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speaker-0 (00:02.318)
Hey Lindsey. Hey Bart. Were you an idiot? Oh my god yeah, that's, I mean that was my life.
speaker-1 (00:04.654)
You're a of the f***ing Tele...
speaker-2 (00:06.926)
you
speaker-1 (00:10.606)
Did you ever watch Night Court?
speaker-0 (00:12.029)
yeah, yeah, I love Night Court.
speaker-1 (00:14.094)
Did you ever watch a little show called Cheers?
speaker-0 (00:16.526)
maybe one or two or four hundred episodes, yeah.
speaker-1 (00:19.351)
Did ever find yourself believing it or not that you were walking on air and that you never thought you could feel so free-he-he?
speaker-0 (00:25.004)
I would fly away on a Lien of Prayer, for sure. Who could it be? Who could it be?
speaker-1 (00:29.048)
Who could it be? Me. Well, good news. Today's movie has stars from all of those aforementioned shows. Well, I'm excited.
speaker-0 (00:39.99)
I am too. mean, you know, there's no reason to try to be the greatest American hero here, Bart. You know, just belly up to the bar. Don't be so bullish.
speaker-1 (00:48.192)
Yeah, think so. let's just do this. You want to do it? Welcome to another episode of Dye Laughing.
speaker-0 (00:49.954)
Just get on with it.
speaker-1 (01:13.272)
Lindsay God dang Roberts.
speaker-0 (01:15.394)
Bart God dang Shannon?
speaker-1 (01:19.022)
How you doing, my friend?
speaker-0 (01:20.256)
I'm doing great. How are you? I'm good. Good. How was your week?
speaker-1 (01:22.68)
I'm good. I've been sick for 13 days. I spent the holiday weekend last weekend, all three days in bed, thought I was okay. And then yesterday I took a turn and felt awful. And I was gonna go to the doctor today and I woke up feeling a little better. So we're just gonna keep rolling. We had a guest last week that canceled on our episode last week. thankfully, because I didn't have a voice, so it worked out.
speaker-0 (01:48.654)
perfectly.
speaker-1 (01:50.855)
I am looking forward to this week knowing now that I'm not going to die.
speaker-0 (01:54.862)
That's always good. I'm glad you're not going to die either. Good, busy, but good. lot going on with a senior in high school. Just a lot to plan and do. He had his official signing day for college, so that was pretty cool. Very proud of him. Full ride. Yup, for bowling. Okay. Love it.
speaker-1 (01:57.816)
How about you?
speaker-1 (02:10.167)
Way to go, Jackson.
speaker-1 (02:15.618)
Good to hear. Let's get to this episode. This movie has a special place in my heart, I guess I should say, because I was the perfect age when this movie came out. It was one of my first video store rentals. Evil Dead was number one. The first movie ever rented in my life was Evil Dead, which set me on a path. But this one was probably first 10 that I rented. Wow. So if you want, let's tell the wonderful people, the beautiful people, the beautiful people what our movie is today.
speaker-0 (02:45.006)
Oh, I absolutely will with great joy. It gives me great joy to do so. Today we are watching the 1985 Steve Miner directed House. Not to be confused with the Japanese version of House, totally different. But yes, William Cat, 1985 House. Believe it or not, I'm walking on air.
speaker-1 (03:03.118)
Produced by Sean S. Cunningham. Sean S. Cunningham, known for producing Last House on the Left, and then producing and directing this tiny little franchise called Friday the 13th. Yep. So big horror names behind this. Steve Miner, he also directed Friday the 13th, part two and part three. Friday the 13th, part two is my favorite Friday the 13th film. I think he should have stayed in the gunny sack with one eye, the town, the dreaded sundown look. I thought that was spooky as shit.
speaker-0 (03:13.4)
small franchise.
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of nerds.
speaker-1 (03:33.24)
He also directed Warlock, Halloween H2O, a really underrated horror comedy, Lake Placid.
speaker-0 (03:39.406)
Gosh, so good that one.
speaker-1 (03:41.499)
And he directed the taboo movie, Soulman.
speaker-0 (03:47.436)
I know, I didn't know if we were gonna go there or not, but.
speaker-1 (03:51.438)
see Thomas Howell in blackface to get a, as the, would be referred to these days in the Trump administration, a DEI scholarship.
speaker-0 (04:01.026)
the most highly inappropriate film maybe ever.
speaker-1 (04:04.966)
There are scenes in that movie that I still remember and I'm terrified to see them again. Dinner at his girlfriend's house.
speaker-0 (04:11.096)
So cringe.
Yes. boy, that's so uncomfortable. bad.
speaker-1 (04:21.678)
So my guess is that vinegar syndrome will not be releasing a 4k version of soul man. That's my hunch. I could be wrong Yeah, that's our movie today house and like Lindsey said not to be confused with the Japanese house, which we will also cover soon But this one just a just a fun little romp tone is kind of all over the place at times So I'm excited about that. I'm also excited about our guests today. So let's let's just let's just keep moving forward You know what Lindsey? Here's the thing. Let's not go back. Let's not dwell in the past
speaker-0 (04:29.169)
boy.
speaker-1 (04:51.662)
keep moving forward and introduce our guest today. Correct. Our guest today is somebody I've worked with for years. He's DP. He's also directed as well, but he also is one of the hosts of the movie crew podcast, which I think they're at end of 400 episodes now, which I mean, the name is, there for a reason. It's for movie crew members who sit down and focus on a different movie every week. So highly recommend it. will be in the show notes if you want to check it out. Our movie this week.
speaker-0 (05:19.636)
Awesome. Bye.
speaker-1 (05:21.954)
House, 1985. guest this week, wonderful man, dig him a lot, Jared Cowan. Jared. Die laughing, God dang pod. How you doing, guys? And Bart, I'm glad that you're not gonna die, but if you do, make sure you die laughing. I will. You know, I did have a wheezing, I had a wheezing, rattling cough for the last 13 days. It
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did kind of sound like a laugh sometime. Wouldn't that have been appropriate?
to me just die wheezing and laughing. In your intro you brought up C. Thomas Howell. I did a movie with him in 2009 called Camouflage and I also work for vinegar syndrome every now and then doing like behind the scenes interviews with some of their talent and some of their directors on some films like Haunted Ween. So check that one out and some others as well. But I will reach out and see if they would like to introduce Soulman into their oeuvre if you will.
speaker-0 (06:16.238)
I'd also like to have a conversation with C. Thomas Howell
speaker-1 (06:21.646)
with them on Facebook. I can make that happen. But yeah, so look, this is my, I don't know if you can see it here, but my vinegar syndrome, Homegrown Horrors, volume three, which is, I did a lot of the- Oh man, Jivan, I didn't know you did that stuff. You know, the problem with them is they don't pay much, but I will travel just because not only is it physical media, but it's also pretty cool. And every time I work with them, they send me things, which is really neat. Heck yeah.
Yeah, I know there are other companies like them out there. Arrow and such. I like the catalogs that they go after. I'm a big fan. They have a nice balance of good old classics and just weird shit. Yeah, they're good people too. So what we typically do, we'll watch the trailer together and the people at home can just listen and we'll just watch it and come back and discuss and then just jump right into it if you are down with said plan. Let's do it.
speaker-0 (07:00.002)
Yeah they do.
Good. That's awesome.
speaker-1 (07:18.606)
Okay, here is the trailer for the 1985 horror comedy film House.
speaker-2 (07:30.094)
This is a house where no one should live.
speaker-2 (07:38.776)
When we lived here before you was nuts. Wouldn't be surprised if someone just got fed up and off your... Ant. Heart of gold though.
speaker-1 (07:43.502)
Here's my
speaker-2 (07:48.92)
Roger Cobb has come here alone. Daddy? But no one is ever alone.
This house knows everything about you! Leave while you can! No!
speaker-2 (08:17.568)
it has been waiting for him. Hi. Sandy.
speaker-1 (08:23.946)
for
speaker-1 (08:51.672)
You gotta love a short and sweet trailer. Damn. Especially with such a strong voice. I love it. I feel like we've gotten away from the trailer guy voice. It's just so nice, you know? That guy was the voice of all of the horror movies of my childhood. There was one that I always remember. Not a great movie, but a weird movie. Dead.
speaker-0 (09:02.062)
It is nice.
speaker-1 (09:13.934)
And that was that dude. don't know who he is, yeah, he made a living on horror movie voiceovers. I don't know how you guys watch this film, but I kind of like the contrast look in that trailer. You know, I think that whatever transfer that was actually felt more correct to me. Like I know that the one that I saw on Amazon Prime was polished up a little bit, but it felt a little lifted and muted. But I like the look of that. That actually felt right to me. Yeah, that looks like a 70s horror instead of 80s horror. Yes.
speaker-0 (09:38.466)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (09:44.15)
If right. That's definitely how it looked in the eighties when I rented it on VHS. The blacks were crushed like that a hundred percent. brought up like, is one of the first films that you remember renting, but this is the first time I'd ever seen this film was for this podcast, but I remember this album art that this like, yeah. It's quintessential. Like I remember. Yeah. I remember like walking through blockbuster as a kid and maybe I'm projecting that, but I remember seeing that.
speaker-0 (09:44.27)
Yeah, for sure.
speaker-0 (10:06.306)
I was gonna say it's iconic.
speaker-1 (10:12.662)
No, the severed hand ringing the doorbell. It makes me want to find, I collect vintage movie posters and I want to find an original movie poster of that now, now that I've done this and I want to hang that in my house because it's so beautiful.
speaker-0 (10:15.008)
It's
speaker-0 (10:26.314)
It is so cool and it doesn't exist in the film. That shot, nothing.
speaker-1 (10:31.104)
And also the effects are a little more hokey than that. That's a little bit more like grotesque and like rotted looking, like, you know, more on the side of the way that things look in American Werewolf in London, you know, where it's like completely like emaciated, like rotted looking. But the things in the movie are actually a more like hokey, like killer clowns from outer space. Killer clowns also, did you see Deadstream from a few years ago? Highly recommend it. No, but I'm gonna write it down.
So you're saying dead stream. This YouTuber spends a night in a haunted house and the effects, very low budget, very rubbery, just like this. This film also had the same problem where a lot of times it was way too bright on those rubbery effects. if you bring the light levels down, make it a little spooky so we don't see how rubbery it actually is.
speaker-0 (11:02.062)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-0 (11:14.9)
How rubbery it is. Yeah, felt very Gremlins.
speaker-1 (11:18.51)
We were a little ruined as moviegoers and then all three of us we also work in the industry and we kind of know how the sausage is made. So when we see things we're like, know, that's not perfect or it looks a little hokey or whatever. But in this movie I saw boom shadows and like there's a scene where like he breaks the vanity mirror and but you can see them like the mirror wiggles as they remove the set piece behind so he can break it in a single shot. Fine, you know, like the camera's a little shaky.
speaker-0 (11:43.0)
That's. It's a little over lit, but I think that it adds to the.
speaker-1 (11:47.79)
style of it and it shows that they were actually working at it back then and like what it takes to actually get that done is super impressive versus like you know now we can spend the time and it's a
lot easier to make things look more perfect so I think that makes it even more endearing you know we kind of have to let go of our our filmmaker brain and just let it kind of like wash over us which I think it makes it actually better
speaker-0 (12:07.336)
Mm-hmm. I kind of enjoyed the rubbery creatures.
speaker-1 (12:10.661)
See the fingers bend?
speaker-0 (12:13.154)
I did. Yeah, I did enjoy it though. To me, there was something about it that just it fed into sort of his imagination and what maybe he would be seeing and what that looks like. It made them scary, but also like not as scary.
speaker-1 (12:28.77)
Yeah, yeah, just like Deadstream, was sort of like, here are our creatures. This is a horror comedy. We're not going straight horror here, so we're not gonna spend too much time refining these creatures. So yeah, I kind of felt that too.
speaker-0 (12:43.086)
There you go. All right, that was House. Thanks guys, that was so much fun.
speaker-1 (12:46.222)
It was good. I'm thankful you had me guys. Yeah, it was really good. We're done. Thank you. Lindsay and I have run out of steam. We've given up. We've looked at the metrics and shorter is better. So we decided to try to keep this under 10 minutes. Jared, you. a good day. that. MovieCrewPod.com.
speaker-0 (12:48.728)
Well, this is the fastest podcast we've ever
speaker-0 (13:03.792)
my god.
Hahaha.
speaker-1 (13:09.118)
Shall we do this? Right from the beginning, the credit sequence, the opening credit sequence is whack. Various posterized or infrared shots of the house with some really peculiar score moments from Harry Menford. Brought us the music for Friday the 13th as well.
speaker-0 (13:10.606)
Let's do it. Let's dive in. Man.
speaker-0 (13:19.832)
You know, like the infrared, bro?
speaker-1 (13:34.574)
Right. In fact, if you notice after we see all of these shots of the house and it feels almost like phantasm. Dude, you're right. It has that vibe. Like a very low budget, like late seventies, early eighties. The credit sequence does not match the film. It's a little peculiar. I think they're setting you up for a theme. Yeah. If you notice like when the camera finally comes to a rest on the house, we hear it's Friday the 13th. hear that whack.
speaker-0 (13:49.858)
No.
speaker-1 (14:02.862)
Like, I need a sound there. I was like, yeah, I can just pull the one from Friday the 13th. So we open on this big house on a bright sunny day after we've gotten through this very peculiar infrared credit sequence. And the camera creeps along the house and through the gate to the back of the house and then comes around the driveway all the way to the front of the house where we see this delivery boy on a scooter who's arriving to deliver groceries. The delivery boy pushes through the unlocked front door.
Sets down the groceries and the foyer. Calls throughout the house for Mrs. Hooper. No answer.
speaker-0 (14:36.347)
Scoffs at the Dali painting.
speaker-1 (14:38.146)
He goes upstairs, everybody who goes into this house. So we always have to go through a couple of rooms first to just build tension. At a certain point, I'm like, can we not just get to her bedroom? Let's just get to her bedroom.
speaker-0 (14:48.426)
We gotta see the expanse of the house. gotta get the v-
speaker-1 (14:51.584)
I know, you have this one, yes. But later it's like, okay, we know how many rooms there are now, let's just get to the bedroom, because that's where the shit's going down. We're filling time, we gotta make an hour and a half, bro. Exactly. So the delivery boy goes past a few doors, goes to this bedroom, and steps into the bedroom, and pretty good introduction to the film that we're about to see, the swinging corpse of Mrs. Cooper, she swings right into frame. know, she swings all the time, she jumped yesterday, but she's still swinging.
speaker-0 (15:14.798)
She's.
speaker-0 (15:19.054)
She's still swinging.
speaker-1 (15:20.11)
Well, was the 80s. It was still a swing in time.
speaker-0 (15:22.283)
Eww.
speaker-1 (15:24.27)
So after we see her swing in the frame, which I thought that was a nice little jump scare. I thought the makeup was good. Immediately after we cut to her funeral and we meet her nephew, Roger Cobb, played by William Cat. And William Cat, well, anybody who over 40 will know from Lynn. Carrie. Oh, sorry. Carrie. let's say anyone over 45 will know William Cat from the greatest American hero.
speaker-0 (15:30.296)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (15:44.334)
Yes.
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greatest American hero. Believe it or not, I'm walking on air. I never thought I would feel so free. Beautiful. I'm flying away on a wing and a prayer. Who could it be?
speaker-1 (16:02.734)
You are-
speaker-1 (16:15.52)
No farther, you're have to pay money, guys, come on. We're way past that.
speaker-0 (16:19.502)
Believe it or not. It's just me my sister and I loved that TV show. So I'm here for a William cat
speaker-1 (16:25.954)
Yeah, my father and I did too. I definitely saw it before I saw Carrie. So yeah, so we're at the funeral and there's an old guy next to him that says that his aunt wasn't crazy. So we're right away, we're kind of giving a little insight into she was, she may have been a little senile, but she's not crazy.
speaker-0 (16:41.876)
Not like my wife. Not like my wife. just standing there bawling. was like, poor lady. Not like the old ball and chain right here.
speaker-1 (16:51.03)
Yeah, she was having a fit.
speaker-0 (16:58.798)
Billy Idol and I mean they just pulled every stereotype out of book for this line up didn't they?
speaker-1 (17:04.462)
Exactly, which was kind of that was kind of what the 80s was like All over the place a fan asked what his next book is gonna be about and he says it's gonna be about his experiences in Vietnam Much to get fans disappointment another fan in line played by Mindy Sterling Who was in the groundlings in the 80s and is best known for Frau Farbacena from the Austin Power
movies Yeah, that was her big role
speaker-0 (17:08.402)
Yeah, I liked it.
speaker-0 (17:27.458)
Wait, that's the movie goes, Scott. That's her. Yes. that all makes sense now. OK. Ring in the fam.
speaker-1 (17:37.07)
She was going a little over the top, wasn't she? No, that's good though. No, I mean in this movie she was going a little over in this one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, everybody in that line is completely over the top. Yeah, but I think everyone was very excited about their one shining moment in that line. she definitely stole the show when it came to overacting, which was always her forte.
speaker-0 (17:44.497)
speaker-0 (17:55.63)
I thought about the girl with the hair where he was like I like your hair and she's like thanks I was like do you she's still saying that I was the girl in house that he liked her hair You're actually with Hugh Lord, yeah, yeah exactly no not that definitely
speaker-1 (18:03.47)
Odd delivery of thanks even.
speaker-1 (18:12.802)
Not lupus. We'll get that in a second. There is an actress in this movie that was also on house with you, Laura. okay. So that fan in line asks Roger if it's true he's married to Sandy Sinclair, the actress, and Roger says, you know, they're now divorced, which if you're a super fan, you should really probably know, especially the things we find out about his personal life, you probably know all of this based on something big that's happened in his personal life. But hey, we're setting up characters here. Who are we to judge?
After that, he and his agent are walking down the street and his agent, Frank, tells him that if he doesn't have a new book on his desk by the end of the month, he's gonna have to pay back the advance. And he tells him that nobody wants to read a book about Vietnam, which look it back, it's like 85, the Vietnam War ended in 74, 75, I think it's 75 actually. So we're just a decade after that. It's probably true, nobody wanted to read about the Vietnam War back then. So.
His ex-wife, played by Kay Lins, Kay Lins had a 50 year career mostly in television. Everything from the Andy Griff, the show, as a child, to Bones. And she was the one who also made an appearance in an episode of House. So she was in the movie House and also in the television show. That actress was in everything in my childhood. You throw a rock in the 70s, 80s and 90s and early 2000s. She was in so many television shows.
speaker-0 (19:21.774)
I'm sorry.
speaker-0 (19:33.006)
Yeah, NCIS, Cold Case, The Closer, mean Heartland, mean my god, just use everything.
speaker-1 (19:39.214)
And as a kid, I always found her very trashy, beautiful. She's got that eighties vibe in this though, like perfectly. Something I liked as a horny teenager, she never could close her mouth. She always kept her mouth open. I see that. I want to appeal to a certain demographic. I'm just always going to have my mouth agape.
speaker-0 (19:41.905)
she's gorgeous.
Totally.
speaker-0 (19:53.752)
Good call.
speaker-0 (19:59.438)
I always have my mouth open. Dang it, now I've got to rewatch House just to watch Kaylin's mouth.
speaker-1 (20:02.05)
I'm ready for you,
speaker-1 (20:07.692)
She calls her ex from an award show from a payphone, which still looks hilarious. Yeah, it's a row of pay.
speaker-0 (20:14.838)
The lineup of payphone. I was dying. mean, so that where you getting your quarters in that dress?
speaker-1 (20:22.51)
Exactly. She's calling Roger from an award show saying she didn't win and saying she got the message about Roger's aunt dying. And you can tell that she still cares about him and he's pretending that he's got a big poker game at his house and turns the music up like he can't hear. can tell there's a moment where they're trying to connect and she tries to connect and he says, gotta go. And then he hangs up the phone and then he tries to pick up the phone again, but it's too late. so obviously there's- a jerk.
speaker-0 (20:37.74)
effort.
speaker-0 (20:48.27)
What a jerk. I'm such a jerk. I have a question. I was trying to put my 80s hat back on to remember if this was a thing, but caller ID was not a thing. Right. So how did he know who was calling him? It was in the script. I got it.
speaker-1 (20:59.416)
No, I think it was in 90s.
speaker-1 (21:06.092)
It was in the script, Yeah, I was about to say, if that is your line in the sand for suspension of disbelief, we are fucked. trust me. I have a lot more on my list that are worse than that.
speaker-0 (21:19.79)
I'm sitting there thinking, wow, maybe he was expecting her call. I mean, that's just where my brain went. Was the call with the cops before or after this?
speaker-1 (21:30.414)
The actual, the call happened first. He sits down to write his book and looking at the title sequence of his book, blinking on his just bitchin' 1985 IBM computer, but then immediately gets up and goes and calls the FBI and asks the agent if he knows anything new and the agent says, no, we don't have any new information about your son. And also the agent at the CIA said, please stop calling him as well. So.
We know something is afoul with his son and that we have they have no information on it Yeah, and then after that he gets the call from from his ex-wife The next scene he Rogers asleep in his bed and he has a dream about his son playing on a grave Which I thought was the first kind of cool creepy little element Yeah So his son's playing on this old grave on it with a wooden cross on it and then a hand reaches out of the grave towards the Sun and the Roger jerks awake from the nightmare and he gets out of
speaker-0 (22:08.27)
from Sandy.
speaker-1 (22:28.298)
and immediately starts to pack. Well, do you think that the hand that's popping out, is that a premonition of Big Ben coming back to life? Upon second viewing, was like, hmm, is that like, you we're looking like he's seeing into the other dimension where Big Ben is stealing his son. I think you're right, because we don't
know it yet either, but the foliage is, it's from the Vietnam scenes that we see, yeah. Yeah, I think that's our,
that you know this is Big Ben coming back from the dead to steal his... for not killing him when he needed it. Yep I think you're right. But I was also wondering like how long... what's the time period here? How long has the kid been in the other world and is it... should he have aged? It's like Jumanji when you know when they actually finally pull Alan back out of Jumanji and he's now an adult. Should the kid have like aged? Like how long has it been?
speaker-0 (23:02.296)
That's right.
speaker-1 (23:27.756)
since the boy's been in there. Every scene that we jump around to in this movie is timeless. We don't even know if when he interacts with Harold, his neighbor later, if that like, is this the next day or is this a week later? We just never know. They never cover any of it. And even he looks, they didn't bother even aging him from Vietnam. yeah, yeah, he looks exactly the same.
speaker-0 (23:48.108)
Vietnam.
Yeah, and everyone was good haircuts too. So apparently there's a barber there, which was good in Vietnam.
speaker-1 (23:59.84)
It's also weird that like they're at that house. Like, I know you're not there in your synopsis reading yet, but like, you know, when they're at the house, when Jimmy disappears, why were they there? Or are we just here doing some pruning and cleaning up around the house for Ant? Or, you know, why does the boy disappear at this house?
speaker-0 (24:20.054)
I had a question about that too and I do, I think they were just visiting. They're just visiting his amp.
speaker-1 (24:24.974)
Yeah, that was my assumption too. And then also, well, you know, there's just so many questions. It's like, why does Big Ben target this house? because, well, what is, does this house have some kind of like paranormal activity that is there that allows us to happen or, you know, so they don't really dive into any of that either.
speaker-0 (24:29.454)
Why?
speaker-0 (24:42.816)
Yeah, because if you're wanting to get back at Roger, you're gonna have to wait a long time and torture that poor aunt.
speaker-1 (24:49.77)
I saw it as a portal and he used that as a portal to get in. He wasn't the one doing the torturing. As we saw, there were other entities in the house besides him. He found a passage.
speaker-0 (24:59.308)
Yeah, but I feel like he was the puppet master. I didn't. interesting. Interesting. Good. We have questions, Steve. Well, actually, you know who we have questions for, Fred and Ethan. I've got questions for you.
speaker-1 (25:01.518)
Hmm.
speaker-1 (25:10.871)
The very next scene, we're at the Ant's house, Roger's meeting with the real estate agent about the house. Real estate exposition Esquire? Yes.
speaker-0 (25:17.121)
Love that guy.
sir. sir.
speaker-1 (25:24.312)
So yeah, he's at the house and they're looking around the house and he tells the agent that he grew up in the house. So that way
we find out that he was raised by his aunt. And we got a flashback of Roger trimming the hedges as the sun plays in the yard. He turns around to see that his son has vanished. Looking all over, as a parent, a very creepy thing, he runs out in the front yard and a car speeds off down the road. Yeah, that was odd. Yeah. Because that's every parent's nightmare. like a kid's missing and then some car screeches around the corner.
but it was just a total red herring. Then he goes into the house and gets his wife. They're married at the time. They started looking all over the house. And then Roger goes on the backyard and sees his son drowning in the pool, runs and jumps into the pool, jumps into the water, and the kid's gone.
speaker-0 (26:06.36)
The cut to this flashback was so abrupt. I was like, wait, hold on. It takes you a second to get your bearings as a film viewer because they're so abrupt.
speaker-1 (26:10.528)
of them were.
speaker-1 (26:17.902)
My second viewing was easier, maybe because I was expecting these things, but you're right. When that first time happened, was like, wait, what the fuck? And did I miss something? I like, I was like, all right. But my second viewing, kind of got it because I was watching it. This was the first time I've watched this film in a long.
speaker-0 (26:26.262)
Exactly, you rewind it. Right.
speaker-0 (26:35.352)
Yeah, it's been a while.
speaker-1 (26:37.102)
20 years maybe. I enjoyed the strangeness of everything because it made me feel discombobulated and confused. Some of the confusion was probably totally not intentional, but I was confused a lot, not about like, don't understand what's happening, but we're here now, we're there, this just happened. Especially when he's writing his book later, we go straight into Vietnam. So there's a lot of flashbacks, flash dreams, things like that. We just go straight into them.
speaker-0 (26:48.514)
Right.
speaker-0 (27:06.35)
felt like it's part of the movie's personality almost, you know, it's kind of like in just sort of the DNA of the film. It's jarring, but you you wonder if it was on purpose.
speaker-1 (27:16.674)
A lot of that stuff, you know how it is, low budget. could have been other scenes that explained it more and they just didn't have time. Immediately back to present day, Roger and the real estate agent are out in the shed in the back and the agent picks up just a harpoon, a harpoon gun that's just laying around. while he's talking to Roger, he accidentally fires it and it misses Roger by a couple of inches. then shows zero remorse? too much.
speaker-0 (27:28.098)
page.
speaker-0 (27:42.356)
I'm sorry about that. Anyways. It felt like something straight out of the film Airplane. I was like, what? Yeah, Roger doesn't really act either. He's. Yeah.
speaker-1 (27:51.842)
Then they walk over to find the painting that his aunt was working on when she died. And if it's of a woman looking into an open door, a glowing open door, and Roger says, that's her closet in her bedroom, which that's very astute. it's any door in the house, right? But Roger says, that's the closet in her bedroom, the same bedroom where she hung herself. And then another flashback in the house, the cops are
they're investigating their missing son and Roger insists that he was in the pool and the cops are saying, sorry, he was not in the pool. And then his aunt comes into the room and the aunt says, it was the house that did it with a big smile. Remember this is the aunt that the guy from the funeral said wasn't crazy. Yeah, she's like the most creepy smile ever. And she's also kind of like not scared with her. She's just more. Disassociation. She's crazy.
speaker-0 (28:38.062)
trying to not chill on about it.
Yeah, and Sandy just hauls off and screams at her.
speaker-1 (28:46.86)
Yeah, so I don't know what the definition of crazy is in that town, but the guy said, she was not crazy. But the woman that we just got introduced to was batching.
speaker-0 (28:54.946)
bananas yeah.
speaker-1 (28:56.878)
So Roger tells the agent that he is not selling the house and he's going to live there for a while.
speaker-0 (29:03.992)
question sure did you guys notice the for sale sign nope Craven Realty
speaker-1 (29:09.518)
Boom. Boom. How about that? That's awesome. No, I didn't even see that. Way to go, Sean S. Cunningham. So that night, straight tonight, super fast, just like all of our transitions, while failing to get past his first page of his novel, so he starts just sort of walking the room board because he's got writer's block and he starts eyeballing the Marlin that's mounted on the wall. And then here's a noise upstairs.
speaker-0 (29:11.234)
Boom! Come on, Wes Craven!
speaker-0 (29:17.333)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-1 (29:39.114)
He goes upstairs, goes into his aunt's bedroom, and she's standing in the middle of the room and says, it won, Roger, it tricked me. I didn't think it could, but it did. And she steps up on a chair and puts her head through a noose and says, it's going to try and trick you too. It knows everything about you. Leave while you can. And then she steps off of the stool, hangs herself, he runs to her, and then she vanishes. Another really cool element. Way more sane in death than she was in life. Yeah, yeah, she's a little more grounded. The next shot.
speaker-0 (30:01.195)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (30:07.362)
is an exterior of Roger turning on every light in the house, because he's been spooked by seeing the ghost of his Very quickly. He moves to the house very quickly. What we see later, when he was rehearsing the closet pull, maybe he was doing it that way, just diving through the house, sliding on his knees. Very theatrically, which is incredible.
speaker-0 (30:27.736)
Yeah, exactly.
speaker-1 (30:29.836)
Like most of your Vietnam vets.
speaker-0 (30:32.27)
Right.
speaker-1 (30:34.508)
Studies show that Vietnam vets love the theater. He goes to his son's room and climbs into his son's bed and goes
to sleep. The very next day, while taking out the trash, Roger chases off a dog that was in his trash can and sees a beautiful woman jogging down the street. They say hi. Here he sees that she's his neighbor across the street. She goes into her house and his next door neighbor steps in and says, pretty, huh? And the neighbor is Harold Gordon, played by George Wendt.
speaker-0 (31:01.514)
Norm! Thank God you showed up, Norm. Yep. We needed Norm.
speaker-1 (31:08.492)
We definitely needed norm. The quality of acting just jumped up really quickly. Yes, it did. And then the sequel house too. Do you know who the neighbor was in house? John Ratzenberger. Was it
speaker-0 (31:13.674)
and the humor.
speaker-0 (31:18.567)
huh, go for it.
Mm-hmm. Cliff. Uh-huh. Was it really?
speaker-1 (31:25.676)
That's incredible. That has a great title to the house to the second story, which is a really good title. Yep.
speaker-0 (31:32.622)
Yeah, this line here that he delivers is, oh man, it made me laugh. Are you about to get there? I wasn't going
speaker-1 (31:37.717)
yeah.
quote it. if you want to quote it, he says he's glad to have somebody new moved in if you want to quote it.
speaker-0 (31:46.645)
Well, I don't know the exact quote, but he's basically like, yeah, man, I'm glad to see you here. The woman lived here before, just a big bitch, super crazy. And man, she's a crazy old lady and so glad she's not here anymore. And she's like, oh, that was my aunt. And he's like, great salt of the earth, that woman, really wonderful. Heart of gold, that one. Just goes straight into it. No, I mean, it just was hilarious. He's so funny, perfectly delivered. Also RIP.
speaker-1 (32:03.522)
Say it, really.
speaker-1 (32:12.984)
Yeah, no doubt. Did he die? man. Well, he was old, but yeah. Easy to say, though. An American treasure. Yeah, definitely. Harold asks if he wants to hang out, and Roger tells him that he's here to write, and he's working on something new, and then he says, you know, solitude. Which is kind of what we got a break from with George Wint's character, is a break from that solitude, because was getting a little, like, watching one guy walk around a house was already getting a little tiresome. So thank God for George Wint.
speaker-0 (32:15.81)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (32:20.598)
An American treasure.
speaker-0 (32:42.926)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-1 (32:43.726)
That night, a writer sits down to work on his book and starts actually writing for the first time and we see a reenactment of the story that he's writing in Vietnam. We meet Big Ben, this loose cannon played by Richard Moll, who was a bull from Night Court. Massive.
speaker-0 (32:58.446)
I mean, think about it. We've got three major TV stars in this film. They're not big movie stars. I love that they did that. I think it's so cool.
speaker-1 (33:10.712)
This is a rambling thing, but it just dawned on me. The real estate agent, he plays a hotel clerk in something, some iconic movie. can't, I just, it's
very familiar. I didn't look him up, but yeah, he has a look about him. I've seen him. He's like the hotel clerk in something like planes, trains, and automobiles or something.
speaker-0 (33:24.28)
Is that not the guy in Ghostbusters when they go any... Yes it is. Yep, it's Ghostbusters.
speaker-1 (33:26.292)
it's like, had no idea. Like I won't. That's it. Well, that's ridiculous. I will not pay it. Well, yeah, we'll tuck it back in there then.
speaker-0 (33:36.744)
Yeah, yeah, he's like, no, no, he's also in war games. He's in Titanic. He plays Benjamin Guggenheim in Titanic.
speaker-1 (33:46.542)
No, it was Ghostbusters. I knew he worked at a hotel. Yeah, yeah, as soon you said that, it popped in my brain. I was like, yeah, that's him.
speaker-0 (33:52.076)
Yep. He was in Ghostbusters. Also, Richard Mole, RIP. Yeah.
speaker-1 (33:57.014)
As a big man, big men don't live that life. But yeah, so Richard Moll, Bull from Night Court, we get to meet the battalion. They're all huddled going over a plan and a grenade gets tossed into their camp. Ben yells to get down and they all hit the ground and then they're ambushed by the Viet Cong. And then immediately Roger gets distracted by his son outside. Well, first he gets distracted and looks at the television and there's a movie on the television. He turns the movie off. Then he looks at the window.
And his son is at the window calling him. And in a very odd scene, he points the remote at his son and turns his son, the vision of his son off. That's one of those that on script someone thought, I think that'll work. I think that'll work. And then shoot it and like, that didn't work. Well, yeah, well, it just shows that it's in his head at that point.
speaker-0 (34:44.66)
Yeah, it's like he's actively trying to turn it off because he doesn't think it's real yet.
speaker-1 (34:49.217)
Ghosts or whatever are in on the joke and they're like, okay, and they make themselves disappear in TV static
speaker-0 (34:56.545)
Or it's a nod to the end of the film when we find out that Roger actually can control these things.
speaker-1 (35:01.966)
As long as you're not scared of it, you're in control of it. He then hears a noise in the house, and again, it's coming from upstairs. Of course, it's his aunt's bedroom. He walks to the closet door, and just as he's about to open it, he stops and says, I must be going crazy. And so he goes back downstairs, and then downstairs, may I say that that was the first time I saw a boom shadow was at that moment. The light was so bright sometimes, it's a wonder we didn't see it in every scene. I know, yeah, yeah. Yeah. 100%. Downstairs, he's brushing his teeth.
and he just has an instinct to go back up to the bedroom and look in that closet. And he opens the door and it's empty. But then the clock downstairs strikes midnight, causing Roger to turn around. He's already walked back downstairs again and the clock strikes midnight. He goes back up, checks the closet again. He
opens the door and this time this giant creature with the huge claws and all these living faces weaved into its body comes out. Yeah, how badass was that? That was like, that was really cool.
speaker-0 (35:55.01)
I was gonna say that one got all the money. Do know the budget for this film was $3 million?
speaker-1 (35:59.598)
You know, but that's actually, I did a conversion on that and that's a lot of money. That was actually like $8.7 million today. I also wonder, was like, okay, so if you had $8.7 million or they had $3 million then, but it's 8.7, like, I think it should have looked. Considering Ready or Not was $6 million, I mean, and how beautiful that film is. Yeah, it made over $19 million when I did the conversion on that, it's like $56.3 million.
speaker-0 (36:15.342)
better fit.
speaker-1 (36:27.726)
on an 8.7 million dollar budget, that's really good money.
speaker-0 (36:31.795)
yeah, mean man, it was a solid hit. But also like how deep
speaker-1 (36:35.79)
deep into the movie are we at this point when we get to this closet? Probably 20 minutes. And you know, I was kind of on the hokey mode with this movie and I was like, all right, this movie's pretty hokey. But when I saw that closet monster, I was like, fuck, all right. I'm in. It grabbed me a little bit more. I think I needed that. You know, it actually made me care about the film a little bit more. It kind of like grounded it. Okay, so this is, this may be something that's actually interesting. Yeah, plus it gave us.
finally a glimpse that it's not just gonna be this guy walking around getting tiny glimpses of ghosts here and there and something's actually gonna there's something that can actually, like, you know.
speaker-0 (37:09.868)
that he
speaker-1 (37:12.482)
Very well, see him grab, I saw in my second viewing, like it reaches out and kind of like runs its claws across his shirt. Then he grabs his chest, which, which, know, but that pays off later. And we actually see the, the, the claws. Yeah, but we don't see blood. All we see is the ripped robe. That's nice though. Like it just shows this, scale of this thing. This thing's big and it's, it's, it's mean. Yeah. Especially when you see how far apart the claws are when he does show it later.
speaker-0 (37:35.746)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
speaker-1 (37:37.87)
I like that a lot. This creature bursts through the door, reaches his claws out and rips them across Roger's robe. You see his robe rip. He closes the door, locks it. I don't think, I think immediately it's morning again. It's like, I guess we don't need to see this guy struggling to go to sleep because it would you think you just, it's fine. Put some Neosporin on that and we'll call it a night.
speaker-0 (38:02.254)
I'd sleeping in my car. Yeah, I'd be gone.
speaker-1 (38:05.006)
Yeah, it'd be like a poltergeist just heading straight to the motel. 100%. Push the TV out on the balcony and go to bed. The very next morning, a delivery truck arrives and it is filled with the most glorious examples of 80s video equipment that you could ever conceive in your fucking life. Do I hear Betamax cameras calling people? Bro, me being like a nerdy little camera dude, I was like, look at this, this is incredible. He just dropped like 50 grand.
I had totally forgotten about the brand Quasar until he rolled that door open. Shows you that, you know, it's weird this film really leans into this trope that like everyone in the world reads. And it's in a time where everyone in the world apparently was reading and they all know who this guy is. And you can make a living at it? Yeah, yeah, right. So he's obviously rich enough that he can go off and just drop a crazy amount of money on all this kid. If you weren't 100 % sure what the tone was of this movie...
speaker-0 (38:40.45)
Man, it's impressive.
speaker-1 (39:03.658)
up until now. Hope we landed now.
speaker-0 (39:06.601)
land the plane, Steve.
speaker-1 (39:08.258)
The plane is coming in. So that night he has set up a complete row of still cameras, video cameras, Super 8 cameras, audio gear, all lined up. They're all recording ready and he's got a rope. Then he does a test run of pulling the rope.
speaker-0 (39:21.612)
He's in like full army gear too. He's still got goggles. He's got his uniform, his goggles. Apparently.
speaker-1 (39:24.226)
has this uniform, I love that.
speaker-1 (39:28.526)
Apparently it was kept at his aunt's house. He does a test run, pulls the rope, runs down the stairs, runs out the front door and does a knee slide on the sidewalk. It's like the ending number in a Broadway production. Yes.
One of the most overlit scenes. Overlit scene, yeah. man. Slides right into his next door neighbor, Harold, played by George Wendt. George Wendt says, solitude. But George is walking his dog in his yard, which also lets me know that he lets him poop. Take a shit in Roger's yard. Yeah, good neighbor. Back inside, Roger turns on all the cameras and he's getting ready to take footage of the beast in the closet. He attaches the rope to the doorknob of the closet door, then gets ready.
speaker-0 (40:02.444)
nosy nosy neighbor.
speaker-1 (40:13.166)
pulls it, door flies open, again it's empty. He goes back downstairs, the clock strikes midnight again, so Roger kind of realizes, that was the different, last night it was midnight. Or I say last night, we don't fucking know.
speaker-0 (40:25.518)
Yeah, eight months ago it was midnight.
speaker-1 (40:28.664)
He had to save up months to get all the video equipment and...
speaker-0 (40:31.822)
Well, I mean, how long does that shipping take in 1985 time? There was no Amazon.
speaker-1 (40:37.58)
was overnight, guys. It was overnight. Yeah. So six weeks later, he's ready to try it. So he realizes that the clock was striking midnight the night before. So he goes upstairs, he's getting ready to pull the cord and he's immediately interrupted by Harold, who's at the door, which it's the eighties. They come
in people's houses when they, when they please. And Harold just walked in, came upstairs and asks if he would like a midnight snack of pizza and beer. So Roger joins him and goes downstairs and they-
speaker-0 (40:39.753)
He FedExed overnight.
speaker-1 (41:07.602)
at the kitchen table and Roger tells Harold his whole story and Harold really only wants to know about the camera equipment upstairs. Roger tells Harold that the house is haunted and tells him that there's something in the closet upstairs and that's when he shows Harold the claw marks on his chest. What about me? Do you think I'm?
speaker-0 (41:26.456)
Looney Tunes.
speaker-1 (41:29.538)
And his answer was almost like, well, you're not, you're famous. But your aunt, she was Looney Tunes.
speaker-0 (41:32.6)
Yeah.
Yeah, but some of the monsters in this house appear kind of Looney Tunes.
speaker-1 (41:38.904)
yeah, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. It did, took me a second. Harold gets up to leave and as he's walking to front door, he swipes Roger's phone book from the table before leaving and then goes next door to his house, calls Roger's ex-wife to tell her that Roger's having flashbacks, seeing ghosts and stuff. She then calls Roger, but he's back to his book and doesn't answer the phone. It was weird that she was still awake even though she had a 6.30 AM call time.
speaker-0 (42:04.686)
Did you think?
speaker-1 (42:08.428)
And it was two in the morning.
speaker-0 (42:09.198)
I mean, I just assumed that he woke her up from a dead sleep. was w- that's right. She was.
speaker-1 (42:14.232)
Walking around before the phone rings. Cuts and she's kind of like walking around, living room, the phone rings, she goes over and answers it. And she's like, what are you talking about? I gotta be on set at 630 in the morning. It's two in the morning. He showed up over at midnight over there with, you know, with food and beer. Then they had to have their chat. So now he's back home. It's at least 132 in the morning if they talked quickly. Right. Anyways, that's my brain. This was the eighties. Amphetamines were still a thing. Okay. So she shows up all night blowing and then she's like, all right, cool. I'm ready for set tomorrow.
She was studying her lines, guys. So yeah, Roger is working on his book. We're back in the Vietnam flashback of his book. The Company Lieutenant, played by Dwyer Brown, which Dwyer Brown is the actor who, if you build it, he will come. Really? He is Kevin Costner's father in Field of Dreams, John Kinsella. Okay, that's cool. Their uniforms in this were so costume uniforms. Yeah, ill-fitting, kind of felt like World War II uniforms.
speaker-0 (43:02.05)
Is it?
speaker-1 (43:12.45)
Well, even the setting felt like, you know, it felt like we're on a stage or, you know, it's like, it's way over lit and it's just very fantastical, you know, but maybe that's it also leans into itself because this is him remembering it. So of course it would be staged. He's writing a story. He's not technically like reliving it. But yeah, I definitely felt like they were heavy on the ferns. We need more ferns. That should be the title of his book, Heavy on the Ferns.
speaker-0 (43:39.868)
Right. I love it.
speaker-1 (43:42.2)
So the lieutenant, who was John Kinsella from Field of Dreams, needs somebody to walk point, so Big Ben volunteers and the lieutenant tells Roger to go with him. So off they go, walking point. Roger stops to take a break from writing and sees a child's toy car roll across the floor. And he calls his son's name. I did like this part, he calls his son's name and then he immediately feels embarrassed for calling his son's name. what are you? He's probably dead.
speaker-0 (44:06.498)
Yeah. What am I doing?
speaker-1 (44:09.71)
He walks over to the mounted Marlin on the wall and studies it for a minute. And then as he turns away, the eye of the Marlin follows him as he walks. And Roger turns around to see that the Marlin is starting to flop on the mount, slapping its head and tail against the wall. beginning of the Billy Bass, if you remember that.
speaker-1 (44:33.422)
I wonder if the creator of Billy Bass was like, I want to do that, in small form. Yeah, we can make. Roger goes out into the shed. He finds a pistol, which he never uses that pistol again. I think they have ammunition. I think he found that and then he's digging around and then he sees the shotgun and then he finds ammunition. He's okay. Cool. I actually have bullets. Gotcha. So yeah, he finds a pistol, then he finds a shotgun, then he finds this box of shells for the shotgun, but he, he put, he put that pistol in his waistband, didn't he?
speaker-0 (44:37.207)
And small form. Billion.
speaker-0 (45:02.606)
Bye.
speaker-1 (45:03.234)
all this like video equipment but you can't go buy ammunition for the guns that you already have. We don't have to fill out any forms to get ammunition bro, you've already got the weapons.
speaker-0 (45:11.564)
Also, what the heck is the ant up to? Well, sh- That's totally sign-
speaker-1 (45:14.254)
She was totally sane. she had that gun for totally sane reason. So he gets the shotgun in the shells and then he hears a noise, turns around and the wall of garden tools comes to life and starts flying off the wall towards him. And he runs to out the door as the garden tools stop and sleep though. They're kind of, they're kind of cartoony. They're kind of like, Hey, hey, hey, hey, kind of like, wait a second before they do that. You know, they're not just like,
speaker-0 (45:19.214)
same reasons.
speaker-0 (45:34.636)
Not viciously.
speaker-0 (45:42.254)
There's definitely some, like it feels very Looney Tunes, right? Yeah. So like the cartoon character has an opportunity to see these things and then turn around and get away. It's like the tools might as well look at each other and be like, look, look, look.
speaker-1 (45:54.52)
They're definitely hanging on filament. it was one of
those things, I guess you can't really just make them fly. Right. Unless you're gonna speed up the film. Yeah, you're right. They sort of had a mind of their own and their mind normally was not to attack. was sort of to saunter. They were sauntering tools. They're good.
speaker-0 (46:11.454)
They came in handy later.
speaker-1 (46:14.018)
They do come in handy later, absolutely. Well, are handfuls, guys. They are handfuls. Da da da da da da. Da da da da da da. Da da da da da da. I'll do a little car wheel.
speaker-0 (46:15.95)
They are hand tool. Oh, that was actually really good.
speaker-1 (46:33.966)
So back inside Roger shoots the flopping Marlin with the shotgun and it does look very sad. It's like, yeah, maybe it was just like the butterflies and the split dogs and return to the living dead. They didn't want to be alive. They were just alive. So yeah, he blasts the Marlin. He goes to the bathroom or first he puts a blanket over the Marlin. I bet, I bet that was shot at some point. Like a flopping blanketed Marlin. Yeah. But we never see it again. You would think so, right?
speaker-0 (46:48.194)
Sad fishes sad.
speaker-0 (47:02.808)
There was something there that they did that later. I read something about that. you did? Mm-hmm.
speaker-1 (47:09.102)
It makes sense because otherwise you would just like take it down and we'd never have to worry about seeing it again.
speaker-0 (47:13.55)
I
speaker-1 (47:15.01)
bet there was a scene later where somebody was in that study and the blanket started moving. And he said, it's rabid weasel.
speaker-0 (47:22.924)
That's a different movie. yeah, the towel over the big fish on the wall was added as they shot it out of sequence. Some of those later shots were filmed before the hole was blown into its side.
speaker-1 (47:36.302)
There's another scene coming up soon that I believe was shot out of sequence and explains why there's some confusing dialogue too. He goes to the bathroom and he's about to take some volume when there's a pounding on the bathroom door. He drops all the volume in the sink.
speaker-0 (47:50.584)
What a shame.
speaker-1 (47:51.928)
just a handful of beautiful volume. He opens the door and all of the garden tools have followed him inside and they're all just sort of hanging out the door, sound train. Just like, hey, how's it going? And then they start chasing him. He runs down the stairs and as he gets to the foyer, it's daylight. Do you notice this? We go from nighttime and now it's daylight. And he's standing in the foyer with a shotgun in his army fatigues. And there standing at the front door is his ex-wife Sandy.
And she asks him what he's doing with the gun and he puts it on the table and with some shells. The shells roll off the table. She bends down to pick up the shells and as she raises up.
speaker-0 (48:33.996)
Hahahaha
speaker-0 (48:45.248)
A good 250. Long fingers, red fingernails. I mean, Jim Henson would have been proud.
speaker-1 (48:53.334)
If I were more astute, I would have looked it up to see who the special effects company was for this. it makes me wonder, cause that just like you said, Jared, that was the first thing I thought of. was very killer clowns from outer space. Yeah. But it has the demeanor of a deadite where it's like, it's like mocking. Yeah. Like someone with not enough budgets attempted a deadite. Yeah. It's interesting.
speaker-0 (49:04.386)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (49:12.226)
Yes. Citrus. Art director was John Krantz Reinhold. Let's see, special makeup effects artist was Barney Berman. Brian Wade is listed as special makeup effects artist. yeah, it was probably this dude. Eyes of Tammy Faye, Vice, Stranger Things. All right, now we're getting into it.
speaker-1 (49:35.212)
Definitely early in his career. Yeah. So yeah, this big old slimy witch woman knocks Roger to the ground. He grabs a shotgun and puts two shells into her, knocking her back onto the front porch. Roger steps outside and sees that he's killed his ex-wife, Sandy. She's laying there with the bullet holes in her. The house has tricked him as far as we know. we see Harold looks on from next door. He sees that Roger's standing on the front porch with a gun in his hand. He doesn't see Sandy's body, but he sees
speaker-0 (49:37.27)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-1 (50:04.982)
Roger holding the gun, and he calls the police to report a suicide attempt. And with the quickest cop response on film in history, Roger is still standing on the front porch. We hear the sirens approaching. So he picks up his dead wife and hides her body under the stairs. No blood, by the way. No blood. Even in the wide shot, there was blood on her, but... is, there is blood. It's even on his hands. In my second view, I notice he...
When he reaches up and he touches her face, he actually wipes blood on her face, like very little bit, like there's no blood on. You imagine that if you get popped with a couple buck shot to the chest, you're leaving some blood everywhere. And there would be an exit wound. Yeah, no blood for the cops to find that way. We don't have to deal with that. And as we find out something later, they don't bleed anyway, I would assume. It's all trickeration. It's all ghost trickeration going on. Good word.
speaker-0 (50:58.114)
So.
speaker-0 (51:02.136)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (51:03.756)
So the cops arrived to find Roger on the porch with his shotgun. Four cops, guns drawn, so nonchalant about this man with his gun. He says he was cleaning his gun and it accidentally discharged. They say they'll have to write him a citation for discharging the weapon. No mention of a suicide call, no mention of let's take that gun away from you. And one of the cops asks Roger if he can use his restroom.
And then Harold comes over and Roger makes them all coffee, which is what when you're trying to get people out of the house, the first thing you do is offer them coffee. of course.
speaker-0 (51:44.396)
And is it me or that one cop Alan Autry? Is it me or
does he just play a cop in every single thing he does? Yeah, just cops. just, his whole career of playing a cop. Listen, I'm here for it.
speaker-1 (51:50.924)
He was in Heat of the Night, right?
speaker-1 (51:57.452)
I like the cop in the hallway and he's looking at the art and he goes, my aunt was an artist. And he goes, okay. And it makes me like, yeah, sure. I'll take your word for it. So while they're all sitting in the kitchen having coffee, at least one of the cops, Harold and Roger, Harold finds a couple of shotgun shells under the table, hands them to the cop. And this is where that confusing bit of dialogue happens.
Because he's already told them that he discharged the weapon accidentally and the cop says, I thought you said that your gun wasn't loaded. And then he goes, well, what's point of having a gun if you don't have shells? I don't know. They're just trying to make some tension here that doesn't really need to happen. of course, I have shells for my gun. Well, he's already said he fired it. Right. But these shells are unfired. So they're just extra shells on the floor. I'm sorry I dropped some shells. What's happening here, sir? Right. Oh, you have more shells than the two that are in the gun?
speaker-0 (52:42.775)
Right.
speaker-2 (52:53.966)
You're not allowed to buy more
speaker-1 (52:54.922)
This changes everything. Yeah. I should already be more suspicious than I am, but this is the red area. Yeah, exactly.
speaker-0 (52:57.442)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (53:02.734)
The fact that you carried two coffee cups over to me and almost scalded yourself because you're shaking so bad, that wasn't suspicious, but these shotgun shells...
speaker-1 (53:11.64)
So Roger escorts the cops and Harold back outside, but now before realizing his shotgun is now missing, which again, the cops don't give a shit if he was suicidal or not. They don't give a shit about taking the gun. They just wanted their coffee and they're on their way. He walks into the door. Then he goes back to where Sandy's body is hidden. He grabs a fireplace poker, opens the door, but she's no longer there. She's not there. He goes upstairs to the bedroom and just as he steps into the bedroom,
he sees the door to the closet close. As he creeps toward the closet, that fat, slimy old witch, version of Sandy, raises up into the frame behind him, holding a shotgun. And just as he's about to open the closet door, the creepy old hag hits him with the butt of the gun, knocking him to the floor. And she says in a little girl's demonic voice, where's your son, Roger? You'll never find him now, he's dead.
speaker-0 (54:04.674)
You missed it!
speaker-1 (54:06.478)
Yeah, dead. Roger says he isn't dead. He's somewhere in this house. So it's the first time we hear Roger believes that his son is not dead and that he is somewhere like locked in some part of this house. She points the gun at his head, pulls the trigger, but the gun's empty. So Roger knocks her out of the way and then runs
away. Out in the hall, she hits him with the butt of the gun again. He falls to the floor, then opens up a closed door in the hallway.
And that's where all the possessed garden tools are waiting and they all fly out and pale the hag and then the garden shears cut her head off. How did he know they were there? Tone in this movie, man, I tell you. It doesn't matter, man. You know, it just moves. Roger bags up the head in the backyard and buries the head.
speaker-0 (54:44.302)
It's just...
speaker-1 (54:54.166)
And then he goes back up and he bags up the body and he drags the body outside all to the song, You're No Good. That needle drop is incredible.
speaker-0 (55:04.3)
that were actually- It really is.
speaker-1 (55:06.456)
You're no good, you're
speaker-0 (55:09.166)
You don't know good. This was the thing though, like I was sitting there thinking to myself, he had a really good relationship with Sandy. So I felt like this song, it's like, it's funny, right? But yeah. Yeah, same. If he had had a shitty relationship with his wife, I think this would have really kind of worked with that. But it is good. The needle drops great. It's a great song. It's funny. It pertains to the monster, but it does not pertain to his actual relationship with Sandy.
speaker-1 (55:20.78)
not apropos.
speaker-1 (55:38.478)
But yeah, great scene. He begins to dig the grave. He brings the body outside. He's starting to dig the grave when he's interrupted by that jogging neighbor from earlier. And she's climbing out of his pool. She comes out and says that his aunt used to let her use the pool. Random,
speaker-0 (55:55.848)
at 2 a.m. whatever time it is.
speaker-1 (55:59.624)
It's daytime. It just bounces all over the place. People take advantage of everybody in that little neighborhood. Yeah, they do, We don't lock our doors and we just kind of like, you know, do what we want. Well, apparently the lady that lived there was crazy, but also not crazy. A nice, but not nice. And probably a babysitter at one point.
speaker-0 (56:14.858)
and nice.
speaker-1 (56:22.712)
You wanna talk about fucked up. Yeah, we'll get there, but Jesus. So he drags somebody outside. She comes out of the pool, says that she, his aunt used to let her use the pool. He tells her he's planning a sapling and that's what's in the bag. As they're talking, one of the hands crawls out of the bag and grabs his foot. And so the whole time they're having this conversation, he's having to stand on the hand as it tries to get away and it crawls out and tries to grab her foot and he has to stomp on it again.
speaker-0 (56:25.058)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (56:51.31)
So he's standing on the foot and tells the neighbor whose name is Tanya that he's really busy. And she says they should get together soon. And she says, understands. She understands when men have to work and when men have to play. It's a good woman, Rhett. So she leaves and he pulls an axe that's embedded in the body out. And the very next scene
we see Roger has chopped up the entire body and buried it in small holes all over the backyard.
speaker-0 (57:04.046)
There. That's right.
speaker-1 (57:19.054)
set to a cover of dedicated to the one I love. Even more odd music choice, yeah. Odd drop. I mean, it's nice to have recognizable tunes. They should also make sense, I guess. I mean, it makes sense a little bit, you know, you're no good, you're no good, you know, yeah, of course there's this demon after me and then now, you know, dedicated to the one I love. This is actually the caricature of my wife, apparently, you know, I've cut it up and, you know, this is dedicated to the one I love. I think...
I may have imagined this, I remember seeing a version of a trailer when I was a kid with one of these music cues. Maybe I have imagined that over the years, but because I remember in the trailer form, it was really intriguing. And you really got a sense of that. was a comedy horror.
speaker-0 (58:03.234)
I definitely would have been, you're no good.
speaker-1 (58:05.73)
Yeah. Especially with what's about to happen with our neighbor, her coming over and seeing him bearing a giant body, obviously, and just, you know, being completely nonchalant about it while being in this like extremely revealing, very 80s bathing suit. Yeah, pretty incredible, actually. She was beautiful. I don't know what that accent was. Yeah, it's weird, right? Yeah. There were a couple of like very American pronunciations of words.
speaker-0 (58:20.066)
Yeah, it was hot.
speaker-0 (58:29.39)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-0 (58:36.014)
Yeah, she was born in Sweden, but you're right. There was a few scenes where she was like, and these are the bath toys. And I was like, okay, here's a sweater.
speaker-1 (58:46.798)
immediately, nighttime. The song continues as he searches the house, then he searches the pool. He goes out and looks in the pool. And then he goes in the backyard and he sees that the dog from earlier has now dug up the severed hand of that dead hag and is holding it in its mouth. And then the dog takes off running with the hand in its mouth. He goes back inside and there's a knock at the door and it's Tanya again. And she's brought over her toddler son at a terrible mullet.
speaker-0 (59:16.898)
Yeah. Do you know whose child this is?
speaker-1 (59:20.224)
No. It's the director's kid, right? my God. Well, we're getting there. Let's keep talking, but we're getting there. That kid is fucking traumatized. Assed to be. So Roger sees that the hag's severed hand is clutching onto the boy's back and takes the kid into the bathroom, closes the door. man. So awkward. Closes the door while she's calling for her son.
speaker-0 (59:22.198)
Yes, D minor, son.
speaker-0 (59:31.298)
It has to be.
speaker-1 (59:49.772)
He's got the kid in the bathroom who's to get this hand off the kids back and eventually bites it off. That fucking kid is crying real tears the entire scene.
speaker-0 (01:00:00.854)
Yes! Horrified! Yes!
speaker-1 (01:00:03.406)
It's the director's son. Jesus. Right. That poor kid. While I'm reading the next, look up and see what happened to that kid. See if he killed himself.
speaker-0 (01:00:14.006)
I can see it right exactly, or killed Steve.
speaker-1 (01:00:17.23)
So yeah, visually, while Roger's struggling, he bites the hand off of the child and spits the hand into the toilet and flushes it and the whole hand just goes down. At least it didn't give us an evil dead flip-off. That would've been funny. So he gets back outside and said, sorry, he had to go to the bathroom. The 80s, man, the 80s. Yeah, dude, that was just fucking wild, bro. So we find out.
speaker-0 (01:00:40.609)
Hahaha
speaker-1 (01:00:42.456)
Tanya wants Roger to babysit her son. She didn't come over to hang out. She wants him to watch her son while she goes out and immediately starts piling all of these toys. Where's she pulling that from? She didn't have it in her hands when she showed up. I just love that's like very cartoon. She's like, here it is and this and this. The PA standing two feet from her. Yeah.
speaker-0 (01:00:59.086)
And here the bath toys
speaker-1 (01:01:02.52)
So now Roger's stuck babysitting his kid, so he props the kid on his couch and goes back to his book. So he's working on his book and the kid with the awful mullet. He's on the floor playing with the toys and starts crying. Yeah. He's on the floor playing with toys, starts crying again, real tears again. That fucking kid. RIP, because he's probably, definitely probably blew his brains out at some point.
speaker-0 (01:01:23.118)
I know, need to, I'm looking it up, let's see what I can.
speaker-1 (01:01:25.94)
And did you hear him? So he goes over to the kid and he says, do you want something to play with? How about a nice plastic bag?
speaker-0 (01:01:33.0)
Yes, yes he did. I mean I get it's supposed to be like funny it's a horror comedy but he's like how about a nice plastic bag I was like no, no too far that's a bridge too far.
speaker-1 (01:01:46.09)
To murder you with. So Roger sits down with the kid Robert on the couch and they're watching a TV show with his ex-wife in it. Hilarious dialogue in that show by the way. Hilarious dialogue. It was, I guess it was supposed to be like a nighttime soap.
speaker-0 (01:02:01.262)
He said something like about being a porn star.
speaker-1 (01:02:03.822)
I can't help it that I'm a male prostitute. Your sister gave me $2,000 for a night with her.
speaker-0 (01:02:08.13)
That's right.
speaker-1 (01:02:10.766)
So Mullet Boy finally lays down to go to sleep. So he puts him down to sleep on the couch and goes back to his book. While he's working on his book, we go back to Vietnam and we pick up back from that night where he and Big Ben are out on patrol. They get ambushed. Ben is shot multiple times. Roger leaves the book there to check on the sleeping kid. Kid's gone, which is the MO of the house. Upstairs.
speaker-0 (01:02:37.74)
Yep.
speaker-1
(01:02:39.308)
He sees another one of those haggie type ghosts walking Robert into the bedroom, closing door behind him. Even creepier ones, yeah. Yeah, very short, like almost kid sized, but very wild.
speaker-0 (01:02:49.826)
look like kids, yeah.
speaker-1 (01:02:52.202)
One of them opens the door and smiles at Roger, then closes the door. So he gets inside the bedroom. He sees that the boy, they've yanked the boy up into the fireplace, which I don't remember there being a fireplace. Hanging out of the chimney, yeah, which is weird. But Robert's smiling. He's actually not, didn't seem to be fazed by this. Not yet. Which is really weird. Not yet, yeah. was, he seemed to be having fun as the two little demons were trying to pull him up into the fireplace. Roger grabs him by his feet and struggling with the two that are,
trying to pull him up and he finally pulls him down. And as the kid flops into his lap, you see again the trauma in that little boy's face. He is so scared by the situation he's in and doesn't, he's about to cry again. He just doesn't know what the fuck is going on. Steve Miner, man. I'm not sure which is worse, what you did to your child or soul man. Roger takes the kid to the bathroom and puts him in the bathtub because that's what we always do when- He's covered in soot.
speaker-0 (01:03:41.23)
Yeah
speaker-1 (01:03:50.038)
So he gives him a bath, which is what you do when you have someone's child that you just met. She gave him a rubber ducky for it though. She's like, here's a, here's a ducky for the bath. Yeah. Tanya shows back up to pick up her kids. Now back to the mission at hand. And why do we need all of these scenes right here? Everything else, the movie seems to play into something, but the whole, that whole neighbor thing, is it to show that he could be a good dad, even though he doesn't have his kid? So this is now we're giving.
speaker-0 (01:04:00.962)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (01:04:18.39)
I yeah, I mean, you just think they're doing it so that he can, he's gonna be scared that he's going to lose a second child, you know, in the house and then have all of this additional guilt about this other child, right? But the problem with that is this isn't a child that we really know or care about. It's too random for it to really have a lot of meaning.
speaker-1 (01:04:37.921)
It's random,
speaker-1 (01:04:43.478)
and because of that mullet, we don't really cheer for.
speaker-0 (01:04:46.902)
Yeah, it's almost really more like off-putting because like Bart, like you're saying, this kid is genuinely frightened. He's not acting.
speaker-1 (01:04:53.666)
Yeah. As soon as that kid came into the scene, it's been 20 years since I've seen it, I remembered immediately, this kid's really crying in these scenes. I had not forgotten that. That kid is so traumatized. And I think also, like, I agree, I think it was because like, shit, another kid's gonna get stolen in this house. And also just, but also to up the ante with having a
kid in peril when they're, to see a kid's life in danger instead of just Rogers for a change. So they leave, thank God.
and it's almost midnight. So Harold shows up under the guise of watching a movie. He was invited by Roger and that's what Roger invited him over for. But he tells Harold that we're not gonna watch a movie and that it wasn't a ghost in the closet, but it was raccoons. And asks if Harold will shoot the raccoons with the harpoon gun at exactly midnight. Rabid weasels. He's given Harold the harpoon gun, which is attached to a line to a big game fishing reel.
Clock strikes 12, Roger opens the door. The creature from before lunges out of the closet. Roger beats it with a fireplace poker and Harold is frozen and finally he's yelling, shoot it, shoot it, shoot it. He finally shoots it with the line attached. The creature goes back into the closet. Roger's foot gets caught in the line and he yanks Roger into the closet. Harold grabs his hand and Roger says, don't let go. And he says,
speaker-0 (01:06:19.98)
I'll never let go, Jack. I'll
speaker-1 (01:06:21.326)
And then let's go and then he let's him go.
speaker-0 (01:06:25.154)
Yeah. Apparently William Katz's son visited the set the day that they filmed that. And like, why are they all letting these like little kids just hang out on the set of this film? And apparently this scene when he was on set, when he saw him pull into the closet, the kid like broke down thinking his dad was in danger. Fuck. And apparently William Katz did a lot of his own stunts in this. So I'm like, why are we letting these kids? I mean, I know it was the eighties, right?
speaker-1 (01:06:50.146)
like this is how they learn Lindsay this is how
speaker-0 (01:06:52.6)
So you're right Jared, you're right. No, you're right. You're right. You're right. Just, you know, give them, give them out there to the world and let them just get on their own two feet. Come on. In their mullets.
speaker-1 (01:07:03.246)
Hey, Dad, I wanna go to set. You know, okay, can we wait till Thursday? There's a book signing scene that I think you would really enjoy.
speaker-1 (01:07:13.134)
So yeah, the lines attached to a fishing rod, Roger gets sucked in and then he gets pulled into this other dimension that's on the other side of the closet and gets pulled back to now the jungles of Vietnam again. He sees Big Ben laying face down on the ground. He rolls him over and Ben tells him to finish him off. Roger pulls out a knife, puts it to his throat, but he can't do it. And so Ben say, do it, do it. So instead he says he's going to go get help.
speaker-0 (01:07:28.354)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
speaker-1 (01:07:42.058)
leaves Ben there, and then we see the VC pulls Ben away into the jungle as he's screaming, I'll get you for this. So now we kind of see a little backstory on what happened to old Ben there. Motive. Then the VC starts firing at Roger. He sees a door-shaped light in the distance, run towards it, jumps through it, and he lands right back in the bedroom where Harold is passed out on a mattress on the floor with a half-drink bottle of Jack Daniels.
speaker-0 (01:07:50.572)
I'm gonna save.
speaker-1 (01:08:11.05)
He walks the drunken Harold to a couch, puts him on the couch, which I didn't even think about at the time, but I thought about it this morning. It just popped in my head and we'll talk about it in a second. Like where did Harold go? So Roger goes to the storage shed and looks at his aunt's painting of her at the closet door, notices a rag stuck to it, pulls the rag down and beneath the rag, he sees that it's the bathroom mirror with his son trapped.
in the mirror. Sorry. And I wish this was a video podcast. I'll see Lindsay reenacting.
speaker-0 (01:08:43.882)
See you later.
speaker-0 (01:08:48.223)
little boy in the mirror.
speaker-1 (01:08:49.88)
Well, just how we knew that like, okay, so that her standing in the doorway is that closet apparently, but you know that vanity mirror is Hinged on the wrong side. It does not match. you're right
speaker-0 (01:09:03.096)
WAP
speaker-1 (01:09:05.902)
There's no truth in your art, guys. There's no truth in your art. Okay. Come on. Art department. The aunt set up the easel with her back to the mirror and she painted the mirror. She's like, that pose.
speaker-0 (01:09:18.638)
Jimmy you're looking so good you want to PB &J while you model? I'm gonna f*** you a s***. Hold that pose.
speaker-1 (01:09:24.917)
make sandwich now hold that pose so Roger goes to the bathroom mirror he smashes it and on the other side of the mirror is a black void and hear wind rushing by and he throws a shaving cream can out into the void and you hear it splash down not too deep
speaker-0 (01:09:45.742)
Yeah, I will say it was moments like this that I was reminded, it reminded me of Get Out. Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:09:51.169)
Because of the black void? They did that all in one shot upon multiple viewings. When he closes the mirror, he opens the vanity, you see the shelves, he closes it. You can see it wiggling a little bit as they're removing the set from behind and preparing for him to break that, which is totally cool. I like seeing that all happen in one take. It's not an optical effect, it's real. So that's really cool. A giant tentacle darts out from the void and...
speaker-0 (01:10:11.182)
Yeah. That is cool.
speaker-0 (01:10:17.112)
This was a really good jump scare.
speaker-1 (01:10:19.138)
That was a reverse shot. That was shot in reverse. It's really cool. Otherwise it would have just been slapping a big rubber arm. Yeah, it was so cool though,
speaker-0 (01:10:26.699)
It was awesome. Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:10:29.038)
So it attaches to him, wraps around his arm, starts pulling him into the void and a bunch of other hands, more of those rubber, remote rubber hands. It of reminded me a lot of Deadstream again. Grabbing him, trying to pulling him. Roger sees a straight razor on the back of the toilet, grabs it, starts hacking at
them and they all let loose and so it frees him. Super quick cut, but then again, I guess he realized that's probably where my missing son is. So.
speaker-0 (01:10:37.07)
tentacles and
speaker-1 (01:10:57.358)
Immediately he attaches a rope to his waist with shotgun in hand and then repels down into the void looking for his son And while he's out there very army of darkness skull bat. Yeah, so cool though So cool stop motion It flies by a couple of times then it grabs his shotgun then very army darkness spins the shotgun around on its finger and then fires and shoots the rope and then
speaker-0 (01:11:11.522)
Let's go.
speaker-1 (01:11:25.612)
Roger falls into the water. love how wide that shot is.
speaker-0 (01:11:28.878)
Also, how strong is Roger? Just holding on to that one rope.
speaker-1 (01:11:34.702)
This guy that military wrapped under his leg though, so he is somewhat repelling which is cool, but he's able to sit upright which is nice. But I love that shot when he falls, they cut like super wide and he's like super tangy in the frame like, wah, like going down. Love that. There's also a void fall like that in Bill and Ted 2, The Boat's Journey. This is one really deep hole.
speaker-0 (01:11:58.856)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:12:02.446)
Roger sees bubbles in the dark pool that he's now swimming in. And so he swims down deep into the water. And then when he re-emerges from the water, he's back in Vietnam again. He gets out of the water and he sees his son is held in a bamboo cage. And he goes over to his son and embraces his son and his son says he wants to go home. And then his son says, he's coming back. And then immediately we hear machine gun fire and Roger frees his son from the cage.
And then as Roger takes his son into the water, we see someone in the shadows firing a gun at them.
speaker-0 (01:12:39.224)
Bad shot. Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:12:41.262)
And I don't know what we were trying to hide at that point because it was so obviously Big Ben. Yeah. his outline and by the gun and I don't know why we had to do it like that unless it was out of necessity and Richard Moll wasn't there and they needed that shot. Well, beyond that, I also thought it was a little easy to get out of that bamboo cage because he sees that it's wrapped with chains on one side, but he's able to untie it on the other side really quickly so the kid couldn't have figured this out. How long have you been in this cage, kid?
speaker-0 (01:13:07.244)
He's only been in there five minutes, Jared. We don't know.
speaker-1 (01:13:09.976)
So yeah, we don't know how time works in this world. He gets sucked in and then, you know, so. It could be three years on the outside and 10 minutes on the inside. So he gets his son out and they reemerge in the pool in the backyard. Roger takes his son into the house, heads to the.
speaker-0 (01:13:26.19)
This is one of those things that if you look away for two seconds, you come back and you're in a pool. And you're like, hold on, this is another one of those moments, Jared, that you were saying earlier. I had to rewind it because I was like, you look away for a split second and back and you're like, wait, how did they get in the pool? What happened?
speaker-1 (01:13:30.83)
You're like, wait, what the hell's happening?
speaker-1 (01:13:44.76)
breaking thing here from how they, what they do next. So, so, so continue and then I'll tell you what I think about this. But they do give us a little, he, when he and his son come out of the water, they give us a little music swell, you know, which is good. Yeah. Yeah. We have hope. So it's not totally fast. It happens, but then God, they're, they're walking into the house immediately coming to the house to the front door. They open the front door and there's Big Ben. It's Big Ben, but it's a ghost skeleton version of Big Ben.
speaker-0 (01:13:50.691)
Okay.
speaker-1 (01:14:13.11)
Alright so there are, this is my thing. They come out of the pool right? Then they go into the house to go go outside? Just go around the fucking house, what are we doing? Yep, I thought the same thing.
speaker-0 (01:14:23.342)
Just go around the back of driveway, get in your car. Did you need the keys maybe?
speaker-1 (01:14:30.314)
I know we needed the reveal of Big Ben. We had to open the door that's an internal wipe or whatever. It's like, holy shit, he's standing here in our way. But guess what? We were already outside. I needed to see them both drying off of the towel. They had to go inside to dry off of the towel so they could leave. Give me motivation for while you're in the house. Or a close up of a bowl with a key in it and snatching out the key out of the bowl. Right. That's where my car keys are. Yeah, something like that. Because I doubt he jumped into the void with his car keys on.
Right. But yeah, it was just totally abrupt. All of sudden we're at the front door. There's Big Ben as a skeleton ghost. Roger says, Big Ben. And Ben says, no, it's your fairy godmother.
speaker-0 (01:15:08.172)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-0 (01:15:13.356)
Wah wah wah
speaker-1 (01:15:16.51)
At this point, any dialogue from here on out is all throwaway lines.
speaker-2 (01:15:21.25)
from the grave and I'm out of ammunition.
speaker-1 (01:15:23.54)
Exactly. So they sort of, they, they tussle for a bit. Ben takes Roger's son and Ben says that the VC tortured him for weeks and that he should have killed him. And Roger puts down his son and tells his son to get out of the house. So we see a shot of his son trying to open the door elsewhere, trying to get out, but can't get out. Roger runs through the house. Ben breaks through the window in the living room and
And where does he run upstairs? that's right. This is why it's so confusing because they run upstairs and they come back downstairs and they have the same thing. Yes. Right there. And we could have not even went up. Yeah. That's why I'm so confused because it was so confusing. he runs upstairs, goes to the
bathroom, climbs out of the bathroom window, goes up onto the roof while the whole time Ben is chasing after him, firing through the door, coming for him. That's where he says the line about running out of ammo. And then Roger.
speaker-0 (01:16:04.398)
Z.
speaker-1 (01:16:22.136)
climbs up into the attic off of the roof, goes back into the second floor, comes back down the stairs, right to the fucking spot we were two minutes before. And then that's where they have a tussle. Roger knocks him to the ground, pulls off his arm, starts beating him with his arm. Jesus Christ, that's so unnecessary. I know you're trying to build tension, but you're already over 90 minutes. This movie's over 90 minutes. So he beats him with his arm. They're at the front door.
Ben grabs his arm from him, puts his arm back on. I guess we're to show that you can't defeat him in this way. So Roger runs to the back of the house, throws the door open to I think would be the living room or the kitchen. And now it's a straight drop down to the rocky shoreline below. Which makes no sense. In this void. I would assume it's this void, but it looks just like a very cold shoreline and the house is on a cliff. Yeah.
in Scotland or something. And then Roger falls out of the door and he's hanging on by the floor of this, it's a kitchen later. I was so confused, but it's the kitchen floor. So he's hanging onto the kitchen floor out over this rocky shoreline. Ben steps out, steps on his fingers of one hand, he's crushing his fingers while he's stepping on them. And then he's a writer, let's not forget it, the guy's a writer.
speaker-0 (01:17:47.137)
Okay.
speaker-1 (01:17:47.944)
He takes his belt off with the other hand while his other hand has been crushed and stepped on, pulls out his belt, loops it, swings it out, loops Ben's arm, yanks on it, and sends Ben falling into the rocky shoreline below. Then Roger pulls himself back up, crawls into the house, which is now the kitchen, and the opening to the ocean is now gone. And he hears his son call from upstairs, so he runs back upstairs. Ooh, I need a drink.
I know, right? Right? He runs back upstairs to find Ben holding his fucking son again. Yeah, he can apparate. Yeah. So now it's our third altercation with Ben in less than five minutes. So Ben is holding his son and he's got a knife and he said he's going to kill his son unless he kills himself. So then we kind of see like, that's that's probably how the grandmother was tricked.
speaker-0 (01:18:44.492)
That's how the grandmother.
speaker-1 (01:18:46.594)
So he pulls out his knife and he hacks off Roger's hand, but then Roger raises his hand up and his hand is still there. And Roger says he's not afraid of him anymore and that he can't hurt him or his son anymore and says, not afraid anymore. Sorry. I beat you. I beat this house. Yeah, exactly. The creepiest thing about Big Ben is you can see the actor's mouth in his mouth. And his eye. It's weird. Like he can see his teeth
behind his fake teeth.
Also, whenever you have a ghost thing, they did this really good in Scrooge. They put black stuff in the ghost's mouth so their tongues aren't red. Yeah, this guy, every time he talks, he's got his full red mouth deep inside and you can see his lips and teeth beyond the makeup, which was throwing me, but it was also kind of creepy. If their goal was to make it a very tension-filled last five minutes, it succeeded.
speaker-0 (01:19:25.31)
So they're tongues. Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:19:40.846)
but it was a lot of running upstairs, running downstairs, running upstairs, running downstairs, falling off a cliff, climbing back in, running back upstairs, and there it happens. So he says, I beat you, I beat this house. Roger snatches his son away from him as Ben is looking very befuddled. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Pulls a grenade from Ben's belt and then shoves it into his stomach and runs out of the room, closing the door behind him. Which he can't do anything about, he's like, whoa!
speaker-0 (01:20:08.078)
Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Hey, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!
speaker-1 (01:20:11.328)
I came back from the dead, but I don't know how to pull anything out of my own stomach!
speaker-0 (01:20:14.702)
Yeah, not the grenade in the stomach again. Oh gosh, how did they know?
speaker-1 (01:20:18.715)
that'll stick.
So Ben go boom. He is splode. He blows up and outside Roger's wife shows up in a taxi. brought daylight now shows up at a taxi. Harold is standing in his yard now. So at some point during all of this, he went home. He got off the couch and went home, got a fresh set of clothes. He's like, you guys are being really loud. I need to go home and go.
speaker-0 (01:20:30.414)
I can't. I can't.
speaker-0 (01:20:44.564)
Let's go. Of course. All this running up and down the stairs.
speaker-1 (01:20:48.078)
Of course it could have been like Harold could have called his ex-wife like, I haven't seen Roger in a month, you know, cause he's been in the void. So we don't know how long this last, he vanished like a month ago. So she shows up just as to see the house burning. The, all the upstairs is on fire and she and Harold were looking up to the house and then the door burst open and there is Roger holding their son. Music swells. Her son says, mommy runs to his mom, hugs the mom.
speaker-0 (01:20:55.896)
Who knows?
speaker-1 (01:21:17.222)
And our final shot is one of the weirdest shots of Bill Kat smiling at them, but at the camera. And we do a totally unnecessary freeze frame of this. No, that is a necessary freeze frame, sir. The only thing that this movie was missing was fucking yellow credits. You know, it's like, I need you to freeze frame yellow credits. It's just eighties.
speaker-0 (01:21:39.648)
I mean, it's like the weirdest ending ever. Roger defeats Big Ben. The house collapses. Jimmy runs out. Sandy hugs him. Roger walks out. Cut. Done. Bye. End. Over.
speaker-1 (01:21:50.104)
We don't need a prologue or an epilogue, whatever. We just need to move on, you know?
speaker-0 (01:21:54.648)
know, but there's so much stuff that they prolonged in this film that they didn't need to and yet they made this really weird ending? I don't know.
speaker-1 (01:22:02.958)
That was such a decision. think like, Hey, you know, I think it's going to be a little too on the nose if he joins her and it's just shows they're going to get back together and be happy again. Let's not go too far. It's like we've went too far already. Just do it. Right. We need the nightmare on Elm Street ending where Big Ben shows back up and pulls him back into the house. Sucks him through the window. Sucks him through the window.
speaker-0 (01:22:24.095)
Hahaha!
speaker-1 (01:22:25.74)
Yeah. The balloon version of him. Here's what I would have liked to have seen. He publishes the book, Harold comes over, gets a signed copy, and the last shot of the movie is a super slow motion of Harold's dog dropping a giant turd on his yard. Credits. that would be hilarious.
speaker-0 (01:22:42.924)
The hands gotta come back and go into the yard.
speaker-1 (01:22:45.602)
The hand comes up and grabs the turd.
speaker-0 (01:22:49.206)
That's right, and the hand comes up and grabs the turd and Kates it back in. No more shitting in my yard, fucker. Credits. I don't know, I wanted something. No, no, we did not, but there's, like I say, there's just other things they could have like cut.
speaker-1 (01:22:59.241)
Did we need an extra 20 minutes on this movie?
speaker-1 (01:23:05.844)
I love a cheesy freeze frame guys, because I was like, okay, the movie's over. We did it.
speaker-0 (01:23:09.496)
Yeah, we did it. That's it, that's house. House! House!
speaker-1 (01:23:12.238)
Well that's it.
speaker-1 (01:23:17.346)
this house. We talked a lot about it, but I think like Lindsay said at the beginning, we'll we just do these three questions and kind of recap with these three questions.
speaker-0 (01:23:27.374)
All right, so let's see here, Jared, let's get some of your thoughts on this. Juby Shannon, tell us what you think. Comedy horror meter. So on a scale from straight up horror to full on comedy, where did this one land for you? Usually we do kind of like a 70, 30, 80, 20, was it more horror than comedy? The other way around and where does the cut happen for you?
speaker-1 (01:23:50.51)
I don't think it's very scary and I don't think it's very funny. So I have very
speaker-0 (01:23:55.141)
You
speaker-1 (01:23:57.454)
It's not a meter on did it succeed or not. What genre is this? You're working at a video store, where do you put it on a shelf? You know, pretending that there are video stores in 1985.
speaker-0 (01:24:01.143)
Okay.
speaker-1 (01:24:11.758)
I don't know man, you know, yeah sure. I guess at that time, yeah, we're putting this horror because there's, you know, there's disturbing things. I think if I had seen this when I was like, you know, this came out, what, 85? I was one. So if I
had seen this as a baby, it probably would have scared the shit out of me. You know, so I'm gonna give it like 80, 20. No, let's do 70, 30. Like, you know, horror to comedy. You know, I think that they're probably trying to lean more comedy.
And maybe try to be more marketable in that way, but I think it just comes off as more hokey to
speaker-2 (01:24:47.182)
you
speaker-0 (01:24:48.07)
Yeah, my thoughts are exactly the same. And for that reason, because this movie scared the daylights out of me when I was younger. I had nightmares because of it. So because of that, it just leans more horror just because that's my experience with the film. And I say 70-30 as well. There's physical comedy, there's rubbery monsters, you know, but to me, the spine of the movie is really kind of trauma.
you know, fear of losing your child and, you know, being haunted by failures. There's some themes in there that do get pretty heavy and to me lean more into the horror of it and the closet monsters and the ghosts and the body distortions. I mean, I don't think it's, you know, it's not, you know, 100 % just really crazy horror, but a lot of the themes in there I think help lean the meter more towards horror as well. That's my thought. What do you think? What say you, G.B.?
speaker-1 (01:25:44.142)
I saw this at 16. It was definitely a different time. A lot of horror movies, as we know as classics today, had not happened yet. So everything has changed. So I remember seeing this at 16 and feeling the sadness of him losing his kid. So that trauma part of it was strange. Seeing the grandmother swinging at the beginning and then seeing her herself as a ghost.
speaker-0 (01:25:48.812)
the phone.
speaker-1 (01:26:12.75)
that was disturbing to see as a teenager. I look at it this way. So this was three million, is that what we said in 85? So let's say this was 10 million in 85. That means it would have looked amazing. The creature effects would have been scary as fuck. It would have been a totally different movie. And I think with those things of like it looking amazing and the effects being just bat shit scary.
speaker-0 (01:26:15.822)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-1 (01:26:40.59)
I think they would have taken a little extra time to smooth out some of those rough edges. So I think with a bigger budget, I think it would have been a, I mean, I think it would be considered like one of the classics today. Even with the script, like that was the biggest thing I was struggling with. was like the, even like the dialogue was super hokey and like all these like super pushed expositional scenes. And then when I looked at like the budget converted, I was like, this is actually a lot of money at this time.
speaker-0 (01:26:53.303)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:27:07.953)
I expected this to be a little bit higher caliber than it was, or maybe it was just written intentionally cheesy, I don't know. That's what I think. think like it was, you know your budgetary constraints going in. Yeah. So you're saying it was a lot of money, but there was a lot of missing money somewhere. Just by how it looked alone. I think going in, you know, they're hiring the wrong people for whatever reason. Right. Hiring the wrong person to shoot this, hiring nobody to polish the script.
So the credit, the critters DP, which is interesting. And I think Sean is cutting him also has a lot to do with this as well because we, we're going to do this cheap and fast. And I think that stuff would have made the script better. So all of this is a long way to say, I'd say 85 15.
speaker-0 (01:27:54.894)
Okay. All right. So elevator pitch. If you were trying to get this movie green lit or just, you know, trying to convince a friend to watch it, what's your elevator pitch? What's the hook that kind of sums it up?
speaker-1 (01:28:06.498)
I've got one written and I even have a... I love it. I even have what I would probably put on the poster. Okay, cool. A grieving horror novelist inherits his aunt's house, the same one that swallowed his kid and wrecked his life. Inside, poltergeists, rubber monsters, and peak 80s chaos. He inherited the house, the 80s kid, and now it wants the rest of him.
speaker-0 (01:28:11.532)
Let's hear it Jared.
speaker-0 (01:28:31.374)
Yes, Jared. That's really good. man. And you said you have an idea of what's on the poster. Did I miss that part of it?
speaker-1 (01:28:43.914)
no, that's what I said, yeah. He inherited the house that ate his kid, and now it wants the rest of him.
speaker-0 (01:28:49.368)
Got it, got it, okay. I'm here for that. Bart, what have you got?
speaker-1 (01:28:52.76)
For the 12th straight episode, I'm going to completely wing it. So I have a feeling if I listen back to all of the ones, I'll probably do the same pitch for every single film, just with a couple of different words different. But I would say if I was pitching it to somebody to watch it, I would say it's a very bizarre, ambitious, but uneven horror film packed with a lot of TV stars of the day that not necessarily
pays off in the end, but is a really fun ride. That was my view of it when I was a kid, and it's still my view of it. The tone is just smeared with a dirty mayonnaise knife. But I like it. I like
speaker-0 (01:29:23.394)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
speaker-0 (01:29:37.038)
That was a good elevator pitch too. So mine, mine leaned into that a little bit Bart, but I just said, if you've ever wanted to watch the greatest American hero team up with norm to defeat bull inside a haunted house, this is your movie.
speaker-1 (01:29:54.669)
Alright.
speaker-1 (01:29:58.318)
There's your goddamn slug line.
speaker-0 (01:30:01.066)
Elevator bitch, that's it. All right, so would you recommend this movie to everyone or only to a certain kind of fan? What's the right audience for House?
speaker-1 (01:30:13.144)
There's a guy that's on my podcast named Mike Griggs who would never watch this film. So it can't be for everyone. So, but I don't know. This is one of those
movies you turn on with a bunch of people and I think you could have a really good time watching it. It'd be a good group watch because you could kind of like make fun of it a little bit, especially in nowadays time. So yeah, I think if you like horror films at all,
This is a goofy one and a fun one to watch. if to someone, know, so people who are into horror, should watch it. And especially because, I'm telling you, this is an iconic poster art.
speaker-0 (01:30:49.782)
it is yeah I mean even the house itself is iconic yeah I think with a gummy this movie would be really funny to watch with a bigger with three gummies yeah
speaker-1 (01:30:53.08)
That's spooky house.
speaker-1 (01:30:58.584)
Three gummies, yeah.
You know, I would just because of the pedigree behind it, you know? Anyone who's a horror fan that respects the history of horror with Sean S. Cunningham and Steve Miner and a Manfredini score, I mean, yeah, the pedigree behind it is worth it.
speaker-0 (01:31:17.418)
Even the stunt coordinator for the film, he played Jason Voorhees.
speaker-1 (01:31:21.944)
Kane Hodder was the stunt coordinator. Yeah. on. I didn't know that.
speaker-1 (01:31:29.77)
I always use my mentor kid, I say mentor kid, he's 21 now, but I was his mentor since he was 14. I always use him as the litmus test, because he likes like hard horror. And I know the shit that he wouldn't watch, and he would never sit through this. He just wouldn't. Which is a shame, because there's a lot of good payoffs in this. Yeah. I would recommend it personally to anybody who likes horror, especially as people that like odd, like humor tinged horror.
speaker-0 (01:31:56.546)
Yeah, same. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, but you've got a, it's so uniquely 80s, right? And like you say, the pedigree behind it, you've definitely have to appreciate 80s tonal chaos to get it. But I if you like gremlins and movies like that, I think you'd probably dig it.
speaker-1 (01:32:13.89)
All right, well that's it. Jared, that is house. I hope you enjoyed your time with us today. Thank you for doing this.
speaker-0 (01:32:21.74)
Yeah. I'm glad that you picked a film that you hadn't seen before.
speaker-1 (01:32:25.851)
Of the ones that you gave me, watched the trailers and I was like, you know, this is the one. This is the one we should see.
speaker-0 (01:32:31.479)
Well, thanks for watching the trailer. Some people just pick and they're like, wait, why'd you make me watch this movie? You picked it! No, proud of us.
speaker-1 (01:32:37.868)
Lindsay, got anything else?
I think it's in the books. came, we saw, we kicked its ass. Movie Crew Podcast, highly recommend it. You can check it out. It'll be in the show notes. But anything else you want to shout out to? No, man. It's just the Movie Crew. I do a bunch of commercials and stuff that you can't search. They exist. You may have seen something I've done, but you wouldn't know it's me, which is great. I love that about myself. But yeah, if you want to listen to more things like this, you can find me on the Movie Crew Pod. And you can find that Movie Crew Podcast anywhere.
Right on.
speaker-0 (01:33:12.142)
That's awesome. And how many episodes in are you guys?
speaker-1 (01:33:15.534)
We're real close to 450. And Lindsay, that's weekly.
speaker-0 (01:33:18.734)
That's insane. Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:33:21.422)
Alright my man, appreciate it. It good seeing you. Alright, cheers. That was fun.
speaker-0 (01:33:24.056)
Thanks, Jared, bye. It was so much fun. I love watching films and being on this podcast with filmmakers, you know, because I'm not one and you are one. And so to hear you two go back and forth and talk about things that I'm not going to catch on to when I'm watching a film, it's so fun listening to all that. And you all were great. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that.
speaker-1 (01:33:46.882)
He really knows his shit.
speaker-0 (01:33:48.654)
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm gonna be honest, I did not know about this podcast. I cannot wait to dive in. 450 episodes to catch up on.
speaker-1 (01:33:57.324)
You don't even know about Punch the Macaque! How are you gonna have time for 450 episodes?
speaker-0 (01:34:01.954)
I barely have time to go to the bathroom during the work day. You should see my work schedule. So, I mean, I've got a whole lifetime of stuff to catch up on. I'm still watching Dallas.
speaker-1 (01:34:11.426)
Got a lot of living to
speaker-0 (01:34:13.806)
Still catching up on did JR get shot what happened? We've got some catching up to do we gotta get to 450 real fast.
speaker-1 (01:34:23.372)
Now that we're bi-weekly instead of weekly, it'd us a while, exactly.
speaker-0 (01:34:26.464)
It may take us a while.
Well, until this podcast just blows up and we have to quit our day jobs and this is all we do all day every day.
speaker-1 (01:34:36.27)
Until then, it shall stay bi-weekly. Until we decide to make it monthly.
speaker-0 (01:34:41.144)
That's right. Exactly what going to say. Good to see you. I see you soon, my friend.
speaker-1 (01:34:43.928)
Alright, ladies. Good seeing you.
speaker-1 (01:34:48.248)
Take care.
All music for this podcast is provided by MKE. To hear more of his music, visit his band's website at detectivemusic.com and Detective on Spotify.