specifically to your sensibilities but I, I think that it, it could be broadly appreciated as well.

Todd: It very much does and honestly not really as a horror movie. I just kept thinking of Quentin Tarantino through the whole thing.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It just smells like something he would do.

It’s wild, it’s over the top. It’s very much a throwback to ’70s era Asian cinema in many ways. There’s lots of martial arts style action in here. There’s over the top violence but it’s very stylized in the way that he tends to stylize it. I would say him, a bit of Sam Raimi sometimes.

Yeah.

Todd: A little bit of Robert Rodriguez, you know, as well.

All three of those guys clearly inspired this director, Kirill Sokolov, a Russian director who did a couple things before this. Nothing I’ve seen but some things I’d kinda like to see after seeing this. He did a m- a movie called Why Don’t You Just Die, which looks again like a very Tarantino-esque type film.

It’s billed on, uh, IMDb as a dark comedy farce slapstick drama thriller. Which this kinda is too I would say.

Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, d- I mean this is definitely a horror movie because there’s elements of the supernatural in here and of course there’s a lot of killing and, and things like that but- I mean, it’s also heavy on action, and it moves, and moves, and moves, and it’s snarky, and it’s jokey, and like I said earlier, very stylized in its presentation, in its cinematography, in the colors, and the, the vibe of the ca- you know, the vibe is just generally so easy to pinpoint that, I mean, I think a lot of people might consider this to be maybe even almost a little too derivative.

I have to admit, I did get a little bored about halfway through, because once you kinda know what’s happening and what’s going on, there aren’t too many surprises left for you, and it’s just becomes one of those action-y things where this one person’s gotta battle her way out of a bad situation against people who are very hard to kill.

And for me, that gets a little old after a while. I do kind of… I was hoping for more twists and turn- and there are a couple, but yeah, I was just kinda hoping for a little more story, I would say, than I ended up getting out of it. But it was, uh, really fun to watch, and so, uh, I’m really excited to talk about it today.

Craig: Yeah, on all of those points that you mentioned, the cinematography, and the vibe, and the colors, and, and all of that stuff, I felt like it was executed so well. I mean, I- I’m probably gonna really hype this movie up, and, and I mean to, ’cause I really enjoyed it. I thought it was super fun to watch. I think it would be super fun to watch with other people, especially the action sequences.

There’s a lot of like, oh, moments. Like- Yeah … like, it’s, it’s a fun movie. I think it would be a fun movie to react to with other people and to see other people’s reactions to it. ‘Cause all the things you’ve said, it… I immediately thought of Tarantino as well, but I also thought, well, the reason I think of Tarantino is because I’m not really well-versed in the cinema that he was inspired by.

Mm. I’m sure that this filmmaker was inspired by Tarantino, but potentially, you know, a lot of the conventions, especially the martial arts and stuff, are stuff that Tarantino was inspired by, by like you said, those films in the ’70s and whatnot.

Right.

Craig: Um, but I just thought on, despite it potentially not being perfect, I thought it kinda nailed it.

The, the, the place where I will disagree with you is I didn’t get bored, and I was with you right up to… Okay, so you were saying, you know, once it becomes somebody just kind of walking through these action pieces, a- and you didn’t say it exactly like that.

Todd: That’s it. Yeah, that’s what I meant more or less.

Craig: It, it gets a little repetitive or boring. And then you said- Something like unless it’s really good or something. And, and I thought that these were. I, I, I concur with you and I feel like we’ve watched movies where eventually if it’s just the same action over and over again, it can… You start looking at your watch.

But I was genuinely engaged in these because of the combination of all of those things. Like, I’m thinking, I don’t know, there’s a bunch of big ones. One in particular, which probably would be around the point in the movie where I would imagine you would’ve started getting bored because we’ve already seen some big action pieces at this point.

But there’s a scene in a dark, like, cafeteria that ultimately-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: ends up being like a fight scene that we’ve seen except for the, it’s shot entirely differently because it’s almost exclusively in the dark, and the director and the cinematographer and the designers do so much with the way that the space is lit.

Todd: Yeah. With the fire.

Craig: Yeah. And that engages me Enough that I’m not… I don’t know. I mean, fighting is fighting ultimately, but I, I felt like it made it, i- each scene was different enough that I was still engaged.

Todd: You know me so well because that was indeed the moment when I started to get bored, and the fire bit did make me double-take a bit.

I was like, “Okay, there’s fire.” And then, and then I was like, “Oh, oh, it’s, it, there’s nothing but fi- Oh, it’s…” Yeah, she lights her ax on f- She’s got a weapon. It’s an ax, I think. She lights it on fire and, and I was like, “Okay, yeah. All right, whatever.” And then it happens in, like you said, a dark cafeteria, and after it started going on for a little bit, I was like, “Oh, this is really interesting,” and that brought me back into it for a spell.

But you’re right. That was about, I don’t know if it was halfway through or what, but that was about the time when I started to kinda drift off into other thoughts and things, but, but that, that scene was interesting enough that it brought me back, and apparently quite difficult to shoot because they were…

Most of this movie is practical effects, and I really admire that too. That’s something I really liked about it. There are obviously some things that could only be done with CGI, but there’s so much that’s just obviously practical effects, and practical effects done well, that I really had to give a tip of my hat to the good old Kirill, the director, because, um, he clearly has a soft spot in his heart for that kind of thing, and it showed, and I really appreciate that always when I see it on screen in a modern movie.

Mm-hmm.

Todd: So, and, and what do you know about these actors? ‘Cause, um, I, I assumed as I’m watching this, ’cause again, I’m so I’m so behind on life. I assumed as I’m watching this that I should probably know this Zazie Beetz, this woman who was a top build in this, who, who’s our main character.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know anything about her, and I, I didn’t really look her up because she wasn’t familiar to me, but she carries this whole movie and is great.

Yeah.

Craig: She’s absolutely fantastic, and, uh, j- reading stuff, uh, she just gets the highest praise from the director and, you know, her co-stars. Everybody was just blown away by her stamina. I mean, I guess that this was You know, really, a- a- and I can imagine, you can see it on screen, it looks like a really intense shoot.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: And she’s in every scene, I think. She, I mean, she carries the whole movie on her back. Without… I- if her performance had sucked-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: the, the, the, the movie would be terrible. But she’s, she’s good and she’s endearing and, and she’s a good hero. She’s tough. I mean, you look at the poster or the box art or whatever, and she’s like this badass chick who she’s got blood on her face, she’s holding up a sword in front of her face.

So you kinda get an idea.

Uh-huh.

Craig: Kind of, I guess. And, you know, all of the presumably bad guys are reflected in the machete or sword or whatever that she’s got. So you kinda get an idea of what kind of movie you’re getting, and she’s great at all of that. And there’s huge fight pieces, which we’ll get more specific about in a second, but she’s good at all of that.

But then also there’s, there’s a family drama, which I kind of don’t care about. Yeah. Me

Todd: neither.

Craig: Not because it’s not well done. She’s good at it. Like, I buy her as an actual character. She’s not just a video game protagonist. She’s got a little bit more to her. But, yeah, the whole family drama, uh, which is a good place to set it up.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Right?

Todd: Yeah, yeah, let’s… Because that’s where it starts off, was this, uh, these two sisters, right?

Craig: Right, these two sisters. We meet them when they’re younger, I guess the older one, and I- I… Is her name Asia?

Todd: Yeah, Asia.

Craig: Okay.

Todd: What a great name for a girl. I love that name.

Craig: Yeah, it is a beautiful name. And she’s got a younger sister, Maria.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: We don’t know who they are yet. We’re just following them, and they’re walking through the rain, and they go into this convenience store, and they kinda seem to be on their own, like they’re picking up some food or whatever. But then this big tattooed, hairy, scary man comes in and is looking for them, and it turns out it’s their dad.

Is it their dad or their stepdad? I don’t remember.

Todd: I’m pretty sure it’s their father, yeah.

Craig: But he’s looking for them, and they try to run away, and they run outside. And again, it’s all in the rain. It’s shot beautifully. But they kind of get caught, and it culminates, and she… Did she have a gun?

Todd: I can’t remember how she got the gun.

Feel like she got it off of somebody, but God knows if I n- if I, if I remember how. I

Craig: don’t remember, but she has one, and she points it at him, and it’s kind of a standoff, and he’s basically taunting her like, “You won’t do it.”

Clip: You stupid little bitch What you gonna do, shoot your own father?

Todd: You’ll never touch her again.

Craig: But she does do it. She shoots him, but then the police arrive and presumably she’s a teenager. She freaks out, and she runs away, leaving her little sister behind.

Todd: Yeah, she makes a comment. You know, there’s a little bit of chatter before the guy shows up, so we know that this is her dad. But she had made a comment about something like, you know, they’re clearly, they’re running away from him, and that she says something like, “And I won’t ever let him touch you again,” to Maria.

So you get the idea that they’re running from their abusive dad. And since you already said it, I didn’t care about this either. I just didn’t know enough. I hadn’t had enough time with them. I don’t know what it is, but this wasn’t enough for me to set up a high-stakes predicament where I cared so much for these characters and what they went through that I’m so excited to go through this journey with them, and I really wanna see them see through their personal issues.

Ultimately, I feel like their personal issues kinda get sidelined by the greater issue that they end up in. But, you know, I, I mean, I guess they’re sisters, so they’re bonded. That’s fine. It, you just kinda have to take that at face value because we don’t really get enough of a setup and enough characterization, I would say, for these two people-

Right

Todd: to really, like, in my opinion, at least for me watching this, care too much about, like, “Oh, man, I hope she finds her sister,” you know? That kinda thing, like- Yeah … hope she can save her sister. Like, ugh, even when they got together and they were talking and things, I just felt nothing.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, it’s secondary.

I don’t… It, it motivates the plot because then we jump, what? Like 10 years later or something like that, and it, it comes to the outside of this building, which the, the whole rest of the movie once we get in there is shot in this big building. Uh, you said it was shot in South Africa, I think.

Todd: It was, and yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of interesting stuff about this building.

Um, that I think there were a few different buildings they used on IMDb, like some exterior stuff, some interior whatever. But- Yeah, it’s just a building. It’s supposed to be New York City, but-

Craig: Yeah, and, and it’s, it’s called The Virgil, and I didn’t even notice this the first time I watched it. Mm-hmm. But like, the, the, the camera pans down and there’s a big pentagram window in the top and then- Yeah

like, there’s all kinds of, uh, like- Like reliefs on the wall … satanic… Y- yeah.

Todd: It’s like-

Craig: Satanic imagery, like demons with horns and stuff.

Todd: This is so hilarious because this is a high-rise in New York City, quite prominent, and it’s got all this crazy-ass satanic stuff over it. W- I mean, this would be the most notorious building in town.

It wouldn’t be under the radar at all. I think about Ghostbusters, and one thing I really like about Ghostbusters is it takes place in New York City with that high-rise that has that cool top on it, but it also, like a lot of buildings back then, kinda had these cool like art deco or tops on them with gargoyles and kinda weird things.

Uh-huh.

Todd: So you don’t really think anything of it, but then it turns out that this building was built for this specific purpose, and that all kinda gets revealed as they go up and things are opening. And like, I love that about Ghostbusters. After I watched that movie, I would walk around cities and look up at these old buildings and imagine that they were temples to some ancient god or something, and secretly, you know?

Funny. But this building is clearly a temple to a a temple to Satan from the bottom to the top, not even disguised.

Craig: Yeah, and I mean, it’s… When she goes in, okay, so I guess if you’re paying close attention, you might realize it’s the same actress, the sister, I believe. Anyway, she’s posing as somebody else to get to take this job as a maid in this building, and Patricia Arquette, her name is Lily in the movie.

I don’t remember. She’s got some sort of Irish last name.

Todd: Woodhouse.

Craig: Uh, W- Lily Woodhouse And she, I don’t know, she’s like the house mother of this apartment building or something- Yeah … it seems like.

Todd: I…

Craig: Which is fine, but she kind of-

Todd: The minute they step in- … it’s like Eyes Wide Shut. You’re like, oh, these are like fancy rich people doing really shady shit in here, you know?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Immediately.

Craig: Well, and like the, the doors bolt all crazy and, and she says, “Oh, you know, the, the bolted doors are a remnant from the past,” ’cause this used to be a really bad neighborhood. Like- There was… It was just, just trash on the street all the time. But then gentrification, and now it’s like one of the most…

It’s, it’s the most exclusive building in Manhattan. She’s like, “Our residents are the most exclusive of society,” or whatever. And she starts in- she introduces her to a few of them, and one of them is Heather Graham, who-

Todd: Yes.

Craig: It’s not like I think Heather Graham is some sort of amazing actress, but I’m still a huge fan of hers.

Oh, God. She’s fun, and I’ve, I’ve been a fan of hers since I was a kid, since, uh, License to Drive. She was like 17.

Todd: I had such a crush on her when I was in high school.

Craig: Everybody did. Yeah. What’s not to like? She’s gorgeous, she’s cute, she’s funny.

Yeah.

Craig: Yeah, she’s great. I love her, and I love seeing her in things, and I love seeing her in this.

She’s fun. But like you said, they all look very wealthy and beautiful and, you know, o- of various ages. There’s different generations. There’s older people and, and younger people. But yeah, I mean, you get that vibe right away, and everything, like, everything is so stylized, the architecture, the interior design.

And it’s beautiful to look- And it’s, it’s, it’s shot well. Everything’s framed well. Everything, you know, is planned in terms of color and I think it’s, it’s pretty beautiful to watch.

Todd: But it’s like so much we’ve seen before.

Craig: That’s true. Yeah.

Todd: But it is beautiful. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, it’s giving that vibe.

It doesn’t have to explain much, ’cause we’ve already seen this movie. Okay, she’s in trouble. We know she’s in trouble from the very beginning. This woman is just flat out explaining to us the wealthy elite and-

Craig: Right …

Todd: you know, this is an exclusive club. We’re like, “All right. We know where this is going.

There’s gonna be some weird stuff happening here.” Yeah.

Craig: And, and you definitely get, like, Rosemary’s Baby vibes, which, you know, the, the director has said he was inspired by, so, uh, eh- And again, there are other, like, cult movies like that. You totally get the vibe. I was also maybe getting, you know, you see all that devil stuff or whatever, so cult comes to mind, but just the vibe of it was also kind of giving me vampire-

Todd: Oh, yeah

Craig: for whatever reason.

Todd: For a minute, I thought this was a vampire coven, you know, and I, I wasn’t that far off, honestly. And I have to admit-

Craig: Really, right …

Todd: I think this is what contributed to my boredom. I, and I, uh, I don’t know, I guess I applaud the movie for getting to it quickly.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: That much is great. I mean, within, like I said, within this first 10 minutes, you know exactly…

You don’t know exactly what’s going on, but you have a pretty good idea it could be one of about a half a dozen things- Right … that we’ve seen before. And at that point, I was just like, “Okay, please let this movie be different. Please let this be- unique enough, fast enough, ’cause I have seen so much of this before.

We watch a lot of movies, so I give a lot of grace here. You know, a person who’s a casual fan or doesn’t watch a lot of horror, a, a horror movie a week for years like we do, they might have a different impression. For me, I was like, “Okay, get to the thing where we know what these people are doing and what they’re up to, and, and this woman’s in danger.

We know that. Like, let’s just get to it, and let’s figure out what’s different about this so that I can like the movie.”

Craig: Yeah, and I mean, ultimately there’s not that much more… There’s not that much different.

No, there really isn’t.

Craig: It’s kind of a li- It’s, you know, the things that we’ve already talked about kind of cobbled together basically.

Yeah. I mean, they’re not vampires. I guess one important thing, she walks through, you know, the lobby, but then she walks into the servant’s quarters, I guess.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I noticed right away, I, I imagine you’re supposed to notice right away, that all of the people who work in service there are people of color.

Mm-hmm.

Craig: All of them.

Yeah.

Craig: And she walks by one room where there’s a group of women in, like, maid uniforms standing around a table, and I think she says, “What’s going on?” And Patricia Arquette is like, “Oh, they’re celebrating. One of our maids is getting a promotion.”

Clip: The Virgil was built in 1923. The neighborhood was different then, full of criminals and vagrants.

People vanished in broad daylight.

Todd: No one cared Then came gentrification. Now it’s all coffee shops and hipster bars. Today, The Virgil is one of

Clip: the most exclusive buildings in Manhattan. I must ask you to surrender your phone while you’re on the premises. Seriously? Our residents require absolute privacy.

Craig: Hmm. Just real quick, let’s talk about Patricia Arquette’s accent. Uh, what is happening?

Todd: I have no idea.

Craig: The whole time I was watch- Like, because initially she has, like, a thick Irish brogue, but it comes and goes. Like- Yeah. Like she’ll just, she’ll just pop it on and off. And I think that I read somewhere, and I don’t remember where it was, but I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere, oh, she did that on purpose.

It’s meant to be reflective of the fact that she, you know, is from the Old World or whatever, but she’s been living in America for so long that she kinda goes in and out of the accent. Okay. Okay. Don’t

be a little lazy.

Craig: But it is funny, ’cause when she puts it on, it is thick, but it’s like she just only thinks about it every once in a while.

Oh, gosh. But anyway, Asia, under the guise of being somebody else named Isabelle, gets put in a room, and she hears something, I think, right away. And if you’re listening to it in headphones or earpieces, the sound is very good, and there are subtle sound cues that I don’t think that you would hear otherwise.

‘Cause this time around, I’ve seen it twice now, once on my own, once for the podcast, the, the second time around I had earbuds in, and I thought that I heard something when she heard something too. She looks around and she’s drawn to the vent, and she looks in the vent, and there’s somebody in there, right?

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Literally someone in the vent. And then she goes to sleep. Like, don’t do that. Don’t do that in the room where you see their eyes looking out the vent from you. What, what are you doing? I, I don’t understand.

Craig: But it’s really quick because while she’s asleep, somebody else comes in her room. I feel like she’s, um, she’s propped up a chair under the door so nobody can come in the door.

Yeah,

Todd: she should have propped up s- something against that fricking vent.

Craig: I know, right?

Todd: Like, what, why are you letting that go? That

Craig: vent open. She also doesn’t know, she also doesn’t know that there’s a hole in the wall behind her refrigerator-

Todd: Right. …

Craig: um, that people can come in and out of.

Todd: We find that later.

Craig: Some creep-o in, like, a robe, like a hooded robe, and a mask, like a-

Todd: Like a pig mask, but not really …

Craig: yeah. Yeah. It’s simple- It’s so- … but yeah, like a pig mask …

Todd: so typical, though. My God. Oh, this whole sequence. Right. Again, I was kind of checking my watch through this sequence. I’m like, all right, she’s gonna go to sleep.

Oh, this guy’s appearing. Now he’s disappearing. Now he’s appearing. He’s gonna grab her at some point. Like, let’s just… I’m waiting for it. And he does. He tries to put her out. I think he’s got, like, some chloroform or something on a tissue, or he’s trying to snuff her out, whatever, but she gets the upper hand on him and knocks him against a table, and I thought broke his neck.

There’s a lot of action in this movie that’s unreal. People in this movie take hits that I thought were being projected as, oh, this is death And there’s a reason for that. But yeah, at this point, like it sounds like his neck breaks as she knocks him against the table and, uh, he falls down. So she immediately goes to town because she’s that woman.

She’s, uh… You remember Kill Bill? She had the pussy wagon. You remember? Like, oh, I was thinking-

Craig: I don’t remember

Todd: it. Oh, yeah, that girl, uh, in Kill Bill who Uma Thurman plays, who comes in, looks like she’s- Sure.

Craig: Gotcha …

Todd: she’s in a situation that she might not be able to handle, but it turns out she’s an actual badass who-

Craig: Right

Todd: is o- on alert at all times and can absolutely handle everything because she’s apparently trained in martial arts and all the weapons and things like that.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And has come prepared.

Craig: Well, there are funny, there are funny things that happen, like she, he does kind of chloroform her, but then she kills him or knocks him out or whatever.

Other people are trying to get into the room. In fact, they are getting in the room, I think. Like-

Todd: They start crawling in …

Craig: yeah, from the vent.

Todd: Like ants from a wall.

Craig: Yeah, right. Uh, the, a bunch of them. And first, she like unplugs a lamp so that it’s really dark in there, and

Todd: then- Oh, huh …

Craig: I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but somehow, I guess to wake herself up from the chloroform, she electrocutes herself.

Todd: Yeah? I didn’t get that bit.

Craig: I thought it was kind of hilarious, ’cause sh- I don’t remember if she bit the cord or I don’t remember what she did, but like she electrocutes herself and jumps up and her hair is all standing on end. But then she’s all juiced up and she just runs and hides in the closet. You said she came prepared.

Did she bring all that stuff? I guess she did.

Todd: I think she did, yeah. ‘Cause she runs into the closet, which looks like, like a comically stupid move.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And you’re like, “What is going on here?” But I think it’s because she had all that stuff in there.

Craig: I think you’re right. ‘

Todd: Cause then as soon as all these people gather, and again, even at this moment, I’ve seen movies like this before, people are suddenly, these mysterious robed people who are coming in are like talking, you know, like normal folks.

They’re like, “Oh, what happened to Jim? Oh, God.” ‘

Craig: Cause it’s, right, it’s the residents. Heather Graham is one of them. Draco Malfoy is one of them. Tom Felton. Oh,

Todd: yeah. Oh, I for- I didn’t realize that. You’re right.

Craig: Yeah. And then the, and then the other guys I didn’t recognize, but there’s like a g- there’s a group of like five main ones.

Mm-hmm. Like, uh, presumably, I mean, we come to find out that this is, of course, some sort of cult, but we don’t know that yet Sh- but she pops out of that closet with, like, a samurai sword.

Todd: Yeah. She rolls out this thing and it’s got a whole bunch of different weapons in it, and she pulls out the sword and goes to town on them, yeah.

Craig: And she cuts off Tom Felton’s head right out of the gate. Right out of the gate. And then she fights- A

Todd: foot and a hand off another person.

Craig: He… Oh, gosh, she slights off- slices off a foot, slices off a hand. Like, this is a literal samurai sword, apparently.

Todd: Oh, and when it’s happening, it’s that, like-

Craig: Matrix

Todd: blood spray. Just like- That you would get in the old, again, this is a throwback to those some, some of those old Hong Kong action movies.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: Where it’s, it’s like a literal spray of blood coming out of the neck or the arm or something when something gets chopped off. Tarantino did it in Kill Bill a lot as well.

So if you haven’t seen those old movies, you’ve probably seen it there. Again, because I’ve seen so much of this, I thought, “This is trying to be Kill Bill. Okay. You know, what’s different about it? Tell me.”

Craig: See, and I felt differently about it. The way that I felt about it was that it wore its inspirations on its sleeve, and it executed well.

Like, I, I lo- I loved this scene, and this was the first scene that I just really got a big smile on my face ’cause I didn’t know that it was gonna be this kind of movie.

Mm.

Craig: And I like this kind of movie, and I liked, I, I thought the, the fight scene was great. I thought that it was shot… You know, I, I, I mentioned The Matrix, but just that…

I don’t know how to describe it. It- but it takes on an entirely different cinematic style just for- Yeah … just for the fight. Like, the fight is filmed in a different way where the cameras move around the action a lot, and you get a lot of, uh, really interesting angles and- Good swordplay and- … swordplay and, and the camera will move quickly, but then it will s- the, the, it’ll go into slow motion briefly.

And just shot really well. And, and I thought that there were cool, not gags, but cool… Like, it was choreographed well. I thought that the fight, the fight wasn’t boring. And she’s taking a lot of hits, too. Yeah. And, and there’s one point where she, I think, ends up on her back, and she kind of spider crawls under the bed.

And then she-

Yeah. …

Craig: she pops out from under the bed and pushes up the mattress and uses it kind of like a, like a barricade and, and pushes them back against a wall, and then she stabs through it with her samurai sword and kills one guy. And just cool, i- interesting stuff to look at. I was actually really impressed with it.

I-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: I, I get what you’re saying in that it is… I don’t know. I don’t know if I do agree that it’s derivative. Like, where do you draw the line between paying homage or, uh, being derivative? I don’t know.

Todd: Or, and where do you just say, “Well, this is just of that genre of film”? Right. So yeah, sure. You know, again, you’re right.

I- it’s unfair for me to say that. I’m just telling you how I felt when I was watching it. I think I was just a little impai… I was looking to see what’s gonna be different about this. And as these people are taking their hits, and she’s taking her hits, I think she’s taken far too many hits for her to still be alive.

Craig: Oh, sure.

Todd: Every now and then, a person will pop up and take a swipe at her or throw something at her, and I’m like, “Wait a minute. That person, I could have sworn-” Like their neck was just snapped or something like that. And I started to get very critical of it. I was like, “Oh, my…” That, that was when I got even more frustrated.

I’m like, “Oh, is… Come on. I want these people to just be dead.” But it turns out they can’t die.

Craig: Right. She walks out in the hall when they’re all dead, presumably chopped up on the floor.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: She walks out in the hall and gets confronted by Patricia Arquette, Lily, and they have a little… I don’t know.

There’s a little back and forth. It’s all in the trailer, where she’s like, “I guess we underestimated each other,” or something and, and she’s like, “Yeah.” I don’t know. I don’t know. She’s standing there like a badass. She’s covered in blood. That whole fight she was in just panties and, like, a little tiny crop top.

So it had kind of that ’70s exploitation vibe to it without feeling super exploitive. And I did appreciate that then after that fight she did put some pants on.

Todd: Yeah, I wondered if we were gonna see her in just this-

Craig: It would- … the whole movie. Yeah, it would’ve been a little over the top if she hadn’t found some pants, but she does.

But she goes out there and she- … and Patricia Arquette, you know, she’s like in a kind of weird half-Irish accent, “Who the are you?” And then it does, like… Did Tarantino do this in Kill Bill too? I feel like he did, where it would cut to exposition and it would give us a title card. Like, it would cut to a- Yeah

freeze frame to start a new, you know, kind of flashback that’s gonna give us exposition, and this one is her story. And we find out that… And we learn these things over the course of the movie, but we find out that she had a tough life and she ended up, I guess, in juvie and in jail, and that’s where she learned to fight.

Now, I didn’t know that they trained samurais in jail, because- … that’s what she is. Like, sure, she’s, she’s tough And, and she’s, you know, gritty, but she seems to be really skilled in weaponry and martial arts and-

Todd: She’s magical …

Craig: she’s a vampire slayer. She’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Todd: She’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and everybody else is unkillable.

Craig: Literally. ‘

Todd: Cause we also find out… ‘Cause she, she pretty- almost explains it to her. And I don’t remember if it’s at this point or if it’s later- It

Craig: is because- …

Todd: that we learn it’s because they made a deal with the devil, basically.

Craig: Yeah. Patricia Arquette says, I don’t know, she’s like, “I have a family that I have to take care of.

You know, they’re, they’re, they’re different,” or something. And, and all the people that she’s just killed, including Heather Graham and Tom Felton, in slow motion come walking out of the room. And Tom Felton is carrying his severed head under his arm and- Yeah … other ones of them are, like, carrying their severed limbs.

Eventually- They reattach … they reattach them, and there’s some CGI work there and-

Todd: Some, a lot, I think some practical stuff there, too. I almost feel like the, some of the, uh, reattachment was, like, a pull apart done in reverse.

Craig: Oh, that may be. That may be.

Todd: Mm-hmm. I, I’m… It looks like something like that, and I was really impressed.

Okay, so what are the stakes here? This woman is a badass martial artist and seems to be able to take care of herself in all these crazy ways. These people can’t be killed, so no matter what she does to them, they’re gonna resurrect, they’re gonna regrow their limbs back or whatever. You get that now, like, what am I gonna have to watch this whole time?

Am I just gonna have to watch her battle these people? Endlessly while they regenerate? You know? So I kind of stopped paying attention at this point.

Craig: Well, and that’s fair because it, we do find out, I don’t know, it’s around this point, somehow she gets away. She runs away, and there’s chases. There’s several chases, a lot of them through these, like, tunnels, uh, in the walls.

The

Todd: vents. The, and the classic vents. Mm-hmm. This place is, uh, is full of these vents that can happen. I like the eyeball bit ’cause at one point Heather Graham’s character, uh, chases her down into one of these vents while she’s crawling around. Oh, and she looks down and sees, like, a bit of an orgy happening downstairs and- Uh-huh

she asks, uh… Virgil. Virg- Is it Virgil? Is that the guy’s name? I don’t

Craig: remember what his name is. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s Lily’s husband.

Todd: There’s sort of a magical Negro in here that was a little sad. Yeah, Lily’s husband is a, a Black guy who is kinda helping her. A little bit of People Under the Stairs vibe here, too, right?

Craig: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Todd: Maybe it’s just ’cause they’re crawling around in the walls, and this guy’s kinda part of the group, but he’s against it. Anyway, so he’s leading them through and he’s like, oh, her through, and he’s like, “Yeah, this is the s- the fuck,” like, what’s that? He’s like, “Well, you know, when you when you’re immortal you kinda get bored, and you need things to do.

And so every floor of this building has a different,”

Craig: you know. It cater- yeah, it caters to a different vice.

Todd: Fear, whatever. I thought, I thought that was an interesting thing he said that I thought was gonna have more of a, a thing in the movie, but it really doesn’t.

Craig: I did, too, and I wish that it would have.

I guess- I do, too. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I guess the building is supposed to be, like, Dante’s Inferno, like the, the different levels of hell or whatever.

Todd: Loosely.

Craig: Yeah, I think that was kind of the initial g- the, the, the shooting title was, like, Nine Floors of H- the Nine Floors of Hell or something like that. But I think it-

Todd: Hmm

I

Craig: think it kinda got lost by the wayside. There’s, there’s that suggestion of it, but like you said, I expected it to be more. I expected to see more floors.

Todd: That, that could’ve been interesting, right, her battling through these different floors-

Craig: Right … that

Todd: are themed.

Craig: But it’s really not. She basically, the guy, whatever his name is, Lily’s husband, takes her to her sister.

Then it’s like family drama. The sister’s still pissed at her for abandoning her when they were kids. You know what? Get over it. Like, she was a kid, too.

Todd: Also, she saved y- she did you a favor. She took out this guy. Well, it turns out he didn’t actually die.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And for some weird-ass reason he ended up back in her custody.

Craig: Right, and then, you know, we get her backstory, too, and she was, you know, working for shitty, pervy bosses, and she was gonna get this great job at The Virgil, and then it turned out that… I don’t remember. Again, th- we find this out over the course of several- flashbacks, but she was supposed to be a sacrifice because they are a cult and they have to make sacrifices so that they stay immortal.

That’s all we know at this point. But Maria was supposed to be a sacrifice, but one of the other maids got caught stealing and so they killed her, and so they needed a new maid. And so they made her a deal that she could live there and they’d take care of her, which, you know, I can understand why that would be appealing.

It’s a nice place.

Todd: Yeah, but why do these people need to make a deal with anybody? I mean-

Craig: Be- I think because, I think because they want their staff to be beholden to them.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: It… Because their, the staff are immortal too. Somebody explains, I don’t remember who explains it, but somebody explains that there’s, like, a hierarchy.

Like, if the staff just behave themselves and are loyal, eventually they can move up the ladder.

Hmm.

Craig: And they, they use Lily as the example. Apparently she started out as a housekeeper or whatever and worked her way up. Interesting that she’s the only white one.

Yeah.

Craig: You know? Like, you don’t see a lot of the maids of color in the high society part of it.

But anyway, so yeah, it turns out that it’s that. But it’s, it’s also dumb sister drama.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Maria’s like, “This is my home now. They took care of me. You abandoned me.” And Asia’s like, “Well, I don’t care. I’m rescuing you anyway.” And, you know, there’s bickering between them. It’s fine. It, you know, is, in terms of the acting, it’s fine.

I even think in terms of the pacing it’s fine because they don’t dwell on it for too long each time.

Todd: Correct. I agree. I-

Craig: it’s not particularly interesting. Like, I don’t care. Like-

I get it. Yeah. Th- th- this, this is what’s motivating Asia to stay. You know, she feels obligated. She wants to protect her sister even though the sister is being dismissive, blah, blah, blah. And then it’s her trying to get the sister out, and everybody else is looking for them. You mentioned the eyeball part, but did you say what it actually was?

Todd: No. No, but I loved it. I loved it. This was my all-time favorite part of the whole movie. It was

Craig: funny.

Todd: You know, it immediately called up exactly what I was thinking. Any time you see one of these movies where there’s an immortal and they can’t be killed, and they regenerate and everything like that, I’m always asking myself, “Yeah, but w- what if you blow them into a million pieces?”

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: right. You know, what if they’re de- atomized? And I always think of this Tales from the Crypt comic that I read as a kid, and one of the stories in there was a, one, one of these Monkey’s Paw stories. And you know the classic Monkey’s Paw story where the woman asks for her husband back, but then, you know, he comes back, he’s already been embalmed, and so he’s screaming, and he’s in pain and all that.

And so then, uh, in this Tales from the Crypt story, she chops him up to try to relieve his agony, but also he’s driving her crazy because he’s screaming and he’s in pain.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And the whole story ends with this great last panel where you see these tiny little bit- it’s like he’s just been chopped into tiny little pieces, and they’re just all in a big pile.

And the description is something like, “Each one of them quivering in pain,” and all that. And I just imagine, you know, these tiny little bits of Jell-O all piled up, all shaking and quivering and screaming. Oh, this poor guy, he’s never gonna die even if she chops him into tiny little pieces. And so anyway, I’m thinking about that in this movie.

I’m like, yeah, but I mean, she’s got all these weapons. She’s got these guns. She ends up blowing Sharon’s head off. Heather Graham’s character. And I’m like, come on. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s mulch. It’s nothing in there. How can she possibly come back from this? And of course the body can move, but I’m like, yeah, but how’s the head gonna regenerate?

Well, apparently they just regrow.

Craig: Yeah, eventually. But- At some point you see- Eventually … you see the body with a little tiny Heather Graham head- Tiny … coming out of it

Todd: That’s like something out of Beetlejuice almost. It’s

Craig: hilarious.

Todd: It is funny. But

Craig: yeah.

Todd: There’s a bit of comedy. There’s quite a bit of comedy in this movie.

Craig: Yeah, it, it-

Todd: And it, it can’t help but be …

Craig: well, including the fact that, yes, her head explodes, but her eyeball is, is still intact- It’s sentient … and s- like sentient, and follows her around- Oh

Todd: my God …

Craig: for a while.

Todd: It’s so hilarious. And the way that the eyeball gets

Craig: her. For no real reason. I mean, I, I guess the eyeball observes her n- near the room, and the body can tell Tom Felton that later so that they can find her, I guess.

But, like, it’s just, that was a very Sam Raimi part to me. That felt very- It’s

Todd: so Sam Raimi …

Craig: very Evil Dead. In a great way, and I thought it was hilarious, and I liked it. It was

Todd: super fun.

Craig: And eventually the eyeball, like, falls out of the vent onto the floor, and Asia sees it and picks it up And you, you know, you, like, see from the perspective of the eyeball while Asia squishes it.

It’s funny.

Todd: It is funny.

Craig: And I hate to gloss over it, but there is a big fight scene in a dark cafeteria w- that uses a lot of fire and, and much of that, you know, was real. They did as much of it practically as they could, so, you know, uh, there was a lot of stunt coordination and precautions taken to make sure that everybody was safe.

Eventually… You know, she’s being bombarded. One of my favorite images of it, it’s a dark… When I say cafeteria, I’m talking about, like, a luxury, like a, like a ballroom kind of-

Yeah …

Craig: but it’s all dark except she finds one circle of light that she stands in, and she’s being attacked just from every angle because it’s tons of people around.

Like, at this point, Patricia Arquette has called on all of the servants and the residents who’ve all robed up, and everybody in the whole building is after her at this point. So she’s being bombarded from every angle, but she fights, and eventually she takes somebody out and she gets an ax and she wraps it in, I don’t know, cloth or something, and sets it on fire.

And then she goes in, back into the dark room, and fights with the fire ax.

Todd: She does this so deliberately that I feel like she’s been waiting to do this her whole life.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Like, she’s like, “Someday I’m gonna be… I’m training

Craig: with this fire ax.” I knew that fire ax training would come in handy. I knew it.

This is my moment. But I love it. I mean, what’s not to love about a fire ax scene? And you know, and, and the ax-

Todd: And it’s unique.

Craig: Yeah, and it ignites other parts of the room and so, you know, again, the, the lighting changes and it’s surrounded by fire. It’s great. Well, and then there’s a big elevator shaft scene.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Lots of different set pieces and action pieces, but they end up being confronted by Patricia Arquette and all of the other folks, captured, and they’re gonna be taken up to the head. Now, they had said somewhere earlier that they made a deal. The history of this building is that these people made a deal with Satan through a conduit, and so they go up to the top floor of the penthouse and it’s just this big open, I don’t know, it looks like a warehouse or something room with a shrine of candles in the middle all around this giant disgusting pig head on a pole.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And they do an evil ritual to call-

Todd: Satan himself …

Craig: Satan into the pig head.

Todd: You, you know Ca- I’m just thinking at this moment, what did pigs ever do to us? When did pigs become so evil? Pig heads and Satan and all that, like what is the deal with this? Was it Lord of the Flies?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Is that where we got this notion that like evil things come through pig heads, and that guys wear pig heads when they wanna do scary stuff to people?

It’s- Anyway, yeah, it’s typical, and here they are talking to… Well, this isn’t typical, but this pig head starts talking to them. And it, I think it instructs them that a sacrifice needs to be made in order for Maria to gain her immortality, and she says that she needs to sacrifice… One of the sisters needs to be sacrificed.

Craig: R- well, right. First, it makes Lily kill her husband-

Todd: Ah, right …

Craig: as punishment for him being a traitor or whatever, and she does it. And, and it try, you know, it shoehorns in this whole, like it tries to humanize her by they deserve to be able to live like this because of what they went through as an interracial couple, uh, you know.

Todd: Mm.

Craig: And I really like Patricia Arquette, and, like, she really tries to motivate this story. Like, they try to make it- She

Todd: tries to sell it …

Craig: they try to make it an emotional beat in the movie. I just don’t care. You don’t need to try to humanize these people. Like, they’re, they’re Satan worshipers who kill people.

It’s

Todd: too far-fetched. Yeah, it’s too big for you to try to add these moments of pathos in here- Yeah … honestly ’cause it’s already like a cartoon.

Craig: Right, and who cares? And it’s just about to get more like a cartoon because like you said, she has to kill him, but then Maria, who’s already sign- I don’t know.

She’s made the deal. She’s gonna be immortal, but she has to kill somebody, and the pig says she has to kill her sister. So she says, “Okay, I’ll do it,” and she signs her name on the pig ’cause that’s how you, like- This

Todd: whole-

Craig: That’s- Ugh … that’s how you get your immortality is if you sign your name on the pig.

So she goes, like-

Todd: This whole name signing thing. Oh my God. Whose idea was this? I

Craig: don’t know. Oh my G- I feel like the pig, like, gets off on it, like it tickles him or something.

Todd: I was thinking like, like a magician. “Okay, now sign your name on this card.” Yeah. You don’t remember? Like, I’m just like, “You’re gonna be seeing it later.

Something magical’s gonna happen.”

Craig: I don’t know. I’m sure, you know, it’s a, a devil thing. You gotta sign your name to sign away your soul- … or something.

Todd: On the pig skin.

Craig: On the f- in, in flesh I guess. I don’t know. Whatever. But anyway, she signs her name.

Todd: Yeah, but you know, there’s not enough room on that pig head for everybody who’s already signed their name presumably on that pig head.

Craig: I guess, but I guess it, it must be like a rotating roster because you’re im- you’re immortal- … until you do something wrong, and then all they have to do is erase your name. Like, the pig literally has, like, a pencil. Literally

Todd: erase

Craig: it. Yeah. He has a pencil- … hanging from his ear like an earring. That’s

Todd: convenient, like a bank.

Pencil with the pen on the chain.

Craig: Yeah. It’s, it is.

Todd: Nobody run off with this now. Nobody run off-

Craig: With my special pig pencil Oh, gosh. Yeah

Todd: It’s probably enchanted. There’s a whole backstory behind this pencil and this pig, I’m sure that

Craig: w- Right, like I feel like he can just use, like, the hair on his ears to erase people’s names.

I don’t know. It’s, it’s odd. Mm. But anyway, so Maria signs the name, then she comes down, then she kills herself. And then I don’t remember how this is conveyed, but it turns out that she didn’t really… I, I think that the two sisters are lying on the floor, and Maria’s dying, and I think she tells Asia, “I signed your name on it.”

Yeah, so Asia’s immortal.

Todd: That shouldn’t work that way, by the way, ’cause it’s like signing a contract, right? Right. Signing someone else’s name doesn’t work. You

Craig: wouldn’t think.

Todd: You wouldn’t think the devil would be working this way.

Craig: I don’t know. It seems to be fairly easily manipulated.

Todd: I know, right? The devil’s always like, “Oh, fooled me.

Damn.” You’d think he came up with the rules of the game, he could change them, but no, he’s, he’s bound by it.

Craig: So now Asia is Buffy, and she can fight them all. Um, and she does, and she fights them all. But meanwhile while she’s fighting and killing, killing, ’cause they’re still immortal. They, I am air quoting.

You can’t see that, ’cause this is an audio podcast. But I’m air quoting. Killing the rest of them. I- she incapacitates them momentarily. While she’s doing that, Patricia Arquette goes to the pig and is like, “Help me.” And then she puts the pig head on. Now, okay, so she puts it on, like, over her head and, like, I don’t know, tendrils from the pig’s s- decapitated head, like, come down and go under her clothes and, like, wrap all around her.

Todd: Yeah. Why? Th- someone’s been watching Motel Hell, you know- Or- … recently.

Craig: Or- … this whole part, and I, I don’t know, you know, I read that they tried to do a lot of, you know, practical th- in the movie in general. This feels really CGI heavy. I don’t really have a problem with that other than at this point, and again, I don’t necessarily have a problem with this, but this whole scene felt very much like a video game.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, and maybe I was thinking about it in the moment thinking, “Well, maybe that’s just because movies don’t go here as often as video games do.”

Todd: Yeah, I guess so.

Craig: But I don’t know. Y-

Todd: For good

Craig: reason … all of… Yeah. I mean, all- I mean, it’s, it’s a good fight. Patricia Arquette now all of a sudden is a badass.

I’m sure she had nothing to do with this. Like- The second that pig head goes on, Patricia Arquette went home with her check.

Todd: For sure.

Craig: Um The animators took over. Come on. But it’s, but it’s a, a, a big, you know, an intense, huge special effects driven martial arts, you know, people flipping through the air, all kinds of shit going on, big fight scene and, you know, at this point, I don’t know, like some sort of pipe is broken and cold air is shooting in, so it’s like snowing, and it’s all shot in blues and whites and, um-

Todd: I do, I, I do have to say I do start tuning out during this stuff.

It’s-

Craig: I liked it …

Todd: it’s too much.

Craig: I even liked- I, it was fine … I even liked the pig head stuff. Like, at le-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: you know, it is something different.

Todd: Pig headed Satan. You know,

Craig: why not?

Todd: Yeah, I guess it’s different enough. It’s not really that different, but it is different to see him fighting.

Craig: Yeah, I liked her fighting the pig head monster.

I thought it was fun and… But eventually she just, you know, she bests it and she tears the head off and Patricia Arquette is like, “No!” I, I, I don’t know how you say no in a weird Irish brogue, but she tries and then I think Asia kicks her and she goes flying, like, 20 feet in the air and it’s all in slow motion and we’re watching her, like, flailing in the air and then she gets impaled on the pig pole.

Yeah. And she’s dead.

Todd: So the whole deal is that at one point in here Asia sliced her name off of the pig head, so she’s got the skin with her name on it. But because the pig’s head burns up-

Craig: She, now- …

Todd: with everybody else’s name on it-

Craig: Right. She burns it now after she defeats it, after she, quote, air quote, “kills Patricia Arquette.”

Yeah, she burns the pig’s head to erase all the other names so that those people will no longer be. Right. Which

Todd: kills them.

Craig: Well, it, it, it-

Todd: So now she’s the only immortal-

Craig: Well, right …

Todd: I guess.

Craig: Right. And it doesn’t necessarily kill them because she walks out and there’s still a whole bunch of them, like, in the lobby.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Um, she’s carrying her sister and, and she walks out and says, “I suggest you move,” or something, and they do. So I don’t think that they all just, like, drop dead. I just think they’re not immortal anymore.

Todd: Yeah. Oh, yeah. You’re right. You’re right. That’s

Craig: probably it. But anyway, she goes out and there’s a guy waiting for her.

I guess she had arranged a ride apparently.

Todd: Right.

Craig: We, we’ve seen this guy before. This is the guy that, that told her where Maria was in the beginning of the movie.

Todd: Right.

Craig: Anyway, she puts Maria’s dead body in the back of the car and she’s sitting in the front and then all of a sudden Maria sits up and everybody, everybody except Asia’s like, “What?

She was just dead.” But Asia explains that somewhere along the lines, I have no idea when, she changed the name on the pig skin that she had in her pocket. She marked over her name and changed it so it said Maria

Oh my God So now Marie is

Todd: alive. These are such video game rules. Like, ugh, it’s like an adventure. It’s like a King’s Quest or something like that. I, I, I just, uh, again, I, I laugh at these movies. It’s fine. It’s hilarious. But, like, that the devil is so easily bested by these technicalities, you know?

Craig: Yeah, the devil.

Todd: Right. The devil himself. Make no mistake. Damn it, she changed the name on the skin that she was holding.

Craig: Never

Todd: thought of that. Guess I gotta honor that.

Craig: Yeah, and I guess, I don’t know, I guess that pig head is gone. It doesn’t exist anymore, but she’s still got-

Todd: So that means the whole cult, everything’s finished

I

Craig: guess, un- maybe they can get a new pig head.

Todd: Where does the devil go now? Like, I mean, he, he was kinda behind the windows

Craig: and then- I mean, it was just a conduit, so maybe they could just get a new big pig head. Everybody sign it again, you know?

Todd: Like a cast.

Craig: No big deal.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I don’t know. But anyway, they get away, and they drive away to go get some breakfast or something, and that’s the end.

Todd: And the Virgil explodes. The building

Craig: explodes. Does it? Oh, I didn’t even remember that.

Todd: Well, the top floor anyway. I, I don’t know. I assume-

Craig: Oh, that’s right. That’s right. It pans up. Yeah, like that, that pentagram stained glass window, like, explodes, right? Honestly, I, I liked it. I thought it was a lot of fun.

Todd: It was fun.

Craig: I would recommend it. I… Kill Bill, I don’t need to tell you this. I don’t need to tell anybody this, but those movies were wildly popular.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, like, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon even, you know, was wildly popular in America. And The Matrix was, you know, the effects and the fight sequences and the, the way those were shot were heavily influenced by those types of things.

And again, audiences like this stuff.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I, I think it’s a fun movie, and I think this would be the kind of movie that I would feel like I could recommend for a movie night with people. I don’t know. It is gory. It does have that Sam Raimi and, and like you said, some of the older kung fu stuff with the, the spraying blood and- Mm-hmm

whatnot. But it’s, it feels so heightened uh, beyond a level of reality. I mean, it is gross

Todd: Yeah

Craig: It’s almost to the point of silly

Todd: It’s more tolerable for some people. It, it becomes a l- oddly enough, it becomes a little more mainstream in that way because the gore isn’t presented as something that’s like-

Craig: Realistic

Todd: yes, realistic and, you know, you’re crying over these characters and the horrible thing that happened to them Right,

Craig: or empathizing with them. No, it’s, it’s like a cartoon. Right. Exactly

Todd: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Craig: So yeah, I think, y- you know, if, if friends wanted to get together for a fun movie night, I think this would be a fun movie to watch.

And there is comedy in it. It’s got recognizable people, especially for people our age. I would recommend this to our friends. I do recommend this to our friends. Friends, I recommend it. Hmm. I think it’s a fun movie.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna give it a glowing review, but there is nothing wrong with this movie.

And it moves and it’s really stylized and it’s beautiful to watch, and it… If you’re into this action. I, I have to say one thing I guess I kinda like about it, is that I’m really big on not, not making violence beautiful. You know, I was really… I think I probably said this before, but I was really maybe one of the only people in the world who didn’t like 300 because I felt like that glorified violence to the extent that it was trying to make it artsy and beautiful, and I really just kind of, to the mic, the core, I really was turned off by that.

Kill Bill and some of the Tarantino movies really veer in that direction, and although I enjoy those films and they are kind of up my alley, there’s a little piece of me that is a bit revolted at that. This movie, at least, when this violence that’s so stylized and so exciting happens to them, it’s happening to these, like, immortal people who, you know, are regenerating anyway.

So I think that’s another thing somehow that softens it. I don’t know. I- That’s, that’s really picking nits. Uh, at the end of the day, yeah, I, I, I’ve seen so many movies like this already that I would say that if you’re into these kind of movies, here’s another one for you. That’s why my review’s not super glowing because I was kind of hoping to see something new here, and I feel like it was more of a mishmash of stuff that we saw before.

But it’s skillfully done mishmash of things that we’ve done before- Mm-hmm … that we’ve seen before, and it sure is a fun ride, and the acting is great, and yeah, everything that you said. So, uh, that’s, that’s where I stand on it. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. Well, thank you guys so much for listening and, and hope you enjoy this episode.

If you did, please share it with a friend. If you like this movie or you got something to say about it or you just flat out disagree with us, especially if you agree with me, go online and, uh, find us or just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast. We have brenchainsawhorror.com. We also have a Patreon page, uh, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast, which, uh, will, for five bucks a month, get you our complete unedited phone calls, some minisodes and things we’ve put up there over the years.

Uh, we have a book club ongoing, uh, lots of dialogue with our fans back behind there. That’s patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Also, just leave us a review somewhere. God.…

We celebrate our 500th episode by diving into 1988’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and why it feels like the “MTV Nightmare”—fast, colorful, wildly visual, and packed with some of the series’ most inventive kills.

We talk Renny Harlin, writer’s-strike, collaborative production, how the film cemented Freddy’s mainstream, quippier icon status, and why it became a massive independent hit despite critics like Roger Ebert.

We break down the thin-but-fun vignette structure, the recasting of Kristen (and our near-miss getting Harlin on the show), Alice’s “power” progression, and standout sequences like Joey’s waterbed “wet dream,” Sheila’s classroom death, Rick’s dojo showdown, the surreal movie-theater nightmare, and Debbie’s unforgettable roach-motel kill. We also reflect on franchise highs/lows, Freddy’s future.

Thanks for sticking with us all these years!

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Automatic Transcript

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Episode 500, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to the 500th episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Holy crap, bro. 500. Can you believe it?

Craig: No. It, it, it doesn’t seem possible. There’s, there’s not 500 episodes of anything.

Todd: Really. Honestly, I’ve looked out there. I’ve tried to figure this out, and to the best of my knowledge, to the best of my knowledge, we are the longest-running horror podcast out there.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: I would challenge our listeners to prove me wrong, and I hope you do. You know, prove me wrong. If, if I’m not right, I’m not right. But even those podcasts out there that have m- maybe more than 500 episodes, they just, you know, record a little more frequently than we do. And I have yet to find one that goes back to 2015, I believe.

Craig: That’s crazy.

Todd: Yeah, I believe it was September or August of 2015 when we started this whole mess, and, uh, we have been doing it nonstop almost every week. We’ve missed a few weeks here and there over the five year, you know, 10 years. Cut us some slack. But, uh, o- overall, mathematically, we have made it to 500 in, uh, over 10 years, and I feel like, uh, that’s an accomplishment.

We’ve been podcasting longer than podcasting was cool.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And that’s probably the only thing I’ve been doing, you know, ahead of the curve.

Everything else is far behind. Yeah.

Craig: That’s funny. Yeah, I don’t know. 500 feels impossible. I bet I couldn’t name 50 movies that we’ve done. I know. I’m not sure I could name 50 movies, period, off the top of my head.

Todd: You’re starting to sound like your mom.

Craig: I know. Well, and people, people ask me about movies we’ve done, and I’m like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Todd: I know. Now it’s getting to the point where we’ll, like, suggest movies to each other and we’ll be like, “Have we done that one? Let’s go back and check.” I have to actually go to the website and do a search to see if we’ve talked about a particular movie. Yeah. That’s how crazy… But also, maybe we’re just getting old and our brains are fried.

Craig: Well, I think it’s both, but it’s, it’s been fun and it’s exciting. I mean, 500 does feel like a pretty big milestone. I have a feeling…

Todd: Have you ever done 500 of anything, Craig?

Craig: No. I don’t think I have. This may be, uh… This, this may be our biggest milestone. I, I don’t know. Uh, I don’t know if I’ve got another 12 years in me.

Or 10 years or however long it’s been.

Todd: I hope you do. I really do. I, you know-

Craig: Well, I hope so in general, but I don’t know about, I don’t know about the… I hope I’ve got at least 10 years in me in, in general. Just podcast, I don’t know. We’ll, we’ll see. We’ll see. You never know.

Todd: Yeah, you’re wearing a little thin on me, you know.

Plus- Yeah … I mean, there, uh, there aren’t that many horror movies, are there? Are there that many horror movies? We do scrape the bottom of the barrel occasionally.

Craig: Well, it feels like we are sometimes, but, but the good news is, you know, I don’t wanna exaggerate, but it feels like horror is really kinda back in a big way.

Like, it’s- Hmm … really popular, and there’s really good stuff- Yeah … coming out. Not… You know, all over the place. We talk about it all the time how just because we’re- We do … so saturated, yeah, with, you know, streaming and everything, there are so many outlets, which is, is good. It gives outlets for creative people who may not have as much money as big studio projects or whatever.

But also we’re seeing, you know, some of those smaller filmmakers becoming recognized and then making their way into the theaters Yeah So I think, I think even though sometimes it feels like we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel a little bit, I think there’s a lot of really good stuff coming out.

You’re just gonna have a harder time finding obscure ’70s and ’80s stuff, ’cause they’re not making more of those.

Todd: I don’t know. I, I, I feel like there are not enough weeks in the year for all the obscure things that are in my list. You have no idea. You have no idea what I have waiting to throw at you.

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: So I have to hold back, ’cause I don’t wanna, you know, make you mad at me for so lo- You know, we wanna keep this going a little while longer. I don’t wanna piss you off too much. So I try to temper my… You know, I try to throw a newer one in there, something a little more mainstream, something a little less weird.

But I’ve got a long-ass list of weird shit that we may never, ever get to. I think about this a lot, and actually, you know, when you said horror’s coming back into fashion, I think we’ve both talked about this, how horror never really leaves-

Craig: No …

Todd: fashion, does it? It’s, it seems to be the one, one of the few evergreen genres out there.

Pro- Romance is probably another one. But, like, especially horror, it comes and goes from the m- what you might quote, unquote call “the mainstream,” but I feel like that’s more a function of the media than anything else. I think s- the audience for horror is pretty solid, and it has remained pretty solid. But it’s only every, I don’t know, 5, 10 years that the mainstream media latches onto a particular movie that does particularly well, and then, you know, there are 20 other movies just like it that come out, ’cause that’s…

Well, that’s not just how horror goes, that’s how movies go in general.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And so then it feels like they’re, “Oh, there’s a resurgence in horror. There’s a new trend.” And all of us horror fans are just sitting here smugly nodding our heads going, “Yeah, I mean, this is, this is our lives.” “This is our day-to-day.”

And, and it is for so many people. You know, it’s been known for quite some time that if you wanna make money, if you’re gonna bet on a genre, go for horror, and you’re probably gonna make some money even if your movie is, is subpar or, or minimal or whatever. You got a good story to tell, horror fans are very forgiving.

Yeah. And that’s what I like about it. And I’ll tell you right now, on our 500th episode, I’m making a prediction. I don’t think it’s particularly groundbreaking, but something came to me as we’re watching some of these older movies that we just love, sometimes just by the pure scrappiness of them, right?

Clip: Uh-huh.

Todd: Like, we’ve seen so many movies on this podcast where we’re like, “The movie objectively is dumb.”

Clip: Right.

Todd: Or, “It’s objectively kinda bad, and we shouldn’t objectively enjoy watching it.” Except you can see that some people got together and they made a thing using the resources that they had- Their heart was in it.

A- a- and, and there’s something charming and fun about watching that.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And I, I feel like the horror audience seems to be more accepting of that than most. We take a lot of pleasure in practical effects.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Things that aren’t so polished, stories that are nonexistent, but as long as there’s something in there that grabs us, we’re generally entertained and we’re encouraging.

And I feel like in this era that we’re moving into with AI-

Clip: Mm …

Todd: where a lot of what we see is being generated by computers and not humans, that maybe, just maybe, overall we’re gonna trend towards this even more I have a feeling that overall, the film-going public and the book-reading public and whatever-going public is going to suddenly become far less critical and far more forgiving of imperfection because it’s human.

There’s more that we enjoy about a movie than how polished and slick it is. We like a particular actor. We like a particular vibe. We like the story. I mean, the story’s key. We like the visuals and all these things. If one or two of those elements really clicks, it’s enough, and you can get wrapped up in the idea that here is this piece of art that some people got together and put tremendous resources into making, and that’s something to celebrate.

I think that when we see a lot of this machine-made stuff flood the market, no matter how polished it feels, it lacks some of what ultimately I think is a big part of what brings us joy about watching a movie. And I feel like the pendulum’s gonna swing pretty hard in that direction, where people are gonna really seek out some of the stuff that was scrappier, more low budget, more put together, feels more human because it’s going to be rarer in the coming years.

That’s my prediction.

Craig: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong. I think that it, it’s a huge discussion that g- we would have to record a whole different podcast on about, you know, like can machines make art? Isn’t art an inherently human thing? I mean, all, all a machine can do is imitate really, uh- Right,

Todd: what humans have already produced.

Craig: Right. And so I just think, yeah, I mean, it, it will lack the human element. It will… And y- that’s a, a big thing to apply to some of the horror stuff that we’ve talked about that certainly is not high art, but still you see the creative drive behind it. You see the passion behind it, and I’ve yet to see something created ba- by AI that inspired that kind of feeling or reaction in me.

Now, who’s to say? Maybe AI will come up with something brilliant and I’ll have to eat my words. I don’t know. But I, yeah, I think you’re right that we’re gonna con- that we may be more forgiving because ultimately we see the, the passion and the, the effort behind it, and it’s, it’s… It will become more refreshing as we’re inundated with all of this AI-generated stuff.

Todd: I mean, you say more forgiving. I feel like there’s gonna be a craving for it. I really do. I feel like the people are going to want stuff that’s homemade, you know, like handmade I s- I suppose.

Craig: Well, we already do. I, you know, I don’t… I, I think there are very few people out there that are, like, clamoring for the advent of AI-controlled filmmaking or…

You know what I mean? Like-

Todd: For sure. It dazzles us for a little bit, and the novelty of it.

Craig: Right. But I don’t think anybody’s like, “Oh, thank God, AI’s finally gonna replace real filmmaking.” I think w- we are drawn to films or any artwork because it moves us in some way, and I don’t think… I don’t know.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Getting too philosophical. Well,

Todd: I think it dovetails nicely into the movie that we’re talking about today. We’re not that clever. We didn’t intend to dovetail it like this. But it was put together during a writer’s strike.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And in that regard, there was no real script behind it, and so it was a real collaborative effort between a fairly new director who was really trying to prove himself-

Craig: Uh-huh

Todd: a handful of seasoned special effects artists that we’ve talked about ad nauseam, who have done other projects, who came together, and actors, some new, some, uh… It just, it, it feels like a turning point in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise on its face. Like, you don’t need to be told this, you know? You watch it, and you feel like this movie is different.

It definitely comes from that process. There’s definite improvisation going on from a, on a day-to-day basis. Uh, you know, when you read about the behind-the-scenes of Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, which is what we’re doing, directed by Renny Harlin, who hung out in the studios of New Line Cinema until they couldn’t send him away.

And basically, Robert Shaye was desperate for a director for the new one, ’cause they had to put a new one out because the third one did so well-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: unexpectedly, and, uh, was finally like, “All right. We’re just gonna give this smelly Finnish guy a break.” He did a decent enough job with his previous film, Prison, which we have also done here on this podcast.

Clip: We have?

Todd: Funny enough, right? Oh, my God. Okay. You remember, right? Or am I reminding you for the first time?

Craig: You’re reminding me. I don’t remember that.

Todd: I get it confused with Shocker.

Craig: I’ll look it up while you’re talking.

Todd: Prison was the movie about the haunted prison, basically. Uh-

Craig: Oh, okay. All right.

Todd: You remember that?

Craig: Yes. That was just like Nightmare on Elm Street. Right. Okay. Yeah. So that makes sense. So they figured he already made Nightmare on Elm Street 3, basically- … so sure.

Todd: Sort of.

Craig: Yeah. Let him, uh… I mean, it even had the same girl from Nightmare on Elm Street 3 in it, didn’t it? Uh, maybe. Maybe. I don’t… I think so. I don’t remember exactly.

The, the Mohawk girl with… Yeah. I’m pretty sure.

Todd: Oh, yeah, yeah. You’re right. The Mohawk girl was in there. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Craig: I hadn’t put that together. Okay. Well, that makes perfect sense. I’m surprised that they were even hesitant. Like he clearly really, really wants to do a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, ’cause he basically already did.

Todd: Yeah. I think it was after this film- That suddenly he started getting calls left and right. That’s a good sign. This is almost like a Sam Raimi story, th- or a Steven Spielberg story in a way. In fact, I think it was Steven Spielberg who called him for the next movie after this. But, uh-

Clip: Oh …

Todd: you know, he just, he literally hung out in the lobby of New Line trying to get in, saying, “Hey, let me direct this next picture,” until finally Robert Shaye was like, “Okay, we’ll give you a shot.”

And apparently he was grumpy. Robert Shaye was grumpy through the whole production, pretty convinced that this ragtag group of people trying to throw some shit together just wasn’t gonna work. But it turned out to be huge. Uh-huh. It made $50 million in the box office, which for 1988 times made it the highest grossing, most successful independent film to date at that time, and really cemented…

I mean, I think Nightmare on Elm Street 3, which we’ve also done, we’ve done 2, we’ve done 1, we’ve done 3. Nightmare on Elm Street 3 really was the point where they kind of redeemed themselves from part two and started to reach a, a certain level of success, tentative success, where they were like, “Oh, this, this is real.

This could be a longer lasting franchise, uh, with a firmer base on it.” Then this movie came in and, against all odds, really cemented that by its reception. The critics didn’t necessarily like it. A lot of critics did actually. My favorite critic, Roger Ebert, who seems to shit on horror more often than not, didn’t.

Thought it should have an X rating and all this garbage. This, one of the few times when I really disagree with that guy. But more or less, everybody really liked this film, and I can see why. Because tonally, as Robert Englund put it, it’s like the MTV Nightmare on Elm Street.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Todd: It, perfectly attuned for its time, for its generation.

It really hit the right buttons. It’s really madcap. It really flows. It’s super visual. It’s very inventive. It’s got some of the best kills in the whole series, and it really kind of shows what you can do with this character, what you can do with this concept of this dream thing. Uh, it take, you know, 3 I think did a pretty good job of it.

4 I think took it over the top.

Craig: Yeah, I, I- Sorry … that, that’s a mouth, that’s, that’s a mouth, no, that’s a mouthful, but I agree with pretty much everything that you have said. I think it was kind of a lightning in a bottle moment. Like, 3- You know, one had, had been, had done well, but then two was a disappointment.

I think three was so good and especially appealed to young people that I think that it brought the audience back, and the audience that it brought back were just ready for four. And, you know, the combination of, you know, this young director and all of the influences that you already mentioned, uh, MTV and it being so visual and everything, I think it just really worked.

I, I think that you maybe said it best when… I feel like with three it kind of hit its stride, and then with four it really just kind of took off. Like-

Clip: Oh …

Craig: it, it seems like a really good follow-up to three for whatever reason. I haven’t seen this movie in a long time, and I don’t wanna dwell on the fact that unfortunately after this I really feel like they fell off.

Like- Yeah … Dream Child was okay. Yeah. Dr- Dream Child was okay, but then Freddy’s Dead was pretty not good. Right. I’m, I’m trying to be kind. I have so much to say about this movie, but when I was watching it, what I was… I was thinking about the whole series. I was thinking, “You know, even as not good as Freddy’s Dead is, all of these movies are completely watchable.”

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Robert Englund as Freddy is fun regardless. I mean, if the script is bad and it’s, it’s, it’s corny, I mean, you still get him doing his thing and, and you get some inventive, creative kills regardless. So they’re all totally watchable. But I hadn’t seen this one in a long time, and it took me a minute to find it ’cause it’s not streaming on any pay service or any free service.

You have to either rent it or buy it. And I was bummed because I have a whole DVD box set, but I don’t have a DVD player.

So, uh, that, that was a, a no-good. But I ended up renting it, which I think ultimately ended up being a good thing because I think I saw a really good, like, 4K restoration of it. It looked so good. Like, better quality than I’ve ever seen it. And it had been so long since I had seen it that when I was watching it, I just remembered that I love this one.

Clip: Mm.

Craig: You know, we’ve done one, two, and three, and I don’t know, we just hadn’t gotten around to this one. We’ve talked about it before, but we just hadn’t gotten around to it and-

Todd: Well, let’s be honest …

Craig: it, it had been so… Yeah. Well, I didn’t know if you wanted to.

Todd: Let’s go, let’s, let’s just tell everybody. We might as well.

We have been holding off on the fourth one for a very specific reason And the reason is that I almost got Renny Harlin on the podcast with us. Living in China in 2016, Renny Harlin was also living in Beijing at the same time. He was directing Chinese films, big budget action films for Chinese cinema that probably nobody outside of China has really seen.

But, uh, that was his gig, and I was a friend of a friend. I knew, uh, a guy who was a visual effects director who was also in the Chinese film industry, and he was the guy that Renny Harlin hired for all of his movies, and they were p- close personal family friends and hung out together. And it just so happened that this guy’s wife, this guy’s from New Zealand, by the way, and, uh, his wife was pregnant the same time my wife was pregnant, so they were linked that way, and so I got to know him And when I found out his connection with Lenny Har- Renny Harlin, I said, “Oh my God, it would be so awesome to have him on the podcast to talk about Nightmare on Elm Street 4.”

And he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll talk to Renny. I’ll talk to Renny and see how he feels.” And, uh, he talked to him and he said, “Yeah, he’s down for it. He’s- it’s a go. In fact, uh, you know, we can all watch the movie together in my screening room. It’ll be great.” And we were super stoked for this. And then life happens, and, uh, I didn’t wanna push it.

You know, I didn’t wanna be that guy, you know? But I’d kinda nudge him every now and then, and then they moved. They left Beijing. And even after he left Beijing I thought we would still get it going, but then COVID hit.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Renny Harlin left Beijing. He’s doing s- other stuff elsewhere. He’s not in China anymore, and so that opportunity passed us by.

And I don’t know, I just always felt like maybe, just maybe we can get him back together, but I’ve lost touch with, uh, with Will. That’s the guy’s name.

Clip: Ah.

Todd: The New Zealander. And we just kind of decided at this point that, you know, it’s our 500th episode. We have this tradition of doing Wes Craven-directed movies, except for the 150th episode, which where we did a movie that is just one of the most precious and nearest and dearest to our hearts, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Except for that, we kicked all this off with a Wes Craven movie because Wes Craven had recently died, so we did People Under the Stairs. We decided, “Oh, for our 50th, for our 200th, 250th, whatever, we would do a Wes Craven movie,” and we have. But now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel on Wes Craven movies.

Right. And just, like, nothing of what’s left really felt like 500th episode material. And so, uh, we were like, “Well, we gotta do a Freddy movie because that’s Wes Craven origin.” And we both love this movie to death, and we’ve been putting it off for so long. I think we were both pretty unanimous as soon as the idea came up, like, this is the time.

Yeah. This is the time to do-

Craig: Yeah. Yeah, and you brought it up, and I’m so glad you did because honestly it had been so long since I had watched it, and I had just for- You know, I remembered everything about it, and I remembered that it had some of my favorite kills.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: But I, I just forgot- Like,

Todd: all of my favorite kills are in this movie.

Almost all of them …

Craig: I just forgot that from start to finish, it’s just really good.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It looks fantastic. You’re, you’re right, it is very colorful, and I think whoever called it the MTV Freddy or the MTV Nightmare or whatever was on point. I mean, it, it, it really is. It, it is very visual. A lot of it kinda looks like a music video.

I mean, you’ve got Freddy in Risky Business sunglasses and- Yeah … not to mention the soundtrack is great. Like Yes. It’s so ’80s. It’s fantastic. Yeah, I love it. I know, but it’s got, like, this banging ’80s soundtrack in the back, like, through the whole thing The acting is as good as you are gonna get.

Todd: Yeah. Not amazing.

Not amazing.

Craig: But it’s as good as you’re gonna get- Yeah … from one of these ’90s… And it’s fine. Like, it’s totally fine. It’s, it’s not, you know, amazing, but it’s, it’s perfectly fine. And beyond it being perfectly fine, I’m genuinely invested in all of these characters, all of them.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Even the small ones that have hardly any screen time.

I’ll do a little plug for our book club. On our Patreon, we have a book club where we read horror books, often YA, not always, but most of the time, and we get together on a Zoom call basically every couple of weeks and talk about it. If you’re interested, you should check out the Patreon page. But we recently did a book, and it was long.

It was, like, almost 500 pages long, and we all were bummed out about it because the characters were so poorly written that you just didn’t care. And so by the end, when the mystery started to be resolved, you didn’t even care because you just didn’t care about these characters. I liked all of these characters to the point where I legit found some of their death scenes sad.

Like, I can’t, I can’t think of another movie like this or even another Nightmare movie where I was like, “Oh.” “That’s really sad.” Uh, but, uh It’s, it, it’s, it’s really kind of great start to finish, and I don’t know how in depth we’re gonna get about the plot of this God knows how old movie. Surely, listener, you’ve seen it.

But if like me, it’s been 20 years or more, go back and watch it again. It’s so good. But we’ll talk about it.

Todd: Dare I make us feel weird in that this p- this movie’s almost 40 years old?

Craig: It doesn’t surprise me. We’re so old.

Todd: But I remember when it came out, and I remember that MTV also had Nightmare on… Like, this, it was after this movie that Freddy really entered mainstream.

In my memory, it was Dream Master, but I was watching the Never Sleep Again documentary, which is excellent, by the way.

Craig: It is really good.

Todd: Oh my God, if you wanna know everything about the Nightmare on Elm Street series, you… It’s on all the DVDs, and it covers every single movie. It interviews almost everybody involved in all of the movies, and it’s just great.

And, uh, Robert Englund and everybody says, you know, after this movie is when Freddy really… Like, there were Freddy dolls, Freddy was appearing on TV shows, or Robert Englund was in any case, and Freddy mania kind of hit. Like, your mother would know about Freddy by this point.

Craig: Oh, yeah.

Todd: And so this movie is the one that really put it over the top.

And I also feel like this movie is the movie that cemented the jokey Freddy. We always had hints of Freddy’s playfulness in the earlier movies. I would say the first one. The second one is a bit of an outlier, although it’s still got its humor. The third one is where they really started to go with it, but I think the fourth one is when, is what took it over the top.

He became just like a, what’s the word? L- not anti-hero. What’s the word I’m- An

Craig: icon.

Todd: An icon, but, like, a bad guy that you love, right? Like a love- Oh, sure,

Craig: sure, yeah …

Todd: a villain that you’re almost rooting for because he is so likable. He’s so playful with them in how he messes with these kids And I guess, again, you know, if you had had a coherent script that cared a lot about a, a story from start to finish that started where the last one left off and took you to a future, you know, you probably wouldn’t have had what we get.

Instead, what we get is what’s essentially a paper-thin plot with likable characters, like you said, in a series of vignettes. It’s just a bunch of dreams.

Clip: Uh-huh.

Todd: It’s a series of dreams that Freddy jumps in and kills people in, and I think that’s what’s fun about the movie, and that’s what makes it music video-like.

But that also gives Freddy the license to just kick back and be cool. So you got the one where, like, it’s so obvious that one that you referenced earlier, the beach scene where he puts on the sunglasses. Like, of course. Like, they just wanted to get Freddy in sunglasses. That’s what the purpose of this scene is.

He’s got the ’80s shades on to be cool, you know? They’ve got a, a whole sequence that apparently they had to throw together last minute, ’cause they had no other ideas and they were running out of time, which is a Karate Kid style-

Clip: Yeah … ‘

Todd: 80s action fight sequence. Freddy’s not even in it. He’s, like, invisible.

He’s not even in it. They throw that in there. It’s so funny. They’re just a series of vignettes, but in every one he’s got a quip. He’s got one or two quips. Almost every single quotable Freddy line I feel like comes from this, this movie.

Craig: The… Yeah.

Todd: It just shocked me how much I remembered- Of Freddy that actually just comes from part four.

Craig: Yeah, a lot of it. And this, you know, this is… I was gonna say it’s him at his quippiest, but that’s really not true. I think that this, tonally it, it nails it. Later it, it, it goes- It’s too quippy … over the top to a point where it’s stupid. Yeah. You know? Like, I, I think it’s in Freddy’s Dead where at some point he’s literally the Wicked Witch of the West, you know, like on a broomstick with a witch’s hat and like- Yeah

it gets really, really-

Todd: Dumb …

Craig: silly. Here it still felt kinda cool. Like And, and, and the quips were still kind of funny. You know, I hadn’t really thought about it not having much of a plot, but you’re right. You know, I don’t know how much the other ones do beyond him stalking kids. And, you know, like you said, the writer strike and, and Rennie…

So Rennie Harlan actually ultimately thought that the writer strike worked to his advantage because it gave him a lot of freedom to virtually write parts of the script himself and, and rewrite scenes and, and do things that he wanted to do. I, I think, you know, ultimately it worked out. But there is a little bit of a plot.

I mean, it is a direct follow-up of part three-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: which actually made me feel bad for for two of the characters because it, it’s, it’s the Alien 3, you know, dilemma where you were, it, you’ve got these heroes who survived the previous sequel only to kill them off immediately in the next sequel which only takes place like, what?

A few months later? Like Right. That’s ki- that’s kind of a bummer for those guys. But no, it’s the three surviving members of the Dream Warriors, which is Kristen, Joey, and Kincaid. And Joey and Kincaid are played by the same actors, uh, who played them in the previous film. But Kristen has been recast. She was originally played by Patricia Arquette and she’s now played by Tuesday Knight, who I don’t know if Tuesday Knight had done much of anything before this.

I mean-

Todd: Acting-wise? I don’t think so, no. Not much …

Craig: this is the only thing I know her from and, and she’s, she’s the lead really. It does a switcheroo on you. She’s the final girl from the last movie. She, uh, comes over into this one. And I am a huge fan of Patricia Arquette. Nightmare III was probably the first time I had ever seen her, and I really liked her in that movie.

I thought that she was a great final girl I haven’t seen Never Sleep Again in a long time, but if I remember correctly, pretty much everybody said they weren’t really sure why she didn’t come back.

Todd: That’s right.

Craig: I feel like maybe I even read something from her ultimately where she said that she really enjoyed doing the movie, she really liked the series, but she had kind of started to get basically better offers.

Like-

Todd: Yeah, she got busy all of a sudden. Yeah …

Craig: offers that were more interesting to her, and so it, it was no hard feelings. She just wanted to do other things, and they recast her with this girl Tuesday Knight.

Todd: Who’s a singer.

Craig: Who’s a singer, and she sings… Is it the, I think it’s the opening credits song.

Yeah. And, and she sounds great. It’s a great song. I think that this put her in a bad position, Tuesday Knight.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: Because I think that fans had liked Kristen 1.0 in, in Patricia Arquette, and it also kind of made her, I think, ultimately a little bit of an outsider during the filmmaking. I think especially the actors who play Joey and Kincaid basically said that they didn’t really connect with her or really even try.

Todd: Yeah. Sadly.

Craig: And then I guess I, I saw, and I don’t know if it’s recent, but a more recent interview, just a s- a snippet of it, of Tuesday Knight where she mentioned the documentary Never Sleep Again, and she is pissed off about it. Like- Yeah, she doesn’t like it at all … she is mad about it. No, she hates it.

She, she says that she had just been through cancer treatment or she was going through cancer treatment and she hates the way that she looks, and fans and, and people who saw it speculated about her appearance and thought that she had had plastic surgery or whatever when she was going through something bad.

And unbeknownst to her, because I’m sure they were all interviewed separately, her other castmates didn’t speak very well of her and kind of insinuated that she got preferential treatment potentially ’cause she was the director, which both she and Renny Harlin deny. So I feel bad for her. Yeah. And ultimately I think that she does a fine job.

Todd: She’s okay.

Craig: I thi- I think she does a fine job. I like her. I like her as Kristen. And w- as I was watching it this time, back in the day I probably, I don’t know, I don’t even know if I remembered who played Kristen in part three at the time, but if I did, I was probably like, “Oh, I like the other one better.”

If it had not been recast, I think that this would’ve been an entirely different movie.

Clip: Hmm.

Craig: I think that Patricia Arquette would’ve brought an entirely different energy to it. And because they were kind of making it on the fly, even if, regardless of whether it was romantic or sexual, even if there was just some sort of connection between Renny Harlin and his l- who be- his lead actress, basically, if he was Writing things for her or giving her any kind of special attention, if they had that kind of connection, I just think it would have been different if it had been a different actress.

Maybe it would have been just as good, maybe it would have been better, but I think it would have been different, and I like this movie, so

Todd: Well,

Craig: I think- So I think it worked out fine …

Todd: I think it could be argued it hardly matters because it’s pretty early on in the movie that it’s apparent to everyone watching that they’re really not setting her up to be the final girl.

There is far more focus on this girl, uh, Alice, and she fits the archetype of the final girl to a T. She’s a little dowdy. She’s kind of virgin-ous. She’s the kind of girl that is supposed to not be beautiful, but you can tell that if you just put her hair up and put her in a sexy outfit, she’s gonna be gorgeous, and this actress 100% is.

She’s kind of a sex bomb, honestly, who was just downplayed for the film, and then by the end of the movie, you know, she’s a badass kicking ass. And so I feel like it’s almost obvious from about 10, 15 minutes in that this isn’t gonna be a movie about her anyway. I wouldn’t say I necessarily expected her to die so early because she’s such a pivotal character and she’s a carryover from the first movie, but when Kincaid and Kevin die so early in the film, then you kinda start to realize, “Oh, maybe she’s the third one,” ’cause Freddy says-

Clip: One down,

Todd: two to go. When he kills Kincaid, I believe. Then you know that he’s gunning for just the other two initially. Alice and her brother, Rick, start to get a lot of screen time, and then Dan starts to get more screen time at the end, which I think is a thing that, that betrays the fact that this movie was cobbled together.

Clip: Uh-huh.

Todd: Of all the people in this film, I feel the worst for the guy who played Dan. He just got pulled in. He’s really kind of a, a, a minor side guy in the very beginning.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: And even though he’s the guy Alice is going after-

Craig: Right …

Todd: there’s not a lot of going after happening. He just pops in every now and then, and she’s like- Yeah

“Oh, I like him,” or, “Oh, he’s hot.”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And then and it’s only, like, at the end when the two of them kinda end up together fighting Freddy, he doesn’t really do a great job of it.

Craig: No, he’s basically just tagging along.

Todd: Yeah. And then, like, at the end, it’s… In the, any other movie, y- there’s a progression of these two characters, like, coming together and finally there’s this romance.

At the end it’s sorta like, “Well, we’re the last two left, and I always liked you, so we’re partners now, aren’t we?” It’s a very lackluster romantic interest for poor Dan.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I, and I’m, I’m pretty sure he gets killed off right at the beginning of the next movie too, so-

Todd: Oh, I’m sure …

Craig: RIP Dan.

Todd: Sorry, Dan.

Craig: But there’s a lot of good stuff. I mean, I don’t know how to talk about everything, but it’s new and it’s shiny and… But you also get all the classic stuff. You get the classic nursery rhyme with the girls in white jump roping outside of Freddy’s creepy house, those classic dream scenes. Right at the beginning.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: You get, you get Kristen calling Joey and Kincaid into her dream right away, so- Yes … um, that’s still happening. The other thing that I would say about this movie, and there are other parts later in the movie that cement this for me, I also feel like this movie could stand alone.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: I don’t even think you really need to have a general understanding of who Freddy is-

Todd: No

Craig: to, to see this. And, and there’s even a moment of exposition-

Todd: Yes. …

Craig: here, in a little bit, that explains Freddy’s backstory just for those 10 people who wandered in off the street who had- Yeah … never heard of it before. So I-

Todd: Like 30 seconds of exposition. One of the things that I found so charming about this movie was how efficient the script actually ended up being because from the beginning, like you said, we get our traditional intro.

We got the, the little bit of a nightmare sequence with Kristen and, and the girls, and freakiness, and an old house that’s Freddy’s old house and whatever. Joey and Kincaid get summoned in, and they’re like, “What are you doing summoned us into this dream? Freddy’s dead, don’t you know?” Like, they’re so sure of themselves, right?

It’s so typical. She said, “No, he really is gone.” And they’re like, “No, look, the boiler’s cold.” And they put her hand on a boiler and suddenly this dog jumps out, and it’s Kincaid’s dog who was also pulled into the dream apparently, and bites her on the- Apparently … on the arm. And then she wakes up- And her arm has got this really nasty looking dog bite on it.

And Kincaid looks over, he wakes up also, looks over and sees his dog’s got blood on his mouth. And, uh, it’s like, so that immediately establishes this whole thing from the last movie- Yeah … in case you didn’t know- Right … of being pulled into the dreams and shit. I mean, I thought it was hilarious that she had this huge nasty dog bite on her arm.

She just kinda wraps it up with a blanket and drifts back off to bed.

Clip: And then it’s fine, right.

Todd: But still, yeah, you’re right. Immediate set up, so that’s good.

Craig: Well, and then that’s when we meet, her boyfriend is Rick, and his sister is Alice, and they, I think, are supposed to be l- like on the other side of the tracks.

I think they’re supposed to be kind of poor. They live with their dad, who’s a jerk because all Elm Street parents are assholes.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I don’t remember if I saw or read somewhere that the actor who played Rick contends to this day that he believes that Christian Slater’s whole Heathers vibe was stolen from this movie, and I think he’s right.

Like-

Todd: Yeah, he probably is …

Craig: I, it blows me away that this movie came out before that because I would have said, “Oh, this guy’s doing his best Christian Slater in Heathers.” It’s exactly what his character is, and he’s kind of funny and-

Todd: To be fair, he’s also kinda doing a Johnny Depp from the first one, I kinda think.

I mean, it’s-

Craig: A little bit … they’re

Todd: not too far off.

Craig: A l- yeah, a l- a little bit And then we meet the new group, okay? So they remind, remind us of the old group, and now we meet the new group. And it’s Rick and Alice, and then there’s Dan, who is a friend of Rick’s, but he’s also the quarterback, and he’s tall and handsome.

And then there’s Deb, who is played by Brooke Theiss, who was the hot sister from Just the Ten of Us. Um, Wendy, she was the hot one. Mm-hmm. And she is the third girl from Just the Ten of Us. Did you watch that show, by the way?

Todd: No, I did not at all, but I know what you’re talking about. It was

Craig: so good. Was it really?

It was such

Todd: a good

Craig: show. Okay. Yeah. Oh I, oh my God, it was, it was cheesy ’80s sitcom, but yeah, it was fantastic. Like, there were… I don’t know, I think there were, like, seven teenage girls or something like that that were all in this one family. And at one point in time they became, like, a girl group and they would, like, sing, like s- like ’60s hits in a bar.

It was amazing. But yeah, so she’s the third Just the Ten of Us girl. N- Nancy from part one.

Todd: Heather Langenkamp.

Craig: Heather Langenkamp, obviously. And then in the second, one of the girls on the bus is one of the girls, and then she’s the third one. I love her. Again, she has maybe, maybe five minutes of screen time, I would say.

Hmm. But I like… She’s just kind of around every once in a while until her keel s- kill scene.

Todd: Are you talking about Debbie?

Craig: Yeah, Deb. Uh-huh.

Todd: Who has the best kill scene. But yeah, go on.

Craig: Yeah. And we learn right away that she hates bugs. That’s the only thing we know about her except for that. She’s tough, she hates bugs, and she works out a lot.

That’s Deb. Oh

Todd: my God. No, this is what I love about this whole opening sequence, and this is how you can tell there was no writer involved. Because the, it’s just ham-fisting in information about each of these people to give us their Achilles’ heel or their archetype or their whatever, right? Uh, so, so we’ve got our asshole parent who, you know, is walking in with a bag and a bottle, so we know he’s a dick, as usual.

They’ve got the boyfriend. Okay. We got the sister. She’s comes across as dowdy right away. Then hunky Dan Jordan, who they make a comment about immediately.

Clip: All right. Anybody have trig this semester?

Todd: What happened?

Clip: I had a conflict, homework or Dynasty, and, uh, Dynasty won.

Todd: Bad

Clip: story. Soaps’ll kill you. Mm, there’s Dan Jordan.

Mm, we are talking one major league hunk

Todd: She- and Debbie’s the big-haired flamboyant girl.

Clip: Uh-huh.

Todd: And then the one you’re talking about, Sheila, the nerd, rides up, right?

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: And she’s got big glasses on, and this dialogue made me laugh so hard. You know, d- she pulls up, Sheila pulls up on a bike that’s spewing out a bit of smoke, and, uh, Debbie’s like, “How can you ride on this health hazard?

Don’t you have asthma?” And Sheila says, like, “Oh, you know what? Why don’t you stop working out so much and try reading a book every now and then?” And then pulls out an inhaler and sucks on it. You’re just me, like, “Okay, Sheila’s got asthma. That’s gonna be important. Debbie likes to work out. Got it.” And as soon as we get all this, like, goofy school-ness where we i- get introduced to everybody, they’re in the hallway and there’s some more dialogue, and they walk by the lockers.

Where did the slashes on the lockers come from?

Craig: There are several things in this movie that don’t make any sense, and, and I think that the filmmakers have conceded that there are holes in this plot- … and this is one of them. But this is just one of many, and, and it also seems, like you said, it was kind of cobbled together as they went.

Another thing that starts out seeming to be something but then just completely goes away is the fact that Alice, in the earliest part of the movie, has these weird fantasies-

Clip: Yeah …

Craig: that play out like they’re really happening, and then it’s like a fake-out. Like, “Oh, that didn’t really happen. That just happened in her head.”

That happens a couple of times in the beginning. Like, she has a fantasy about Dan, I don’t know, like saying she likes him or something, and then she has another fantasy about screaming at her dad and throwing dishes or something.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But then that, that never comes up again, which is fine. I don’t care.

The other thing, like, with the, with the glowing slashes, I don’t carry, I don’t care about that either. Where did they come from? I don’t know. It looks cool. Who cares? Like, they don’t even… It’s just for us. Yeah. And it’s just for us. Nobody else sees it. They

Todd: don’t exist in the movie.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Like, they walk by some lockers, and as they walk by, suddenly the lockers have glowing slashes on them.

There’s no reason. They didn’t suddenly slip into a dream sequence. There’s a… It’s just some- No … kind of creepy image for us to foreshadow Freddy later, you know? That’s all it is.

Craig: What they were talking about is Joey and Kincaid were telling her, like, “Stop talking about it. You’re gonna stir him up.” You know, I don’t know if that’s what happens- Yeah

but he does end up coming back, like, now. Well,

Todd: I give a little more credit to the earlier… Even though you’re right, like, this is a thing that seems to be set up but then does not really pay off. In a way, it’s establishing that Alice has a unusual degree of imagination and/or daydreaming ability and/or ability to control her dreams.

Uh, not really, but l- you know, like, like somehow she’s special, and I feel like this gets called out later, that somehow Alice just has this unique ability to daydream that gives her an edge eventually. I mean, it’s, it’s tenuous, but, uh, I feel like that’s what this is trying to set up. But it doesn’t really solidify

Craig: If that’s the case, I wish that they would’ve fleshed it out more, because I didn’t get that at all.

Hmm. And that actually, if that were the case, if she were able to, like, consciously dream or, or have waking dreams, that would n- that would close one of the holes in the end. Because in the end when she goes to confront Freddy, she never goes to sleep. We never see her go to sleep, and we never see her wake up.

So-

Clip: Yeah …

Craig: I was really confused as to how she got to him in the first place, but whatever. We also learn at this point that Rick does karate.

Todd: We get a nice montage. Oh, God, it’s the Karate Kid era.

Craig: This was so funny to me, because this guy that plays Rick is super cute. Like, he’s an adorable guy, but I don’t know if he does karate.

No, I don’t

Todd: think he

Craig: does. This… And it’s a, it’s a whole montage of him, like, doing karate by himself to, like, this rock song. But the, the words of the rock song, I wish I could remember the tune, I can’t at all, but it’s like, “Settle down.” And that’s what I, I wanted to say to him, like, “Settle down.” Like…

Todd: Nobody’s, nobody’s watching you. You don’t have to show off so much.

Craig: And it, it, it, it looked like, it looked like when you were little, and you would go over to your friend’s house, and their older brother would be like, “Hey, wanna see some karate?” And, and they would tie the Karate Kid, like, headband around their head and, like, “Do some kicks.”

That’s what it looked like. And

Todd: they think they’re badass.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Yeah, like remember early internet era, that guy, that poor guy who did the S- the Star Wars, uh, lightsaber m- … who, who I think actually got teased incessantly and permanently mentally, like, like traumatized by it. But anyway, yeah, that reminded me of that too.

But also, we were all like this when we were… Like, we all saw The Karate Kid- Oh, yeah … and thought we could do karate. And so this is such- … this is such a, a, a time capsule and such an artifact of its time that I just smiled so wide when this bit came on. But yeah, it heavy-handedly establishing that he’s the karate guy.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And al- here’s the weird thing Later on, there is a whole sequence, and we already talked about it, where he fights Freddy in this Asian karate thing. Oddly enough, they had not planned that when they shot this.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It was only when they were like, “Well, how’s he gonna die? Well, we’ve already established that he does karate, so maybe we can do this.”

And, and, uh, and they had to throw that scene together real fast. Like, that’s crazy, right? Uh-huh. That they would establish something without really knowing where it was gonna go. I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe that.

Craig: Yeah. And it, it’s, it’s kinda surprising that it came together as cohesively as it does.

Right. It- but it does… I mean, it moves fast. I mean, this, at this point, this is when Kincaid and Joey get unceremoniously killed off, but still in good ways. Like, Kincaid falls asleep and wakes up in the trunk of a car in a great big junkyard, and he’s immediately like, “This ain’t my dreamland.” And so he, he immediately screams for Kristen.

And then, classic, his dog comes out of nowhere, pees fire, and wakes Freddy up.

Todd: Oh my God.

Craig: Was it a j- like, was it a, did it, did it originate as a joke? Like, I don’t even understand how this happened.

Todd: It was just R- Freddy Harlan’s random idea, and, and he was honestly just pulling from his own dreams and his own ideas.

Like, this was just his notion. And then later, if you watch the Never Sleep Again thing, Robert Englund’s like, “Well, if you really think about it, it’s like the hounds of hell.” And like what? No. This is like a dog peeing on the, on the dirt in a dream bringing back Freddy. It doesn’t make sense.

Craig: I know it doesn’t, but like-

Todd: How did he get into this dream?

So then a dog in a dream resurrects Freddy from the graveyard that they physically put him in? What, what was the catalyst- Yes … for this? I, it just, none of it makes sense.

Craig: Who, I mean, it, right? Who cares? I mean, it’s that, it’s that conversation that the kid has with his dad in Monster Squad about, you know, bringing the killer back and like, “You know, blow him up and send, put him in a bunch of different boxes and send him all over the world.”

And he’s like, “Yeah, that was part seven.” Yeah, like- Right … in, in, in this day with, with Freddy and, and Jason and Michael Myers to some extent, you just have to come up with some way to bring him back. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, we know. A, a dog, a dog pees fire, and he comes back. And- … y- and you get, you know, these fun practical effects of his bones coming back together and, like, the flesh coming back onto his body.

And, you know, there’s a great thing, you know, where his glove comes up out of the ground, and then you have the classic shot of his long shadow.

Todd: Visually, this is so awesome.

Craig: It looks great. Oh, yeah. And, and then you get the, the theme, the, the Nightmare, the <> w- whatever it is, and he’s back, and he’s back.

And then, uh, it’s a, a close-up on his face, and, “You shouldn’t have buried me. I’m not dead.” And it’s great. And, and this feels like a big scene. Like, it’s- I’m sure a lot of it is matte paintings or, or something. It’s, it… But it looks big

Todd: Yeah. It’s really impressive. It’s kinetic, it moves. It’s just really well shot.

Craig: Yeah. Kincaid, like, drops a big car on him, but that doesn’t work, and all the cars come on, and there’s big explosions, and Kincaid screams, “Kristen, Freddy’s back.” And then he gets killed. And then Joey doesn’t even get that long of a scene.

Todd: No. But I like his.

Craig: Joey’s scene kind of hearkens back to Part I.

It’s another waterbed scene. I’m sure you do.

Todd: Hell yeah. This, I mean, this, I still think about this scene to this day. My God. Joey’s in a waterbed and, and then he glances up at a poster on the wall, and there’s, like, a hot chick in the poster with a tiger, and then suddenly he hears something or feels something.

Who knows? And then he decides to pull the sheets away from his waterbed. He looks in and his waterbed’s got lights in it. That’s the thing I think is funny.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: And this girl, naked girl floats up to the top, and I wanna talk about her. She’s, uh- She’s

Craig: gorgeous …

Todd: she is, uh, Hope Marie Carlton, born on March 3rd, 1966 in Riverhead, New York.

Began modeling at age 13. Was the Playmate of the Month in Ju- July 1985 issue of Playboy. Went into appear in several Playboy videos and a bunch of Playboy special edition publications. No surprise there.

Craig: No surprise there ’cause she’s beautiful.

Todd: She’s gorgeous and she looks great, and, uh, she was in some low-budget movies that some of our listeners, I mean, you know, some of our listeners are not just into horror, but also fun, weird ’80s movies like Hard Ticket to Hawaii from 1987, which I think is one of the…

Have you seen that?

Craig: No.

Todd: This is one of those, like, old ’80s, like, low-budget action movies that has become popular again because of the internet. Hard Ticket to Hawaii, you gotta see it. It’s, it’s a blast. She’s in The A-Team and L- You know, she’s a bunch of stuff on TV. Married a, a rich millionaire and then had a dispute about money later, which she lost.

She didn’t get access to his millions because of their prenup back in 2009. I read a lot about Hope Marie Carlton.

Craig: I- I s- I

Todd: can tell … was very interested in her. I love the age of the internet when I can learn all about her now, but… Yeah, she was in Ghoulies Go to College too. Maybe, maybe if we, if we last to another 500 episodes, we’ll have certainly done Ghoulies Go to College.

Oh, boy. Uh, but, but one that she did before this was Slaughterhouse Rock, which is on my list. I really want us to do at some point a theme month, because I think we have just enough movies to fill out four weeks of the last of the, like, heavy metal horror movies from the ’80s, and Slaughterhouse Rock is one of them, and she’s in that.

Nice. So

Craig: I’d

Todd: like to, to see that.

Craig: Yeah, I’m not I’m, I’m not sure Poem

Todd: Marie Carlton

Craig: I’m, I’m not sure who else was as interested in all of that as you are. But- I,

Todd: I think there were many …

Craig: she is There were

Todd: many. Trust me.

Craig: She was very gorgeous and, you know, and this is a dream, so he’s excited. But she goes away.

She swims down, and Freddy comes up and, and grabs him and g- and kills him and says, “How’s this for a wet dream?”

Todd: I love that. I love

Craig: that line. It was funnier when he said it, yeah.

Todd: It is

Craig: far funnier,

Todd: yeah.

Craig: But he’s dead, and the next day at school-

Todd: Everybody’s dead. Two kids are already dead. T- Like, this is, this is also like all the other movies where, like, kids are dead and people that are just going around their normal lives like, “Well, hope that doesn’t happen again Yeah.

It’s so funny. This movie, more than any other, and this is why I say the plot is paper thin. W- I mean, if you look at it, the plot of the first one, it really takes its time. Of course, it has to set up the whole premise, so it needs to take its time. But, you know, it’s this whole learning about this creature that’s coming into their dreams, and they’re trying to sort it out, and then they kinda, like, sort out that their parents are somehow involved, and they gotta figure out how to defeat him, and they figure out that, oh, it’s gotta be, like, you know, we have to enter the dream, but we have to have a way to c- bring him out into the real world.

So, like, that’s plot heavy. The second one is really kind of almost a character study. This kid who’s coming into his own and trying to figure out who he’s gonna be. He’s, he’s, he’s possessed by Freddy. There’s a lot of subtext there that we’ve already talked about, and, and it really focuses on this kid and his journey through, you know, you could say adolescence, through learning about his own sexuality or whatever.

The third one is this whole affair, right, of these kids who are brought together in this mental institution, and they all have these special abilities, but they’re all haunted by these same dreams, and they’ve gotta sort out, like, how they’re gonna relate to each other, and then they figure out they all have these special powers and that they’re gonna band together to use to kill Freddy.

You know, that’s– These are, I think, high-concept, very well-plotted movies. This movie is just like, “Okay, we’re gonna kill off the three characters from the first one, and then Freddy’s gonna systematically go after each of these other people.” He, he comes back in this way that’s kinda n- nebulous, and here we are.

You know? I mean, it just, it’s so thin.

Craig: It is, but I do think that it’s clever in the way that it progresses the story because-

Todd: It’s fun …

Craig: Yeah, it is fun. And I mean, it, it, there is a through line. So once they’re dead, the next day at school, this isn’t important at all, but it drove me crazy. Kristen is a smoker, but Tuesday night clearly is not because-

Todd: She lights one cigarette once.

Craig: It doesn’t get lit, and then she continues to smoke it. She smokes an unlit cigarette through this whole scene. It’s, it dr- It was crazy. I was thinking like, “This is, this is where, like, is not good,” because you see, you see- The flaws … the little things that you… Right, the flaws. She’s– The cigarette is not lit.

She smokes it through the whole scene. But she kind of, she tells Kristen about the Dream Master- So this is the Nightmare on Elm Street for the Dream Master. Mm. The Dream Master has literally nothing to do with this whole movie. Like It’s just a word that comes up- Right … a couple of times. Like, there’s no explanation for what it is.

It’s just Alice mentions it here. She’s like, “Oh, yeah, I feel like when I was a kid I knew a nursery rhyme about a Dream Master.”

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And then she… It comes up again at the end. We don’t know who the d- I don’t know. There’s something else. Somewhere along the lines we hear about some ancient things guarding gates or something.

I don’t know. But at this point she tells Kristen, “If you have bad dreams or whatever, just dream someplace fun and remember you’re in control.” See, I feel like that’s where that whole Alice daydreaming thing could have tied in. Mm. Like, her being, you know, her having these waking dreams where she’s in control.

If they had developed that more, it would’ve been better, but whatever.

Todd: Fair enough.

Craig: Anyway, then there’s just a few minutes where you get all of the kids together really for no reason except for to go visit Freddy’s house. That’s when Rick- … tells Dan, “Oh, well- The

Todd: whole, the whole story …

Craig: the whole story.” Yeah, the whole story- Just for-

about the parents killing Freddy.

Todd: Just for us.

Craig: Again, for those… Yeah, just, just for the people who wandered in.

Clip: She told us a story about Freddy. Fred Krueger, he’s a town legend. He was a child killer freed on a technicality So? So a lot of parents got pissed off. And according to Chris, they hunted him down and roasted him like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Nice neighborhood. Yeah. Anyway, that’s where it gets weird. Um, she says that he comes back in dreams, and if he kills you in your dream, you’re dead for real.

Todd: I also find it, again, I think it’s in almost every movie from here on out, but I still find it comically amusing that there is this incredibly decrepit, abandoned, overgrown house.

Yeah. Like the Munsters’ house.

Craig: On this nice street, right.

Todd: In this beautiful street, right.

Craig: And then Kristen goes home, and her horrible letch mother drugs her.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: As parents on Elm Street are apt to do.

Todd: They’re all assholes.

Craig: But the thing is the, the way that this works is Kristen is the last of the Elm Street kids.

Now, Freddy’s objective up to this point has been to kill the children of the people who murdered him out of vengeance.

Clip: Mm.

Craig: But now he’s accomplished that because Kristen is the last one. So the only way for him to be able to access the other kids is to exploit Kristen’s power and have her draw them in.

So once he gets Kristen in a dream, and, and it’s in the boiler room and it’s all lit and green and shit, and it looks amazing. Once he gets her in there, he starts taunting her like, “You should call in one of your friends.” She’s like, “No, no, I won’t do it.” But she, I guess, inadvertently calls in Alice. And as soon as she calls in Alice, basically she is like, “I’m sorry, I’ll protect you,” or something.

And she just runs at Freddy, who grabs her and just tosses her into the furnace.

Todd: Yeah, that was fast. And

Craig: she… Right. There’s no fight. I have no idea what she was planning to do. Like she d- it doesn’t even look like she’s trying to hit him or like she just literally like runs at him, and he grabs her and throws her in the furnace.

And she’s burning up. And as she’s burning up, she looks at Alice and says, “Alice, you’ll need my powers.”

And shoots her powers into Alice.

Todd: It’s thoughtful of her, isn’t it?

Craig: It is.

Todd: Right at that moment of death, being consumed by the fire to do that last bit of goodwill.

Craig: It’s stupid of her- Stupid … because her fatal flaw was that Freddy was able to taunt her into drawing somebody else in. So then give that person the ability to draw more people in?

To draw other people in. Like, that doesn’t make any sense.

Todd: Like, let it die with you, Alice. You’re gonna die any- I mean, um, Kristen. You’re gonna die anyway.

Craig: Kristen, let… Right. Right.

Todd: I just like, again, you know that there was no actual writer involved in this when… I’m, I’m backtracking a little bit, but after mom had drugged Kristen-

Craig: Yeah

Todd: she’s like, “In case you haven’t been ke…

Very positive feelings about Hell High, a seemingly-forgotten little gem from 1989. Sure, it’s a bit dumb, even laughably bad at times, but all the other bits fall into place – the cinematography, the score, the acting – to the point where…ya know what? We don’t even care.

We talk about its odd production history (including star Christopher Stryker’s tragic death before release), the bizarrely charming opening trauma, and how the film mashes together slasher tropes with “teens cause a death” and light Last House/I Spit On Your Grave vibes.

From Dickens and his outcast crew to the incoherent football-game detours, swamp “slime” gathering, and a prank that turns into an unsettling assault, we break down the movie’s tonal whiplash and why the inciting incident arrives way too late.

We also cover the rushed revenge ending, the goofy cover-up plan, and the final twist, plus call out Christopher Cousins (Breaking Bad) and Daniel Beer (Creepshow 2).

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Automatic Transcript

Hell High (1989)

Episode 499, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today was my turn to pick, and, uh, this week I found something that kind of dug out from the l- long list I have of ’80s movies that I’ve touched on or heard about somewhere. Somebody might have recommended along the way.

I don’t believe anybody I know has ever recommended this movie to me. Looking at it, I was kind of surprised that I hadn’t really heard of it or seen it, but it’s a 1987… Well, 1989 was when it was finally released, but it was filmed years before that. If you look in Wikipedia, it says 1989. If you look on IMDb, it says 1987.

But actually, it was shot in 1985. So I don’t know, I guess they were splitting the difference somewhere in there because the, one of the stars had died shortly after the movie was completed, I suppose. Anyway, this is Hell High, and, uh, yeah, I had never seen this before. I don’t even think I’d ever seen it on the video store shelves.

How about you, Craig? Did, did this ever cross your path?

Craig: No, I don’t think I’d ever even heard of it before. And, and I don’t know what else to say about it beyond that. It, it was entirely n- I knew nothing about it going in. I mean, it was unfamiliar. I didn’t really recognize any of the people in it or anything.

So I’m always surprised when we come across these ’cause I- Yeah … I always kinda feel like we’ve seen everything at this point.

Todd: We sure do, and yet

Craig: And it’s, right, and yet, and especially something, you know, this is kinda right up our alley. And I’m less surprised when the movies are really, really bad. Like, that doesn’t surprise me so much.

Like, yeah, people don’t really talk about it ’cause it’s so bad, but this movie’s not bad.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I would say it’s, uh, competent and fairly par for the course for the time period. In terms of, like, how well-made it is, I think it’s pretty well-made.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: By comparison, pretty darn good for the time. So I’m, yeah, I was surprised that I had never heard of it before.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if I would ultimately call this movie good, but I think I know what you mean in the sense that, like, we see a lot of trash.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: We see a lot of cheaply shot, amateur kinda stuff, and this movie is… It actually is well-filmed and well-lit and has a story of s- interesting story. You can tell that they’re going for something, uh, pretty typical for the time.

To me, it was almost a combination. I wasn’t sure if they were going for I Spit On Your Grave light. Oh, I wouldn’t say rape revenge, right? Because that’s really not exactly what happens here, but-

Craig: Yeah, but sexual violence type stuff, yeah.

Todd: Exactly.

Craig: Last House on the Left light, huh? Right. Kind of.

Todd: But very light.

But also you kinda cross that with, like, Teaching Mrs. Tingle or, oh, I think of the House on Sorority Row where-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: you know, or even I Know What You Did Last Summer, where some teens are responsible for a death and then end up paying for it in some way. So it’s kinda got both of those elements in it. I just kept getting flashes to those things as we went.

I think the thing that surprised me the most is that this is the director’s… Well, so the, it’s written and directed by the same guy, David Grossman. There’s another writer credited, but he didn’t really do anything else, and David Grossman really didn’t do anything else either, like wrote one other movie, and that was it.

So, like, it’s a one and done for this guy’s directing career as far as we know, and more or less writing career as well. And most of the people in here, acting wise, this is either the only movie they did or the only thing of note that they really did, with a couple exceptions There are a couple people in this cast who went on to very successful careers, and, and one of the stars who’s a little bit older was a, a television actress.

So we’ll talk about them as we come across. It’s just weird because usually with these older movies, a- and we’ve been doing a lot of them lately, it’s like, oh, w- look, you’re seeing this guy before he went on to do all these things, and oh, this director was kinda like their first shot at it, and then they went on to do a few more things.

And this movie isn’t really like that at all, even though it’s a pretty good movie all things considered.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: You know, there’s no reason why probably they couldn’t have used some of this movie to, uh, you know, as part of their resume. I was kind of surprised, but not really, ’cause it’s kinda typical for these movies too.

The shooting was all completed in 18- 1985. I think it took 18 days. The whole movie was edited and everything i- by ’86, but it wasn’t even released until 1989.

Craig: Do we know why? I don’t remember reading why it was delayed so long.

Todd: I wish I could have figured it out, but I couldn’t find any information on that at all.

Craig: I mean, I, I… These things happen. I mean, it, you know, it, it still happens today. Of course. Sometimes movies just get shelved for whatever reason. But like as you mentioned, you know, one of the main guys, I don’t know his name ’cause I didn’t recognize any of these people, uh, the guy who plays Dickens in this movie, a guy named Christopher Stryker.

Todd: Christopher Stryker. What a badass name, by the way. Stryker. Christopher Stryker. What if Curtains… Didn’t Curtains have like a main character’s name was Stryker? I don’t remember. Oh, God. Uh, but this movie remi- no, I, I g-

Craig: I get this movie mixed up with, not mixed up with, but it reminds me of several things. I feel like Curtains may be one of them, Pieces because-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: it’s one of those, it’s one of those typical movies where some traumatic childhood thing is going to lead to trouble later on. But- Yeah … anyway, this young actor, Christopher Stryker, who plays a despicable character, uh, in the movie- Oh,

Todd: yeah

Craig: but, uh, it was kinda tragic because he filmed this and then before its release, uh, so he never even saw it, but before its release he passed away of AIDS. And I, I guess that he was a, a stage actor, and he had, I don’t know if it was on Broadway or, or where, but he had been in a production of Torch Song Trilogy, which is a great gay play.

But yeah, it’s, he, he passed away before it came out, which is too bad.

Todd: That’s awful. 27 years old, right? Like-

Craig: 27, I know …

Todd: Jesus.

Craig: Yeah, it’s sad.

Todd: That was a time.

Craig: I actually found this open- this opening to be really charming.

Todd: It is-

Craig: I thought it w- … in its own way … well, first of all there, you know, the, the title that came up on the version that I watched was Real Trouble.

I guess it was filmed on a, under a couple of different titles. Real Trouble was one of them, and then I guess at the last minute they changed it to Hell High to try to make it kind of a more typical horror title to entice audiences or whatever.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: But then you see this little blonde girl in like a pink baby doll dress.

Todd: Oh my God. That’s so typical.

Craig: And she’s, I don’t know, she’s got like gold ringlet hair, and she’s like skipping down this, uh, dirt road.

Todd: With these white shoes and-

Craig: Yeah, like- Tights … like white patent leather shoes. Right. Like, she looks like a baby doll. And you hear a, a woman’s voice recorded over, “Brooke, don’t you dare go off to the swamp or you’ll get a spanking.”

And then she’s skipping off down the road. It’s so quaint and funny, and it’s all shot like through kind of a dreamy filter I feel like. And then she gets to this old shed that apparently she uses as like a playhouse. It- And she’s got a bunch of dolls in there and stuff.

Todd: This is presumably in a swamp, but it’s really just a field-

with a puddle in

Craig: it. There’s, there’s just something along a dirt road.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. Oh, and there is a puddle.

I forgot this was supposed to be a swamp. Gosh, yeah. That comes in later, too. It’s hilarious. But she hears something, like a motor or something, so she sneaks out the back.

Todd: It’s just like a cartoon, right? There are like two boards that just swing-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: swing open. And just- Yeah … and she just crawls through it, and then peeks through with her big blue, as blue can be, eyes looking right through these, this gap in these boards at what’s gonna happen inside.

Craig: Yeah. And what happens inside is this guy pulls up on a motorcycle with a girl on the back, and they come into the shed, and he throws her violently to the ground and starts-

Todd: Fondling her …

Craig: accosting her. Yeah. Yeah, like he pulls up her shirt and starts fondling her boobs. And she… Like, I, I thought that he had brought her here to like assault her, but apparently this is just how he rolls, I guess?

I know, right? And, and she’s, and she’s like, she’s like, “Knock it off. Not here. This place creeps me out.” And he’s not even nice. It’s so weird

Clip: How can you not feel safe? Come on, we haven’t got all day. I don’t like this place. What’s there not to like? Come on, let’s go. I-

Craig: Oh my gosh. But eventually, I don’t know, she pushes him off, and they, they almost have sex, and the girl’s watching all of this through an enormous crack in the wall, like- Mm-hmm

how they don’t see her, I don’t know. I know. But they leave, and they drive off on the motorcycle, and then they turn around. Like, they had to go up the road to make a U-ey or something. And meanwhile, while they’re doing that, she’s behind the shed with this one little puddle where she, like, scoops up some slime, and when they come driving back down the road, she throws the mud on them-

Clip: Mm-hmm

Craig: and they and they crash. And they crash and somehow both get impaled on different huge spikes that just happened to be sticking out of the ground. I don’t have- I don’t know … any idea what this is. But- But it’s hilarious. It, it’s so funny because, like, they are both just impaled on these huge poles. Oh, and it’s so bloody and gross and she’s just- Oh my God

and she just runs home.

Todd: It’s hilarious because it- you would almost think you’re watching an intentional comedy-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: because of how random this is. By the way, I gotta mention these two, this, this couple here. This guy is a longtime stunt guy. He got started in 1981 on Friday the 13th Part II doing stunts.

Went on to do stunts or be a stunt coordinator on so many popular movies. Sleepaway Camp, Alone in the Dark, The Flamingo Kid, The Money Pit, Angel Heart, Innerspace, Teen Wolf Too, Bull Durham. G- dude, you just read through his entire… JFK. I didn’t know there were stunts in JFK. I guess there were.

Craig: Huh.

Todd: But, like, you read through his entire resume, and it’s insane.

Almost every movie since 1981 that’s had stunts in it, including all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies-

Craig: Wow …

Todd: yeah, this guy has been a stunt, either a stunt performer or a stunt coordinator on. I- incredible. I guess this was one of his first stunts. Getting impaled on this thing. Maybe this is what inspired him.

Craig: That’s funny.

Todd: It’s so charming, though. Like you said, like, everything about this is just uber cute, from the way the girl is dressed to, like you said, this is such a typical start for all these horror movies right now is there’s some traumatic childhood incident that happens. It’s usually sexual in nature, like this one is.

And then the way that they’re just… She just flings mud on them, and it’s enough to kill these guys as they fly off the road into totally random spikes that have no purpose for being there.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Ugh.

Craig: The other thing that I found funny about this, and I didn’t think about- really until later. This causes her trauma and we, we, we skip now to 18 years later where she’s a science teacher, and I’ll come back to that in a second.

But what’s funny to me is that they could have shot this whole opening sequence at any given point with or without the knowledge of the actors in the rest of the movie because it doesn’t really matter. Like, ultimately she gets triggered by something that reminds her of this, and she has flashbacks to it, and she kinda loses her mind because of it.

But it could’ve been anything. Oh, yeah. She could’ve been- It could’ve been- It could’ve been any accident. She could’ve been involved in any kind of violent thing where she was maybe kind of responsible for somebody’s death. Car

Todd: accident.

Craig: Yeah. There’s no real reference to, a- aside from flashbacks, to this scene.

Todd: Yeah, except that the, the teenagers later, and I found this amusing too, when the teenagers eventually wanna go to the swamp, Dickens says, “Hey, let’s go to the swamp tonight.” One guy’s like, “I don’t know, man. That place creeps me out. Those two kids were killed there.” He says, “No, that’s a myth. No kids were killed there 18 years ago.”

Craig: Fair. You’re right, you’re right.

Todd: And I’m like-

Craig: It’s just so, it’s easy to miss that part because it really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, no. Like, it just, it’s, it, it’s any childhood trauma as it always is.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: But yeah. But then, but then we cut to 18 years later and she’s Ms. Brooke Storm now. And she’s a science teacher and she teaches a science class full of 20-something-year-olds.

Douchebags. Douchebags. And they’re all… The first thing that I thought as I was watching this was this woman does not have what it takes to be a teacher. No. She’s not in control of this classroom. These kids are walking all over her. You have to have a certain grit to be a teacher and this woman does not have

Todd: it.

I, I r- I honestly wasn’t sure how this woman made it through the next 18 years of her life the state that she’s in. I mean, they make her out to be the jumpiest, most t- timid, scared, anxious, on edge woman you could imagine. But one thing that I’m not gonna say about this movie is that the dialogue is really quite good and inspired.

Craig: No.

Todd: The dialogue is really silly. While the class is just making fun of her and just seem like, “Oh, man, we have to turn in a test,” and I don’t know, they’re just making a huge deal out of something that they’ve gotta do in every class every day probably because they can harass her I guess. She’s back there yelling at them going- Class,

Clip: you don’t understand learning, do you?

I’m here to help you if you’ll only give me a chance. Biology is important

I’d like to reach you people She’s enough.

Craig: Oh my God.

Todd: Oh, definitely something.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And that’s where we get our first look at, at Stri- I wanna call him Striker now, man, but it’s, uh, Dickens.

Craig: Dickens,

Todd: yeah. Dickens. Charles… Is his name Charles? I don’t… We ne- we never got his first name, did we? He’d just be an unnecessary dick to the teacher, and basically an unnecessary dick through the entire thing.

He’s a-

Craig: Yeah, he’s a douchebag. At first I thought that he was just going to be, like, the class clown, but no, he’s a troublemaker f- for the sake of being a jerk. And-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: he just gets worse and worse as it goes on. Like, here he’s just kinda jerking around in class or whatever, but I don’t know, he’s just openly defiant for no reason.

Like, this poor teacher, again, she’s totally lost the script. Y- when you see a teacher in front of the room having to be like, “Come on, you guys, I’m serious. Really, come on. Calm down.” Like, you- you’ve lost it. Like, you- Yeah … you’ve lost control. It’s over. You may as well just go sit at your desk. She asks him to collect the tests or whatever, which he d- does in a butthole manner, and then he walks up to her.

She’s like, “File the tests,” and he’s like, “Okay.” And he throws them up over his shoulder so they, you know, scatter everywhere. He’s like, “They’re filed.” And she’s like, “I don’t even…” It’s such a stupid standoff. It’s so dumb. And he’s just a, he’s a jerk.

Todd: And you’re right, she has no control.

Craig: She has no control and, and he ends up kind of being the leader of this little group of outcasts, and there’s a girl named-

Todd: At first they called her Elizabeth, but actually they call her Queenie for the…

I guess that’s her nickname, I suppose, Queenie.

Craig: And then there’s a, a heavier set guy that they call Smiler, and they’re kinda this little group of outcasts. And then they immediately kind of take in this other guy named John John, who apparently up until today was a popular jock, but now he’s on the outs.

Do we ever find out why he’s on the outs with the… Why did he get kicked off the football team and they’re all taunting him and calling him a coward? Like, I couldn’t figure that out.

Todd: I never figured it out either, but this school, I, I think this is an aptly titled movie, Hell High. If you went to this school, like, it would be hell.

The coach comes up to him in the hallway and is like, “John John, no one quits the team. You’re a coward, and I expect to see your uniform in my office as soon as possible.” He just tried to quit? Is that what it was?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Maybe they’re calling him a coward because he quit the team.

Craig: I guess. I don’t know.

Todd: I don’t… He’s not the f- quarterback. I mean-

Craig: No, there’s another character who I think his n- his name isn’t Quarterback, but that’s all anybody ever calls him.

Todd: They literally call him the Quarterback a lot. He even calls himself- … the Quarterback at some point or two. He’s a c- he’s an archetype.

Craig: Oh, boy. But, but yeah, there’s some setup, I guess, with the teacher.

I kept calling her Storm, I think.

Todd: Brooke.

Craig: But she gets asked out by the coach, but she’s so jumpy. Like, like you said, like, how is she even- survived life up until this point. She’s so jumpy, she doesn’t know what to do, and then she’s got another lady teacher friend who’s like, “No, seriously, you should go to the football game with him.

You really need to get out more,” which apparently she does.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Eventually, when she does go to the football game, and I don’t wanna skip the next part, but eventually when she does go to the football game, she goes, like, fucking incognito.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I… Like, what was that about?

Todd: Got big old sunglasses on, a big coat.

Craig: She dresses like an old, like she, yeah, like she’s in an old-timey detective movie or something. Mm-hmm. She, like, wraps a scarf around her head and she’s just got sunglasses. Like, oh my God, I didn’t even understand what was happening.

Todd: You would think she’s in the witness protection program or something.

Craig: Yes.

And she’s just sitting there in the bleachers amongst all these other normal people, and she looks like she’s waiting for, like, a drop-off, like somebody’s gonna drop off a briefcase or something. I don’t know. It’s, it’s so weird.

Todd: Well, the coach isn’t even with her. I mean, I guess he’s gotta be in the game, right?

But, like, she’s by herself. Wasn’t, like, a, the best date for her to get out on anyway, I’d suppose.

Craig: But before that, Dickens, he’s just sitting in his car and, and John John, the disgraced football player is, is with him, and eventually they see Brooke, Mrs. Storm, leave and Dickens starts following her. And they follow her home I guess ’cause he’s mad at her because she back-talked him in class or something.

I don’t know.

Todd: He’s, uh, unreasonably mad at her. It’s, he’s just fixated on her, yeah.

Craig: Uh-huh. And they follow her home and then watch her shower. And listen, I’m not a lady so, mm, I don’t know. Maybe showering is a lot more fun and erotic for ladies than it is for dudes.

Todd: If horror movies have led me to believe anything, then yes, this is one of those things.

They… Women spend a lot of time soaping themselves up and they get extreme pleasure from it.

Craig: Yeah, like apparently w- I mean, when I wash my boobs, it doesn’t really do- … much for me, but when, uh, when this lady washes her boobs, man, she really gets into it. And they’re watching through the window like a bunch of couple pervs.

Todd: Not to be a perv, but they’re clearly not hers either. They clearly used a bottled body double for both- Yeah … of the, the little topless scene. And my, I think it’s even the same body double, to be honest with you.

Craig: I, it might be. Uh-

Todd: Yeah, it’s the same set Both times.

Craig: Great boobs.

Todd: Yeah. No, they’re, they are n- whoever they belong to, they’re quite nice.

All natural. I approve. It’s so typical teen movie stuff, right? They’re watching through the window, then they run off and I don’t know. It- like you said, she loves soaping up. She decides to go out with the coach. This neighborhood was interesting, wasn’t it?

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know if the movie was jumping around or if I was not really paying full attention- Oh,

Todd: it

Craig: was

which might be it, because th- th- they’re watching her undress and then she gets a phone call. I don’t remember who the phone call was from. But then all of a sudden, John is by himself driving in this ’80s neighborhood, this ’80s suburb neighborhood.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It made me very nostalgic. It reminded me of, like, ET or something.

When I saw, like, the kids on bikes, I was like, “Oh, what a better time it was.”

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: I, I live in a family neighborhood. I never see kids on bikes. It’s sad.

Todd: Yeah. It’s just not a thing anymore. Westchester County, New York, is where this was filmed, and the homes here at this time, they all kinda look the same, but they’re not like the cookie cutter homes that you see now.

They’re like these two full-on two-story homes that all have this brown wooden siding on them. It’s so interesting. And then he goes to the door. He’s going to pick up Queenie for the, the game, right?

Craig: I guess. I don’t know that we knew this.

Todd: Yeah, ’cause he was, he was asked.

Craig: Okay. All right.

Todd: Yeah, it was just one line where for reasons I don’t understand, Dickens suggested that he pick up Queenie for the, before the game.

And he stands at the door, and he kinda turns around, and he looks at the neighborhood, kinda shakes his head, and goes, “America

Craig: That was weird

Todd: What was that all about? I don’t know. What was he, what was he thinking? I don’t, I don’t know either. Ah, but they’re trying to develop, not really strongly, but a sense of romance between these two.

Or at least he’s clearly into her, she’s clearly into him.

Craig: Several things here. First of all, he goes up and he knocks on her door, fine. But nobody answers, and so he just goes in. Now this happens in movies all the time.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: U- unless it was, like, my parents’ house, I don’t knock on the door and if nobody answers I just go in.

Like … Okay, whatever. Oh. But anyway.

Todd: It’s, it’s one of those movie things, right? It’s just like- Oh … hanging up the phone without saying goodbye, right?

Craig: But he, nobody answers so he just goes in and he opens the door. He’s like, “Hello?” She’s like, “Oh, I’m up here.” And then we cut to her and inexplicably she is in a full leotard and, like, leggings and headband.

Like, she stepped out of a Jane Fonda workout-

Todd: Yeah. …

Craig: into this scene for no reason.

Todd: No, she’s, like, stretching at first. Well, I think the reason is she’s got kind of a halter top. It’s, it’s one of those sort of, like, half leotards, right? It’s got straps that come over th- her shoulders, but then there’s a halter top over it.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And she’s perky. She’s perking out on this one, and I feel like the movie was very gratuitous in that way. And then, uh, she asks him to turn around. “I’m gonna put on a different top,” and when she, he turns back around she’s pulled up her shirt to flash him.

Craig: Ooh, she pulls it up for us. first. And then she says, “Okay.”

Like she tells him, “Turn around, I’m gonna change my shirt,” and he does. And she, then he turns around. She pulls her boobs out and then goes, “Okay.” And he turns around and sh- does she say, “What do you think?”

Todd: Yep.

Craig: And then they just leave? Or does

Todd: she just- They just leave. She says, “Ha ha.” She puts it down and then they go.

Yeah. Oh my God.

Craig: So weird.

Todd: It’s so funny. It’s just, it’s just another excuse to pull these, this set out again. Apparently this actress was supposed to go topless herself, and then she got cold feet last minute, got nervous about the crew being around or something like that, and decided not to do it, so they had to use a body double.

And I guarantee you, same body double they obviously used for the shower scene. But, uh, eh, I don’t mind. Not in the slightest. So it’s the football game. We’ve been in this movie for 20 minutes, right? And nothing- Mm-hmm … terribly significant has happened, but it’s moved along all right. We have an hour left.

It’s not a long movie.

Craig: No, it’s-

Todd: Actually, I think it’s more like an hour and 17 minutes, something like that.

Craig: I was gonna say, if you cut out the opening credits and the end credits, it’s less than an hour, 20.

Todd: Oh yeah, for sure. And Dickens walks in, so like we see the game, right? There, there’s this team playing, and I have to admit, like they did a pretty good job.

Some of these movies with low budgets, it’s almost laughably bad how they try their best to make it look like a crowd and to make the game look like an authentic game. But you can tell it’s just 10 people kinda standing around in uniforms and like a crowd that’s just shot at very close up, just the same eight people sitting in bleachers staring off the camera.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Th- this one at least had some wide shots. It felt like a high school game that was just, I don’t know, more of a scrimmage than a full-on game really, but maybe early season. I don’t know. It, it didn’t come across as the big game that happens at night, but it, I actually thought that this did a better job than most of these low-budget movies of portraying a high school football game.

Craig: I agree with you. It’s just strange because it’s almost like they felt like they had to cobble together the things that you’re supposed to have in this type of movie. Mm-hmm. Because there was no reason for this scene really.

Todd: Right.

Craig: It, it, it’s just kind of a pit stop. The three others aside from Dickens are all there at the game.

The teacher’s there incognito for some reason. The game is happening, and like you said, we see shots of that. But then Dickens arrives- … and I have no idea what was happening in this scene

Todd: There’s just, just for no reason, he- as he’s walking towards the bleachers, he comes across a football player who’s been injured.

Looks like one hell of an injury.

Craig: He looks like he got hit by a car.

Todd: Blood all over him. There’s something’s with his leg. He’s… Nobody else around, right? Like, they just wheeled him out on the, to the edge of the track and just left him there for a while. He- certainly there’s nobody around because Dickens walks up to him and makes some comment to him, and then pulls out the biggest switchblade I’ve ever seen in my life, opens it up, menaces him with it, and then a medic comes by and wheels this kid off, and Dickens puts his switchblade away and then walks on.

Craig: Yeah. Dickens is like, “How’s the leg?” And the guy’s like, “I don’t know, Dickens.” And he’s like, “You- they’re gonna put you under the knife.” And then he pulls out his knife and he’s like, “I want you to think of this knife when you’re…” I’m like, “What are you talking about?”

Todd: Why do you do this to people? What’s wrong with you?

Craig: And then, i- as far as I remember, there is no reference to this ever again. No. I have no idea who that kid was. I have no idea why Dickens is menacing him. I have no idea why this kid got hit by a freight train on the football field. It is so wild. And, and then he just goes up and sits with his friends for a minute- Uh-huh

until he can say, “I’ve got an idea.”

Todd: I also have no idea why that guy was wearing a uniform that was different from all the other players on both, on the other two teams.

Craig: Oh, boy. I didn’t even notice that. I didn’t even notice that.

Todd: He says, “I got an idea.” He wants to go harass the teacher

Craig: Yeah, and that’s kind of the crux of it.

Before they do that, they drive… Well, there’s like a music montage. Again- Yes … it, it, like, feels like-

Todd: Typical …

Craig: well, they’re just, like, piecing together what a teen movie is supposed to be. Mm-hmm. So now there’s this weird music montage where it’s, like, half action shots of the football game, and, like, the coach, like, getting comically frustrated, and then-

Todd: Oh, and Smiler throwing popcorn.

That guy, every time he chucked a handful of popcorn down at somebody down below, I’m like, “There can’t be much left in that bag.” And then when they finally get up to leave, he comes back and dumps, like, a, another full bag of popcorn straight on those people. I was like, “Oh my God.”

Craig: He keeps throwing it at the same two people, and I didn’t understand if this was supposed to be a joke.

Like, it’s these two guys who look almost just alike, and they’re both in, like, black leather jackets.

Todd: Oh.

Craig: I didn’t understand what was happening. Like, I didn’t know if they were supposed to be a stereotype of something or- Hmm.

Todd: A stereotype lost to time.

Craig: Well, I don’t know, but, like, they weren’t small guys, and they were in, like, biker leather.

Like, they should’ve jumped that guy and kicked his butt.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But whatever. Anyway, during this music montage, the other half of it is the four outcasts, I guess, in Dickens’s car, which is a convertible, and they drive out onto the field during the game.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: I thought for sure they were gonna hit one of the players.

Hmm. Like, I thought that was gonna be … It l- it looked like it was being set up that way. Yeah. But instead, John John, the disgraced football player, catches the football and is, like, celebrating with it.

Todd: They drive off.

Craig: And they drive off, and I honestly was perplexed at this- point and I was like, are we supposed to be rooting for these people?

Like, was that- Right … supposed to be like a heroic thing that they just drove out onto the field during a game? I said, i- in my mind I’m like, “‘Cause that doesn’t feel heroic. That feels like a douchebag move.”

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Somebody could have gotten hurt. It’s, it’s very main character energy. Like,

Todd: like- But you’re right.

It’s, it’s like set up very triumphantly.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: Like a, like a, the football player catching the winning pass of the game or something like that. He’s-

Craig: Yeah, like a hero moment. It’s weird.

Todd: Yeah, he’s shot up against the sunlight, you’re absolutely right, and everybody else looks like, oh, shocked. They, they’re shocked and appalled and beside themselves.

Like, he really showed them, didn’t he? The coach is angry. Everyone’s upset because seems like they took the only football they had or something. I don’t know.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: But yeah, h- I’m still waiting for the hell of this high at this point. Like, so much movie has happened, and I’m waiting for the inciting incident.

Craig: Well, and it comes, I guess, but not before… I mean, there are so many- Not before a lot of other stuff … little things like, like I know right after the game, Storm, who’s in disguise, apparently flees the football game. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe she’s with the coach. Maybe the coach drives her home. But they end up at her door and she’s like trying to get in and he’s like, “Oh, can I come in?”

She’s like, “Oh, no, I better not.” And he’s like, “No, really, I wanna come in.” And she’s like, “Oh, no, no, we’ll, we’ll catch up another time.” Like, she’s desperately trying to get away from him and sneak into her house. Which, a- again, I don’t understand. And then he’s like…

Clip: Boy, those kids really let me down. If we’d have won the game, she couldn’t have waited to get me in the sack Those little bastards made me look bad.

They better pray tomorrow never comes

Craig: It was so random. I didn’t know if they were trying to set up a red herring, but it doesn’t make sense to set up a red herring because there’s really no killer to speak of at this point.

Todd: Yeah. A better movie would’ve taken advantage of these situations or just not put them in there at all.

Craig: Y- not put them in there at all, I think. I mean, I guess you kind of have to include Storm, uh, Brooke, whatever her name is, in the narrative to justify her importance later, but it really feels shoehorned in.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And then I didn’t understand at all, okay, so the four of them, the, the four bad kids or whatever, park, I said in the woods, but you reminded me earlier it’s supposed to be a swamp-

and they split up, and I couldn’t figure out what they were doing, but they all have, like, trash bags. And this is clearly not a swamp. Like you said, it’s just, like, a, a field or something, and they must have had to, like, dig little holes that they then filled with I don’t know what it’s, what it really is.

I, I guess they’re supposed to be gathering, like, mud or something. But they’re basically scooping with their bare hands dirty water- … into garbage bags.

Todd: Yes. It’s so con- It’s

Craig: so stupid.

Todd: It’s so stupid. Later he calls it slime And later, it appears green. So I’m thinking that this is just poor production design, honestly.

I think in the script is they go to the swamp to get gross swamp slime, you know- Uh-huh … smelly, nasty. But you’re right. It- they’re scooping dirty water into trash bags, which I don’t know why they had to split up to do this.

Craig: I don’t either.

Todd: I swear every shot is of this, is of a different kid at the very same little puddle.

Craig: Yeah. Sh- like shot to shot, i- in the exact same location as though we’re supposed to believe they’re in different places- Mm … but it’s the same.

Todd: And Smiler just can- can’t stand this. He goes, “Shit, I hate this. I can’t live like this. I can take care of myself.” And then, like, he pulls a doll arm out of there and gets totally freaked out by it and falls backwards.

And there’s a POV at some point. It looks like something unknown might be stalking them, and I’m thinking, “Why?” Like, we know what happened in the swamp. There was nothing supernatural. It was this-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: accident 18 years ago. We know who was involved. There’s nothing. So, like, it’s setting the swamp up to be this scary place with the music and with them, you know, turning around at a sound, and this little POV shot that turns out to be Dickens-

Craig: Uh

Todd: scaring some of the other kids. But again, it’s so unnecessary. It’s just more baffling than anything else.

Craig: Yeah. It’s stupid.

Todd: Almost like you said about the football thing, just stupid. Like, oh, this is how these movies always go. There’s a scary swamp or a scary forest, and there’s something mysterious about it, and so they do this.

But there is nothing mysterious about this place.

Craig: No. John John and Queenie make out for a second in there, and then they get scared by Dickens, but then it’s, it’s pretty inconsequential. I mean, they just needed to be there to get the mud.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And, and then they go off to scare Storm. Now, this is the part of the movie that bothered me.

There are things that I liked about it. They show up at her house, and they put on these masks, and I really liked the design of the masks. Yeah. They were cool. I didn’t read anything about them. I don’t know where they got them.

Todd: They look like they probably came off the shelf somewhere. They’re not, you know-

Craig: Probably

Todd: but they’re cool.

Craig: They’re good, yeah. I mean, one is, like, a scary head with another head, like, eating its way out of it. John John’s is kind of like a jester with, like, kind of a phallic nose. One’s just kind of a devil, I think. But they, they look really good, and they are menacing. But that’s what they’re gonna do.

They’re gonna come scare this teacher, and when they get to her house, John John’s a little nervous about it.

Clip: Look, I don’t wanna do any more than what we talked about, okay? We’re out of our league just by being here. Yeah, right. A little scare, and we’re out of here. The masks are just for protection. It’s not that I’m scared, but she’s real.

This is big-time stuff and real trouble if we blow it. What do you mean she’s real? She’s just another victim And besides, everybody knows you’re just a coward, John John

Craig: Like he’s supposed to have some shred of moral dignity or something. I don’t know. Yeah. Um, but anyway, they do it anyway, and they climb up on her roof, stomp and make a lot of noise to scare her And she is very scared, as I can only imagine you would be.

Now, as a teacher myself, I think my first thought would be, “Oh, it’s probably kids messing with me,” but I would still be scared.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And that’s not okay. And like I have told… I do, I teach high school, and kids, you know, can be kind of stupid. There was one year that their senior prank was that they all took sleeping bags and slept on the lawn of one of the other teachers, a, a, a young, popular teacher.

Uh-huh. And they were telling, they were telling me about it the next day and I said, “That’s hilarious. If you did that at my house, I would call the police.” Like,

Todd: I,

Craig: I seriously, seriously doubt that there are any teenagers listening to this podcast right now, but if you are, do not with your teachers outside of school.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: They are just normal people, and they don’t want you m- hanging around- … outside their house, outside of school hours. I would call the police.

Todd: Let alone dancing on their roof.

Craig: Yeah, and, and, and it goes, it goes even beyond that because, I don’t know, I think she calls somebody. There, there’s kind of a break in it.

Todd: At first, you know, they’re dancing on her roof. That’s freaking her out, ’cause we already know she’s just a neurotic mess. Then they toss that slime on her window-

Craig: Right …

Todd: which makes her distraught and pleading. Now, look, this was his grand plan? We’re gonna dance on her r- on her roof and we’re gonna throw slime on her window?

It seems like that was his main plan. At least that’s what he- I

Craig: don’t

Todd: know … comes up with with the kids, right? But it seems to imply that he knows that this slime is gonna affect her. You know what I mean? Because we know her history.

Craig: Right.

Todd: That she had that accident, and it was some of that slime that she threw on the bikers that caused that accident.

But he doesn’t know that. Nobody knows that.

Craig: No, no.

Todd: So it’s just a coincidence-

Craig: Right …

Todd: that he picked for his plan the exact thing that was probably gonna freak her out the most.

Craig: Right.

Todd: So I thought that was a little dumb.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And you’re right, I, I don’t know if she called anybody or if this was just her friend coming by to see how the date went.

Craig: I think that’s, I think that’s what it is. I mean, it, it bothered me. Okay, so they dance on her roof and that scares her, and she’s like having flashbacks to the opening scene when she accidentally killed those people, and she’s like really freaking out. They take a break and like have a five-minute conversation on her roof.

I was like, “What are you doing?” Yeah. “This isn’t even good pranking. Like, you need to get out of there. Like, surely the police would be coming or something.”

Todd: They think it’s great, though. Like, one of the chara- one of the guys goes, “I have to give it to you, Dickens. You sure came up with a good one tonight.”

And I was like, “It’s so s-” I know, it’s so

Craig: stupid. No. It’s so

Todd: dumb.

Craig: And I, okay, I get it, it’s just mud or slime or whatever. That’s vandalism. Don’t- Vandalize people’s homes

Todd: We sound like, we sound like- It’s

Craig: horrible.

Todd: We sound like the most upright, we sound like the Upright Citizens Brigade here. Don’t vandalize people’s stuff.

Don’t.

Craig: Come on. Somebody’s gonna have to clean that up. And- A- and after they take their little break, that’s where they start sliming the house, and then she, like, opens the door and she’s freaking out, and somebody dumps a big garbage bag full of slime right on her- On her,

Todd: on her

Craig: head. She, she’s looking up screaming, mouth wide open, and she just gets a bag full of slime just all over her, and then she goes back in.

Now, you said you thought that this was Dickens’ plan all along. I think that this was part of his plan all along, but I also think that he had planned all along to assault her.

Todd: You think so?

Craig: Yeah. I don’t think that the rest of them were in on that. In fact, I don’t think the rest of them really knew what was happening.

Mm-hmm. Um, after, after they threw all the gunk at the house and on her, they ran off, but apparently only three of them, all of them except Dickens, ran to the house. Oh,

Todd: that’s right.

Craig: And, and they’re confused. They’re like, “Where is he? What’s going on?” Meanwhile, we see that he’s breaking into her house. I- in fact, that happened during the, the big attack.

Yes. Like, while they were all throwing slime, she was standing at her locked door, and Dickens broke in and, like, reached for her. And again, I’m thinking, “Okay, fine, the masks and the stomping. Okay, fine, the th- the mud or whatever.” But no, you don’t break someone’s window and try to grab the… Now we’re talking about breaking and entering, and assault, and-

Todd: Yeah.

I did think at some point this was gonna turn out to be one of these home invasion movies, you know? With the masks and everything, and him breaking his way in. But actually, he runs off at this point because that’s when Brooke’s friend comes over.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And she reaches in through the broken window, and she doesn’t do her any favors, this woman.

Like, “Oh, you’re gonna be fine. Don’t worry.” It’s like she doesn’t even realize that th- all this went down.

Craig: I know. She’s like, “It’s probably just some kids.”

Todd: Just some kids.

Craig: Mean- meanwhile, listener, don’t forget that her friend is covered head to toe in swamp muck.

Todd: Like, yeah. She just helps her wipe it off and s- and gives her a Quaalude.

Craig: Puts her in bed and gives her a Quaalude. “

Todd: It’s gonna be fine.” Her friend’s like, “No, no, no, no.” And she’s like, “No, it’s okay. Tr- trust me, like, all the kids do them. You know, just here, take this. It’ll help you calm down. I’ll just come back in the morning and check up on you, all right? Believe me, everything’s gonna be fine.”

And just leaves her like an asshole. Oh my God. By the way, we now only have 35 minutes left in this movie. Again, this is a significant event, but we are, we are over two-thirds of the way through this film and we’re just now getting to this.

Craig: And this is… Yeah.

Todd: If I hadn’t been tracking the time ’cause I just had it up on my screen the whole time, I wouldn’t have been as puzzled.

I would’ve thought, “Okay. Well, it took a while to get to it, but we got this. Now we got a lot of movie left.” There is not a lot of movie left after this.

Craig: Mm-mm.

Todd: Everything just happens very quickly from here on out.

Craig: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and there’s quite a lot of it. I mean, it, it also takes a weird turn here where Dickens breaks back into the house and starts molesting her.

Now, this Quaalude ha- I don’t know anything about Quaaludes. I, I think of the ’70s when I think of Quaaludes. Yeah. But I, I, I think that they were or, or have historically been used as date rape drugs sometimes, and, and she’s out of it, and Dickens is gross, and he’s, like, molesting her. Yeah. Like, playing with her boobs and, and rage-talking at her, and it’s all very misogynistic and gross, and, like, he’s gonna get her back for what she did, and it, it’s all disgusting.

And at some point, they … The, the rest of them are in the, in the car. The other two boys are like, “Send…” They send the other girl, they send Queenie to look for him. It, it’s like they’re joking about it. Like, Smiler’s like, “You never know what that Dickens is getting up to.” Like, this isn’t a funny joke. Like, he’s, he’s accosting her.

It’s disgusting. And then when Queenie shows up, she walks in as he’s, like, fondling this unconscious or semi-conscious woman, and she kind of chastises him a little bit but doesn’t really make that big a deal out of it, and then she starts molesting the teacher. This was so weird. I know. This whole part was very strange, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

And when she is… Like, she pushes Dickens off the lady, and then she’s, like, fondling her and stuff, and she’s like, “Oh, do you like it? Do you l-” She’s asking Dickens, like, “Does this turn you on?” And it does, and then he gets back in on it, and then he liter- I, I think that he says that he’s going to rape her, and it appears that he’s about to when the other two boys walk in and have to interrupt it again.

And it was all much darker and, I don’t know, it felt a little uneven-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: at this point. I’m like, “What kind of movie is this? I don’t understand.”

Todd: You remember that other movie we saw with the monkey that went nuts, and it was the Italian director?

Craig: Primal Rage?

Todd: Primal Rage, remember? Where it’s a lot like this, too, where there’s-

Craig: Yeah

Todd: there- there’s a lot of goofiness and hijinks and cartoon characters, and then suddenly you get this extremely dark assault.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: And it’s, it just really comes out of left field, and it casts a little bit of a cloud over every- you know, the whole movie at that point.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: Yeah, it was weird, and I wasn’t…

You know, it’s just these characters feel so unreal, and everything they’ve been doing l- is such a eye-rolling, groaning up u- to this point that when it goes to this level all of a sudden, you’re right, it’s just off tonally. It just totally changes.

Craig: Well, and it seems like it’s approaching it with a little bit of dark humor, and I don’t know if there’s an audience for that, but I’m not it.

Like, I- Yeah … I just never find any kind of humor, dark or otherwise, in this kind of violence and assault. It’s not funny to me. I don’t… And again, maybe that’s just a matter of taste, but I don’t like it, and it was off-putting to me.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: Now we got all these kids back in the room with her. We see, we the viewers, the camera sees that Brooke has regained consciousness and she’s kind of opening her eyes and her eyes are fluttering around.

While the kids are arguing about what to do next, she jumps out of bed and throws herself out the window, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre style, through the glass of the second story window, I think. And, and they see her down on the ground, and Smiler goes out there and checks her pulse, says, “She’s dead.” Yeah.

And then they have to figure out what to do. Like, they drive away at first, and then Dickens is driving the car and he pulls over and is like, “We have to have a plan. This is gonna ruin our lives.” And he somehow convinces them, I don’t know, he convinces them that they have to cover it up somehow.

Todd: They have to frame somebody else for it.

Craig: They have to frame somebody else.

Todd: And who are they gonna frame? I don’t know, let’s just frame the quarterback of the- The quarterback … of the football team.

Craig: Why not?

Todd: Right? ‘Cause John John used to be on the team, so he can go to the diner where they all eat afterward the game, he knows they’re gonna be there, and get something from the quarterback that they can plant in her house.

So then John John proceeds to do this in the worst possible way, the stupidest way possible. He sneaks up into the parking lot. They can see through the window, and it, it looks like there’s the table the quarterback’s eating at. One of his buddies keeps kinda looking out the window like he’s kinda wondering what, what’s going on out there.

But he manages to successfully get his letter jacket from the car, and it’s like, okay, then run away. But he decides he’s gonna slash his tires first. That didn’t make any sense.

Craig: No. I didn’t get it.

Todd: And then when he leaves, instead of just sneaking out, he peels out fast, which then raises the suspicions of the guys inside, and who’s like, “Oh my God, that’s Dickens’ car.

We need to follow him.” And they see the tires are slashed, so they get on the motorcycle and they f- and they chase after him.

Craig: Why? Why are they chasing him?

Todd: I don’t know. They have no idea, right? They don’t know what’s going on. They… There’s no need. There’s no need for this. I

Craig: mean, it’s fine. Like, I, I… It’s fine that they are the popular football players and they don’t like Dickens, ’cause they don’t even know it’s John John driving.

They think it’s Dickens driving. It’s fine that they, like, are high school rivals or whatever, but why are they chasing him? Like-

Todd: They have no motivation.

Craig: No, it doesn’t make any sense.

Todd: So Dickens’ car peeled out of the parking lot, so what? Like, they don’t know what’s going on.

Craig: Right I mean, it’s just to motivate a chase scene.

Mm-hmm. And a completely unnecessary chase scene that goes nowhere.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: They chase him on the motorcycle down the dark highway, and eventually he does a U-ey in the highway and somehow makes them crash the motorcycle, which explodes.

Todd: It blows up spectacularly.

Craig: A huge explosion.

Todd: Yeah. Okay. I

Craig: mean, it was good.

It was a good explosion.

Todd: Didn’t make sense, but yeah, it was a good explosion. And-

Craig: And then we never see those people again, I don’t

Todd: think … but we know they’re fine. I guess they, they end the chase there. But now this guy’s left this huge trail of suspicion behind him. I mean, my God, this is… This really ruins your plan.

But back in the house, Dickens is arguing with everyone. Queenie eventually storms out, and she-

Craig: The house, right? They’re just… They’re hanging out at the dead woman’s house-

Todd: Yeah … which

Craig: I thought was sus, but whatever …

Todd: does- didn’t make sense either. You’d think they’d wanna be gone.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Who knows if her friend’s gonna come back.

You know, you never know.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And then we see Brooke’s eyes open. I thought he checked her for dead. Guess he didn’t do a good job. Yeah,

Craig: well, he is kind of a big dumb-dumb, so maybe he doesn’t really know how to check a pulse. I don’t know, ’cause presumably this is, I… This is not intended to be a supernatural deal, right?

Like- Right,

Todd: yeah. I don’t think so …

Craig: she just was not dead, and now she’s alive, right.

Todd: And, you know, the movie cinematically does a good job of all this. I mean, you can see the anticipation when the camera kinda starts from far away and slowly dollies across the grass and into her face. You’re like, “Oh, God.

Her eyes are gonna open.”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And, and they do. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s very typical, but it’s al- Like you said earlier, it’s very well done And I also really liked the fact that a lot of this took place outside, and it wasn’t so muddy dark that you couldn’t see what was going on.

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: yeah. Nor was it so well lit it didn’t seem like darkness at all.

It, it was really nice in that way. And I don’t know, uh, we might have been watching, like, a remastered copy. Maybe if we saw this on VHS it would’ve been dimmer, but it was really nice. And so now it, like I s- like we said, it, it kind of almost becomes like I Spit On Your Grave or Last House On The Left.

Craig: But it all happens so quickly. Oh, yeah. Like, it, it, it really seems like this should’ve been the most of the movie.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: But they just have to wrap it up in, like, 10 minutes.

Todd: 15 minutes. We have 15 minutes left and, like you said, like five minutes of that is end credits. This should’ve happened in the first act.

This should’ve been the end of the first act.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And instead, this is the tail end of the movie.

Craig: And it’s relatively anti-climactic because we see her wake up, and then Dickens gets in a fight with Queenie and sends her outside. The, as soon as she gets outside she hears from the woods, “Help me. Help me.”

So she walks out into the woods. We get the classic j- just shot of her face. “Oh, it’s you.” Right. “

Todd: Oh,

Craig: thank God you’re okay. Come on, let’s go back to the house. I won’t let that guy hurt you anymore. We’ll get you help.” And then she gets her face smashed in with a rock. Right. The, the teacher, who is all bloody now and just in…

Like, like you said, it feels like I Spit On Your Grave ’cause she’s just in her underthings. Like, you know, she’s in, like, panties and, like, a camisole or something, and she’s all beaten up and bloodied. And she hits that girl and kills her presumably. Mm-hmm. And then John-John gets back and he hears a woman’s voice from the woods, and he thinks it’s Queenie so he goes out there.

He gets hit in the head with a rock-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: and falls down a hill. And, I mean, anybody who’s over the age of five knows that he’s not dead obviously.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But then we have to deal with the other two who are still in the house. So we just get a random shot of her bloody hand grabbing a pencil- … and a comically large knife.

Todd: From a drawer that is lit on the inside.

Craig: Specifically just those two things.

Todd: Yeah. It’s very giallo.

Craig: Yeah. And then we cut back to the boys. Smiler at this point is kind of freaking out and because he’s freaking out I guess his, he gets the tummy rumblings, and he has to go to the bathroom. So he goes up s- he goes, he walks up the stairs where he’s immediately stabbed with a pencil through the temple.

And then with the pencil in his temple he waddles back down the stairs and collapses at the foot of them, and then to she- Does she jump down the stairs on top of Dickens?

Todd: She just comes down screaming, like Psycho style. And, you know, Dickens wanders over to see what’s going on with Smiley, and she comes r- screaming down the stairs with a knife and immediately pins him to the wall.

And he’s- Yeah … and he’s gone just like that.

Craig: No, he’s not dead.

Todd: Pinned to the wall, I guess.

Craig: Because then, big twist, John’s not dead, and he wakes up and he comes back in. And oh my God, this makes no sense. Then we see the teacher looking at a medical book-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: with a scalpel. What the f-

Todd: I think this is all supposed to call back to that first scene in the beginning of the movie, including the, the number two pencil.

You remember at the very beginning, the, um- Oh,

Craig: yeah …

Todd: what’s-his-name makes a comment about why we always have to use a number two pencil, and someone says, “‘Cause it’s the hard lead.”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And, and this, they were, I think, dissecting. They were showing the anatomy of a frog. They had just dissected a frog. I think their whole test was to identify the body parts, and so this is supposed to call back to that.

But it’s dumb, right? This isn’t, like, part of her history. This is just something that recently happened.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So this isn’t a very elegant thing for her to do. But anyway.

Craig: It makes sense, I guess. She has him tied up to the heat, kinda like a frog would be pinned down. That, that

Todd: makes sense. Yeah. But, but I mean, again, i- if this called back to her childhood, that would be different as far as I’m concerned.

‘Cause, you know, the whole notion, right, is that she’s regressing or something like that ’cause she’s going crazy. ‘Cause she’s saying things like, “You should never have hurt my dolly,” and- Yeah,

Craig: like, she thinks that this is the guy that she killed before.

Todd: Mm-hmm. “You should’ve stayed in the swamp where I left you.”

Just as she’s about to cut into Dickens, I think she cuts into his shoulder, John John leaps in, and they have an extremely brief altercation, and she falls to the ground.

Craig: He knocks her out, right.

Todd: Yeah. Well, sort of. Yeah, he knocks her out. He lets Dickens out, and Dickens gets mad and he’s like, “I’m gonna kill her,” and he runs to leap on her.

Craig: This was hilarious.

Todd: Oh my God. This was so funny.

Craig: Like, flying leap. He’s like, “I have to kill her.”

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Flying leaps. She’s on the ground. He flying leaps over the couch, knife in hand. She, while he is midair, wakes up, grabs a fireplace poker, puts it upright so that he impales himself on the fireplace poker, but still manages to land directly on top of her in exactly the correct position to slit her throat.

Todd: Oh, it’s so clunky and unbelievable.

Craig: So then they’re both laying there dead. And John-John just grabs the letterman’s jacket, throws it over the top of them, and leaves. This is hilarious to me. Yeah. Like, evidence. Like, like, the, oops, the killer just accidentally left his letterman’s jacket thrown over the bodies.

Todd: Oopsie.

Craig: Oh my God. Yeah. So funny.

Todd: And of course, we still have a few minutes left, so John-John is going a little nuts. He’s just paranoid, I think, and he’s staring at an empty, you know, at the, at the fuzz on the TV for a while. And the next day at school he can’t concentrate, and the teacher’s telling him he needs to look up at her, look up at her, look up at her.

And the police show up at the school.

Craig: And he’s all paranoid like they’re coming for him.

Todd: They just walk into the classroom, pick up the quarterback, walk out, and take him into the car down below and drive off. Like, this, these things, I’m sure that’s exactly how they go. Uh, what I loved though was how the quarterback reacted to all this.

As he’s being dragged off he’s like, “Hey, what are you doing? I’m on the football team.” I’m the quarterback. I’m the damn quarterback. Like, “Oh, sorry sir.”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: John John screams

Craig: Yeah, he freaks out

Todd: His screams echo through the hallways and all the way outside. He’s gonna be tormented forever, and that’s the ending.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Ooh, what a lot of fun this movie was.

Craig: It, it was fun in a weird way. Like- Yeah … in a weird way it was kinda fun. Like, it was so random and such a hodgepodge of different things, but it was watchable.

Like, it was 100% watchable, I think.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: You’re right that it was slow, and then the last act is so rushed, but for whatever reason, I was engaged in it. Now to be fair, I, I was probably looking at my phone. At one point, I looked, I looked at the, I looked at the screen and I had no idea what was going on.

And I realized that I had been looking at my phone, like, trying to figure out what I wanted for dinner. Like, I was on, like, the Domino’s app- … like, seeing if they had any deals, and then I looked up, I’m like, “Wait, I don’t know what’s happening.” And so I had to rewind it, like, a couple of minutes. Sure. So I suppose you could kind…

Your mind could wander, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter. Eh, I don’t know. It, it’s not a good movie, but it’s far from bad. And if you just need something to pu…

This week, we discuss Craig’s pick, A24’s 2024 horror film Heretic, noting its strong reviews, the writers’ long theology research, and how it rewards rewatching.

We praise the film’s claustrophobic, dimly lit first half as Hugh Grant’s Reed lures Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) into a polite but escalating philosophical trap, using arguments against religion while the women prove smart and resourceful.

We debate plot contrivances, Reed’s improvised psychopathy, and the intentionally ambiguous ending that raises existential questions without taking a firm stance.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/07/heretic-poster.jpg

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Automatic Transcript

Heretic (2024)

Episode 498, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, this week, Craig, was your choice, and you chose a pretty modern film, 2024’s Heretic, which was actually pretty well-reviewed when it came out. I think it’s got a seven on IMDb. It’s got at least 80 or 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. And, uh, it was done by the same guys who did another movie or two that people were pretty impressed with, which was A Quiet Place- Mm-hmm

I believe. And we also did Haunt in 2019, and I think we enjoyed that one quite a bit, if I remember correctly.

Craig: I think so, yeah.

Todd: But he- they’ve done quite a few other things. The Boogeyman. I don’t know. The Quiet Place really took off, right? But I think they only did the screenplay and story for the original.

Craig: Yeah. They were writers on it, I think.

Todd: So, uh, Heretic, I had actually seen this twice before . I don’t remember why. When we org- when you originally brought this up, I thought we had done it on the podcast ’cause normally I just don’t watch horror movies until… unless we’re gonna do them for the podcasts these days.

And, uh, it must have been somebody who really wanted to see this with me. So we, uh, took a look at it, and I saw it and, and, I don’t know, maybe went back to see it again with somebody else. I, I enjoyed the movie, and I was really happy to watch it the second time around. Even though it has twists and turns in it, I think it was the kind of film that w- works even better on a second viewing once you kinda know where it’s going because it gets a little heady at times.

And so it’s good to have the second opportunity to go through it again with a more critical eye and kinda decode the messages that it’s trying to say because the, the writers of this movie really took, took their time with it. I think they said that they worked for about 10 years on the screenplay just because they were doing, uh, research on theology and stuff like that and really wanted to make it deep, so.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Here we are, Heretic, starring Hugh Grant as well. How about you? Why did you recommend this? I assume you’d seen it before?

Craig: I had seen it before, and I don’t remember when, but it’s been a while. I would say at least a year, if not more. And I don’t remember when I saw it the first time if I knew anything about it.

I maybe had seen a trailer, but I, I just remember that when I watched it, I thought, “Oh, this would be a really good one to talk about on the podcast.” And I may have mentioned it at some point, but we never got around to it, and I kinda forgot about it, and that happens all the time.

Todd: Mm.

Craig: But, uh, I was looking for something to watch, and I stumbled across it again, and we needed something to watch, and, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about- Yeah

for a variety of reasons. But it’s funny because you… When, when I brought it up, you’re like, “Haven’t we already done that?” And the more I thought about it, I was like maybe we did, but we didn’t, I don’t think.

Todd: It’s not coming up on my search.

Craig: No. I, I th- I think maybe part of the reason that I thought that we had is because after this movie was over, I feel like I thought about it a lot.

Mm. And so maybe that translates into memory of talking about it. But that’s one of the things that I like about this movie, and it’s an A24 movie, right?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, you know, A24 is getting really big, and, and they’re kinda branching out and doing different things, but my experience with them has been really positive.

I tend to really like the stuff that they put out because it’s unique and interesting and often unexpected. The stories themselves or, or twists in the stories often take me by surprise, which is refreshing. They’re entertaining, and they’re well made, which is the most important. You know, those are the most important parts, but they also tend to make me think more than your typical fare.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I don’t need tha- And I don’t need that all the time. I don’t need horror movies or movies in general to really make me think. In fact, sometimes I don’t want that. No, right. Sometimes I’m going, sometimes I’m going to movies specifically so that I don’t have to think, especially about serious things.

But occasionally, and when it’s done well, I like it, and this is one of those cases.

Todd: Yeah. A24 reminds me of what the film industry kinda used to be like. particularly in the ’70s, right, when it was really exploding with a lot of experimental movies and a lot of independent cinema that made it to the big screen.

Like, the, the movie-going audience had a lot to choose from, and this was sort of before the age of the blockbuster, right? So nowadays, the studio model seems to be let’s invest a lot of marketing and money into these huge tentpole films that are almost guaranteed successes- Mm-hmm … so that we can stay afloat and y- and then fund, you know, the smaller movies as well.

But, but they seem to do less and less of funding smaller movies, and they just wanna go from tentpole to tentpole. It’s like the book industry. I read that at one point, and I think it’s still true today, that it’s really the blockbuster authors that float Every major publishing house. But publishers, editors then, you know, take that money and they turn around and, and invest it in taking chances on newer authors.

Sure. That’s what editors pride themselves in doing. Whereas the movie industry s- I- seems to be veering away from that model. Anyway, it’s a lot more expensive nowadays to make movies, and it’s harder to get them distributed if you’re not a big, giant studio, and movie theaters basically just show the big studio films and are not gonna take a chance on some indie production.

The days of sh- you know, shooting your movie with your friends and shopping around to movie theaters and drive-ins and stuff are over. So, you know, that’s kinda changed the kind of films that we get, and so it’s really neat to see a studio like A24 get well-known for doing these kind of movies that are just off the beaten path.

They’re unique, like you said. It seems like they take a lot of chances on really odd, interesting, bizarre, fun material. You kinda know you’re guaranteed to get a film like this. You may not like it, it may not be successful, but God, they’ve had a lot of hits.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And this is just exactly the kind of film that they make.

I mean, when you’re open up an A24 movie, this is exactly the kind of movie you’re hoping to get, I think.

Craig: You … Well, I, I think part of the fun of it is that you never really know what you’re gonna get. This movie surprised me in several ways. I, i- in fact, in at least one way, to me, it kind of feels like two different movies.

The first half and the second half feel like very different kinds of movies, and I like them both, and, and the transition is interesting, but I think that’s … Whether or not the balance works, I, I think is a good point for debate. But you mentioned the directors. I don’t remember who. I- it’s a team, a writing and directing team, and I don’t remember which one of them it was, but one of them was inspired to think about this story by the death of his own father.

And when his father passed away, uh, you know, and, and he was an adult, it, of course, made him start having, like, existential thoughts about life and death and, and belief and faith and, and what happens to us after we die and, and all that stuff, and he wanted to take kind of a serious approach. He wanted to approach the idea of religion and faith and death and the afterlife, he wanted to approach it in a serious way, but in a horror movie.

I don’t know. You know, i- in terms of … You, you mentioned before, like, I don’t remember even exactly the context of what you were talking about, but you s- you said something about, like, what the movie has to say or what these types of movies have to say. I don’t know if I walk away from this movie feeling like it really has a strong message one way or the other It almost presents itself like an existential puzzle.

Yeah. It, it’s more … I, it, it … To me, it feels more about presenting questions- Than providing answers … than about positing a lot of answers. Right.

Todd: Yeah. I think it’s deliberately vague in the end, and I feel like that’s just as well. Some people might call it cop-out, I suppose. But I don’t know, these movies about kind of a crazy person or crazy religious person, they don’t tend to do themselves many favors if they try to land one way or the other on some religious debate.

Like, what is the meaning of life? Does God exist? You know, that kind of thing. So much easier to just be like, “Well, this is this one unhinged person’s perspective,” and you can just leave it at that because it’s a horror movie. We’re, we’re, we’re looking at what he does with who he is in- instead of necessarily solve those questions.

It’s not really the forum for that I think.

Craig: Yeah. A- and, and to, you know, talk about crazy people or, or, or zealots or crazy religious people or people who are trying to answer these big questions about God and faith and, and life and death and all of those things, that is kind of a stock-type character, but that’s one of the many ways that this movie subverts things for me.

Because Hugh Grant, they wrote this movie at least in part with Hugh Grant in mind because they had seen, he had said somewhere in an interview that he feared falling into a particular niche or, or category and, and being typecast. And, and there was a period in his career where he was doing very, very well, uh, you know, professionally and financially, but I, I don’t think that he really was thrilled doing all of those rom-coms in the ’90s.

Todd: Mm.

Craig: So they wrote this with him in mind and, and he was a little … I wouldn’t say that he was reluctant to take it based on what I read, but he was … There was a lot of conversation that was had, and he had a lot of input before he finally decided to take it, and he did. But Hugh Grant is really charming and really charismatic and handsome, and his character is also Clearly really smart and well, I don’t know if well-educated is the right word, but well-read.

You know? Like, he kinda knows what he’s talking about. And, and we’re, we’re jumping the gun, but as an antagonist, which he seems to be, you- I found myself not necessarily agreeing with him, but z- like seeing his point of view. He, he, he wasn’t just a bad guy. He is a bad guy n- no question, but, uh, a- an interesting one.

And another way, I don’t know. I don’t think that this subverted any expectations for me, but it would’ve been easy. The, the movie focuses on these two young women. Everybody, the three main characters, none of them are given first names. Hugh Grant’s name is Reed, Mr. Reed, and the girls’ names are Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, who are Mormon missionaries, and they’re, they’re going door to door to spread the word or whatever.

Sister Barnes is played by Sophie Thatcher, who I’m a huge fan of. I mean, she’s really establishing herself as a scream queen in the genre right now. She’s done a lot of big budget movies. She is in the, the Showtime series Yellowjackets, which is a really good show, and she’s… It’s a great show and a great ensemble cast, but she’s a highlight.

And then Sister Paxton is played by a girl named Chloe East, who I don’t really know a whole lot about But she’s great in this movie too. It focuses primarily on these three core characters, and they’re just all really good. They’re all played really well. It’s shot really well. It’s directed really well.

But it would’ve been easy and stupid for them to make these girls, uh, stereotypical.

Todd: Uh-huh.

Craig: I- either as Mormons. They even talk about… They, they mention the, the South Park guys’ musical Book of Mormon and- Mm-hmm … you know, are kind of concerned that that might be people’s perception of them. I don’t think that the, the filmmakers had any interest in belittling or making fun of Mormons, and I think that that’s kind of l- for whatever reason, maybe it has to do with the South Park guys’ musical, but it seems like that’s kind of low-hanging fruit.

And the approach to these young women, not only do they seem kind and, and respectful and, and courteous and, and all of those things, but they’re smart and, and resourceful. Though Mr. Reed ultimately challenges their faith, it doesn’t seem to be an attack on any particular faith or denomination, and I appreciated that too.

Todd: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of space in this movie for us to really dive too deep into their characters. A lot of it is dialogue between them and him, and not much of it gets terribly personal. It’s mostly philosophical, and then by the end of the movie, it’s just them trying to survive. I wouldn’t say that I feel like these are two…

Maybe the diversity here comes from the fact you have two different girls. You know, they’re not alike. They’re alike in the fact that they’re Mormon and they’re missionaries and they’re believers, but they seem to have different approaches and different, like, levels of faith. And I feel like Sister Paxton is the person who’s painted as the, what you might call stereotypical Mormon.

She’s just very, very full of faith, very full of positivity. She doesn’t seem to question too much. She seems to be really toeing the line quite nicely. N- not to say that this isn’t genuine, I’m just saying that that’s just who she seems to be. Super polite even when she shouldn’t be and all that gets her into trouble.

I feel like Sister Barnes is the one who seems a little more She’s clearly has her faith. She clearly does believe in God. She’s not as willing, as you would think, to question it so much, but she’s got a little bit more of an edge to her. She seems, in my mind, to be just a little more thoughtful, maybe a little more intelligent than the other girl.

Craig: Uh, I don’t know if I’d say that. I- All right … I would say it’s a, a difference between kind of naivete and being worldly-wise. Like- Maybe

Todd: that’s it … S-

Craig: Sister Paxton has been raised in the church, and it- True … it appears, it appears that her experience is somewhat limited to that experience, whereas Sister Barnes was not raised in the church.

I, I think her mother died, I think. Yeah. Or, or her da- One of her parents died, and I think she and her dad, she said that they auditioned a bunch of different churches- Mm … before they finally landed on Mormonism. So not only is she relatively new to the faith, but she’s been through some difficult things in her life.

And sh- before picking this faith, she kind of educated herself in, in other faiths, too. So it’s set up, it seems like in the beginning, that they are trying to paint Sister Barnes as being the one who’s kind of questioning the faith. Like, Sister Paxton seems like she’s completely resolute in her faith, but it seems like they’re setting Sister Bar- Sister Barnes up to be more of a questioning person.

Yeah. But I think that’s a little bit of a mislead. Yeah. I don’t think that it’s necessary… I don’t think that it’s that she doubts her faith.

Todd: No.

Craig: It’s just that she’s She is somebody who questions, and that’s not a bad thing

Todd: Yeah, and I- my shortcut for that is I think she’s just smarter about it, I think is what I say.

And I mean, look, you know, you’re, we’re all products of our upbringing, and sometimes w- we just have a certain naivete just because we don’t know any better. We’ve never been exposed to anything else. And so a person who’s naturally been a little more worldly or come to the faith of their own volition, like you said, after searching, and has had all these other experiences and has had ways of thinking, you know, outside of God and, and that sort of stuff, is definitely going to have, I think, a much more naturally balanced perspective on everything than a person who was raised in it and hasn’t known any different.

And so I guess, you know, saying she’s more intelligent is just, is maybe not accurate. It… What I mean to say is she’s more worldly, and I think she has more to pull from when it comes to reasoning these things out and her pers- and a perspective.

Craig: It’s interesting, though, because I think that it almost feels like we’re set up to view Sister Paxton that way.

Todd: Mm.

Craig: Sister Barnes is the tough one. She’s the one who’s on her toes. She seems to be a little bit more well-read, more educated, more worldly wise, and Sister Paxton appears to be the kind of doe in the headlights. She’s, she’s usually taking her lead, taking her cue from Sister Barnes. But I think that that’s intentional so that they can-

Todd: Switch it around?

Craig: surprise us later. To, not necessarily switch it, but I mean, without spoiling anything, Sister Paxton is not stupid.

Todd: Right.

Craig: And, you know, she may not be as well-read, but she’s not incapable. She’s not dumb. She’s not incapable of figuring things out, and when necessary, she’s not incapable of taking care of herself.

Correct. And, and that was one of the ways that it kind of subverted my expectations, and it comes at a moment. There was one particular moment in the movie that really took me by surprise. Mm. And it kind of had to do with that revelation. But that’s really getting ahead of ourselves. I guess we should say, you know, we’re introduced to these girls.

They seem very, very nice. Sister Paxton, the only thing that she really kind of seems to be, not questioning about her faith, but struggling with, is that she’s a kind of a girly girl, and she sees other teenage girls, air quotes, normal girls, you know, having fun together on the street, and she tries to engage with them, but they end up just making fun of her-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: because of her Mormonism. They, they, they pants her and, and make fun of her traditional undergarments or whatever.

Todd: Yeah, talk about their magic underwear.

Craig: Right. I mean-

Todd: Easy target.

Craig: It is. I mean, I mean- It’s a thing, but whatever. So whatever. Th- that’s how they’re set up. They go to this guy’s house. He seems very charming and charismatic, but I don’t know.

I mean, I, I, I think it’s projected. Of course, we’re watching a horror movie, so we know that there is potentially something off about him from the very beginning. They wanna come in and, and talk about Joseph Smith or whatever, but they say, “We can only come in if there’s a woman in the home.” I assume that’s a real thing.

It, it, it seems that the filmmakers really went out of their way to make sure that they were portraying things in a fair and accurate way. And if that’s the case, and women Mormon missionaries, or any missionaries for that matter, have that rule, that’s super smart.

Todd: Yeah. W- well, I think they had a Mormon person as an advisor to make sure that they were getting that, those parts accurate.

And I did read that after the movie came out, different religious people had different takes on it, and some representative of the, of the Mormon Church, or maybe just a prominent Mormon pastor or something, did come out and say that they appreciated the fact that this movie in, in some ways served as a cautionary tale for other missionaries to, like, you need to follow the rules and, and you know, and make sure that you’re taking care of yourself or bad things can happen to you as well.

And, uh, that w- I thought that was an interesting take on the messages of the film. I- in w- in some ways, the movie reminded me, this aspect of it anyway, reminded me of like, uh, Oh! Barbarian-

Craig: Yes …

Todd: Funny Games, these films where people are so polite that their politeness can get them into trouble.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And certainly in this case, almost to a comical degree, actually, and I think there’s definitely some moments of comedy where even when things are getting very intense, these w- at least one of these girls cannot help but be so polite, because it’s how she’s programmed, that you’re just like, “Oh girl, come on.

You’re in a situation here.”

Craig: Th- well, there al- but there comes a point where it also seems to be, I don’t know if a defense mechanism is the correct word, but-

Todd: Hmm, a way of keeping things diffused?

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. Right, right. But I mean, I don’t know. He manipulates them. He gets them to come in the house. He says he has a wife.

Clip: Prophets- Talking of Noah, it is very, very wet … teach about

God and receive revelation a- and they interpret the Word of God and, and preach the gospel to the world. And because of apostles, people who know the gospel- Would you like to come inside? D- do you have a girl roommate? Yell who? A, a roommate. We can’t come inside unless another woman is present, but, um, we can, uh, stay out here in the doorway if that’s fine with you.

It’s just for safety. Oh. We don’t mind the rain. Well, my wife is home. Does that count? Yeah. Perfect. Okay, good. When you said roommate, I panicked. I, I haven’t had a roommate since, uh… Anyway, I, I have a soulmate, and that is good enough. Yes. That’s great. We’d love to come in and meet your wife. Then come on in.

Great. Do you like pie? Yeah. My wife has pie in the oven.

Craig: And so they’re relieved, uh, but they naively go into the house without meeting the wife. And, and he locks the door behind them, I think, and he immediately says something like, “Oh, by the way, there’s metal in the walls and ceiling.” And they’re like, “Okay.”

Todd: Yeah, that’s fine. Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Craig: Well, I mean, he just says… It, it’s just such an odd thing to say, and he says it in just such a casual and offhand way that I think that they don’t really know how to respond. Like, we, as viewers, are watching the movie. We know something’s going on. I immediately thought, “Oh, well, their cellphones aren’t gonna work in there-”

Todd: Yeah

Craig: which, which is the point. But he tells them his wife is in the kitchen and, and he keeps making excuses for why she isn’t coming out. She’s shy or whatever, but she’s making a pie. She’s making a blueberry pie. He starts to ask weird questions about… Well, not weird necessarily, but a little bit invasive or intrusive so quickly, I guess.

And, and, you know, he asks about her dead dad, and there’s some awkward stuff going on there. But then he asks them their, their feelings on polygamy. Gosh, I don’t know. It, it all gets down into lots of, of stuff about religion and organized religion.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But again, this is mostly a ruse. But this whole scene with them sitting in the living room talking casually, it’s shot in such a way, and the whole movie is shot in such a way that it feels, I don’t know, claustrophobic and uncomfortable.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: There’s a lot of, you know, extreme close-ups on the actors’ faces to kind of show you Their level of comfort and, and I don’t know, I just thought that it was very well done. It’s, it’s tense and suspenseful and you wonder- I wondered, where is this going?

Todd: Right.

Craig: And, and I, I didn’t know. I was, I was scared for these girls.

I knew that they had put themselves in a precarious situation, but I didn’t know where it was going.

Todd: You know, the lighting is very dim in this film. It- almost all throughout, I c- I can’t really think of a scene except for the… Even in the very beginning it’s a bit washed out. You know, when they’re outside doing things, it’s almost like overcast and washed out.

So the whole picture feels pretty, in a murky way, it’s almost like fireside chat impression-

Craig: Yes …

Todd: that you get, right? There’s, it’s, it’s kind of a glowing light that’s in there but it’s not necessarily a, a good one. It, it all, it contributes, I think, to the unsettling nature of it. I mean he has a candle in there as well and it almost seems as though the movie’s intended to be lit by this candle that he has.

At one point the electricity seems to flicker. Some lights do go out and he’s like, “Oh, that happens from time to time.” There is a storm brewing outside so we get that as well. So it’s almost like they’re inside this impression of taking shelter by the sto- from the storm by a campfire. To the visual, these are the kinds of conversations you would have around a campfire where everybody’s staring into the fire and talking about God or, or the meaning of life or what’s important to them or what their goals and dreams are.

But you know he’s really turning this on them as well by questioning them in a very intelligent way. He’s very clearly practiced in this and he clearly knows a lot about the Mormon faith already even though he has asked for the information. I mean it- they’re not going door to door just to random people’s homes.

They’re going to people’s homes who have asked for information so this guy’s actually invited them there in a way. So he’s expecting them and then it turns out that he’s a guy who actually knows quite a bit about the Mormon faith because he’s immediately questioning them about some very specific things, uh, based on their history and stuff.

And so you could see why that would be very uncomfortable for the girls because right away they feel like they’ve fallen into a bit of a mental trap- Mm … this guy has kind of set up for them and they’re not ill-equipped to deal with these questions but you can tell they’re uncomfortable because now they feel like- Yeah

they’ve been there under false pretenses I think.

Craig: Well, yes. The first time I watched this too, I don’t think that I noticed how claustrophobic it was. Like, I, I, I don’t remember seeing any windows. If there are windows, all of the drapes are closed. It does feel… The lighting is very yellow, like firelight, like you said, but it, it feels very enclosed.

And there are no pictures anywhere on any of the walls. It’s all very sterile. There’s only one picture in a frame in the whole room, and it’s of him and a dog, and I think Sister Barnes notices that. She, she seems to be very aware of her surroundings. Mm. But like you said, at this point it could just be that he’s an asshole.

Yeah. Like, somebody… And I, I, I… There are people who do stuff like this, like invite missionaries into their homes or whatever to try to ridicule them or to try to have theological debates with them. Like, that’s a dick move. Like, if you don’t wanna talk to the people who are coming around to talk to you about their faith, just don’t talk to them, but don’t berate or ridicule them.

Just leave them alone. They’re, they’re doing their thing. They’re not hurting anybody. Yeah. But it, it could just be that. It appears like he may have lured them here to challenge them on the aspects of their beliefs and the history of their religion, because he does ask them about polygamy, which again, you know, if you wanna talk about low-hanging fruit, if you’re gonna go after Mormons, I mean, that’s one of the, you know- Easiest ways

I guess if you’re gonna be… The easiest ways, I suppose. But she, Sister Barnes, responds to it in a very articulate and logical fashion. I- in fact, it was probably the most articulate defense, and not defense, but explanation of why polygamy was a part of their historical culture.

Clip: Yeah, I know that, um, it may be difficult to understand, um, but, uh, polygamy was a spiritual mission needed at the time in order to grow the ranks of our membership in the wake of much hardship and bloodshed.

Um, a man having plural wives meant more, well, more babies to help the community grow It’s, yeah, it’s sketch for sure to a modern lens And it was, it was removed from the church not just because it was grotesque or controversial, but just because it wasn’t necessary anymore.

Craig: I mean, that’s, that’s logical.

You know, I’m Catholic, and Catholics disallow birth control. Birth control is a sin. Now, why do you think that might be? It’s, it’s the same, you know, it’s the same thing. You know, they, they want more Catholics. They want more Mormons. Again, I’m not a fan of polygamy. I don’t, you know, endorse polygamy, but she’s really articulate in the way…

And, and so it sets it up that I don’t know what he expected. I think that he’s surprised to find that he has found in these girls, or at least in Sister Barnes, a worthy adversary.

Todd: Right.

Craig: I, I don’t, I don’t think that he was necessarily prepared for that And I like that too. I like that dynamic. Now, it, it, it comes down to he, he leads them into the back, and it’s kind of this big library room.

Todd: Looks like a little chapel.

Craig: Yeah, and, and, and he basically, I mean, through, you know, manipulative double-talking, he, he basically reveals to them that there is no wife, that he’s lured them there and, and to get them to really consider and think about the nature of, of their belief. And they’re trapped in there.

You know, the door’s padlocked. He says they can’t get out. The only way out is through the basement, and there are two doors.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And they have to pick between two doors.

Todd: It’s very much like a little chapel. He’s got a little altar there. There are two sconces on the walls like you might have two candles.

Those two doors, just like those two doors at the top, at the front of the church where the altar boys and the pastors come in and come out of. There’s a library around. He even mentions the pews that he drop- drapes their coats over. Mm-hmm. It’s here in this little chapel-like setting that he’s putting forth his biggest arguments.

And again, he’s got all the materials. It’s like you bring out books or something. He’s got a Monopoly board, and he gives this great thing about a monopoly, and he talks about, uh, you know, how Monopoly, the game that we enjoy, was actually an iteration of an earlier version of a game called the Landlord Game, which was basically stolen from her.

Uh, the woman who invented that didn’t get any royalties or whatever, and the guy who stole it from her changed it and made it into Monopoly, was the first millionaire board game producer. And, uh, and then how we have later iterations of Monopoly that are totally different. He just talks about that.

You’ve got Judaism, you have Christianity, you have Islam. They’re all iterations on the same thing that go back. And then he’s like, “And then I got these pictures on the wall.” And I mean, it’s, it’s a presentation. Again, it’s just like he’s a pastor giving a sermon to an audience that he has prepared. You know, he flips off the lights, and he’s got a slideshow.

He, he has pictures on the wall. He’s like, “These are the 12 gods and prophets that predate Christ and Christianity that have basically the same story,” virgin birth, followers, ended up crucified or killed or something like that, resurrected, that sort of thing. His whole premise is, “Look, this is just the latest iteration of something that’s very ancient and maybe just doesn’t even exist anyway.”

And this is not a… To me anyway, this is not a groundbreaking argument. I suppose there are people who will watch this movie Who were like blown away by these facts. But I mean, I studied philosophy and religion in college. I, I was a minor in it, and I took some classes where they did historical criticism of the New Testament, and we studied Islam and all that stuff, and it’s pretty well known that there are many, many aspects of the religions that we have today that are not original to those religions.

Everything that he talks about, I was surprised to find that the authors of this said that they, took them a really, really, really long time to study all the theology to get this right because I thought the theology was rather simple. I didn’t find these arguments to be that new or novel or groundbreaking, nor that complicated.

It’s all stuff I’ve heard before, and I wasn’t listening rapt with this guy’s theology. I was just watching rapt to see where he was gonna go with it. What was his endgame here? So I, I was a little surprised at how thin ultimately I felt like his arguments were considering supposedly how much effort the writers put into it.

Craig: See, and I found his argument to be compelling, but I think that the reason that I found it to be compelling was because he drew all of these parallels between these different religions and traditions. Again, not things that I was unaware of or that I hadn’t even observed myself just in my brief understanding of, of different religions throughout history.

But he sparks notes it in such a way that the parallels seem really compelling. But I think that that’s kind of the weakness of his argument, and I think that he’s taken aback when Sister Barnes calls him out on that ultimately.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: She basically says… And, and this goes on for a while. He also uses music.

Uh, he uses an, an older song, The Air That I Breathe, which it’s a great song. I love that song. But he talks about, you know, they’re like, “No, we’ve never heard it.” And he’s like, “Yes, you have, but you heard it when it was Creep by Radiohead.” And apparently, the band who put out The Air That I Breathe sued Radiohead for using similar melodies and, and, and keys and whatnot, and I- they settled out of court, and then Lana Del Rey, I guess, stole from it.

The point that he’s trying to make is that nothing is original, basically, that everything is, you know, just kind of building upon things that have come before it, and the same is true with religion. But what she calls him out on is, you know, yeah, you point out all of these similarities, but you completely ignore all of the vast differences between all of them.

And she’s right. And, and- Yeah … it just, you know, she’s smart, you know. She, she’s not gonna fall for that kind of argument in the way that I think a lot of people, myself included. Like, I wouldn’t necessarily fall for it. I would question it, but I did find the way that he presented it to be compelling, and I was a little taken in by it.

So I was impressed when she Kind of called out the, the faulty logic in, in, in his presentation.

Todd: Yeah, that was really good. Sister Paxton seems a little less concerned about it. She’s maybe a little more bulletproof in that she- just her faith seems a little too strong for her to question too much. That was my feeling anyway.

She seems a lot more concerned about just getting out of there.

Craig: Right,

Todd: right. But she continues to be very, very polite. There’s one aspect of this that’s kind of important to mention is that he had taken their coats early. They had freaked out a little earlier before they were led into the back room, realizing that something was wrong when they saw that this candle that he had lit was blueberry scented, so there was no pie.

Craig: Right.

Todd: It was just a smell was coming from that candle. And they tried the door and couldn’t get out, and they discussed that their bike key for their bike locks is in one of their coats. I think it was supposed to be in Sister Paxton’s coat. So they needed to get their coats. So they go to the back, they pu- they end up putting their coats on, and that bike key is…

Turns out it’s in Sister Barnes’s coat, so he’s clearly switched the, the bike key from one to the other for some reason. But ultimately, his whole game leads to this whole thing. He’s like… And, and what I liked about this is he’s kind of using their techniques on them as well, which keeps everything from escalating.

I mean, they’re in there, they’re super polite. They have these nice ways of phrasing things like, “I would like to see your wife. We would really like to leave now.” And his responses are, “Well, of course, of course. You know, you can leave whenever you want, and nobody’s gonna keep you from leaving, and you can leave through these doors right here, and I don’t wanna keep you.”

You know, he’s really flipping it back to them, this politeness, and all of this keeps everything, like I said, from escalating, but continues to create a huge tension in the room because they’re all dancing around what they really wanna say.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Uh-

Craig: Right. But that, that dance, I feel like it’s ultimately S- Sister Barnes who realizes that it is just a dance.

Todd: Mm.

Craig: So there’s these two doors, and one is belief and one is disbelief, and he says, you know, I don’t know, one leads outside or something. I don’t remember. Mm-hmm. Um, but he makes them choose, and Sister Paxton thinks that he just wants to be right- Yeah … and he wants to convince them that he’s right, and she’s willing to say, “Oh, you’re right.”

“It’s all stupid. Disbelief, I’m ready to go.” But I think that Sister Barnes realizes that it’s just a dance, and I think that she realizes, as I suspected, that it doesn’t matter which door they pick.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: I think that she knows, and so she’s not going to allow him to manipulate her into just a- agreeing with him.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And so she convinces Sister Paxton to go into the belief door with her, and she says, “So let’s go in the belief door and let God decide or, or leave it up to God.” And so they go in there, and this is where it becomes a sec- a different movie. Yeah. Like- Totally … the, the whole first part felt like a psychological thriller that I was very much engaged in, and I found it really suspenseful and tense.

Now, you mentioned before… Oh gosh, what was that other movie where it’s very normal in the beginning, like a psychological thriller, and they’re in that B&B- Barbarian … and… Barbarian. And then all of a sudden there’s this crazy dungeon. Uh- Yeah. And, and that happens again here, and they’re down in this crazy dungeon, and then all of a sudden there’s some weird thing down there with them.

Todd: With a pie.

Craig: I didn’t, I didn’t know what was going on.

Todd: Yeah, it got very weird very fast. This is a dungeon very unlikely to be in the back of this, this building, of this, this suburban house. I guess he’s a little out away from the rest of the homes. I don’t know. He says the house is built by a hillside or something like that.

But, uh, yeah, it, it’s very weird, this, this crazy-ass dungeon. There’s a table there, and this, uh, this crone l- lady draped in rags whose face is half messed up, uh, hobbles in and sets a pie down on the table. And, and he comes across a very rudimentary sort of loudspeaker. It’s just sort of a pipe leading down there where he can communicate with them.

Clip: You are now in the presence of a living prophet of God. The reason I invited you into my sanctuary tonight is because I have been shown a miracle. I believe this miracle is proof that all known religions are demonstrably false and only an ancient echo of something true I need a witness, you, to verify that the miracle is real

Todd: And in short, the, the prophet’s gonna be dead from consuming the pie, and then after that she will be resurrected, and I need you to be there to verify all this.

It’s so bizarre. Yeah. And it really threw me off-guard. I’m like, “What is going on here?” And it, it happens. She eats the pie, this woman. She drops face-first into it, and he asks them to feel her pulse and breath. And he says, “When she return, she will return, don’t worry, and she’s gonna tell us what she saw in the afterlife.”

Craig: But, but just then the doorbell rings.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It’s their elder who has come to check on them, which I thought was really nice. Did you notice that that elder was played by Topher Grace? I would’ve never-

Todd: I-

Craig: I never would’ve noticed … I

Todd: never would’ve noticed at all. Uh, n- yeah, he didn’t look at all like Topher Grace.

Craig: That was weird. But anyway, he shows up and, and so while Mr. Reed is distracted at the door… I mean, Mr. Reed eventually just sends the guy away, and when he sends the guy away, it’s revealed that their bikes are no longer chained to the gate. Mm. We didn’t know that up until this point. You said the thing about the key, but we see now that their bikes are not there.

So I thought, you know, they chained their bikes to the gate. I thought, “Well, somebody will find them eventually because their bikes are there.” But they’re not. They’re gone. The girls, like, try to get some matches by pulling a rug under the door while he’s gone, and they do, but when they run back down, I, I think they’re gonna try to make a fire, like, in a pipe to, like, make smoke signals or something.

Yeah. I don’t know. It doesn’t pan out, so it doesn’t really matter. But as soon as they run back in, Paxton is like, “That body moved.” And Barnes is like, “No it didn’t. You’re imagining things.” And then they go to try to make the fire but he comes down and stops them and-

Todd: The woman wakes up.

Craig: That’s right. She

Todd: shows up next to them.

She pukes blood and she says this cryptic stuff. She says, “The conductor says my name. White clouds, not heaven. They unplug my brain. It’s not real.” And then he’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, you must be…” Comes down, he, “Oh, well, you must be exhausted. We’re gonna record your prophecy in the liturgical texts,” and shoos her away.

Uh, which was also weird. Like, what? W- what is this? Then he comes to the girls and he says that one of them has a very, very big secret he knows. It has something to do with how the flame reacts to her. It’s so weird And then he asks them what they saw. And again, he’s, he’s, he’s trying to get them to think about this as a miracle or whatever.

And h- he says, “I could show you God if you’re willing to die. You can see what, you know, what this is all about.” And Paxton at least claims that she believes what he’s saying, but Barnes doesn’t. She says it was all a magic trick, and she seems to have figured it out. Kind of explains, “Hey, there’s a woman.

You switched the women while we were upstairs,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and I give her a lot of credit for that. I don’t know how I would’ve figured that out from what she was talking about. And she says, “And you switched our bike keys because you knew all along…” Oh, no, I’m sorry, that comes later.

Sorry, that’s not her.

Craig: Yeah, it was… C- she does figure this out, but First, it’s Barnes who’s like, oh, when he starts talking about, “I can help you see God, I can give you all of the answers, you just have to die and come back,” and Barnes is like, “Oh, I get it now. I’ve been trying to figure out since we realized we were locked in here how he was going to get us to make us think that him killing us was our choice,” or something like that.

Right. Right. That, that it was our idea. And, and that’s when she says she’s not buying it and it’s not a miracle, that it was a magic trick. And she says something about how Taco Bell killed her when she was a kid.

Todd: Almost killed- Killed her and brought her back to life, right?

Craig: Yeah. But she had a near-death experience, and she says that she experienced all the things that people describe, like the white light and the feeling of wanting to come back or whatever, but she says it’s just brain chemistry.

And meanwhile, all the time that she’s been doing this, she’s been circling him so that he’s turning his back to Paxton because they’ve made a plan before. They f- out of that office library space, they had… One of them had, had swiped a letter opener and, and I think it was Barnes, and she had gotten it to Paxton, and she said, “We have to have a code word.

When I say magic underwear, you stab him.” So through all this time, Barnes, who seems to be totally onto him and, and totally, you know, calling out his game to his face, she’s getting him turned around, he’s facing her, Paxton is, is behind. Again, all these extreme close-ups where they’re, like, sharing eye contact, and Paxton’s like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do it.”

And just as Barnes goes to say… And this building, it’s building and building, and the music is swelling, and just as she goes to say “magic underwear,” the code word, Reed, in a split second, reaches out and slits her throat.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I was floored.

Todd: Me too.

Craig: I couldn’t believe what was happening, and I thought, “Well, that can’t be right.”

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. Something, something is wrong because she, Barnes, is our smart final girl.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: How is she not going to be dead? But she is. I don’t know. Like, I, I don’t know if there was a, a cinematography technique or if it was just because now Barnes is dead. It so smoothly transitioned to changing the narrative focus to Paxton that it didn’t feel jarring, but I was so surprised.

You know, it… From this point, Barnes is basically out of the picture and Paxton is on her own, and this is where she starts to prove that she’s not the doe-eyed little simpleton that we may have thought her to be. She can figure things out too, and she does The, w- one of, like you said, she, she reiterates, you know, “I know exactly what you did.”

The prophet or whatever was an actress, or n- no, like she really did die, so when we checked her pulse, she really was dead, but then when we were distracted by the doorbell, which how would he have planned that? I don’t know. Yeah. But while we were distracted by that, another woman who looked just like the dead woman came in and replaced the body.

You got rid of our bikes, that’s why with the bike he was in the wrong thing. And it appears that she’s right, and we see all of this play out like a flashback. I, I don’t know that we necessarily can know if she gets all the details right or not. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, I guess.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But, but that did bother me that a big part of her story hinged on the fact that they had to be distracted so that somebody could come out and replace that body.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: He couldn’t have planned the elder ringing the doorbell. Now I, I, I’m sure he could have distracted them in some other way, but that couldn’t have been part of his plan. But anyway, she seems to be onto him, and he’s like, “Well, if that’s true, then there would have to be another way into this room or out of this room,” and he kind of looks around and she’s looking around.

Um, and ultimately she figures out that there is a trapdoor in the floor, and he’s like, “Well, if you’re right, then there would have to be a body down there. Are you gonna go check?” And she’s like, “Yeah, whatever.” Now again, this you have to have some willing suspension of disbelief, I suppose. Because if her theory is correct that somebody came in and replaced that body and put it down in that floor, that door, nobody could have gotten in and out of there without them knowing.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It was underneath a table in the middle of the room, and that table was on a rug, and when she pulls the rug away, she has to like search through silt and dirt to find the handle. That door has clearly not been opened- No … anytime recently. But whatever. She goes down there. There is a body, so apparently she was right And I think at this point he kind of closes the door on her and she goes exploring.

And you said before it made no sense that this dungeon would be down there. Well, it’s not just a dungeon. Apparently there’s a whole series of like tunnels and different rooms, and he’s got some sort of room that’s like lit with, I don’t know, some kind of weird blue lighting, and it’s full of these small like three by three by three metal cages with people in them-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: that he apparently just keeps down there. It’s very kind of like the people under the stairs. Yeah. Like they’re all gross and-

Todd: Half dead. I wish I could understand this. I don’t really understand where those people came from. Are they other missionaries that he has brought in and then-

Craig: I think it’s just other people- They’re all women

that he has lured them in there to challenge their faith, whatever that faith may have been, to basically beat them into submission and to conceding that the ultimate true religion is control And he claims that because they submit to that and they submit to his control, that that’s kind of like ecstasy or paradise for them.

I mean, it’s all delusional and psychotic.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: But, but that’s- Yeah … what he claims. It… He’s not really torturing them. He’s allowing them to feel the full ecstasy of the ultimate religion, which is his control. Whatever. He’s a psychopath.

Todd: Yeah, I mean, ultimately that’s where I said earlier, like, it’s really just about this guy being a psychopath, and it’s not really trying to solve any…

How is he possibly proving anything about religion by what he’s going through? Who’s his witness? You know, at the end of the day, it’s not like he’s gonna write a book about this and publish his findings. You know? It’s just this little personal thing that he’s doing, but he’s got, like, a, a model of the room and the house and everything upstairs as well.

He’s taking notes. It’s all very crazy. But yeah, she’s like, “Oh, but y- you’re improvising. That woman went off the book by telling us it’s not real, and now you’re just winging it with me now and your explanations,” which I think is maybe an indication that maybe he really is even more psychotic than… Uh, like, maybe he really has no real big plan behind all this.

Maybe this is just his script for luring the Mormon girls in. Maybe he’s got a whole other tactic for luring some of these other women in.

Craig: Maybe.

Todd: I thought it was interesting how she finally gets him. He’s approached her. She ends up kind of escaping. She runs upstairs, slams the door on him down there, goes upstairs again to leave, but then she turns around and goes back down, and I’m not exactly sure why.

Craig: I’m not either. I didn’t even really understand how she ended up back down there. But she does, and he stabs her.

Todd: Yes.

Craig: And they both seem to be dying because she’s already stabbed him. She stabbed him in the neck with something. He thought that she was, like, she was kind of cowering with her back to him, and he thought that he had her dominated or whatever, but she turns around and stabs him in the neck.

Todd: Right when he says magic underwear, she stabs him, which I thought was a cute. I, that’s,

Craig: that’s nice. Oh, I missed that. That is cute.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: So they’re both, they’re both there in the cellar, the s- the original cellar where they w- w- were after going through those doors, and they both seem to be dying. And she talks about prayer, and she says that there was this study, this academic study on the power of prayer, and basically there was, I don’t know, a, a group that got prayed for and then a group that didn’t get prayed for, and the study showed conclusively that prayer has no effect.

So she says prayer doesn’t work, but she still thinks that it’s beautiful that we, people, pray for each other anyway. And so she starts praying, I guess, for him or for both of them, and he crawls to her, lays his head in her breast- As she’s praying, and then out of nowhere, Barnes jumps up off the floor and kills him with a board that we had seen fall out before.

There was a board with three big nails sticking out of it, and she jumps up and hits him with the board, and he falls over dead apparently. And then the end of the movie is that Paxton escapes through a window and walks out into the snow, and a butterfly fl- lands on her hand. Somewhere earlier in the movie, she had said, “When I die, I’m gonna come back as a butterfly, and I’m gonna land on the hand of people who I love.”

She said, “Not just, you know, not on their arm or their shoulder, but specifically their hand.” And she walks out and, like, the snow is falling, and it’s all bright and beautiful, and this butterfly lands on her hand, and then that’s the end.

Todd: Well, it lands on her hand, but then it seems to disappear, right? It doesn’t fly off.

It shows us from one angle the butterfly landing on her hand and her looking at it, and then it cuts to another angle of her looking at her hand and the butterfly is not there. I think… Well, first of all, there’s a few things here. There’s a kind of resurrection of Barnes apparently-

Craig: Right …

Todd: implied here, and then there’s her going off into the bright light, having perhaps a vision of a butterfly landing on her hand, which may or may not have been.

I think it’s possible she didn’t escape, and this is her afterlife vision before she passes.

Craig: The r- yeah, and I think that f- y- you talked about the lighting in the beginning and how it was very, like, yellow and claustrophobic. It… That completely changes when we get down into the basement. Then it becomes all dark and blue, and, and it’s a completely different atmosphere.

Now, here in the end when she escapes, it’s entirely different again. It’s almost shot through, like, a gauzy filter.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And everything is very beautiful and ethereal and bright. Now, it could just be that metaphorically she’s escaped the darkness and she’s, you know, coming out. But I think that it also could easily be read that she did die down there.

Todd: Yeah. It’s hard to know.

Craig: Well, and that the afterlife, you know, whatever it is, is peaceful and freeing and beautiful, which is nice. Or it could… I- I think it’s intentionally ambiguous. Yes. Because she could have just as easily, she could just have easily have really escaped. Now, I find it really difficult to believe that Barnes was still alive.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Not only had she had her throat cut- But then after that, Hugh Grant had also gone digging around in her arm to pull out a birth control implant to try to convince Paxton that, that Barnes was, like, a robot and that they were all living in, like, some Matrix-style simulation. That was weird.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: That was another way, I think, to try to get her to kill herself, ’cause he said that if she killed herself, then she would wake up in the real world.

But whatever. Weird. I think it could go either way, and the movie, again, like I said, the first time I watched it, I thought about it a lot. I find that the older I get, and I can only imagine that this is just part of the human condition, the older I get, the more existential questions I have Uh, I was raised Catholic.

I, I, in, in terms of organized religion in the Catholic Church, I definitely have issues with, you know, some of the uglier parts of the church’s history, and I certainly don’t agree with all of their stances on some things today. But Christianity, for me, has been a very comfortable perspective to view the world from, at least Christianity in the way that I understand it, where, you know, you treat other people that you would, uh, as you would like to be treated, love, uh, love your neighbor, you know.

I appreciate that lens. But the older I get, the more I, you know… I don’t know. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. I don’t know what happens to us after we die. The idea of an all-knowing and protective God is really comforting, but logically it also makes a lot of sense that we as human beings would construct things to ease our fears about things that we have no way of knowing about.

Mm-hmm.

Todd: Giving us control and power of some sort over things that we ultimately can’t control or, or-

Craig: R- right. We can’t, we can’t know what happens after death, and that’s scary. So it, it’s logical that we might construct some belief about what happens after death that is comforting to us. That makes sense, and even if that’s true, fine, that’s okay.

Todd: Right.

Craig: But I don’t know. And, and I like that this movie had me thinking about that stuff without taking a hard position on it one way or the other. I think that the cynicism is addressed through Mr. Reed, and I definitely feel cynical and, and questioning in that way sometimes. But I also thought that it was kind of a fresh perspective to have somebody like Barnes, who has life experience, who has done their research, is not ignorant of other traditions and other religions and, and the similarities between them, but still chooses faith.

I don’t know. I, I thought that it was a fair and interesting balance and, you know, it made me think about things for several days, and I thought… I don’t know. That, that was cool for me. I, I liked it overall. And I mean, even if you don’t care about that stuff, whether you’re religious or not religious, or whether that debate i- is even of any interest to you, I just think that it’s a good movie.

It’s, it’s suspenseful and tense and well-written and, and well shot and, and all three actors I think do a, a, a really brilliant job. So even if you don’t care to have that debate Either with others or even internally, you can still… I, I, I would imagine you could still enjoy the movie.

Todd: Oh, yeah. I, I think that’s part of the brilliance of the movie is just that the debate aspect is sort of superfluous to what’s going on.

You know, and that’s this manipulation of these girls and their minds and, and this control thing that this guy has that, you know, a- again, a situation that they’re trying to get out of that they find themselves in due to their naiveté, then some bad decision-making, and this guy who’s really smart trying to outwit them, you know, in one way or another.

You could just do it with just normal logic and normal human manipulation. This movie is choosing to do it in the context of a religious debate.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And, and I think that the beauty of it is that the religious debate, like you said, it’s kept ambiguous because it’s not that important. Don’t get me wrong, it is an important aspect of the movie.

It’s the, thematically what the movie is about, what this man is obsessed with, and what these girls are out taking their time and their life to do.

Craig: Right.

Todd: But ultimately, the movie isn’t interested in teaching us, “This is right, this is wrong. Now what do you think?” You know? It’s, it doesn’t have that posture.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Even though the characters do. So yeah, I, I like, I like that aspect of the movie and I, that, that’s one reason why I think the ending is so smart. It leaves itself up to interpretation a couple different ways, but doesn’t come down hard on, I think, any definitive answer, and I like that as well, so… I liked this movie a lot more on my second viewing.

On my first viewing, I thought it was kind of a contrived, muddled mess. And in some ways it is a little bit. Like you said several times, you really do have to suspend your disbelief. This is such a complicated, convoluted setup. Mm-hmm. It’s really almost dreamlike in a way. I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, if the whole thing was just a fever dream- Mm-hmm

or in these girls’ minds. Uh, n- so in that respect, it’s really weird and it seems a little contrived But I enjoyed it. I was along for the ride. I had a good time with it, and I did think about it afterwards. And, uh, and I– the fact that it held up on second viewing, you know, really leads me to, to appreciate a lot more than I did after my first time around.

Craig: Yeah, keep your eye on Sophie Thatcher too. She, I think, is really establishing herself. I’m a big fan of hers.

Todd: Did you see Companion?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Oh, love that. She is fantastic in that, and that’s another really good, smart movie.

Craig: Uh-huh. Yeah, she’s a very talented young lady. And there is a cover of Knocking on Heaven’s Door that plays over the credits, and she sings it.

She has a beautiful singing voice too. It’s interesting. Again, it, it plays with that idea of nothing be ori- being original, of everything building on something else. It’s a, a cover of Knocking on Heaven’s Door, but it’s set to the instrumentation of Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You. And they match up really nicely.

It’s, it’s kinda cool. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good movie. Good– I mean, A24, you know… I, I, I will confess that I’ve seen one or two A24 movies that I didn’t think were great. I think there was one Brandy did where, like, she had an evil mother-in-law, and it was entertaining, but it wasn’t like- … it wasn’t as, perhaps as thoughtful as, as some of them have been.

But I’m a big fan of the studio in general. I’m glad they’re doing well. They obviously have a strong reputation because talented people, actors and writers and directors want to work with them, and it shows. So yeah, check this movie out. It’s good.

Todd: By the way, did you see the, the latest news on A24 and about how they’re entering this AI agreement?

Clip: No.

Todd: Oh, God, that was so depressing. Uh, they wanna dive in and use AI in what they claim are, are, are better ways that enhance human creativity instead of-

Craig: Stealing it …

Todd: I’m a little skeptical, but, uh, they’re suggesting that there are parts of the process, and this is actually probably true, there are parts of the process that, you know, AI could be well-suited for if we start taking this seriously and stop being so opposed to it.

Clearly they’re- Yeah … already using it maybe. So, so, uh, anyway, they had this very big, high profile… I don’t know if they, they were i- invested in or there was some project. God, I should know what I’m talking about. But this is a subject pretty near and dear to my heart because AI pretty much has literally stolen my job.

Mm-hmm. So I’m a little sensitive to it. But they …

We head into horror-comedy with Pandemonium (1982), a PG-rated slasher parody Todd discovered while looking into Paul Reubens’ filmography.

Despite an “insane” cast packed with recognizable comedians and performers, we talk about why the movie tanked, why it feels plotless, and how its nonstop juvenile gags, dated stereotypes, and heavy improvisation don’t land for us.

We dig into behind-the-scenes factors—director Alfred Sole admitting he didn’t know how to direct comedy, mismatched performance styles, and the title change from Thursday the 12th to Pandemonium—and we walk through key bits like the opening javelin kill, the cheer-camp setup, and the final reveal.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/07/pandemonium-poster.jpg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Pandemonium (1982)

Episode 497, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week I thought we would go into the horror comedy section with something that I’ll bet nobody, maybe none of our listeners have ever heard of. I would be surprised because I thought that I would have heard of this movie.

As soon as I heard about it, I thought, “

Craig: Oh my God, Craig,

Todd: we have to do this.” And I think I discovered it around the time that Paul Reubens died.

Yeah, I think I… Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, I was looking up… So it was a couple years ago maybe. I was looking up stuff that he had been in and this came across and I looked over it. Oh, it’s, it’s a comedy. But then I realized it was a parody of slasher movies.

And then I looked at the cast and I’m like, “There is no way.” This movie just didn’t seem like it could exist without me knowing about it. It’s called Pandemonium from 1982. It’s rated PG. It’s not bloody or anything. It is more comedy, I would say, than horror parody, but that’s the through line. God, the cast list is insane.

If you grew up watching movies and television in the ’70s, ’80s, this is an all-star cast of comedians all together in one film. A lot of the Groundlings in here.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So I, I thought we would watch it finally because I had it. You know, you couldn’t find this for a while. Part of the reason why we waited so long is that I had a hard time getting a hold of it.

It wasn’t streaming on anything. It wasn’t available on Amazon. I don’t remember if you could even buy a DVD. And I managed to s- track down some really, really crappy copy of it, and I was like, “Ah, this copy’s too crappy.” And at some point in time it became available on Tubi. Mm-hmm. Because I was looking for it again for the 10th time, and suddenly it popped up on Tubi and I’m like, “Well, great.”

And it’s a beautiful pristine copy of it, too.

Mm-hmm.

Todd: It looks like, yeah, like you would’ve seen it in the theater. So here we are, Pandemonium, 1982. I’m curious if you heard about this before, ’cause I never mentioned it to you.

Craig: I think maybe you did. Just… I think you’re right. I think it was when Paul Reubens passed away, we were talking about him and, and potentially what we could talk about to pay tribute to him, and I think that this came up.

But I had never heard of it before, and I didn’t really look into it then. So no, I, I had no familiarity with this movie at all, which I guess kind of surprised me only because I’m so familiar with so many of the people, not only familiar with the cast, but also at the time that the movie… Well, not at the time that it came out.

The time that it came out I would’ve been three, but- In the ’80s, some of these people were people I was really familiar with and fond of.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And, and it also seems like, I think that it was kind of obscure. It didn’t do well at all. It, it tanked for, I don’t know, people argue different reasons that I’m sure that we’ll talk about.

I think the most obvious reason is because it’s not good.

Todd: No.

Craig: But

Todd: That’s the best reason.

Craig: But I, I, I guess because it didn’t, you know, it, it, it didn’t do well, the producers or distributors or whoever just kind of dumped it into late night cable territory where I guess apparently it played fairly often.

This is the kind of movie that I would’ve expected to see on Up All Night with Rhonda Shear.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I o- I think that that’s the only context in which this movie could be enjoyed. Yeah. You have to appoint to… You, you have to approach it from that mindset. Like-

Todd: Right …

Craig: you, you have to go into it knowing that this is going to not only be stupid, which it is, but really pretty bad.

Yeah. And it’s, it’s really not the kind of thing, I think, that you can sit down and pay close attention to and enjoy.

Todd: Yeah. It, it might be so stupid that it drives you crazy.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: Now, we’ve done some things like this. Obviously Student Bodies I think was one of the earliest horror comedies, and that predates this.

Craig: Yes.

Todd: And that one’s actually pretty good.

Craig: It was funnier than this one was.

Todd: It was funnier. I mean, it’s dated in its references of course, because it’s just referencing movies from the ’70s, and horror’s gone through a lot since then. But and it’s dated in some of its, you know, I don’t know, I think there’s like references to weed and things like that, you know, stuff that was just a little more pop culture-y at the time.

But I feel like that one- At least followed the assignment to a T. They were making a straight out slasher parody and they did it. And I find it chuckle-worthy.

Mm-hmm.

Todd: I still like it. And there, and there’s a weird… You know, there’s some interesting actors in there. There’s that guy who was really lanky who they called the Human Stick.

Remember him?

Craig: Vaguely.

Todd: I still sometimes go back and watch Student Bodies if it happens to be around and I’m bored.

Craig: Sure.

Todd: Then we did, um, as a tribute to another comedian who passed away, we did Frankenstein’s General Hospital. Remember that?

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: God.

Craig: It was bad, too.

Todd: That was maybe worse than this one, I kinda think.

Craig: I don’t know because it, I felt like at least that one, as stupid as it was, had a plot. This movie doesn’t really have a plot.

Todd: Although you can argue that most slasher movies don’t really.

Craig: I guess. I mean, there, right, there’s that setup. Cheer camp, slasher. That’s it. Like-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: I mean, you, you’ve kind of got other bits and pieces, like jokey bits of exposition.

But ultimately none of it matters. The, the plot is entirely insignificant. It’s just A series of really juvenile, really silly gags over and over and over, and like, it, it just never stops. Like, everything is a gag. Yeah. The closest thing, I mean, like you said, Student Bodies. Student Bodies was a lot like this.

I think they did it better. I, I think that when it’s done really well, like when we’re talking like Mel Brooks or Leslie Nielsen, like Naked Gun, Airplane type stuff- Mm-hmm … those movies are stupid too, but they’re funny.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: The jokes may be dumb and juvenile and crass, but they’re funny. Yeah. This movie isn’t funny.

Todd: It’s not.

Craig: It’s not funny. No. The jokes aren’t funny. The gags aren’t funny. They’re just, they’re groaners. They’re roll your eyes, like, “Oh my God.” Like, it’s, it’s bad.

Todd: I liken it to Transylvania 6-5000.

Craig: Ugh, I liked that better than this.

Todd: Yeah. That was years after this, and that one I think benefits from maybe just the humor’s a little bit better.

Again, they’re trying… And that, you know, I think we talked about this when we talked about Transylvania 6-5000, about how some of it was so stupid. I, I think Carol Kane was in that too, wasn’t she?

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And some of it was so dumb, but you could tell they were going for this Mel Brooks style comedy.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And on paper it looked to be fine, I think, and it turned out that so much of the movie was ad-libbed.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Was, uh, was, was, you know, just these guys who were really good comedians riffing, but the, you know, it just didn’t really work because it couldn’t… Y- you just can’t have a movie like that. It just wasn’t clever enough.

And I think at that time, I’d have to go back and listen to that episode, we kinda talked about what makes a movie work and what makes it d- what makes comedy work and what makes it doesn’t. You know, like Mel Brooks’ comedies are pretty consistently funny.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And they’re really in this same vein. And the Airplane movies, what were those, Abrams?

J- Abrams and Bruckheimer movies?

Craig: I don’t remember.

Todd: They’re groaners too, but I don’t know, they’re just more fun, aren’t they?

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: And they have ensemble casts just like this one- Uh-huh … just full of stars that you’ll recognize, and people work together all the time. They work. This absolutely doesn’t.

Craig: Great.

Todd: And it’s a shame Because they’re trying. Again, I, I don’t, I don’t get it. What is the, what is the secret sauce, you know? What, what’s different?

Craig: I, I, I’m not sure. H- honestly, I, I think, and this is a huge discussion, but basically I think that to do really stupid comedy well, you have to be smart and, and you have to have a really good sense of timing.

But it’s not even just about the timing, it’s the writing. I mean, Mel Brooks’ stuff, yes, his jokes are low. Like, it, it, a lot of it is low humor, but there’s something smart underneath it. It’s not always satire or com- or, or commentary. It is sometimes, but not always. It’s just really well done. This, I read a whole lot of theories for why this is as bad as it is Because I felt kind of bad, like-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: I, I was trying to find, you know, like is there a cult audience? Like, what does this cult audience… A- and apparently there is a small one. I, I don’t know if it’s, again, just based on nostalgia, like kids who grew up catching this late at night on HBO or… But a variety of things, I think, didn’t work. First of all, the director was Alfred Sole?

Yeah. Sole? I don’t know. Whose only other, if I remember correctly, really big thing was Alice Sweet Alice, which we haven’t done, have we?

Todd: No, and why not?

Craig: I, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve started watching that movie before and, and haven’t been able to finish it. But it is kind of a notorious, and, and well-known and, you know, I think respected film in, in the horror genre.

And so he went from that to this, and a- as I understand, again, I don’t think I’ve seen it in its entirety, but as I understand, it’s kind of a stylized, you know, straight horror film, whereas this is just a goofy, off-the-wall comedy, and he has said since, “I was not a comedy director. I didn’t know how to direct comedy.”

Yeah. A- and I think that that shows. And though there are so many amazing performers in here, and again, like people that you are definitely going to recognize, it was kind of a mix-match of different styles that didn’t know how to work together.

Todd: Oh.

Craig: I didn’t think about that un- till I read it somewhere, but then h- having read it, I, I see it.

Because I read that, like you said, several of them came from the Groundlings, like Paul Reubens, who ag- is fantastic. I’m such a, a huge, huge fan. Phil Hartman, who was a genius. Tragic that he was taken in his prime. Edie McClurg, who was everywhere- Yeah. … in the ’80s, but people would know her best, I think, from she was the secretary in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and then any other number of movies where she basically played that same character.

Todd: Yeah. I-

Craig: But you’re definitely gonna recognize her. These are all Groundlings, and so they come from a really, you know, strenuous improv background. And then you’ve got these more, like, old school Hollywood actors, like Eve Arden, who… Wasn’t she the principal in Grease? Yeah. That’s who I know her from. She

Todd: was.

Craig: And, and this guy, Tom Smothers, who I don’t really know much about him, but he was kind of an older Hollywood leading man. Oh,

Todd: dude, it’s so funny you don’t know much about Tom Smothers. You never saw The Smothers Brothers on TV, did you?

Craig: No, I didn’t. I, I think that was, like… I remember my dad talking about The Smothers Brothers-

Todd: Yeah

but I don’t

Craig: think I ever saw it.

Todd: I used to watch the reruns of them all the time, and so, you know, I mean, obviously, because they were on before my time. But, uh, they would show up in syndication and reruns all the time, and maybe after reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show or something like that. But The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was great.

It was pretty notorious as being very counterculture for its time. In fact, that’s what got them into trouble with the network, is they were very anti-war and the network didn’t like that, and they were like, “Well, screw you.”

Yeah.

Todd: And then they eventually got taken off the air. But Tom Smothers here, his, his brother Dick Smothers, but Tom Smothers here was also known as the Yo-Yo Man.

He did yo-yo tricks on the show.

Oh, that’s funny.

Todd: And he also, like, sold instructional videos on how to do tricks with the yo-yo, and sold his own yo-yos, and I was a fan. I learned, I learned how to yo-yo from Tom Smothers and watching his instructional videos.

Craig: I, I can’t say I’m surprised.

Todd: It sounds like something I would do, right?

God. I…

Craig: These guys- So you, so you had them. There’s a theme song. Well, there’s a theme… I’m sure there is. Oh my God. So- So these guys kind of, uh, from an earlier generation, and then Carol Kane, who again, huge fan. I mean, she’s been working… I, I, I think, uh, Taxi came after this. I think this was really early. I think that she had already done When a Stranger Calls.

Hmm. ‘Cause that may have been the only thing she had done at this point. But she went, you know, on to be on Taxi and, and has been working since then. I always remember her from Scrooged. Yeah. She’s one of my favorite parts of that movie. We

Todd: love that one.

Craig: She was also Corey Haim’s mom in License to Drive, and she’s hilarious in that movie too.

Todd: She’s, uh, Mad Max’s wife in, uh, Princess Bride. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. And so she’s excellent, but she is classically trained in theater. So you’ve got these young improv kids, and then you’ve got Carol Kane and these older actors, and they were just approaching it in different ways. And then you’ve got a director who doesn’t know how to direct comedy and doesn’t really know comedy.

So most everything, and I was not at all shocked to hear this, most everything was improv’d. Hmm. And they were just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck. And I don’t know how they picked what stuck because it didn’t stick for me. It just wasn’t funny. And then, and then the last thing, the last thing that the, the, the cast and crew I read Knew that they were DOA when the movie was gonna come out because they had filmed it under the title Thursday the 12th, and it was meant to be an intentional obvious spoof of Friday the 13th.

But while they were in production, they found out that there was another movie being in production and they were using the title Saturday the 14th. And so to avoid confusion or, or to, you know, whatever, avoid seeming like they were ripping off somebody else, they changed the title, and the title doesn’t really give any suggestion of what the movie is or what it’s about.

Todd: It’s an awful title.

Craig: Yeah, it’s really bad. Nobody knew what it was, nobody knew what to expect, and it just bombed and I’m, I’m not surprised.

Todd: Yeah. Alfred Sole got the job because he was going to direct another horror film called Ghouls and that, that fell through. And around the same time, the press was going on about the death of horror movies.

You know, this was one of those cycles just before the slashers got big in the earl- in the ’80s. I think Terror Train didn’t do very well. And so anyway, like, people weren’t terribly interested in doing another horror movie all of a sudden. And so there were these, there was this screenplay out there written by these two guys, Jamie Klein and Richard Whitley, who really hadn’t done much, had never did much, but they thought that, you know…

They saw Friday the 13th and thought that it was ridiculous enough they could, they could make fun of it. But, like, clearly over time they lost the plot a little bit because although it does, especially toward the latter quarter or latter third I would say, kinda slip back into its parody of slasher movies, a good portion of it, as you said earlier, is just broad comedy.

Mm-hmm.

Todd: It, it’s just silly scenes between people at this cheerleading camp. I would almost say it loses some focus there too because it doesn’t have a plot. What’s the through line? There is no, there is no through… Even the through line of it being a, a, a slasher is lost after the first 10 minutes or so.

Craig: Well, and it, like, for the first, I don’t know, 45 minutes or an hour, I don’t even remember how long this was, but for at least what seems like the first half, you’re just kind of reminded that it’s a slasher because a black gloved hand will come into frame in the back of a scene, or, like, just as somebody is walking off- Yeah

screen, the black hand will show up and be like, “Oh darn, missed him again.” Like, that’s-

Todd: Swipe at them.

Craig: Yeah Like

Todd: a cartoon.

Craig: Right. It’s really silly. And it I don’t know. I was gonna say it doesn’t really know what it wants to be. It’s, it’s really not much of anything in particular, but there are also things like in the beginning I thought, “Okay, maybe this is gonna be like a Scary Movie, uh, the franchise Scary Movie.

Maybe it’s gonna be that type of- Hmm … parody, where it’s not just parodying necessarily one movie, say Friday the 13th, but it, it’s really pulling jokes from a variety of things. And I was led to believe that because when we’re introduced to Carol Kane, her name… What’s her name? They’re all Sandy, Mandy, Andy, Randy.

Todd: Oh, she’s Sandy. Yeah, she’s Sandy. That’s funny. There’s a point at which they’re all rattled off, right? That, that was hilarious.

Craig: Whoever she is.

Todd: I didn’t even catch that until that was rattled off.

Craig: I didn’t either.

Todd: I wrote it down. Sandy, Mandy, Candy.

Craig: Sandy- Yeah … Mandy, Candy, Randy, Andy, and Glen. Dan. And

Todd: Bambi.

Craig: And Bambi. Bam- Bambi is the head of the camp or whatever. She’s an old- Yeah … cheerleader. But when we’re first introduced to, I think she’s Candy, I think. Uh, whatever. Carol Kane. She’s at the bus station or train station with her mom, who is played by Eileen Brennan. Yeah. Yeah. Who again, you would totally recognize.

I remember her as being Jack’s acting teacher from Will & Grace, but that was when she was much older. She’s been in a bazillion things.

Todd: I think of her from Clue. She’s,

Craig: um- Yes. Oh, absolutely … Miss Peacock. Is that right? Miss Peacock. Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: Oh, she’s great in that, too. Great movie. But she is, like, playing the mom from Carrie, and she says something about Candy’s dirty pillows.

Clip: Don’t be tempted, child. Don’t get on that bus. Mama. You mustn’t go to that evil camp with those, those cheerleaders. Um Everyone will see your dirty pillows. Those aren’t dirty pillows, Mama, they’re breasts.

Not those. Those are titties. Those are dirty pillows. Those aren’t my dirty pillows, Mama. They’re his dirty pillows. They’re not dirty pillows. They’re breasts. But out.

Craig: And she turns to some bum who’s standing right there holding pillows, and even that guy was a guy that we just saw in some o- I think he was in Curse 2.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: Wasn’t he one of the guys in the… Like, after the guy got bit by a snake and they stopped at, like, a hotel and there was a bar in the hotel? I think he was one of those guys.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Anyway A- and then Candy has telekinesis that also comes with a side of laser eyes. And so I thought that that was gonna be more of a thing, and I thought, “Okay, good.

This is going to be kind of a broad jab at, you know, a lot of popular cliches or popular films, and it’s gonna be a lot of in jokes.” And I’m down with that. I really… Like, I enjoy the Scary Movie franchise. But it’s not. If it is, the jokes or the references were so broad or obtuse that I missed them.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Because that was one of the only direct references that I can recall.

Todd: Yeah, there were not many. They, they were just broad, like you said, like slasher-type things. The, it starts out even almost pulling from, um, Student Bodies, where there’s a lot of s- text on screen.

Mm-hmm.

Todd: Right? It says, like, “Victim number one”- Mm-hmm

and flashes, and we see Carol Kane scene. And then victim number two, we were introduced to Glen, who was Judge Reinhold, who doesn’t belong in this movie really. I mean, yes, he’s a comic actor, but he’s almost a different flavor than all the rest. I, I don’t think of him as the silly, goofy guy.

Craig: He, he plays more of the straight man later in his early career, which was just about to take off.

I thought it was funny seeing him in this because I felt like it really showed him cutting his teeth. Like-

Todd: Ah, yeah.

Craig: Like, this is… I- Judge Reinhold, bless him, you know, was- Yeah … cute and silly in the ’80s. I liked him. He was funny in Beverly Hills Cop and, and some other stuff, too, but-

Todd: I mean, I watched Vice Versa over and over again-

Craig: Yeah, that was all right

so

Todd: I’m gonna be able to… Yeah. Again.

Craig: He was, he was a good butt hole in Gremlins. I mean, he was around. He was, he was doing stuff. Yeah. He is really, really green in this movie. But I mean, the whole thing can’t be taken seriously, so I don’t know what more he could have done. But it, it is funny to see him in a terrible blonde wig- Being goofy, being goofy in this movie

Todd: When we’re introduced to him, and this is just kind of an idea of the level of humor you’re looking at, you know, his mother is telling him, “Now, at camp you can’t ever touch yourself or you’ll go blind.”

He’s like, “Okay, Mother.” And then his father comes out and he is blind. He’s got dark glasses on, and he’s got pencils in a… I think this must have been a thing where blind people sell pencils or something.

Craig: On the street, I th- yeah.

Todd: Oh my God. And so, you know, it’s very cringey and dated when we thought all of this kind of humor was okay, and it’s so bad.

You know, he’s just like, “Hey, oh, by the way, you wanna buy a pencil?” And he’s like, “Sure, Dad.” Like he always does it. And as he goes to put the pencils away in his briefcase, he op- his briefcase flies open and it looks like he’s got like a million pencils in there like he’s done this a bunch before. So it’s just these old-school blind jokes.

He says, “Okay, goodbye son,” you know, as he walks off the camera, and of course he’s waving in the wrong direction. I’m like, “Oh my God.”

Mm-hmm.

Todd: He says, “Dad, I’ll buy you a pencil as soon as you do your Ray Charles impression.” And so his dad bobs his head left and right. He’s like, “Okay.” Really? Mm-hmm. Oh, Jesus. Uh, he’s victim two.

Victim number three is, uh, is so bizarre.

Craig: Mandy. Yeah, this was so weird.

Todd: Oh, what is going on here? There’s like h- Mandy’s father is talking to us, breaking the fourth wall, as though he’s a television presenter.

Clip: And time to meet the breakfast. First, from the dairy wonderland of Wisconsin, it’s eggs, presented by my own son Chip Junior.

And now from the golden wheat fields of Nebraska, it’s Toast, presented by my lovely wife, Chip Sr. Good morning, Daddy

Todd: Ugh. Oh I don’t know. It’s

Craig: weird …

Todd: introduces his family, his wife, her, all that. Like, what, what? What a weird mashup.

Craig: And his daughter, she’s like a beauty queen type, I guess.

Todd: And she’s really into brushing her teeth.

What… Whose idea was that? I wondered if at one point this was a slight nod to Grease.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: You know, there’s that bit in the t- where they do the, the toothbrush- Yes … brusha, brusha, brusha with-

Craig: Uh-huh …

Todd: but I don’t know. She’s really into brushing her teeth. She’s a beautiful woman. I, I thought she’d been in more, but she’s hardly been in anything.

This was her claim to fame, really, ’cause she’s got that look typical of this time that seemed like it would do really well on, like soaps or television or s- you know, The Love Boat or whatnot. So that’s her. Victim number four flashes on the screen and is asking which way to cheerleading camp at a, at a food truck.

And, you know, this is your very light parody of the scene where everybody s- in the restaurant stops and stares. In this case, they all run out, and then the food truck people warn her about, uh, going, ’cause that cheerleading camp had an accident. We didn’t talk about the accident, and this is the thing that made me think it had promise.

The very first thing in the movie is a football team, and this guy, star quarterback, I don’t even remember his name, wins the whole deal, yada, yada, yada. They all go into the, the locker room, and there’s this one girl who’s going to his locker, and I don’t know, she hides, and then everybody gets in, and then she’s, goes back out with the other cheerleaders, but she’s not so popular with them.

I don’t know. But then the other cheerleaders ru- then she’s… They’re like, “Oh, I think our vegetable routine went really well,” and they have these giant vegetables that they’re holding. They’re like prop vegetables. And as they walk away, we see, like, are, the first of our POV from the Black Glove killer’s hand, who is unlocking a door to a javelin, where the one javelin is kept-

Yeah

Todd: under lock and key. Okay. Opens it up. It pans up this huge javelin, and as soon as we see the, the pointy end of it, there’s like a sparkle, like an animated sparkle on it as he picks it up. And then POV style, you know, uh, reminiscent of Bay of Blood. The first Friday the 13th, I think, has a kill, or one of the Friday the 13ths has a kill like this in it, where, you know, it’s POV with a long stick and a b- some people get skewered.

He tosses the javelin at the cheerleaders as they’re walking away in a line. And almost as though it’s a routine, each of them in turn s- turns around towards the camera. I thought this was really well filmed, by the way. This is my favorite part of the whole movie. They’re like, “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.” And of course, that javelin goes through all of them, so they’re like, literally like a giant shish kebab.

And later, when they’re carted off in the ambulance, they’re all laying down just like a giant shish kebab. And so Apparently this is one of several murders that starts happening to cheerleaders and at cheerleading camps, which we see from newspaper reports that flash on the screen.

Craig: The cheerleading camp closes down because of all these murders, but then we pick up when it’s opening up again.

Todd: Exactly.

Craig: And Bambi, the girl who the other cheerleaders were mean to and wouldn’t let her on the team is, you know, she’s gonna have her own little cheerleader experience now and coach all these new folks or whatever.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: God. The, the, the last two, victims five and six are these, like, letterman sweater, joint smoking douchebags, Andy and Randy.

One of them was Jimmy Olsen from Superman, I think.

Todd: Oh.

Craig: From the, the Christopher Reeves Superman.

Todd: Oh, okay.

Craig: Pretty sure I didn’t catch that. But my… There was one line that for whatever reason made me laugh out loud, and it was when, like… So w- once we’ve been introduced to all of them, they all congregate on this college campus, which I think they filmed almost all of it at USC, but they all kind of congregate.

And I think the last one to arrive is Sandy, who’s the brunette, and she’s kinda like the sassy, tough one. And when she arrives, it parodies that scene in mostly, like, teen romance comedies, but whatever, where the boy, like, sees the girl and, you know, she’s almost, like, i- in slow motion and soft lighting.

And in this case, one of the boys sees the girl and he’s like, “Oh my God, look at her. She’s the girl of my dreams,” or something like that. And he goes, “I know just what I’m gonna say to her.” And she walks by and he goes, “Hello, bitch.”

Clip: And I

Craig: just thought that was so funny. “I know just what I’m gonna say to her.

Hello, bitch.”

Oh, God. I don’t know why that made… That was the only thing, I think, in the movie that made me laugh out loud. Oh my gosh. It was so funny to me. Oh my gosh. Uh, but then, I mean, nothing really happens. I mean, we’re… Okay, I guess we find out that a, somebody has escaped from prison? And his name is Jarrett and another person has also escaped from the nearby mental institution.

So there are two killers supposedly on the loose. And then we’re introduced to Cooper, I think. Hmm.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Who is this guy? I, I, I couldn’t figure out who he is. He’s come…

Todd: I don’t know who he is either. He’s, I guess he’s a cop of sorts?

Craig: A cop or I couldn’t tell if he was, like, a cop or if he was, like, campus security.

He’s dressed as a Canadian Mountie.

Clip: Ugh, God.

Craig: And, and he ha- and he rides a horse named Bob, who is also a character in the story, sometimes played by a real horse, sometimes played by, like, a papier-mâché horse. Uh-huh. Like, he sits on the horse at a desk that’s specially made for horse height. It’s so weird and so stupid, and I could not figure out why he was dressed like that.

Maybe that’s a spoof of Animal House with that-

Todd: Well- … general

Craig: guy?

Todd: Or it was j- I mean, it’s a reference to, um, Dudley Do-Right.

Craig: Okay.

Todd: The Mounties, right? And he, “I always get my man,” and he repeats this multiple times as though it’s funny. Ugh.

Craig: Okay. Well, it went right over my head. Now, maybe that’s just a time thing.

Maybe that joke was a little before my time. I don’t know- Yeah …

Todd: but it was dumb. Still not funny.

Craig: Right. And he has… I don’t know. The, they just work in the same building, I think is the only reason that they’re always together, but it’s Paul Reubens, who I guess is a janitor named Johnson.

Todd: Well, he’s named Dribble until he says, “Change your name,” and he’s like, “Okay, now my name’s Johnson.”

What? Was that a joke?

Craig: I don’t know. I didn’t get it. Oh. I didn’t get it. And they’re just around every once in a while. Like, we’ll have scenes with them every once in a while. They’re always stupid. I mean, I guess the only notable thing here is that this was when Pee-wee Herman was, I think, in the Groundlings or Pee-wee Herman, Paul Reubens.

But it really seems like- I would prefer to think that he was developing what would eventually become the Pee-Wee Herman-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: kind of voice.

Todd: I really think so. I think that’s what’s happened.

Craig: I would rather think that than to just think that he had kind of a limited range. I, I, ’cause I don’t believe that to be true.

So it really seems here like he’s experimenting with the voice that will eventually become Pee-Wee Herman. So I guess that from a historical perspective, it’s kind of- … interesting to see that. But knowing who Paul Reubens was and would become, he’s terribly underutilized. Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: it’s not worth it to see it just, like don’t go in thinking, “Oh, you know, I’ve never seen this Paul Reubens movie before.”

No. It, like he, he doesn’t have the opportunity to do anything really fun or interesting. It’s not worth it.

Todd: It’s confusing from a modern perspective, ’cause you look back and you almost think he’s doing the Pee-Wee Herman schtick, but he’s not. He’s not that character. He’s just got the voice and some of the facial expressions, but-

Craig: Right

Todd: you know, he’s not childlike, he doesn’t have that suit on. He- Right … he’s just doing it. I think you’ve, I think you probably nailed it. And I think we talked about this when Paul Reubens died. I think we discussed a little bit about how, you know, he really locked into that and really developed it and then really protected it and-

Craig: Yeah

Todd: for a while would even… He wouldn’t go out not in character and-

Craig: Right …

Todd: even some of his friends at the Groundlings would be like, “God, this guy is so talented.” They were like, “Dude, you’ve gotta do… You can’t just be doing this one character your whole life. You’ve, you have more to offer than that.”

Craig: Right.

Todd: But yeah, uh, this would be an early time when he was clearly trying that out everywhere and trying to figure out what it was gonna be.

And so yeah, I think for that perspective, it is kind of historically interesting. But it’s a shame, like you said, he’s got nothing to do, and he has really even no schtick to do.

Craig: No.

Todd: He’s got almost no jokes. He’s just got some line, one-liners. That’s about it. Oh. I love this bit, though, when the guy from the asylum and the guy from the prison end up in the same truck, like one of them’s driving a truck and picks up the other guy as a hitchhiker Uh-huh

as the truck is driving off.

Clip: Where you going? To college. Me too. Where you from? The prison. Really? I’m from the asylum. No kidding. Maybe we ought to form a club. Yeah. You know, my dad has this old barn that we could use. You know, and, uh, it needs some curtains. You make curtains? I don’t do curtains.

Todd: It was stupid-

Clip: Yeah

Todd: but I did chuckle at this bit. I thought this, this could have been really funny.

Could have been. Right. Right.

Todd: Yeah. I mean, it’s just a bunch of gags. Like, we don’t have to go through it all, right? Right. Like, but I do wanna point out a few things. One of them is, it keeps coming up, this, this really cringey racial comedy that just does not fly today.

The cheerleaders get ready in- together at gym for their first lesson, and I think it’s the… Oh, the guy who played Squiggy in Laverne & Shirley.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: He’s a character in there.

Craig: Yeah, Salt and Pepa. They’re, they’re… His name is Pep- Pepe, and then there’s this other lady. I don’t even know who they are. They just hang around.

Todd: They check her in. It’s like they’re handling the front desk at the cheerleading camp, which is more like a school than anything else, so it’s confusing.

Craig: I have no idea who these people are.

Todd: But I think this would go over a lot of people’s heads if they’re not familiar. That scene is clearly a parody of old, like, werewolf movies.

There’s always this moment where, you know, somebody checks into an old inn in this dark village out in the middle of Transylvania or something like that, and there’ll be some weird young guy at the front that’s almost like an Igor-type character. And then there’ll be some older, like, crone-like lady, you know, who comes in from the back, who’s mysterious, maybe like a witch or something like that.

They’re creepy and they’re warning someone, you know, that these parts are magical and don’t be here, and things like that. And I think this is… Th- their introduction is clearly trying to spoof that, but it’s so out of place. And there’s no werewolf in this movie ever again.

Craig: No.

Todd: But we hear a lot of howling during this scene, and a weird effect of, like, smoke at the bottom?

Craig: Yeah. That was strange. Especially when she was ar- But I feel like what you were gonna say was, you know, during their class- They, like a murder tour comes through, like on a tr- like a

Todd: dead cheerleaders tour.

Craig: God.

Todd: I mean, I like the idea. The camp reopened, and now, like, they’re also making, like, a tourist attraction out of it.

Like, “Here, see where the murders happened.” Because this is actually a thing, right? And they’re driving around while these new cheerleaders are practicing. But what we have on there are these Japanese tourists who are, “Ooh, ooh, I saw, I saw,” taking pictures.

Craig: It was a very popular joke in the ’80s, yeah.

Todd: It really was.

Japan was big for us in the ’80s. We thought they were gonna take over the world, and they did a lot of traveling to the US to, as tourists, and they got a big reputation for just taking a lot of photos, ’cause they made all the good cameras at the time.

Craig: Right, right.

Todd: I mean, it all made sense back then. It, it’s very cringey now.

Craig: I know. I mean, i- i- even, I mean, even then it was a ridiculous joke. You know, like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: it was, it was a blatant stereotype. I don’t think anybo- I don’t know Yeah, it was- It, it was a different time … caricature Our sense of humor was different. But right, it was caricature. I don’t know. We didn’t find it offensive in the ’80s, but we didn’t find a lot of things offensive in the ’80s, so who knows?

Todd: True. True. But then this gets taken to a whole other extreme later on when there is an airplane scene.

Craig: Glen, what is his last name that rhymes with dandy? Glen Dandy.

Todd: Oh man, this is so convoluted.

Craig: He, what is his name? We just were talking about him. Judge

Todd: Reinhold. Judge Reinhold. Yeah.

Craig: He gets, like, sexually frustrated or something and decides to go do gymnastics in the gym, jumping on the springboard.

I can’t remember what that thing is actually called.

Todd: Trampoline?

Craig: It- it’s… No, no, no, it’s not the trampoline, right? He- he’s, like, jumping, he’s jumping off of a springboard over something, I think, and this also didn’t make any sense. Somebody is standing outside with a giant comical cartoonish TNT box, I think, the ones that you, like, push the handle down.

The

Todd: detonator,

Craig: yeah. A detona- it, like a cartoon detonator, and he keeps jumping on this springboard, and the first few times we see it, there’s nothing there. But then the last time we see it, it’s all strapped up with dynamite, with TNT.

Todd: That had to be an editing mistake.

Craig: No, I think it was supposed to be a joke.

Like, somehow they armed it with TNT in between his jumps or something. I don’t know. Oh, okay. But anyway, the whole point is he jumps on it, it explodes, it shoots him like a rocket out the window and into the sky, and then he flies alongside a commercial aircraft and is, like, out the window begging the people inside for help.

It was really silly.

Todd: Which must have been a slight reference to that Twilight Zone episode.

Craig: Oh, I don’t know. I feel like we’ve seen this kind of silly thing in a bunch of places, but I don’t even remember how it, it, like, that’s the last that I remember is, like, he’s, like, pounding on the window and, again, it’s, like, Ja- maybe it’s the same Japanese tourists.

I don’t know.

Todd: I’m not sure it really ends in any particular way. I think he just ends up being, he’s just dead.

Craig: We never see him again, right?

Todd: But this is Air Tanaka, and there is a white woman dressed like a geisha who gets over the intercom before he’s there and gives, in a terrible, terrible Japanese-English accent-

Clip: Welcome to Air Tokyo flight 45. We hope that you enjoy your flight. Right now, stewardess Godzilla is serving your favorite beverage. Wake up! There’s a literal person dressed as Godzilla, and so there are these dumb little gags where somebody complains and so he breathes fire on them. Oh my word, this

was a mess. Big gags. Right, and then it cuts

Craig: to Mandy, the tooth girl, playing with giant stuffed teeth. And then she has a scene where she brushes her teeth when- with an obscene amount of toothpaste on the toothbrush, which also- Which is just gross … it almost made me gag just- I know … watching it. And then a black glove grabs her through the medicine cabinet, and does he, like, drill through her mouth?

He’s got a drill. He’s got a drill, which was cool, and of course, like… And I thought, “Oh, this is actually getting serious,” ’cause this, this looks like it’s gonna be a very gruesome scene. The drill goes into her mouth and foam starts coming out of her mouth, like toothpaste. Like, I guess

Todd: Her mouth or throat are so full of toothpaste, or maybe just her body, that instead of bleeding she just exudes toothpaste foam

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what that gag… I liked it, actually. I thought it was kinda cool.

Craig: It was one of the better parts i- in terms of the slasher spoof, it was one of the better parts.

But th- but then there’s a whole lot going on, like there’s a, a lover’s lane scene, and there’s prison scenes where the principal from Grease gets put into the gas chamber, and it’s just a chamber where some big fat guy who eats beans farts into it. Like- And then there’s a whole scene where they just sit around a table, these dumb kids sit around a table talking about who wants candy.

And it’s like, “Hey, Andy, do you want candy?” “No, thanks, Randy. Give Sandy my candy, Randy.” And it goes on- … for a good 45 seconds.

Todd: Uh-huh. It’s not funny. It’s not funny. It

Craig: went on for so long.

Todd: Oh.

Craig: And then, I don’t know, there’s a bunch going on. Like, both of the escapees, the convict, vict and the insane asylum patient both end up at the hospital, where we also find out that some doctor was in on all of this.

What all of this is, I don’t know. I have no idea what’s going on.

Todd: He’s talking about turning people into furniture. What the hell?

Craig: I don’t know. At one point they went to see somebody in the morgue, and they pulled out the slab and it was a coffee table, and they just acted like that was normal. I don’t know what was happening.

I

Todd: have no idea what was going on here. One of the things that made me laugh out loud was Paul Reuben’s character. As they’re going through… And again, because we had no context for why this furniture was there or what they were talking about, we have no idea what’s going on. But they pass by, it’s almost like a tall jewelry chest or something.

Clip: Hey, Sarge, this is Trixie, the waitress at the Kit Kat Klub. You’re right, Johnson. I’d recognize those legs anywhere. She’s a fine woman.

Jump shot!

What are you doing?

Are

Todd: you- I was trying to get your drawers. Even though I still had no idea what they were talking about-

No …

Todd: something about that delivery and that line made me laugh out loud.

God. I don’t know.

Todd: And this doctor’s like, “Every doctor has furniture. Not every doctor has patients. Now every doctor will have furniture and patients in one.”

What?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: What? Oh. I

Craig: don’t know, but then all f- but then I have in my notes all three of them get electrocuted.

Todd: Yeah, and they’re gone, but it has nothing to do with the slashing. Like, what’s going on?

Craig: Right? Because then- What are they doing here? … then Bambi takes a bath in milk and cookies. Why? I don’t know.

Todd: Meanwhile, the killer… This is a clear Psycho reference. And again, I didn’t know if like… ‘Cause Hitchcock notoriously used chocolate milk as blood in the shower scene. I don’t know, I wondered if this had the genesis from that at least. But the killer, as she’s l- sitting there reading her magazine, he, like, stabs through the curtain, which she doesn’t notice.

He stabs into a carton of milk, she doesn’t notice. He stabs into the magazine she’s reading, she doesn’t seem to care or notice. He stabs everything but her, and eventually lifts her up and drowns her in this. But it’s like she has to save her cookie or something.

Craig: Ugh. Wow.

Todd: It’s so weird.

Craig: I know. I honestly don’t remember because everything was so random.

Todd: It’s so random.

Craig: I, I… She, but she’s dead, apparently. And then Sandy and Randy go to the sex ed room, which has a cover and a drink minimum.

Todd: And a bed.

Craig: And a bed. God, I don’t know. And then Candy, Carol Kane, finally has sex with the other guy, and likes it, sort of, she says.

Todd: Ugh. I love, I love it when Randy leaves Carrie in there for a little while, or whatever her name was, ’cause he’s going to investigate, and, and she says, “Do you want me to come with you?”

And he says, “Sure, if we time it right.”

Craig: Yeah, that was funny.

Todd: That might’ve been the funniest line in the whole

Craig: movie. That was funny, I will admit. Mm. And it’s funny because, like, I was barely paying attention, and the line happened, and it took me a second, and I was like, “Oh, that was funny.”

Todd: Inspired. One inspired line in this entire hour and a half.

Oh. God,

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know. More of the… Somebody gets suffocated with a pom-pom, one of the guys. Mm-hmm. Sandy, the sexy brunette, gets stabbed with a megaphone. Is that what that was supposed- Yeah … to be? Like a giant cheerleading megaphone she gets stabbed with. And then we have, I guess, the homage scene where the final girl, Candy, runs around and finds all the bodies.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And I have in my notes she’s now pursued by the killer, who is now in a miniskirt.

Todd: Yeah, with fingernails and- dress, and it turns out that the killer is the quarterback from the very beginning. I mean, it’s pointless. Like, we never saw this guy except in the first five minutes, and he’s like, “If I can’t be a cheerleader, n- nobody can.”

I don’t know if this is, like, supposed to be making fun of feminism or something like that. I don’t know, but, uh- I

don’t know.

Todd: Then his parents show up, Edie McClurg and whoever that other guy was, as ghosts taunting him or whatever, and then he gets freaked out and he runs out and she runs out into the football field, starts using her Carrie powers, and eventually pulls a statue of himself over him.

And Dick Smother- uh, suddenly Tom Smothers is there riding in, and they love each other.

Craig: Yeah, they had a musical moment earlier, and they reprise that here. It’s like an old Hollywood… They’re not even really singing. Like, they just open their mouths and-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: old school Hollywood voices come out.

Todd: Lip syncing, yeah.

And then we pan up to the scoreboard and we get that typical for the time, that closing montage of credits where there’s a quick little scene from each person, and they put their names up on there.

Craig: Did they even? I don’t… I didn’t even think they put their names up. I thought it was ju- Oh, no, they did.

They put their character names up, but they didn’t put their credit. Like, they didn’t put the actor’s name, which I thought was really strange. It’s just like, “Here’s Randy,” and a little Randy scene. Like, yeah, I know. I just watched this movie.

Todd: Oh, revisit the joys of the earlier hour- Yeah … and 29 minutes. God. Oh, man. I- you know, it was painful to get through because it was so cringey and I was so disappointed. Because it’s so disappointing to see so many good, wonderful comedic actors in something that just falls so completely flat. You can see what they’re trying to do.

You can see that they’re trying to parody some horror movies, and they got some scenes to parody it. Most of it was not that. Most of it was just weird byplay. And in a sense, this was a lot like, I think, Transylvania 6-5000. But I can’t recommend it-

Craig: No …

Todd: except as a really interesting time capsule if you were really bored and wanted to see some early work by some of the…

by Paul Reubens, for example.

Craig: Yeah, but it’s not worth it just for that. I mean, like, like I said before, you, you might look at it and say, “Oh my gosh, Phil Hartman’s in this, and Carol Kane,” like these are some really great people and, and you might get excited- Mm-hmm … because you like those people, and then you will see this movie and you’ll be terribly, terribly disappointed.

Yeah, I, I, I can’t recommend it either. Like I said before, if you can somehow recreate the up all night experience, like if you’re 11- Mm-hmm … and you’re a boy and you’re having a sleepover and you’re not really gonna be paying attention to it and you’re just gonna be goofing on it, maybe. Maybe. I, I can’t think of another way that you could set it up for yourself to enjoy this.

I, I, I could be wrong. You know, to each their own. I, I don’t mean any offense to those of you who grew up with it and have a soft spot for it. But seeing it for the first time in 2026 It did not do it for me at all.

Todd: Hard pass. Hard, hard pass. But it was fun to talk about.

Craig: Yeah, sure.

Todd: And thank you guys for listening as well, and if you have anything to say about this movie, as Craig said, drop us a line.

ChainsawHorror.com is our website. Just Google Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast and you’ll find us on social media. Drop us a line in any one of those places. Or if you, uh, would like to chat with us a little more directly, join our patrons at Patreon.com/ChainsawPodcast. We have complete unedited phone calls as soon as they’re made that, uh, include all the things that I cut out of these and, uh, s- for streamlining and all the personal stuff that we do.

All the stuff we’re trying to keep from the general public is wide open and available for you for just five bucks a month, along with some minisodes we’ve done in the past and some other things. We have a book club over there as well, where we’ll read horror books and, uh, talk about them via video chat a couple times a month.

If that interests you, join our Patreon, Patreon.com/ChainsawPodcast. Otherwise, just leave us a review somewhere. Let us know what you thought of this. Uh, we always like good reviews over at Apple Podcasts or on our webpage. You can, uh, send us a voice message by clicking Talk to Us and record a quick 90-second clip which automatically gets sent to us, and, uh, we will play it on the air.

And if we get requests through that, we usually bump those a little higher to the top. Until next time, I’m Todd.

And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We head back to 1980 for a horror-comedy detour with Motel Hell, a quirky, blackly comic cult favorite that we both remembered more fondly than it played this time around.

We talk about the film’s odd tone, slow pacing, and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre-style setup of Farmer Vincent’s famous smoked meats, plus the bizarre “garden” reveal where victims are buried up to their necks.

Along the way we dig into the performances, the dated humor, the strange character turns, and that iconic pig-head-and-chainsaw finale, including the movie’s straight-faced closing joke about “artificial preservatives.”

We also debate whether this is a charming product of its time or just too dumb to fully work today, and where it lands as a cult curiosity.

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Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Motel Hell (1980)

Episode 496 – 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig

Todd: This week, uh, thought I’d take us back to the ’80s, 1980 to be exact, to the point in which horror movies were coming big on the scene, slasher movies, things like that. Uh, we’ve done several slasher films from 1981, 1979, whatever, just around this era, oh, a few weeks ago and, and we had been- I’d been on a bit of a kick doing these, uh, old early ’80s slashers, and I promised Craig this week that I would not choose another early ’80s slasher.

We were both just ready for something fresh. So, um, I pulled up this movie that I know I had seen at some point, or at least run across on cable, maybe not seen the whole way through, but it certainly haunted the video store shelves of my childhood. And I knew it was a horror comedy, and it comes up every now and then and people talk about it as a quirky satire, comedy horror movie, blah blah blah.

And so I said, “Let’s do it, Craig. Let’s do Motel Hell.” Had you heard of this one before?

Craig: Yeah. Like you, I know I’ve seen it. I think I’ve probably seen it more than once. And I remembered a lot of things about it, but it had been a long time since I’d seen it, so I didn’t remember a whole lot. And I mean, I guess I was gonna say you could technically call this a slasher, but it’s not really.

No. It’s got a similar vibe, but it’s different in that it’s… I mean, y- you already said it’s a comedy, and it is, but it’s, it’s more of a black comedy, not a scary movie parody, slapstick, goofy comedy. It’s… I mean, it’s still silly, but it’s a little bit darker and it’s not as in your face with gags and stuff- Right

um, as, as some things.

Todd: It’s a shame too.

Craig: Well, I don’t know. I thought it struck kind of an interesting balance. Uh, I don’t know if it was perfect, but I don’t know. I’m interested to hear what you thought.

Todd: I don’t know. Like I’ll be honest with you, I had a hard time staying awake. Now, I was watching it at like 11:30 PM or something like that.

I’d had a long day. My parents are still visiting. We’ve been running a little hard, and so I was already pretty tired going into this. But I kind of expected it to perk me up. I thought this was gonna be this fun, irreverent, satirical black comedy that everybody says it is, and both my dad and I found it hard to stay awake.

About halfway through I wanted so bad to just shut it off and finish it in the morning, but unfortunately, I mean he was watching it with me and he was staying up too, so I just pushed through. So I don’t know if that affected my reception of it, but w- I was just groaning and rolling my eyes through the whole thing, and I didn’t find it particularly funny, and I didn’t find it scary at all.

I was pretty disappointed overall. It wasn’t what I remember from flashes of my childhood.

Craig: Yeah. Gosh. I don’t know how we want to approach it, but I mean, I, I feel similarly and I r- first of all, I just decided, like, I’m just gonna watch this. I’m not gonna take any notes. How serious can it be? And so I cuddle up in bed and turned all the lights off.

Had the, you know, laptop, like, right there next to me, and I got about halfway through it and I was like, “I have to turn this off and go to sleep.” And it was early, like- Ah. Like, it was earlier than I would usually go to bed. So I was like, “No, I’m just gonna wait until the morning.”

Todd: No.

Craig: And then I finish it this morning.

Yeah, I mean, it is kind of slow and there’s really not a ton that happens, but it’s odd.

Todd: Definitely odd.

Craig: Well, and I, I, I think that that oddity saves it, and I, there, like, there are some interesting performances. I don’t think it’s poorly shot or anything.

Todd: No.

Craig: And I kinda think that maybe they got what they were going for because originally, and I don’t remember, it was s- I don’t remember if it was attached to a particular director initially, but the, I know that the original script was a lot darker.

It was written by a couple of brothers, I guess, Robert and Stephen Charles Jaff, and it was, like, I don’t know, just more violent and graphic and had, like, bestiality in it and stuff. But when they got the director, Kevin Connor, he said that he would do it, but he wanted it to be a dark comedy because some of the crazier elements, I guess he thought if we played this totally straight, audiences aren’t gonna buy it.

Todd: Yeah. And I can see that.

Craig: Yeah. And I can see that too. I think it was probably… I, I, I certainly wouldn’t, I don’t think. I mean, it would, it would take a lot to get me on board with some of these plot points if they weren’t presented in a ridiculous fashion, because they are ridiculous. Yeah. So- I don’t know.

I think it was, it was, uh, intended to be a little dark and weird and quirky, but it is a little bit slow too. I mean, I… How do, how do we wanna talk about what it’s about? I mean, it’s-

Todd: Well, ultimately it’s, it’s a little bit inspired, I would say, slightly Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in that you have a, not a whole family, but you got, you got, you got a guy, and Nuts is not his wife, it’s his sister, right?

Craig: It’s, I, yeah, I thought it was his wife- For

Todd: the longest time … or

Craig: girlfriend or something for the longest time, but apparently it’s his sister,

Todd: right? Yeah. So you got Vincent and Ida, and instead of running a restaurant, they run a motel. The Motel Hello, you know, which conveniently the O burns out at points to make it Motel Hell.

Right. And he serves his famous meats. Smoked meat. Smoked meats. Farmer Vincent’s Smoked Meats. This

Craig: is it.

Todd: So it’s so similar in that way to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ’cause they had what? They had a barbecue place, didn’t they? Yeah.

Craig: I’m not confusing

Todd: that with-

Craig: That may have been part two. I don’t remember.

Todd: Oh, maybe that was part two.

Craig: They definitely did cook people up, though, and serve them to people, that’s for sure.

Todd: Yeah. And so, um, it, you know, it really kicks off with Farmer V- Vincent, who’s this man played by Rory Calhoun, who is a pretty well-known Western guy. He was in a million Westerns and all over television and stuff I think if you watch movies and TV in the ’80s, in particular if you were into Westerns, you would recognize this guy right away.

Craig: Yeah, he’s got a really recognizable face. I didn’t watch those types of things. My grandparents, my mom’s parents were into those shows, so they were kind of always on in the background. But he has that typical look, and if you look him up on- online, you’ll see old black and white photos of him where he’s, you know, a handsome, rugged kinda looking guy.

But ironically, I think I read that he was kind of known as being the reliable, trustworthy, good guy in most of the stuff that he did back in the day. So to put him in this more menacing role was a switch for him, but I thought that it played well because he’s supposed to be charming. Like, they’re well-respected in their community, and his meats are famous.

Todd: Yes. His smoked meats with no preservatives at all. I, I don’t know how this works. With

Craig: no preservatives.

Todd: I think you’d wanna refrigerate these no preservative smoked meats a lot more than they ever do in this movie, but… It’s, it’s similar, isn’t it, a way similar to Tourist Trap and Chuck Connors? I mean, it’s almost the-

Craig: Yeah.

Yeah, for sure …

Todd: it’s got a similar vibe. And you’ve got, again, this guy who played mostly, uh, the good guy in old country Westerns who’s later in his career playing against type in a horror movie just the year before this, Tourist Trap. The movie feels a bit like Tourist Trap, and- It does … weirdly enough, it’s almost like these guys swap notes, right?

Like, “Hey, uh, you should be in a horror movie like I was last year.” “Okay, I’ll do that. Thank you, partner.”

Craig: Yeah, they are strikingly similar now that you mention it. I mean, even down to I, I feel like there was old man, young… Well, that guy, whoever you were just talking about, there was a love interest that was younger than him just-

Todd: Yes

Craig: kind of like there is here, which is also-

Todd: Yes. …

Craig: weird, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The sister, Ida, is played by Nancy Parsons, and I’m like, “I recognize her. She’s been in stuff,” and she totally has. I think probably what I remember her from around the same time was Porky’s.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: Porky’s, uh, I think, I don’t know how many of them there were.

I think there were… I know there were two. There may have been three, and I think that she played the same character. I don’t remember if she was a coach or, or what, but she was such a popular character in the first one that they put her on the poster for the second one. And she’s hilarious. And she also played Janice Van Meter in Steel Magnolias- Right

who was the heavyset woman that Dolly Parton and Olympia Dukakis make fun of on the dance floor, and they say she looks like two pigs rustling under a blanket or something.

Todd: Oh, God. Oh. Oh,

Craig: Iris Van Meter.

Todd: Back in the ’80s it was so fun to f- to laugh at fat people, right? God.

Craig: But she’s funny. Like- She is … and, and she, i- if, if you look at her IMDb, I mean, she’s again been in everything.

Th- I, I could say the same thing about Rory Calhoun. You look at his IMDb page, you know, it’s just hundreds of credits with him in one episode of such and such. And same thing with her. She played a nurse a lot. She played a coach a lot, like in one episode of that show that you used to watch. Mm-hmm. And she’s very recognizable.

And I, I like the two of them. And I read that they were both really pleasant to work with, and they enjoyed each other, working with each other. I don’t remember who it was, somebody involved, I don’t remember if it was the director, but somebody in an interview much later talked about the making of the movie and said that it was a really positive experience.

They had a really good time. So that’s nice.

Todd: One would hope so. Definitely much more positive and pleasant time apparently than Texas Chainsaw Massacre was.

Craig: Yeah. Though again, some similarities because this d- because he do- well, he makes smoked meats. The big twist is what he’s making them out of, which is people, which is a twist enough.

Right. But that’s not the weird part. The fact, the fact that he sets up not even elaborate, but very simple traps on like a curve in the road to cause people to have accidents, and then he like gets them and turns them into meat, that’s, that’s enough for a horror movie. But that’s not the weird part. No.

Like that’s-

Todd: It’s not the movie

Craig: And I don’t even really understand- Ugh … the weird part either.

Todd: It’s so bizarre. It is so bizarre, and it just happens without any explanation whatsoever, and this must have been what turned off a lot of people reading it. I think the, the brothers who wrote this, that combo really had a hard time getting studios interested in this.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: U- United Artists finally came around after initially rejecting it because these shock films around 1980, 1979 were be- becoming big, and they’re like, “Well, this is a fricking bizarre, shocking thing, so maybe this will be a big hit.” So that’s why they picked it up, is because it was so strange and bizarre.

But before, just, just years before that, nobody wanted to touch it for that reason, and you can understand why. Ah, I guess we’ll get to it, but right now, like you said, it, it really… I, I think it jumps right in. You know, for a movie that felt a little slow, and certainly not slow because nothing was happening, but just slow to get to the interesting stuff, I thought, it starts off very promising.

Vincent is at his motel. He, uh, walks past his, uh, sister sleeping, so we establish that he’s got that girl, Ida, in there. Mm-hmm. They’ve got a preacher on television that they’re watching who turns out to be Wolfman Jack.

Clip: Heat of hell, right? You bet. They walked across the sands and they knew they were sinners.

They knew that they didn’t know the word of the book that told them how they should behave, and they would get

Todd: And that perked my dad’s ears up, because Wolfman Jack is from his era of radio. A very, very famous syndicated radio show out of, was it New York City? I can’t remember exactly. “Well, Wolfman Jack here.”

“Playing all the hits for you tonight.”

He’s been in a few horror movies. God, he was a featured voice in that one that we did that was kind of a musical. It was the made-for-TV one. You remember that?

Craig: Wasn’t it Midnight, Midnight something?

Todd: After Midnight?

Craig: I don’t remember. Oh, God. It was a New Year’s Eve movie, wasn’t it?

Todd: Yeah, a made-for-TV movie that it went off on all these interesting directions that had all those famous people in it or whatever.

Ah, God.

Craig: Midnight Madness?

Todd: No.

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Yo, man, that’s gonna drive me nuts. It’ll, it’ll come to us by the end of the episode, I’m sure. I’ll b- I’ll be frantically googling it while you’re talking at some point. Yeah, but he’s in it and he is a preacher, and I suppose that in itself is supposed to be funny, ’cause this wildly liberal dude playing a preacher would be hilar- Kind of like Sam Kinison playing a preacher in one of these mo- Oh, oh, was it Ozzy Osbourne plays a televangelist- Yeah, yeah

being interviewed in, uh… Which movie was that? What was that?

Craig: God, I don’t remember.

Todd: We’re getting old. The,

Craig: the Trick or Treat or something like that, I think. Trick or

Todd: Treat. Yeah, that was it. That was. So anyway, so here we are. He goes out and, uh, we establish then that they’re, they’re very religious and, and then he goes out to the road with his gun and he s- sits off in the bushes and it looks like he’s about to do something, but really he’s just watching the road as a guy and his, a gal on a motorcycle, she’s on a sidecar, lose control.

Now, this was so… For a movie that’s pretty well shot, this was so poorly shot. I have no idea what caused them to lose control. Did you see anything?

Craig: No, and I don’t know. I assume that he had set a trap because we find out that that’s what he does, but that’s so… It’s so early in the movie that maybe we’re not supposed to know that yet.

Todd: I guess.

Craig: But I mean, it’s shady nonetheless because-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: the next thing we see, I mean, he walks up to them and they, they seem to be far more injured than they should be. Right. It didn’t really seem like that big of a deal. They

Todd: just kinda bump into the tree and fall- tumble over.

Craig: Yeah. They should’ve been…

I think they could’ve walked away from that one, but- Yeah, yeah … he carries her into the house. That was weird, too. It w- I assume they were a couple, but the guy that was riding the motorcycle was old. Yeah. And she looks like she’s supposed to be in her early 20s. You know, f- fairly typical beautiful blonde heroine of the movie.

But the farmer, Vincent, carries her in the house.

Clip: Ida, come in here. I’m hungry, Vincent. What do you want? Good Lord has chosen to pluck this flower away from the Grim Reaper, and I wanna make good and sure he keeps his hands off her. I need your help.

Craig: And he, like, tells Ida to-

Todd: Do her thing? …

Craig: get her ready or something.

Yeah. I don’t know.

Todd: Yeah. At first I thought-

Craig: But I guess they’re just gon- they’re gonna keep her.

Todd: Yeah, she’s the one they’re gonna keep. They’re not gonna make meat out of her. He wants to save her. Who knows why. There’s… It’s weird. He just-

Craig: Well, ’cause she’s hot.

Todd: Well, yeah, but he- I think … just kinda says it and leaves her very matter-of-factly and goes off.

There’s not, like, a moment, you know? There’s nothing to really establish that, except for he just drags her in and says that to her and then walks out. And there’s a couple who shows up at the hotel, motel. Well, I think it’s the next day, and he’s sh- br- showing off his meats that are sitting there on the shelf.

He pulls up a box. He’s like, “2.95 for a box of Farmer Vincent’s famous smoked meats. No preservatives, no nothing.” And I was like, “God, get me that box at $2.95.” I

Craig: know. It was huge. I was thinking the same thing. I was like, “That would be $40 now.” Like… Easily.

Todd: I would stock up. But you have to

Craig: knock

Todd: off a few

Craig: bucks ‘

Todd: cause it, the…

If, if this, there are no preservatives in this meat and this has been sitting out on the shelf.

Craig: That’s true. Yeah. No preservatives.

Todd: And then there are two little girls that are twins. That’s so weird. Yeah. Right? They’re like the twins from The Shining. They’re dressed alike, they’re little, they’re cute, and they both have these identical mirrored Mylar balloons that they’re carrying like a cartoon.

They wander into the shed or processing plant there, and there’s just hogs hanging up in various carcasses and various states of… Again, not refrigerated or anything. There is a cooler in there And then as they’re walking through this creepy moment, someone with a hog’s head jumps up and scares them, and they go running out.

And that’s just kinda it. Like, they run out to Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad are ready to go anyway. The girls get in the car, and Farmer Vincent says, uh, “Don’t worry, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll calm them down.” And he goes over to the car and goes, “Rah!”

Craig: That was so weird. Like, ’cause they’re freaking out ’cause they just got chased by this hog head person, and so they’re screaming, screaming, and the mom’s like, “I’ve never seen them act like this before.”

And then like, yeah, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll calm them down.” And then he, like, terrifies them into silence. Yeah. And the mom and, and the mom and dad are like, “Okay, thanks, bye.” And they leave.

Todd: It’s such a strange sequence. And then he drives in his tractor to this vine-covered door, goes inside. We don’t really know what’s inside here yet, and then he puts on an eight-track.

I don’t know what, what was on this eight-track. Is it, was it sound effects that are masking something? I, I never sorted that out. I don’t

Craig: know.

Todd: And a cop shows up. Now, Ida jumps this cop, which is supposed to be a jump scare. You, you think he’s, she’s gonna kill him ’cause he kinda wanders on into the room.

Well, ’cause

Craig: she’s carrying, like… And she’s carrying, like, a butcher knife or something.

Todd: Yeah. But it, it’s a joke. Is it her brother or his brother?

Craig: It’s his brother.

Todd: His brother He’s got a pretty young brother

Craig: Who is also the sheriff

Todd: Yeah. I, I think, uh, honestly, like, too young to be this guy’s brother unless his parents just had some-

Craig: Yeah

Todd: some very distant… You know how that works. It does happen.

Craig: The… Yeah. I was gonna say, those old farmers, you know, if, if their, if their wives pass, they would often remarry younger women and have more kids. That’s not, that’s not all that uncommon around these parts.

Todd: Ah, true. Actually, you have a very good point there.

I stand corrected on that one. Yeah, so anyway, this is, um, Bruce. That’s his name. Played by a man named Paul Link, or Linky-

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know …

Todd: who was also all over television. He was in Parenthood, which is one of my… I love that movie. I haven’t seen it recently, but the Parenthood from 1989 with, uh, Steve Martin in it.

I remember thinking that was the most hilarious thing. And yeah, and he’s just been all over television, was working all the way up until 2018, and he’s okay. I, I feel like this guy of all of the actors in here is maybe the, the least convincing in his role.

Craig: I don’t know. I thought he was fine. What conv- I don’t…

And again, I… I mean, it’s not that I wasn’t paying attention, but I was laying in bed. It was late at night. I, so I, I, I may not be as sharp on the details as I sometimes am, but I thought for a while… You were just about to reveal the real big twist, w- as you should. But at this point, Terry has woken up. The sheriff tells…

She’s like, “Where’s my boyfriend?” And Vincent’s like, “Oh, he died.”

Todd: Right. And, uh, and- … Vincent chimes in and is like, “Yeah, and I already buried him.” Like, what?

Craig: Yeah. She’s like, “I wanna see him,” and he’s like, “Oh, sorry, I already buried him.” Yeah. And, and she’s like, “How can you do that without anybody’s permission?”

And the sheriff just kinda goes, “Around these parts under certain circumstances, it’s okay.”

Todd: Oh, he literally says that. Under c- “It’s okay.”

Craig: It’s okay.

Todd: And they, and they take her to this makeshift grave and this makeshift cemetery. It’s It’s

Craig: funny. But from that point she’s just living with them.

Todd: And she’s cool with it.

Craig: Like, she doesn’t seem to really object. It’s-

Todd: No …

Craig: bizarre. She

Todd: gets over this boyfriend very quickly. They must not have been together very long. Oh, maybe he’s too old for her anyway.

Craig: Maybe, maybe she’s, maybe she’s a road twitch that… But, but what was weird to me is not o- okay, so she lives there, but going back to the sheriff brother, he’s always hanging around, and he’s always talking about, like, how great the meat is and stuff too.

I thought for the longest time that he was a part of the operation.

Todd: Yes, me too, and he has no clue.

Craig: No, I was s- I was shocked later to find out that he didn’t know about it because it seemed like he was in on it all along.

Todd: Yeah. Seems like he’s… I mean, especially his activity here where he’s like, “Yeah, well, we buried the guy.”

Like, “Sorry, ma’am, it just happens. It’s what we do.”

Craig: No, so apparently he’s just real dumb, I guess.

Todd: Yeah. So maybe him playing dumb was just me thinking that he was too simple in his role, honestly. Honestly, I shouldn’t criticize it too much because it’s really the writing that’s silly, you know? This guy’s doing the best he can with the character he’s been given, which is this dumb cop who eventually kind of is trying to woo this girl.

Craig: Yeah, but e- that’s gross too. Yeah. And, and again, that’s like… It’s really weird because it seems like he goes from being as suspicious almost as his brother and his sister, I guess. I guess they’re all siblings Which is weird. Up, like up to a certain point and then it’s like, oh, no, he’s a good guy. But up to that point he’s gross.

Like- Yeah, he’s

Todd: gross and shady.

Craig: Yeah. And he at some point invi- ta- invites her out. I don’t remember if he invites her out on a date or if he just out on a drive or what, but they drive to I guess like Lover’s Lane or the equivalent, I don’t know, some like overlook or something. Mm. And there’s a whole bunch of cars here.

This was the only part of the movie that potentially might have made me chuckle. Because he pulls up behind all these cars and he gets on his radio or whatever and, and says, “Hey, this is the sheriff and you’re all committing crimes or breaking the law or something. Get out of here.” And he starts calling out the cars one by one.

And you may as well have had that music behind it, the like… The Benny Hill theme song, yeah. Yeah, the Benny Hill. Yeah, because they, because they all just start to scatter. But my favorite one was one couple, for reasons unexplainable, gets out of the car fully nude- … to just kind of throw their arms up in the air and run around in circles for a second and then get back in the car and leave.

Todd: That’s so dumb.

Craig: That was hilarious to

me. Hilariously stupid. I was like, “What are you doing?” You’re, uh, fully nude, just get out of the car, like jump around for a few minutes, then get back in. Oh, boy.

Todd: There’s just a lot of stuff like this like that’s just so simple and basic that I’m thinking, I guess this is their attempt at comedy.

Craig: Well, and I actually found that funny, but I lost my train of thought.

My train of thought was the whole reason that he evacuates all those people is so that they have a good view of the drive-in.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: They’re gonna watch it from this overlook, which, you know, that’s fine, noth- that’s actually kind of, you know, romantic, good idea, whatever. But as soon as she gets into the movie, he starts like manhandling her.

Yeah. Like…

Todd: Yeah, like he gets very rapey all of a sudden.

Craig: Yeah, yeah. And eventually when he does think that she calls for help, she doesn’t actually, it’s a cry over the radio, but when he thinks she cries for help he’s like, “Okay, gosh, sorry,” and he does back off. But before that he’s gross. I mean, he tackles her and- Yeah

and gets on top of her.

Todd: And then once they find out that there’s a cry for help over the radio she’s just like fine again.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Like this guy who just tried to- jump her is, uh, “No, they’re just cool now.”

Craig: Yeah, they’re friendly from then on.

Todd: There’s a lot of this in the movie where people are… It’s not realistic, you know?

And most comedies aren’t, but, you know, it’s especially- Right … it’s not realistic in a way that it almost feels like a teenager wrote this. You know? “All right, now they’re gonna do this, now they’re gonna do that,” but there’s no flow. There’s no, like, sense of where, okay, yeah, but how are their emotions gonna shift to allow this to happen?

And the point is, no, they don’t. It’s just a, it’s just plot. And so I think that was another thing that kinda made me roll my eyes at this movie. Like, it’s like the way that this cop ingratiates himself to her in the first place is she is completely distraught over her boyfriend’s death and crying, and then he g- goes up next to her and he says-

Clip: What is it, child?

You feel all alone in this world? None of us are ever really alone. You do have someone What do you mean? Why, you have yourself. Think about it. You’ve been blessed, child. Oh, the ways of the Lord are mysterious. The very fact that you’re sitting here with us proves that it was preordained

Yeah I guess you’re right

Craig: Oh my God.

Todd: And now she’s h- she’s fine again. This grieving process of this woman was, was instantaneous. Just quick turnaround from grieving her dead boyfriend, who these people buried without her permission, into undying gratitude for this man and willing to go out on a date with him immediately.

There’s just so much plot and not a lot of attention paid to making it make a lot of sense in the real world.

Craig: Well, and because ultimately it’s all very unimportant. A- and, and-

Todd: Yeah, that’s true … I

Craig: mean, there really, there really is no-

Todd: There’s nothing important in this movie

Craig: No, we’re not working towards anything.

It’s just a vehicle for this weird scenario, basically. And maybe the reason that she’s not into the sheriff is because he’s too young for her, because she’s apparently only into super old guys because- … pretty soon she starts falling for th- the farmer.

Todd: Which comes out of nowhere.

Craig: I don’t know. I mean, it’s, it’s just clunky.

It’s like… It’s, it’s later, I, but… And I don’t even remember what it was, but he, like, rescues her from something or saves her from something. Oh, from drowning, because Ida starts to get jealous and tries to drown her. Yeah Which was also a hilarious scene. But we’re, we’re … The big twist is at some point, it doesn’t matter where, somewhere about a third of the way through the movie, we get introduced to this garden.

And at first it just looks like a regular garden, but then it comes to one particular patch where there is something covered in burlap sacks-

Todd: Yeah, a bunch

Craig: of burlap- … moving around.

Todd: Yeah

Craig: Moving around. You know, some, uh, some sort of crop- Mm-hmm … planted into the garden. Could be a cabbage.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Could be a tomato plant.

You don’t know, but it’s moving around and making noise. And- And that’s odd …

Todd: and the inspector who had been coming before to inspect his plant, his hog plant, came back late at night, I guess unannounced, and decided he wanted to poke around the property, which is what brings him into this garden. I think he even climbs over to get in.

And when he lifts up one of these burlap sacks, which is moving around and making noise, he hears a sound from the speakers and he gets clubbed by Vincent from behind. And it turns out that Vincent and Ida are planting their victims into the ground.

Craig: Alive

Todd: They’re burying them up to their necks alive.

Ida, I guess she was a nurse or something like that. She knows how to sever their vocal cords so that they can’t do more than just make these, like- Ah … kind of sounds.

Craig: Uh, oh, it, it, it’s horrible. Mm-hmm. They’re horrible, disgusting sounds.

Todd: Yep.

Craig: Ugh, gross.

Todd: And to what end, I’m not sure. Like, is this their way of aging the meat or something?

See, when I was a kid watching this, I had the impression there was some supernatural thing happening here. You know? Like, they had this special method for doing something with these bodies And that’s why they planted them, like it was a magical ground or they were turning them into creatures or something like that.

That was my recollection. But there really isn’t. It’s just like a way of torturing these guys for a little while.

Craig: Well, I read a summary somewhere that said they’re fattening them up, and, and may- I… They’re… We do see a- Well, they

Todd: force feed them, yeah …

Craig: where they force feed them, right. But I don’t know. It’s just so strange.

Like what? And it’s just- It’s just

Todd: strange to be strange …

Craig: if there is an explanation for why, if I missed it because I don’t remember them ever saying, “I know it tenderizes the meat,” or keeps their temperature low or something, y- I- Yeah … I have no idea. It’s just so that it can look like a cabbage patch of zombie heads.

Mm. Because they basically seem like zombies even though they’re not, right? Like, they’re-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: they are still fully aware. Like, they just can’t talk because their vocal cords-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: she does, you know, uh, apparently precision surgery right there in the garden, and sews them back up, and they’re just fine, and they just…

Oh, my God. It’s so weird and stupid.

Todd: I mean, when you think about it, it’s actually pretty horrifying, if you think about it. I mean, you’re buried up to your neck. You can’t move at all. Oh,

Craig: yeah.

Todd: You’re stuck there. It’s just your head. You can’t scream nothing, and you, you can’t move. I mean, how claustrophobic would that feel?

It’s like being buried alive, but you have, uh, air. And they come in every now and then and force feed them. They have to defecate somewhere, so I guess they’re doing that in the ground where they are. I c- they got a lot of cleaning to do after they pull up these weeds. Let’s just put it that way.

Craig: Gross.

Todd: Yeah, the whole thing when you, when you think about it is super gross, and I would feel like a modern movie would really ki- would really kinda human centipede this, you know? They would really try to play up how sinister and dark this is, and what it’s really doing to these people. But because this movie is just so off the wall and it just feels more cartoonish than anything else.

Craig: Yeah. It does. It feels like a really dark Scooby-Doo episode.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I mean, I can just see the Scooby Gang all buried up to their necks and, oh, gosh. But yeah, it is… It’s, it’s goofy like that and I don’t remember… I thought I remembered it being something, some commentary on meat consumption. I, I almost thought that it was, like, critical of meat consumption, and I don’t know if it’s meant to be or not.

Mm-hmm. I think it’s more just about maybe… And, and to say it’s about anything is- Giving it some credit … a stretch, but yeah. You know, there may be some commentary there on consumerism and whatever. But yeah, it’s just strange. It’s just like… It’s, it’s like a, a nightmare scenario. I mean, and, and to be fair- You know, as you said, if you think about it, it is really nightmarish and it is a great visual.

It looks cool.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But it’s, it’s almost like they had an idea of something that would look cool and they were right and they kinda built a movie around it, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. Yeah,

Todd: it doesn’t make sense.

Craig: It just, well, and it just allows for them to play in that cool set piece.

Yeah. That’s it. Like, there’s no purpose to it. It’s just that it can look cool and they can play there.

Todd: To be honest, aside from the fact that it’s established pretty early on that they’re killing people and he’s grinding them up for meat, we never actually really see him kill anybody.

Craig: No.

Todd: We never see him grinding up bodies for meat.

We never see him cackling in delight when somebody’s eating his sausages or whatever like that. Like, we never s- I don’t think we even ever see anybody eating this meat. So-

Craig: Yeah, I mean, you see him eating, like, meat sticks and stuff. That’s true. But it’s not like they’re gnawing on raw meat or human meat.

Yeah. And I mean, it is in a slaughterhouse, so you, I mean, you see sides of pork- Pork and stuff … and whatnot. And event- well, but eventually he has human torsos. Uh, I mean, they look fake. They’re obviously styrofoam the way they’re moving around, but- Yeah … my point is, you do see some scary imagery, but there’s not, you’re right, there’s not a lot of on-screen violence Or gore, uh, save for kind of the very, very end, which still isn’t really very explicit.

Todd: And so this set piece here is the only thing that serves to give us any real

Craig: shock?

Todd: Shock, yeah, I guess. Uh, character stuff with Vincent and Ida allow them to play together, because otherwise this just comes off as a goofy-ish comedy. Because there becomes this whole plot where Terry falls in love with Vincent.

Craig: Yeah. Right.

Todd: Which comes out of nowhere, but it’s like you said, it’s after he saves her from drowning. And then V- and she tries to kiss him, which was just so- She

Craig: tries to seduce him …

Todd: really fast.

Craig: She throws her… Yeah.

Todd: It’s so gross. Everything about it was strange. It comes out of nowhere. The- there’s a huge age difference.

You can’t imagine that she’s actually attracted to him.

Craig: Well, and it feels incestuous too. Yeah. Like, I know that they’re not biologically related, but it definitely felt like a father-daughter kind of relationship up to this point, and then that just makes it even creepier.

Todd: And then he’s all weird about it because he’s religious and he’s like, “We need to be married first before we can even kiss.”

And so then he goes downtown to the preacher to talk to him about it, and he gets a, an engagement ring for her, and he… There’s a moment where he proposes this to her. I, I mean, this is almost like a whole separate movie with a whole separate tone, and it’s so stupid. It feels so forced and basic, just like a wacky cartoon that we’re watching that’s not even that wacky.

Just kind of, just kind of cringey.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I, I, I didn’t love it either, but I thought that it was fairly apropos for the type of movie that it is. It also reminded me a lot of, I, I won’t be able to remember the name of it, but there was a movie where, I don’t know, a couple of couples or something went to an island and there was a weird family that lived there.

And the kids were like grown-ups, but they still acted like kids.

Todd: American Gothic.

Craig: Do you remember that ? American Gothic.

Todd: Yeah, mm-hmm.

Craig: Yeah. This reminds me a lot of that. I, I mean, even- Oh, yeah … even the box art for this movie, the, the brother and sister, Ida and Vincent, are s- are standing like the, the painting American Gothic.

Todd: It’s true. It’s true. That did it better. That struck a better tone, I thought.

Craig: Maybe. I think there’s a fair argument there. But again, it’s just take whatever, everyday people, your victims or whatever, put them in this insane environment with, with wacky characters and, and just watch for a little while So I don’t, I don’t know.

I don’t want to accuse you of being overly harsh because everything that you are saying I, I don’t disagree with. I just, I didn’t hate it.

Todd: Well, I had to keep reminding myself that this is sort of a product of its time, and I think the humor w- is just… Like, nowadays our humor’s just a little bit more, I don’t wanna say sophisticated.

I’m not sure what the word is I’m looking for, but I don’t think we have the patience for this kind of basic humor like this anymore because our movies are, I don’t know, they’re just- they just strike a different tone, and it’s hard to go back to this anymore. It would be like watching Meatballs today.

It works and it’s funny. You can’t say it’s not funny, but it’s just not our style anymore. And I feel like for its time this movie was probably just a bizarre, fun, goofy little spectacle that nobody knew what to do with, and for that, you know, it- it’s, it’s interesting. But now I feel like years later it feels kind, just kinda stupid tonally, and I, I couldn’t really laugh at it.

And it’s so cartoonish that to even call it a dark comedy just feels off because our comedy, our dark comedies nowadays can be so freaking dark that this feels like child’s play in that arena. Do you know what I’m saying?

Craig: Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I, I mean, I, in a nutshell I feel like you’re saying it’s a product of its time- Yeah

and, and it may not appeal to modern sensibilities. And, and I 100% agree. Like, my high school students would think this was so dumb, and I don’t think they would get why anybody would find it amusing or, or humorous. I think I still am a little bit nostalgic for that. Right. To be fair, dumb humor a lot of the time is a comfort for me because-

Todd: Mm

Craig: the world feels very serious and heavy a lot of the time- Yeah … right now, and it’s just kind of nice to just to revert back to that 13 or 14-year-old boy who was carefree and could laugh about farts and you

Todd: know, like- Well, yeah. And I… 100% behind you on that, and I think that’s why I couldn’t hate this movie.

I, I get kinda tired of… Because I think we’ve been getting it since the ’90s, this sort of edgy, self-aware, cynical, you know? It, it… Just everything, from children’s cartoons even. Everything’s with a wink and a nod and edgy and cynical and doesn’t take itself seriously, that I feel like i- i- that was fun for a while.

But now I, I, I want movies that are with heart, you know? I k- I kinda want some movie that even though it’s dumb, it’s just really going in for dumb. Or-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: did you see the Masters of the Universe movie?

Craig: Not yet.

Todd: Okay. I’m very biased because I was a huge He-Man fan growing up. And I know that that movie is not doing well in the theaters, but it doesn’t seem to matter because I think Amazon is thrilled because they’ve gotten the audience they were looking for, and it’s gone over really well with that audience.

Craig: Good.

Todd: And their, their whole business model is very different. You know, they don’t really care so much about box office numbers. They care about getting subscriptions and, and targeting these niche groups with, with products and things like that. So to that level, it was successful. And I’ll tell you as a fan why I thought it was successful and why it worked for me and why I went back to see it a second time Is because it wasn’t poking fun at its subject matter every 10 minutes.

It wasn’t turning to the audience and laughing and winking and going, “Isn’t this silly?” You know, all these men running around. Like, it is silly. The He-Man universe is goofy as hell.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It’s so stupid. All right, we know that. It’s silly, but we like it anyway. And so it gave us a movie, it played it straight with, uh, still a lot of comedy, still a lot of fun, and still a lot of humor, but it retained the heart of, “This is the story.

This is the universe. We make no apologies for these characters, and we’re not gonna just laugh at them in this sort of meta way.” Like, the Barbie movie did that really well, too. And so I feel like I’m hoping that we’re turning a corner here. And, uh, this is a very roundabout way of saying, “Yes, I agree with you.”

I… This kind of thing is, es- to a certain degree, very comforting because it’s just boldly going in a direction and it’s not trying to be cute and meta and winky and- Uh-huh … which ends up sometimes just feeling, like, cynical and insincere.

Craig: Yeah. Ah.

Todd: Okay. Maybe I’ve apologi- maybe I’ve, you know… I haven’t changed my opinion on the movie.

I still found it kinda boring and I was still rolling my eyes at it and whatnot. I get it. But, but still, I, I’m not gonna say I hated it and I’m not gonna discourage people from watching it.

Craig: Right. I… And honestly, I felt the same way. Like, I wasn’t super enthused about it either. Uh, before we started recording, Alan thought we had already recorded this morning, and he asked how the podcast went.

And I said, “Oh, I, we haven’t done it yet.” I said, “But gosh, I don’t really know what I’m gonna say about this movie.” And here we are, here we are an hour in. But I didn’t love it either, but I mean, it was, you know, something easy to watch. It’s brainless. And the things that we’re picking apart like, “Oh, that’s so stupid,” yeah, they are stupid, but whatever.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: It’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a dumb movie. I don’t think it’s trying to be, trying… I don’t think it’s trying to be anything that it isn’t. You know? It’s-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: it, it… So I, I actually would recommend it ’cause I do think that it’s, though a little bit slow, I do think that it’s pretty well made. Ultimately, the cop, who’s the brother, gets suspicious when he finds out that farmer Vincent and the girl are getting married, and so he starts poking around.

I don’t remember. His

Todd: jealousy drives him.

Craig: His jealousy drives him, and I guess at this point he becomes kind of the hero. Yeah. And we find out that he didn’t know what his brother was doing and, gosh, I don’t know. Uh-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: for reasons that I don’t understand, right before the wedding or on the wedding night or something, Ida puts something in the girl’s drink and she passes out.

Now, I thought Ida was trying to poison and kill her-

Todd: Uh-huh …

Craig: because it seems like even though Ida and Vincent are brother and sister, it also seems like she’s jealous.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But then she also looks at girly magazines, so I don’t know what’s going on with her.

Todd: Yeah, she’s an enigma, this Ida character.

Craig: But the girl just passes out.

Now, I don’t know what they were planning on… And, and Vincent is in on it. He apparently was in on the drugging. I don’t know what that’s about. I don’t know what they were going to do with her.

Todd: Yeah. But Vincent’s kinda 180 here. Like, was this all an elaborate thing for them to just get her dead too? He seems very sincere and interested in marrying her, but then w- as soon as she drugs the girl, which she seems to do without Vincent’s permission, or was he in on it?

Craig: Well, he doesn’t act surprised when she passes out.

Todd: No, he doesn’t. And he’s like, “All right, well, go, we’ll go to work on her.” What? Wh- why, why did that come in and out of nowhere? W- were we supposed to believe that this was all an elaborate ploy for him to mess with this girl for a while before they gave her the same fate as everyone else?

It’s just baffling to me. Again, I just feel like it’s a very plot-driven movie, and now they just wanted the plot to go in this direction, so they made this scene so that the plot could go in that direction.

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. And then, like, there’s other weird stuff going on with the garden, like I don’t even know, like- Oh,

Todd: man

Craig: and we, I mean, we skipped a bunch. Like, there’s other victims from the road. Like, he traps a whole band, and the lead singer of that band is Cliff from Cheers. Did you notice that’s John Ratzenberger? Oh my God. I didn’t recog- I didn’t recognize him at all.

Todd: No.

Craig: Um- I did not … I didn’t, uh, until… I, I didn’t even read about it until after the fact.

Todd: Well, I saw the name come up in the credits, and I was looking for him through the whole movie, and I didn’t think I could find him, and I thought, “Well, he must’ve had, like, a tiny bit role in the background someplace.”

Craig: He was the lead singer of that band in the van. Oh, interesting. Uh, and then there’s, there’s also a swinger couple who are like…

That was weird.

Todd: That was charming for me. Again, because it was so dated. Like, I thought if you had seen this movie back in 1980, probably all of this would seem so modern and hilarious to y- hilarious to you. But now if I was watching this with some young person, I would have to decode everything they were talking about.

It, it reminded me of Terror Vision. You remember? Half of the comedy of Terror Vision is about this swinging couple, and they’re, they’re making all these innuendos that don’t make sense today. Like, about how, oh, he’s very Greek and all that, which at the time was slang for homosexual or something. And-

it’s very similar here. Like, they’ve had these innuendos that I think if you were not of the era, you would have you scratching your head and would go right over it. They just seem like they’re bizarre. And then there’s that scene where they they go for no real reason, they cut to the room and she’s dressed up in some leather outfit, and she’s got a whip, and we get a good five minutes of her just running around, I guess, practicing with her whip.

Craig: That was weird.

Todd: And then-

Craig: You didn’t know what was happening …

Todd: the woman just whips everything in the room, just completely destroys the room, and then the guy comes out in the w- the weirdest, most sexually unappealing mishmash of costumery you could possibly imagine.

Craig: Like, and like lingerie. It

Todd: was strange. With a plastic skirt and all…

I mean, ha ha ha, look at how kinky they are. They’re so kinky that d- they’re just completely over the top. And she starts… He’s like, “Rub me with oil. Rub me with oil.” And she’s pouring oil all over his chest, and he’s just getting off on her, like, rubbing oil into his clavicle. I mean, it it’s just dumb.

Craig: Well, right, and then Ida and Victor, whatever his name is, come in carrying ropes and stuff, and they’re like, “Yeah, come join us.”

Like, ew.

Todd: Tie us up.

Craig: Which they do and then- Yeah … bury them, I guess. Yeah, so there’s a whole garden full of people, but they, you know… I don’t even ultimately know what happens to them. I feel like- Yeah … some of them-

Todd: They get hypnotized …

Craig: like, maybe break out?

Todd: Well, ultimately. Ultimately, what happens to them is that they end up breaking out, and I don’t understand why.

I don’t understand how. One of them gets loose, and I think it’s the, her boyfriend, right?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: Terry’s boyfriend gets loose somehow and is able to pull himself out, and he more or less digs the others out, and then it becomes kind of a pseudo-zombie movie because they’re stumbling down the streets with the smoke behind them in the dark, gurgling- Gurgle

’cause they can’t make any sounds, and coming after the couple.

Craig: God, I don’t even remember that. All I remember is that the, Bruce, the sheriff, is trying to rescue her, and they’re in the slaughterhouse and, like, he’s slaughtered some people, and he’s got their torsos, like, hung up on hooks, and he’s putting it in the smoker and stuff.

But Bruce shows up. There’s fighting between Bruce and Ida at some point. Yeah. But then the, the big showdown is this big chainsaw duel between- … Vincent, who’s now wearing that pig head. By the way- Oh,

Todd: God …

Craig: it must have been Ida in the pig head the first time, right? I guess so. It had to have been. It had

Todd: to have been, yeah, ’cause Vincent was out, was in the other place, yeah.

Craig: I was really confused by that. But anyway, so he’s in this big pig head thing, and they have a chainsaw fight. Now To just kind of throw in the pig head thing, I mean, sure, why not? And it looks really good, and I guess that, that image of him kind of standing in the doorway kind of Texas Chainsaw style with the chainsaw up and him in this big pig mask, that image was used on a cover of Fangoria that if you can get your hands on now is worth a lot of money because it was recalled.

Like- Too gory … once it was on, yeah, once it was on the shelves, it was considered too gory, so they recalled it- That’s crazy … and put out a different cover.

Todd: For Fangoria.

Craig: I know. Jesus. But I know. It, I know. I– God, it seemed like there was always gory stuff, but maybe not on the cover. I don’t remember. But I agree that that image itself, I feel like I’m familiar with that image more than I am with the movie.

Todd: Well, it’s been copied. It’s a thing.

Craig: Is– Was-

Todd: Even like in- Was

Craig: that- …

Todd: Saw, right? …

Craig: Saw?

Todd: Yeah. Yeah Somebody had a pig head mask in… Oh, what’s that movie? Is it the, not The Stranger. Is it The Strangers? No, they have other masks.

Craig: No, I- It’s

Todd: a home- …

Craig: You’re Next …

Todd: home invasion movie. Yeah, You’re Next that does that too, and maybe that all came from this movie.

I don’t know. But when you think about the logistics of this It makes no sense. Like, he can’t even- No … see out of that. He’s ju- he literally has a pig’s carcass’s head over his head, right?

Craig: Yeah, and it’s enormous. If that came off of a real pig, it would be ridiculously heavy.

Todd: Yeah, and how can he see?

Craig: He’d be bobbling around.

Todd: Yeah. It’s just like, it’s very impractical, and I can’t imagine it’d be very pleasant to wear either.

Craig: I don’t know. But they fight. They have a duel with chainsaws, which is fine. I, I guess this was a last-minute rewrite. It wasn’t initially in, and then it became kind of the most iconic scene of the movie.

And it’s fine. They fight, and all the while, Terry, the girl, is on the conveyor belt, like being pulled towards the meat slicer. So it’s a race against time. But, uh, eventually he mortally wounds Vincent with the chainsaw. Like, he, he gets him in the torso, and immediately is concerned, like, “Oh, Vincent.” Like, this guy was just trying to kill you, but okay, whatever.

He swings in on a rope. That was the weirdest thing. Like, so in one scene, he’s in with Vincent, he’s like, “Oh, gosh. Oh, Vincent,” and then the next scene we cut back to her on the conveyor belt, and f- from the back wall he swings in, like I guess on one of the chains for the meat, I don’t know. But like Tarzan swings in just so that he can flip a switch-

Todd: Yes

Craig: to turn off… Like, why didn’t you just run in there? Like, dramatic.

Right. But he gets in there and he turns the switch off so she’s fine, and then they both go in there and they’re like, “Oh, Vincent, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.” What the… He’s psychotic.

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And then this part was also hilarious because there, it’s, there’s very dramatic music. Uh-huh. And they treat this as the emotional climax of the movie, and they play it 100% straight.

Uh-huh. And it’s so funny. Like, he’s like, “You can have the motel and, and you can have the farm. Just… A- and you can have the garden.” And she’s like, “What garden?” And he’s like, “The secret garden.” And then he doesn’t say anything else about it. And then he’s like, “Oh, oh, and take care of my animals.” And the guy’s like, “Yeah, I’ll, I’ll take care of your animals.”

And he’s like, “My whole life’s been a lie.” And they’re like, “What?” And I, again, straight as an arrow they play this thing. He says with great remorse and, and much emotion, “I used-” artificial preservatives. And then he dies.

Todd: I chuckled at that.

Craig: Uh- I

Todd: did chuckle at that.

Craig: I chuckled at it too. That-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: in the moment I recognized, oh, this is so funny because they’re playing it so straight.

Like, more than in any other part of the movie, they’re really committing to this with the score and everything. Yeah. And it worked. And, you know, then it’s silly. Like, they walk out together. Now, where I thought that this was going was that as horrified as Terry and Bruce had appeared to be by everything that was going on, I thought that they were gonna take over the operation.

Clip: Hmm.

Craig: Why I thought that, I don’t know. No. Apparently, apparently that’s not what happens. They walk away from the motel and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, this place is awful. That’s why I ran away when I was little.” What? What are you talking about? He’s like, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it.” And she’s like, “What do you mean what you’re gonna do with it?

Burn it down.” He says, “You mean arson?” And she says, “That’s what I’d do. This place is evil.” Cut to black, the end. Like what?

Todd: Yeah. Oh my God.

Craig: Ah. Wrap it up. Yeah, wrap it up. Okay, folks, it’s over. Go home.

Todd: The horrors of arson.

Craig: Yeah. And then there’s some great honky-tonk music over the credits that I very much enjoyed.

Todd: Ah.

Craig: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a goofy movie. It’s goofy. It’s, it’s… I, I wouldn’t go so far to say as it’s good, but I can understand why it has its fans. I would imagine that if you’re somebody who saw this around the time that it came out- Hmm … it may have even kind of been a breath of fresh air. I don’t think that a lot…

I don’t think there were a lot of horror comedies. I mean, they’ve always been around. We’ve done some that predate this, but I don’t think they were as common as they are today. Especially, I mean, this is right around the era that we were heading r- right into the big slasher explosion. And this is, uh, a little different.

It’s quirky. It’s a little slow. It’s too long. Yeah. Way too long. It should’ve been, it should’ve been an hour and 28 minutes instead of an hour and 40 however minutes it was. But I don’t think it’s a waste of time. I, I can see why it has its fans. I can see why it has a cult following. I can see why it has a reputation, and for those reasons, I think it’s worth your time.

But temper your expectations. It’s not great.

Todd: Yeah, I think this is why I remembered it more fondly than I, than I experienced it this time around, is because I think probably for its time it was a bit of a breath of fresh air. When I saw it, quirky enough and bizarre enough that I was like, “Wow, this is clever in how quirky and bizarre,” and this irreverent comic romp that goes in all these strange directions and changes tone a lot.

But ultimately, like for today’s audience, like you, I’m not gonna say don’t watch it, but I don’t know. I’m not gonna see it again. I’m not that… I would watch Tourist Trap again, you know? I’d watch Terrorvision again. I’d watch Terrorvision 20 times.

Craig: Maybe.

Todd: But this, no, it, it just, it was just too dumb for me, and that’s all I have to say, I guess.

Craig: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough I don’t know. I just, uh, the people who talk to us, I feel like some of them would get a kick out of this, but I totally see where you’re coming from. By the way, The Midnight Hour.

Todd: Thank you. The Midnight Hour. Oh, man. With that fantastic slow-mo scene.

Craig: Dance sequence.

Todd: Oh, the dance sequence is great.

Craig: Oh, that, I liked,

Todd: yeah. But the one with The Smiths song in the, in the cellar with the slow motion with their swinging around and the blood, the wine that’s kinda flowing like blood.

Craig: God, I don’t remember that part. Oh,

Todd: such a

Craig: good scene. It’s a good movie, though. I liked that movie.

Todd: Yeah, that was a fun movie.

Craig: Check that one out.

Todd: That was silliness and dumbness that kinda worked. Uh, that was really campy.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, this one-

Craig: That one’s more fun.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Watch that one.

Todd: Watch The Midnight Hour. Skip Motel Hell and go to The Midnight Hour. Didn’t you think it was a little on the nose, too, that they showed the, the sign just before the end credits, they zoomed in on the sign Motel Hello and sparked out the O in very slow and dramatic fashion like we didn’t know this was going on?

Craig: Uh- … I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

Todd: Well, thank you guys for listening and, and we hope you enjoyed this show. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Please write us a review on those podcast, uh, review places like Apple Podcast. We love to see those, and that also helps drive more traffic towards our show.

You can look us up, Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast. We’ll get you to our website, our Facebook, and social media pages. We got a Patreon, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Full unedited episodes after we record them are immediately out. That’s our whole phone call, including what we talk about before and after and all those juicy bits that we leave out of the general public eye, if you enjoy it, or their ear, I guess you could say.

If you enjoy this, please consider subscribing, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. Only five bucks a month gets you that, gets you our book club, and a whole bunch of other goodies. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We tackle Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 thanks to a patron request, expecting another cheap public-domain cash grab after the poorly reviewed first film, but we’re surprised by the improved budget, production value, and approach.

We discuss how the sequel goes meta by treating the first movie as a film-within-the-film, allowing recasts and retcons, and how the movie leans into extreme, Terrifier-style gore with a huge rave massacre and creative kills.

We break down the updated creature designs—especially Owl as a mastermind and Tigger’s Freddy-inspired vibe—plus Christopher Robin’s added backstory involving a mad scientist, kidnapped children, and Pooh revealed as his brother Billy. We also cover the ending, mid-credits tease of Pooh and Piglet returning, and the franchise’s planned crossover “cinematic universe.”

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Automatic Transcript

Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey 2 (2024)

Episode 495, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, this actually came as a request from one of our patrons, Jessica. And it’s a good thing she did request this, because I don’t think you and I would have voluntarily done this movie. Who knows? We probably would have gotten to it.

We’ve done a lot of strange things on this. But I think you and I bo- well, I don’t know. I’m just gonna speak for me right now, is I have not been at all interested in this twisted childhood universe of- Mm-hmm … public domain, you know, pre-Disney character childhood favorites like Winnie the Pooh and Bambi and Pinocchio and all that stuff they’re making horror movies of.

Because of the first of these, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, I didn’t watch it, but I saw screenshots from it and I read the reviews and it sounded like it was absolute garbage. That’s what everybody said about it, and sounded like a quick cash grab. And it was produced by a guy who does these just quickie direct-to-video movies for, like, $10,000.

You know, they shoot them in like 5 to 10 days and put them on the shelves. Which, don’t get me wrong, this is a very respectful thing to do.

Craig: Yeah,

Todd: sure. It’s fine. It, it makes money and it has an audience, and I actually enjoy a lot of those films. So I’m not knocking the idea that you will take something that’s coming out, make a cheap copy of it, or do something quirky and clever like this, but not put m- many resources into it, you know, and throw it out there not expecting it to do much, but at least hoping to make some money off of it.

That’s fine, but, uh, it’s not typically the kind of thing I want to sit down and watch usually. So I, I didn’t give it this much credit at all. And then to see that they made a sequel of it, I was like, “Oh my God, of course.” You know? Just the, the weirdness of it gave them… I think that movie had $50,000 budget and it grossed over 7 million.

This movie had a $500,000 budget and grossed about 7 million worldwide. So you know, there’s an audience for it. But the first one is not well reviewed. It’s like 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. This one is closer to 50, and I have to say, I was actually surprised. This wasn’t what I was expecting. I guess the more money that went into it and a few talented people came on board to up things quite a bit.

And it wasn’t what I expected, let’s just put it that way. I don’t think it bears much resemblance to the original movie at all. So, you know, thanks Jessica for the request, and I’m looking forward to chatting about this with Craig. This seems like one of those movies you might have had on in the background.

Craig: No, because I could almost repeat verbatim what you just said. The first one really turned me off. Now, I was initially kind of interested when they first announced the first Blood and Honey, and you know, the story was, it was because A.A. Milne’s original characters from the Winnie-the-Pooh, the first Winnie-the-Pooh book had entered public domain, and they were gonna make a horror movie out of it.

And I thought, “Well, that’s really stupid,” but-

Todd: Could be fun …

Craig: it could be a lot of fun. Yeah. Right. And so I was kind of excited about it, and, you know, anything that I would see about it, it didn’t sound particularly promising once it was actually in production, and I was seeing stills and the, the guys just looked like any big slasher guy in a relatively inexpensive rubber mask.

Like it- Yeah … it didn’t look good. But I thought I’d give it a chance anyway, and it, you know, it opened in a fairly promising fashion in the same way that this one does with an animated sequence that gives the background. And just for any of you who haven’t seen the films and you’re interested in the background, the first movie, the background is that Christopher Robin didn’t meet, you know, fuzzy stuffed animal type things in the Hundred Acre Woods.

He actually met these, like, human animal hybrids or, like, anthropomorphized animals and, and befriended them and took care of them. But then when he went off to college, he abandoned them and, and there was nobody to feed them, so they starved through a harsh winter and ate Eeyore.

Which traumatized them, and they vowed never to speak again. And in the first movie, Christopher Robin wants… Like, he gets engaged and he wants to take his fiancee to meet his friends in the woods. So- … he, he takes her there and they savagely murder her and, like, I think torture him and stuff. Now, I only know beyond the animated part what happened really, because I started watching it once and I got to where the animals…

Oh, and the animals in that movie also, like, vowed to never speak. So in that movie, the first movie apparently I think, Pooh says one thing maybe, but they really don’t speak ’cause they vowed not to. I got through the animated sequence, which was promising, but then just the first five to 10 minutes after that were so bad that I turned it off and I never went back to it.

And like you, that turned me off from the rest of them. I really had not much interest, even though looking at them from afar, they seemed to be getting better, at least in terms of production quality, probably due to budget. And some of them started sounding interesting. Like, I Had heard some good things about the Bambi one.

I think it’s called, like, Bambi: The Reckoning or something like that. Right. And I had seen a couple of clips from it. It’s, it’s big time CGI, but it looks maybe kind of interesting. And then the next one that’s coming out, Pinocchio Unstrung-

Todd: Which, a great title by the way …

Craig: it is really good, has Robert Englund in it.

Todd: It does, really?

Craig: Yeah. Robert Englund is Jiminy Cricket, and- Another guy, big guy in, in horror is playing Geppetto. I can’t think of him, but he’s… If you look it up right quick, Richard something maybe. You would recognize him immediately because he’s been a menacing, scary guy in a million things that we’ve reviewed.

So-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: I mean, just the attachment of those folks gives me hope that maybe they’re getting better. Okay, that was my perspective going into this. This request came at least a month ago. I have no idea when this will actually get posted, but in our timeline, this request came at least a month ago, and I think we were kind of like subtly putting it off.

And eventually I was like, “We should just, we should just do it.” I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it going in, but I was surprised too. Mm-hmm. It wasn’t what I expected either, and I would say that while I’m not gonna give it a glowing review, I’m glad I saw it. Like, I genuinely am glad I saw it, and it’s not bad.

Todd: Right. Well-

Craig: I, I didn’t not like it.

Todd: You did not like it. I mean, production value is great. The gore effects are fine. You know, there’s obviously some CGI supplementals in here. But I could tell that this would appeal, and I think it probably came at the right time. This seems to, I think, appeal to a crowd that The Terrifier would appeal to because it seems like the attempt here is to just keep things very extreme.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And I guess that’s, that’s really what the writer-director/producer of the whole thing, Rhys Frake-Waterfield, had said outright. He said he wanted to make a sequel to that first one, improve it, get a much bigger budget, and take everything extreme. And at least one of the actors, I think the one who played Tigger in here, said that he took a lot of his inspiration for his character from The Terrifier, as well as Freddy Krueger and somebody else.

So-

Craig: Yeah …

Todd: they had that in mind. And, you know, The Terrifier 2 I think had just come out around this time as well. So it shows, I would imagine there’s a lot of crossover between these two audiences. You know, once word gets out about how gory this is and how extreme the killings are, then probably a lot of folks, uh, who liked The Terrifier movies and were kind of on that bandwagon would jump over and want to see this.

And because it delivers on that front, I think.

Clip: Mm-hmm.

Todd: But also, the acting is good.

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: I think the acting’s fine. It’s great. E- even, uh, the guy who plays Christopher Robin, who I guess is reprising his role from the first movie?

Craig: No. Am I right about that? Okay. So this is… No. This is one of the things that I think is coolest about this movie.

They solve lots of problems from the first movie by making this movie meta.

Todd: Right.

Craig: In that the first movie is actually a cinematic film of true events that happens to the people in this movie. Does that make sense?

Todd: Yeah, it’s kind of like Scream and what was that one? S- Stab.

Craig: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. As though, you know…

S- yes, exactly. So what we saw, the first movie that we saw was a, a filmed, uh, version, a fictionalized account of something that actually happened to the people that we are now being introduced to. So that changes… That, that solves the recast problem- Mm … because the guy in the first movie was just an actor playing the real Christopher Robin who we’re seeing now.

Um- Right … it also allows them to retcon things just by saying, “Oh, well, they changed it for the movie.” So the, the animals now can speak because, you know, the film just added that element of them vowing never to speak or whatever. And they can also justify the change in the appearance of the villains because these are the real villains, and that was just a cheap movie knockoff of them.

Mm. And they do look a lot better in this. I, I- Oh, yeah … I wouldn’t go so far as to say Pooh looks… I don’t know. I still think he could have looked better, but some of the creature design, particularly Owl, I thought was fantastic. Yeah.

Todd: He was a… I’m sorry. He was a producer Scott Chambers. He, he’s an actor too. He’s acted in a lot of movies, but he was a, a producing partner, still is I suppose, a producing partner of, um, of Rhys- uh, Frake-Water- Waterfield for a lot of those other films. So he, he produced the first film and decided to step in- Gotcha

and, uh, and act in this one. I think he does a great job, even though this is certainly not his first acting credit. He’s been in a lot of, uh, these straight to video… And I think that’s why he’s so good. I, I actually thought he was really good in this. If it weren’t for… And this movie really focuses around him.

Craig: I think he’s directing the next one, by the way.

Todd: Oh, is that right? Okay. I think so. Yeah, they got a third one coming up, and they’ve got two released last year, right? The Bambi one and the Peter Pan. There’s a Peter Pan.

Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Todd: And then the, the Pinocchio one’s coming up, if it hasn’t been released already.

Uh, it’s c- it was coming up this year at, at least. You are right. And they wanna do crossover movies. They wanna take- But I think they’re

Craig: filming that now …

Todd: the whole Avengers attitude. Yeah.

Craig: They’re either filming the crossover one or Blood and Honey 3. I don’t remember. They’re filming one of them now. But yeah, they’re crossing them all over and, like, they’re treating it- They- they’re using the Marvel model- Yeah

where they start out with these individual movies, then they cross them over, bring in even more characters. Like, they’re gonna bring in, like, Mary Poppins and- … Sleeping Beauty, and there are several others. But they’re gonna bring them in in the big Avengers style one so that the, they can then spin them off into a phase two of other Uh, individual movies.

Todd: It’s, it’s so smart because when you think about it from just, even just a purely business but also creative aspect, I mean, this is why we have public domain. Disney themselves took these stories like Pinocchio- Sure … and, and, and Sleeping Beauty, you know, that they didn’t have to pay any rights to, and really owned them in a way.

You know, for childhood, like, when people think of Pinocchio they, they immediately think of Disney.

Clip: Yeah.

Todd: It’s just part of the zeitgeist now. And so with these originals falling out of public domain, now somebody else can come over and kinda skirt around everything that Disney has set up. But the Disney part of it is helping to bolster these movies really- Right

because everyone’s so familiar with these stories because they’re… the Disney move- movie versions of them are so beloved for multiple generations now.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: So it makes sense to capitalize on this and do it in the same way the big studios are doing it. W- I just hear the twisted childhood universe and the idea that they’re gonna tie all these together like Marvel did, which we l- really loved.

Then I think, “Oh, you know, actually I kind of am curious just to see how they’re gonna pull this off.” It does in a way wanna nudge me towards them a little bit, especially after seeing this. Yeah. Because, uh, I think they’ll actually might do a pretty good job with it. D- don’t get me wrong, like these are still silly.

You can’t take them seriously, and they don’t take themselves seriously.

Craig: Right.

Todd: This one is fun, and I’m- Yeah … curious to see how the others go, too.

Craig: Well, they… It is fun. I enjoyed it. And, you know, I guess the setup for this movie is that i- in the town that the real Christopher Robin lives in, he’s like a pariah because nobody believes him that there are these animal men in the woods that killed all these people.

Mm-hmm. So they think it must have been him even though, I, I don’t know, I guess they couldn’t prove it or something, ’cause he’s not in jail or anything. Like, he’s-

Todd: Yeah. That’s a little weird. He’s just allowed to roam free, but everybody thinks he’s a murderer. Like, what?

Craig: Okay. R- right, like a mass murderer.

Right.

Todd: Not like there was an OJ Simpson trial or anything.

Craig: But instead they’re just all being real mean to him. Except for his gorgeous girlfriend and his lovely parents. Uh, he’s living with his parents and his little sister, Bunny.

Clip: Hello. You know Mom has been calling you for ages. She’s getting annoyed.

Hello? She calls me Ella, and my name is Bunny. I mean, you’ve got two names, which is absolutely fine. Nope, just Bunny. And just Ella. Just Bunny.

What are you doing up here then? What’s all this? Before you get mad, I asked Mom and she said it was fine. What was fine? Is that Billy’s teddy- Did you go in Billy’s room and get that? Mom said Billy would’ve wanted me to have it. Okay, Bunny, in future, you really need to ask me before you just go in there and take stuff.

Okay? Why? It’s not your bear. Besides, I’m doing this to protect us. Protect us from what? Girls at school told me you’re crazy ’cause you believe there are scary animal people in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Todd: Bunny.

Craig: But the… A- and then the premise of the movie is, I guess, there’s a group of hunters who do believe him because-

they go out into the woods looking for these animals or whatever, and they find them. And one of them, I was surprised by this, ’cause I knew that Pooh and Piglet were in the first one, and I think you see them right in the very beginning. I think that’s part of the reason that I turned it off. I knew they were in the first one, so I knew they were in this one, and I knew they were introducing more characters from the books in this one, too.

But so I was shocked when almost immediately Piglet gets his head blown off.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Oh. By one of the, by one of the hunters. And then Pooh, I think, maybe kills the rest of them, and I think Owl is there, too. I don’t remember if he helps or if he’s just kind of watching in the background. But then Owl, who appears to be, like, the evil mastermind behind all of this- He’s like a leader

which I think is a really clever thing. Like, you know- The wise owl. The wise owl. Like, in the Disney version… I don’t know that I’ve ever actually read the books. I, you know, I, I, I loved the original Winnie-the-Pooh movie, which was actually just three shorts stitched together. I loved that. That, I think that was, like, my favorite Disney movie when I was a kid.

I watched it over and over and over again. And in the Disney version, Owl thinks he’s really wise, but he’s really just kind of doddering and, and goofy. Yeah. But I think it’s clever to take, you know, the wise, old owl approach and make him, like, this sadistic, psychotic mastermind.

Clip: Look what our lives have become.

Each day we get weaker and weaker. But remember, remember what happened last time. Pooh, it’s time to decide. Either we take the fight to them and perhaps survive,

or we lay down and die

Craig: You know, we’ve gotta take the fight to them. And so they do, and then that’s the point where before we officially started the show, before we started recording, I said to you, ’cause you said, “I’m, I’m not sure,” something along the lines of, “I’m not sure I’ll remember the details of the plot.”

And I was like, “It really doesn’t matter.”

Todd: No. It really doesn’t.

Craig: It really doesn’t matter. I couldn’t tell you much more plot-wise from that point on. It’s just a spectacle of creature and slasher, and it’s fun.

Todd: It is.

Craig: It’s really gory. It’s tongue in cheek. But, but it doesn’t pull any punches. In fact, like you said, it, it, it’s, it’s really extreme.

I think the body count in this movie is w- like 45 or something like that. And there is, like, a big terrifier, like, set piece massacre, like mass massacre.

Todd: Yeah. It’s so terrifier because it also, it’s a rave, right?

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Todd: It’s so silly. I mean, when, when is this movie supposed to have taken place? Because d- are raves even a thing anymore?

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: I don’t, I don’t know. Like, maybe, maybe not. I was a little shocked actually to learn that the original movie They had budgeted so little for it. But then after they had more or less shot it, they had posted some screenshots online and of course they went viral, and of course everybody was talking about it.

And it freaked the producers out because the producers really did not expect this to be a popular film. They thought they were gonna throw this on video like they do the other things, it’ll go to streaming, something like that, and it, it- nobody’s really gonna care about it and it’s, nobody’s gonna pay attention to it.

But it got so much attention that suddenly they were like, “Oh shit, so many people are gonna watch this movie. We need to reshoot this.” So they went out and, like, supposedly one of the actors said they basically reshot the movie three times. But ultimately, over 10 days and with a budget of $50,000, which they said was the mo- the biggest budgeted film that, that Reese Frank Waterfield had ever shot.

And he shot a lot of movies before this, man. We’re talking Dinosaur Hotel, The Legend of Jack and Jill, Easter Bunny Massacre-

Craig: Oh my gosh …

Todd: H.P. Lovecraft’s Monster Portal. Like, all these are straight to video, and all of them on budgets of less than $50,000. But of course $50,000 is still nothing compared, compared to every, to even the cheapest low-budget movies.

And so it came out and it just looked awful. Like you said, they had just masks on that they had a company make. And they got so much shit for that original movie that they were thrilled to have the huge budget of a half a million to do this movie. And so they were kind of on cloud nine shooting it and they thought they could do anything.

And apparently Shooting this whole rave scene made them so stressed out for a number of reasons that, that they were, like, vomiting on set and stuff like that. It was just a nightmare for them.

Craig: Well, I think that they were using… I read something that said they were using maybe real animal parts. Oh, really?

And that it, the, the smell in there was horrible. And it is, I mean, it’s, it’s super gross and, and violent and, you know, regardless of the fact that ultimately you know it’s fake, it still looks gross.

Todd: Sure.

Craig: I can only imagine that that would’ve been a stressful scene. You know, I call it a scene, it goes on for a long time.

Todd: Oh, yeah. It’s like a, it’s like a quarter or fifth of the movie. I mean,

Craig: it’s just long. Yeah, it goes on for a l- And there are tons of people in it. And, and we can go back. I wanna talk about specific things, but I just thought it would n- for this movie, which is, this is uncharacteristic of me, it doesn’t make sense just to go through it scene by scene because it doesn’t matter.

But, like, I- Right … I do wanna, like, I wanna talk about the different creature designs and I, other stuff like that. But so this scene comes late in the movie. I mean, this is, you know, kind of the big climactic scene. It starts out with a great big, huge rave, and then the animals, Owl, Pooh, and Tigger, it’s mostly Pooh and Tigger, I think, in there, but they’re all in there.

They come in and they just immediately start slaughtering people, and one guy gets a pole through the face, you know, the, the doorman or some guy standing right outside the door. And then I think it’s Pooh chases a girl in, and she runs in and she’s screaming and everybody’s looking at her, and then he, he has a bear trap on a chain that he launches at her, and it gets her head and he, like, rips her head off and it explodes-

all over the people in the rave. And then all of the people, a lot of the people from the rave run out, I think, but one or more of them kind of herd a group of them into a smaller space.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And when that happened, I was like, “Oh, they’re herding far too many people in here.” Like, there are still so many people to deal with.

And they just- Yeah. And, but they manage.

Todd: They deal with them. They deal with them. They take them apart bit by bit.

Craig: And I mean, they just slaughter them, just absolutely slaughter them in the most violent, gory, bloody, bloody ways. It’s over the top. And you know, I’m not a, I’m not the hugest fan of extreme violence like that.

Even Terrifier is borderline for me. But this is so… It is gross, and it’s as graphic as Terrifier, but it feels more tongue in cheek for some reason, and, and that softens the blow for me a little bit. I actually really enjoyed it.

Todd: Terrifier, I won’t say Terrifier’s entirely mean-spirited. It’s, you know, there’s a comic aspect to- Art the Clown, but it’s, it’s more mean-spirited than, say, Freddy Krueger and a lot of stuff that we see.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And, and, and then v- super violent to boot. This is definitely more tongue in cheek. In fact, there’s as- there are shot for shot homages to Freddy Krueger in here. I mean- Oh, yeah … the place kinda looks like a boiler room, and there’s, you know, him dragging his fingers-

Craig: Tigger, yeah, Tigger drag- ’cause Tigger’s got these great big claws, right?

Todd: Yeah, and then again, the actor who did Tigger himself said that he d- he drew a lot of inspiration from Freddy Krueger for this, and, and he’s a little quippy.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: He seems to talk more than… Except for Al, I suppose. He seems to talk more than the others, at least talks to his victims.

Craig: Yeah, and he quips.

You’re right. Mm-hmm.

Todd: This also, because it takes place in what essentially is, like, a warehouse, it just feels very Terrifier because it’s r- again, like you said, it’s nothing more than just him going bit by bit and slaughtering people one at a time more or less.

Craig: I think my favorite one, well, one of his quips, which it’s so stupid, but it made me smile, is some of the ravers are, like, looking around, and they’re like, “Oh, no, this is a dead end.

Let’s bounce.” And Tigger pops up and goes, “That’s my line.”

Todd: I did chuckle at that one.

Craig: And then he shoots his claw all the way, like, through the guy’s back and it comes out of his chest and-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: then he slaughters them all. But I think my favorite kill was there’s one girl, and she’s up on kinda like a catwalk or something, and Tigger comes up underneath her and starts jamming his big, like, blade-like claws up through the, the grated floor beneath her.

And eventually she falls because it, like, gets her foot or whatever, so she falls down in pain. And then he’s, like, s- stabbing up through her body from underneath. And then he gets up on top of her and is just clawing at her like a cat, and the blood is spraying everywhere and… Oh, gosh. It’s- Yeah … it’s super over the top, but I don’t know, funny.

I mean, it’s a guy, you know, like, it’s a cat guy.

Todd: It’s, it’s cats.

Craig: A walking, talking cat guy. It

Todd: really

Craig: is. It’s funny. You can’t take it seriously. A- and I kinda, I don’t know, I liked that about it.

Todd: Yeah. That was a nice aspect to it. Watching the whole movie is– It’s interesting because they’re, they’re trying a little bit, and, and I feel like the third Terr- the third Terrifier does this, too, where they’re clearly, you know, the, the first one, it got a lot of criticism.

Apparently, it’s really, really bad, and the producers admit that, and they were like, you know, “I mean, we shot it for 50,000. What do you expect?” But this time around, especially now that they have this cinematic universe they were thinking of managing, they actually put some effort into a little bit of pathos with Christopher Robin.

And I didn’t find that this slowed the movie down too much.

Craig: No.

Todd: Sometimes it does. Sometimes this kinda thing feels shoehorned in or you’re like, “Well, this doesn’t even matter.” But actually, it does because there’s a nice through line here. The whole origin story for these characters as opposed to the original movie-

Craig: Right

Todd: I mean, we can just sum it up here, I think, is that- These, there’s a mad scientist-

Craig: Mm-hmm …

Todd: who was doing genetic experiments and hired a janitor from the school to go around and kidnap children. And one of the children he kidnapped was Christopher Robin’s, uh, brother, Billy. And so he has had this traumatic event where he watched his brother be abducted by this guy in this van that he’s been dealing with his whole life.

And he’s got a psychiatrist there, and there’s a couple scenes where he goes under hypnotherapy and is able to reveal some things, which is a nice way to give you some backstory and whatnot. And then he does a little bit of research too and sort of puts the pieces together. I guess he didn’t really know about this geneticist.

I mean, it’s also silly. Right. Like, how could this actually- Yeah … happen and, and nobody knows about it, you know?

Craig: It’s silly. I feel like isn’t there also… There are also moments of, like, omniscient narration, like we’re being told a story, and it’s like-

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: in the beginning … “And Christopher Robin made friends with Pooh, and”-

Todd: It’s like the book

Craig: “But Christopher Robin never knew true Pooh nature,” or like he was blind to it, or he blocked it out or, or something like that. Yeah. So, like, it shows them together when they’re kids, and Christopher Robin’s like, I don’t know, skipping through the tulips, and Pooh’s, like, just standing in the background like-

covered in blood. Like “And Christopher Robin was blind to Pooh’s true nature.” Like, okay.

Todd: It’s funny, but it’s not, like, comically funny, right? Yeah. Like, you would expect this to be eye-rollingly funny, but they do play it straight.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: And I think that helps to make the movie work. It, just the material is comic.

It, but they don’t play it that way. He’s really got this trauma. He really does this investigation. He tracks down this guy who gives him more detail, and the detail itself is absurd.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So he did these genetic experiments on these kids where he was, uh, splicing them with animal genes, so they ended up as these weird animals.

But then they end up getting killed, or what, they die? He killed them. What is it? They-

Craig: He killed them.

Todd: He killed them. The, um, the, the scientist or the-

Craig: The sci- … the janitor? The scient- Well, I don’t know. The scientist-

Todd: Killed

Craig: them … either killed them himself or, or made the other guy kill them. I don’t know, but they killed them.

Todd: Right, and then buried

Craig: them. Because it worked. Like, that’s, that… What he was trying to do, I don’t know if they were getting out of control. I think it was just, like, he realized the horror of what he had done or something, and so he killed them all. Now, remember-

Todd: Mm-hmm …

Craig: listener, that these are kidnapped children.

So- … these aren’t just lab creations. These are kids that were kidnapped from their homes and now are, you know, are animal hybrids or whatever. So they kill them, and then they bury them in the Hundred Acre Wood, but they they regenerate and crawl out of their graves.

Todd: Like zombies.

Craig: Right.

Todd: So these are actually zombies when you think about it.

Craig: I guess.

Todd: I suppose, like they originally were gonna go with a supernatural angle for all this and then decided against it. So this still is kinda supernatural though.

Craig: I, see, and I, I thought, now, and I don’t think it’s explicit either way, but I thought just more it was a result of the genetic tampering.

Like, they could just regenerate for, for whatever reason. But I don’t know.

Todd: Well, that’s what, uh, that’s what I kind of interpreted too. But it is a bit of like, um, Five Nights at Freddy’s, isn’t it? Sure. It’s, uh, it’s a little similar to the plot of that. I mean, I’m not saying that the one inspired the other, certainly not.

But, um, it’s definitely weird like that movie was weird in its backstory, and you just kinda have to go with it because it doesn’t matter. No, it doesn’t matter. It just, just gives you a reason for these murderous animals to be out there.

Craig: Well, and it, I mean, it’s, it’s kind to establish pathos and, like, there is, you know, whatever.

I mean, Christopher Robin, I mean, who deserves to be, have their whole family slaughtered? What I was going to say was, yeah, y- y- Christopher Robin is clearly the hero. He didn’t really do anything wrong. He lost his brother and has been haunted by that all this time. So you do feel bad for him and, and though I said the movie is maybe a little bit more tongue in cheek than something like Terrifier, it also doesn’t really pull any punches.

I was kind of surprised when, I think it was Pooh, brutally murdered both of Christopher Robin’s parents-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: and kidnapped his little sister, ’cause his parents were super nice and supportive. They were

Todd: just lovely people.

Craig: Yeah. Like, they, you know, they, they took in their pariah son and totally, you know, believed him or, or I don’t know i- whether they believed him or whether they were just coddling him.

But they were super, super nice. Yeah, they, that, that didn’t save them.

Todd: Well, his mother’s kill was my favorite. I- She’s pulling out the dishwasher at the same time that Pooh comes into the house, and then he just bas- And, and there’s knives knife side up, which I don’t know, when you load the dishwasher, I, I don’t know- No

I always put a knife, the knife with the blade side down.

Craig: Obviously. Well, if for no other reason than this, like-

Todd: Right …

Craig: but they, they so heavily projected this. Like, that was one of the very first- Oh, of course … things you saw in the movie was this huge knife, you know, and sticking up from the dishwasher, and the mom’s like I don’t remember.

She’s like, “Those silly boys never load it right,” and turns it over or whatever. I’m like, “Well, that’s obvious.” Yeah.

Clip: Yep.

Craig: It still looked good, though. But it, it was funny, though, that when… I don’t remember what happened. Did he trip her or push her or throw

Todd: her? Pushed her down into it. Like, just… Well, first he, he sm- smashes her face down into it, and she stands up, and I think this is what you’re saying, right?

Like, the knives are comically… Like, they’re sticking out of her face in all different directions, which doesn’t make any sense.

Craig: And it’s not just one knife. That was what was comical about it. Yeah. Like, the setup was one big knife. Now it’s, like, five or six knives poking out of her face. Ugh, it was pretty funny.

Todd: But then there’s apparently a knife or two left over down there, because then he pulls her head down and slowly pushes- Oh, yeah … her eyeball down onto another knife, and it’s like, oh, God, like, they really just wanted to keep going with this, you know? Just make it as brutal as possible. And yeah, so we got the n- we got several n- eye injury scenes in this one.

That’s the way to go when you’re, when you wanna cringe, I think.

Craig: Mm-hmm. A-

Todd: and yeah, it looked pretty good. I, I liked that bit just ’cause I thought it was a little silly and fun and cringey at the same time.

Craig: Oh, I liked it, too. I, yeah, it was a… That was a good one.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: I wouldn’t s- you know, I thought all of the kill scenes, you know, all of the violence, it all looked good, and it was creative and interesting, and the aftermath was gross.

Todd: There’s a lot of beheading, a lot of ripping limbs off.

Craig: A lot of heads, like, blowing up or, like, parts of them getting chopped off or… A lot of head trauma.

Todd: It’s funny how they would even cut away. Like, when the… So when, when Christopher Robin confronts the janitor and he tells this whole story, he’s also burning all of his evidence, and then he says, you know, “Forgive me.

May God forgive me for what I did,” and he whips out a gun and, and blows his, his head off. And, uh, they didn’t show that, but they showed the aftermath really close up.

Craig: Uh-huh.

Todd: So, you know, even when they didn’t show violence on screen, you think, “Okay, well, they’re trying to pull a punch here,” or they’re, or they’re trying to save some money or whatever.

No, they would always be another shot that would show you the aftermath in all of its close-up, bloody gory- Yeah … g- uh, glory, so.

Craig: Pooh had, like, a, a penchant for just, like, breaking people’s bones, right? Like-

Todd: Yeah, like that

Craig: girl that- I feel like there were… I feel like he does it a couple of times.

Todd: Oh, yeah.

Craig: He just kind of…

I don’t know. He’ll get a person, I think it was both times girls, but I don’t remember, down on the ground, and then he’ll just, like, stand on their arms or legs and snap them with- Snap

Todd: them, yeah.

Craig: Ugh, it’s crazy. It’s really, really violent.

Todd: It is.

Craig: So okay, obviously, you know, Christopher Robin, I guess you’re rooting for him or whatever.

He’s the good guy. But, uh, ultimately-

Todd: He can’t do anything.

Craig: Well, he can’t really do anything, but you also should feel for the bad guys. I mean, they’re psychotic murderers now, but- They’re victims … ultimately, as it turns out, Winnie-the-Pooh is Christopher Robin’s kidnapped brother, Billy. Yeah. So yeah, psychotic murderer, but also kidnapped child, mutated and left for dead in a grave in the woods.

Todd: Who came back to life. No wonder he’s so pissed, you know?

Craig: You know, I, to say that it adds depth to the movie would be giving it far too much credit, but at least it kind of gives it an additional layer-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: to the lore, which I don’t know, I thought was interesting and not lazy. So I thought, I, I thought it was good.

Todd: Then Christopher Robin ends up in a, you know, this ends up being a big fight in the woods again. Not a big fight. I guess after they leave the rave, they just go through town and are killing people for a while until they make their way back to where Christopher Robin lives and get his parents and-

Craig: And steal his sister

Todd: his sister. Steal his sister and take her into the woods, so Christopher chases after them into the woods, right? I don’t remember what happens to his sister.

Craig: I don’t either. Does

Todd: she escape?

Craig: I think, or, or he saves her. I don’t know, maybe it’s in my notes. I have Pooh arrives at the rave or, or he’s been there or whatever, and he, like, burns some ravers up in a furnace, and he saws a girl’s head off.

And then I guess Christopher Robin has been making his way to the rave.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And he’s there, and Pooh confronts him in the rain with a chainsaw.

Todd: Yes. The chainsaw, which then becomes a flaming chainsaw.

Craig: I know. And th- well, they have a big fight, like a big fight, and Christopher Robin has a big pole, but Pooh has a chainsaw.

But then, yeah, w- I don’t remember why the chainsaw catches on fire, but it’s hilarious. There’s something about the fire. Oh my God. Because then it stays on fire- … for a while. But just like the e- like, like three quarters of the end of the chain part. But it’s amazing. I mean- I know … you can’t really go wrong with a flaming chainsaw.

Todd: No. And this has gotta be… That seems like something I would find in a video game, but I was trying to remember if I have ever seen this in a movie before. We’ve seen a lot of chainsaws, but a flaming chainsaw?

Craig: Probably at some point. You think so? I don’t know. Oh, no. Well, or at least a, you know, maybe a guy with a chainsaw and the guy’s on fire.

I don’t know.

Todd: There’s probably-

Craig: Sh- of all the movies we’ve seen, surely- One of the Leatherface

Todd: ones …

Craig: yeah, I don’t know. Who knows?

Todd: Yep, so he’s chasing with a flaming chainsaw, and I really grinned at that. I was like, “Oh, this is great.”

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: And eventually they’re face to face and he calls him Billy. He’s put two and two together already, I believe.

But they end up kind of at his grave, which I guess is still open.

Craig: Apparently.

Todd: Oh, I think this is when he lets the little girl go, and Christopher has an ax.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Right? And I guess just calling him by name really stops Pooh in his tracks, which allows Christopher to swing the ax up towards his head. And as he’s doing that, he says the, the, Pooh says, “Oh, bother.”

Craig: Yeah, that was really funny.

Todd: And gets hit in the head and split open. I mean, Pooh’s dead now. I was like… And then falls backwards into the grave, and I’m thinking- I thought they were planning sequels to this. Like-

Craig: Oh,

Todd: well- … you’ve killed off Piglet …

Craig: that’s easy. I mean, you can always bring… Yeah, but you can always bring them back.

Todd: Yeah, but they split their heads right open. I mean, one guy got his head blown off. True. The other one got it split open. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I guess they will bring him back.

Craig: Yeah, I mean, it ends, I mean, it ends right here. It, it ends, you know, happy and Christopher Robin and Bunny, the sister’s name is Bunny, which I thought was gonna be, like, an in thing.

Like, I th- ’cause that’s not her real name. I don’t remember what her real name is, but she wants everybody to call her Bunny.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And she’s also, like, she’s really… I mean, she’s a little girl, but she’s really sweet and, and pretty and blonde and, you know, cute, cute little kid, but she’s also kind of a weirdo.

Like She, she does weird things with Christopher Robin’s old stuffed animals and stuff and I don’t know, she’s kind of weird. So I kind of wondered if they were setting her up to be Rabbit in future films. Mm. But I asked AI and they said no, because apparently after it seems like, you know, the day is won and the, the happy music plays and it fades to black, there’s a mid-credits scene where it goes back to, I don’t know, the lair, I guess, the animal’s lair.

And Owl has a whole big monologue about how… Well, first of all, he’s got Pooh’s body, like, sitting on what looks… I mean, it’s a chair, but it, it’s framed almost like a throne. It’s back lit and, you know, his head’s cleaved open or whatever. And Piglet’s body is there, too. He says something, I don’t know, he has a whole big monologue about how, like, our strength is our friendship or something, and he talks about how he’s going to bring them back and he’s, “We’ll all be back for you, Christopher Robin.”

And then that’s the end. So I guess we are to believe that either Owl is going to do something to bring them back, or I think it would make more sense that as they have done before, they just regenerated and just came back to life. Could be. But, but either way, they are coming back. And, and then the end credits were fun because it was, like, storybook illustrations, simple pencil illustrations of, of future projects.

So you had Pinocchio and Peter Pan and, I don’t know, whoever else we talked about earlier. And that was kind of a fun, you know, preview of what was to come. I, I’m not trying to wrap up because there are still other things that I wanted to talk about, but ultimately when the movie was over, I was like, I was like, “Well, that…”

I, I really, I, I, especially when we’re watching these for the podcast, one of the first things I think about is, I wonder what Todd will think, and I, I didn’t know, but I suspected that you might feel the same way that I was. I, uh, that I did. I didn’t wanna spoil it for you, so all I texted you was, “I watched it.

I was surprised.” That’s, that’s all I said. But ultimately, like, I was surprised, and pleasantly so. You’re right that I probably never would have watched this had it not been requested. God, again, it sounds like I’m wrapping up, and I’m not, because I, I, I, I specifically wanna talk about Owl. But I would go so far as to recommend this to anybody who considers themselves a, any kind of horror fan, like somebody who really likes horror movies.

Todd: Loves Winnie-the-Pooh.

Craig: Maybe. You know. Yeah, yeah. Like you said, you know, Winnie-The-Pooh, and, and this is true of all of these Public domain properties that they have, it is smart to capitalize on them because there’s going to be at least a curious audience. You know, people who are familiar with the stories from whatever medium, whether it be the original fairy tales or more likely in our generation and, and probably a couple of generations before us and after, are gonna be familiar with the, the Disney versions.

But I would think lots of people our age specifically, but maybe even our parents’ age, would be at least curious to see what’s going on because they’re familiar with the characters, they’re familiar with the property. So, uh, I, I don’t know. If somebody said, “Oh, I love Winnie-the-Pooh,” I wouldn’t immediately say, “Oh, you should watch- Go see Blood and Honey

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.” Little

Todd: girl.

Craig: Um, but if they, I also knew that they were a fan of horror, I would say, “Oh, you should check out the second one.”

Todd: Right.

Craig: I, I guess it’s not really fair to recommend skipping the first one when I haven’t seen it, but what I saw of it and what I’ve read about it I don’t think that I’ll be going back and watching.

I, I, I considered it. I considered putting it on last night as I was going to bed. I, I felt a- almost an obligation for the podcast- For

Todd: research purposes …

Craig: but I couldn’t bring my, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Uh, and I, and I don’t think that I will. But, uh, this one I would go so far as to recommend.

Todd: I would too, uh, especially if you’re into, uh, extreme violence.

Like I said, I think, uh, fans of the Terrifier franchise, there’s a lot of parallels here. It seems like they’re going for the same vibe. Whereas Terrifier, I believe, especially the first one, is so paper thin on plot and characterization that it’s just nothing but a series of kills. This is really not far off from that.

The only difference is, like I said, that they’re clearly setting up the Christopher Robin character as a, an important element for whatever they have planned for the future. So yeah, no, I really, I really enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, and we’ve seen a lot of movies that I’ve just rolled my eyes at and kept occupied with something else while I’ve got it going and, you know, it just feels like a slog to get through.

This movie really didn’t feel like that. It kept moving-

Craig: Mm-hmm …

Todd: and it kept my interest even though it was rather silly. Uh, yeah, so I would, I would also recommend it. What, what do you want to say about Owl?

Craig: I was just so impressed with that character and the design. It reminded me… I, I read somebody compared it to the Creeper from Jeepers Creepers and-

Todd: Oh yeah, there’s a little bit of that there

Craig: I don’t, I don’t know. I, I was just so impressed, like the, the mask, the, the layering of the feathers. I don’t know. He, he didn’t even necessarily really look like an owl. It looked almost more like, not a crow, but maybe like a, a vulture or some other kind of, like a, like a carrion bird hunched like that, and, and a great voice.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I can’t even remember it specifically enough to imitate it, but I, I saw some people comparing it to Pinhead It reminded me, ’80s children except for Todd, it reminded me a lot of that really, really scary goblin in, in Legend. Oh, yeah. Kinda the, the, Darkness’ kind of main henchman from, from Legend. It reminded me of that a lot.

I, I’ve already said I liked the characterization, that he’s like this psychopath mastermind who really seems to be not manipulating necessarily, but leading the charge of these others. Like, these others seem to be taking his suggestions. They’re, you know, they’re… He, he seems to be the leader.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Or the brains.

I guess the brains of the- The brains

Todd: behind the operation, yeah.

Craig: Right. Uh- ‘

Todd: Cause there’s nobody, like there’s no plan here. There’s nobody, you know, it’s just like, “Let’s go.”

Craig: You know? Yeah, he basically just sends them in, you know? Yeah. He kind of sends them in as the front line, and he kills some people and, you know, like it’s so gimmicky, but I, I liked that he got one girl, I think it was a girl, down on the ground and stood on her chest and puked acid puke onto her face.

Todd: Acid. That was- I liked

Craig: it.

Todd: Yeah. He’s gotta have a thing, right? I guess. I was thinking about birds, you know how they regurgitate food for their young, and maybe this was a loose adaptation of that in a horror movie. Yeah,

Craig: yeah. Right. I totally thought of it as a bird thing. Uh- Mm-hmm. And it was humorous in an amusing way, not a ha-ha way, but an amusing way, and also gross and, and different and fun.

Everything. I, I… If they made an owl spinoff, which I doubt they will, but if they did- Yeah … I would watch it because I was really intrigued by him as a character, and I loved that he could fly. I loved the flying shots- Yeah … you know, that were not from his perspective, but like tracking with him as he was flying, like through the forest and stuff.

I know this movie had a bigger budget, but even for the limited budget that they had, I thought that stuff like that looked good. It made it look a little bit more expensive than it was, I think. So that’s specifically what I wanted to say about him. Tigger, I, I liked the look of, you know, his claws, like you s- And it was very inspired by and reminiscent of Freddy Krueger, even in the cinematography.

Like you said, it’s in almost like a boiler room setting and lit in the way that those dream sequences in the boiler room were because it’s at a rave, so it can have colored lighting everywhere.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: And there are the dragging of the claws, the taunting, you know, the, the verbal quips and taunts, but also just the way that it was shot.

There were a lot of really extreme close-ups on Tigger’s face, as they used to do with Freddy in those earlier films. And, and, you know, he was sadistic, and his mask looked s- looked great. The only complaint that I had about it was that I think that he and Pooh were in almost identical outfits.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I sometimes had a hard time telling which one was which.

Like, if they were shot kind of from afar, like if it wasn’t in close-up, I was like, “Wait, which one is this?” Pooh was fatter.

Todd: Right. But their faces also were similar shaped, weren’t

Craig: they? Yeah. The articulation around the mouth especially was similar in both. And, and those masks did look pretty good, and 100 million times improvement from the cheap masks from the first film.

Yeah. And, and I imagine, you know, these movies are doing well, so I imagine that they will continue to have m- As long as they continue doing well, they’ll still be well-funded, and they’ll probably continue to improve In those areas in terms of the costumes and the prosthetics and those types of things, but yeah.

Honestly, this one has me curious now about the others.

Todd: Yeah. Me too.

Craig: I, I think I might watch them.

Todd: I’m shocked. I’m utterly shocked that this movie w- awakened my curiosity about all of these other ones, because if they do this well with this one, then they’re clearly gonna be putting a little more care into the new ones, and they’re not the cheap cash grab garbage that I imagined they were going to be, especially based on the reviews from the very first film.

So yeah, I’m actually looking forward to it. So Jessica, you, you got us onto something here. Thank you so much for your request. Uh, really, really appreciate it. All of the rest of you as well, if you’re interested in becoming a patron, you can go to patreon.com/chainsawpodcast, and, uh, for just five bucks a month, uh, drop us a line.

Our patrons do give us requests. They vote on the requests that we’re going to do, and they have a direct line to us. We chat back there. We have a book club back there. Uh, we have the unedited phone calls that lead to our episodes that are up there every week for them to watch. Even when, uh, we’re- I’m a little slow on getting a public episode out, our patrons get immediate- almost immediately the recordings after we record them.

So if that interests you, just five bucks a month, patreon.com/chainsawpodcast. But you can find us just by searching Two Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast, and drop us a line anywhere we are, on our website, chainsawhorror.com, on any of our socials. Just let us know what you thought of this, and let us know which of the, what is it?

Childhood, Twisted Childhood Universe movies we should see next. I’m gonna need a little guidance on this.

Craig: I’m looking forward to some of the ones that are coming up. I’m looking forward to 101 Rabies Bites.

Todd: That’s one? Oh.

Craig: That’s one of them supposedly. Um- Oh my God … The Jungle Book Bloodlines. That could be fun.

Alice in Wonderland where Alice is a street walker and- Oh, God … the Mad Hatter is a psychotic guy hunting her down.

Todd: Alice in Wonderland is too easy. And, and you know what? Alice in Wonderland has been done to death in so- True … many other ways, right? Like, uh, there’s a porn version of at least one or two of those out there.

Oh, I’m

Craig: sure.

Todd: But, uh, no, um, uh, 101 Rabies Bites. Jesus. I didn’t, I haven’t seen anything about that. I thought you were making a joke.

Craig: No, I could, I could… Um, and listen, that, you know, that’s, that’s some AI research right there, so I can’t guarantee that’s true. Oh,

Todd: okay.

Craig: But, uh, that’s, that’s what I read. I’m looking

Todd: it up right now.

That’s what I read. Rabies Bites. That sounds like AI messing with you there.

Craig: It could be. It could very well be, but I don’t know.

Todd: Oh, my goodness. Untitled 101 Dalmatians horror film. The twisted… It was revealed, yeah, the Dalmatians have rabies. Yeah. Oh, it’s gonna be like Willard really, isn’t it? Just 101 dogs running around biting people.

I love it. Well, thank you guys so much. Until next time, I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

We tackle 2019’s ‘Color Out of Space,’ a Nicolas Cage-led adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s story, inspired by our recent disappointment with ‘The Curse.’

We talk about why Cage is unfairly maligned, how this film captures Lovecraft’s bleak, unknowable cosmic horror, and why the movie’s cinematography and surreal color effects are such a standout.

From the meteor hitting the family farm to the contaminated well water, warped time, and terrifying body-horror transformations, we break down what worked, what felt unnecessary (including some exposition), and why the film still lands as a gorgeous, disturbing ride.

We also compare story vs. movie elements, discuss the ending’s lingering dread, and touch on director Richard Stanley’s comeback and hoped-for Lovecraft trilogy.

http://chainsawhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2026/07/color-out-of-space-poster.jpg

Expand to read episode transcript

Automatic Transcript

Color Out Of Space (2019)

Episode 494, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

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

Craig: And I’m Craig

Todd: This week we’re doing a film that came out in 2019. 2019 doesn’t seem like that long ago to me- No … but actually it’s been a while. It’s been, like, seven years, so I guess it’s an older movie, whose standards you’re going by.

But, you know, we’ve always been apologists for Nicolas Cage. Both Craig and I think that he is an unfairly maligned actor. Did you see that interview that I posted to our patrons recently?

Craig: I don’t think so.

Todd: So I found an interview with him that The New York Times just did just last month or two, and it was very extensive and, you know, they just talked to him.

I mean, Nicolas Cage, I like the guy. I love his work. I think he’s an actor who does a lot of different interesting things, and he’s not afraid to be crazy, and I think people love to make fun of him. But there comes this tipping point where it’s just the thing you do, right? “Oh, Nicolas Cage, like, he’s this crazy guy, and, and we make fun of him, and he’s not serious,” and all that.

But don’t get me wrong, he’s, he’s eccentric. As an individual, he’s clearly eccentric. He seems to know that. He’s very self-aware, and he takes all these different projects, and he’s just interested in doing different stuff. He wants to stretch himself as an actor and do different things. And he also has his own little shtick, but I have no problem with the guy.

In fact, I really enjoy almost everything I see him in. And I, I… So anyway, I like Nicolas Cage, and I think you were inspired to pick this movie because of a movie we did recently, right?

Craig: Just a couple weeks ago, I think. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. What was the connection? I can’t rem-

Craig: We watched The Curse. I don’t rem- the, the ’80s.

Wil Wheaton-

Todd: Right …

Craig: the family on the farm. And I think both of us were aware that it was based on a Lovecraft story, but in looking into that movie, we, you know, found specifically that it was based on the Lovecraft story, The Color Out of Space. And we knew that this was another adaptation of the same story.

And, and both of us were left underwhelmed by The Curse. So I thought, while it’s still fresh in mind, why not do 2019’s Color Out of Space and see, you know… We’ll, of course, talk about it on its own merits, but I figured we could draw comparisons to the other one, too.

Todd: There you go. Yeah. And, and I think that’s, that’s apropos.

Like, like, there’s a lot to talk about as far as comparing these two films. Have you read the original story?

Craig: I- yesterday I did, after, after I watched this. Yeah, after I watched this, I was, um, curious, and I had time, so I, uh, listened to it and read along at the same time. Have you? You said you might, but I, I know you’ve been really busy.

Todd: God, I wanted to, but I’m traveling through Thailand with my family right now. I’ve been in Japan, I’ve been in Thailand, and it’s me and my parents and Kenji, and we’ve just been so busy that it was- Enough for me to just watch this movie. I actually woke up at 5:00 AM to watch this movie- Ugh … just to make sure that I could see it Yeah

before he woke up and before we got busy with our day, and now it’s evening time and we’re recording this. So, um- Yeah, ’cause I knew if I waited till evening I might not give myself the time. We might be-

Craig: Sure …

Todd: stuck in a taxi in Bangkok traffic somewhere, and I’d be freaking out. So I managed to watch this, and I didn’t do any research or anything on it, but, uh, I really enjoyed it a lot.

Craig: Good.

Todd: I was really glad you picked it. I’m gonna just show all my cards at once. I thought it was a little long

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: But aside from that, like what a well-made movie. And I felt like, not having read the short story, just n- being familiar, I’ve read a few Lovecraft short stories. I was like, “This has to be a far better adaptation of the short story than The Curse ended up being.”

Am I right or wrong about that?

Craig: No, it is. It’s better. Honestly, in, you know, having seen them both now and then reading the story afterwards, they both kind of draw from the same elements of the story kind of in different ways. Like, there are certainly things that happen, like specific details of the narrative that happen in both movies.

And, and in terms of that, neither of them really deviates a ton from the overall story, but that’s kind of the thing with Lovecraft stories. I’ve, I’ve said… God, it’s probably been years ago, we talked about Lovecraft, and I said that I’m a huge fan of his intellectual property. Reading him is a challenge for me, not because the text is challenging, you know, it’s, it’s relatively common language, but he writes in a really vague manner.

Like, all of his… Not all, but most of the stories that I’ve read are, are told from a first narrator’s perspective, and it sounds very much like folklore, and it kind of sounds like if an old, gosh, I don’t know, you know, some old bearded man telling you some story that his grandpappy told him. And so-

Todd: It’s very narrated, right?

It’s not

Craig: like a- It, it’s very narrated, and there’s not a whole lot of detail. Like-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: you really have to fill in the blanks with your imagination, which is good. I mean, I think that that’s, you know, a, an appropriate technique for storytelling. It’s

Todd: part of his appeal, I think, honestly.

Craig: Right. But when I say, like, I’m a fan of his intellectual property, like the whole Cthulhu mythos and that whole universe that he built, you know, the, y- you know, a, a, a whole, you know, communities and, and different cities and towns and universities and-

all of these ancient gods and all of these stories interconnected, like all of that is, is, is great. I, I’m super on board with it. And I really like all of the things that had been influenced by… Like, I love Lovecraftian stuff. Like, I love The Thing and any, you know-

Todd: Yeah …

Craig: big Kaiju-type thing and… But all of that is so visual and so fantastic, and when you read it in his stories, it’s suggested.

Like-

Todd: Yeah, he’s vague there. Well-

Craig: It’s very, very vague

Todd: It’s definitely worth talking about. It, it’s a little stodgy too, right? It’s a very old school way of writing, I think. But what you say, it, it’s like a guy imparting a story without giving a lot of detail. Like Stephen King he is not.

Craig: Right.

Todd: Uh, he’s like the opposite.

He’s gonna tell you the general gist of what happened, but your brain is gonna have to fill in the details. And I think that, I think that’s why he’s mined so much for material.

Craig: Well, and that makes sense.