(upbeat music)
Hey there, folks, it's Richard.
I'm just cutting in real quick
before Brad and I get started
to tell you that "Gialo Meltdown 2,"
a book by me is now available on amazon.com
in streaming or downloading form.
No way, paper or electronic.
It's a whole book about me watching over 200 "Gialo" films,
and I would love if you checked it out.
Hey, let's get on with this show
because I don't like podcasts with advertisements
at the beginning, just like this one.
Statistically speaking,
one of the most impressive records of failure
is destined to be broken.
84 failures.
A fantastic record, incredible.
A record like that couldn't possibly last.
I could just sit in my office
and wait for the criminal to show up.
Please don't do that.
Oh no.
I'll take a very personal interest in your case.
(dramatic music)
- Everything is ready, my darling.
Do not be afraid.
So we'll be together again.
(dramatic music)
, (dramatic music)
(dramatic music)
- This sandwich tastes as dry as hell.
- Hello, and welcome to "Hello, This Is The Doomed Show."
I am Richard.
- It's Brad.
- Folks, we are tuning back in.
We took just a few minutes break.
We were just finishing up our discussion
of the "Cat in Nine Tales."
And right before that, literally minutes before that,
we talked about frickin' "Bird with a Crystal Plumage,"
and then we took just a little break to have a sip of water.
And that was about 220 episodes ago.
- Wow.
- Let me make sure, folks, we took a break
from doing the third film in "Dario Argento's Animal Trilogy."
And we didn't mean for it to be a big break.
But this is episode 250-something,
and Brad and I did "Animal Trilogy,"
part one, on episode 56, so.
- Wow.
- It was just about 200 episodes ago.
But hey, better late than never, right?
- Yeah, we left just enough time
so that they would think that we weren't gonna do it.
- That's right, that's right.
You have time to see the movie,
because this one's still weirdly hard to get a hold of.
We've had multiple editions
of both "Bird with a Crystal Plumage"
and "Cat and Nine Tails."
But this one, I call it a straggler.
- It is.
- It's kind of a mythical film, for some reason.
It's probably because of its distribution rights,
getting all tangled up.
It's sitting in a vault somewhere,
trying to remember the film company that made it,
tried to bury it.
- Maya.
- Oh, Maya is the version I'm watching it on.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah, yeah, I'm wondering about the company credits,
like the, 'cause a major American studio actually.
- Universal.
- That's it, yes, thank you.
Universal Pictures, they're the ones
who distributed it Paramount,
distributed it, distributed it.
They've buried it, I think.
I think they've made it difficult
for us to get this damn thing.
- Yeah.
- You can get this.
The Maya DVD is the one I have.
It is pretty much out of print.
However, Shameless has the 40th edition, Blu-ray,
but I have never seen that
for sale anywhere I know about.
I have the Shameless DVD as well as the Maya DVD.
- Okay.
- But I do not have the Blu-ray.
- Yeah, the Shameless is hard to get.
The Maya is getting hard to get,
but I'm gonna go outside of Amazon's spectrum here,
because you know what?
Sometimes they don't do us any favors.
I can't wait to edit this part
where I actually shop, here we go.
- Yeah, meanwhile I've looked up on eBay for you.
- Oh yes, if you can get it on eBay folks, do it there,
'cause you know, I like Diabolik.
- Oh no, I'd pick Diabolik over eBay for sure.
- Spasmo, are you a cat of nine tails?
Are you hearing this?
- I am.
- So they say the Blu-ray's out of stock.
That's not good.
- eBay has the Blu-ray
with 99.9% positive feedback.
- Oh, nice.
- Free three-day shipping for 29.99.
- Folks, do it, that's what I would do.
That should probably upgrade.
I do like the Maya DVD.
Do you, which version did you watch
for this particular viewing, sir?
- The Shameless, because I do believe the Shameless
is better than the Maya.
- Well, I should probably try to track that down then.
- Best is I remember, and it's been a long time.
My history with this film was I watched it
online, and I wanna say it was YouTube.
And then Maya announced, or no, Maya had a DVD,
so I ordered it, and as soon as I ordered it,
Shameless announced a DVD.
And this was back when I would immediately buy GLE
for any reason, so we doubled it pretty quick on that.
It's the most complete version, supposedly,
and there are some scenes that like half of them
don't look quite as good, still much better than like a VHS.
- Right, right.
- And then the next frame all of a sudden is like better.
- Damn.
- It's a good looking DVD, so it's not Blu-ray.
I don't know what the Blu-ray looks like.
- Yeah, that's the thing.
I've never seen that frickin' Blu-ray.
I've always done the DVD.
Alls I know is the bootleg I had originally was very dark,
and even with the brightness on my TV turned up all the way,
I could not see the end.
The whole cataclysmic car crash ending, couldn't see it,
so I was very, very disappointed.
That was a big bummer for me.
Yes, I'm quite happy with the Maya,
and I will be checking out that frickin' Shameless.
- Yeah, and the Blu-ray's 30 bucks,
and it is region free according to eBay.
- Cool.
- Yeah, that's the thing, I'm still that guy
who has no region free Blu-ray player.
I'm depending on the kindness of strangers as I do.
As you can probably guess,
we're gonna spoil this whole movie,
so please, if you haven't seen Four Flies and Gravel,
but give it a watch, you will not regret it.
- That's right.
- I'm gonna play a trailer.
It's probably got some frickin' some pumpin' heartbeats
and some Ennio Morricone, despite,
this is when Ennio Morricone and our pal,
Argento, butted heads for the first time.
They'd been doing so good,
and it caused a little bit of a scandal
that people couldn't believe that Argento
had dared to question the maestro.
And he would, of course, go on to work with Goblin,
and the rest is history.
- An evening of darkness becomes an eternity
of terror and suspense,
as a killer stalks the streets of a city
in search of unsuspecting victims
to quench his never-ending thirst for blood.
(screaming)
- What's the police?
They found the maid with the throat guard.
- I would definitely describe it as an extreme case
of homicidal mania.
- The patient was here for three years.
It was our opinion, but the patient was completely cured.
- I could kill you now, but I won't.
I'll wait.
I was going to help you.
- An innocent man becomes a target of insanity
as he steps into the crosshairs of a homicidal maniac
with a need for revenge.
(gun firing)
- Congratulations.
You guessed right.
- The killers are homicidal paranoid.
Cases like that commit the most horrendous crimes
would appear to be the most insignificant reasons.
- Stop acting like a baby.
Stop crying.
You hear?
I never want to see you cry.
- What have you done now?
- You'll end up in an asylum.
Asylum!
- Baby, it's all a bad dream.
I'm scared.
- What's the matter?
What's happening?
- Look, I'm waiting for someone.
Then you go out that door and you run.
- Four flies on gray velvet.
Join us for a journey into the dark
and endless caverns of a sick and twisted mind.
Join us for a journey into living hell.
(screaming)
- Okay, that was a sort of a trailer or a total trailer.
I don't even know what I played right there
'cause I'm a bad boy and didn't look it up.
I do have the plot synopsis from IMDB
'cause I haven't seen a VHS tape for four flies on gray velvet.
I like to read from the VHS tapes.
I like to see how these things were marketed here.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Here we go.
Scott Calvin has been a humble Santa Claus for eight years,
but it might come to an end
if he doesn't find a Mrs. Claus.
Of course, that's the Santa Claus too.
That's the plot from that.
That's gonna be our Christmas episode.
- Exactly.
No, seriously.
A musician is stalked by an unknown homicidal maniac
who blackmails him for the accidental killing
of another stalker.
Whoa, there's no spoilers in that
because that's just misleading.
I like it.
- Uh-huh.
- Perfect.
Oh boy, so this movie opens and I gotta say,
can the drummer get some?
- Can the drummer get some?
- Folks, I love drummers.
I know a few drummers and their brains are totally different
just like bass players are totally different
from every other kind of musician.
Drummers be crazy.
- Drummers be crazy.
- And we got Michael Brandon, who is a,
is he an American dude?
He is, he's a Brooklynite.
- Yeah, he is actually in one of your,
one of your favorite Marvel movies.
- Holy shit, I had no idea that was him.
- I did not know it either.
- He's in Captain America, the first Avenger.
- He is.
- Somebody get that kid his sandwich.
- Well, he had a, we'll be very glad to know that.
But that's like her favorite,
that in the first Thor, her favorites.
That's brilliant.
So yeah, Michael Brandon, American dude,
he's great in this.
Argento was quite taken with him and thought,
you know, hey, this guy reminds me of me,
which is terrifying.
But we got this drummer and he's, he's at his sesh.
He's jamming, he's jamming with his fellow musicians.
And I'm gonna do a quick impression of the singer
in his band.
(singing)
That's how he sings.
He's the worst.
I want to fire him, but I have no,
I have no power in this band.
I'm very low on the power totem pole.
But he sees a flyskido.
He's trying to kill this flyskido.
And while this flyskido is flying in his face,
he's also seeing a stalker out the window.
'Cause they're recording their session
in a record store slash music store.
And then later they're recording in a studio,
but it's in the record store is being stalked.
And then you see this movie's got heart.
- It really does.
- A pumping heart.
This is a very gimmicky credit sequence.
I love it.
I adore it.
I think it's wonderful.
- So good.
- After they're done, and Michael Brandon
our drummer boy is, he's Roberto in this movie.
When Roberto is, he's running out the door,
his buddy, the keyboardist, who I believe
is supposed to be gay and has a crush on him,
chases him out the door and apologizes for playing.
So shit, he's just off his game.
And Roberto's like, who's going to notice
this music so crazy, would anyone even notice?
Just, just, you know, hit your cues, man.
And then he's like, do I have to remind you
of our singer sounds like this?
(singing)
So Roberto finally confronts the stalker.
This guy's been following him.
So he follows him in reverse
and they end up in an old theater
and Lietta's like, hold up.
Is this a secret New Year's Eve movie?
All these revelers are coming out
of this old theater at night
and they're covered in confetti and they look drunk.
There's musicians leaving.
So the stalker goes in there, Roberto follows him
and the guy pulls a knife like, get away from me, man.
And Roberto says, I'm sick of seeing your stupid face.
And when the stalker's holding the knife on him,
I said, Brad, this is a prequel to Knives Out.
- Knives Out.
- Yep, speaking of Marvel.
- Knives Chow.
- Hey Knives Chow, speaking of the MCU.
So we see the freaky mask.
We got this weird Cupid doll mask on our actual killer here
who is conveniently photographing
Roberto accidentally stabbing this guy.
This might lead to some blackmail, I can't say.
- But it's a pretty good assumption.
- After Roberto kills quote unquote, the guy,
or quote unquote, kills the guy,
that smooth ass Morricone lullaby weird song.
That's my favorite piece of music
from Morricone starts playing
and we see the upscale suburban lives
of where our pal Roberto lives.
He's living high on the hog.
So they've got high rises and everything
and it's beautiful buildings,
but it just reeks of like this gentrified hipster living space
where he and his wife live.
- Right.
- We see a dozing kitty
and this dozing kitty is a character
that is my favorite character.
And then Roberto's in bed with his Mimsy farmer.
She's not an actual farmer,
but she does have a name of Nina.
This is my favorite hair on Mimsy farmer.
She has the best hair in this one.
- You are a corrector.
- Yes.
So she gets a call, a mystery call and they just hang up
and you can tell they have marital strife.
And it's just, you know, things are tense immediately,
but we don't know why.
Other than Marcos, I mean, other than Roberto's a murderer.
- Oh, well.
- But he reads about this corpse in the paper.
So the murder did happen,
but they don't know who the guy was yet.
And meanwhile, the mailman is being harassed by Mimsy,
AKA Nina and their, their nosy neighbor,
because this guy, a strange guy who lives
in their apartment complex,
he gets pornography in the mail
and the mailman has been delivering it
to the wrong address.
It is a subplot that barely fits
and barely leads to one of the most red herrings of all time.
But, you know, whatever.
- Well, you know.
- But Roberto does get the ID card of the dead man.
So he knows who this guy is now, at least by name.
And that night, it's party time.
We got guests talking about dirty stories,
talking about cannibal chefs,
putting paprika on their corpses.
- Mm-hmm.
- And then we got another guest named Andrea.
Oh no, somebody, I get mixed up.
There's this Andrea guy and he tells stories.
He looks vaguely like a mustachioed,
Elliot Gould.
He looks like a mustachioed, Elliot Gould.
His name is Andrea.
But the actor is Stefano Satafloris.
- Sounds about right.
- Have I seen him in something else?
Maybe, not sure.
- Not sure.
- But he talks about a beheading in Saudi Arabia
where they kill this guy and, of course,
this will lead to Roberto having multiple dreams
about this beheading in Saudi Arabia.
And then in the records, Roberto finds the photographs
of the killing of the stalker, which he hides.
So the killer has been inside the house now.
And then he wakes up from his beheading dream
to get strangled.
And I wrote LOL, BRB.
- Yeah.
- And the killer whispers in a maniacal voice,
"I could kill you now, but I won't."
- But I could.
- He could if he would, but he can't, so he won't.
- You're gonna buy it.
(laughing)
- Mimsy gets up, our pal Mimsy,
and she's like, "What's wrong with you?"
And he's like, "Nothing, I remember that."
So he tells her the whole story, fesses up completely,
and the maid is very conveniently
(laughing)
absorbing all of his information.
- Wow.
- She's gonna try to blackmail the blackmailer.
- This has two of Elizabeth's favorite Maxons.
- Oh.
- Number one is never try to blackmail the blackmailer.
- Nice.
- I mean, the killer, I'm sorry.
- Dude, either way, don't do it.
- Yeah, don't blackmail the bad people.
- I can do that.
This maid is played by Marissa Fabry.
She was in "The Weekend Murders," which is ridiculous.
She's also in "Rabbit Dogs,"
one of Mario Baba's final movies.
- Still haven't watched it.
- Oh man, it's great.
It gets really sleazy, but it hangs in there.
It doesn't cross the line for me.
- I tried to watch it one time and it didn't go well,
so there will always be a Baba film that I have not seen.
- I highly don't recommend the version
that Lambaba touched up.
- Yeah, I've heard that's terrible.
- I love Lambaba so much,
but him filming scenes in 2004 for a film from 1974
ain't happening, it just didn't--
- Terrible idea.
- Yeah, it did not work out at all.
Don't recommend it.
But she is gonna get murdered.
Oh boy.
Mimsy doesn't believe Roberto at all.
She's like, "You're whatever, you're full of shit.
You're crazy."
But then, she thinks it's just a dream.
But then she finds the wallet on her dresser
of the dead man and she tries to get him to run away.
But no, no, no, no, no, no.
He's gotta go see God, a.k.a. Godfrey.
As we all know, Bud Spencer is God.
- We all know Bud Spencer thought he was God.
- Well, yes, who am I to argue with that?
But he has to talk to the professor first,
which the professor is played by the fricking gay cameraman,
the gay stereotype from a fricking case of the bloody iris.
- Mm-hmm, that's not the only gay stereotype in this.
- Oh no, he's one of three.
I think the only one who's maybe not a stereotype
is the keyboardist who has a crush on Roberto.
This is Orestes Leonello.
He's a Greek-born actor and I love him so much
in case the bloody iris.
I feel like he's one of those,
ah, it's a paycheck kinda guy, you know, like,
he had a type that he liked to play.
But the professor is certainly one of his best characters ever.
He's very fun.
He's very mannered.
One of those bums who's probably a bum by choice,
like a hobo who decides to adopt this persona.
He may have even been a professor at one time
and now he's-- - Possible.
- And living on the streets.
So he leads him to God and our pal, God-free,
Bud Spencer is fishing.
- God!
(upbeat music)
âª Hallelujah, Hallelujah âª
(upbeat music)
- God-free, God-free, not God.
What the hell is wrong with God-free?
Think of something else to call me,
something less appropriate.
If you're gonna call me God,
at least you could call me God Almighty.
- God Almighty?
- What do you want?
- He's very upset about the state of the environment
and that fish are all disgusting and tiny now.
He says that you catch one,
you wanna nurse it back to health.
But he introduces him to Jerkoff,
his parrot named Jerkoff.
And then they talk and Roberto tells him all about his troubles
of murdering this man and that he's being blackmailed
and he thinks it's an inside job,
but he doesn't know what they want.
Do they want money?
It's like, I don't know what they want.
And he tells him to get a fricking private eye
to follow him around, a private dick, if you will.
And he tells him to hire the professor
for a thousand lira a day, excuse me, a thousand five a day
to follow him around so they can, you know,
see if he's in any real danger.
- Exactly.
- Back at home in the rain,
Roberto attacks the mailman thinking he's the killer.
And the mailman's like,
"What do you got against mail carriers?"
(laughing)
- Hilarious.
- And as Elizabeth says,
never try to blackmail the killer
because the maid tries to blackmail the killer.
When the killer, we find out much like the killer
in "Tenebrae" is haunted by a traumatic past.
And it's time for fun in the park, Brad.
Let's go to this set piece.
- Yes, sir.
- We'll have some carousel music
and some jaunty times with the hippies making out.
So our buddy, the maid is waiting for her mone.
And of course, music stops and they use that camera trick
where they make everybody disappear.
(laughing)
Except the camera moves.
So every time it's supposed to be a seamless shot
of someone disappearing,
the background and the camera move to kind of reveal
that it was just,
they just stopped filming for a few seconds.
God bless them for trying.
- They did try.
- And then she gets chased through the hedge maze to death.
- Crazy.
- She tries to call for help.
And the hippie couple who we're making out
are now outside the park.
And they try to help her,
but they're too little, too late.
And we don't see her actually getting killed.
We just see her scraping her nails on the stone wall.
- Yeah.
- It's a very bloodless death, which is a little shocking.
I thought that we're gonna see some blood.
- Yeah, and I don't,
I don't really know why she went through that crevice
'cause it didn't gain or anything.
- It did not.
(laughing)
Especially when it was so fricking tight, dude.
It was a toy squeeze.
Next thing you know, they have another party.
- Mimsy's very concerned about the maid being disappeared,
but then her hot cousin shows up.
I wrote her down as a sister,
but this is a cousin named Dahlia.
- And you know who she's played by?
- She's played by an actress named Francine Rachet,
or Russet.
- Yes, sir.
- I don't know if I know her from anything.
- You know her from something in real life.
She is married to Donald Sutherland.
- Wow.
And has been since '72, I think is what I read.
- Good for them.
That's incredible.
- Yeah.
- It makes me want to see the disappearance.
- She's foxy.
- Yeah, yeah. - I mean foxy.
- 1972 is the disappearance with Sutherland and Francine.
I wanna see that.
That's incredible.
- It's good stuff.
- So yeah, her hot sister's there,
and I'm confused as to what's gonna happen here,
but I know that they're gonna hook up
as soon as good old Mimsie's out of the way.
- Exactly.
- Andrea tells a perverted Frankenstein story,
which nobody wanted to hear.
- Nobody.
- They find out that the maid is dead,
and then Roberto has another beheading dream.
Every time he has this dream,
the sword is just about to land on the victim.
It's about to cut their head off.
It's closer and closer each time.
- Mm, painful.
- This time he gets a creepy note,
and in my version, the creepy note is in Italian,
and I cannot read it,
but we cut to the dead man, the stalker who we stabbed earlier,
eating spaghetti, or as I wrote, "piscetti."
- Piscetti.
- So the killer faked his own death
and has been one of the blackmailers,
and now he is blackmailing the killer, so that's twice.
- Yes, Elizabeth Boyd stood out.
- Dude, as she should, this is awful.
This is as bad as calling someone and saying,
"I know who the killer is,
"but I don't want to say over the phone.
"We can talk later."
- Bingo.
- I did write that he's blackmailing the BM,
which sounds like bowel movement.
- Mm-hmm.
- Yep, we find even more childhood trauma
from the killer's brain.
This killer is in a padded cell,
and there's a voice, presumably,
the father of the killer going,
"I wanted a son, not a wimp.
"You're a wimp.
"I'm gonna beat you."
- Wimp.
- Yep.
They show a dead animal,
and it's, you know, a dead animal hanging from a string,
and that's when Roberto's cat goes missing, yikes.
The cute kitty is now in danger.
So dead man, our stalker is now an actual dead man.
He gets murdered by the killer
for trying to blackmail the killer.
(laughing)
He gets killed with a semi-priceless antique.
I called it El Cabang.
- El Cabang.
- Roberto has a car montage.
He finally goes to hire the private dick,
and he's driving his car around town.
It's a great edited scene
where instead of seeing him go up the stairs,
we see a POV of him going up the stairs quickly
with the sound of the engine.
So it's like he's driving up the stairs,
which I don't recommend.
And he meets our pal, Arosio, the gay detective.
This is absolutely a stereotype,
and I can't help but praise this character
because he's utterly brilliant.
I don't praise the stereotyping,
but I do praise that he's one of the coolest people
in the frickin' movie.
- Tell Elizabeth that I would watch a series of films
of him solving or not solving crime mysteries,
'cause he's awesome.
- He has a Roberto Baima feast.
He guilt trips him into putting him
on his expense account immediately
and has like five sandwiches and a steak
and some eggs and a frickin' few beers at the bar.
We see J and B at the bar, so this is a giallo.
- It's a giallo for sure.
- So he tells him about his perfect record of failure.
He says 81 cases of utter failure, not a single case solved.
He says by those odds, I have to win.
I could sit around and not investigate this at all.
And Roberto says, please don't do that.
Oh man, remember when Argento was funny
when his jokes landed?
Come on.
- Yeah, I mean, and there are gay stereotypes
in all one, two, of all four of his first gialli.
- Yeah, it's wild.
So he gets back home after hiring us a roseo.
Good old Falehi, the Italian actor, is one of the cops.
And he's questioning Mimsy.
She tells him, I can't stay here anymore, I'm out.
I'm gonna let these cops take me away
and then I'm gonna stay away.
So that's when cousin Dahlia is babysitting our pal Roberto.
And like a baby, he gets a bath.
And I said, we've all been in this situation.
Am I right, fellas?
So she's bathing him and he manages to fake his own death
and scare her and then con her into bathing
and having sex with him in the bath.
It's so crazy.
- Yeah, I mean, he's not a good dude.
- No, Roberto is an egomaniac and a fricking adulterer
and a jackass and yet I can't help but want to know
what's gonna happen to him.
I am invested in this story even though I dislike this man.
So a roseo stops by after the bathing
and he mistakes Dahlia for Roberto's wife like you would.
And then they go to get the evidence.
So he has all of the things he's been collecting
and they find the dead cat.
So our poor kitty, very fake cat, thank God,
is in a plastic bag, looking dumb, struggling.
Bleh, I'm a dead cat, bleh.
- Bleh.
- So then he dreams again about to be heading again.
Oh my God.
- Just keeps going.
- A roseo interviews the psychiatrist
who lays out all of the facts about a certain person
with mental problems who's like a psychopath
and everything, but we don't know who it is.
We don't know who it is.
It's like mystery.
- Mystery.
- Then we get a private dicking montage
where he goes completely fricking wild interviewing people
around town and he finds,
he meets the other gay stereotype in the movie.
This guy who just lives in an apartment,
dresses semi-provocatively and waves himself
with a fan to cool off and they are just on fire together.
It's great.
I don't know what he learns from this guy,
but he definitely is ready to crack this case
and that's when he sees his prey.
A roseo sees his prey and follows him on the subway,
loses him, ends up in the men's room,
which is not where we need to go.
- Right.
- He gets bonked on the head
and then he gets poisoned, directly injected
through his chest nipple into his heart.
- Terrible.
- But he does get rewarded
because the killer hisses at him.
- You did it.
Congratulations, you've figured it out.
- Yeah, you guessed right.
- After he dies, he is dead.
Now, Roberto's at home again.
- Waiting to get killed.
- Yeah, waiting to die.
Andrea, our Elliott Golden personator,
gives him no information.
He just says, dude, you better get the fuck out of here.
Roberto initially refuses and he will continue to refuse
and he finds out about a roseo's death
and decides to go to the funeral parlor
to pick out his own coffin.
No, it is a funeral director's convention.
Lots of nice merchandise and this is when he meets up
with God and the professor and the reason God picked
this place is a meeting to help him get more in touch
with his own mortality so that he could
- Prepare for death.
- Yes, and realize the gravity of a situation.
- Exactly.
- This is great stuff.
The professors running around goofing off,
stealing cigarettes from people.
There's all this ghoulish comedy with all the deluxe coffins.
This is very fun.
I love this scene.
And Mimsy's cousin, she can't bear to deal with anymore.
She's packing.
She's out of there.
(trumpet music)
- Hello there, young man.
- It's King Ding Dong.
- King who?
- Ding Dong, don't you see him?
- No.
- Who's the hostess Ding Dong?
- To kids, I'm just as real as the good taste
of that chocolatey icing and creamy filling.
- Try my mom.
Now do you see him?
- I think so, Jimmy.
- Hostess Ding Dongs, fruit pies and Twinkies
with Hostess tasting his believing.
- So as our pal cousin is packing up, she hears the voice.
She's thinking about that childhood trauma too,
adding her to the fricking suspect list as well.
She can't call Roberto 'cause he's jamming too hard
with his boys and the singer is going,
(mimics singing)
That's when she tries to hide.
The killer pulls the plug on the lights
and she crawls into the Tenebrae room of the house.
And then she gets inside the lion, the witch,
and the wardrobe.
The killer lets her think that the killer has left
and so she comes out and gets totally
- Mertalated. - Mertalated.
- A little slash on her head and goes bump, bump, bump
down the stairs.
- Yeah, a little bit of full cheese sneaking in there.
- Damn.
So they take her body to the convention center
where they can view it.
- Of course.
- It's beautiful.
The cops want to do a funny test on her retinas.
Mimsie ain't having it, she's too traumatized,
but they want to look at that eyeball
'cause it's recently been discovered in the 1870s
that they think that if you look at the image
from a retina of a murdered person,
you'll see their image, so you can catch the killer,
but unfortunately it's 1970s, doesn't work.
- No.
- So what do they see?
They see four flies, the image on her eye,
is four flies on gray velvet, the title of the movie.
- Tricky.
- I wrote, it looks like four guys and flag football.
- Yes.
- Roberto buys a gun, finally.
I'm not a gun person, but this is the time to do it,
and it's the most wonderfully quaint, beautiful packaging ever.
It's like, it looks like it came out of a vending machine.
And Godfrey is there saying,
"Dude, I actually approve of you buying this."
And he says, "You ever see the movie 'Straw Dogs'?"
So now we're gonna roll out the suspects.
This is the night, this is when shit's gonna go down.
We got funky drumming, it's just beautiful.
We got piano plonking away, just those dark,
dark, frickin' low keys.
Ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball.
And we see all the red herrings, all the suspects,
even the nosy neighbor lady, gay keyboardist,
Andrea, some other chick that I think is named Maria.
I forget, someone apparently was in love with Roberto,
and he was like, "Whoa, she was?"
He's like, "Yeah, dude."
I'm like, "Who the fuck is Maria? I don't know."
She's credited though, this Maria person,
as Laura Troshel, and they literally say the name Maria,
and then that's it.
Don't know who she is.
Anyway, glad I mentioned her.
- Yes.
(laughing)
- Roberto falls asleep on the couch
and finally finishes the dream
with the actual beheading this time.
And now he's waiting, he's waiting, he's waiting,
he's got the gun, he's got the lights.
He's going to either A, turn the lights on
when he hears something or electrocute himself.
Look at this, like, what is he doing?
He's stripping, he strips the wires
and he's just holding them bare in his hands.
Like, yeah, you're gonna turn the lights on, all right?
- Yeah.
- The light's gonna be your hair on fire.
(laughing)
- Too boy.
- So he turns the lights on and Mimsy bursts in
and he's like, "What are you doing here?
I told you to leave."
But then he sees that pendant swinging on her neck
and he realizes she is the one who killed
her own cousin's sister, and they talk it out
after he slaps her across the room.
Yikes.
He beats her.
- He does.
This is another one of Elizabeth's maxims.
As soon as she's identified as the killer,
she's just crazy.
- Yeah.
- Like uncontained and like crazy, crazy voice,
crazy eyes, crazy face.
- Dude, this is why you hire Mimsy Farmer.
- It is.
- She's gonna get wild, she's gonna get totally wild.
- Gonna get cranked up.
- Oh my God, so she has her big monologue,
which on my DVD switches between Italian and English,
almost seamlessly.
There are probably parts of this speech
that were never dubbed into English, which is fine.
I can read subtitles.
But yeah, her father beat her because she wasn't a boy.
She, he raised her as a boy and was just unaccepting
of her, drove her completely insane
and she went into an insane asylum and he died.
He did the biggest crime of all, the biggest sin of all,
which is dying before she could kill him herself.
So she went looking for a man who was just like daddy
and sure enough, she found the ultimate in Roberto,
who's just like her father.
- Yep, great.
- She nonchalantly shoots him in the shoulder
with this magical special effect shot
where we actually see the bullet flying through the air,
piercing his shoulder.
It's brilliant.
It is fricking fantastic.
And then again, while she's talking, she gestures
and nonchalantly shoots him in the leg this time.
So you're turning your drummer
into a synthesizer player by doing that.
Yeah, I said that.
- Yeah, you did.
- And that's when Godfrey runs in and screams,
"God loves you."
And knocks the gun out of her hands
and she runs out the door, jumps in the car,
speeds away and gets into a horrific car accident.
- Car.
- That beautiful lullaby music plays.
And we see the quote unquote scientific camera
that shoots at a super, super high frame rate.
So they can do ultra slow motion.
And they scared the shit out of the real mimsy farmer.
She was--
- I really did.
- She thought she was gonna die or be blinded.
So they're like, "Yeah, get in the car and crash it."
She's like, "No, I'm not doing that."
And they said, "Okay, we're gonna smash this windshield
in your face, but it's gonna be in slow motion.
Don't worry about it."
She's like, "No, I'm not doing that."
And they said, "Well, we'll put a layer of glass
in front of you and then we'll smash the layer of glass
in front of that layer of glass."
And she looks terrified.
- Yeah, she certainly does.
- And she should because, yeah.
- This is like Carlo Rambaldi's cousin or something.
No, I don't know who did the effects, but.
- But they're in Italy who are not exactly known
for safety precautions or, you know, et cetera.
- Once again, we have this epic, epic destruction
of the killer, the killer meets their fate
in this totally grand-Guinal frickin' stage type thing.
And it's great.
- Horrific, yes.
- Argento, I believe, was trying to finish off
his career in a big way as a giallo man.
And of course, we all know that he would be back.
He would go make an art film
and he would be immediately back with a deep red.
And thank God he came back, but you know.
- Certainly.
- Let's look at some of this crew.
Look at some of this crew members.
Good old Salvatore Argento.
I believe he's, yes, he's Dario's father produced this.
He would produce everything up until,
everything of Argentos, up until Tenebre,
and then he passed away or retired and then passed away.
We got Cinematography by Franco D. Giacomo.
Who did?
The good and the bad and the ugly?
Oh my God.
That's incredible.
What else did he do?
Oh, Amityville II, The Possession.
Wow.
- Dang.
- Good on you, brother.
Oh my God, he did the killer, must kill again.
Wow.
Not in a favorite.
- We never finished it.
It's like the disk from Netflix was messed up
so we didn't see the end.
- I will not say that you lucked out.
It is absolutely not a favorite of mine
and it does a, it punishes you for watching it
with some rape, so I don't like that.
- Oh, oh good.
- But I do believe it is worth a look at least once.
He also was the lighting cameraman who saw her die,
so that's nice.
- Oh, that's a better one.
- That's nice.
And of course, we talked a little bit
about Anya Marcona, you know, legend.
Not happy with Argento, but hey, it happens.
The Postman, our buddy, The Postman,
was played by Gildo DiMarco.
I tried not to pronounce that like Gildo, I'm sorry.
But he played Garulo in The Birth of Crystal Plumage,
the stuttering pimp named Solong.
- Solong.
- Did you have any other trivias you wanted to drop
on this thing?
- No, I kind of dropped them there in the film
while we were talking about it.
- Nice.
- I know, oddly enough, I guess maybe
because it was a universal film,
that there was a critical reaction.
- Yes. - Wikipedia.
- Oh boy.
- Wikipedia's got some, everybody hated it.
- Yeah, it's a bummer, man.
- Yeah, a friend, Libowitz, who had a column
reviewing bad movies told Glenn O'Brien
in a 1978 issue of High Times that
the worst movie I ever saw was called
Four Plies Ungrave of It with Mimsy Farmer,
one of your great loves.
But to this day, I have never seen a worst movie.
- What an idiot.
- Yeah, because, to say it's the worst movie ever.
- What a fool.
- I mean, that's, Roger Ebert hated it,
but he hated everything.
- He said that Mimsy Farmer deserves
to get those Mia Farrah roles, I like that.
- Yeah, and Mia Farrah was doing horror films.
- Yep.
- Gene Siskel gave the film One Star Out of Four
and wrote, "Our Jento script contains more red herrings
"than the Cape Cod Room."
I don't even know what the Cape Cod Room is.
- I'm following that link.
It is a restaurant in the Drake Hotel.
- See, Siskel, we don't know what you're talking about,
and neither do you.
- Nope, don't care for it, don't care for it, it's fine.
And you know what, I get it.
Our Jento is one of the most polarizing people
within his own fandom.
Like, every film is his last great film.
Every film is underrated, excuse me, overrated.
Every film is just garbage, except for, you know,
whichever ones you love, and that's fine, that's fine.
- How's the new one gonna be?
- Hey, I have heard mixed things.
(laughing)
I've read two quick reviews that were just tweets
that were short, you know, one or two sentences,
and one guy was like, "Thank God, Dracula 3D
"wasn't his last film.
"This is a much more fitting, final film."
If he retires or sadly passes away.
- Sure.
- Another person said it's a return to form,
and they really loved it.
And I've read a lot of other negative reviews,
and I am one of those people who my expectations
are in the toilet.
I, for my own sanity, I like it until I'm proven otherwise.
Which is, you know, I would like it to be better
than Giello.
I would like it to be better than Dracula 3D.
And I can't say I hated either of those films.
They're very Bucky-like-a-bronco movies.
(laughing)
- Bucky-like-a-hurricane.
- I mean, Giello fell for the torture porn thing.
Once you get out the pliers and the blow torture,
whatever the torture implements were,
I'm out, I gotta bail.
And then, Dracula 3D, the budget is so paltry
that the big imagination is completely hamstrung
by, you know, they can't even have a train station set.
And it is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life
is the train station, the CGI,
birdemic level train station,
where it looks like a photograph of a train station
with a green screen door cut out
so people can exit from a closet
that is supposed to be a train.
So, you know, I saw Dracula 3D and I saw Giello,
and I have no memory of either.
- Yeah, yeah, that's the issue I have, too, with Giello.
It's not, other than the stuff I complain about,
it is not memorable.
Hell, I've even come around to the card player,
and that was one of my worst of the whole genre.
And now I'm like, you know what?
This is the mecca of internet poker.
So what?
- It really is.
It's always compared to, like, had he made a Giello
about Pokemon or something, you know?
- Ooh, I wish, yep.
'Cause somebody, I think it might have been,
I forget what, yeah, some reviewer,
it's to be about Bitcoin.
- Yeah.
- Some reviewer compared it to it being like Argento's CSI.
And I was like, ooh, yeah, but yeah,
that's not good either.
- Yeah, so no.
- How do you feel about Four Flies on Grey Velvet, dude?
- I like it.
I think that the Bird of the Crystal Plumage
and Four Flies on Grey Velvet
unfairly push the nine tails down
because the Bird of the Crystal Plumage
is the Giello's Halloween.
It's not the first Giello, but it's the one that popularized
them. - Totally.
- And then Four Flies on Grey Velvet
was the lost film for so long.
In fact, the shameless disc says
the lost Giello of Dori Argento.
- Wow. - So I think that being first
and being lost unfairly kind of pushes
the kind of nine tails down, which I really like,
but I do really like it.
Also, I think maybe if we had a Blu-ray,
if somebody went in, somebody else maybe,
other than Shameless Steven, were to do a Blu-ray arrow
or vinegar syndrome or somebody,
I think that before, like when Kill Baby Kill
did not have a Blu-ray, if you were to have a Bobathon
and you'd watch Blu-ray, Blu-ray, Blu-ray, Blu-ray,
and then you'd watch DVD and Blu-ray, Blu-ray, Blu-ray,
and it would always lower the DVD
because everything else was so vibrant.
- So I think that it would even help
for Floss Emery Velvet more to have a Blu-ray
and maybe the Shameless Disc, maybe that's the one to get.
- Hey. - I think he originally wanted
one of the Beatles to play the part
and of course now that just,
maybe then that didn't sound ridiculous,
now it kind of sounds ridiculous.
- Yeah, he had Terrence Stamp in mind
and he had Ringo Starr in mind.
- Yeah.
- I think that would have been wild.
- I mean, can you imagine if we were talking about
a giallo that had one of the Beatles?
- Hey. - You know, it's the star.
- You know, and if it was Ringo, it'd be so funny
because Ringo, for my money, was always the funniest.
- Sure. - He would just react
to things and I would lose my mind, so.
- Yes, in fact, I think he's the best Beatle.
- Yeah, yeah, a lot of people are coming around to him.
He was considered such a terrible drummer for so long
and it's like, no, no, he's great.
- No, yeah, and he is the one that I don't hate.
I don't hate any of them, but like John was kind of
sanctimonious and George was kind of holier than now
and Paul's kind of a smart aleck.
- Yeah, oh yeah, totally.
- But anyway.
- I love Four Flies and Gray Velvet.
I don't reach for it as often.
I watch the Cat and Nine Tails the most.
I think out of everything in Argento's filmography,
other than Suspiria, I think Cat and Nine Tails
is still my most watched.
It's just because I can just disappear into that movie.
I don't know why, but Four Flies, and yes,
it's mythical status of just it being so hard to find,
even though I have a perfectly acceptable copy of it,
still feels like this movie I don't believe I own, you know?
But yeah, I adore it.
I can't think of anything really to say
to diss on it at all.
There's just something magical about it.
I think Bird of the Crystal Plumage, I wanna say,
the reason that one's the lowest
might be because of Suzy Kendall.
- You're not a Suzy Kendall fan and long time listeners know that.
- Yeah, I like I love Torso,
but she's my least favorite part of Torso.
She is that movie's heart.
She does seem to care about her friends the most,
but I don't understand her in Bird of the Crystal Plumage
at all.
I'm trying to think of, I do love her in Spasmo
because everyone in Spasmo is so weird.
- Yeah.
- I think I like her in The Devil's Garden.
- Yeah, I like that one.
- That's a very upsetting film
because of its content and its subject matter,
but I think it's really good.
- I like it.
- Yeah.
- British yellow.
- So Brad, we have talked about Four Flies of Grey Velvet.
We have talked about kind of ranking
in the trilogy there of the animal trilogy.
Are we ready to put those little flies to bed
in their red velvet pillows?
- I think so, I think so.
- Look at that folks, we set a record
and it only took us seven or eight years
to wrap up that episode.
- I'm telling you, because I said to Richard,
did we do all the animal trilogy?
And he said, we did two of them one night
and then you got tired, you wussy.
- No, we were doing a marathon.
This was back when we still sat around
for between four and six hours
to do a three-hour episode.
- Yes, that's true.
- And we were way over time
and it was just too much.
And we bailed and by God, we came back to it.
- We came back with a vengeance.
- Yes, a grey velvet vengeance, a velvet vengeance.
- Vengeance, vengeance.
- Vengeance, whoo, almost fell out of my chair.
Look at that.
- I'm telling you.
- It's chair dropping.
We do have a little feature though.
We're gonna do something called
the matinee of the imagination, I wanna call it.
- I love that.
- We do a double feature to spark your mind up, bro.
- Yeah.
- Dude, would you like to go first
for this matinee of the imagination tonight?
- I would love to do the matinee
of the imagination first.
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna do something that is just,
you're never gonna see it coming.
But I think a double feature, a great one would be
the 1971 proto slash your blood and lace.
Not the Mario Baba film, but blood and lace.
- Beautiful, I just watched that for the first time.
- You did, it's got a beautiful bleary.
I would double that with a recent film,
you're never gonna see this coming.
- No dude, go for it.
- The rental.
(laughing)
- That's brilliant.
- And I don't really wanna say why they go well together.
I just let the viewer find out on their own.
But I think that would make a great double feature.
- Dude on a stick, that's incredible.
- Yeah, there's some similarities there.
I don't wanna say what.
But I think that would make a great double feature.
- Yeah, I just did the rental, just out of the blue.
So it was almost the same day.
It may have been the day before.
I think I watched Blood and Lace and then the next night
I watched the rental and I gotta say, yeah,
it got a little too close for a home invasion for me.
- Mm, gotcha.
- But it did not break me in that regard.
I hate to say I've kind of lost touch
with like the strangers and stuff like that.
Because I own a home and these trying times.
- Elizabeth, like had I told her,
this is a home invasion film, she might have grumbled.
She's not as big a fan.
She loves your next.
- Yes, that is.
- And that's about as close.
- You can watch The Strangers every so often.
- Yeah, The Strangers is the tough one for me
because it's actually a home invasion.
The Strangers 2 has just a scene or two of home invasion.
Your next ends up being more than home invasion.
So I can make these excuses for those.
- Well, as let me bring something up,
our friend of the show, Mark, was telling me the other day
that he picked up X on Blu-ray.
- Yeah.
- And him and I have talked about before of our love,
mine and his, for The Strangers' Prey at Night.
And I did not realize that the dad
in The Strangers' Prey at Midnight is in X
as the pornographic poncho.
- Holy shit.
- So he's in both and two of the best slashers
of the last 30 years.
- Holy shit, that's incredible.
Martin Henderson, I did not realize that.
Now I knew he's the boyfriend
in the American version of The Ring.
- Oh, shit. - And I did know that.
- I did not know that.
- Yes, but I did not realize he was, yeah, he is in,
I mean, X is just a wonderful, wonderful slasher.
And so is, I think The Strangers' Prey at Night.
It's just so sad that it didn't go anywhere.
- Gotta have a good crowd for X.
We had a, we got real lucky.
We have a cheap night on Tuesdays here at our theater.
And apparently that was the raucous, horrible experience.
'Cause unfortunately, unlike a lot of films nowadays,
X is very quiet.
In between all the horror, there's lots of quiet.
You can hear a pin drop moments.
And the crowd I had on the regular night,
sorry to be Mr. Snooty, was you could hear a pin drop.
In fact, the jokes, I was the only one
who laughed out loud of the jokes.
Everybody was scared to make a noise in that theater.
But apparently the night before, my buddy saw it
and she said it was a total nightmare.
People were yelling at the movie, talking on their phone,
bringing in bags of food, rustling around.
- Why would they go and see a movie
and just act like a fool?
- Because it's cheap night.
That's the half price, you know?
I never go that night anymore.
'Cause it just--
- Yeah, I don't blame you.
- The best experience I had with that was for,
that kind of night was for Hellfest.
- Yes.
- My buddy Jason and I went on a Tuesday night
and it was so it was half price tickets.
This is pre-pandemic and it was a madhouse.
The lot, we were there 25 minutes early
and we got in line for concessions.
Get some snacks, get a drink.
Three minutes before the movie started.
We had to bail on the line.
So we were in line for over 20 minutes
and I had to get some water from the water fountain
so I wouldn't be coughing during the film.
And then it was completely packed.
The whole theater, full and people loved Hellfest.
But if they were having like issues and being loud,
you can't tell 'cause Hellfest is a loud ass movie.
- It really is.
- Woo, dude.
- It really is.
- So speaking of going to a theater for a matinee,
I have my double feature.
Dude, yours was incredible.
Yours was mind bending in the best way.
I wouldn't have thought of that.
- Thank you.
- Yeah, so I've got a little crazy double feature here.
I think it's crazy.
First up, I'm Bear Till Lenzies Nightmare Beach.
- Ooh.
- The slasher by way of Giallo.
So a master of the Giallo trying to make a slasher
and being very successful and hilarious at it.
- Yes.
- Nightmare Beach is a classic.
Can't recommend it enough.
- I like it.
- So you think you're going to go home
but you find out there's one more movie.
What could it be?
It's The Devil's Men from 1976.
The Greek horror movie called Land of the Minotaur.
- I still not have seen that.
- With Donald Pleasants and Peter Cushing and very,
they're both very confused.
I don't think they know what the fuck is going on.
- Wow.
- But I recommend Land of the Minotaur.
It's, you know, my birth year.
I'm a big fricking 1976 guy.
- Yeah, you are.
- And let me find it.
Oh, it's not coming up on The Devil's Men.
There it is.
But you know what's so funny?
Type up Land of the Minotaur.
It comes up as The Devil's Men.
Go figure.
- Amazing.
- This is from a Greek director named Kostas Karagianis.
So if you're a fan of the Greek episode
of Inspector Morse called Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts,
you'll love this one.
- Mm-hmm.
- But yeah.
- Okay, right.
- The director, Kostas is also the star.
He plays the hero.
- Wow.
- And he's got some, I think he does some like
Greek kung fu moves to save the day.
I forget.
- Heck yeah.
- But dude, this movie is totally crazy.
Totally crazy.
- It's, it's a, I've got a DVD.
It's, they doubled it with the Norman J. Warren's Terror.
But I just got around to seeing it.
- Which I have done that double feature and it's magical.
- Wow.
- Woo.
- Yeah.
- Amazing.
- Yep, yep.
- But yeah, our pal Kostas Karygorgis, director of,
hold on, this is, this is blowing my mind here.
Was he not the director?
Folks, I apologize.
Hold on, let me do it.
Let me do a little control F here.
- Control F.
- I'm the guy who does that.
Okay, I'm sorry.
- I don't even know what it means.
- So the director is Kostas Karygianis,
the star after Pleasence and Peter Cushing.
Kostas Karygiorgis, it is one syllable difference.
- Wow.
- So I want to pretend they're the same guy,
but I can't because I don't know.
But Kostas Karygianis, the director, 178 films.
- Amazing.
- Most of them straight to video.
- Straight to video.
- Whatevs.
I can live with that.
So yeah, there's my double feature.
- Amazing.
- Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- I love it.
I need to see land of the Minotaur.
- Do it.
Make sure you watch the devil's men cut, though, brother.
- Oh, of course.
- Or the devil's men uncut.
Wow, wow, wow.
- Wow, wow.
(laughing)
- So folks, thanks for joining us.
Brad, thank you for talking to me, dude.
- Thank you for having me,
for letting me be here to talk to you.
This is the good times.
- Let the good times roll.
- Yes, let them roll right out the door.
(laughing)
- That's right.
- Bye, folks.
- Bye-bye.
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- Folks, thanks so much for listening to this episode.
If you'd like to write into the show,
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