Sinuous Scilops aims to drag you down into the very same muck, filled with sexual deviancy and decayed morality.
When you look at the state of the world around you, and you realize how little time you have left to be happy, do you really want to waste that time you have left listening to cinema, science?
We become almost absorbed in it.
And I want to see it burned, I want to see it after the face of the earth.
Yeah, it's amazing, but I think parents have to really pay more attention to what these kids are listening to.
How dare you?
Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of Cinema PsyOps.
I'm your host, Cort, the guy that is so super stoked, he can't stop screaming hello at the top of his lungs, despite the fact that he's super excited to have his co-host from the, hello, this is The Doomed Show, Richard.
I thought for a second, you'd like turn into the DTX, like stereo tester thing.
I was like, oh crap, my speaker's gonna get blown.
Yeah, Matt and I have been joking that people are gonna think that I'm just looping it, that it's not actually me doing it.
And I'm like, that's fine.
I'll bring them on the line with me and I'll somehow share a camera.
Demonstrate.
And I will do it on video.
And I will let them see that it is something that I am capable of doing, yes.
Fuck it, we're doing it live.
Fuck it.
We're doing it live, fuck it.
One thing that you haven't been doing live a lot lately, that's a segue right there.
That's how you do professional podcasting.
But one thing that you have, hello, this is The Doomed Show.
It's on a hiatus and both you and Brad are scratching that podcast itch over here at the CinemaPsyOps.
Oh my God.
Well, he told me about the nooks and crannies that he got into.
And I was like, oh, my turn.
No, I just needed a break between writing books and fricking being in a band and making other music and being crazy.
I was like, what is the one thing that's going to drive me over the edge?
And it was podcast editing.
And I don't produce a show because to me, producing means I pay other people to do it.
I just make a show and I was losing my damn mind.
Like so.
To 2023, I took off, but we're coming back next year.
We're coming back hot.
It took me a lot of time to realize that the amount of obsessive editing that I do is more than enough for a hobby level podcast, because I'm not being paid to do it.
This is what I do from fun and everything like that.
And so the little things that come up and the things that normally bug me, I just tell myself, well, that blows.
Well, we'll fix that for next week.
This is just a hobby.
And yet everything that I think is the most egregious piece of shit episode I have put out yet with the most noise, the most awful this and the worst editing and the most flubs and the most big-ass bullshit and me just mispronouncing words and being upset about it, like I get zero response from literally shouting into the void.
And occasionally we get a little something back and we're not the norm there.
I mean, podcasting is such a black hole of an endeavor.
It's like it's dealing with an AI that you only get the response back, but yet the AI is like snobby and won't respond, or at least busy doing other things and won't respond.
And you never know who's listening.
You never know.
You see your stats and you're like, hold on, hold on.
This has 400 downloads.
That can't be true because I should have 400 angry emails demanding that we stop making this garbage show.
I've never understood.
I always thought that Potamatic was just feeding me a line with all the stats.
There's no way people are hearing this, but people are listening.
It's just people don't write in.
And I used to be really obsessed with the numbers.
That's something I sort of sorely miss now because it was a metric of me knowing how my show worked.
I could rank myself depending upon the other shows that are on Legion Network, and I could kind of see that I'm doing at least as good as this show.
I'm getting at least as many downloads as this show, which is really all I cared about.
And yeah, there's a couple of times when I'm like, hey, I'm getting the most right now.
Yeah.
And that felt really good, but it was also like, you know what?
I'm still going to do the show no matter who's listening to it.
And since Bo retired, we have not been getting numbers, not for any particular reason other than we just haven't.
And like, I'm even fucking happier about it because what little feedback I do get.
And thank you, everyone, that does reach out.
I mean, the people that do reach out, they're so wonderful and kind.
And I've yet to have someone take the time to reach out and not have a bunch of wonderful things to say, you know, or supportive things to say, or just even thanking me just for doing the show to give them something to look forward to every week.
You know, that's the shit that I love.
And I just wish people would...
They used to do that, right?
When podcasting first started, it was like emails and voicemails, and shows would be like three hours of just feedback from listeners practically, you know, for some of the bigger shows.
And now it's like crickets every time you say something into the void, and you never know what's working and what's not.
So you might as well do it for yourself.
And if it's causing you stress, sure, dude, stop, stop for a while, take a break.
You know, Cinema PsyOps, you have a vision, you have a singular like style.
Your show has a fricking unique style.
And that is like one thing that I hope that we curated over at The Doomed Show is a style.
And I kind of, I want to break it in a way and try something new.
Cause like Jeffrey, our cohost over at Hello!, This is The Doomed Show, he has a new show called Super Chillers.
And it drives me nuts because it's so good.
I'm so mad at him for making a show that is unique and fun.
And it's like he and his cohost play games and they do all this crazy shit.
And it's just like, it's great.
And it's of course, it's not horror movies.
It's YA horror novels.
And that is a world that I knew of, but knew nothing about.
So now they've got me reading this craziness is written for teenagers.
So are we talking like Christopher Pike or?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
RL.
Stine or as they call him Raspberry Lemonade Stine.
Nice.
But like, yeah, it's just so, I love that.
I mean, when people come back to me and be like, I miss Lambava, you know, AKA Lamberto Bava, or they're like, you know, that they miss Question Time with Brad or something like that.
I'm like, that's how you know it's working.
Like when people know your opinion, that you said about a film six years ago, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You don't like that.
You don't like that movie that much.
Wait, did you ever come around?
Did you ever rewatch that?
And I'm like, how, what?
That's when you know you've made it.
It's like the numbers from Beau were amazing, and the work he did in the background for Legion was just like stunning.
And not only would I have retired from doing that, if I was doing that, my head would have exploded.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm sure that there's a way to aggregate the numbers and everything like that.
And I write APIs for a living, that's what I do.
So that's something I'm going to be looking into.
That maybe there's an easier way to scrape those numbers and get the returns back and just like do a quick command or something, you know, to have it done so that we don't even have to do it anymore.
It just be like an automated thing.
I'll scrape your numbers.
But like the thing that I was going to say, and the thing that weirds me out the most about podcasting is some kind of weird out of context thing that Matt and I say becomes a clip.
And then the clips become legendary.
And then the clips usurp everything else about the show.
And now like people are quoting clips of us saying horrible things, taking out of context.
And I'm like, what have I done to society?
What is wrong with this picture?
You know, Doomed Show, we don't do your numbers, but there's over 250 moments of me saying some dumb shit that I know will haunt me someday.
Well, and I have gone back and I have listened to the old episodes just to kind of like, man, I remember like, let's say the Evil Dead one, when we went to the cabin and I was doing all of those sketches.
And really that's when I was burning out, when I was trying to edit all these sketches every week and get everything done once a week and doing all these really involved like productions and just going nuts, you know, and I would burn out.
I mean, hell, that's probably what burned Helming out the first time was all that production work that they had to do.
God, yes.
Yeah, and so I would go back and I would listen to some of these things.
And I'm like, I thought this was funny, you know?
And like, there's some edgy humor things that I try to pull off in earlier episodes.
And I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
Like, it's like, it's like nine years ago.
And I'm like, okay, well, at least I've grown as a person.
But when I listened to that stuff back then, I'm like, you're a dick, dude.
I fucking hate you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know, I'm scared.
I'm scared to go back.
I listen to The Doomed Show constantly, because, you know, I always say, I made the show for me first, and then also the co-hosts and then the audience, unfortunately, was last, which is not, it's not actually true.
Of course not.
But I make the show and I painstakingly, you know, would spend eight hours per episode cleaning up the show, because I wanted to listen to it later and not hear anything that would annoy me.
Like I had to meet my standards, which are not human.
So I'm like trying to figure out how to come back to Doomed Show 2024 and leave all that shit behind and just record, make sure it sounds okay, put it out, move on with my life.
And I'll listen to it when I'm in my seventies, you know, like, I have my diggity odd days of podcasting.
We're so fun.
Well, I can tell you the best way to avoid noise is to record using Zoom.
It has some of the best audio software for compression and limiting and removing noise and like noise suppression in the background.
And it's specifically for this, for video conferencing, but the audio in it is a component that we're interested in.
And I've gotten the subscription to Pro and I haven't really looked back.
I've been trying to find ways to get my audio specifically recorded as best as possible directly to the computer.
And there's been a couple of times when I've toyed with getting rid of all of my equipment that I so painstakingly taken care of and repaired and brought back from the dead in some cases where I'll buy a broken one and fix it and then it'll break again.
And a lot of people, a lot of people compliment your scarred up equipment.
It's just, I don't know, I grew up around a dude, like one of my closest lifelong friends, fathers, was a engineer.
Well, actually was a retired engineer now, but he still contracts out every now and then to the places he used to work.
He was a broadcast engineer, so he took care of TV stations and radio stations.
And basically within like a, I don't know, like 45 to two hour driving radius, I think, is what, like all the towers that he would go to.
So this dude would be like dead of winter, climbing radio towers and working on them in the winter on a mountaintop by himself, you know?
And so he would take me into the studio, he would show me the equipment.
He had all this leftover equipment that was in his house that we would scavenge and pull apart and build amplifiers and things for the bands that we were in.
This guy and myself and then his son would do this stuff together and do all of these kinds of things.
And I just got really into this old radio equipment and he had a console for an old radio station in the play, like they have like this little shop that they converted and put like a pool table in.
And in the corner where the shop is, they put in this giant console.
That's like this old style radio show console.
Like it had the pots that turn left and right, like little dials instead of sliders for volume.
It's like all tube and everything like that, that he had lovingly restored.
I mean, like repainted, patched the metalwork on it, everything, replaced the screws, used vintage tubes in it and everything, all the shit that he needed to do, because it came with an amp.
Like it was just enough to be able to amplify it to pump the signal out for microphones and stuff.
It had like a microphone preamp that was stereo, like for two mics.
And he was using that for left and right channels to play his hi-fi phonograph into another tube amp that was like a broadcast amp kind of thing that he had that he modified.
And it just like all the speakers in the shop and everything.
And I just loved that sound.
And I became obsessed with that sound from all that tube stuff and messing with these dials and like just screwing around with the audio and getting the better sound.
Plus being in a band makes you obsessed with sound and mixing.
And just like the slightest change in a waveform is like a musician's joy, whether it's modulation or phasing or distortion.
And so like you start learning about all these different techniques.
And of course, I'm gonna end up doing podcasting when I can't play guitar well enough to be in a band.
Of course.
Or end up in radio, you know.
So you're gonna have a part of that in your life because of that.
Oh yeah, yeah.
And also I have a face for podcasting because I definitely don't even have the face for radio.
It's not even good enough for that.
I don't know.
I've always said kissable court.
Call you the smoocher.
Yeah, but that's in the private times, at the fuzzy fun times.
I film all that stuff anyway.
Not without my consent, you know.
Anyway, maybe we should stop flirting and start talking about the movie that we're gonna talk about tonight.
So when I kind of approached you at doing the show here, I was like, do you wanna do a sort of defense of, and we'll talk about something that may be not be as well known in a certain genre of horror or something, or well liked, or coming to the defense of, because I tried that format with Brad for Lust for a Vampire, and I wanted to find a way to look at the film outside the context of whatever disappointments I may or may not have had in it.
And that film I liked just because of the boobies.
So I was good there, so I was like, yeah, let's cover it, and I like it just because of that.
But I ended up seeing the things that he found that he really enjoyed that made it his favorite film, and I wanted to kind of see if we could recreate that.
And so I threw out a name of a bunch of different slashers that I thought would be fun to champion, and you were like, nah, none of those.
I was like, all right, cool.
Well, then I was like, here's some that I haven't seen, but they're super rare and nobody ever talks about them.
Do you think you could kind of champion any of these?
And I threw out a couple more titles and you went, Death Screams, yeah, let's do that one.
And so I'm curious, like with the context of that conversation, like what about Death Screams appealed to you the most in that frame?
I held off watching Death Screams because right when I got into like downloading movies and I was trying to get all these slashers that I did not rent when I was a kid, either because I'd never heard of them or my Blockbuster, whatever, Blobby Blue didn't have them.
And I found a copy of Death Screams.
And before I even watched it, every review was the same.
It's unwatchable, it's too dark, it's unwatchable, it's too dark, you can't see it.
And so I was like, all right, let's just, and I started playing it, and the first six, seven minutes of the movie is completely unwatchable from that old tape.
And I just like, okay, delete.
I deleted that file and tucked away Death Screams in the back of my head and waited for it to just finally get the love it would deserve on DVD.
That never happened.
And then finally, Arrow was like, we got this.
And I was like, I pre-ordered stuff and I never pre-order shit because every time I pre-order, something goes horrifically wrong at the factory or the artwork gets screwed up or whatever.
And so whenever a movie is delayed, go ahead and message me because I probably pre-ordered it because I'm causing chaos.
And I pre-ordered Death Screams and it ended up exceeding my expectations.
And it's like, I mean, aside from having one of my favorite slip covers that Aero has done, which I don't know if you got, if you were able to snag the one with the slip cover or not.
Nope, didn't get it unfortunately.
It is, oh my God.
So it's a woman screaming and it's a cutout.
So it's got the nice cutout and then they have the artwork.
And a lot of times I will get a Blu-ray and nerdily switch out.
Like if they have the reversible cover, I'll put the OG artwork on there, because I always prefer the original artwork.
No offense to the people who draw wonderful covers for Blu-rays, but I usually just want the original art.
But this artwork that they did for this Death Screams, I like it better than the original poster.
It is so cool.
The lady hanging upside down with her severed head.
And then you've got this extra bonus with the slip cover, with the screaming mouth.
You're looking at her through a screaming mouth.
It's really badass.
Oh wow, that's super cool.
Yeah, I came to it way too late for that.
Cause I literally just did a quick search for looking for, cause we wanted to do Slashers, because both of us pretty much, I think, fell backwards into horror by becoming obsessed with Slashers at a very early age.
And just never really came out of that.
And that's a good realm to really kind of talk about it, because I don't know anybody else that literally will watch any movie just because it's a Slasher, and then decide whether or not they like it afterwards.
Oh man, I have kicked very few Slashers, especially 80s Slashers out of bed for eating crackers.
My list of Slashers I don't like is tiny.
It is so like, oh my God, it's so hard to fuck up an 80s Slasher for my personal tastes.
Yeah, and that's kind of where I think is a great place to kind of start the review and just dig in because we've basically both confessed to being lifelong Slasher fanatics.
And I think it was just the most accessible and it was what I thought horror was because that's just what horror was when we were growing up in the 80s, right?
And then like mid to late 80s, that's just what everybody thought horror was.
Like if you told someone that you liked a horror movie, but you meant a ghost story, they were like, oh, who's the killer?
You're like, no, God damn it.
Like, no, it's zombies this time, right?
No, fuck, it's Satan.
God damn it, it's Satan's baby this time.
You know, but yeah, that's kind of how it was.
People just automatically assumed it was just a slasher because that became ubiquitous to horror.
And that's a great lens to kind of do the discussion for the movie Night Scream.
So this particular episode for the pirate radio, Edit Music, I kind of got a little lazy.
And fell backwards into lyrics that actually fit the content of the film.
So I actually just picked songs that had either the word scream in the title, or screaming, or talking about hearing screaming.
And they all work like really well.
So if you pay attention to the lyrics, there's some stuff that matches to the content of the film perfectly for our pirate radio edit.
I'm super stoked.
Up first is Blitz with the song Scream.
But up first is the Legion Patreon ad.
So you'll have to hear it right after this.
This will keep you quiet.
Oh, hi there.
I didn't see you.
You called me cutting a new show.
I'm Bo Ransdell and I'm one of the many creators you can find on Legion Podcasts.
I said quiet.
My fellow podcasters and I work hard to bring you the best in horror podcasting, but that comes at a cost.
Not that, but also yes.
No, what I'm getting at is that there are server costs, costs for good microphones and software for editing, all the things that make our shows fun to listen to.
And you can help.
If you're enjoying the shows on legionpodcasts.com or in the Legion Network available on iTunes and Stitcher, just about anywhere you can download a podcast really, you can help us out and get a little something for your trouble at patreon.com forward slash Legion Podcasts.
For just two bucks a month, you get a pair of movie commentaries exclusive to Patreon.
And for $5, you can also join us for a monthly screening of a movie.
All of that available on patreon.com/LegionPodcasts
We appreciate it and thank you for listening.
Now, back to the cutting room.
All right, so if you could hear the lyrics and you understood them, if you are one of the folks that can do it, you will see there are some moments in there, like when he does the chorus of Scream and Shout Until You Die.
That fits pretty well with the content of the film.
Man, that song was great.
Blitz is pretty awesome.
They're a pretty underplayed band, I think.
They go into sort of like the psychobilly punk and rockabilly all over the place.
So check them out, folks.
I highly recommend them.
All right, so let's dive in to Death Screams.
The first 20 minutes.
Film opens on a moonlit night and transitions into a set of train tracks, then pans across the forest where a couple are getting after it on a motorcycle.
That's some amazing balance, by the way.
There is dialogue and I just saw tits, so thank you, Mooby, and here's our first clip.
Oh, come on.
Yes, but tell me you love me.
Oh, thank you.
Oh, oh no, Ted, you promised.
It's not that.
That damn thing got caught in my hipper.
Geez, that hurts.
This was one of your better ideas.
Anyway, besides, I'm getting cold.
Oh, please, Angie, please.
The mill freight runs over this thing at 10 o'clock tonight.
And if we time it out right, I promise, I can make this a night that you won't forget for the rest of your life.
Yes, but tell me you love me.
I love you, I love you.
It's coming, it's coming.
So at the end of the clip, the thing that's coming is supposedly a train above them, or it might be the guy at the same time.
He may have been rushing his plan there.
I'm guessing that he wanted to orgasm as the train went overhead to help with the vibrations underneath them and make it feel better.
Maybe, I don't know what the plan is, but that's kind of what I think he wanted to do.
Dude, you're so sheltered, man.
When's the last time you had a traingasm, bro?
I just don't find that very interesting.
That's not my kink, to have a train go over me.
I'm sure twisting your radio dials gets you hot, buddy.
It does.
I like to tune in Tokyo, if you know what I'm saying.
So the train above them is going overhead, and then in a hard cut for no discernible reason, the couple now has a wire wrapped around both of their necks together, and they're being choked or constricted in such an amount of force that they both are now spitting up blood while the train goes overhead.
I don't understand exactly how that happened or what happened because a moment before they cut, both their arms were up in the air, like they're holding on to each other, and she's holding on to his head, so there's arms in the way to where they wouldn't get over the throats completely.
And they don't show anyone sneaking up on them, it's just all of a sudden there's a wire there, and we just have to assume that the killer was the camera moving around.
I don't know, that's what they did.
I mean, I like a movie that opens with two utterly baffling choices, motorcycle sex, oh, three, motorcycle sex, traingasm, and then the, wait, how would you even die from that?
That would just be really annoying.
I'm not sure what happens, but they are definitely dead, and then their bodies are pushed, motorcycle and all, into the water as they sink in slow motion.
Yeah.
So while they're sinking in a super slow motion, the title card pops up with lots of opening credits.
I didn't time it, but it was long enough for me to type all of this that I am currently saying and spell check it after pausing that clip and preparing to do the next one.
Also, could have checked my email too, I think.
Well, this is funny because at the end of the movie, too, the credits roll real slow because they were having trouble making a feature length here.
And just when I thought I wouldn't have enough time to type this after checking my email, I actually did have enough time in the credits.
The opening credits continue just a little bit longer, and holy shit, was that an overture on the soundtrack during all of this?
What the fuck is going on?
The music in this movie is outrageous.
Like, some typical synthesizer bits will happen later, but everything else in this movie score has got like weird TV movie-like vibes to it.
Like, they borrowed the composer from like Magnum PI or something.
I don't know, man, this music's wild.
Yeah, it gets really weird and bombastic, and it makes me wonder if it is like a broadcast library that they just got the rights to to be able to use in their film or whatever.
Like, if it is just a library drop or if they didn't have enough money to finish the score, so they went synthesizer with it because that happened sometimes in movies of this era.
It's just strange.
I don't know why, but that's just how it ended up working.
It mixes together well, and it doesn't really like the score is doing its job in that you're not noticing it as much when it's not doing the bombastic craziness that doesn't quite fit.
But the synthesizer stuff actually works for what it is when it happens.
All right, so the opening credits finally end, and we see an idyllic suburb or small town or something along those lines.
As we end that sequence of going through that town and a general store and some dialogue, you should know the rules of this show by now, folks.
Dialogue equals clip.
Hey, here.
Hey, Orsi.
Avery, I don't know where the hell he is, but if you find him, you can tell him for me he's fired.
Now, Arch, you know, if Ted's run off with that girl, he's gonna be needing a job in this factory.
Old pal, you be the good Samaritan.
That ain't my problem.
As for me, he's fired.
What's the matter with you, boy?
You wanna go blind?
Silly, can't you do anything right today?
Arch, you're gonna have to watch that stuff over there.
Avery, forget everything I just said.
You find that boy, tell him to get his ass back here on Monday.
You just wouldn't believe what I gotta put up with in this place.
Oh, Arch, you got a big old heart there.
You know what?
Just a big old heart.
Get the hell out of here, Avery.
All right, lots of unpacking that clip, and it's too bad people won't hear Richard laughing in the background while it's playing, because I always replace this audio later, but I love how you're giggling at certain points.
I mean, sorry, it's just like every scene in this movie is loaded with crazy shit.
Yeah, they made some really weird choices in this film, for sure.
One of them being during the clip, the pig catches a kid trying to steal a hustler and then sneaks a peek at it.
After telling him he will go blind, that was one of the things you were giggling at.
The clip ends and the film cuts to a softball practice with spectators for some reason, and it is being spied on by a strange-looking dude in a conductor hat who is all kinds of sus and runs away like a weirdo, dropping it and then coming back to get it, while he is disgust in this clip.
Okay, give me the bad news.
Only five balls, two bats, and one base.
One base?
Now who the hell would want one base?
I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.
Casey?
Oh, I don't think Casey would do that.
He sure runs like a bat out of hell.
Well, those are the hazards of spring practice.
All in all, it wasn't a bad year.
What's with this year stuff?
It's only been two weeks.
Just seems like a year.
I don't know.
I'm gonna kinda miss it.
Yeah, me too, like jock itch.
Crude, Bob, really crude.
What do you say I treat my two favorite assistants to a beer?
You get to carry the bag, though.
First one to the car gets two beers.
No, we'll make out all right.
We have before and we will again.
Now that reminds me, are you working tomorrow?
Get Bula, the carnival's coming in tomorrow.
I take it that means you're not gonna be here.
Look, it's not my day and besides...
Just asking.
I mean, the fact that we're gonna have a crowd coming out our kazoo.
Okay, we'll make out.
$2.75.
Walter, what's the word?
You know how kids are.
I know, but I've just never been away from home that much.
Well, I'll be there to take care of you.
Sure, you're just gonna love having to babysit me.
That wasn't exactly what I had in mind.
You know, I wish our break was just beginning instead of ending.
Maybe I would have spent more time thinking about school than just having fun.
Fun?
Are you crazy?
That was slave labor.
Snotty-nosed little kids plotting against us, crazy Casey stealing bases, and you, ganging up your girls against my all-star boys' team.
And we beat you too, didn't we?
Women forever, superior beings.
Well, I do wish we had two more weeks.
So we could beat you again?
No, so I could do things a little differently.
Well, I better get in and get cleaned up.
Your parents driving you to school?
Just Mom.
Dad's got to work.
You know, Dad, I think he's afraid I might see him cry.
Um, Kathy, how about if I call you tomorrow?
Maybe we could go down to the river or something?
Sure, why not?
Oh, wait a minute.
Tomorrow's the carnival.
I've got to help with one of the booths.
Oh.
Well, okay.
Do you want to help?
Sure, I'll see you there.
Um, Kathy?
Huh?
Never mind.
I'll see you tomorrow.
Dude, just ask her out already, you fucking weirdo.
Now's the time before they go away for school, where she's going to meet some actual hunky guys.
It's the same guy who's like, Oh, I can take care of you because we're going to be at the same school when we get back and you don't have to worry about it, blah, blah, blah.
And yet he's heavily hinting and she's not picking up what he's putting down.
And at the same time, he just can't come right out and say it, even though she seems very amiable to maybe starting a relationship with him.
Just doesn't make sense.
Young love.
All right.
At the end of the clip, we see the couples that were wired together has in fact stayed together as they float on down the river or stream.
They were dropped into and then it cuts to the dude running the general store as one of his employees takes off for the night and cuts through the dark woods as a foreboding synth sweep plays underneath her soldier.
And this stuff was actually pretty cool.
Got some serious Halloween vibes in this sequence.
I think I wrote that later on.
I'm just going to say it now.
I love it.
Oh, I just love the train scare because like we're all hyped up for like trains now.
She then cuts through what looks like an old train yard.
Maybe she looks around as though she hears something that scares her.
And then a fucking freight train goes barreling past her as she screams.
And that is a new kind of jump scare right there.
Good Lord, how did they time that so well?
Man, and her fear is palpable too.
I like this actress a lot.
Yeah, she really sells that moment, and the way she was super close to the freight train and the way it barrels into the frame just grabs you.
That is one of the most unique cheap scares, quote unquote, that I've seen done.
It's not a cat jumping out of a cabinet that's covered in dust and how the fuck did it get in there?
It's not anything like that.
It's not one of your friends just walking in and saying your name to ask you a question and startling you like you get in Slashers.
This is legit a really clever jump scare that works effectively, and I was really impressed with it.
We have a very obtuse cat scare coming up that is barely a cat scare.
That's true.
There is that as well.
All right, so for a brief moment during that, we see the train conductor hat wearing sus af weirdo clapping and happy either that she almost died or that the train is so loud and fast.
I am not sure.
Now, I need to preface this.
This is the first time I watch the film, folks, so I don't realize that the guy in the conductor hat has mental issues due to an accident that happened earlier because the film doesn't bother telling you that until it's almost over.
They just leave you twisting in the wind with this guy acting really bizarre and you're not sure what's up with him.
So all of my notes are that.
I just don't know why he's acting like this.
It doesn't make sense.
All right, so she regains her composure and walks through some dark streets, giving off some real Halloween vibes at this point with how it's lit specifically and the way that it's framed where you see her on the sidewalk, but there's hedges around where anything could jump out in front of her at any moment.
It's pretty cool the way that they do that.
Yeah.
And it's especially notable in the movement where they have the camera follow her up the stairs and into the house.
That feels very much like the opening of Halloween 1 with the Steadicam movement, kind of what they did there.
It felt more like they were doing a dolly, but they pan up and follow her towards the house, and that was a really nice shot as well.
Once she gets inside, she screams out, everybody knows there's dialogue, and our next clip.
I'm back here!
Oh, you made good time tonight.
I'm not nearly ready.
Mmm, smells good.
Oh, the police were in today.
They were trying to find Ted.
Always said that boy would be worth nothing.
He didn't do anything wrong, he just disappeared.
He and that girl he was dating, you know, Angie Maloney?
Virl's girl?
Didn't know and don't care.
Hell, I don't drive no more.
Anyway, that's the girl.
They can't find her either.
And you do too care.
And you can just bet you know what they're doing.
Why, in my day, nice boys and girls just didn't...
Oh, yes, they did.
They just never talked about it.
Anyway, I just hope you heard as them gets back.
Anything to keep Mr.
Johnson in the bed and move.
I just couldn't do anything right today.
What's wrong?
It's just me.
I just need to get out or something.
Says who?
Says me, that's who.
Do you realize I haven't been out to a movie or anything since Matt went back to medical school?
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I was so bad.
You were just too hard on him.
Hard on him?
Why, pity his poor patience.
He has about as much chance of becoming a doctor as I do the Queen of England.
Oh, Grandma.
The Queen of England, you hear me?
If his brains were TNT, he could muster a good partner.
You're terrible.
Meaner than hell, and don't you fit it.
I know it ain't easy, but you're worth big things.
I just don't want you to settle for nothing, second rate.
Even if you are bored.
I promise.
Oh, that's my girl.
Hold on, I'll check.
So at the end of the clip, as the lady heads back into the bar, which probably for health code reasons should not have a cat, but what do I know about health codes?
Anyway, she is going back inside.
A machete-wielding maniac makes a very Evil Dead-style Vazo slide into frame, and then hacks the screen door just as she closes the actual door and somehow does not register the noise at all that that just happened.
I don't know how she does it, but she's completely oblivious, maybe, because she's just so preoccupied with the cat.
But she has some tiff about a phone call or something with the boss of the bar, and that is the end of the first 20 minutes.
Oh, my God, my favorite thing is that she says the immortal line to the cat, get in here before you get your buns dirty.
And she says it to the cat twice.
It's insane.
I don't understand how a cat is supposed to get their buns dirty walking outside.
I don't know.
I mean, if it was made today, she would have said beans, because everybody refers to those little creepy things that cats have on their paws as beans now.
Yeah, toe beans, yeah.
You don't like toe beans?
Wow, that's weird for a cat owner.
I've got like, yeah, I got three sets of them, and man, they freak me out.
Ah, toe beans are the best, man.
I'll even sing toe beans at my cats while I'm rubbing their paws to the tune of Jolene, because that's me, you know?
I love it.
Yeah, I'm such a fucking cat, dad.
This is what my wife has done to me.
All right, so the first 20 minutes does a really good job of setting things up, and it does a really great job of doing setup for the characters and some character development.
But the film's like, you know what?
If we can do a normal size movie amount of character development in the first 20 minutes, what if we spend the next 40 doing even more characters and even more character development and really, really bring you into the lives of these town folk?
We got a whole town to take care of here.
Right, right.
We're about to dive deep into some decisions that this slasher made that I can see where you probably may have a problem with this if you're just looking for blood or tits every 10 to 20 minutes like you can expect normally in a slasher.
Now, we've had both right as the film opened, and at the 20-minute mark, we've got character development, so we're due for some boobage or some kind of blood or something that would be titillating within the next 20, for sure.
And the film doesn't do that.
And I think one of the reasons for that is it's much like the other earlier slashers of its time, because this is, what, 82 is when it was, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so we're talking contemporary of this would be My Bloody Valentine from Canada, right?
Like, and I get some very heavy vibes with the character development and the way we just kind of are in a hangout film for most of this.
Girls Night Out, too.
Yes, Girls Night Out is another one where it feels very much like just like a hangout film.
We don't care about horror.
So I think if you're coming into watching this, wanting that titillation and wanting that, like, I would say for lack of a better way of describing it, Friday the 13th 4 is like the prime of what you would expect whenever you normally start getting slasher films.
There's like deaths like pretty much every 10 minutes or so, or tits, or something along those lines, or at least a Jason encounter, something to keep you going and something to keep your eyes on the screen and the titillation.
Very, very little character development.
And if there is character development, they're throwing tits in during that part.
And this film does not do that.
I should warn everybody upfront about that.
If they haven't already seen it, it does not do that at all.
But I also didn't notice it until it actually started going into the killing parts.
I just got into watching it, and I found myself engrossed in these characters.
And I ain't even mad at it for that.
And I just wanted to frame that, the rest of this discussion with that, because I may bellyache a little bit, like, where's the killing or something here and there in my notes, but it's really not a problem for me at all.
Like, I actually was very entertained by this, and not just because I was doing notes.
It took me nearly three hours to do the notes because I realized I was just watching the fucking movie, and I had to go back and do the notes for certain segments.
So that's a really good sign that I'm enjoying it.
Speaking of slashers that are more about the characters than the kills, frickin this cinematographer, his name is Daryl Cathcart.
He also was the DP on Final Exam from 81, which I don't know if you've seen Final Exam, but it is just like this.
I think I have that on my Plex server that I've been meaning to watch it, but I haven't gotten to it yet.
I'll basically get a hold of a movie, and then if I like it, I will go out and see whatever physical media version I can get of it, depending upon whether I had it on streaming or how I got a hold of it.
First, I just watch it, and then if I like it, then I must own it, which is very much how I used to rent things.
I would rent it, and then if I liked it, I would then eventually buy it.
I think that's a good spot to stop and move into the next 20.
What do you think?
Let's do it.
All right, so the next 20 minutes starts up with the carnival in full swing, and the young kids on their way to college are all gathered playing all the carnival games, which they are apparently terrible at.
They fuck up just about everything.
It's so the most realistic thing ever because every single one of these games are rigged at you to just bilk you out of cash.
Like, usually they show in movies where like one guy or someone eventually will win and like everybody's like mesmerized and thinks it's amazing.
That never fucking happens.
Everybody walks away from these booths downtrodden.
It takes the girl.
The girl has to step up.
Then we see the town weirdo try to hop on a merry-go-round and fail miserably at it.
Again, I didn't know that he was mentally of diminished capacity.
He could have failed so much worse, like getting his arms ripped off by the freaking thing.
Like that made me really tense when he tried to half-assedly jump on like that one girl did successfully right before him.
Yeah, little monkey see monkey do kind of thing there, where he's trying to mimic what somebody else is doing because it looked like fun, and then he just couldn't quite do it.
There's a couple of times where you think the actor's going under that fucking thing, too.
Like you were worried there might have been an injury on set or something.
All right, then our crowd walks past a kissing booth that raises its price depending upon the attractiveness of its clientele.
Weird joke, but I admit I'm probably just a little salty because that guy looks like an older 80s version of me.
He's like a nice, kissable beardo.
The star clerk and her grandma head towards a booth.
There is more dialogue.
Thank fuck, I'm sick of writing fucking notes.
And there's our next piece.
Mrs.
Sharpe.
What do you think of the crowd?
It's getting bigger every year.
Good selling weather.
I can feel it in my bones.
You have a quote for sale again this year, Mrs.
Sharpe?
Come on, girl, let's get going.
See you later.
Hi, Bob.
What are you doing here?
Slave labor.
It's my job to hold up the counter until she passes me the nails.
Sorry.
Thanks.
Looking good, Lil.
Want to come back and help me nail?
Come on.
I never get around when it comes to nailing.
You'll have to forgive him.
He isn't housebroken yet.
Bobby, will you cut that out?
Morning, Avery.
Put to sleep.
Stop that, I'm ticklish.
Bobby, what's gotten into you?
I think I'm in love.
It's about time.
I'm busy.
My hands are occupied.
Just reach inside my pocket.
Put your hand back in quick, Sandy.
Sure, anything you say, a doll for all three.
Whoo-hoo-hoo.
Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
So they tricked the guy running the Test Your Strength, hit the mallet booth by having all the guys go and waste their money and then fail.
And then the lady goes, but she says, if she gets it, then every single lady gets a stuffed animal from them.
She points all of them out and said, we get all of those, right?
And the guy says, yeah.
So she hits it and then gets the bell to ring, which is a scam I think they're pulling where the guys actually are pretending and actually not trying that hard because they're all just goofing off.
And you hear as they're walking away that they talk about how that works every time and that they all paid to get three people to play and they all each won.
So it's not that big of a deal that they scammed him like that or something along those lines.
You can kind of hear it.
I faded out during that.
That's okay.
They fooled me.
I totally thought that she was just a master at that.
Obviously it's something that this character can do because if you can hit the test your strength and hit the bell, you can do it.
I'm not saying that it wasn't a setup that she couldn't do it.
What I'm saying is it was a work to trick the guy just so that they could get one over on him for fun.
Like they're all in on it to get one over on the guy for fun.
I wonder if the guys, if any of them actually could have gotten it to go, but I know for sure that they knew in advance that she could do this anyway.
They weren't surprised.
They were pulling a prank on this guy for fun.
See, while we were watching this, Lietta was looking up and it's not how hard you swing the hammer.
It's the way you swing the hammer and you have to get it perfectly in the center of the part where the hammer comes down.
That's how you do it.
It's not a real test of strength, apparently.
Ah, it's a matter of getting the right point of impact to transfer the energy and send the bell of Soren, huh?
Exactly.
Interesting.
Well, thank you for looking that up, Lietta.
We appreciate that.
She loves to research.
Those librarians, man.
Yeah, I know, right?
All of this shenanigans feels a lot like the attempt to endear the youth to the audience in the original My Bloody Valentine.
Oh, I even wrote that down.
So, super tired Insomniac Cort wrote this set of notes from about 11:30 p.m.
to about three in the morning a.m., obviously.
So, there's gonna be some surprises for sort of slept okay Cort that put in a work day and didn't read the notes and is now doing the show, stoned.
So, just let everybody know that.
After this clip, it cuts to the couple who were wired together, now slowly drifting apart down the stream and it seems that death has put a real damper on their relationship.
I don't think it will survive such an odd murder either.
There's a brief interlude of old bitty crankiness and I guess some of these folks rely on the money they can make at the booths at this carnival or something because the main old lady is like all about it.
You heard that in the last clip.
Then they then jump back to the kids smoking up as the pig shows up.
There's pot on screen and dialogue and a pig.
So our next clip.
Gangbang, gangbang!
You're having a nice day.
Hi, Sheriff.
That you back there, Walker?
You all right, boy?
He just had to take a leak and I told him to make sure.
Just shut your mouth, you know, before your brains fall out.
Everybody's having a good time?
Oh, yeah.
Yes, sir.
Oh, I love to see young folks having a good time.
See, did anybody notice a strange smell around this particular area?
Yeah.
No?
Well, now, you know, I do.
I smell that.
You know what has a queer effect on me?
Makes me kind of want to find out where it's coming from.
Then maybe it'll go away.
What do you think?
I don't smell a thing, Sheriff, like it's gone.
I appreciate that.
Oh, by the way, any of you folks seen Ted or Angie?
Well, now, you would tell me if you saw them, would you?
I mean, it's not exactly like they're in any trouble or anything.
It's just the folks a little worried about them.
Not like you, huh, Ramona?
You never seem to get tired of it.
Of course, if you hear anything, you let me know now, huh?
You only have a nice day.
No, Ramona.
Who the hell cares about Avery?
I could be dying right now.
God, I did taste it off.
You mean you ate it?
You stupid jerk, it wasn't half gone.
What you want me to do, shove up my ass?
Let's go.
I thought you already did.
He was an interesting, probably queer.
My God, you call.
Is anything you like?
Oh, it all looks good, but I'm on a limited budget now.
Oh, I baked these myself.
They're free.
Well, how about a piece of pie or a cookie?
At least have a brownie.
Okay.
That's funny, Axe.
You want to get an old man on my back?
Move it over.
Let me in.
Have we got plans?
What?
Okay, who gets what?
I get a hot dog.
Did we actually pay for this mystery meal?
Oh, no, thank you.
I'm just going over to that booth.
Don't I know you?
No, but I know you.
I've heard enough about you from my friend Kathy.
Oh, my trusty co-worker.
That's her.
All this big city excitement getting to you?
Not until now.
Surprising what a small town has to offer.
Sure you don't need some help with the box?
Sure.
Lead on, girl.
Didn't Kathy say you used to live here as a kid?
No, my mother.
I was born in Chicago.
Oh, Chicago.
That is a mighty little piece of pie.
You want more?
Is that enough for you?
You want to go for sex?
Sarah!
Man, I am sorry.
I don't know what's gotten into her.
Oh, that's all right, I'm a little bit partial to this meringue.
I don't know.
Come on, it'll be a blast.
Yeah, we're all going down to the river after dark.
Big bonfire.
My tape deck.
I don't know.
Come on, Bob.
It's the last.
Next, we all spread out.
Except for Ramona.
She spreads all the time.
Hey, come on, guys.
It'll be a night that will go down in history.
Yeah, that's what they said about the Titanic.
Yeah, I got an eye on it.
After the bonfire, why don't we all go to the cemetery and tell stories?
My sister went to one one.
I don't know.
Yeah, you can split any time you want.
We all can't.
If the action gets better somewhere else, you want to be alone, nobody's gonna go look.
That give you any idea?
Yeah, tall white princess.
Speak with wild tongue.
You go to college?
No, I work at John Osher's store.
Mr.
Johnson, do you like your job?
Married?
Around here?
I think the boys around here better open their eyes.
Oh, Coach Marshall?
Miss Bottomley?
I'm sorry.
Got yourself a new sweetheart on.
My boy just worshiped ground that man walks on.
Why, he thinks he hung the moon in F-Star.
Now, if I were just a little younger, don't think I wouldn't.
Agnes, you're making an eye fell.
Okay, so at the end of the clip, we see the teens, quote unquote, on a potato sack slide, and then it goes into a pretty long sequence of carnival fun with all the rides and the crew enjoying them, and a bouncy house as well.
My favorite part is the shitty haunted house they walk through because I am positive I went through that same one when it is even more rundown in the 90s than what it is here.
Okay, so at the end of the montage, the kissing booth joke returns, and the lady puts up an out to lunch sign and walks away.
Again, weird fucking joke, but there's more usable dialogue now, so that's our next clip.
Anyway, we think you would, and we're the ones doing the inviting.
I appreciate it, but aside from the fact I don't have any way to take with me, I'm a teacher, and whooping it up is considered a big no-no.
So what?
I promise you, you can whoop wildly.
We're starting out by the river, you know, just past the falls, and then who knows where we'll move?
Let me think about it, okay?
Thanks again for the invite.
It's tempting.
Wanna go on the merry-go-round?
I think I'd prefer a Coke.
Thank you.
Oh, I didn't mean to scare you.
That's okay, I just had other things on my mind.
Need any help?
No, I'm fine.
Listen, some of the kids are having a little bonfire party tonight down by the falls.
Would you like to go?
Thank you anyway.
How about a movie next week?
Sure, that sounds like fun.
Great, see you later.
That clip ends with some girl shaving creaming a car, and the town red herring in a train conductor hat seems real angry about it when they cut to him.
So this is the set up.
The girl doing the shaving creaming of the car is the one that we're talking about, and the conductor hat guy is watching things that are happening to her from this point on.
They do show him in cuts, but it's very hard to see.
But it is true, he is around for a lot of the stuff that happened.
It turns out it's the girl angry at the teacher for not wanting her from the sweets booth when she was offering him free brownies and things.
And he takes some time to clean it off as they start another sequence in the House of Horrors where the town red herring seems real disturbed by it.
So, there in the trivia, there was a moment where the guy who wears the train conductor's hat, he walks out of the haunted house like really like scared.
And you think, oh, he just got scared by the haunted house because he's a little special.
But originally, a character who's going to meet a grizzly fate very soon, their head, their severed head was used as a prop in the haunted house.
And he saw it.
It was like, whoa.
Oh, so the killer that killed the person that we're going to be talking about later on actually put...
Okay, so that makes sense.
Yeah, I do have that in my notes where they have him exit.
There's a lot of moments like that in the film where it feels like they either lost footage or just never did pick up shots for things or something is just not quite there with a lot of things.
The writer was told not to be on set because, quote unquote, they couldn't afford to have him there.
But I think they just wanted to clean up his script, and I think they were playing kind of fast and loose, and it more or less worked.
Yeah, it's an interesting, weird thing there, but yeah.
And they cut to the lady who shaving creamed the teacher's card a memorial water fountain.
Like, it's, I don't know how to describe it, but it's a memorial, but it has a water fountain on top of it.
So how else do you describe it but memorial water fountain?
Hmm.
She pops a squat on said memorial water fountain and takes out something that was tied to her thigh with a dew rag.
I assume it's weed, because everybody's getting high in this movie.
Yep, yep.
And she ties the dew rag on her head and is quickly stabbed by something, like a garbage spike stick that you use to pick up litter.
And then, I think that's what it is.
I thought it was a bow, and I thought it was supposed to be an arrow.
Oh, but it seemed too long to be an arrow, and it didn't have any of the flatching or the feathers at the back that I could see.
But it just looked like a pole to me.
But maybe I just, you know, fevering Dream style watching this late at night.
So she pulls out that spike, whatever it was, and darts off and goes into hide in a merry-go-round that is also in a caged area, for some reason off by itself, in like a wooded area that makes no sense.
I don't know what's going on, but that's where she is.
And after she's trying to hide out in there, her head is then bagged with a plastic bag.
And even though her hands are free, she can't seem to figure out how to poke a hole in it so that she can breathe or whatever.
And then she dies, and that is the end of the first 40 minutes of this movie.
Dude, and the shot of the merry-go-round taking her body around, it's just that shot of her just dead, sitting on that merry-go-round.
Like it was, none of that made any sense to get her to that point.
But once she was at that point, it's a great shot.
So they had this great idea and a cool place to do the set piece.
But yeah, why was she, she didn't try to go for help.
She thought the horses of the merry-go-round were gonna save her life.
What's interesting about the first 40 minutes to me, and the thing that I really kind of couldn't stop thinking about is, this is like when Giallos became slashers, and then the Italians said, Oh yeah, we've been making these forever.
Let's start making them.
And then the Italian slashers that got made that were these weird, because they were already in this dream-like quality where nothing had to make sense anymore, and they were very artistic and doing this new wave style of filmmaking that the Italians were doing already with all of their stuff.
And let's face it, they were just doing sequences that looked cool and putting together things in the loosest of plots, even if there was one in their slashers.
And Argento is definitely guilty of this as well.
He's not innocent when he started doing things that he said were Giallos, but were clearly just slashers.
I'm like opera and phenomena, for fuck's sakes.
Those are slashers.
Those aren't, those aren't Gialli, really.
But it feels like that.
Like it feels like those style of slashers that the Italians would do much later in the eighties.
And it has a sensation of like this hangout film, very much like My Bloody Valentine that was a contemporary of this time.
It would have just been out in theaters just before this, if this ever got theatrical release.
And it has those moments that you can really kind of feel.
It's very much a slasher.
Like it has the train scare where the girl's walking through the dark back from her day at the store.
And a lot of those shots really build up tension.
And then they go right back to being a hangout film again.
And it's just an odd sequence to put things in.
And I think a bit more time in the editing room and tightening up these loose threads of story that they left abandoned would really make a quite coherent film that would probably be far less enjoyable than this.
The fact that it's so all over the place and just not sure what it's doing and is kind of schizophrenic and it doesn't really know what reality it wants to live in, whether it's a 80s hangout movie, like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, or is it a fucking slasher?
It doesn't know, but it's trying to be both.
And it's strange and wonderful at the same time.
Yeah, it's one of those things like, I don't know if you've seen Cheerleader Camp before.
Yes, it's very much like Cheerleader Camp.
You know, I used to be about the kills, and I used to be about the gore and everything.
And then as the years go by, I'm like, man, I just want to hang out with these dorks.
And like Brad called it, man, like years ago on The Doomed Show, he called them a bunch of Good Time Charlies.
And this movie could have been called Good Time Charlies, colon, the movie.
Good Time Charlies versus the Psycho Slasher.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's strange and just feels so uneven and just doesn't know what it wants to do and jumps around a bunch.
But when it's in slasher mode, it's a really decently made slasher.
Like the sequence where she goes running after being stabbed and goes to hide in the merry-go-round, like all of this surrealistic weird things that make absolutely no sense to it.
I mean, I would give an Italian filmmaker who would do stuff years later, very similar to this, so much fucking leeway over this kind of stuff.
I'd be like, sure, you just go.
It's fine.
Like I've seen me do it, like a ton.
Like I've given Argento so much fucking slack for his Lady D's output.
You know what I mean?
And like, I'm talking to the guy who coined the phrase, the mobava, the mobeta.
So I know you like that kind of stuff too.
But to see this in a 1982, like made in the South regional slasher is so weird.
And just like, I can't believe that this got so overlooked.
And it has to be because of those bad VHS releases.
Yep, forgotten.
Because this is just so weird.
Somebody has to be talking about it.
Even if it's just to their total disappointment that they rented a slasher and got a Fast Times at Ridgemont High hangout film mixed in with their chocolate and peanut butter, if you know what I'm saying.
Like the chocolate is their slasher and they got a Fast Time at Ridgemont High peanut butter center in this.
Oh man.
Anyway, that's just kind of my take on it in the first 40 minutes where I'm like, I don't know what's going on, but I'm in.
This is so weird.
All right, so we're ready to move on to the next 20?
I am indeed.
All right, so let's hit that full hour mark.
So the next 20 starts with the town red herring playing with his train set.
Shocking no one that he has a train set at all because he's been wearing a conductor hat the entire time.
His mom comes in and there is dialogue, so everybody knows how court works.
That's our next clip.
We all need a good night's sleep after all the excitement today.
I sewed both my quilts, and the mince pies went just like that.
Now I hope you didn't stuff yourself too much.
Give that tum-tum of yours a good rest, you hear?
Come on over and sit down, Mama.
You're awful quiet tonight.
I'd have thought you'd have been a barrel of muckies after all the excitement.
She tried to hurt him.
Who tried to hurt who?
She, she, Goopy's car.
All on the window.
Yeah, dirty.
Who?
Coach.
You are right.
It is bad.
You should never hurt anybody.
And Casey, dear, there are lots of ways you can hurt somebody.
Remember how we talked about boys and girls and how they get together?
No, I never hurt girls.
I never hurt girls, never like that.
I know you wouldn't, darling, but it is just as bad to take things that don't belong to you.
That's a hurt, too.
Some of the kids said that Coach had lost a lot of equipment this summer.
Equipment?
Bat, ball, bases, things he needs to play ball with.
People who take things like that hurt Coach, too.
I love Coach.
And he loves you.
Oh, my precious, we all do.
Just remember, that taking things is hurting, too.
Just as bad as those boy and girl things.
Oh, is that okay?
Your wish is my command.
I can't believe you said no.
Do you know how many girls would just die to go out with Neil?
I didn't say no, exactly.
I just said no to the bonfire.
What's the matter, Lily, can't you let your hair down?
My hair is down.
You know what I mean.
Look, Coach is a great guy.
I know.
And it would be a lot more fun with both of you there.
Besides, he may show up anyway.
We didn't say he had to have a date.
Hey, that's an idea.
Why don't you change your mind and, you know, sort of arrive unexpectedly?
You can ride with us.
Sure, and find out he doesn't show.
Lily, you're going.
See you in about an hour.
I'll tell my dad we're going to a movie.
So have him picked out Casey Ellis.
What a gracious, I thought I heard someone else here.
So did I.
Lily, I saw you with that Marshall boy today.
Grandma, please don't start on me again.
I'd rather you be with that Dr.
Bum than that Marshall boy.
In the first place, Matt wasn't a bum.
He was a very nice boy.
I just wasn't in love with him.
And as far as Neil Marshall's concerned, the only thing he's done was ask me for a date to a movie.
Is there anything wrong with that?
His mother was practically a common horror.
But that's not Neil.
And then again, my mother wasn't exactly an angel.
She died giving birth to you.
But she was never married.
That's not true.
There's your father's picture in there on the metal.
Grandma, please.
I know.
I've known since we've taken that trip to Savannah when I was eight.
You know what?
The picture, the picture of my father, the one with the frame.
I saw a store full of him in Savannah.
But, but it doesn't matter.
It never has.
Your mama was so beautiful, so full of life.
You couldn't hold her like a boss.
And then she was gone.
And there you were.
Oh, Lily, I tried, I tried so hard.
I know.
And that's why I know what love is from you.
You're the best thing that ever happened to me and the most important thing in my life.
But I have to grow.
I just can't stop existing.
I'm just a silly old woman wanting time to stand still.
You're right.
I loved it.
I loved you, child.
I love how grandma and her living daughter who got yelled at for doing the exact same thing that grandma just did with another woman just because it was her own mother and doing some slut shaming.
They reconcile and just say, oh, it's because I love you.
And then everything's okay at the end there.
Also, the conversation between mom and the town's red herring sure has a different context when we know that he found the head or the severed head of the girl that died in the merry-go-round, but they re-filmed some things and it just doesn't make sense.
It works for what it is, but when you know, it explains why he's so upset.
And it makes sense to the things that he's trying to say to his mother there.
And it actually adds a whole new level of kind of horror to it.
Like he is supposed to have found a girl's head, knowing that it's a girl's head and knowing what happened to her and kind of knowing who the killer is, but he's unable to communicate with her about it and to tell her what's happening because he has a diminished mental capacity.
And it's never obvious until he actually finally speaks because otherwise he just looks like a strange guy who's just acting strange for most of this.
You just don't understand.
There are people that do not have diminished capacity that I grew up around that behaved like this.
Uh-huh.
I love also that she's trying to get him to stop stealing shit from the baseball team.
He's stealing bases from the baseball team.
Yeah, in gloves and baseballs and things, yeah.
She's trying to make it like, by the way, I'm also gonna teach you about how sex is dirty real quick.
So she's conflating stealing people's property with having sex and that they're both equally wrong.
It's like, all right, mom.
Well, and she also talks about, he was talking about how the lady gooped this guy's car because he was hurting her.
And I'm pretty sure she's misunderstanding what he's saying.
And I think she thinks he saw two couple, like a couple having sex in the car.
And she's trying to explain what the goop is that's coming out of her.
Oh no, man, I hate when the ladies goop all over my windshield like that.
I actually prefer it, it's one of my kinks.
I'm not judging, I'm no judgment zone.
Yeah, but so I do love that she's just basically trying to teach him a lesson where it's like, yeah, you saw some people fucking, but you shouldn't do that.
You're not able to do that, that's not for you.
But also it's really bad for you to steal.
I need you to stop stealing.
She turns it into a teachable moment, and she tries to put the young man to bed.
And she's trying to do something right basically, but it doesn't quite work.
And the context of the film, her not understanding is the thing that we need.
And otherwise, it just becomes this weird, awkward conversation that I'm really glad I had in the clip because I didn't want to write any of that down and try and describe it.
And hey, no couples that are going to hook up, they can't go to home base because he stole it.
Bada boom.
That's a baseball sex joke, LOL.
At the end of the clip, the young lady goes off to brush her hair, like we heard the grandma and her separate.
And she's looking at a photo, which I think is of her father, while the grandma walks past a meat cleaver of foreboding that also never gets used.
The young lady gets changed and they cut to the teacher dude also getting a shower, which is an interesting inversion when this was made.
Like usually it's the lady gonna get into the shower that we would have seen here, even though she's the good girl.
But instead they go to the teacher.
And I'll tell you what, if you're a fan of man ass, you can thank this movie for this scene as well.
Because they focus in on this dude's behind.
And while it's not my thing, I can say it's definitely well formed and I can see why you'd be into it if you are.
When he's in the shower, someone sneaks in and we think it's a killer, but it turns out it's a sex scare, because it's just Ramona trying to get some D in her V.
She strips down and tries to seduce the guy, but he dumps her into the shower and tells her to dry off and go home.
She starts getting indignant about it.
Thank God there's more dialogue and our necklace.
You know, I don't get it.
What's the matter?
Not good enough for all you?
Whatever you say.
Maybe I'm just not into cheap thrills.
I had a lifetime of that with my mother.
You son of a bitch.
Good night, Ramona.
What's the matter?
You having trouble getting laid tonight?
Take your damn hands off me.
I've had enough to hear with you and your sanctimonious bullshit.
This town don't need your shit.
You can take this hit town and shove it.
It's not this town that's bothering you.
We're not talking about this town.
We're talking about your son.
Don't you talk about my son.
Go ahead, hit me.
I wasn't the one that did it.
I wasn't the one driving the car.
Casey was the one that was driving the car, not me.
You should have died four years ago, you little slut.
You call this living?
Sheriff's department.
Avery, Casey's gone.
What do you mean he's not there?
He's gone.
Have you looked in the bedrooms?
I couldn't have gone far.
I've looked everywhere.
I looked in the bathroom, the garage, the basement.
He's not here, he's gone.
This is the first time he's done this in six months.
All right, honey, now just stop crying and start looking for him.
All right, now I'll start from this end, okay?
Now don't worry, sweetheart.
Just imagining their sex.
Like they didn't even set up that they were married and that he was the father of the kid until that moment when he yells at her.
And apparently she was in the car with him on a date and he crashed the car and that's why he's like this now.
It regressed him to like some kind of childhood state and he was injured in the car crash but survived.
And then she also survived, but nothing happened to her and they resent her for being on a date with him.
Like that's a lot to pack in there.
Like, okay, so she may have broken into his house and she does just like sexually assault him essentially by like just looking at him naked in the shower without his permission.
But if they had any kind of like forward play before or if there was something that she may have been interested in him in or any kind of reason other than just breaking in and sexually assault, like her coming onto him is pretty much like a dude's just gonna go for that.
Most guys are pretty easy to convince to fuck you, especially if they're into attractive ladies.
Like that's just, it's not hard to get them.
Ramona, that actress is gorgeous.
Yeah, absolutely.
I know her name specifically because I'm like, whoa, look at her.
Like the whole time.
Wow, wow, wow.
Yeah, exactly.
So there's a line in there too, when he says, I get enough cheap thrills with my mother or something like that.
And that line about his mom makes me think he is sus as fuck and possibly our killer.
Because that kind of casual misogyny that also hints at mommy issues relating to sex is a major red flag, not only in slashers, but also the kind of guy that you shouldn't probably trying to sleep with for fuck's sakes.
The minute he started talking like that, she should have just fucking left and been like, okay, we're done, we're done here.
I'm gonna end up buried in your basement, got it.
No, but like the first time I saw this movie, I completely missed the whole thing about Ramona and the dating that the sheriff's son, and I missed the whole thing about that guy's mother, which if you're, you know, if you're kind of like bewildered by all the other shit happening in this movie, then you would miss it the first time.
So by the time we got to the end of this, I was just utterly baffled.
Yeah, and the other thing too is the timing for this, it should be much earlier in the film for her to be confronted by the sheriff.
This should have been happening like the night that the other kids got killed.
He should be heading home to shower, and she shows up there, and that's how we're introduced to Ramona.
And maybe they had a relationship, or maybe she just is finally coming on to him, or whatever it is, I don't know.
But this stuff should have been much earlier in the film, especially right after the first kill, when you're first thinking about, well, who could the killer possibly be?
Because it's a throwaway line of casual misogyny.
But when you're really looking for any elements of a slasher so late in a film, it is a blaring fucking siren that it's him.
It's fucking him.
And then they try and do the thing with this fucking pig sheriff, who's like blaming her for his son's injury, but he only blames her.
He doesn't start saying anything about anybody else for him to be a red herring.
And his son is clearly not a red herring, now that we know and have seen that, you know, he's just had a diminished capacity due to an accident that clearly had some kind of a brain injury.
And they don't tell us that, and we need that pretty much right away, because otherwise we're wondering why the fuck his son is even acting like this.
Oh, and by the way, we didn't even know he was the fucking sheriff's son until now.
Yeah, I feel like they're, because they're so in love with the characters, that we're gonna be so, the viewer is also gonna feel that way, and just be so entranced by the mystery, like, ooh, what's going on?
What's that about?
Who's that character?
Oh, where, I mean, just imagine like teenagers in the theater going, what is this shit?
Oh yeah, they're throwing popcorn and booing because there hasn't been much for tits.
There's been fuck all for deaths, and they didn't wanna come to see Fast Times at Ridgemont High on the cheap, but that's what they're kind of getting here for the most part.
And what the fuck is with that fucking pig sheriff?
He sure seems like he's trying to be a Loomis-type of character with his grudge towards the kids for what happened to his son at the same time.
He's like, not quite that.
They don't know what to do with this guy, but they're very clearly setting up that there's somebody who is already investigating and trying to find out what's going on with these kids that are going missing, and that's very much your Loomis.
But at the same time, you're wondering if it's like the town that dreaded sundown where you're wondering if it may have been the sheriff the entire time when you're watching that, you know?
Anyway, I mean, it's gotta be the sheriff because he looked at that hustler.
The pig heads out to look for Casey, which is his son apparently, and they cut to the teacher dude heading out into his garage as a soccer ball falls and he goes looking up at the rafters in his garage and sniffs about in the upstairs area.
His mommy issues and red flags are now supposed to be cleared up because we're presuming that he's dead.
Whenever the Machete Maniac strikes with an offscreen kill.
I mean, we see a Machete Maniac arise, but we don't know what's going on.
I don't know what they're trying to do there, but whatever.
Oh, yes, they are absolutely trying to fool the shit out of us to hide the identity of the killer as long as possible.
This is the moment that I thought was a movie mistake.
Because it got me, and it's such a lowercase C of a cheat.
It's not like all caps cheat, but they got me.
And I was like, I wrote a review over at a little drop of a name here, eurocultav.com, lots of great reviews over there.
Unfortunately, my reviews are there too.
But when I talked about this movie, I specifically talked about how it felt like a movie mistake, but I guess it was just clever enough to just fool me.
I'm like, no, it just got me.
It just fooled me.
So that's not a cheat if it just did a good job.
OK, so the movie then cuts to the kids hanging down by the river, having a small campfire that was sold as a bonfire.
And Ramona is not happy about how she was turned down for sex.
The would be goofy dude strikes out as well.
And they cut to the pig looking for his kid by checking out the bar for Ramona.
For whatever reason.
And then they cut back to the girls by the fire with one very lucky dude around them all.
As Ramona caresses her beer like she is fondling a cock.
I was getting way too into the way she was rubbing that beer.
Like she's very clearly got some kind of a fixation when it comes to holding on to a phallic symbol.
She even rubs the very tip of the beer as if she is trying to stimulate the end of a penis.
I mean, it's...
God, I just remembered the banana from earlier.
The blonde girl, when they were at the carnival, when they're sitting down to have their big old lunch at the carnival, first of all, who's eating carnival bananas?
Not me, but the blonde girl who's going to go skinny dipping shortly, she is sucking on that banana and eating it the most like Lina Romay way possible.
Swallows the whole thing without taking a bite, yeah.
Oh my lord.
The goofy guy gets another chance with his lady when he fucked up earlier from being a goofy annoying shitbag, and she asks him to dance with her, and one of the girls has some more weed and offers some to her boyfriend.
Ramona heads back to apologize to her current dude that she's going to shag, and they go off together as the goofy dude falls down in the dirt and misses an opportunity when his woman wants to quote unquote go for a swim.
They cut from this to the pig snooping around the teacher's place once again.
I think it is because it's dark and there is no one there.
He heads out to the garage and sees a light and knocks to see if anyone is there.
He walks in, finds a bloody windshield and something falls down as a jump scare, but it cuts away before we can enjoy it.
Whatever that was supposed to be, that's the end of the whole first hour.
You know that goofy guy, the goofy character who does the curly impression, which is like if you want something in a movie to set my teeth on edge, it's when people imitate the three stooges badly.
But you know he had a whiskey dick.
That's why at all all this stuff fell apart.
That's probably what was going on.
And he is certainly really fucking irritating.
I don't like when they try to do goofy characters that are supposed to be comedic relief in slasher films.
It just doesn't work.
I can't really think of one that actually does.
And he may be one of the most egregious ones there is because his whole thing is predicated on literally just being the most irritating person that could possibly exist.
And I don't understand why anybody would be friends with somebody that was like this.
This is the kind of person that usually you beep beep Richie at, right?
You tolerate him because he's been a lifelong friend.
Somebody made a meme of Shelley from Friday the 13th, part 3, and some other people, the really obnoxious characters.
And the meme was like, every 80s movie has had a motherfucker like this, like some spazzed out, wacko, like ultra cranked up to 11, annoying butt head friend in every movie of the 80s.
Oh man.
All right, I think we're ready to move on to the final 30.
What do you think?
It's actually kind of 30ish, maybe 27ish minutes, 28.
Let's do it.
All right, so the final 30ish give or take minutes starts with the kids at the campfire, and I'm fucking lazy, so that's our next clip.
There's dialogue.
Not me.
Not now.
So she's pissed because he's got whiskey dick, or at least she can't get him to take things seriously enough because she definitely wants sex.
That's what she meant by partying, and she's upset she's not getting laid, and everybody else is making out.
Valid.
I mean, it's a valid thing to be upset about.
Right, but if a dude does this, he's an unbelievable asshole.
Like, you can't have a double standard in that.
Like, I understand why she's being pissy, but it's still an asshole fucking move.
I give the ladies all the slack.
I'm like, no, girl, you go get yours.
It's fine.
Well, I mean, I can understand why it's especially frustrating because if there is a dude who is into girls, they will fuck a girl if they want fucked.
That's just all it takes.
Like, it's got to be so easy.
So when she's dealing with this goofy ass guy who would rather do a bad girly impression in the fucking dirt right next to a fucking river than put a dick in her, I can see why she's pissed off.
But don't take it out on everybody else.
That's why you're not the victim.
You're the asshole.
If I suffer, we all have to suffer.
That's a very Republican way of thinking.
Sure.
She goes off to swim and starts to strip down, but they cut away and then cut back to her nude in an ass shot.
So thank you fucking movie.
She wades out and starts swimming.
And then we get my favorite thing in any kind of skinny dipping sequence, which is skinny dipping, underwater nude swimming.
I love that.
That's my favorite skinny dipping thing ever is underwater nude swimming.
I love when they take the time to get that shot.
It's going the extra mile.
She back floats with her tits out.
So fuck, thank you movie.
And some obviously nude colored panties are on as well.
This Blu-ray showed us all we needed to see to know that she's definitely wearing nude panties to cover her bottoms.
But that's fine.
It still feels like I saw everything.
She continues this display of her incredible body and then bumps into a rock ledge or beaver dam.
I couldn't tell which, but it's like a dam of the water that builds it up a little bit.
Sometimes people just lay out rocks to have a bit more deeper of a swimming pool created in a river or little stream like this.
It does happen.
I've seen that.
But anyway, she bumps up against that rock ledge and it stops her.
And then the two corpses of the two lovers both float up and bump into her at the same time, sending her out of the water screaming to have her throat slit by the killer.
Having her just completely disappear while being upset sends all the dudes looking for her, and they give up super easy as her corpse floats against the dead couple that's already there.
They are talking.
There is dialogue.
I don't care how short it is.
And our next clip.
Sandy?
No, it's just us.
We took a shortcut across the old road.
You didn't see Sandy buying change, did you?
Thank you.
Doesn't look like he's coming, does it?
Give him a little more time.
Well, are you going to spend the rest of the night staring at him?
I just can't believe it's the same girl.
What do you have in mind?
Hey, how about heading out to the cemetery?
Yeah, the cemetery.
Hey, you know, make love on the tombstones.
Feel the coolness of the rocks against your bare skin.
Tom and I are going to have to be hen back.
Not me, I'm not afraid.
I didn't say anything about being afraid.
I just thought that you would rather...
What you thought wrong?
You game, Cathy?
You want to make love on a tombstone?
I'd prefer a ghost story.
Come on, Lily, you have to go.
Sure, Lily's going.
I don't know.
What if he shows up and we're not here?
I'd just better go home.
Come on, Lily, keep us company, and really, we'll tell ghost stories.
We'll even know by the fire, just in case.
Great.
Hey, let's all pile in the pickup.
Hmm, let's go.
Let's go.
They put out the fire, and the movie forces us to watch in real time as they hike their way out of the clearing by the water, and then finally cuts to them riding in the truck to the cemetery via a spooky forest shot.
We then watch them hike in real time through the forest on their way to the cemetery.
They make it to the cemetery, and it feels like a cheap set, not an actual cemetery, but I think they're just, Oh boy.
Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that.
I don't know if it's an actual cemetery.
They tried to beef up with more fake tombstones, or these were pickup shots or whatever, but anyway, they set up a circle around what looks like an actual grave, and the goofy guy conducts a bullshit ritual to trick them into chanting, Oh, what an ass I am.
That's so fucking hilarious.
This is only redeeming moment, dude.
Like, holy shit.
Like, okay, curly ass motherfucker.
I forgive you for everything you've done up until this point.
It's up to you now to stop doing the curly impression.
Lily is picked to tell a ghost story, so fuck, man, that's too good not to.
That's our next clip.
I call upon Lily Carpenter to enter into the center of the cycle of fire.
Story, madam, story of doomsday.
I remember, I remember.
I only know one story.
So go ahead.
Well, it's not a very nice story, but once upon a time, there was this girl, and she was all alone in her house at night.
Everybody else had gone off somewhere.
And there was this maniac at large, and it was dark, and there was a storm coming.
But she wasn't afraid, because she had this large German shepherd dog that slept underneath her bed, so she really didn't have to worry, even if it was dark.
And she was all alone.
That night, the storm began to rage.
The shutters on the house began to slap the side.
She laid in her bed listening to the night sounds and the storm rage.
And for some reason, her skin began to crawl.
The dog was sleeping on her bed, so she shouldn't have been afraid.
But still, she reached under just to pet the dog for reassurance.
And sure enough, it was there, and it licked her hand.
Okay, the girl couldn't understand it, but something kept telling her that something was wrong.
It was almost like she knew a door was open somewhere or something like that.
Anyway, she thought she ought to get up and go check, but she was too afraid to get out of bed.
I mean, the dog was there for her protection, so she shouldn't have been afraid.
But she was.
The storm eased up after that, but she still couldn't relax.
She'd reach down every five minutes to check if the dog was still there, and sure enough, the good old dog was there, and it licked her hand, and she felt better.
But then she heard this dripping.
Drip, drip, drip.
She kept wondering what it could be.
The dog didn't seem upset, but she just couldn't stand that dripping.
It sounded like it was in the bathroom.
And you know how a sound can grow in the dark.
Drip, drip, drip.
She couldn't stand it any longer.
She jumped out of bed, and she ran into the bathroom to shut it off and jump back into bed.
She threw open the shower door, and hanging from the nozzle was her dog.
Its throat had been slit, and blood dripped in large red droplets onto the clean white tile.
But what was worse, what was written in blood on the bathroom mirror?
It said, that maniacs lick hands, too.
As she tells this variation of the urban legend, someone creeps up towards them from the proper entrance to the cemetery and follows the sound of them being creeped out to find them.
They get hit by a sudden thunderstorm, and so they head to an abandoned house and, holy shit, how are they all still alive?
Why has nobody killed them?
I just love how the maniac in the story was self-aware.
Like, he referred to himself as a maniac.
He's clearly been doing some work, but he's not ready to quite change.
It's either people can lick, too, or I can lick, too.
Yeah, something along those lines.
Maniacs.
Well, she's clearly not adept at telling campfire stories or ghost stories around a campfire.
She eats pop rocks and washes it down with coke.
No fear at all.
They find a fireplace once they're inside after they break into the house and lay out blankets, and a fire magically appears in a cut for no reason at all.
The wacky guy needs to move his bowels and has to be talked into using the outhouse, and the rest of the crew wants to scare him once he is done.
He darts off to the outhouse and pops a squat before realizing he has no toilet paper and is going to use a handkerchief or something, but will just tell his mom that he lost it.
Was it his underwear?
What was he going to use to wipe his ass?
It was a handkerchief, but it just didn't seem right.
I just don't understand.
I mean, in an outhouse, sure, it will just be down there forever, whatever.
It makes sense, I guess.
But still, it's like, why do you have to tell your mom what happened?
I mean, why do we need this moment other than just being a silly idiot?
But anyway, he also puts his hat that he's been wearing, this giant top hat that he was wearing in the cemetery when they were telling the tales, on top of the other shitter hole, because it's a two-seater in that shitter, by the way.
And while he's shitting, a raccoon comes up out of that other second seat of the outhouse where his hat is and pops the hat out, scares the shit out of him.
Literally, once he is done.
The crew sets up to scare the shit out of him as well, but when they get there, he is cut the fuck up and hanging upside down in the shitter.
And if you paid attention to the ghost story in the clip, the way that he is hanging and the blood is dripping down, the killer very clearly did this specifically because of the tale that they were telling.
He was there when she told the story, and that's the reason why.
They cut him down and carry him into the abandoned house.
Finally, with ten minutes left, we get a proper slasher scenario.
As one of the guys darts off from the house after the rest, get the guy inside that's been severely injured and presumably murdered.
The lone dude heads back to the truck, but the machete killer is there, and he is now presumed dead as well, because we see the machete swipe, but we don't actually see him die on screen.
The young lady that followed him finds his corpse in the truck as his head pops off next to her, and holy shit, this film is doing a sprint to change from a quirky hangout film to a full-blown splasher in under 10 minutes.
Better late than never.
She is now a headless corpse too, when the main man from the crew runs to the vehicle to find them.
He darts back through the woods and seems to have encountered the killer, machete and all, and clubs him with some kind of a stick that he somewhere picked up, I don't know when, but when you find your friend's dead, of course, you get a weapon, that makes sense.
He clubs him and just sends him across there.
And we hear a scream that sounds like a female scream or a scare chord synth scream that hits at the same time as that club strike happens.
And that's something that they do.
When the killer gets hit, it makes that noise for some reason.
Then he darts off further into the woods, and while darting through the cemetery, he falls into an open grave.
And when he tries to climb out, the killer chops his fucking hands off with a really decent effect.
But Jesus Christ, we're like seven minutes left, and this is like our second supposed, third supposed death already.
This guy just blew my mind.
This character is getting his hands chopped off because when they're hanging out with all these young, fresh faces, he's way too old to be hanging out with these kids.
And also his voice is like really deep, and he just sticks out like a sore thumb.
There's this thing of bringing in the local talent, and then bringing in some Hollywood people, and mixing them all together.
I can't imagine this guy was like, he had to have been local, like the best local actor.
I think he probably managed the theater where most of these, because these people, while they may not be full-fledged actor-actors, like to where we've seen them a ton before that they went on to careers that we would notice them in, they're all serviceable, and they all do an excellent job.
I mean, I'm judging by Herschel Gordon-Lewis standards, they're actually actors, they're not non-actors.
They're actually doing a performance that works.
I agree.
There's a couple of people who are just solid, like our main lovers, the two innocent kids.
She is just a natural, really, really fun and cute.
They cut back to the house, and one of the ladies notices that someone is coming, and without thinking, the only remaining dude whips open the door to a machete swipe that he barely gets the door closed in time to stop.
That was really cool.
That was another really effective jump scare that was pretty unique.
I like the way they did that.
Ramona runs up the stairs and then falls through them because they are rotten, and they even hinted that at the steps and the porch to be careful that the floors might be rotten and you don't want to fall through.
The only remaining man climbs up the stairs and tries to pull her up, and as they do this, and they're all trying to really pull her up through the stairs, the killer presumably is in the cellar with her, and he chops her in half because they only pull up half of her, and that was a decent effect as well.
They all run up the stairs into a room and close the door, then the only dude left gets cleaved through the door, but somehow is still somewhat alive.
The killer is revealed when he busts through the door, and it is that fucking teacher, and his motivation is also revealed in our short as fuck final clip.
No!
Lily, Lily.
Lily!
So for no reason at all, we just have an immediate flashback in his mind of how his mother actually seems to have been a sex worker of some sort, or at least a stripper, and that he was there with her at work all of the time and seeing naked women, and apparently that turned him into a slasher.
Anyway, there's just this flashback of that happening.
For two seconds.
Yeah, and he hates sex apparently, and then Lily uses this fact that he was distracted going through all of this, to somehow grab a shard of glass when the window that he hits next to her breaks.
She picks it up and then slashes his throat while he's distracted, or when he screams her name and goes to swipe at him.
Whatever, it doesn't matter.
His throat is slashed.
The fucking pig is also still alive somehow, and he just shows up at the house just in time to have the teacher come back for one last scare that somehow has him jumping out of the window and then falling at the feet of the pig who shoots the dying man not once, not just twice, but just one shot shy of the loom is six times!
I shot him six times!
One of those actually happens to be in the head and it's the head explosion, and it's the first shot, which I really think should have been the final shot, but it was still glorious either way.
It doesn't fucking matter.
The survivor asks the pig why.
He says he doesn't know.
That sounds an awful lot like, is that the boogeyman?
As a matter of fact, that was.
And then let's get them all home and they cut to the sexy naked corpse in the water.
Freeze frame on that and roll credits for fucking ever.
Ha ha.
What an odd set of choices this film makes, and what a weird way to go about doing everything that this film has chosen to do.
I just don't quite understand all of the choices that they made.
And like, I really feel like there's a decent slasher in here if you recut it and you can still maintain all of the character building fun that you wanted to get.
You just move a few of the events around and have them happen in different times.
Cause otherwise you have this long as fuck hangout film that has like basically a slasher movie pasted to either sides of it.
Like they got this, like there's somebody running with unfastened scripts, right?
They have Fast Times at Ridgemont High knockoff film in one hand, and then they have a Halloween slash My Bloody Valentine knockoff in the other hand.
And they go running to get to the production office and they trip and fall.
And some of the like 13 through 14 pages from one gets mixed into the other.
And then some of the like last 60 minutes, and then they have these really confusing set of movies that end up becoming death scream and then something else like maybe Cheerleader Camp, who knows.
The director had everything on note cards, I bet.
And then one day someone bumped into me, dropped the whole thing on note cards and said, Oh, my scenes are out of order now.
Oh, well, let's get shooting.
It's North Carolina.
And they fell into a fucking puddle.
So he wasn't able to read them because that's the only reason they did things the way they did them.
He's behind the camera.
They're like, Oh, he's really concentrating back there.
But he's just squinting at his car.
It's like, what the fuck did I write?
Yeah, yeah.
Everything that I'm saying about this, I freely admit that this is not a well put together movie.
Like everything about this is executed poorly from start to finish.
But it's not any of the fault of the actors that are in this.
They all do an excellent job.
And the scenes in this, whenever they're performed as they should, are more than serviceable for any other kind of slasher that I've seen.
The thing that is wrong with this is the editing and the direction and the way that the story jumps around.
Like it's clearly not written that way in a script because nobody writes a script like this.
Unless they are the director fucking up somebody else's script.
I should hate it for all of these reasons, but because of that, I'm like, aw, nice try, slugger.
And I'm so charmed by it.
I find it so enjoyable.
And this would be one that I would play it as a caveat with people where I'm like, okay, now look, this is a hangout film that has slasher elements in it.
So just sit back and have some fun with this and don't expect much more than like the last American Virgin with Murder.
Right, right.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Shock Marathons books.
Matt Farley and his crew, they did some like movie marathons books that really inspired me many, many years ago.
All three of the reviewers in that series are fascinated by the crap in between all the horror stuff.
And so like this movie is right up their alley because it just like we talked about, they care so much more about the characters.
And I love that you've been saying it's a hangout slasher.
I literally wrote that in my notes.
I love that.
The, it's cozy, it's charming, the carnival stuff, you know, like I used to harsh on Drive-In Massacre, because Drive-In Massacre has this huge, overly long stretch, where they just get the production value by taking the camera down to the local carnival and have the killer, I think it's the killer, or the, no, the detective or somebody just walking around in the carnival for like 10, what feels like 15 minutes of the movie for no reason.
And now I'm like, shit, let's go back to that carnival, you know, that's fun stuff.
And this one, Lietta, my wife, is trying to like put these slashers in the context of holidays and holiday celebrations.
Like, you know, we have our Christmas slashers and our Halloween slashers and all this other stuff.
And even she's going for like summer solstice horror movies and end of the semester, end of the school year horror movies.
Christmas and fall break horror films, because there's slashers like that.
Like fall break big time, even later, and this one by accident, we're like, oh, this is the end of summer.
So now we have something to watch when school's about to start up again.
Yeah, it's the end of like a spring break, basically where these kids go home and spend all of their time coaching little league for money before they go back to college.
That's basically the layout of this.
I love it.
Yeah, it's thoroughly enjoyable.
And like I said, it's not particularly well-made and it's just something that is not necessarily the fault of any of the folks that are actually on screen.
And I don't blame any of them at all.
And I would make a fan edit of this that would probably, what I feel would be a much more coherent film that would tell you a bit more of a narrative and would make it feel more like a slasher, but still have it be a hangout slasher.
And there are plenty of movies that I would categorize as a hangout slasher.
We already mentioned Fall Break slash Mutilator.
That is 100% a hangout slasher.
Big time.
Yeah, which you're either in for that or you're not.
A lot of slasher films, particularly the earlier slasher films and a lot of the one-off slasher films, they took the risk of not going so hard on the formula and they really wanted you to be endeared to the kids before they killed them.
And in some cases, like with Shelley and then this fucking Curly running around on the ground, jackass in this film, like they made characters that 100% you were rooting for them to die faster.
Like that's what they did.
There's very few of them that spend the time, like My Bloody Valentine is one of them, Fall Break is another one.
My Bloody Valentine gets real fucking close to being a hangout slasher, but it also makes sure that it gives you a kill every 10 minutes at least, or something having to do with a kill every 10 minutes.
And you follow the Ahab slash Loomis the entire time in My Bloody Valentine, 100%.
This one is essentially taking all the beats of some of the slashers that hit big and reworking them in ways.
But like the really good stuff is definitely something that a screenwriter had to come up with.
Like that fucking train scare is perfect where she's walking through the train yard.
And if they just came up with that on their own, whoever invented it, I want to give the credit to the screenwriter because it's so masterfully done.
But I could totally see a cinematographer and director just putting this sequence together to do a horror film.
Maybe all the character stuff was the reason the screenwriter got pushed away because he put all that in and no slashing.
I don't know.
But like there's a way to do this.
And even like a One Dark Night, which isn't really technically a slasher, though it's called a slasher.
It's more of a super national slasher.
That's another hangout film, but it still finds a way to keep the tension going.
When this takes you to the carnival, you're diffused of all tension and you forget all your troubles and you just get lost in the fun of these wacky rural community folk just having a good old time.
It literally made me flashback to the county fairs I used to go to as a kid.
Yeah, me too.
Anything else you have to say about the movie then?
I just love this.
And I'm glad I waited until the Blu-ray was available and didn't try to stick it out through watching a crappy copy.
You know, and I'm not anti VHS at all.
Some movies are, they can actually be scarier because you get that more of a claustrophobic feel from a VHS.
I mean, I'm not gonna argue that it has better picture quality.
It certainly doesn't, but it has an aesthetic that helps horror work better in some cases, yes.
I wouldn't have been able to see that girl's flesh-colored panties as she was floating down the river there.
No, you would have thought she was totally naked.
I would have been in Dreamland.
But no, this, I-
I saw everything.
I absolutely recommend this to people who are just burning through all those slashers and are less concerned about the body count, less concerned about the Tom Savini-esque splatter effect, it's just crazy shit.
And luckily, this one tries very hard to make up for it with all that gore.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
This is not the first slasher movie you should ever watch.
This is, if you've seen pretty much everything else that everybody's already said the name of, then give Night Screams a check it out, because it is a snapshot of the time that it takes place in.
It is a snapshot of a culture for that particular time in the South when they made a slasher film.
It makes some very weird choices that are going to baffle you.
But at the same time, it's definitely of its era, of its time, and it has the feel that it should for that particular time.
And if you want to just press your nostalgia button for a slasher movie in the 80s that you would just catch randomly, either on cable or blue $2 for a VHS rental oven, had no idea what you were going to get into, Death Screams is that kind of slasher.
It's like Memorial Day Massacre where it may not be great, but there's something about it you will never forget.
I love that you said, oh, yes, to Memorial Day Massacre.
I'm telling you, we watch it every Memorial Day and we're just as baffled as we were the first time.
Like, what the hell are we looking at?
All right, so we're going to tell some stories, right?
Right after this, I think we have some dark ride stories and some haunted house stories that we could definitely tell from carnivals.
So let's take a break here.
We're going to play the band GBH with the song Hearing Screams and the lyrics to this fit even fucking better because in parentheses, just like they do often in country songs or the last time you were hearing scream.
I don't know what that all means, but we're going to find out.
And then right after that, we're going to have story time.
See Fuck yeah, I told you the lyrics would kind of fit with what's going on with Death Screams.
But shit, it could have been literally about anything and it would have fit with what's going on in Death Screams because it's all over the place.
All right, so now we're gonna tell everybody about some experiences with carnivals in our story time.
Storytime.
That's one of my favorite things that I've ever done, by the way.
It's really good.
Thank you.
All right, so that haunted house of horrors thing that they go through, I went through something that was exactly the same thing.
It was just an extended, like, truck trailer that they modified into being like a walk-in walk through maze that had that same, like they didn't have plexiglass to protect their stuff.
They just put up the wire caging, like for chicken wire or the thicker stuff that they use that's like the diamond plating with the diamonds cut out type of bars that you see in this film.
And you just walk past, like, the lamest fucking automated displays that are breaking and falling apart because this thing has been running for 50 fucking years.
I went to the Carnival with Lietta like maybe like a year or two before the pandemic.
And I actually got in one of those that had a car that actually had the working, the car was still working and it would drive you through the whole thing.
That was the only part of it that worked.
And the stereo that played the loud, like no bass, it's all treble, like nightmarish, like the worst sound design you could possibly imagine for a haunted house.
And every single scare was broken or missing everything.
We rode around in the dark and then came out and the guy was like, it occurred to me how bad he was trying to talk us out of going into it.
Like he was taking our tickets, like you sure?
Like you really sure?
Because he's probably had people who wanted their tickets back or some shit.
It was so bad, dude.
Yeah.
Pathetic.
Yeah.
I have a fondness for those because I remember being very young when a lot of those, like the way that the thing looks in this particular film, that haunted house, it's like a walkthrough haunted house.
That's just like a truck trailer.
It just has a quick path and it's like one of your carnival tickets to go.
However much that costs.
It's only one ticket to go through.
And you know, it's self guided tour you walk through.
And if you look at the floor, you can see the pressure plates before they do the gas blasts and things like that.
But what you're describing is called a dark ride and that's usually they have to set up a thing like a collapsible ride or it's like, okay, they can put it into like a warehouse where they just put two doors in there and then they build the ride through and just set it up.
That's what it was.
Yeah.
And sometimes it's a tent.
Sometimes they have like a pop up structure that they'll put them in.
And I've even seen a couple of dark rides like that where it's like a couple of tractor trailers that come apart and then they snap them together when they back them up all together.
And then the rides in there.
I've been in one that was like that before.
I took pictures of the artwork at the time because the artwork outside was just beautiful.
Like they had all these skeletons and vampires and ghouls and shit paint on the outside.
And that was the part that was kept up and nothing else.
At that same carnival, Leah and I nearly got crushed to death in just the force of gravity.
We were safe on the ride.
It was that ride that's sort of like a low stakes roller coaster that just does like one or two humps around.
It was really, really small.
But the dude was running it as fast as it could go.
And he didn't want to let us off.
So the centrifugal force was like crushing Leah and I together, much like the couple at the beginning of Death Screams.
And it was so unpleasant.
Like I could feel my back was trying to go out.
It was so fast and so crazy.
And we were being just slammed into the side of the seat.
And he wouldn't shut it off.
And I was trying to wave to him to shut it off.
And when we got out, we were wrecked and we immediately went home.
Like that killed our carnival spirit, terrible.
I actually, some of these carnivals that I've been to as well, there was a really great dark ride that I will never forget.
That was like one of those they build it into a warehouse or like it was like a pavilion thing that they build it into and then put the tent stuff up on the side.
And then they ran you through.
And it had a track that was set up that you had to follow in everything.
And everything was on pistons.
And there was like the gas cannons that would fire at you and blast like not necessarily confetti, but like just like a blast of air at you that just looked kind of dusty or whatever.
And they would have cobwebs that would move and then the spider that would drop from the ceiling and everything.
Same thing that you said, the really bad blown out speaker that has nothing but trouble because all the woofers are gone over that.
And there's something about those dark rides and those walk through haunted houses that the shittier they are, the more I'm like, oh man, this has got to be so old.
Like I wonder how many people have gone through this and been this disappointed.
I get connection with them.
Now that we've just concluded story time, unless you have more dark ride stories to tell, I did have a question for question time of something that we were discussing, but I think it bodes to get its own moment and we can pretty much make this as quick as you'd like, and then we'll wrap it up from here.
I'm ready for questions.
Do it.
Okay, what is a jokester character you find the most annoying in a slasher film?
Oh my God.
I mean, the meme covers it that you mentioned earlier, obviously, but like which is the one that you fucking can't wait to die the fastest when you watch them?
God bless America.
That's a good question, huh?
I can give you a couple if you need some time.
The large gentleman from Cheerleader Camp is a good, him and the other guy who are rapping together.
That is skin crawling insanity.
That's a hard one to beat, yeah.
Oh, you know what?
I just watched Hide and Go Shriek for the first time in a long time.
And almost every guy in that movie is one of those characters.
So all of those fucks.
Well, my next question was gonna be, can you make a list of runner ups to the similar characters that irritate you?
You definitely can do that.
For me, I know a lot of people say Shelly, and yes, Shelly is absolutely irritating, but-
Shelly is like a human being.
Shelly has like pathos.
Yeah, there's reasons why he's behaving like that, and he at least comes out of that and stops being a prick.
How about the guy in his fucking computer in Friday the 13th Four?
Why does that guy not get a little flack?
I fucking hate him.
If I were at a party with that dude, and I saw him talking to other people like that, in my earlier days, he would have gotten a headbutt and a barrage of punches from me, or would have been kicking my ass after I headbutted him, because I fucking hate that guy.
Yeah, he's a miserable asshole who's trying to bring everybody else down, especially his own buddy.
Yeah, he constantly belittles him and talks down to him and calls him a dead fuck.
He's a piece of shit and a shitty fucking friend.
God, I'm trying to think of these prankster dorks.
The guy in Fallbreaker Mutilator, whichever one was the prankster in that.
Yeah, yeah.
He was trying to be a standup comedian, but I was begging for him to die.
And I felt terrible for the lady that fell in love with him.
I'm like, why do you love this piece of shit?
Oh, a movie I was thinking about while we were talking about movies that don't care about fricking being a slasher.
He knows you're alone.
The boyfriend who, or the, excuse me, the fiance who goes to the party with his bros, like that guy who's like...
He's the closet, right?
He's a closet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a closet.
He is a closet.
That dude, he's awful, but he's not a goofy character.
He's just a terrible character.
Yeah, well, it's okay to hate on a character.
It's a character you find the most annoying.
And the jokester characters definitely are the worst, and they're the ones that I tend to hate a lot more.
But yeah, the douchebag guys, man, they drive me nuts as well.
You know who's one of my favorite of those asshole characters, though?
The dude with the really thick glasses from Pieces.
That dude is next level.
Like those characters, like those goofball, dorkest characters, they study his ass in college.
Like he is, oh my God, man.
Like, and the dubbing, well, you know, the dubbing of Pieces is one of the best things about Pieces.
And that dude's voice is just, and all of the dialogue he says is fucking stupid.
One person that should be annoying and I should fucking hate, but I somehow find charming, is Biff Tannen's character in April Fool's Day.
For some reason, I think he's terrific as he is.
Oh yeah, he's so good.
Like he's enjoyable and he's actually funny and he's kind of charming and the jokester character works with him, but he is of real fucking brick in that movie.
Two, oh my God, yes.
The, we just watched Intruder for the first time in a long time.
That's the grocery store slasher when Sam Ramey was involved with, right?
Exactly, that has a prankster guy in it, but mainly my favorite dude in that is the stoner dude who has the weirdest dialogue delivery.
Holy shit, like we were, I was rewinding his dialogue, man.
It was so weird.
Every time he spoke, I was dying.
All right, well that, we could go on for that for quite a while, but I think that's more than enough of examples of things to check out for if you wanna do some research in the jokester or other annoying characters in slasher films.
And say, let's go ahead and end this because I promised to get you out at like two hours and we've definitely gone over because we're some chatty Cathys.
Oh, we love to get our gab on.
With that, I'm gonna play the ending Legion promo.
And then after that, we're gonna come back with the band 2.8 and the song, You're Screaming, Aphrodite, right after this.
If you enjoyed this show, then make sure you check out the other great shows on the Legion Podcasts Network, like Cinema Psy Ops, Cinema Beef, Devour the Podcasts, Duncan and Bo Come Correct, Exploding Heads, Horror Movie Podcasts, Freige the 13th, Get Slayed, The Helming Power Hour, Hello!, This is The Doomed Show, Hero Hero Ghost Show, Kill the Cast, Underwater Kaiju from Outer Space, Jerry Hates Action, Legion After Dark, Mental Health, Obsessive Cinema, Discourse, Pick Six Movies, The Podcasts by The Cemetery, The Podcasts on Haunted Hill, The Psychosomatic Podcasts, Rick Radio, House of Wax, Dude Looks Like the 80s, Rabbit in Red Radio, The Shadecasts, Short Bus Cinema, Two Drink Minimum Commentaries, The VD Clinic, Who Will Survive Horror Podcasts, and Which Versus a Doomsday Clock.
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Oh, I should have gave the audience a warning that this band may melt your fucking face off with awesome.
I'm sorry, everyone.
It's better to learn.
I saw them play live, and they definitely fucking melted my face off.
2.8 is super energetic.
They've been played on this show before, but never appreciated as much as when they were into your ears, my friend.
All right, so I did promise to get you out of here, so let's go ahead and go through the show housekeeping as quickly as possible here.
legionpodcasts.com, for me it's forward slash cinema dash psyops dash podcast.
I didn't look up Richard's, but it's definitely Doomed Show, or Hello!, This Is The Doomed Show.
And you'll be able to find it with a Google search or just a quick search on the website there at legionpodcasts.com
You can also find me in sometimes, I think, Richard, are you on the Legion Discord chat?
No, no, I'm like so bad at Discord, it's ridiculous.
Oh, well, it's just a chat app, basically, where everybody can chat in a giant chat room.
It's perfect for Legion Podcasts.
I have a Discord account, I'll join that shit.
Yeah, it's a lot of fun when you jump in there and you can get talking about stuff.
It doesn't happen enough, but the more people we get active in there and chatting about things, maybe we can keep going.
Yes, we'll see, but I get replies to things that I said like a week or two ago, eventually.
So, hey, it works, it's cool.
I like to see people discuss some things with me right there at the Legion Discord chat.
Now, let's give you the rundown of the memes, because I am a meme machine.
I'm a meme stealing machine, and by stealing, I mean I share with the people.
So first, it gets posted to the Instagram, cinema_psyops, thrice daily during the workday for the working week, for the working stiff like myself.
Then it gets shared to the Facebook group of Cinema Psyops after the page of Cinema Psyops on Facebook, all aptly named for the podcast, Cinema Psyops, that you are currently listening to.
And then at some point, I will share it to my main page as well.
And eventually, someday, Hello!, This Is The Doomed Show will hit your feet again.
Will it not, Richard?
Oh, it will.
We're coming back hot as fuck in 2024.
It's gonna be great.
Well, while you're out there looking to scratch that podcasting itch when you put your own show away for a little while and take an hiatus, kick the fuck out of this week and make it your bitch.
Go ahead and invite you to be able to record on your side.
This works really, really good with Matt.
If you're hooked into your computer with the mic that you normally use to record on your computer, it'll capture the same level of audio.
It automatically syncs up to the mic that you have set for it.
Yeah, and actually you sound fucking terrific.
So you're enabled to record on your side.
Recording in progress.
Recording, recording in process.
Progress.
All right, we're ready to freakin rock, man.
This is awesome, so.
Can you give me a three, two, one count in?
Three, two, one, go.
Cool, I'm gonna sync it up on the word go for what I have on my side and what you're recording on your side.
And that should pretty much do it.
So yeah, we're good.
And just because I'm, you know, retentive and I want to make sure.
Yes.
Recording to the cloud.
So we have three recordings now.
Well, I'm gonna hit record on SoundForge and now you have four, so.
This is the most important motherfucking conversation that ever happened.
This level of overprotection has got me excited.
Like my anxiety is like, we have four levels of each recording, man.
We're gonna be fine.
Man, that's ridiculous.
I love it.
Okay, you've heard the show recently.
So, you know, I do like a long shouting intro and everything.
Okay, cause I just, if somebody hasn't recorded with me in a while and I do that, I don't want to be like, what the fuck is going on with Cort?
Is he having a seizure?
No, I know.
I'm hip to the news.
Okay, cool.
If we need a third segment to, not necessarily pad out the time, but just like get it to about an hour, cause I like to have the episodes be at least an hour.
Oh yeah.
That'll be cool.
But I doubt that we will not be particularly loquacious about this film.
Dude, we'll be circumloquacious.
All right, well with that, I am going to go ahead and play just a little bit of the intro so I can take a couple of hits off my vape and then I will come in with the hello.
So, boom, here we go, three, two, one.
Wait till I get you to school.
And we beat you too, didn't we?
Women forever, superior being.
Yeah, the future is female, motherfucker.
And you can just bet you know what they're doing.
In my day, nice boys and girls just did them.
Oh, yes they did.
They just never talked about it.
Anyway, Mr.
He has about as much chance of becoming a doctor as I do the Queen of England.
Oh, grandma.
The Queen of England.
Queen of England?
His brains were TNT.
Fucking old bitch.
You're terrible.
Fucking loser.
I'm totally pulling all of the things that you have to say out and putting them in outtakes.
This shit's gold.
I can't not do that.
It's too much fun.
The audience has to hear this too.
It's just so fresh in my mind.
Put your hand back in quick.
He even does a curly impression later, and I want to cry.
Yes, shove the burning joint up your ass.
Hey, don't kink shame him.
Kink shaming is my kink.
Well, there are some people who have a shaming kink, so you should get together and hang out.
She spreads out.
That's slut shaming.
I know, I'm not a fan.
Went to one once.
What, a bonfire or a ghost storytelling?
I'm like confused.
Bonfire ghost storytelling.
Oh, that's condo.
That's our next clip.
And my dumb ass just deleted it, so now I have to go fetch it out of the folder.
I love when I do that, and I have to make this as an outtake to make fun of myself for being a dummy.
I think you like a challenge.
It is loaded in 3, 2, 1.
I like a challenge because I'm challenged.
Emotionally.
Say, maybe I'm just not into cheap thrills.
Whoa, slow down, what?
Can I have a moment?
Right?
Oh shit, I gotta take that out.
I apologize, I should have taken that out.
I try to remove all homophobic slurs from movies when I pull an eclipse.
I didn't hear that one.
Old movies, man.
Towns like purgatory, man.
It's like Twin Peaks, only worse.
There's no Black Lodge there.
It just fucking sucks to live there.
The whole place is the Black Lodge.
Theodge So while you're out there looking to scratch that podcasting itch when you put your own show away for a little while and take an hiatus, kick the fuck out of this weekend, make it your bitch.
All right, man, you can go ahead and stop recording whenever you want.
Cool, well, thank you for having me back, Duder.
Recording stopped.