Episode 006 - Queer Horror

Our hosts tell us about their evening at the Portland Horror Film Festival (including Heather's chance to interview editor of Rue Morgue magazine Andrea Subissati), and their respective recent horror viewings, before sharing and discussing notable entries in queer horror.

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_02 0:26

Hello, and welcome to the Portland Horror Podcast Massacre, a roundtable discussion on the topics of the horror genre from the perspective of three very different horror nerds. Welcome to episode six. My name is Willie Greer, and I am joined tonight by my two sexy co-hosts, Jeff Dean.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Heather Alexander.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

And we're coming to you from Portland, Oregon. And tonight we are doing one of our triple feature discussions. Tonight's category is Queer Horror. Happy Pride, everybody. But first we're going to kick things off with a brief discussion of the movies that we've seen recently. Who wants to go first?

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Yeah, let's go ahead and start a little bit and talk about the Portland Horror Film Festival that happened last week here in town. Heather Willie and I were there on Thursday night for Grind, a uh anthology film uh directed by Brea Grant and Ed Dodery, and also the screening, 45th anniversary screening of My Bloody Valentine.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Um with a QA with the director after.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yes. Yeah. Uh let's talk a little bit about the first feature that we saw.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Grind and what a grind it was to get to get through it.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Yeah, basically it's an interconnected um anthology about the horrors of being a minion to the corporate overlords. Um I the four stories in this anthology. I like the first one and the last one. The two ones in the middle kind of just drove me a little bit. They're just too long, yeah, is the problem. And I really thought the anthology itself was one segment too long. I think I leaned over to you at one point and kind of said, like, is this almost over?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

It feels like a short movie feels like it's three hours.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Yeah, yeah. So that was my kind of takeaway. It was just mediocre at best.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, I Willie and I missed the middle uh because it was a little triggering to say the least, um, in terms of you know, experiences at work and such. Uh, so we went outside for a smoke and missed uh a bit of the middle part of that.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Um yeah, I uh it um philosophically, I just couldn't, you know, I I I'm okay with being triggered if I feel like there's an endpoint that'll be somewhat satisfying. And that, you know, it doesn't have to mean a happy ending, of course, as these are horror movies. Um I just kind of felt like the movie wasn't necessarily saying anything that I didn't already know very, very well. And I wasn't really interested in how it was saying it. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah. I mean I agree. I just I I wasn't yeah, it I wasn't intrigued. Uh it was a little it just gave me a a bit of an ick factor in terms of real-world trauma that people go through. Um, you know, there one of the segments is has people in this giant warehouse that's like simulating Amazon and people are like peeing into bottles and um there's just a lot that that is um calling out the darker side of the um consumerist aspect of um of work that we're currently going through as a culture, and um yeah, it I didn't I didn't need it in my life.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Yeah. My biggest takeaway was it's a horror comedy, and I just didn't find it to really be that funny. Like even when it was trying to be funny. I thought the most amusing segment was the first one, and maybe that's because my patience wasn't tested yet. Yeah, totally. Um, about you know, the uh lady trying to make sales quotas for leggings with you know, had the nice cameo by Barbara Crampton as the head of the uh company and stuff. Always help. But uh yeah, other than that, the two middle ones were just kind of like oh, they just went on way, way too long.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yeah. We left at the delivery um segment the um Grubhub Cat. Yeah, the Uber Eats Guy. Um we left he was it was having a groundhog stay moment, and I was like, Oh my god, I gotta I gotta go.

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, and that was just a festival film.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

I don't know if it's gonna get any sort of well, it's Barbara Crampton, so usually it might get a streaming release sometime.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Yeah, did the the filmmakers have anything interesting to say about it in the QA? Or um, I did not stay for the QA. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

I I was not around. I went outside and met up with uh our friend Gretchen and some friends and kind of chatted for 20 minutes. And then by the time I went in there, they were just about to start my bloody valentine.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Yeah, I ended up having to leave a little bit early, unfortunately. I wish I could have caught the My Bloody Valentine screening.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

Yeah, I enjoyed the um my bloody valentine screening, even though I was sitting by myself. No, um, I broke up with them via text. I really shouldn't have done that. He said he's gonna get popcorn and never came back.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah. Willie, yeah. Willie bounced early and then I went to go do an interview and literally never came back.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

So but but the more every time I watch my bloody valentine, I realize how much I enjoy it. And this 4K restoration was pretty sweet, and all the gore that has was put into that 2000, like I think six DVD has been remastered now, too. So it fits in seamlessly. Oh, damn. Because we before, like when we watched it, you could tell, like, oh, this is the cut footage, it looks it looks horrible, like the work print or whatever. Yeah, but so now it's it put it's put back in. Um, and it was just yeah, a lot. I just enjoy this movie. I love uh the mayor and the police chief. They're just like the police chief always has a pipe in his hand. It's like he's never smoking it, but he's got a pipe in his hand. And the mayor is just hilarious because he's got a cigar all the time, and he's just like so flummoxed and stressed out, it's just hilarious. And uh yeah, I just I like the movie quite a bit. And with the gore put back in, it makes it a fun slasher.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Are they doing a physical release on that? They are, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Screen factory video is putting it out, and that's kind of like what uh the director George Mahalka was uh kind of talking about um with the interview.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Uh-huh. Yeah, I missed um I missed the movie. I had just seen it on Valentine's Day. Um, Adam and I had uh a Valentine's Day um, you know, dinner and movie in bed, uh, which was my bloody Valentine. Um so I had seen it recently. I had still wanted to see it again, um, but I had left work early to come to the festival because the the festival started um around the time that I was still in work. So I left work early. On my way home, I get a text from Eric Lee, who um is the uh one of the founders of my scare of uh The Scariest Things, and he texted me asking if I wanted to interview Andrea Subisati, who is the editor of Rue Morgue magazine, who he knows I fucking love. And I was like, Are you kidding me? The festival starts in an hour and a half, and you want me to prepare questions to interview this woman who I love. Fuck you. And yes. Um, so I rushed home and did like 30 minutes of prep for that. And um, so right when the movie was starting, I went into the green room, green room with Eric, and we um did like, I don't know, a half an hour-ish interview with her, uh, and it was transcendent. And then I uh as soon as we left, you know, we basically like had a smoke and a drink, and I was just hanging out with her and Gretchen Gwen for the rest of the night. And so I was like, well, this trumps my bloody Valentine. I'm so sorry. That does sound kind of delightful, actually. Yeah, yeah. Good for you. Even though I abandon you.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

I was sitting next to some guy. We held hands a little bit. He jumped a few times, I comforted me.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah. Um, yeah, so that was that was that night, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Yeah, so we only went one night, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

I wish I could have seen some of the other features because they were showing the trailers beforehand. Some of them look kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

That um the Japanese one I was curious about if it was.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Friday the 69th looked fun.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

Yes, yes, yeah, and the one called Landlord, which is called the vampire one. Look like an set in an urban environment or something, look kind of interesting as well. And then I have never seen this, but Frogman, apparently, there's the sequel like Return of Frogman, which everybody cheered for. So I'm like, maybe I gotta see this Frogman film.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

It I feel like the the first like 40 minutes is kind of a slog-ish. I saw it when it hit streaming a couple years ago. Um but then the end, the last 45 minutes were really fun. So it, you know, it's good and it's bad. It's bad and it's good. But I think that, you know, maybe they learned from their first movie and their sequel would probably be even better. A little shorter, maybe maybe there was just so much arguing, you know, with a lot of the um the found footage movies, you either get characters that you're like, oh shit, these people are really cool and I want to hang out with them, or you get characters that are just like bickering the whole time, right? And you just want to get away from them. And that was kind of that vibe was there was just a lot of bickering in the car and then getting lost in the woods and bickering in the woods, and I was just like, All right. But then Frogman shows up. Save the day, saves the day.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Yeah, drama and and conflict is not just arguing necessarily.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

But it is easy, it's very easy to do.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Um, all right, so we've uh we actually only just recorded uh uh our episode five, just what, like two weeks ago? I think it was two weeks ago. Um yeah, so this one this the release of this uh episode will be a little bit delayed, but it was this um weekend was the only weekend that we could record in June. So we've only had a couple of weeks to watch not many new releases. So I only have um three new releases to talk about. Um one of which is a shared new release, which we'll get to shortly. Um but I recently watched um Mother Mary with uh Anne Hathaway, and it blew my mind. Um I had literally no interest in this movie when I saw trailers for it, when it was, you know, in the theater, could care, could have cared less. Um even when it was on streaming, I was like, eh, you know, I I don't really care. Um, but I was super tired, but I wanted to watch a movie and I wanted to watch something a little slow and heady. Uh and I watched a I re-watched a trailer for it and I was like, I think I might be in the mood for this. So um got a little stoned, got in bed, and holy fucking hell, this movie blew my mind. So it's by writer-director David Lowry, who has done a lot of films, but he's most known for 2017's A Ghost Story and 2021's The Green Knight, both of which I haven't seen, but I will now. Uh, it stars Anne Hathaway as Mother Mary and Michaela Cole as Sam. So essentially this movie is about a pop star who's having a comeback festival or um comeback concert and um is having kind of a crisis of um identity, I I I guess, and um rushes to um this fashion designer who was her um who was her dress designer when she first became famous. They were best friends, inseparable, best friends, a really you know, crazy connection. Um there was a big falling out and um their relationship was very fractured. So for her to go back to this dress designer, um, Sam, was like a big deal. And so she kind of rushes in in a state of panic, and Sam is like essentially absolutely not like fuck you. Um and but she agrees to do it, and they have to do it in like a night, essentially, because everything is um, you know, uh last minute. And um the dialogue here is so phenomenal that like my cat Jonesy was on my lap meowing in my face, and I was like, I am kicking you out because you are ruining this movie for me. Like it was every word, every phrase was poetry. Um, the set design was beautiful. Um so I'm gonna just say that this isn't necessarily a horror movie, it is a bit of a ghost story. Um it's got a lot of kind of feelings of dread in it, um uh feelings of like the the next shoe is gonna drop at any moment. Um, but it's not necessarily a horror movie. Um that said all of the songs in this, because so she's a pop star, and it's kind of a musical. Like they literally have entire scenes where she's on the stage performing these songs and dancing in costume. Um, and all of these songs were written for the movie specifically. Um, and Anna Hathaway sings every single one of these things, she dances every single one of these dances. She spent like two years in preparation um for this movie and fucking kills it. And it's just I cannot tell I I know that the movie was met with some like people were like, it was fine. Um, but for me it was transcendent. I loved it so much. Um, I don't think it's for everyone, but yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

So it sounds like it's gonna be in at least right now, one of the tops of the year for you.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah, probably top five for sure.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

I'm super excited about this one. Yeah. Another one of uh another one of my friends who whose opinion I trust like highly recommended it. So the way you were describing it, I was kind of th like thinking of his like smile two vibes.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I don't know if it's no, because it's not gory and it's not scary, you know. It's just there's a bit of a ghost story involved. Um there's um I guess the like spookiest sequence would be um there's a like a seance flashback um that is pretty creepy. Um but that you know, and then there's the ghost story aspect of it.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Um I don't think I saw the trailer. Is it marketed as a horror movie?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Or I think it's marketed as a thriller. Okay. It's like a musical thriller. Um it's it's definitely not. I I feel like it spiritually it's a horror movie. Um, but I think that if you're kind of splitting hairs about what horror is, it might not qualify to you as a horror movie. Yeah. Um I'm pretty forgiving with my boundaries. Yeah. It's it's staying on my horror movie list for sure.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

Yeah, I'm definitely intrigued. Yeah. I want to see it for sure.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I mean, if I'm calling those Guillermo del Toro movies horror movies, then I'm a little loose.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Uh have you seen anything?

SPEAKER_03 16:50

Oh, yeah, you've seen Um Yeah, the one thing I want to talk about is I recently kind of re-watched the new Scream trilogy. Um, I hadn't seen the last two, but I'd seen Scream 5 when it came out a couple years ago, thought it was fine, but didn't really remember too much about it. So I rewatched that, watched six for the first time last week, and then watched seven last night. Um Are you gonna break my heart? I'm not gonna break your heart. I know I know last time I think you said you rewatched seven and you just loved the hell out of it, right? Isn't this your favorite franchise ever? Yes. And Scream's your favorite movie of all time, yeah. Okay. I thought Scream Seven basically kind of felt you're wrapped up in a bloody 90s nostalgia blanket. Okay. Um I did like 7. 5, um, I thought was entertaining. I did not like six really at all. I kind of hated the reveal of who the killers were. I won't spoil anything for anybody who hasn't seen it. Um, and my one complaint about seven was um who the killers are. They're really just kind of grasping, it seems like. But uh, I did like having Nev Campbell back as the lead. I kind of thought they really took a uh inspiration from the 2018 Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis returning. And how uh um it really just feels like Final Girls can't get a break, man. Yeah. No rest for the Final Girls. It's like and nothing good ever happened to the Final Girls. But yeah, she she was good and then kind of held the movie together. You have some of you know young kids back, like you know, her daughter is one of the characters. Um, Courtney Cox stumbles back in again. I think she's been in like every single one. She has. Um, and they do kind of an interesting thing where they're you know, talking about AI a lot, where you have all the you know characters from the past um making an appearance, basically. But yeah, it it was um it's a fun, fun movie. I kind of think if you like the Scream franchise, you'll get a kick out of it. Um I don't think I loved it quite as much as you, but but yeah, I do just watch it four more times.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Four more yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

I'll get home tonight and watch it again. Yeah. With your commentary. But it it was fine. I thought Campbell was good. I I hope if she I know it did well at the theater, they're probably gonna put do part eight, but please give the Sidney Prescott character a break, man. I mean she's gonna be a little bit more than that. Well, the whole time I'm like I'm like, yeah, I know she wasn't in six, but I'm like, God, the trauma she must have gone through.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Well, that's why I want her her daughter to be um uh the new leader. Tatum, yeah. I want her to be the new final girl.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

I like the kind of the two leads, Jenna Ortega and the other actress in five and six. I know they're that was kind of the plan, but because of the controversy and everything that went on with was it Melissa Barrera or whatever her name is, her comments that they kind of just decided nope, we're not doing that, or we're gonna go back and get Nev Campbell back.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

But yeah, I mean I don't hate that. Um I I I still s five is still like my least favorite of the new trilogy because I love six. Um and then seven, you know, was I was lukewarm on it first and now now I really love it.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

But I like the the killers in five. That kind of like, okay, I can believe this. Like by the time they got to six and who they when they revealed who the killers were, I was kind of like, and I could kind of tell this is where it was going on. I'm like, please don't let that end up being that.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

But yeah, I feel like the killers in five, six, and seven were a bit weak.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

Um but well in seven, that's one thing when they cast a couple people and they make one appearance at in the middle of the movie, you're like, Yeah, they have to be the killer. Why did you cast this person?

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

For a little small, you know, roll of thing. That that's who the killers are. Yeah. But uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

All right. Um, so yesterday I watched a movie called Affection. Um, and this is um by writer-director B.T. Mezah, and it stars Jessica Roth, um, who is in Happy Death Day, among other movies, but most known to me um being uh tree in Happy Death Day. And um Joseph Cross, who's also in a ton of movies, and I never really know what I've seen him in, but he's always recognizable. He was really great. Um, essentially, this woman wakes up with no memory of the life that she's supposed to be having. Um, she remembers a different life. So she remembers that she has a different name and a different husband and a different child in a different house, and and her she's being met with this man who's saying, No, that's not real. You you're actually this person, and I'm your husband, and this is your child, and this is your house. And that's a great setup. Yeah, and so she's basically. Um, he says you have a condition where you had an accident and your memories are are false. And the reason why they're false is because you're pulling in information from all of these things in your life, books that you've read, movies that you've seen, you know, people that you've known, and you're creating a false narrative of who you are. And um, and that will fade. We just need you to stay in isolation, and I will, you know, continue to show you like videos and pictures of your life, and and you'll eventually remember. Um, and so she basically acquiesced and says, Okay, uh, you know, like tell me who I was, or am, I should say. Um, but you start getting the sense that like not all is as it seems, of course. Um I I did like this movie a lot, but once I started realizing the reveal, which was pretty early on for me, um, I was I couldn't stop thinking about the movie um from 2025 called Invitero, um, that I really, really liked. Um, and I won't give away the plot to that because that kind of gives away the plot to this. Um, but that's just to say that like I know that we take movies and we take the ideas and the plots and we kind of like we keep doing it over and over and over, and that's all fine and good. We've we've all seen the same, you know, movie rehashed and differently. But for some reason Invitero was a really unique idea and to see it only in a second movie, I just couldn't I couldn't divorce the two. And and it just felt like they were doing a like a poor man's job of this other movie that I thought was really excellent. I think that if you haven't seen Invitero, then Affection is a very good movie. Um, especially the end is super it's a great ending. Um it is a very good movie, but I just I I got hung up on this idea that um that it was too similar to this other movie, so ruined it a little bit for me. Um, but I do recommend it. It's it's streaming. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Do you have any like uh suspicions on like were they think was it like a an accident? Like two people came up with like a similar idea, or were they thinking like we could improve on that?

SPEAKER_01 24:29

I think it's just a similar idea based on sus like society and and you know, just where we're headed in the future and all of those things. Like I think that it's a topic that is relevant and contemporary, and we're probably gonna see more movies about it. Um but there hasn't been a lot done recently. Maybe, maybe in the past, maybe in like the 70s when it was just like the future is this, and you're like, oh shit, that's scary. Um, there's probably a few of those lingering and and you know, decades ago, but in terms of like now contemporary movies, those are the two movies that stand out about this topic. Um, and so yeah, it was a little hard to kind of divorce them. I mean, we're all familiar with like, you know, oh shit, there's like this movie's coming out and it's about a killer crocodile, and then like a month later there's another killer crocodile, and then you know, it's like they always happen in threes. It's like an airplane shark movie, another airplane shark mean movie, you know, it's just like they're always piggybacking on each other, so it's not um very surprising. It this is a little further apart than normal, um, but it's a really good movie. I I do recommend it. And Jessica Roth is phenomenal. Um, just a really, really great actress who commits to the horrors of it all.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Did you rent this?

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah, I yeah, I rented it for like four bucks or something. Um and then the the last movie that we've all seen.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

Yeah, it's the big one that came out right now, a week and a half ago. I guess.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

We hadn't seen it at the time of our last podcast, which we it had yet to come out.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Yeah, it was a week away. Uh yeah, I don't know how deep we want to go into it right now, but uh it's I I I am so fucking jazzed and excited and joyous about the last couple of weeks that I've had in a movie theater. Uh fucking backrooms. Um good God, man. The backrooms fucks. That is my my personal opinion. Um I was absolutely delighted the entire time. We uh me and my wife took our friend Jenna to it, and we were all like moaning in dread the entire time. And at one point, during a certain acrophobic scene, uh my wife grabbed both of our hands and all of our palms were like super sweaty. I did scream a couple times, but the whole time I'm just like, I love this, I love this, I love this. It was great. Um vibes for days. I have a lot to fucking say about this one, but uh uh some some of which kind of relates to what you were just talking about about your previous movie. Um but uh yeah, what a fucking great couple of weeks for for horror. Uh it's really makes me think of last year we got Sinners and 28 Years Later, which were very, very expensive movies that took some big swings and some big chances. And these kind of feel like the parallel to that, only they were much, much cheaper. Um, but I have been I haven't been able to stop thinking about these two movies since we saw them. And uh the last week I've just been in the autism zone absorbing all of the YouTube content for the backrooms that I possibly can in my waking life. So yeah, a little obsessed.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Was that what we were gonna talk about? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Okay, good. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, you know, I I love that um the episode that we did about YouTubers, which uh Willie, you had texted Jeff and I weeks in advance. Uh it was like two or three weeks in advance um before we did the episode. Uh, basically, like, I think now is the time that you know we should do our YouTube episode. And Jeff and I didn't know a lot about YouTube horror. Um, and we were like, okay, if you want to do it, like we can we can manage, you know, we'll do we'll do enough research. We can we can pull this together. Um, and so, you know, that was the deep dive of all of the the YouTube stuff, and um, including, you know, um Curry Barker, uh, who did Obsession and who was well known for milk and cereal, and then Kane Parsons, who did um the Backrooms, you know, series, and then now is famous for Backrooms. Um, so we did this episode two weeks ago before Backrooms even came out. Obsession had just come out. Backrooms hadn't been released yet. Um, and it feels like now we were like, you know, standing on the ledge shouting to the world about what they were about to receive, you know, uh, because backrooms came out and then it just like blew up the the whole universe. And uh I l I was listening to NPR talk about YouTube horror, you know. I'm like YouTube horror is all the topic of conversation right now, and how it's basically like taken over Hollywood um and usurped even the Star Wars movie uh that came out.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

So nothing against Gro Group, but I love to see it.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah, I am I absolutely love to see it as well. Um I was not the biggest fan of backrooms. I um I definitely I love this the the episodes on YouTube um for sure, and I was very excited about this movie, and I I enjoyed the movie a lot. I think that the third act kind of broke it for me a bit. Um, I was all there until the kitchen scene, and I'm not gonna talk about any spoilers, but when the kitchen scene happened, I was like, I don't know what movie this is anymore. Um so uh I am looking forward to watching it again. I think that when Adam and I saw it, we we both enjoyed watching it very much. Um when it was over, he he said, What did you think? And I said, Well, I liked it. I think I was a little disappointed, and he said, Me too. And that was it, you know. Um so I loved all of the backrooms stuff, you know, like the um the finding the backrooms, exploring the backrooms, how fucked up everything was. Um when his assistant and her boyfriend or those two young people go into the backrooms with him. I loved all of that.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

Um some fucking top tier found footage in this movie.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

I I loved all of that. And I even, you know, I even liked I wasn't really like I didn't really understand why the therapist character was involved or any of that stuff. But when she shows up to the backrooms, I was even here for it a little bit when she was like, you know, running from that thing that she, you know, and she's like on the ledge and stuff. Like that was pretty fun. Um, but the thing that she's running from, I just thought was so I just I was I thought it was really cheesy and I I wished it was something different. And I know that there's talk about how like the backrooms kind of takes a memory of what it knows and then distorts it, which is why things look slightly off there, which explains the thing that she's running from and why it's the way that it is. But I don't know, the way that it was done, I just thought it was really silly.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Yeah, that that's gonna be like a very subjective thing. That's either it's either gonna work for you or it's not, you know. Um I it it worked for me like there's this level of like absurdness to it. It's so absurd that you're either going to laugh or you're going to be terrified. You know. Um and I could see why it wouldn't work for for some people, but for me I found it much more effective than that kind of the the bacteria monster that's in the YouTube videos that looks to me just more like a like a wire sculpture that's walking around or something.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Yeah, I like that guy.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

I'm not saying I don't like him. No, yeah, totally. Um He's a cute little guy. Yeah. Jeff, what did you think?

SPEAKER_03 33:00

Um, well, I had never even heard of this until we did our episode two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_04 33:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

So when we talked about this is coming out, I decided, okay, I'm not gonna watch anything on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

I want to I wanna watch any of the backrooms episodes. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

I I want to go in to this movie basically as a clean slate, like not knowing anything about it, to see does this work as a movie, or do you have to know you know what this YouTube sensation is? Um, so I went into the movie and I kind of loved it.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

You did?

SPEAKER_03 33:38

I did. I thought like I thought it was like fantastic, um scary, and kind of hypnotic in this strange way uh and like a counterpoint to what you think like the kitchen scene for me. And everyone's gonna take something differently out of this movie, but uh that scene kind of sums up what the message of the movie is to me.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

What's the message of the movie?

SPEAKER_03 34:10

Um this is all gonna be different, but to me, I kind of read it as you need to address your trauma, or it will destroy you and possibly other people in your life as well. That's kind of what I took out of it. And also the whole thing about how everybody looks a little bit different in the movie, um, because it's a memory. I I kind of read that as like all events in your life when you think back on them, probably are not exactly what happened. Right. It's a a version of what you think happened.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

So it's distorted and not accurate.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

Yeah, just like sometimes you tell a story over and over and over again, sometimes you're gonna embellish it or forget certain aspects. I mean, that's just kind of like what I took out of it. Other people are gonna take other things out of it. Somebody might not take anything out of it at all. But uh, yeah, so I I just really, really enjoyed it. Um and I'm kind of glad like there's one scene with the scientist where they don't really push it too far. I'm like, okay, don't go too far with this because you're gonna ruin the movie, I thought. Yeah, like over explaining yeah, so they didn't do that. Um, but yeah, but I really, really enjoyed the movie. I can't wait to see it again. Yeah, me too. I'm going back this Thursday.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Oh, you are? Yeah, nice.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

Yeah, so yeah, I I enjoyed it. I think I know we're we're s basically a little over five months into the year, and it's probably right now in my top three.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Oh, damn. Okay. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

So it so we're we're coming back with with the spoiler talk at the end, right? Or are we just diving in now?

SPEAKER_00 36:05

To the spoiler talk of the back rooms.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

For back rooms.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

That's what that's what I thought we had agreed on. We don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

But I mean we can, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 36:15

Uh I I I don't care. So if anybody hasn't seen the movie yet, they can forward. Skip ahead to the VM code.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Uh yeah, fast forward a bit. Uh maybe 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Uh I mean, is it cool? Is it is it right if we do some? We might be here a little while. Uh I promise we'll I promise we'll get to the to the trilogy.

SPEAKER_04 36:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

But um okay, spoilers in three, two, one. Uh I totally understand um about the the third act in the kitchen scene. Like I was completely hypnotized and immersed in the like, I think like right before that scene, like we have that iconic shot that's in the teaser where it's like descending to the different levels of her childhood home, and it gets more and more warped and fucked up. And I was literally just like bouncing in my fucking seat. I was so happy. And then we get to that kitchen scene, and I was kind of like my immersion did wobble a little bit. That was not what I was expecting, you know. Like, oh, we're gonna go a little Texas chainsaw now? Is that what's going on? Um, but yeah, it worked because like I for me, like that we're at this point, we're kind of in this little pocket of the backrooms, which is our antagonist Clark's unconscious, his personal unconscious, where he keeps all of his shame about the various failures of his life, his job and his marriage. Um so it did work for me. It was, you know, like the vibe of that that room, I guess, is so different, and everything that happens in that room is so different. Um that yeah, it it I I lost my balance for a little bit, but I was able to kind of buy back in, and then once uh once Big Clark comes out, Captain Clark.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Captain Clark.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

Yeah, I was totally fucking sold, and I love that they got uh that actor from Alien Romulus. Uh so much of this movie was practical, and I cannot fucking wait for the physical to come out. So like I'm I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of behind the scenes of this giant 30,000 square foot labyrinth that they really built on the set. Um let's see.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Um Why, though why why why did he start eating them? You know, like why like he hadn't been in there for that long. Well, I think it's like that's not really established.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Time is not It probably is a little distorted in the backrooms, and I I don't know, like there's that one point where he says like uh like with when he brings the camera crew back to help him investigate, he's like, you know, every night that I come back here, you know, uh he's like drawing the map of it. And he he's been there enough to have that map the at his second therapy session. Yeah. Um so I think I assume that he had been going back a couple like for like at least three nights or something. I could be wrong about that.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

But why does he even like have the idea to eat them?

SPEAKER_03 39:25

I think I think by that I think by that point he's been there a long time. Okay, and like the one thing that that kind of sold me on my theory about like the whole trauma thing is like he says, I like it here. Yeah, I wanna stay here, I I don't want to change. Right. And then shortly after that, his alter ego comes and basically kills him.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Right. And I kind of think for some reason the whole eating thing is like a metaphor for like it's gonna eat you alive.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Or you consume or maybe like the the memories that you can that you have you can continue to give you sustenance in a way. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Toxic sustenance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and also it's just really weird and dreamy. And that I would not put it past David Lynch to have thought of a scene like that.

SPEAKER_03 40:27

And the woman in standing in the corner, um, probably his ex-wife. That's what I took it as because you know, he basically scalps her and puts her hair on his therapist when they're role-playing.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Oh, I forgot.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

Right. Yeah, and I think the guy that he disembels and eats from I think he's like his furniture salesman rival that he's watching the commercial on TV. His name his name is Big Wayne, I think. Huh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

And when Who's the lamp guy?

SPEAKER_02 40:58

I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 41:00

He was like from the movie Freaks, I think. He just popped in. No, but no one knows. When when Captain Clark shows up when he's starts coming, his wife just runs out of the room. Yeah. Yeah. Right, which I think is like. I mean, this is just what I'm reading into it. It's probably just all different types of levels of things people are going to take out of it. But uh, yeah, it it worked, it worked for me.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Yeah, if there's a commentary in the physical release with the writer, um, because Kane Parsons didn't write the movie, it was Will um who is it? Will Suduk Sudick?

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Yeah. Um He hasn't been a part of any of the press really. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

I know. So Will this guy, Will Sudek, um, is really only known for the TV show As Ash versus the Evil Dead. Um he has not done any movies. He like he did think he worked on Westworld too? He had one episode. Okay. I mean, he I think he was the producer of a couple of of the things that he wrote for, but he wrote um one episode for Westworld and one episode for Homeland. Um, and then he wrote like eight episodes for Ash versus Evil Dead. So this guy is like he's been in the industry for a while, but he hasn't really been known for much. So this is like his big thing. So I'm really curious to hear from this guy, like why did you write this? You know, like these characters, this progression, like you already have the establishment of backrooms and what Kane Parsons kind of put out there with the government stuff, but this furniture sales guy, you know, and the therapist and all of that is unique.

SPEAKER_03 42:49

I'm curious to hear about like because maybe it was like, hey, can you somehow flush out this make a story out of this these videos? Well, maybe and maybe they had multiple people trying this, and that's what they ch that's when that they should.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

Yeah. Uh in my in my hyperfixation rabbit hole of the last week and a half or whatever, um I did hear Kane talk about like they they they took a different a couple different passes for possible stories, and that was the one that seemed the most appropriate. They tried a different uh a bunch of different things and none of them felt like they were working. Um as far as the furniture salesman, I I think that all is a very kind of cheeky, clever way to tie into uh the actual source material of that backrooms photo. It was actually a furniture store.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

Um and kind of helps to maybe explain the look of the place a little bit. Um that, of course, depends on how much of Clark's mind is a part of uh the structure of the backrooms to begin with. There's a whole lot of lore in the YouTube stuff that it might be actually the the mind of uh Ivan Beck, who is the Uh the chief's the CEO, I guess, of um Async, the the the research company that's in the hazmat suits going down there. Oh, okay. Used to be MRIs. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

So it was probably according to the lore, I think it was like a combination of like an electromagnetic test they were doing at the time that there were some solar flares that caused the disruption and created the portal into this dimension. Um but clearly Clark's mind is influencing it a little bit too in some way. Um but I I don't know, like the the YouTube series is so hard sci-fi, you know, but there are still like these weird, dreamy, psychological and even trauma-based elements. The element of trauma, at least in terms of the character Ivan Beck, um figures into the lore, uh even being mentioned in certain like song titles that that Kane put out. A lot of his song titles reference the lore of the backrooms.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

How many episodes are there?

SPEAKER_02 44:59

God, there's like I want to say around I don't know if it's like 30 or 40. There's about three hours of content, I think, in total.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

For some reason, like 38 popped into my head, so it's like around there somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

There were some people that were speculating that uh A24 was kind of like, oh, can we snap up what this kid's doing and like make it about trauma like everything else we do? And uh I did find out in interviews as well that Kane's mother is a therapist.

SPEAKER_04 45:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

So that is a very like organic thing to me. And he he said, you know, like the world that we're exploring is the same, but I wanted to take advantage of different media formats to go into that world in different ways. So I love that idea personally. Like there's a there's the scientific, physics-based way into it, then there's maybe the psychological way into it. And afterwards, my wife, who doesn't know any of the YouTube lore, but she came up with um she wondered if the therapist in her book about opening the window was some somehow creating new portals like people were opening in their minds or whatever. Um it could just be that uh it was by happenstance that his furniture store happened to be one of the portals, or he might have had something to do with it opening up. I like to think, just because I'm Mr. Jungian, that he had something to do with it opening up.

SPEAKER_03 46:28

This is the perfect A24 movie, seriously. Because so many of their movies are so polarizing with horror fans.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

That's so true.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

I mean, there is such a huge conversation, like I've read a lot of stuff about backrooms, then of course everything A24 seems to put out, there's a contingent of people that just do not like it at all.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

You know, they just dislike um the A24 vibe in general, or yeah, you know, it's like people call it elevated horror.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

You know, that conversation goes around and around where people just don't like it. And that's fine, but when I walked out of this movie, I'm like, oh, this is the perfect movie for them.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Divisive. Yeah. Yeah, I I I go back and forth on A24. There are movies that I really like of theirs and movies that I I'm like, oh god, that was just not my thing.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

But yeah. There's there's been a lot of backlash against uh the the the trauma core uh subgenre that's been happening lately. And I and I do get it to a degree because like some of the movies are definitely a repetitive, you know? Like there's like clusters of like four movies that are all kind of saying the exact same thing, and oftentimes they do really just kind of hit you over the head with the metaphor so hard that you're like, is this even a metaphor anymore?

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah. Um I mean they're doing that in the publishing industry as well with horror. Like every fucking book that comes out is about trauma. So, you know, it's hard to escape right now, and maybe it's just because you know, we're at a stage in and society where we're we're finally going to therapy and we're finally like, you know, confronting what the fuck's going on with the world and ourselves, and you know you nailed it, and and what trauma and how trauma has affected us and the decisions that we've made as a society.

SPEAKER_03 48:25

Um at least someone's still putting out a movie called Hungry Hungry Hippos.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

That's yeah, that that's for me.

SPEAKER_03 48:36

Well, I do know, like um, yeah, there are certain people that they want a certain type of horror movie. And that's totally fine. Yeah, you know, that's what they want for enjoyment when watching.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

And movies for them will always be there.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Well, we are always be art the clown.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Well, the w yes. I mean, when you say them, I feel like you are talking about me. But no, no, no, no. I mean, I do love I love trauma horror, you know. I I love all kinds of horror. That's the thing, is that like, you know, I am I am an equal opportunity horror lover. I do like an art the clown film, and I like a backrooms movie, and I like a scream movie, and like I'm just uh, you know, I'm here for the genre, and I'm not very fucking picky about it. Um but that said, the trauma train has got to pull up to the station at some point. I don't know. Maybe not.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Once enough dudes start going to therapy, then we can have a new sub-genre. So guys, let's fucking get to work.

SPEAKER_04 49:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

I mean, I you know, trends exist for a reason. You know, there's there's fads that people just do because everyone else is doing it, and then there are trends. And this is a really fucking huge issue that's going on, you know, collectively with all of us. 100%.

SPEAKER_04 49:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

Um, and how many fucking letterboxed reviews have you read that, you know, like use that joke about like men would rather blah blah blah than go to therapy? You know? Why do you think that's happening? I don't so I I you know I have no problem with it as long as they keep making them interesting. And this is definitely one of the most interesting trauma core movies that I've seen in quite a while.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 50:26

Absolutely. Um I don't know how deep do I want to go into this? Maybe I don't want to go that deep. I think we're I think we're covering a lot of good stuff here.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Okay. Yeah, maybe I'll save it for a separate YouTube video of my own.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Yeah, that would be awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that. Okay. I would watch that. Um, shall we start talking about our triple features? Why not? Okay. Willie, you kick us off.

SPEAKER_02 51:06

Uh the movie that I chose is one that I saw a couple times before, and I've always been pretty fond of it. This is a movie called Knife and Heart from 2018. Uh, written, co-written and directed by Jan Gonzales, uh, with a musical score by his brother, uh, Anthony Gonzales, who goes by the name M83. Uh, some really good dreamy synthwave, vaporwave stuff going on there. Um, plot of the film, Anne Paritzi is a gay film, gay porn filmmaker, having a very hard time getting over her editor, former lover Lois, when the cast and crew of her newest production begin getting killed horribly, and alters the production that she's working on to reflect the murders and investigation, changing the title from Anal Fury to Homicidal. Um I will admit, as far I I really do love Italian horror and Giallo, but I am I'm basic bitch in the sense that I mainly know Argento, and so that's mainly what I'm gonna be preparing comparing this movie to. But there are so many different Argento flicks that this movie, I think, is paying direct homage to. Um most obviously probably Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and there's a bit of a tenebrae vibe going on there, and there's a little bit of opera as well. Um it's interesting. Gialos are are kind of typically heteronormative, and by extension, the violence is uh very misogynistic feeling. So this is kind of an interesting thing to make it a gay a gay male film directed by a gay male, perceived through the female gaze of two lesbian characters. So we do get to kind of bypass a lot of the traditional male gaziness of this movie, um, to explore this very like hyper Freudian sexual violent content uh without that baggage, which is kind of a cool thing. I feel similarly about uh the movie Duke of Burgundy, which is um kind of a kink love story about a dysfunctional relationship between a dominant sub, and by not only making the two characters women, but having that movie set in a universe where men apparently don't exist, is a really fun way to explore those kind of dynamics without having to have traditional, stereotypical male-female baggage. But um yeah, I like this one a lot. Um it's very passionate. There's a lot of rage and pain in this movie, I think, you know.

SPEAKER_03 53:50

Nice uh murdering instrument as well.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

Oh, absolutely. Doesn't get more jello than that, does it?

SPEAKER_03 53:56

Um yeah, I really enjoy this movie. It does a fantastic job of feeling like a CD 70s Jalo film. I mean, it really just kind of like you feel like I gotta take a shower after watching this movie. Like a lot of those 70s uh Jallo films, you kind of feel that way too. You just feel like like you can smell the sweat on everybody.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

Yes. I need a shower, but what fluids am I washing off? I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_03 54:27

Yeah, um yeah, my only criticism for the movie is kind of similar to the same criticisms I have with any of the Jallo films where you it kind of starts to lose me in the third act. You're like, who's doing what and what is happening now? Um but yeah, it's a it's a small uh complaint, but I I do enjoy this movie quite a bit. And uh I know the lead actress, uh I think she was like married to Johnny Depp for a long time. Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Yeah, well, her their daughter.

SPEAKER_03 54:55

Yeah, Lily Rosedepp, right?

SPEAKER_01 54:56

Yeah, Nosferatu girl.

SPEAKER_03 54:58

Yeah, Lily Rosedap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I enjoy this movie quite a bit.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Yeah, um I also enjoyed the movie uh uh w in the end. Um it was a little too porny for me uh in the beginning. Too porny. I I wasn't um, you know, for uh an afternoon movie, which is I just watched it a few hours ago. Uh for an afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 55:24

An after after dark movie.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

And uh for an afternoon movie and the That's why you were late answering the door when late in the in the you know late uh light of day. Um yeah, it was it's very porny. And um, you know, I'm not saying no to porn. I just didn't expect so much of it. There was a lot. Um, but I liked it. I liked um essentially I liked when we followed Anne, um, the main character, out of the studio and kind of like on. There was at one point in the film where she gets on the train because uh she goes to the police station and she after one another one of her actors is killed, um, because the movie essentially focuses on all of these um gay, porn actors getting killed, and it's it's all of her actors, you know, who are on her movies, and um, it's just happening one after the other, and she goes to the police and she's like, Aren't you guys doing anything? And the police are like, Well, it's not really a high priority for us, and she's like, God damn it. So she gets a clue from one of the um detectives, and um it's a feather.

SPEAKER_03 56:40

She gets a feather, yeah. Well, they find by all the bodies, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:45

Yeah, and it's a it's a very unique feather, and she kind of looks up this um, I don't know, a this bird expert, which is another weird fucking scene when she goes into the woods and there's this like uh pyramid house, which I was like, what the fuck is this house? This is directly out of David Lynch. Um, and she goes to this pyramid house and there's this like woman sitting outside, and this and then she calls upon this young man who appears from the woods and he has a a bird fucking hand or something. I'm like, what the hell is going on?

SPEAKER_02 57:26

It has that disease that makes you slowly turn into a bird, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:29

Of course, yeah. So she gives her this clue that like this feather comes from, you know, these these ancient woods from this lore that this bird comes down and will um essentially take take the death out of you so that like essentially dying people would go to the these woods and they these birds would come and take the death out of you and take the death to and burn it in the sun, but they got too close to the sun, so they were blinded. And so there's this whole lore, and so she goes to these fucking woods, she gets on a train and she goes to the woods to try to figure out like who's killing, you know, what do these feathers have to do with all these deaths? And then there's this weird cemetery scene, and this the the people at the inn, it got really weird, and I was here for it. Like as soon as she got the feather, like from then on, I loved the movie. Um, but the you know, the all of the rest of it, I was like, okay, what are we moving on from this porno that they're shooting? You know, it's just a lot.

SPEAKER_03 58:33

Um don't you think? Um I really wish they would have had a different title. Something with a bird, an animal, a lizard, a bug. Because that fits in so much with so many of the Jalo films where, you know, interesting titles, us kind of thing. They should have named, especially when they have the whole bird thing. I'm like, why did they not unless they just thought it would be too humorous or didn't it?

SPEAKER_01 59:01

No, I think that would have been great. Maybe they can uh go back and amend that. Um so uh in my research of this film, um, I learned that the lead character is loosely based on Anne Marie Tensey. Yes. Um, a female producer um specializing in gay porn that was active in front in France in the 70s and 80s. So I thought that was really kind of like a lovely homage to an actual real person.

SPEAKER_02 59:30

So you did have uh a partner for a while named Lois. Oh, really? Lois Kernigs River?

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

An American director and editor uh who was a lover and collaborator of Tensi.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

That's really cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:42

So tonight you're gonna do deep dive research into her filmography.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

Oh god. I I think I'm porned out for the day. Um but and then um I I have a hard time pronouncing names. Um J Jack or Jacques Noloto Noloto? Sure. No? Okay. Um, so he had a cameo uh and he is an actor director whose own 2002 drama Porn Theater serves as a thematic reference point for Knife and Heart's penultimate murder scene in an adult cinema, which um was really cool. I don't know who he looked like, I don't know which character he was in that um scene, but I really did love the theater scene. What I thought was really funny was that like so they're in this theater playing, you know, her um Anne's movies, and she's in the audience um kind of mourning the death of her her lover, and um, and all of these men are in the background and they're all, you know, given blowjobs and fucking each other. But every time one of them stands up, their pants are on, zipped up, you know, and like but they stand up suddenly, like I'm suddenly standing up, you know, but everybody's pants are on. And I was like, who how do you give a blowjob with no when you know your pants zipped up?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

Life finds a way, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:09

Uh yeah. So I was like, okay, nobody's pants are actually down for any of these blowjobs. Um yeah. Uh so the other thing that I did love about this, I know that there was a lot of um apparently there was a lot of Brian De Palma influences who I just don't know his work that well.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:30

The split screen, I could see that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

There was um, yeah, there was the kind of like fetishistic close-ups of like A V equipment.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

Okay. Apparently there was narrative nods to dress to kill blowout and body double, which I just don't know them.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:46

Those are all Brian De Palma movies. Yeah. Brian De Palma was like a student of Hitchcock.

unknown 1:01:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:51

These movies are kind of seedy versions of Hitchcock movies.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:54

Body Double, I can totally see that now that you mention it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:57

There there's there's this very, very weird section where the protagonist in the movie um just kind of stumbles into a club where there's a Frankie Goes to Hollywood video just happening. It's just a musical number. Um, and it's not explained at all. Um, yeah. And like um, I feel like kind of maybe also paying homage to those little weirdo Argento devices, like uh in Fourflies on Grey Velvet, the murder gets solved because in this movie's universe there's a machine that can capture the last image that a dead person has imprinted on their eye.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

And so they get a visual clue from that. So, like, make that leap to um a magical bird. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:44

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the this is like what was really noteworthy to me immediately was just how it's like somebody really studied Giallo and just made the film. Like, I'm going to make this 1970s slash 80s Giallo film, and it's gonna have every single fucking Giallo thing in it. You know, you've got like the the vibrant um colors of blues and reds and all of that. You've got the mask killer with the black gloves, with the close-up of a bladed knife object. So like in Giallo's, it's mostly always like a sharp object is the murder weapon. Um, you have the POV of the killer, so you're not, you know, the killer's not just showing up randomly and killing people, like you actually are with the killer and watching him kill people, and then you're going back to the main characters. The motivation's always like childhood trauma or a psychosexual kind of situation. There's always a fumbling police officers or like a police, you know, that aren't doing their their job, so like the character has to like find the clues and and help solve the murders. It's just like every single beat of this, aside from like, you know, boys banging, was so Giallo. It was like really and and even like the soundtrack and the rainy streets and like you know, it was it was a really good Giallo movie that wasn't a Giallo movie. Um I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:19

Yeah, I think of that I think they capture a 70s Giallo movie pr pretty perfectly, just in its mood and tone. Yeah. I mean a little bit seedier than you know the the actual 70s ones were, but uh still there's a lot of stuff to like.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

I do really, yeah, I enjoy like that kind of vibe, and it's like the yeah, it's like maybe the the sleazy counterpart to um that duo that made like Strange Color with Your Body's Tears and Oh yeah, I haven't seen that one yet. Gorgeous, gorgeous movies, man. You will not find better cinematography anywhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:58

Okay. What about that diamond tear?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:00

And they make even less sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:01

What was the diamond tier? Who's that uh it came out like last year? Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:06

That was a fun one.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

Uh I think kind of like yeah, like a spoof on like spy movies like diabolic and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:13

But still really beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:16

Beautiful and psychedelic.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

I need to I need to watch those. Um, do we have anything more to say on this one? Uh I I know that he has a new movie coming out um called I'll Forget Your Name, which is a gothic horror drama um starring Vanessa parodies. Uh I think either they're in post production, so it should be this year or next year. Um the film follows a fifty year old instructor in a small village whose nightly cruising encounters take a darker turn when she falls for a young man who soon vanishes, sending her down a mysterious and nightmarish path. So that'll coming be coming out um from that director, Jans Gonzalez.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:01

I'm excited for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:03

Oh, and he is partnering with M83 again as well. Are you next? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:11

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:11

Alright. Only because mine um I feel like we'll have a lot to say on your film and not a lot to say on my film. Because again, I picked a movie that you'd seen it before though, right? Yeah, I had seen it before.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:27

So you can't do that again, can you? You just keep picking movies you've never seen. No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:31

I I picked a movie that we sa that I saw. There's just a lot, there's not a ton of deep diving into this. You know, it's a pretty surface level movie. Um, it's called What Keeps You Alive. It's a 2018 Canadian film written and directed by um Colin Minahan of the Vicious Brothers. Um so the Vicious Brothers together they wrote um directed the 2011 Grave Encounters. They did uh Extraterrestrial, which was 2014, and 2017's uh It Stains the Sands Red, which I love that movie. Um so he uh basically wrote and directed this movie keep uh what keeps you alive. Um and what keeps you alive is about um these two women who are married. They go to um this cabin in the woods, which is one of the woman's like um grandfather's uh cabin that she inherited, and they're celebrating their one-year anniversary. Um, and once they get there, um the place is beautiful, and you know, they're having uh a romantic time. Um and then they uh an essentially a neighbor shows up and the neighbor calls the one woman by a different name. Um they have known each other since childhood, uh, and she basically calls her by another name, confusing her wife and kind of angering her. Um, but that was the first moment where we kind of understand that something is not right here. Um essentially, the it's not really a spoiler because this is what the movie is about, but the woman, um, Jackie. So we follow, we mostly follow Jules, who is um the wife. Jackie is the the other wife who's the cabin this is. So Jackie turns out to be a psychopath, and she is essentially a serial killer who has been killing all of her wives. And the reason why I love this movie is because it normalizes just a queer relationship. You know, the movie is not about them being gay, it's not about gayness at all, it's just about this woman who is um a sociopath or a psychotic serial killer, and um and that's it, you know, and and it just so happens that they're they're lesbians. And um, and I love that because I think that one of the things I always say is that I I need more women monsters. I need more women who are killers, I need more women who, you know, are the bad guy, are the thing to be afraid of, um, because so often we're the victim um or the final girl. And that's just kind of where we are relegated to in horror. And I just love a um, I love a female killer. So that's kind of why I chose this um for queer horror uh for my queer horror movie, because it just normalizes that. And and I love a movie that doesn't have to talk about why it's gay, it's just gay, you know? Um so uh yeah, what did you what did you guys think?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:57

Um I will start off by saying one of my least favorite horror subgenres is the domestic horror film.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:08

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:09

Which is basically Fatal Attraction kind of launched us, but the 1990s were filled with movies like Single White Female, Domestic Disturbance, Unlawful Entry, all these ones where oh somebody is not who they say they are, and they're gonna, you know, kill you and everybody in your family. However, I thought this film was really, really well done. I enjoyed both performances uh by the lead actresses, and there's uh pretty much three people in this entire movie. I mean, you have the neighbors across the street, um, the husband has what two lines or whatever, but uh their friend. But the movie is pretty much carried by these two actresses and uh uh Brittany who played uh the the survival um yeah Britney Allen Britney Allen she does a pretty damn good job in this movie uh of conveying kind of like what she's feeling and what she's going through without having too much of a little dialogue to do it. Um expressions on her face. Um she's a fighter though. Yeah, what she goes through. I'm like, hmm, I don't know if you can you survive all of that. Uh yeah, but I thought it was spoiler alert, you can't. Yeah. Um yeah, but I thought it was it was well done. I did appreciate the same thing that you said where it's like, okay, it's not even acknowledged that you know it's a gay couple. It just that's the way it is. And none of the characters in the movie bring reference to it at all either.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:43

So it's a good point. It's not something that I had considered necessarily. But uh I I loved the first act.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:52

Uh once once the the reveal happened and and the plot kicked in, I did not buy Jackie's performance.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:00

Uh Jackie was the the psycho, yeah, the psychopath, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:05

Yeah. Um the uh her wife I totally bought. She sold the fuck out of it, even though the script had her do some very stupid things. Yeah. Uh I, you know, uh was totally in love with her and wanted her to live. Um it reminded me a bit of uh Revenge.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:23

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:24

Especially in the how the fuck did she survive that kind of thing. And then uh I can't say what it reminded me of in the third act because that would be a huge spoiler unless we're going there. But uh uh yeah, it it did it it didn't work for me, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:41

Yeah. That's okay. I I kind of when I was watching it, I was like, oh, Willie's not gonna like this. Um it's not about generational trauma. Well, I'm getting more of a sense of the things that you like and don't like, and and while I don't necessarily think about it in advance, um when I'm watching it, I kind of pick up on like, oh yeah, no, Willie wouldn't like this. And and like, you know, and I alternatively, like, I know what Jeff would like because we have a lot of the same tastes and we like a lot of the same things in terms of contemporary films. Um, but some of the things that I love about this movie, um one of the things is that it takes the classic trope of like, well, there's multiple tropes in here. There's the cabin in the woods, there's the final girl, there's the serial killer spouse, um, there's the cat and mouse aspect. And it so it takes those tropes, but it kind of like turns them on their head a little bit. You it they're not all just like, you know, the trope from A to Z. It it kind of like makes it its own, which I really appreciated. Um, and just kind of the um I had written down when I was actually taking notes when I was watching this. Um the the cinematography in this is just really beautiful. Like they're in the middle of these woods, and it's um, there's this beautiful lake, and these like, you know, woods and the mountain, and the cabin is gorgeous, and there's a fireplace, and um, it's just a really pretty uh movie. And one of the scenes that I absolutely love is at the there's this one point where Jackie and Jules um are upstairs and she essentially like Jackie is chasing Jules and they she chases her upstairs and they're fighting, and they're like literally wrestling across across the upstairs, but you're not up there with them. You you don't actually follow them. You're following the ceiling from the first floor, and so the camera is like panning across the ceiling as they're wrestling, and the light is swinging, and you can hear the thumping and the dust falls from the the floorboards. Um, and it's just so beautiful, and it and it's kind of a long scene. Um, it goes from one room to the next, and um, and you can hear them like grunting and punching and you know, stomping, and um, and I just thought, what a fucking like beautiful way to to go through this fight scene.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

Yeah, I thought that was a very creative way to not have to choreograph and do a fight scene, but you get the implication of what's happening. Yeah. Um, I thought that was a good example of kind of creative filmmaking on a scene. Yeah, and I thought like some of the camera angles, like there's a scene where she's trying to get away on the boat and she's getting pursued, and you have a couple shots where they hook the camera to the end of the oar, kind of give it a disorienting uh feel to the scene, which I kind of felt like okay, this is kind of what the character is feeling. So I thought, yeah, the director did a pretty decent job sometimes of doing some creative camera work.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:58

And I did love the cinematography. Yeah. That opening that opening one shot when she's exploring the house is fantastic, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

And when she when Jules is um or Jackie is straddling the neighbor and stabbing her to death, and just like the arcs of like her coming up and going down and like over and over, and then the blood splattering, it was just like a really beautiful. Are we just the most demented people in the world?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:29

That that shot reminded me a little bit of Psycho. Oh, yeah. Like how we're gonna watch the knife keep going up and down, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:35

Yeah, and then the blood splattering, and yeah, it was just a really lovely scene.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:41

Um, one of the things that drives me crazy about these types of boob movies is like, how do these people keep getting away with all, you know, yeah, they murder how many people?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:53

I know, like she opened that box and there was like there had to be at least like 12 lockets in there.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:58

Yeah, and like for insurance, I mean, there's just like you know, the I know you have to suspend your disbelief sometimes, but like all these movies have that where they you the reveal of like, oh, they've been married 15 times before that, and they've had other families and they murdered them all. I'm just like Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:16

So it's kind of like that that really is sticks in your craw, doesn't it? A little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:22

It's a very annoying movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:23

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:24

No, it's interesting what you said about how now that when we've been doing this, you kind of re when you're watching something, you realize maybe what the what one of the three of us might think about it. Um I mean I've known Willie 25 years, so I pretty much know I mean we pretty much know each other, I think, and what we're gonna like and dislike. I mean there's variations on things, but we're always finishing each other's sentences. No. Um yeah, but but I think I'm getting a read on what you like too. And that's kind of the fun thing about it, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:00

So it's it's fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:02

Okay. So again, my movie wasn't a hit. Uh, and that's that's totally fine. I'll get friends someday who actually like me and the things that I like.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:13

We like you. Like you, right? Just kidding.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:18

All right, let's talk about this other fucking movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:21

All right. Um, my movie that I chose was The Picture of Dorian Gray from 1945, based on the 1891 novel by Oscar Wilde. Um, controversial novel, even back in the day. Um, Oscar Wilde was a pretty controversial character. He went to prison for sodomy, believe it or not. He was pretty much an a gay man who was not shy about it. Um and this is his only novel. He was pretty much a playwright, um, other than that. Uh, and it pretty much is a autobiography, I guess you could say, about Oscar Wilde's life and his beliefs. But basically the story is um Dorian Gray has a picture painted of him by a lifelong friend. Um, he makes a wish to kind of be youthful forever. And uh basically that's what happens. Um, I think everybody knows the story of this of this literature, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:33

Well, I was under the impression that um uh the the painting aged. Well, yeah, yeah. I didn't I didn't realize that the painting reflected his sins in a grotesque way.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:45

Yeah, basically so yeah, Dorian has his painting done of him. He keeps it locked away because as time goes on, he does not age, but the picture represents all his sins and it ages. So he's kind of immune to all his shenanigans. Um Okay, the novel, which I read back in college, uh is very more open about the homosexual homosexuality going on. Um, and they of course had to tone it down for the 1945 film because of the haze code of the time. But there's still a lot of subtext in this movie that totally is there if you if you're ready to see it. I don't even know if I think it's just there. Um ready or not? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:43

Can we talk? Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I didn't see a ton of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:48

Okay. Um because I'm familiar with the novel, and there's so much there, I kind of read into it a little bit into the movie as well. But and I I realize we're not talking about the novel, but the movie, so that's what I'll talk about. But okay, you have this one character, Lord Henry, played by George Sanders, who is basically a devil on the shoulder character. Um, he believes in hedonism, giving into earthly pleasures, and embracing hates women too. He does, yeah. I mean, yeah, there's so much dialogue, just kind of bad mouthing women.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:32

Even though he's married, like he has a wife, supposedly, right? But we never no, she goes to the dinner party. Does she? She goes to one of the dinner parties.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:42

Okay, yeah. She is beard, maybe. Yeah. Um, but this movie is kind of dripping with dandies. I mean, everybody seems like they're a dandy in this movie. Dripping with dandies. Um, but yeah, so the character of Dorian Gray becomes influenced by Lord Henry, and we never really see what Dorian's sins are. They're alluded to in narration, pretty much, because they couldn't really show anything. But he he never gets married. He has a couple of female relationships, um, and one of the most wickedly sinister aspects is what happens to uh Sybil Vane, played by Angela Lansbury, where he tells Lord Henry, I want to marry her. Lord Henry says, like, oh, why don't you test her by telling her, Um, will you spend the night? And if she's a virtuous woman, she won't. And you know, if she does stay the night, then you know uh she's not a virtuous lady. Um, she agrees to stay the night, and then basically uh Dorian Gray tells her to get out and never wants to see her again, which leads to tragic uh consequences. Um, that's just like so wickedly sinister of a move.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:01

Um Well, the letter that he wrote her too was just like, dude, fucking tone it down. He was just like, I hate you, I never want to see you again, you're a slut.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:10

Yeah, and I had seen this film a couple times before, and when I watched it again for this re-watching, I kind of like loved it. I also listened to the audio commentary, which Angela Lansbury, who plays Sybil Vane, helped do the commentary for. Um, and the character of Dorian Gray, played by Heard Hatfield, I kind of loved his performance. It's so cold and icy and reserved. Uh, very opposite to the character in the novel who's very flamboyant. Oh, really? Yeah, the character in the novel is very he's blonde, blue-eyed, and just like a flamboyant gay man. And this portrayal is completely the opposite of that. Because he almost feels like he's soulless from the beginning, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:00

Yeah, he doesn't have a lot of personality or he almost seems to be a sponge. He just is like absorbing the people around him and being so easily influenced by the people around him.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:12

Yeah, and the one thing about the film I don't really like or don't buy is the uh the niece character played by Donna Reed, who comes back and falls in love with uh Dorian, and that character was added for the film.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:30

Gladys.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:31

Gladys, that was added for the film. Okay, because it's mainly the painter uh who is infatuated and in love with Dorian.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:41

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:41

But they had to edit they had to cut that out of the movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:44

What was his name? Um Basil. Basil, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:50

Yeah, yeah. So but yeah, so like a lot of like he goes off to like supposedly opium dens and all these types of things, like, but they never really say what he's doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:03

Also, why why were all of the women like afraid of him? Through narration later when they're talking about his sins, they talk about how all of the women are afraid of him.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:16

Because he has a reputation, but they never really say what it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:20

Like what is his reputation?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:22

It it's based kind of like in the book, they just or they have it's done through narration, like Sir Cedric Hardrick does the narration, he's kind of uncredited for doing it, um, to kind of see what he's been doing, but we never really know. It's kind of like what your mind thinks he's right doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:40

Because I thought he was just going to um sassys and stuff. Um so that like weird little shock that he would spend a lot of time in, I thought was maybe like a prostitution place, and that he would go up the stairs to disappear. I thought maybe he was like going to a prostitute, or maybe like later I was like, well, what if it was male prostitutes, you know? And then like I don't know, it was just it was very vague. And I was like, why is he so evil? I mean, he was like not a great guy, but when they reveal the painting later after he's been alive for or you know, the like the paintings existed for like 30 or 40 years at that point. Um, he looked like he just had syphilis everywhere. And he's got blood on his hands. Yeah, because he murdered his but his mouth, it looked like it was just like so much syphilis around his his lips and his mouth.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:37

He was just like full of warts and I think it's just to represent his moral decay. Yeah, basically. But okay, crazy. I rambled on too much.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:46

Yeah, no, uh, what was uh the actor who played Dorian again? Uh Heard Hatfield. Has what uh has he did has he done much much else or had he done much else?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:55

He you know, this was one of his very first roles, and he was kind of typecast. Um Angela Lansbury said she talked to him later because she was lifelong friends with him, kind of like Anthony Perkins was. Okay. Where his career did not take off because of this one role, kind of tarnished people's image.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:13

He said, Um, there is a quote that he says, Um, you know, I was never a great beauty in gray, and I never understood why I got the part and have spent my career regretting it.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

Damn.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:27

Yeah, he's an interesting presence for sure. Uh even before he he turns to the dark side, and I'm still kind of like, I can't really tell what's going on in his face. But uh I got very Dracula vibes from him for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:40

I like the way they shoot him. They do kind of like a lot of halo light sometimes. Uh the way they would shoot maybe a female in nineteen twenties, thirties movies, the kind of the way they shoot him.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:53

Yeah, his face is very um there's not a lot of character to it, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

Yeah. Well the director, um and this is mentioned in the commentary about the director was very strict about I don't like barely move your lips when you talk. Just like no lines.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:15

And does that uh Egyptian cat statue figure into the novel or is that for the movie?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:20

I think that is in the that is in the novel as well. Though not as much of a presence. Okay. Because it's in the the movie, then it's in the painting as well. It's like it's right. And then it's in his house. Yeah, he has it in his house.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:35

Very heavily implied that that's what grants his wish.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:39

Yeah, because George Sanders has one line where he mentions I can't remember the name of the Egyptian god that that is like one of 718 Egyptian gods. Yeah, yeah, that will grant, you know. But of course, you know, there's very just like we were talking obsession about be careful what you wish for, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:00

Yeah, yeah. I just find it interesting that like they still try to make a very kind of Christian morality tale out of it when you it's a uh apparently a world where Egyptian occultism is real. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:13

So did you uh I really liked it a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:16

For sure. Um, we saw three movies with fucking amazing cinematography, I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:21

But uh it won the Oscar for best cinematography for black and white films the year it came out.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:26

Yeah, it's gorgeously shot.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:28

So yeah, Angela Lansbury was fucking gorgeous in that too. I had never seen her in such a young role before. That was one of her first roles down in Gaslight.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:38

A bit of a Betty Davis quality almost.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:40

Yeah, totally. Uh I could I could see like where silent film actress, you know, like she still had kind of a silent film actress like look to her, um, even though it was a 1940s film. Um and George Sanders, who plays Lord Henry, I loved his character so much. Like his dialogue, he was so fast with delivering the dialogue, and it was so funny and insightful. Um, you know, in a diabolical way, because he was so hedonistic.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:14

Um I mean, he's an asshole.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:16

Yeah, and he hated he obviously hated women um and had nothing to say, uh, nothing good to say about them. That said, I loved his dialogue so much and I loved his um performance. Uh so I started looking up other George Sanders movies to to you know maybe watch. And that was when I discovered that um in 1972 he committed suicide. Um, so he left behind a suicide note saying, Yeah, dear world, I am leaving because I am bored. I have lived long enough. I am leaving you and your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck. Damn.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:54

That was right at shortly after he made um Psychomania.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:59

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:00

Because he's in Psychomania.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:02

I did not know that.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:03

And he's in one of my favorite 60s horror movies, Village of the Damned.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:07

I saw that. Um yeah, yeah, he is a great character, and a lot of that dialogue is lifted from the novel.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:15

Okay. I might have to read the novel because I fucking I was just like, oh shit, I love how this is written.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:22

Um, but I didn't love the movie. I honestly it was um it was a little too fucking long. Um, and I um I don't know, it just like all of the men and were just horrible men, you know. So you're just watching all of these guys, except for um Basil. Yeah, he was good. He has a conscious he was a good man. And that um I don't remember who he was, but at the dinner of that big guy who um stayed for the yeah, yeah, the uh he was in like the the parliament or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was he was like um very offended by um by Lord Henry, which uh was practically the only person who was. Even some of the women were just like, oh, he's so funny. Even as he was like insulting them to their favorite.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:15

They just didn't really take him seriously. Okay, I don't think they they kind of said, like, oh, he's just rambling on one of his rants again or whatever. But he's a lord, so he must have some important job. Sure, a job, I guess. Yeah, nobody has any jobs in in that movie, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:31

Yeah. What are they doing? Um I'm I realized um when I was watching Knife and Heart that our first triple feature that we did, um, you picked a really old long movie. So um Baby Jane. The Baby Jane movie was like two hours long. I picked a Giallo. Then you picked another you picked another foreign language Giallo Willie.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:57

And I don't I don't and then I picked another like kind of surface level Well, it's funny when we did this, I was thinking like, oh, I can't pick another old black and white movie, Heather's gonna kill me. But then I'm like, I don't want to pick Rocky Horror Picture show. That's just too too obvious. That would have been fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:15

Um no, I mean I love I love being and I'm gonna say forced, even though I don't mean forced. I I love having to watch, you know, a long black and white movie because I do enjoy them a lot. I just don't watch them on my own time. So having it so it's like homework. Yeah. I like the homework, you know, uh, of it. Um and the same with, you know, a um a foreign language two-hour movie. Um, I do enjoy them, but I'm not gonna like pick it by myself, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:48

So well, I think like one thing with older movies, and I think and by older movies, I mean anything from the 1970s backwards. Pacing is a different issue back. I mean modern audiences are trained because of what they used to say, remember MTV changed people's things, and then now it's TikTok or whatever. But movies are paced completely different now compared to back then. It's like a now you have to have something happen like every six minutes or audiences get bored.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:20

Um I'm not saying that's you.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:23

I just think like that's it's not not me, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:25

But I do think like okay, I admit that uh Dorian Gray is a little bit too long, and I think it's because of this forced character of the niece coming in there. It's like this is like I was like, because nobody gives a crap about her.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:40

Yeah, I did like her performance though, she was lovely.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:45

Yeah. Fine. No, I mean, sure, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:48

Um not as good as Angela Lansbury's no, I mean that was character.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:52

And that song Angela Lansbury sings.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:55

Okay. I have over and over again over and over again. I did take issue with the fucking yellow bird song. My god. I was just like, it was lovely to listen to it the first time, and then within the the same ten minutes, she sings it like twice more, and then you hear it again like three or four more times, and the I'm like fucking goddamn this goddamn bird. Let this bird out of its cage and move on.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:18

I know it was a gimmick for the time, but I like the fact that every time you see the painting it's in color and then everything else is in black and white. I think it's kind of cool. It is cool. Um, the movie really should have been called The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Or they call it the picture. I don't know. I guess it's a picture, but for some reason it seems like portrait would have been better. Yeah. It does seem like the more appropriate word. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:42

But that was the name of the novel too, though, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:45

Yeah, the picture of Dorian Gray. And I know the word decadence is brought up kind of in the movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:53

The word decadence?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:54

Yeah, it's brought up a few times by characters. Okay. Um and I had read that decadence was a word that um was kind of a code word for homosexuality, like back in Victorian times.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:10

What did it mean? That isn't decadence just like um debauchery or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:17

Yeah, but I heard like it was one of the words that like there were code words.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:22

Decadent dandy.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:24

Like, I also heard that because Oscar Wilde wrote the play, um what's the uh something with Ernest? And earnest is a word for a code word for being a gay man in Victorian times.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:45

Wow. I need a whole new dictionary to figure it out. Yeah. Well, that was fun. Uh I like our triple features. It definitely. I will try to pick. You don't have to try more suited to the page.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:01

Pick whatever you want to pick. This is supposed to be pick whatever we want to pick. I mean, I really didn't. I don't want like our opinions about to be like, oh my god, they're not gonna like this. I'm not gonna pick it up.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:14

I'm not even opposed to like I I kind of like that little like random element of you picking a movie that none of us had seen.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:20

Yeah, you know, like oh, with body cam?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:23

I think one time we should all do that. Like we all just all three of us pick a movie. I'm down. Let's do that we haven't seen. Yeah. Okay, we'll do that next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:33

Do wait, if you pick a movie. But if you pick a movie that I if that one of us seen, you have to pick a different movie. Like none of us can have see seen any of the movies. Sure. That could be fun. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:45

I will I will try very hard to pick a shorter movie next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:48

Don't worry about it. I I'm just giving shit because my attention span is that. I understand. Uh you multiple millennials with your TikToks. I'm not a millennial.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:59

Methinks that doth protest too much.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:05

All right. Um, yeah, I think that's it for us tonight. Um, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:11

I think so. I think I'm spent. Yeah. I'll maybe uh I'll just tack on this. Is still queer horror adjacent, but I caught the pilot of uh the Vampireless Stat last night, and it's it's violent, trashy fun. It's it's fun in a way that uh the interview with the vampire season was not fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:28

But this is gonna be a blast.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:30

Is it um is it period piece or uh they've updated it.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:35

Okay. Yeah. And uh vampires are thriving in the Trump era, apparently.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:39

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:40

Yeah, I've always been it's in my cue to watch the interview with the vampire series, but I guess you don't like it. Oh, I do.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:47

It's it's good. It's just uh it's not as it's not very sexy, I guess. Oh, okay. It's not not sexy, but the vibe is a little bit more, you know, just very toxic domestic abusey kind of relationship.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:01

Do you have to watch that to watch the Lestat one? Are they connected in any way?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:06

They are I mean, like one is told from one half of that couple's point of view, and the other one is told from Lestat's. So they they vary very they vary in tone. I wonder have you not read the books?

SPEAKER_03 1:39:20

It's Louie, right? Louis the Louis the from that and then Lestat's from because that's how the novels go. Okay. What? You don't like vampires?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:30

They're okay. You know, it's like it's it's not my favorite subgenre. Like I've I've obviously watched a lot of vampire movies um and and such, but uh they are not my go-to, so I have not read the books or um yeah. I mean, I watched an interview with a vampire, so I know the movie, but so you're fine watching Vampire with Stat.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:55

That's yeah, okay. That's the condensed version of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:58

Okay, yeah. Because I like trashy fun. That's like my middle name.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:05

I mean, I do like my artsy trauma core, but I like trashy fun too. Uh what's it streaming on? I I loosen up sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:11

Uh-huh. What's it streaming on?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:13

Uh AMC Plus.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:14

Okay. Yeah. Alright, kids.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:18

Yeah, I'm spent. Yeah. Yep. Thanks for listening, everybody. Indeed. Give us a review, please, on one of the one of the sites where we're at. Yeah. Wherever those are. You know it. We like hearing from wherever you found us.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:32

If you found us, in the woods, you can't do it.