Episode 003 - Triple Feature (April 2026)

After catching up on their recent viewings, Willy, Jeff and Heather each share a movie they've picked to feature and discuss. 

Written and hosted by Heather Alexander, Jeff Dean and Willy Greer.

Music composed by Willy Greer and performed by Portland band Hemogoblin.

Produced and edited by Botch the Crab.

Recorded entirely on location in Portland, Oregon.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:30

Hello and welcome to the Portland Horror Podcast Massacre, a round table discussion on the topics of the horror genre from the perspective of three very different horror nerds. Welcome to episode three. My name is Jeff Dean, and I'm joined here by my two beautiful co-hosts.

SPEAKER_06 0:50

Heather Alexander.

SPEAKER_05 0:52

Willie Greer. And we're coming to you from beautiful Portland, Oregon. Uh this episode is gonna be what we call the triple feature. Where we've each picked a film and um we've all watched it, and we will be discussing uh said films. So Heather's picked a film, I've picked a film, and Willie's picked a film, and uh we're going to uh have a great time discussing them.

SPEAKER_06 1:22

Argue vehemently about them.

SPEAKER_05 1:24

That's right. There might be a no particular theme, just random choices. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

It's fun.

SPEAKER_05 1:30

Alrighty, but before we get started, we are going to do um kind of recent watches, what we've uh seen recently. Who wants to start with that?

SPEAKER_06 1:40

Um, I'll go first. I have a lot, you guys. I had a feeling. Uh yeah. Okay, I'm gonna start off um by talking about a little movie that uh it was a limited release um in the theaters for a hot minute and then it was released on streaming. So you can rent it wherever you rent your movie streaming or go to um your local video store because we still have video stores here in Portland. Um it's a movie called This Is Not a Test. It is based on a YA novel by Courtney Summers. It's directed by Adam McDonald, who also did 2014's Backcountry, 2017's Pywacket, and um 2024's Out Comes the Wolves or Outcome the Wolves, but I haven't seen that one. Um it's starring Olivia Holt uh from Heart Eyes and Totally Killer. But it's this great little zombie movie um that takes place from the perspective of these teens that are banning together in a abandoned high school to essentially survive a zombie, a sudden zombie apocalypse. Um I really liked it. It was pretty scary, like it was a great zombie movie just in general, but then there was some um young love, there's some you know lies and deception and um some great gore. Uh so yeah, it was a great little survival zombie movie. I, as we all know, love zombie movies, so it's hard to do me wrong by one. And this one did you rent it? Yeah. I think it was like, I don't know, seven bucks or something.

SPEAKER_05 3:24

Okay. Would you recommend it then?

SPEAKER_06 3:26

Absolutely. I mean, you gotta love zombie movies and maybe even like YA perspective um movies, but it was really well done. Um, and Courtney Summers, the author of the novel, did the screenplay, so it was pretty close to her um original vision. But yeah, that was good.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Cool. Say it was from the same maker of Pywacket. Yeah. I dug that one quite a bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 3:52

And that country, I mean.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 3:54

Yeah. Oh, oh, okay. I love Pi Wacket. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:00

I uh I did a willy Ditto Willy. You did a willy. Yeah, you do diddle willy. I said ditto.

SPEAKER_06 4:08

Oh, okay. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Don't you don't yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:14

All right, who's up?

SPEAKER_05 4:16

Um, I'll go. Um I'm gonna talk about The Bride. Uh, here we go. Oh boy from 2026. Came out um about a month ago and left the theaters about 24 hours later. Um The Frankenstein monster journeys to 1930 Chicago to find Dr. Euphronius to help him create a mate because he is oh so lonely. They dig up a murdered woman and um resurrect her, and thus the bride is born. And they are soon on a wild and weird journey of self-discovery. This movie is put together kind of like the Frankenstein monster himself. It's like so many different ideas and pieces and this and that all put together. Um some of it works, some of it does not work at all. Uh it's written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhall, which stars um uh Jesse Buckley, who just won the Oscar, and uh as the bride, and Christian Bale as the Frankenstein's monster.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

I like how you make it sound that she won for the bride. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:28

Um never know. They'll they'll never know. Yeah, but uh so this movie is kind of a complete mess. Um, a lot of stuff does not really work, but I had a wonderful time watching this movie. Uh I thought her performance was so wild and over the top, I kind of likened it to Nicholson's performance in The Shining. Just kind of like um almost cartoonish in nature, but I didn't have really any problem with that. I loved the look of the movie. Um I kind of think this is a midnight movie in the making. There is so many strange happenings going on here. You can't even tell really what type of movie this is. There's a musical number.

SPEAKER_06 6:20

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 6:21

Um there's possession.

SPEAKER_06 6:23

There's uh There's possession?

SPEAKER_05 6:25

There is, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 6:26

Uh who gets possessed?

SPEAKER_05 6:29

The bride.

SPEAKER_06 6:30

By who?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Um we'll get into it. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_06 6:34

By Mary Shelley. Wait, are you serious? I'm dead serious. I wish she was kingdom. My god.

SPEAKER_05 6:40

Yeah, so yeah, it and it and it's interesting, and this part I did like because Mary Shelley and the Bride are both played by Jesse Buckley. Okay. Just kind of like Elsa Lanchester played. Uh-huh. And then you have a dance number. It's just like that. It's just like it. No, but you know what I'm what I'm saying. I'm giving you something they have to. Um, and uh Christian Bale, you know, does putting on the writs.

SPEAKER_06 7:04

So my number one question uh is what the fuck is on her face?

SPEAKER_05 7:10

It's during the resurrection scene, there's some sort of chemical. It's like they didn't they don't really explain how they resurrected it. It stains it for the stains her tongue and her face.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

I actually like that. There's like one sentence of dialogue to be like, oh yeah, some stuff stained your face. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 7:24

Just because they knew people would ask. Oh, right. Yeah, it's just like something because Annette Benning plays Dr. Euphronius. Um, and uh she just has some sort of contraption. It looks like it kind of hooks into the heart, but then they use some sort of I can't remember what the name Yeah, something like that. And then um when she suddenly it's a Cthulhu movie. Yeah, and then so that's that's how she has that mark on her face. And it plays in later kind of with a theme that really is kind of like the running theme of the movie about finding your own identity as a woman. I see. Um but yeah, so would I recommend this movie? No. But I did I would recommend it to me. Yeah. So because I liked it, even though I fully admit there are a lot of weird problems with this. But I do think it's kind of like it's just a strange movie that took big swings that I appreciate.

SPEAKER_06 8:24

Yeah, and you saw it too, really.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

I did, yes. Uh do we is it uh another it hasn't been out for very long, but it's probably already gone from theaters. Like, is it too soon for spoilers? I don't think it's a spoiler. Do you do you care?

SPEAKER_06 8:38

I care not.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Okay. Skip to this time code to avoid spoilers. Um I had fun in the moment watching it. I was entertained. I I'm glad that it exists. I like that uh so many big budget movies are um taking weird chances. Um it is a complete and total mess, in my humble opinion.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Um yeah, I I have so many the the yeah, okay. Um I loved Annette Benning's performance. I thought she was great. Uh like the look of it, the the vibe to me felt very 90s. It kind of reminded me of like Boz Lurman or something. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 9:24

Um what's the spoiler?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Oh yeah, what I mean, I guess we've already talked about it, but like uh the things that don't work for me, the primary thing that doesn't work for me is the is the Mary Shelley thing, and it's such a huge part of the movie. It opens up the movie, like we fade in on Mary Shelley, and she's like, I am Mary Shelley. And it okay, first off, the the character who is going to become the bride um is possessed by the ghost of the aut of the spirit of the author of Frankenstein, but she lives in a world where Frankenstein and the monster are real. Um Mary Shelley's spirit is apparently, you know, like full of rage uh uh having had her voice silenced all this time. But I mean, Mary Shelley was not suppressed. Um, you know, there were there were a couple of years there where Frankenstein was I might be coming at this from a pig-headed, ignorant dude point of view, so call me out in the comments if I need it. Um there were a couple of years where uh Frankenstein was published anonymously, but her name had been on that thing for at least a hundred years before the 1930s, which is when this movie is set. Um I guess the conceit is that there was a sequel that she wanted to write and was never able to, or whatever, but that still doesn't make any sense to me. Um so just write like the main conceit of the film is nonsense from the get-go. So we're a possession movie before we're a Frankenstein movie, and the two things aren't really related, they seem very coincidental. Yeah. Um so that's a big thing that threw me off. And then at the end of the film, after her journey of self-discovery, she decides that she wants to name herself, and she names herself the bride.

SPEAKER_05 11:20

Well, I think she named herself the bride because it's not of Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

But it's not it's still like a patriarchal archetype, and it's not it's not a name, it's a noun. It will be a name now, because not now you'll see people.

SPEAKER_06 11:34

Yeah, do you sign your name with the or are you just bride?

SPEAKER_05 11:37

And then you put an exclamation point at the end.

SPEAKER_06 11:39

Right, is bride your middle name and the is your first name? I have so many questions, but um yeah, I These questions and many more will not be answered.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Right. I do engage.

SPEAKER_06 11:48

I don't know that we should spend more time on this movie, but I do want to see it if it's free and somebody pushes play for me.

SPEAKER_05 11:57

Don't worry, I'll buy it when it comes out and I'll let you borrow it.

SPEAKER_06 12:01

Oh, that's not gonna work because I'll never put it in.

SPEAKER_05 12:04

It's kind of like Frankenhooker where I let you borrow it. We never watched it for like two years.

SPEAKER_06 12:09

Yeah, well, I eventually did. Okay. And it was okay. All right, uh, let's see, what else here? I have so many. Um, I've got one too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, oh sorry.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

I'll just I'm just over here in the corner. Uh trying not to bother anybody. Um, I did want to thank you guys for uh reminding me about Mother of Flies. I did catch that this past weekend and fucking loved it.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Um But yeah, I am very, very glad that the Addams family exists. I love what they're doing so much. They are really proving what is c what is what is possible, what just a family of three, sometimes four, I think, um, can do in their backyard, literally. Yeah, and and some really good VFX plugins, of course. But uh yeah, a fucking awesome movie, uh great character study. Um uh again, another kind of uh witches versus patriarchy theme, which that's been a trend since 2015. I wonder why, I'm not really sure. Um, but it doesn't show any sign of slowing down, and I'm very, very happy. Just more, more witch movies, please. We cannot get enough.

SPEAKER_06 13:18

Yeah, I love Toby Poser. I think she is one of my favorite indie actresses of the time.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Um oftentimes when a horror fan describes a movie, a horror movie as being metal, they usually uh it usually just means that it's like brutal and fucked up. But just the essence of this movie is fucking metal in in the best possible way.

SPEAKER_06 13:41

Wouldn't the the last movie not the last movie, but one of the more recent movies, the other witch movie that they did, um her and her daughter were literally in a metal yeah, Hellbender. They were in like a metal band in their garage.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

And that's they are they are that band in real life too. Okay and Hellbender's got some songs on the soundtrack for this one. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_05 14:01

Yeah, I thought that Mother of Flies, um, I watched it again. I think I talked about it was it the last episode? Yeah, or maybe the first episode. But um, I think I like that's my favorite that they've done. That and Hellbender are the are the two best. But I think after watching Mother of Flies again, I was just like, they're getting better at movie making.

SPEAKER_06 14:23

I need to get on it. It's the only one that I haven't seen.

SPEAKER_05 14:25

So the only complaint I had about Mother of Flies was the actor who played the father just for some reason I just didn't believe him.

SPEAKER_06 14:36

It wasn't actually John Adams.

SPEAKER_05 14:39

I don't know if that was was that John Adams? I think so. Okay, yeah. I just for some reason his performance kind of was lacking compared to the other two.

SPEAKER_06 14:49

Yeah, he was that was John Adams.

SPEAKER_05 14:52

Yeah. But but that that's a small complaint.

SPEAKER_06 14:55

Yeah, he was in the deeper you dig. Um I mean he's been in a lot of them, but I really liked him in that one too. Um my turn. Yes, okay. All right, um I'm gonna talk about uh Whistle, a movie uh that also just dropped on VOD. I think that was in theaters for a hot minute as well. Um, directed by um Corin Hardy, who did 2015 The Hollow, um H A L L O W, which I really liked, and then 2018's The Nun, which we won't hold it against him, I guess. Um The Nun.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Oh, oh, the nun. Oh yeah. If I said I was like the nun which I missed that one.

SPEAKER_06 15:44

Um yeah, and it was written by Owen Egerton, who actually uh we've been I was on a panel with him uh maybe last year at CryptoCon. He's the um writer director of Bloodfest. Okay um 2018. Anyways, um starring Sophie, I don't know how to say her last name, Nestle, um, the teen Shauna of Yellow Jackets, um, and some other people. It's again, it's a teen movie. Um, it was really fun. It is about a cursed whistle that when you uh blow into it and you make the whistling sound, you're essentially summoning you at the moment of your death. And so no matter how old you are when you die, if you're 79 or if you're 54 or whatever, and how you die, it summons that supernatural being, and that version of you comes to kill you in the moment. So they have to figure out how to stop, you know, their death selves from killing them now because they summon them too early. So it's one of those kind of like rules, you know, fable mythology, um, teen horror movies that have some really awesome, gruesome deaths. Um and uh the only real setback for me was that there was not a lot of mythology on the whistle. They just kind of like briefly touch on it for a minute and then they they just accept that it exists and that it summons their death selves or whatever.

SPEAKER_05 17:21

But is this Irish or American made?

SPEAKER_06 17:23

It's American, yeah. Um, but it was really good. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I think that uh it's gonna be one of those movies that if you hate it, you you have a lot to hate about it, and if you love it, nobody can tell you that it's bad. Like it's just gonna be awesome. Uh and I was one of those people, I was watching it by myself and I was and I was like, holy shit, this is so good. And then I was like looking around at somebody at no one in the room, you know, looking for validation, and I didn't get any except for Jonesy, my cat, who was like, Yes, it is good.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

He loved it.

SPEAKER_06 17:59

He did love it. Uh but yeah, again, that one is a rental wherever you rent movies.

SPEAKER_05 18:03

Yeah, I I love The Hallow.

SPEAKER_06 18:06

I thought that was like really, really good. So good. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:09

Yeah, I read about this a little bit, so I'm curious to see it.

SPEAKER_06 18:13

Yeah, I mean, I again I I'm not recommending it like, hey, this is a great movie. Uh, but if you're willing to take a chance on, you know, like a medium budget uh teen, gross, weird CGI movie, then go for it.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

The description kind of made me think of uh One Missed Call a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Takashi Miyake. Uh like uh when you get the curse, you get a phone call from your future self right before they're about to die.

SPEAKER_06 18:47

Oh shit. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Yeah, that was a great movie.

SPEAKER_06 18:51

Did they remake that?

SPEAKER_05 18:52

They did. They did, but they all got remade. Okay. Yeah, the remake. I never even bothered because I heard it was just awful. Yeah. But I think it's like one of those Dimension movies or something that came out like 20 years ago. Nothing against Dimension, but for a while they were making some pretty bad directed video stuff, which I think that was. Um Well she got um Primate from earlier this year. Um Love Primate. Yeah, basic basically it's about a group of friends um that go on summer break and they stay at uh one of the friends or one of the girls' father's houses in a hillside mansion in Hawaii. Um, and the father is away and the friends start to party, but things go bananas.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 19:40

When the family chimp I don't get it gets infected by rabies. This is basically Cujo, but the family chimp? Yeah, like the m the mother was like a Jane Goodall. Family R deserves to die. Yeah. Um the mother was basically like a Jane Goodall type who had adopted uh this baby chimp uh and the mother passed away, and the father has an enclosure there and takes care of it. His name's Ben. Um and it's funny because when the movie first started and you had all the kids and then you have Ben there and he's all you know cute. I'm like, oh, this is gonna be one of those movies where you get all attached to this animal and then it's gonna go, you know, it's attached to a chip. Yeah, but unfortunately, there's there's only like one scene where they're like, oh, look how cute Ben is. So it wasn't like kind of thought like, oh god, this is gonna be there's only one scene. But um I thought it it's a fun movie, you know, it doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything. It is how it looks good.

SPEAKER_06 20:36

It's super gory. Yeah, it's it is great.

SPEAKER_05 20:39

There are some great kills up death scenes, and basically it's not a CG monkey, it's a man in a costume.

SPEAKER_06 20:45

Are you serious?

SPEAKER_05 20:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 20:47

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_05 20:47

Yeah, and uh, I mean there might be a few CG shots, but um for the most part, because I saw a little bit online about it and the actor who's in the makeup, and the makeup or you know, the costume that he's wearing has that kind of weird look where he's like, God, this monkey is creepy looking. Right?

SPEAKER_06 21:06

So it kind of helps with all monkeys are creepy.

SPEAKER_05 21:09

It kind of helps with the uh you know the effect of it. Um the movie is uh made by the same guy who made uh the 47 meters down movies. Yeah. I like the second one.

SPEAKER_06 21:20

I did too. Umcaged.

SPEAKER_05 21:22

But uh yeah, Primate was fun. Uh it's pretty lean, like 90 minutes, nice running time.

SPEAKER_06 21:29

Yeah, it's great. I love it.

SPEAKER_05 21:30

Uh it gets to the point pretty quickly and uh a lot of good carnage. And and pretty much the whole movie takes place at this mansion.

SPEAKER_06 21:39

Gorgeous Hawaii mansion, like right on the cliff.

SPEAKER_05 21:42

Yeah, and and it's a fun, fun 90 minutes um if you're into, you know, animals run amok type movies.

SPEAKER_06 21:50

Or men in rubber suits run amok.

SPEAKER_05 21:54

Yes. Um but they really you know what they should have named this uh movie? Furious George. Oh yeah, seriously. That would have been a bit more tired than Primate. But yeah, but it it it's a decent it and it's now uh if you have Paramount Plus, it's streaming on there for free. Oh is it?

SPEAKER_06 22:15

Yeah, nice. I want to show it at summer.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

So it's like if the uh the Gordy's home sequence from Nope were a full-length movie. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_06 22:25

Oh yeah, that's what I thought it was, actually, when I saw the ad for it. I was like, holy shit, are they making a full-length movie about that? I mean, honestly, if you're out there listening, Willie, what do you got?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Uh oh, nothing else. I've been watching non-horror movies that aren't worth talking about. Wow. I know, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_06 22:45

Who even are you?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

I'm married. She wants to watch the Oscar movies and stuff.

SPEAKER_06 22:50

I'm like, oh yeah. Boring.

SPEAKER_05 22:52

At least there were some horror movies nominated for Oscars this year. That's true. Very true.

SPEAKER_06 22:57

All right. I will talk about Undertone, the least scariest movie you'll ever hear. Uh I know a lot of people out there loved it. Um, I am not one of them. It was a good movie, and that was about it. It had some good atmosphere. Um, I enjoyed the performances, uh, but I thought it could have been way creepier. Um, there was a lot of missed opportunity, but then when the reveal happens of what's going on in the house, I was not on board. It was kind of dumb. Um, but uh yeah, I think everyone should see it and you know get your own opinion about it. Uh it's I tend to not like very um I don't know, like the really popular, like I hated Baba Duck and I was crucified for that.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

So you just like action and gore and I do, yes, yes, give it to me. How was the the sound design at least?

SPEAKER_06 24:03

It was good. Um the sound design was really good, but that said, I thought it could have just been scarier. I mean it it just there wasn't a lot of I don't know, maybe uh you know I'll I'll end up seeing it again and maybe my opinion will change, but um yeah, I was just hoping to to like get some chills or you know, get creeped out in a dark room. You can I know the mark of a good horror movie when I get scared going to the bathroom after, you know, I'm like looking around at the shadows and checking behind the shower curtain. Did not that didn't happen. Bummer.

SPEAKER_05 24:41

Oh, go ahead. I just said bummer. I noticed that it's very polarizing, like you said. It seems like people really like it. Kind of reminds me of a lot of the movies like um It Follows or The Witch.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Was were they?

SPEAKER_05 24:54

Well I remember It Follows. Some people were like, Oh my god, people especially when the hype kind of starts getting in there, you know, and once a movie is hyped up, there are people who already have their guard up, like oh, I'm ready to tear this movie apart. You know, or like, oh and especially when anybody says this is the scariest movie ever made, that's subjective.

SPEAKER_06 25:15

Well the the tagline for this was the scariest movie you'll ever hear.

SPEAKER_05 25:21

Yeah, yeah. So but yeah, I I just online I've seen a lot of polarizing, you know, like oh my god, it was so great, and other people are like, This was awful. You know, so yeah. I'm curious, I want to see it. So definitely yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

People whose opinions I respect have fallen into into both camps for sure. So I don't know what to think. I'm gonna have to make a decision for myself.

SPEAKER_06 25:49

Do you you have any other movies?

SPEAKER_05 25:52

You have a lot more, so why don't you do another one?

SPEAKER_06 25:56

It's like all I do is watch horror movies. Um all right, let's do ready or not to. Um, well, you already saw that one, so I'll do one that you haven't seen, then we can talk about ready or not two together. Um, why don't I talk about well, I guess this is kind of very similar. I saw um the new movie They Will Kill You uh in the theater, which I loved. My husband seems to think it's not actually a horror movie, but I think it's a horror movie. Um it's very gory, it's got Satan in it, it's got Satan worshippers, it's got resurrection, um, it's you know, very action-y. It's been described as Kill Bill Meets Ready or Not To, and I think that's a really good description of it. Um it is written and directed by Kirill Sokolov. I'm terrible at pronouncing names, so forgive me, um, who is Russian and did the 2018 movie Why Don't You Just Die, uh, which was also Russian, which was really good. Um, and written by another Russian, Alex Lit Litvek, um, who did uh 2010 Predators, which I enjoyed. I know it wasn't popular, but I'm on your side.

SPEAKER_05 27:14

I like Predators.

SPEAKER_06 27:15

I like the Predators. Uh, and then starring Zazzy Beats, uh, who has just been in a ton of uh action movies, um, and then Patricia Arquette and a whole bunch of other people are in it. But it's really fucking great, it's beautiful. Um, it is action-packed. Um, essentially, a uh a woman is searching for her sister who's gone missing. She discovers that she was last seen at this really elite uh apartment building in a big city. I don't, they might be in New York. Um, and so she gets a job as a maid to go in there and find the sister because it's very like you can't just walk in this building. Uh so she gets a job as a maid. She it's her first night. She is settling into her room, and she's immediately attacked by these like cloak wearing people who kind of come out of the walls, and she fights for her life. Um, the fight scenes are really creative. Uh yeah, it reminds me of just a very well-choreographed um action movie. Uh, anyways, so the whole movie is her trying to find her sister in this building and then also fighting and killing all of these Satan worshipers. Um and that's it. It's fucking great.

SPEAKER_05 28:42

Yeah, when I saw the trailer, it kind of reminded me of what is the Gareth Evans of the movie The Cops going on. Oh, the raid. The raid. Oh, that one's great too. Yeah. It reminded me of that. Like I it just seemed like, oh, he's gonna go from one you know, she's gonna go from one floor to the fighting, fighting, and fighting. She does kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:06

She goes to different floors, and each floor is a different theme, like a um a deadly sin. Yeah, you know, because all these people are immortal, so um they're bored and they have a fuck floor. Uh it's a hell of a lot of fun. Highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, it looks like a blast.

SPEAKER_06 29:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

It's interesting that uh this and ready or not too came out so close together.

SPEAKER_06 29:29

I know people were uh people were calling it on a lot of the reviews on Letterboxd were very funny. I mean, people who who liked it even were like it's a um it's a warmed up ready or not to, or it's uh ready or not to leftovers, or you know, but it it's uh I kind of think like because March had so every weekend there was one or two horror movies coming out. There's literally like five horror movies playing at Eastport right now.

SPEAKER_05 29:59

It's wild. Yeah, because I think like if they do that, even if it's a good movie, something's gonna get left behind.

SPEAKER_03 30:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:06

Because I think it was um they will kill you, like didn't do very well last weekend because there's too many other movies out.

SPEAKER_06 30:13

Not that it's not a good movie, but you know, people are gonna go like, oh, let's go see Ready or Not Two, or you know, yeah, it seems a little short-sighted to have those two movies playing at the same theater at the same time, but yeah, um, but y'all should go see it in the theater because it was it was really fun.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Um I'm excited to see this one for sure.

SPEAKER_06 30:32

Yeah. And then so Jeff and I we saw Ready or Not Two.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:37

And uh so let's see, Ready or Not Two is directed by oh, it's the radio silence guys. Um, but also one of the writers was Guy Busick, who wrote Scream 5, 6, and 7, Final Destination, Bloodlines, Abigail, and Ready or Not. So he is definitely in that radio silence um group, if not um on paper. But starring Samara Weaving, Katherine Newton, Sir Michelle Geller, uh Elijah Wood, and Sean Hatsui. Hatsui. I don't know. He's the he's one of the guys in um The Pit. Uh he's the one of the doctors that was in the first season uh on like the day shift or the night shift, and then he like disappears for the whole season and he comes back at the end.

SPEAKER_05 31:27

The pit. Is that a horror show?

SPEAKER_06 31:29

It actually is.

SPEAKER_05 31:31

Is it? No. Yeah, kind of it's not a horror show.

SPEAKER_06 31:35

I mean, it kind of wiley from ER.

SPEAKER_05 31:39

I thought it was about like olive farmers or something like that.

SPEAKER_06 31:42

Olive Farmers, the Pit, okay. That's what I thought it was. It's an ER show.

SPEAKER_05 31:47

Oh, another one of those? There's not enough medical shows on.

SPEAKER_06 31:51

You I agree with you. There aren't. We should have more because I love them. Okay. Um, anyways, so did you like Reader You're Not To?

SPEAKER_05 32:00

I thought it was fun.

SPEAKER_06 32:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 32:01

I hate when mom and dad fight. I thought it was fun. Um, it looks great, a lot of fantastic gore. Um, the additions of Elijah Wood and Sarah Michelle Geller was great. And I love the fact that it basically takes place, you know, five minutes after the end of the first movie. Yeah. It's very much Halloween 2 from 1981.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:22

Um, there's not a whole lot new added, a little bit, but I'm like, that's okay. It's a good time. Yeah. Um, I think if you like the first one, you'll like this one. Yeah. Unless you're someone who's gonna be like, wait a second, that wouldn't happen.

SPEAKER_06 32:39

You're wrong, it would happen. All of it's real. Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, Elijah Wood needs to be in every movie as Satan's lawyer, uh, because he was so fucking good. Yeah. Um, he's like he plays it really straight, you know.

SPEAKER_05 32:55

He might have been my favorite part in the he was he was really good.

SPEAKER_06 32:58

Yeah, and he he wasn't taking sides, you know, he was on the side of Satan, and that was it. Like whoever he just had to play by the rules. And I loved Catherine Newton and um Smarrow Weaving's uh little sisterly dynamic. Yeah, yeah. They were they're kind of like they don't like each other, they've got some family drama, um, so they're very like argue, and it was cute.

SPEAKER_05 33:25

Those two have become like quite the uh Scream Queens? Yeah. Yeah They're both in quite a few horror films the last five, seven years or something like that, right? It's good that I'm sure that's what they're offered now a lot. But I know a lot of times after a while, sometimes the actress is like, no, I want to branch out and do something else.

SPEAKER_06 33:46

A boring drama.

SPEAKER_05 33:47

Yeah, a love story, a medical drama.

SPEAKER_06 33:53

Uh you have anything else you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_05 33:55

Yeah, I want to talk about um something. Uh this is not a new release, it came out in 2013. It's the Crystal Lake Memories documentary. Oh have you guys ever tried I'm not gonna say try watching it because it's a I own that fucker. I used to fall asleep to it. Yeah, because it's a hefty six hours and forty minutes long.

SPEAKER_06 34:14

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_05 34:15

Yeah, it's based on Peter Brackey's book, you know, Crystal the uh Coffee Table Book, which is a fantastic tome. Yeah. Um, and uh Daniel Ferrens made a documentary basically about the entire franchise. And he gets everybody, uh uh uh actors, uh uh effects people, all participants who are pretty much still living to participate and do interviews about the making of uh these movies. And it's divided up nicely into each chapter is one movie, and they spend probably about 45 minutes on each movie, so you're talking about you know almost seven hours.

SPEAKER_06 34:53

Do they do Friday vs. Jason?

SPEAKER_05 34:55

They do, they do uh even the 2009 uh remake. Um cool. So because it was made in 2013 and there hasn't been anything on Friday 13 media since they even pay uh brief flip service to the TV series.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 35:11

Yeah. And they have um a lot of people when they filmed this um who have since passed, like uh Betsy Palmer and um uh Warring Warrington Gillette. So so they're in there. Um it's narrated by Corey Feldman and he kind of does uh this corny thing at the beginning where the camp sitting around the campfire telling people about you know Jason and stuff. But that that's fine, that lasts five minutes, and then it gets into the making. But but it's a fantastic documentary. I'd highly recommend it. I don't know if it's screaming on shutter. It's like I bought it on Blu-ray at a convention, and then a little while later they had like, oh uh, we had so much more material, send us 20 bucks and you can get a bonus disc. So I had that so there's like four hours more of stuff. Yeah. So if you want it, it's like 14 hours, and the same people, uh Daniel Ferrens, who he was the writer director of Halloween six or something like that, but he did another one of these documentaries for Elm Street called like Never Asleep Again, which I think came out two or three years before this, and that's like four hours in length.

SPEAKER_06 36:16

Was it is is that on Shutter?

SPEAKER_05 36:19

Yeah, I thought one of them was. Yeah, I yeah, these are the ones that kind of are before all these um I can't remember the company that makes uh like something into darkness. They've done a whole bunch of these and they're like four hours long, and now they are making um it's called like the thing expanded.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 36:37

I I've seen it's like a four-hour making of documentary. They've done one for aliens, and then like yeah, so but this is not them, but I think they kind of started this trend of making these huge documentaries which are kind of crowdfunded, basically.

SPEAKER_06 36:51

Alright, um, moving on. I I've got a couple more to talk to you to to talk about, but I won't spend a lot of time on them because um there's a couple of duds in here. Um one of the duds is called Do Not Enter. You know, I it's it's directed by Mark Clusfield, who is apparently a music director, and this is his only movie he's ever done. Um, it's about this group of people who break into um a haunted dilapidated hotel, and things do not go well. They're like looking for treasure. I don't know. I had fun with it, but it's not a good movie. Is this new? Yeah, it's new. All of these are 2026. Okay. Um yeah, that was a rental. Uh, another rental was called Capture, um, directed by Bruce Wemple. Uh, a woman inherits a house from parents that she didn't know were her parents because she was foster kid. Um, finds all these videotapes there and starts watching them, and the the her parents' past is essentially like uncovered, and um, and then some entity from a haunted camera starts to go get her. It's okay. Uh, it was okay. Uh, that was capture, and then I like the idea of a haunted camera. Yeah, I mean, it's a video camera. Yeah, so um the actually the ending uh was great. Uh I think the ending sold me on the movie, but the other dud was actually, Willie, you saw this mortuary assistant.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Uh half of it.

SPEAKER_06 38:38

Oh, okay. Oh, right. You fell asleep and didn't watch it, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:40

I didn't fall asleep. I just tried to turn it off. I thought to myself, like, what would Heather do if she'd finish the fucking movie? I can't do it.

SPEAKER_06 38:49

Yeah, it was a hot mess. Um it I I really kind of hated it. And I I thought I had such high hopes for it because the trailer was so creepy. Um, but it didn't know what it wanted to do with itself. It was all over the fucking place. And I was there were too many, too many things in the soup, you know, that like it just couldn't find a direction. And I was for so many things going on, I was fucking bored.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Yeah, I just I was not When did you shut it off? Uh literally about halfway through. Like I was tempted to before. It was like, no, no, no, I'll finish it, I'll finish it. Jesus Christ, is this thing getting worse? Yes. But like from the get-go, it's just like that mortuary set is so fucking fake and unconvincing.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

And then when she's having the conversation with her boss and she goes, Oh, I don't really drink, and I'm like, Oh, Chuckov's alcoholism. Very next scene, she's at a meeting. It's like, come on, try well, make me work a little harder for this movie.

SPEAKER_06 39:51

Um She's a drug addict. Yeah. Sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

Yeah. Um, and uh yeah, that's that's a topic that that we'll uh we'll tie into one of one of the big three that we'll talk about later that I'll go into more detail with. But uh even that yeah, the the allegory for the demon is just so fucking played at this point.

SPEAKER_06 40:11

The ending was terrible. I was just like, are you fucking kidding me? It was oh yeah, you guys just skip this movie. I think a lot of bad movies have something going for them. Uh, and I give I give a lot of bad movies some grace, but this movie, no grace given. It it sucked. Um, all right, so that was those. And then one that I did like was uh Cold Storage by uh written by David Coep, who uh did the novel and who is also like a very prolific screenwriter, um starring Joe Carey from Stranger Things and Georgina Campbell from um Barbarian Influencers and the new movie Psycho Killer, which is not out yet. Um I think it was out uh in theaters for a minute and it's not on VOD yet. But Cold Storage, it's essentially um long story short, it's a storage facility that's built on an old uh government facility that's like hiding bad things away. So they're they essentially had this thing from a meteor um that replicates it's like a fungus, but it will like eat you from the inside out and then make you into a monster. Um pretty cool special effects, uh really fun creature feature. Uh they're essentially trapped in a storage facility outrunning this fungus that is infecting every living thing that it possibly can. Um, and then uh yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. That one in streaming as well.

SPEAKER_05 41:52

Yeah, David Cope wrote Jurassic Park and Stir of Echoes, the screenplays. And then he also wrote the new Spielberg sci-fi one um that's coming out this summer. Um something. Yeah, so so this was good.

SPEAKER_06 42:09

Yeah. Yeah. It was good. I I thought the CGI could have been a little bit better, um, but it was absolutely fun. Like I saw the movie Ick last year, which I really liked. Uh this kind of has the same vibe, like a fungus that's just like taking over the world. Uh last one I want to talk about is called Forbidden Fruits, and that one is also in theater. Um, written and directed by Meredith Alloway, which is her first feature film, starring Lily Reinhardt, who is Betty on Riverdale, Victoria Pendretti, who is Nell from Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House, uh, and a bunch of other um women, uh Alexandra Shipp, who was in Tragedy Girls, and Lola Tongue, who hasn't done any horror, but she apparently was on that um very popular TV show The Summer I Turned Pretty. Uh it is it's compared to like Mean Girls Meets the Craft, um, and it kind of is that, but it's not very horror. It's definitely not scary. Um, it turns horror at the end, where all of the women essentially, you know, they're all kind of there's a lot of fighting and weird social structure that's happening in their quote unquote coven. Um, and it all comes to a head at the end, and that's where the horror comes in. But there's no magic, to be clear. Um, and it's essentially these girls who work in a clothing store in a mall, um, and they're all just very I don't know, girly. I I don't know. And they they're trying to do this like little sister coven thing, and it's it's cute, it's very, you know, kind of Heather's ish. Um, I had fun with it, but if you're looking for an actual horror movie, it's not really that um until the end. But if you're looking for like a a cute little fashion y, you know, um sisterhood mall vibe, this is the movie for you.

SPEAKER_05 44:18

Just like slacks.

SPEAKER_06 44:20

Uh I mean you know what? I wish it was slacks because uh then it would have had more horror in it. But um, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:28

I think of mall horror. I think of chopping mall and slacks.

SPEAKER_06 44:32

I love slacks. I mean I don't love slacks, okay. That's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Never seen it. Oh, the initiation. Oh, initiation.

SPEAKER_06 44:42

Oh, right. The um the 80s one.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Yeah, Daphne Zooniga.

SPEAKER_06 44:46

Yeah, that was good. I like that one. I do too. All right. Okay, so we are, I think that's that's all of my recent watches. Uh, thank you for listening. We are gonna go on to our uh our triple feature, and we're gonna start with Willie.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Oh god, the pressure. Okay. All right. Um I this one is just it's just been one of my favorites for a very long time. Um it's a very simple movie. I'm talking about 2020's The Last Matinee, uh, also known as Red Screening. Uh this is a production from Uruguay, directed by Maximiliano Contenti, co-written by him as well, I believe. Um I personally it's one of my my subgenre fetishes, is movies that take place in movie theaters. And there have been several horror movies uh with this premise, and I wish I liked half of them more than I did, uh, but there are a couple of bangers, of course. Uh the ones that I can think of off top of my head. We've got uh Demons, Popcorn, Anguish, Porno, Movie House Massacre, Movie Theater Massacre, Midnight Movie. Uh, I think the Final Girls probably counts in there too, Drive-in Massacre, The Last Showing, Um, uh Closed Circuit. That's an older one, I think. Um, but basically this one has the most in common with uh Anguish, which I think was from 80 or 81. Um in so much as it's about uh a slasher who is stalking a movie theater during a horror movie, and uh he has a very similar fetish for ocular trauma that the killer in Anguish does. Um so it's uh it's an old palatial style theater that's not doing real well. Uh it's this screening of a very weird Euroslea's Frankenstein movie is very sparsely attended by some people who are there on a date uh and want to get busy. Uh some of them are just teenagers causing trouble, uh an old man who just wants some shelter, um, and uh random dude who just kind of shows up with his jar of pickled olives, which he's just down to his last olive, and I guess decides that uh since uh a grocery store is too far away, he'll just pop into the movie theater and kill some people and pop their eyeballs out uh to dunk into his pickle jar. Um and that's what it is. It's just a killer killing some folks in a movie theater, and it's really, really beautifully shot. I would call this more of a slasher than a jallo. But it um we can't have nice things, but it uh it has the has the feel of a giallo for sure. There's no murder mystery, you know who the killer is right away. Uh interestingly, though, like you never know anything about him. You don't know his name or any of his backstory, so in that sense, there's a little bit of uh final exam going on in there, too. But um the killer's identity is known from the beginning, and the murders only get slightly Freudianly sexual, so slasher movie more of an agello, but it's got that beautiful Italian Dario Rogento Mario Bava feel, and I just love the vibe of it so much. And uh one of the other attendees of this screening is uh a little kid who is snuck in to watch a horror movie. And if you're one of us, and I know you are, you would definitely identify with this kid, uh, kind of like in horror and fascination at the same time watching this movie. Uh, even though I think he peas his pants at one point, he can't uh he can't leave the theater.

SPEAKER_06 48:58

He he cries and he pisses himself. And at that moment, I was like, get it together, kid. Come on. If you're gonna be one of us, you gotta toughen up.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

But uh yeah, like uh the movie one of the opening images in the movie is uh is a kid walking down a different kid walking down the stairs and spilling uh a bag of gumballs that go like bouncing down the stairs.

SPEAKER_03 49:22

So that's such a big foreshadow.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

It's a very much a foreshadowed scene, uh, which is witnessed by our little kid protagonist at the end, which made me think like I think this movie is basically like um the metaphor for a little kid having his mind warped by seeing his first horror movie, which relatable.

SPEAKER_03 49:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Um I saw my first horror movie quite by accident in the theater. Yeah. And uh I didn't know what to make of it for a day or two, but uh within that week I decided I was a fan of horror movies, just got thrust into this rite of passage, saw some shit that I couldn't unsee and decided I kind of liked it.

SPEAKER_05 50:02

Yeah, I quite enjoyed The Last Matinee. I saw it when it first came out in 2020 and then re-watched it recently uh for our discussion. Um I love the look of the movie. Um I love just that it's really kind of contained into this one environment I think is pretty sweet. I love a good bottle movie. Yeah, and um I I I like the fact that it's not, like you said, not just a jalo movie, though it feels heavily influenced by that.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

Very much so.

SPEAKER_05 50:35

Um but I I really just kind of adored his fetish. Which can we s I guess we can spoil it, right? Oh, I kinda did. Yeah, his fetish for cutting out eyeballs.

SPEAKER_06 50:47

He scoops them out with an ice cream scooper.

SPEAKER_05 50:49

Yeah, ice cream scooper, and then uh and there's one part where he eats like his own eye, yeah, which is uh pretty uh pretty spectacular.

SPEAKER_06 50:58

Pretty ballsy, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 50:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 51:01

Uh yeah, I I uh I also had seen it back in 2020 and uh re-watched it last night for tonight's discussion. Um I I remember loving it. Uh and last night I I I think I just liked it. And I I think that I was hoping for just a little bit more in terms of the killer's story. Just like, what what's the deal with the eyes? You know, why are you there? Why do you hate movies? You know, like what what's happening? Um and but we don't get any of that, we just get this guy. And uh so I was paying I was paying attention a lot to the details because I thought if they're not gonna talk about why like what is happening here, they're gonna put in a lot of Easter eggs to kind of clue us in as to what we should be expecting or what they're going for. And so once I started picking out the Easter eggs, I started putting it together a little bit more. So the the movie theater is called Cine Opera, right? And right away we see Dario Gento's poster for the for his movie opera um on the walls. Um so we get a couple of shots of that. So it's like, okay, we're establishing a relationship with Giallo and Argento right away. And you know, the music is very giallo. The the fact that the killer is wearing black leather gloves is very giallo. Um and the fact that we don't really know about like much about him is kind of giallo too in in a lot of the movies where they don't really go much into the detail of like the killer. Um and then the uh the other thing that well the other kind of I know that this is actually the name of the city, but the city's name is what is it, Montevideo? And I was like, holy shit, this place is called video. Like they live in a place called video, that's fucking cool. Um and so the other thing, I was like, what the fuck is the thing with the eyes? And then when I was trying to study all of the posters on the wall, I saw the poster for Anguish, and then I was like, oh shit. And so immediately I was like, okay, are they is this an homage to Anguish? I mean, yes and no.

SPEAKER_05 53:36

Yeah, I mean like it's another movie that takes place in a movie, right?

SPEAKER_06 53:40

A movie theater, and and somebody who's collecting eyes. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that made a little bit more sense to me. Um and then uh and when the movie ends, there's this very pronounced kind of like uh pause on the popcorn machine. So it's essentially panning up from the popcorn machine from the bottom, and when it gets to the top and the word popcorn is in lights, it kind of pauses on that. And so I was like, is this an homage to the movie Popcorn? You know, and I don't know, maybe I was reading into a lot of things, but um I really liked it. Uh what I didn't know was that the movie theater is showing that movie, that terrible fucking Frankenstein movie called Frankenstein Day of the Beast, that is directed by Ricardo Islos. Is Los. Um he plays the killer. Yeah. Oh my god. So cool, right? Like, I don't know. That was so one of my uh one of my musings was like, is he ashamed of his own movie? So he's he must have had a bad experience making the movie or something. He's going around popping up everybody's eyeballs because he doesn't want them to watch his movie. It's like no one should watch this, it's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Tries to make them unsee it.

SPEAKER_06 54:58

Yes, exactly. I like that yeah, so that was really fun. Um I don't know. There there was also, again, I was getting a little deep into the weeds with this, but I was looking up Anguish, and uh Anguish is a film within a film, within a film, but um it's in a Los Angeles theater called The Rex, and that dinosaur poster kept popping up, like and I had to rewind it to see if it was they called that movie the Rex, but they didn't. It was something dinosaur or some shit like that. Um that's interesting though. Yeah, it was like it was very prominent in a lot of the movie, this big dinosaur poster.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

Um and god, you've done more homework in my movie than I have. Well, it's just thank you.

SPEAKER_06 55:44

I was I I was curious. Um but yeah, the um I I don't know. Part of it was like, is this the death of cinema? You know, is this why he's gouging out eyes and killing everyone? Uh I I really liked it. I wanted a little bit, I wanted some more layers to the characters um and to the killer. But again, like you said, it was beautiful, and I love all the Easter eggs, and I kind of went down a weird rabbit hole with it.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

I love that though. Yeah, now I'm gonna have to go back and watch it again and start scouring.

SPEAKER_06 56:19

Yeah. Um I feel like I missed a lot because I didn't know what to look for.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Like, you know, the the the beauty of this movie is definitely, I think, heavily influenced by by Argento and and probably also Baba. Um, but Opera is really the one main movie of Argentos that has eyes as a as a specific theme. Yeah. That's way more of a Fulci thing. So in in some ways the violence feels a little bit more Fulci-y, although he is, it doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere in the movie. Um generally I'm with you. I I like my movies to have layers, you know, but there's I'll allow one movie out of 20 or 25 to be simple as fuck. And to me, this one is really simple. I don't need much more of a motivation for the killer other than he ran out of pickled olives and needs a substitute. But um if there if the theme that jumped out at me, like probably because of my own personal bias, is yeah, just that experience of what watching a horror movie is like as a little kid. Yeah. And being a little traumatized.

SPEAKER_03 57:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:27

But if you're a certain kind of weird kid, you can, you know, it's it's it's a trauma that you that you wind up liking.

SPEAKER_05 57:34

Yeah, I I I enjoyed that the kind of weird fetish with the eyeballs thing. I kind of that sets it up from like, oh, he's just he just says not just killing people. He's not no, he won't he has a reason. He just wants the eyeballs. It's the ocular trauma of watching a horror movie.

SPEAKER_00 57:50

Maybe it's a good metaphor for that.

SPEAKER_06 57:52

You don't actually see him remove the eyeballs that much, maybe toward the end, but his own. Right, his own. Um, but I didn't realize that he that was happening until um one of the the dead people was like revisited by a moviegoer, and I was like, holy shit, is he missing his eyes? And then every time they would kind of rediscover a dead body, they were missing their eyes. So he we saw the kill scenes, but we never really saw him like scooping out the eyes. Um it was just happened. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 58:29

And and also we should talk a little bit about which I thought was like my favorite kill in the movie is when the couple is skewered.

SPEAKER_06 58:36

Oh my god, that was so good.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Yeah, that was a great one. That one and the the guy outside taking a smoke break. That was kind of a genius. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 58:46

Yeah, he's uh he inhales smoke from a cigarette, and then the killer covers his mouth and his nose and slits his throat so that the smoke comes out the slit throat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

Why didn't I think of that? That's goddamn genius.

SPEAKER_06 59:00

Yeah, that's really good.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

And and yeah, for the simplicity of it, I think they do a really good job kind of choreographing the whole thing. You know, uh, you get a few other locations with the snack bar and the projection booth and stuff. Yeah. Um, and they do a really good good job with with with chase scenes and stalking scenes. Yeah. Um so yeah, a kind of a a really fun exercise in minimalism, which I which I appreciate.

SPEAKER_06 59:25

I wanted to when the guy is going to the bathroom to wash his ejaculation off of his pants, um, he slips on the newspaper that is covered in blood that the killer like rubbed his bloody hands on, and he gets red stain on his butt. And when the projectionist sees him, um, she says, Hey, you have a stain. And he thinks he's she's talking about his ejaculation, and he's like, Oh, and he gets flustered and he goes in. But I wanted her to say, You've got red on you. Yes. And I think it's a missed opportunity, but they need to go back and rewrite that.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:07

Um and people can find this on I think uh Tubi has a version of it that I think is cropped, unfortunately, and some of the subtitles are missing. But Heather, you said you rented it?

SPEAKER_06 1:00:20

Yeah, I rented it on Google Play for two bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:24

It used to be on shutter. It did for a long time. For a long time it was on there, because that's where I originally saw it, and I swear it was on there for at least two or three years. They should get it back. Yeah, got on the right.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:36

Yeah, it's I I want I I want to get it on disc, though I think the Blu-ray is not in print anymore and it's only on DVD.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

Was it ever released like in the States? Yeah, my copy is Region 2, I think. Oh, is it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:53

I think there's a DVD that's um US release, but I could be wrong. Um alright. Are we uh moving on to movie number two?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

I think I've said my piece about it. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:07

Uh no, let's move on to screening number two, basically, of our triple feature. Oh boy. Alrighty. From 1962, I'm gonna read the tagline for the movie. Sister Sister Oh So Fair. Why is there blood all over your hair? This is from the 1962 movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, directed by Robert Aldrich. Um, brief summary. In 1917, Baby Jane Hudson is a famous vaudevillean star with her own doll named after her. Years later, her sister Blanche becomes a famous actress. And after a tragic accident, Blanche is relegated to a wheelchair and placed under the care of her younger sister Jane. Flash forward years in time, and the two sisters are living in an old gothic Hollywood mansion where Jane, filled with jealousy and animo animosity, subjects Blanche to extreme abuse as she slowly gives way to madness. Now this movie um was so popular it launched a horror subgenre, basically called Hag Horror or Hag Sploitation. Hag Exploitation. Um Or also Psycho Biddy. Psycho Biddy and uh Grand Dame Goodnol.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:35

But this this movie didn't launch Psycho Biddy, it's um Psycho.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

Oh, I was gonna say Sunset Boulevard.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:43

Yes, Sunset Boulevard is kind of one of the movies Psycho is sometimes mentioned it, but it's not an old hag.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:51

It's we all know that it's not an old hag, but it is the it's the demonstration or the projection of the old hag. Yeah. Um, so it's the yeah, it's it was cited as the the the beginning of Psychobity, but yeah I'm happy to be wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:10

Yeah, and and I mean no, it's it's still kind of like it's a male gazy thing for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:18

But um Sunset Boulevard is kind of more along the lines of uh the thing because basically When did Sunset Boulevard come out? It's like 1950.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:28

Really?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:29

It's more of a noir, but I think it's yeah, yeah. But you know, a a lot of what Hagsploitation was was these older actresses who were considered past their prime um were finally given roles, but they were you know all as um murderers or insane, you know, dames. Crawford went to that well a couple of times. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they um I mean this movie gave Davis and Crawford a lot of roles. Like uh Betty Davis went on to do the nanny, Dead Ringers. Um Crawford, pretty much all she did after this was horror movies. She did Straight Jacket, uh Berserk, um I Saw What You Did, and the Ever Wonderful Trog. She is 19. She is, that is her right there. Um no, but I love whatever happened to Baby Jane. Uh Betty Davis's performance as Baby Jane Hudson is like one of my favorite villainous performances of all time. She's totally like chewing up the scenery. That woman. But she is like so good. And uh yeah, I just love I love movies about uh people where uh pretty much the main one of the main characters is mad um like crazy um which is like one of the reasons reasons why I love uh the psycho sequels. I love Deranged, that movie from 1974, where they're not just relegated to go, here's the villain, we're gonna see them every once in a while. But um and baby Jane Hudson, you actually like kind of feel sorry for her, even though she's like completely demented. But uh you know, the movie is talking a lot about celebrity and fame, and how once you're famous, it's painful to all of a sudden be forgotten.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:22

Well that's kind of the the substance, right? I mean, that's why Demi Moore's character did what she did, because she she she needed that that male gaze or or any gaze um to feel worthy or or worthwhile even.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:41

And then um, you know, Crawford's character of Blanche Hudson is not necessarily innocent because at the end, you know, when she describes you know, because baby Jane basically thought she was the one responsible for crippling her sister. Right. Um but that's not what really happened. So and for the Record that's not too hard to figure out.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:02

Yeah, yeah. They they hint at it a lot throughout the movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:05

I mean, just the fact they don't show any faces in that opening prologue kind of kind of gives the game away for me.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:10

And it's funny because there's basically two prologues in the movie. There's Baby Jane singing, um, you know, whatever happened to Daddy in the vaudeville days, and then we flash forward, we're in the movie studio, and um, you know, the director is like, Oh god, she's horrible. Shut it off, you know. And that takes and that's 18 minutes of the movie before you actually get to what they call yesterday. Um uh we actually see Crawford and uh Davis. Um and I think like the mansion, the set is fantastic.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:42

It's such a beautiful house, my god.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:44

And I drove by the house like 15 years ago. It's in yeah, the outside looks pretty much the same. Um I think the inside is the set, of course. Um but yeah, I think this movie kind of pushes some envelopes because um some of the abuse uh that baby Jane dish dishes out is like like she kicks her in the head, like when she goes down the stairs, and it's like but um the first time I saw clips from this movie is from the 1981, it was like a document uh clip movie called Terror in the Isles. And they showed clips from this movie, and I remember at the time thinking, like, what the hell is this? You know, what is this clown woman yelling yelling about? But then and then when I finally saw it, um when I was like in my twenties, I was like, Oh, okay, now I realize what this is and what it's from and why it was in the uh clip show. But uh, yeah, I think, like I said, uh Davis's performance is fantastic. I love the fact that she was just like went all in on this, yeah. And her makeup and her costumes are just so wonderfully ghoulish. The fact that she's you know, a late 50s-year-old woman dressing like a little girl, and she's obsessed with her father. Yeah, and there's like a whole weird thing with that whole thing about like, you know, I written of a letter to Daddy, yes, and like one of my favorite scenes in the movie is when she hires Edwin Flagg, you know, the kind of huckster pianist to help her revitalize her career. Who has his own mother issues, interestingly? Yeah, yeah, played by a great Victor Brono. I think it's one of his first films, actually. Um, but yeah, when she does when he plays the piano and she sings it for him. You're kind of like you're kind of like in his and you kind of his performances, he's kind of like, What the hell am I getting into his face?

SPEAKER_06 1:08:47

Changes from like I'm playing the piano to what the fuck is happening? Yeah, and then he immediately tries to hide it, you know, and and like because she looks at him and he just smiles and nods. And yeah, that poor man.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:03

Yeah, but yeah, I really just enjoyed this movie. I've probably seen it half a dozen times now in my life, and every time I see it, I think I like it more.

unknown 1:09:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:13

The first time I saw it um was as a kid. Uh there was a local station that would play like three horror movies on Saturday afternoon, and that was one of them one time. And generally, one of my my triggers, I guess, in in horror movies um is like abuse or bullying or whatever. So like Let the Right One In is like one of the best vampire movies of all time, but very little replay value for me personally. Um so I think some of the camp value was lost on me as a kid that just kind of really bothered me. But uh yeah, revisiting it, I can kind of see it for a little bit more of its campy, trashy glory. And um aside from Sunset Boulevard, uh I I kind of got Pearl vibes a little bit from Baby Jane as well, just like being this delusional uh trying to hold on to Stardom and maybe not having been that talented in the first place. Yeah. Um uh I also thought of a few real life cases, like I get probably obviously like Judy Garland, um the the ladies in uh the Grey Gardens documentary. Yeah. And uh going back to an earlier topic that we were talking about, Corey Feldman. Oh yeah. Oh sorry, that's not the big yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:32

I know it bums me out when I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:33

I brought it down, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:36

Yeah, and also one of the things that kind of I think led to the popularity of this film and also kind of the aura now is that those two actresses, you know, hated each other in real life.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:49

So playing two um characters who are at each other's throats um just kind of lead you know leads to the interest of the movie.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:00

Yeah, I read a lot about um their shenanigans on set.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:04

Um and uh I know very little about this.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:08

Okay, so they have a they were both silent movie actresses, um, who I think Joan Crawford was um maybe a year ahead of um Betty Davis. And um when Betty Davis arrived on the scene, uh they immediately kind of didn't like each other. So Betty Davis was in a movie and fell in love with her co-star who was dating Joan Crawford. Joan Crawford married the co-star, and Betty Davis said that like she never forgave her, she like stole her her love. Um, this goes on, you know, Betty Davis had this big movie premiere uh happening, and there was gonna be a big newspaper announcement, and that day Joan Crawford announced her divorce, and the papers overtook that news of the divorce and relegated the the premiere to like the small corner. Damn. There was a lot more um, but like Oscar stuff and just like uh insulting each other's appearances and is insulting each other's acting abilities. Betty Davis once said of Joan Crawford, she slept with everyone at MGM except for Lassie. She's slept with every man at MGN except for Lassie. She was also um Joan Crawford was bisexual, and um Betty Davis thought that she like had the hots for her. Um there was all kinds of stuff. So on the set of um Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, they both took the roles because they wanted to reignite their careers. They were like fault, you know, they weren't doing much at the time. Um, and uh so they agreed to work with each other. Joan Crawford knew that Betty Davis had a bad back, and the scene where um Betty Davis drags Joan Crawford out of bed. Um, so Joan Crawford is crippled in the movie, and so she can't move her legs. Um, and so the rumor is is that she wore this lead um wrestling belt uh to make herself heavier. And uh they had to do the take over and over and over because Betty Davis, she was so the Joan Crawford was so heavy that Betty Davis was struggling, and so they had to do the take over and over until Betty Davis was in agony. Um they used Joan Crawford insisted on a body double for the um the hammers or the for get her getting hit in the head by Betty Davis because she feared that Betty Davis was actually going to injure her. Um and something happened where like they had they had to sub in Joan Crawford for a shot for that, and uh it's rumored that Betty Davis actually hit her really hard in the head and like gave her a mild concussion. Wow. Um, so there was a lot of things like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:06

There was um when they when she's kicking her after she finds her on the phone. Yeah, she like Joan Crawford said like she was really kicking me. Yeah. Like in the stomach.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:15

Yeah, yeah. Um Joan Crawford was her husband was like the CEO of Pepsi or something. Yeah. Um, and Betty Davis got a Coca-Cola machine installed in her um like on her dressing room, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:32

Because Robert Aldridge was always drinking Pepsi. So she said So Betty Davis had a Coke machine installed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:38

So um so that goes into um let's see, what was it here? Um they it's Hush Hush. Sweet Charlotte. Yeah. So Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte was supposed to be the sequel to um not the sequel in terms of um Story wise. Story-wise, but kind of the the seeing these starlets together once again. Um so that came out two years later in 1964, written and directed by the same um Robert Aldery team. And uh anyways, uh and so they so Betty Davis signed on um to do this and Joan Crawford signed on and she shot film for about a week and then dropped out and she had to get be replaced.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:30

So yeah, replaced by Olivia de Havland. Okay, yeah. Yeah, it's it's uh it's not a hundred percent sure they said it like Joan said it was because of my health, but Betty Davis said it was because she just didn't want to work with me anymore or something like that. But yeah, the the the interesting thing with the Oscar thing is because um you know they both got this movie made by agreeing to do it, and they took points at the end for salary and uh Crawford let Betty Davis have the more unflattering role because Crawford did not want to seem uh ugly on screen. She was more vain um than Davis. And Davis was the one who was nominated for Best Actress for that year for Academy Award. And rumor has it that Crawford told all the other co-star or all like the Academy people who were voting, please don't vote for Betty Davis. And then she told all the other four other nominees, if you don't show up, let me can I accept the award for you? And then Davis didn't win. I think it was Audrey Hepburn or somebody who won. And so Joan Crawford got to go up and accept the Oscar like four times.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:49

Like she she essentially got on stage multiple times to accept Oscars that weren't hers, but she was accepting on the behalf of yeah, just to piss off Betty Davis. Wow, this is a multi-layered cat. Betty Davis at one point at some award ceremony, she was protesting. Um, and so she wore this like really ugly dress, not expecting to like win or be on stage, and she actually won. And so she had to get on stage in this horrible blue dress. And as she was walking past Joan Crawford, Joan Crawford said, Beautiful frock there, Betty. Just made her really self-conscious. And Betty Davis, when Joan Crawford died, said something like, Um, you're not supposed to, and if you don't have anything good um about the dead to say, then you shouldn't say anything. Uh Joan Crawford is dead.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:41

Good. Yeah, and and there's like a famous quote that I've heard. I think there's a famous quote that Betty Davis has said many, many times because she did the talk show scene like in the 70s and 80s quite a bit, and I think the talk show people kind of just milked her for stuff. So I think you know, this is from what I read, like she kind of started to elaborate things just because she knew she was on talk shows and stuff. But she did say at one point, like, I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she was on fire. Which is hilarious. And there's so many other actresses too that this kind of launched older actresses like Debbie Reynolds, Shelly Winters, Tolula Bankhead, who went on to do a lot of these movies like Whoever Slew Auntie Roo, Die Die My Darling, um, all these you know hag exploitation type films. And it's funny because in my research they uh put misery down as a hag exploitation film.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:38

Even though I didn't think of that movie when I was watching Baby Jane.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:41

Yeah, but but yeah, yeah. I I can kind of see because it's an older woman.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:47

She's in her like 30s though. Kathy Bates in I feel like she's not that old in Misery. She looks like she's in her late forties or fifties or something. Maybe I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:00

Yeah. Um yeah, but I know like earlier you had said the the movie was way too long.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:08

Yeah, it it was a little long. I mean, I I really enjoyed watching it, of course. It's um there's a part of me that was really identifying with Baby Jane um uh when she's like wearing this when she's like wearing this like you know, cute little house frock, you know, and she's got these slippers on and she's just drinking like scotch right from uh a drinking glass and just like shuffling around the house. I'm like, man, that's that's I want to be that when I grow old. I mean, I am that now, but life goals. Um I know I was like, that looks like a good life. Um, but yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. Um, she doesn't start really getting a like a hankering to relive her glory days until like the middle of the movie. So you see her as, you know, she yeah, she was wearing some crazy makeup, uh, you know, and her hair is kind of insane. Um, but she is in her everyday apparel, right? So she's like this is how she is every day. And it's not until she decides that she wants to reinvent the wheel with her performance that she starts dressing in her baby doll outfits and doing the like heavy cake makeup.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:31

Um, and that's when her psychosis really takes off and she starts kind of doing some baby talk and you know, like um yeah, she's triggered because Blanche's movies are now on running on TV, and she's getting fan mail, which she's hiding from her sister. And then the neighbors you know come over to want to see her.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:54

The neighbor, by the way, is called Mrs. Bates. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:57

And you know the daughter's Betty Davis's real life daughter. Oh really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:02

Oh, damn, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:04

And it's it I think it's kind of an interesting concept because when they show the old Joan Crawford movie that they're watching in TV, the neighbors, and then it and you can hear it, a dog food commercial comes on. Oh, movies on TV sucks, you know, because they're like, oh, you get preempted by a dog food commercial and stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:27

But um case good, Kathy Bates is 42. Hardly an old hag, my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the dynamic. Yeah, you know, I got you.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:37

It's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:38

But I wrote down, I wrote down reverse misery in my notes. I'm not quite sure what that means, but it made sense at the time.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:45

Yeah, but you know, dead parakeet, dead rat.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:48

I mean, that rat was like tendon. Oh my god. I'm so hungry, but you didn't eat your tendon. Yeah, she was that was great. But also, that fucking buzzer, I was like, girl, do you not hear the buzzer just stop fucking buzzing? You're literally driving your sister mad.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:12

And wouldn't you like maybe get a different, like a little chime?

SPEAKER_06 1:22:16

Uh uh exactly for like 20 minutes. It was yeah, it was unhinged. Um, so the hagsploitation, I want to talk about a little bit. Um, just for a moment. Uh so hagsploitation uh or psycho-bitty, I know the hag the word, the term hagsploitation is um frowned upon uh these days. I enjoy that name. Um, but uh so it exploits the stereotypes that we have against aging women, both physically, mentally, and as well as their status in society. So, you know, women have to uh maintain their good looks and they're not allowed to get old, and if they're getting old, they're not allowed to be ugly. Um, and you know, you can't you also can't lose your mind because that's bad. The oh also, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane was a novel first, um, by Henry Pharrell, uh published in 1960. Um, and Robert Bloch also published his um novel in 1959. Um Psycho, yeah. So Psycho was published in 59 and then made into the movie in 60, and um Henry Pharrell's novel was published in 1960 and made into a movie in 62. Um, so they are, I think, while a lot of people are saying that um whatever having a baby Jane was kind of like a love letter to Psycho in a lot of um instances, they were kind of coming up at the same time. So I think that they were mostly um just uh similar in the genre and in of the time that they were both being written and worked on, and it was kind of um the uh I don't think that they were directly influenced by each other, but they were more influenced by the genre. Um but uh so I was kind of deep diving into exploitation and what that meant. Um, so of course the unstable aging starlet trope is Sunset Boulevard, um, also the substance and also X, um, because we saw X first, right? And we we knew that she was a crazy old lady who was once a dancer and never, you know, got her big break. Um so the traits are tragic, physically grotesque, delusional, violent, obsessed with regaining their youth and their fame, their vain, they're desperate. Um, and the irony here is that Crawford and Davis took those roles to revitalize their careers and were competitive in real life. Um, so art imitating life, I suppose. Um, but hagsploitation of the 60s, so we have Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Straight Jacket, uh Lady in a Cage, Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice, and then modern Hag Exploitation. We've got the taking of Deborah Logan, um, the visit, uh, as we talked about, X, um, the substance, also Relic, which I love. Oh, yeah, yeah. I haven't seen that one. Um, and then I haven't seen this one, um, but it came up a lot. It's based on a true crime of um a woman who ran a boarding house and would kill people for their um their checks or whatever. It's called Dorothea.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:36

Yeah, you know, that's based on a real life thing. And I lived in Sacramento at that time. This happened in the late 80s. Me and my friends would drive in downtown Sacramento and they had it all cordoned off and they were excavating the yard looking.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:53

Are you serious? Wow, that's cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:55

Dorothea Fuentes, I remember.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:57

Did you watch the movie?

SPEAKER_05 1:25:59

I did not see the movie, but I knew all of it.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:02

I think it came out last year.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:04

Okay, yeah. But I remember when that happened because I lived down there and it was all over the news every night. That's cool.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:09

I was like, oh my god, I mean, cool in that horrible, grotesque way.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:13

Um yeah, for a modern example, I don't know, I don't know. I might this might be a reach, like uh it has more to do, I think, maybe with a disease than aging, but weapons that fits in there anywhere. You know, it could be.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:25

I mean, she's a witch.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:27

Yeah, yeah. And she's you know sapping energy from from kids to try and restore her youth. Yeah. If it's not her youth or health, yeah. But I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:40

One thing that I was thinking about I was thinking about too, though I don't know I if I agree with it, is I read that the French film Inside could be considered hag exploitation because it's uh I don't know if I would buy that because it's an older woman trying to, you know.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:57

Is she that much older? She's not older because she was pregnant when they got in the car accident and she lost her baby, which is why she's trying to steal.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:06

Skipped at this time. Oh too late. Yeah, but it's like how many years later is it?

SPEAKER_06 1:27:11

Oh uh it can't be that many years later.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:15

She she was I think she was pregnant when they got in the accident, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:27:19

Yeah, but but then it's the younger woman who's pregnant now.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:24

But she but she wasn't she wasn't pregnant in the the vehicle when they crashed, she killed the other woman's baby.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:30

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:32

She wasn't she wasn't pregnant also? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:35

Because the husband was still alive then, right? But I don't know. Okay, never mind. Okay, let's end it because I think we all agree I don't consider it Hagsploitation. Very good. Yeah, but one one of my favorites is Straight Jacket. Yeah, which Crawford did. William Castle. Uh huh. She did a couple of movies for William Castle. Um, Joan Crawford did, and Strait Jacket is um a really good time. We watched that recently. A couple years ago at Swater, I know. Um yeah, that's a fun. I just recently bought a book that showed up today. Um I was hoping it it would um have come before I did this, but it's called uh Grand Dame Gugnol, which is another word for you know like Grand Gugnol. That's a French word for like bloody theatre. Oh okay. Um they went with the politically correct name, I guess, instead of Hagsplay. Rude. But yeah, it it's a book all about these these. Oh really? So I'm gonna like dig in uh you know next weekend and look into it. I've seen a lot of the movies. Um Whoever Slew Auntie Roo with uh Shirley Winters is a good Christmas one. It's a lot of fun. Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:45

Yeah that came up when I was researching Christmas movies to watch last year and I watched a trailer for it and I said, Nope.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:55

This is not a hag exploitation Christmas for me this year.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:00

I'm gonna be hag splited. And you know when I get older.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:04

Um I remember seeing a drag show one time where they were parodying this movie because both these actresses are kind of gay icons. So of course they're gonna parody this this film.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:19

Um I'm pretty sure I saw Simskits on RuPaul Drag Race. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:24

Yeah, well yeah, yeah. It's I kinda like I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that Judy Garland uh died about she died like in 68 or 69. That I think she could have been in some of these movies. Not that I'm I'm not sure of how many people how many of these actresses are proud of them. You know? I know later in Crawford's life she said that you know that everything she did after Baby Jane was just garbage.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:52

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:53

But at the time when she was making them, she would she would do theater appearances and all that stuff to promote them all.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:00

I mean there are okay, so the it they're fun movies and even now they're fun movies, but uh realistically, you know, if we're talking about um changing the perspective of women aging and uh in society and changing the perspective of the male gaze for, you know, women aging in society. Um I'm hoping that we uh all understand the division between fiction and reality because um literally, you know, um hysterical. The women were hysterical, and you know, women are told to calm down, stop being so emotional, stop being crazy, like all of these trigger words to talk about women's mental health. And so we have these really fun horror movies and these psychological thrillers that you know lean hard into what it is to be an aging woman and what we expect of that aging woman, and that is hysterics, and that is crazy, and that is you know, heightened emotions and and all of these things, and to to really grasp on to that fleeting beauty and to wanting to regain your youth and all of this shit that as an aging woman myself I don't really identify with. Like that's not my journey, that's not my story. Um, and I know a lot of aging women who thought that's not their journey either. So, you know, I'm hoping that we all understand that yes, this is um a perspective of the past um that we have worked hard to overcome and we're still overcoming more now, less with um mental health, uh, and more with beauty expectations. And I think that we're seeing that a lot in horror now is the the aging, you know, beauty expectations, as with the substance. And um I am a fan of exploitation. Um but I think it it deserves to just stay in its in the past, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:12

I I think like with this, I think baby Jane was actually kind of saying something. And when something is popular, then all the exploitation they just take advantage of. Okay, oh yeah, let's which I think the majority of all the Which is why like kicked it off, yeah. You know, you know, the thing that kick kicks almost anything off is like the true gem, and then and then everybody else is like, hey, it's made a lot of money, let's copycat this. Yeah, yeah. Without any really thought going into it.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:42

Right. As I once said.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:45

Oh, and just by the way, Ryan Murphy made a 2017 uh miniseries called Feud, which stars Oh right, I remember which stars uh Susan Sarandon as Matty Davis and Jessica Lang as Joan Crawford.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:01

It got good reviews. Yeah, it's good. I watched it at the time.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:04

It's it's super entertaining and it's about the making of uh whatever happened to Baby Jane.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:08

Oh it is.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:10

Oh damn.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:10

So yeah, I would recommend it.

unknown 1:33:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:12

He's done a number of those because Ran Murphy, you know, is the guy who uh is behind American Horror Story. And this and he has another series called Feud. There's been another uh other ones based on real life people who have animosity towards each other. Yeah. I didn't watch any of those, but I watched this one because it was a point of interest for me. So but yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:34

Whatever happened to Baby Jane.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:37

Watch it. Uh all right. So I'm gonna talk about a 2026 movie that is on Shudder, and it is called Body Cam. Uh, it is written and directed by Brandon Christensen, who wrote 2017's Stillborn, which I really enjoyed that movie. Um, 2019's Z, which was mediocre, 2021's Superhost, uh, which also was really good. 2025's Puppet Man, which was fucking garbage. And um, oh, that was 2023, and then 2025's Night of the Reaper, which uh was not good either, in my opinion. Yeah, it was a bummer. Yeah, that was a bummer. I was looking forward to that one. Um, stars Jamie McAlica and um Sean Rogerson. Synopsis. Two police officers investigate a domestic dispute, and there is an accidental shooting not wanting to be crucified by the public. The officers attempt to cover it up only to uncover that the cameras aren't the only things watching them. Uh so this is a um found footage, body cam cop horror movie. Right. Quite topical. Yes. Um I did not enjoy this movie. Uh so when we picked our movies, Willie and Jeff picked movies that they had seen before. Um, I picked a movie that I hadn't seen before. I wouldn't have picked this movie if I had seen it, which might be a lesson for me. Um, yeah, I I was distracted a lot by just the bad cop culture of the movie of oh fuck, I accidentally shot someone. I'm gonna cover it up with trying to get rid of the footage and you know, make up a story about how this woman got shot and you're gonna, you know, getting everybody to lie and and covering his tracks and all of that shit. That was it wasn't that wasn't the point of the movie, um, but it was definitely a big footprint in the middle of the movie that I could have done without, and it distracted for me uh a lot of what else was going on. Um because you know, he gets very um paranoid and and ecstatic, and he's just kind of like going mad with uh I don't know, with guilt and with trying to cover it up, and it was just somet it was an energy I I didn't need in that part part of the movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:16

Just kind of hearing you say that it sparked like oh yeah, like kind of a they're they spend a lot of the time of the movie uh pursuing tweakers, uh their word. Right. And then he kind of becomes one without really ever doing math.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:32

Right, exactly. Yeah. So um, yeah, it's a it's it was it's been compared to the um VHS segment uh Stork from 2024's VHS Beyond, um, which is also uh takes place from the perspective of body cams, and police are breaking into a dilapidated home um to find missing children and they encounter a creature. Um so this one is you know, two um cops so body cam is two cops breaking into a dilapidated home um responding to a domestic abuse call, and they find I don't like chaos. Uh I don't know, it's like a hole in the ground that says rise above it, and then uh and they find weird two people.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:26

Two people a woman in distress upstairs and then a guy downstairs holding something.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:32

Right, covered in a blanket.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:34

Is the crib covered in blood upstairs?

SPEAKER_05 1:37:37

The crypt has a dead dog in it.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:39

Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Um yeah, and these people are very they're not coherent, you know, and and they're not even like quote unquote tweakers. They're just kind of like I don't know, mumbling, confused, possessed, half-possessed people. I don't it's unclear.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:59

They reminded me a fair amount of the uh the unhoused uh zombies, quote unquote, in Prince of Darkness.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:07

Okay, yeah. Yeah, totally. Um I don't know. It just there so the movie also after um they leave the house and they're trying to cover shit up, they they also visit one of the cops' mom's house.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:23

Because something tragic happens.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:24

We don't have to spoil it, but yeah, something Well, a couple of tragic things happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:29

Yeah, right. I plan on spoiling the fuck out of it, so we'll have a skip to this time code. Oh yeah, I'm okay, we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:36

Yeah. I mean, so yeah, the he uh one of the cops kills this baby, right? Yeah, he shoots. Something the baby's wrapped in the blanket. Right. Is a baby. We don't know if this baby's alive or whatever, because these people are not right. Yeah. Um, so the baby's probably not right. And then the woman freaks out and attacks the cop, and then he shoots her, and it's a whole fucking thing. Um, and then they go to the the mom's house, and she has these drugged up people worshipping some god in uh in a room, and they're all hooked up to IVs or some shit like that. And and then they I don't know, they drive around and then they start seeing this house reappearing in a city and yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:21

I thought like because it's the main guy's partner's mother's house. And I kind of thought like, oh, maybe there's some sort of voodoo thing going on. And then later on it comes in, like, oh, because the entity in the house knows like the enemy is that guy's right.

SPEAKER_06 1:39:38

You took something from us, and so we take something from you as what you're doing.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:41

Yeah, and kind of references his mother as like an enemy or something like that. I see. So so and that she told them when they came to the house, you need to get out of here, you know. Yeah. But yeah, so my opinion of the movie was I like the fact that it started off with a bang. Okay, it's like pretty much five minutes in, you're into the story, and this and that. Um but the running time is like what 73 minutes, and it felt about half hour too long. Yeah, it's like this because there's stuff in the middle, it's like you're just kind of repeating the same thing over and over and over again. I kind of thought like this could have been a segment of um it really it could have been like an segment of like uh you know, Masters of Horror. It should have been really 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:29

Well, I mean, honestly, VHS Beyond did it and it did it better.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:33

Yeah, that's the thing, because it just goes on too long, and then by the end, it completely lost me.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:39

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:40

And I was just like the end. I was just like, okay, I got you know ten minutes left. I'm just gonna finish it. But at that point, but but at that point I was like, I don't care. And then the bad effects were just like, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:54

Oh yeah. No, Willie. Uh what is your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:59

Well, uh, I I do think it started off with a fucking bang. Um I was very impressed by that opening scene as as reminiscent of other movies as it might have been. Like I kind of felt like that opening scene where they they uh breached the house, it was it felt like it was the filmmaker saying, We're gonna start our movie off with the finale of Blair Witch Project. So I was like, okay, where are you gonna go from here? I'm intrigued. And I gave it the benefit of the doubt, I think probably longer than you guys did.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:32

Um I was intrigued by certain things. I think that whole idea of you know a very politically charged horror film dealing with uh a cop who transgresses in the line of duty. It's not a bad idea for a horror movie, but it's gotta be handled really fucking well.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:48

You've really got to be mindful about how you do it. And it was they got close. You know, the the character of Bryce is obviously pretty far gone before we even meet him.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:00

It's uh his partner, uh, Jerome, who is maybe being morally tested by the situation and the demon that we find out is behind everything. Um which and I did like that bit at the end where he he has that full circle moment where now he has to kind of shoot somebody and a baby. Um I thought that was kind of clever. They didn't really go far enough with it story-wise, develop story development-wise. Um again, you know, I remember when uh the Hellraiser reboot came out, and I remember like thinking, like, I like this, I wish it were a little bit kinkier, and didn't evil the Evil Dead reboot already do this whole like demon of addiction thing? That's obviously what they're doing here. Like they someone comes out and says it out loud at one point, you know, the demon of temptation and addiction, or whatever. Really? Something like that. Okay. Um maybe, maybe just temptation. Yeah, but it was very clearly like about addiction, and this character, Jerome, is trying to kind of escape this.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:06

Because his sister had died of addiction. Yeah, we find out.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:10

He's trying to get it get free of the vortex. I loved the fact that when both of these guys are in crisis, they run to women to help them out. Bryce literally runs uh Jerome literally runs to mama. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:26

Um, what did you think of the end, though? We're like all of the spoiler alert. You guys should watch this movie before you listen to the rest of this podcast. Um, if you care. Uh the dead people coming back and being possessed and being like, we're all family now. What is that?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:45

Oh, we're all junkies together. Oh my god, I guess. Yeah, it was it was pretty on the nose. A little bit more, like 50,000 more for the effects budget would have helped a lot.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:56

Um the the reoccurring house when when Jerome's trying to drive away through the city. It was interesting. It it gave me very like backrooms vibes.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:06

Yeah, I was thinking of um the the new uh the new movie coming up um from the backrooms, the YouTuber Kane Pixels. Yes, it so he's got a new movie, A24 is doing it called the Backrooms. I love liminal spaces. I just like it nothing creeps me out like a liminal space. Uh so yeah, and the basement also gave me those vibes when he was like going through the basement with just like his all you see is his flashlight and his hand and his gun, and the shots are of these long corridors that are abandoned and dark, and yeah. So there was some there was definitely cool imagery in it.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:45

I thought it was like a good idea to do the body cam thing, because usually with found footage, you kind of have that thing like, why would you keep filming?

SPEAKER_03 1:44:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:54

Oh, you know, at least with the body cam thing, you realize, oh no, it's gonna film no matter what.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:58

You are absolutely correct, but they still at the very like I was giving it, I was like, maybe it's gonna justify it at the end. It did not. Who the fuck edited this? Oh yeah. That's a problem that like at least half of found footage movies have. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. Um and if if I could digress a little bit, you know, talking about subgenres that are kind of played out. Um it it bums me out because I do like the idea of modern-day movie monsters being embodiments and allegories of n neuroses and complexes and really deep weird human emotions and psychological states. Um sometimes it is done well. Brief rundown of what we've had so far. But I think unfortunately these things are really on the nose half the time. So we cover addiction with Evil Dead 2013, Hellraiser 2018, Body Cam and Mortuary Assistant, uh, trauma with stop motion, uh her inherited trauma with hereditary and final destination bloodlines, maybe even raw. Um grief, particularly the anger stage with the Babaduke, PTSD with smile, existential angst with it follows. Um you were describing the plague last episode, I think, and I was like, I was wondering, I wonder if that's like about like people viewing empathy and sensitivity as a as a weakness.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:37

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:39

Right, perhaps.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:40

Uh the nighthouse dealt with nihilism, and that was probably the best example of making a human emotion into a monster as I've seen. Um and maybe narcissism with the substance. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:56

But I like that I like that idea very much, but and I I love the idea, the fact that like as as played out as elevated horror, quote unquote, might be these days. Um I think it is very cool that kind of uh people decided to cash in on a trend by trying to make movies that were a little more thoughtful. That's very, very it's usually the opposite when it comes to trends in in filmmaking.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:23

Yeah, I mean you've got the you know the opposite of that, which is kind of the last band-ay, which is very simple and straightforward, and then you've got the you know, the elevated horror of of making a monster out of an emotion. Um and I think that a lot of things, a lot of movies do it right, but when they fail, they fail hard. Yeah. Um, and I think body cam for me hard. Yeah, it didn't do it for me. Um other cop movies um are uh if if cop movies are your jam, uh we've got Maniac cop in 1988, uh Wolf Cop in 2014, The Last Shift in 2014, which was remade in 2023 as Malum. Uh we've got Body Cam in 2020, different body cam. Um, The Wolf of Snow Hollow in 2020, um, and Night Patrol in 2025, and Body Cam in 2026. What about Jaws?

SPEAKER_05 1:48:25

Isn't that a cop movie? I mean, main character is Cherok.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:29

Oh my god. Any opportunity for you to talk about Jaws, because he's sitting here right now wearing a Jaws shirt. Am I? Oh my god, I am. All right, we should wrap up here uh pretty soon. Uh anything else we want to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 1:48:46

We're gonna be at CryptoCon very shortly.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:48

Yes, we are in a month.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:50

Yeah, May 1st to 3rd um in CTAC, Washington. Uh annual convention, CryptoCon. It's a good time. Uh they're gonna have Tom Atkins, Adrian Barbeau this year as guests, and a couple other fine folks. Oh, Emily Perkins.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:07

Yeah. I'm gonna make it really awkward with her excited. I'm gonna wolf out.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:15

Yeah, my boyfriend who uh is uh in Scare Me.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:19

Um yeah, Josh Rubin.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:22

Yeah, Josh Rubin, Scare Me and uh Wounded Fawn and Wounded Fawn and all kinds of good stuff. I'm gonna be real awkward and weird around him.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:30

But it's a really good time. We've been going for years and we love it to death.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:33

And we're gonna be panelists and moderators there. So um if you want to come check us out, you can listen to us nerd out about more horror stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:42

We might even do trivia up there.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:44

Oh, yeah. We'll do trivia.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:45

Yeah, we'll do our Portland horror trivia massacre up north, and uh it's a good time.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:51

Yeah, there's a lot of awesome shopping there too, so bring your cash.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:55

Indeed.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:56

All right, who wants to lead us out?

SPEAKER_05 1:49:59

All right, guys. Thank you so we're all just looking at each other.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:04

So rock, paper, scissors.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:06

Um thank you for listening and please comment on our socials or and let us know um what you think of our podcast and what you think of us. But be nice, please.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:18

Yeah, we're sensitive. Yeah.