Attack of the Final Girls is a podcast about the horror genre, so listener discretion is advised. Please check the show notes for specific content warnings for this episode. And of course, beware of spoilers. and welcome to another episode of Attack of the Final Girls. I'm Teresa. And I'm Juliette. And we're here again post-election 2024. And we're we're alive. We've survived. But we decided to continue with our post 2000 or like, I guess, in the middle of 2000 cheese fest.
Also an election year, funny enough. Yeah. And a weird election year because that was that was the year of the hanging chads. Oh, yeah. The year of the hanging chads. The first year of George W. Bush's eight year long reign as president. Al Gore narrowly defeated. Florida hanging chads. If you weren't alive in 2000, it was a wild time. It was a wild ride that started an even wilder ride. Yeah.
Yeah. So and it wouldn't have been as wild. I mean, there's some shit that happened, obviously, like post 2000, you know, 9-11 specifically, which pretty much changed our trajectory as, you know. preteens and children into the weird millennials that we are. Yeah. Thanks for that, everybody. Yeah. And media was very different pre 9-11. And this is a perfect example of that because the first of the Final Destination franchise made in 2000. It's funny because...
there was a plane crash that happened prior to this movie, but it happened in like 96. And people were still saying like, this movie happened too soon. It's not, you know, this is a bad situation. You did not handle that with a caring hand, you know.
And I think now people would be like, what? That's not a thing anymore. Yeah, we'll get into the 9-11 of it all here in a bit. But a little more about why we switched. I know last time we said we were going to do rec. I mean, first and foremost, we were already. talking after the election results were in, like, are we feeling this? Do we want to do something different? You know, there's a great meme that has been circulating for a long time. I feel like it pops up.
in the old Instagram feed periodically that says something like, Girls say I'm going to go watch my comfort movie and the movie is somebody sawing their own head off with piano wire. Yeah. So like, you know, we are girls. So, you know. Obviously, we're all in need of some comfort movies right now, some things, some familiar faves. But then also recording this on November 9th, yesterday, we got the really sad news that Tony Todd had passed away. And, you know, we had already...
done Candyman. So please look up our episode on that. We did that earlier this year. But we decided, you know, with such... an iconic horror presence and, you know, reportedly such a nice dude, too. I didn't have the pleasure of meeting him, but I've heard from a lot of people who met him over the years that he was just such a, like, stand-up awesome dude and really good to his fans.
You're like, OK, we need a comfort movie and we should honor Tony Todd. So final destination it is. Yeah, Tony Todd, it plays a pretty small role in this. But considering we already had covered Candyman, which is like, you know, his. claim to fame, really, when it comes to horror.
But I know lots of personal friends who did meet him at conventions or working on movies with him because that is another thing that can be said is that he always had time for the indie filmmaker. He was really an icon. He was at... pretty much every horror convention you could ever think of. Up until earlier this year, there were a lot of sudden cancellations and he was sending videos to those conventions and...
He looked, you know, like he was not doing very well at that point in time. And my partner and I talked about it earlier this year because I think he was supposed to be at Horror Hound in September and he canceled. And we saw the video and I was like, oh, no, not Tony Todd. And unfortunately, he passed away actually on the 6th. Nothing confirmed yet. So, yeah, we...
Can't really do Platoon, although that is also a horror movie in many regards. We didn't want to do Platoon. We wanted to do Final Destination because Tony Todd's character in Final Destination is strange and he... is in on whatever is happening inexplicably and
has to drive the plot forward and give a lot of exposition but also is not lots of people speculated that he's death or he's the grim reaper but he's not the creators of this movie have said over and over again you know he's not i can't remember if he's been in all five of them so far
No, he was in one and five and he will be in the new one. It was the last movie he shot. They did say this morning I read that they finished all of his principal photography and his part was done and shot. So he will be in Final Destination. Bloodlines which comes out I believe in 2025 that movie has gotten delayed kind of over and over again it was
said to be in pre-production pre-pandemic. Then it had pandemic delays. Then it got delayed again because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. And it was just now...
kind of finding its legs, was slated, all of that good stuff. So he will be in that, reprising his role. Okay. And if you have not seen any of the Final Destination movies, and you need a place to start, one is... a great place to start but honestly you could really watch any of them because they have very little to do with one another like they
kind of revolve around the same storyline, but you never have to worry about missing something. All you need to know is teenagers escape death, then death comes back for revenge. That's pretty much the premise of all of the movies. And you're going to see some people like, you know, being killed in ridiculous ways. If you've ever heard of somebody saying, I don't want to drive behind a log truck because of Final Destination, it's the second movie. Yeah.
And you don't have to watch any of the others in order to enjoy the second movie or the third film, which is around a theme park. Yep. I can't remember what the fifth one is. Stock car races, I believe. Or the big scene is a stock car race. Is that the fifth one or the fourth one? Maybe the fourth one. I might be flipping the last two because there's definitely a there's a ski lodge one. I want to say like I keep thinking that there's one that has a ski lodge in it, but the NASCAR one.
is before the ski lodge one i could be thinking of i know what you did last summer which is also coming back yeah so final destination four which is just called The final destination is the one that starts with the stock car race. And then final destination five is the one that starts. It's another like.
car thing it's a bridge under construction maybe i'm thinking of i know what you did yeah in either case there are tons of fun they're super goofy you can't really get like deeply invested in the movies because they're so silly and It's a franchise that like redoes itself and then each time like tries to top what it did the last time. And so...
As you go through the series, it's more and more ridiculous. The second one is kids getting ready to go on this. They're going to go on this road trip. The third one is the theme park. The fourth one is the NASCAR and the fifth one is the bridge. Oh, I remember. Okay. The fifth one is the big, big bridge. Yes. That collapses. Okay.
You kind of know what you're going to get, which is why this is sort of a comfort movie. There's not really jump scares. We've seen this movie a thousand times. It's not new to us. But it's kind of nice to go back to a movie that you've seen before and see if it has something more to say. Yeah, definitely. And sometimes they don't.
you know, sometimes movies are pretty straightforward, but it's fun to go back to like early James Wong stuff. And before he became like extra, I mean, he was famous from the X-Files already at this point, but before he became like a huge. movie guy you know and final destination was really like the entree for him into like big time movies because he did do trick-or-treat actually the 80s trick-or-treat he wrote that which i was like
What? I did not know that until today. But yeah, he wrote and directed this one. He has produced a shitload of movies. Yeah, this was actually based on an... unproduced spec script for an X-Files episode. And if you've watched enough X-Files, this is like a really long X-Files episode just with FBI agents that aren't as cool or hot as Mulder and Scully.
Dumber names. Yeah, they're kind of dumb. It's like Shrek, which is supposed to be because of Max Shrek from Nosferatu. And I think the other guy's name is like Ween or Weir or something like that. Yeah, they're just not as cool. Yeah, no. But if you just insert Mulder and Scully, like it probably probably would have worked. It would be a thousand times cooler. Yeah. And then so James Wong and Glenn Morgan, who are a team of X-Files writers like.
Again, if you're an X-Files person, you know those names. They were some of the frequent writers. They often wrote together. And they're responsible for a lot of iconic X-Files episodes. They got teamed up with this script. took it to New Line Cinema, the house that Freddie built, of course, and developed this into the film. Yeah, I could totally see Mulder like, haven't you ever heard of the Revenge Grim Reaper, Scully?
I could totally see that. But I also appreciate that they were like, this is a really good idea. It's very crunchy. There's lots of ways that we could go with this. Let's... like table this idea because we think that it could be strong enough to be like a full feature movie rather than you know an x files episode so i do appreciate that yeah especially the era I don't I'm unclear about
when it was written as a spec script for the x-files like when in the show because this movie was released in 2000 but obviously you know it takes time to develop a concept, go from a spec script to a film script to production to a finished movie. But I'm thinking like, you know, 2000s era X-Files was moving this show in a completely different direction anyway.
It could have been written early enough on because it does feel like an early season episode, like a season two or three, more of a monster of the week episode. But I do think that like... Number one, they could get gorier than they actually could on The X-Files. Now, The X-Files was pretty gory for its time in terms of, like, being network television.
It went there in a lot of ways, but they could not do what they did in this movie on television. Oh, no. I mean, kid gets like hung by a... I think it's supposed to be like a shower curtain string or it's... What's it called? A laundry line. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He gets hung that way. Sean William Scott's character gets decapitated. Yep. Kind of like halfway through his head. It's pretty bad. An entire plane explodes killing everybody on board. Yeah. So. Yeah.
Pretty rough. I mean, the explosion thing, I think they probably could have gotten away with on the X-Files, but I don't know about straight up decapitation. Probably not. Yeah, the plane explosion actually was probably... Again, in a pre 9-11 world, the most acceptable thing they could have done on the X-Files because they did some stuff kind of like that, you know, pre Lost as well. Right, right. Yeah, because I think Lost.
That didn't really get its feet until like, what was it? 2000. I know I was watching it in like 07, 08. So it probably came around 2005. I want to say 2004, but. 2004. Wow. That's amazing. I was basing that strictly on what was happening in my life when I was watching it. Did you watch Lost? I watched the first season on DVD. I would often do that with shows because I was working in a record store still.
And we had used DVD. This was the golden era of DVD box sets. And I could get them very cheap. So I could often like, you know, buy them on discount. watch a season of something and if I didn't like it I would just sell it back and get something else so I did watch the first season on the encouragement of an ex and like they had a whole group that would like get together every week and watch it and I was behind everybody and I was like
I like this, but not enough to be obsessed about it. I was still like fresh off of like X-Files obsession. So I think I wasn't ready. for a new show yet. That's fair. You know, like when your show ends and you're like not ready to accept a new one into your heart. I think I was at that place. Lost was the first TV show that I ever streamed because ABC had ABC Go and you could watch.
episodes on their website nice so this was like before I had you know Netflix I hadn't bought anything like that before but I was working at the library at the time and although we did have it on DVD and we I could have rented it it was like always
is waitlist, waitlist, waitlist. And everybody was like, wait a second, did you know that you can watch it on ABC Go? And I was like, I don't know what that is. And they're like, you can watch it on your computer. And I was like... watch a show on your computer what is this voodoo why would i sit in front of my computer for that long well world's changed since then 20 years later yeah i think i watched like we watched the first season
I tried the first season a couple of times. I couldn't get into it. I was like, why do I care about a plane crash show? And then by the cliffhanger of the first season and then getting into the hatch in the second season, I was like, okay, I'll watch this.
Yeah, it's funny. I had kind of the opposite thing. I was like interested. And then when the tailies came in, I was just like, this is too many people to keep track of. I'm done. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Anyways, last aside. Yeah. So this movie is about... Devin saw was character named Alex, who has a premonition on a plane before it takes off to go to Paris on like a high school trip.
Which, like, what the hell is that? I never got to do that shit. No. But he has this premonition, so he gets off the plane, and after he gets off the plane, the plane actually does explode and kills all of his friends, except for a handful that got kicked off the plane. And then one by one, each of the kids who got off the plane end up dying in mysterious and horrific ways. Mm-hmm. Devonsault was the star. He went on to, if you've recently watched any of the Chucky show, he was on.
in various roles and also a guy who's been on a ton of horror conventions. Most notably because of Casper. Oh, yeah. So he was always my association. Really? Anytime I think of him. Yeah. And I didn't even like that Casper movie. I was really I was just a little too old for it. I think I know so many people who are a little younger than me that.
loved that movie and he was their first little kid crush. And I was too old for that. And I also grew up on classic... 40s Casper cartoon so I was like what is this CGI nonsense but I still associate him with that like I didn't know who he was until people were like oh he's the Casper guy oh yeah
Allie Larder plays Clear River. She goes on to be in the second one as well. If you've ever seen Legally Blonde, you might know who Allie Larder is. Kerr Smith, who plays Carter, he went on to be in other horror movies as well. Kristen Cloak, who plays Miss Luton, she also was in Black Christmas, also a James Wong project. She's Glenn Morgan's wife. Yeah. She did some X-Files appearances, but she was a recurring character in Millennia.
Oh, okay. Millennium. The Chris Carter X-Files adjacent show. Oh, cool. Daniel Roebuck, who he went on to be... He's had a pretty big career in horror since this Final Destination movie. Not specifically because of Final Destination. I think he's one of Rob Zombie's faves. He's been in the Terrifier movies.
Um, he was in that, was he in that stream movie that we saw earlier this year? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure he was. He was the drunk guy, I think. Um, so he was in stream, uh, with Jeffrey Combs. Yes. Yeah. Also done by the Terrifier people. Yeah. And Phyllisa Rose.
Yeah, Feliceros. Sean William Scott, which I always think it's interesting that he's in this one, considering this was the year after American Pie. And he was like, became immortalized basically because of Stifler. Very different. He plays a very different character. this one still kind of like a silly character but not like a stifler silly character yeah
So interesting that he's in this. Obviously, Tony Todd is in it. And then lots of extras are in this movie because it requires a lot of people to randomly get murdered. Yes. But yeah, I like Devin Salwa. have a good time with everything that he's in. Another favorite of mine from around this era is Ethan Embry, but I always get him confused. I'm like, is that Ethan Embry or Devin Saul? I don't remember. Yeah, I think I...
I probably think they're the same guy. Yeah. Like they both have the same kind of color hair. Yeah. You know, fair skin. And they both have like yellow brown, medium brown hair. Devin Sawa has really stupid hair in this one, though. Oh, he does. But it's very, like, 2000s dude hair. Everybody had hair like this. Yes. Where they were like...
smashing it so that their bank stood straight up with gel. You guys, nobody looks good with this haircut. No, no, that's right. Ethan Embry is disturbing behavior. Devin Sawa is final destination. Exactly. Yep. And a lot of people who were in this movie.
went on to work on disturbing behavior. So it's, or I think disturbing behavior was actually the year before. So we're in disturbing behavior. I can't remember if it was 99 or 2001, but. Disturbing behavior was 98. Oh, wow. Okay. So a little bit before. Yeah.
This was the era of this type of movie, like teen movies were in. Because of Scream. Right. And Final Destination was supposed to just be Strangers. And then because of all of the teen movies, they were like, well, let's just make it a... classmates you know the very first thing that happens in this movie though and I think the reason why all of this stuff happens is Alex is like
kind of skeezed out about getting on the plane. I don't know if he's never been on a plane ride before or he's never been on a long plane, like a long flight, because it's like nine hours, eight and a half, nine hours from New York to Paris. So kind of a long flight. But his mom tears off the old bag tag off of his dad's suitcase who does, you know, ostensibly fly. It's a very like specific moment that she like tears it off and then.
you know, he has this premonition and stuff happens. Now there's other stuff that happens. There's a bunch of coincidences with like the departure time and his birthday and the flight number keeps showing up everywhere. And on the sign that tells you when the flight's going to take off, it says. terminal and he's like oh this is bad you know there's lots of weird stuff that happens the music that's playing it's a whole thing yeah so
It may not necessarily be that one specific thing. Maybe they're like trying to sow some seeds of which one specifically is the thing that made it happen. But I don't know. That's the first one. Oh, yeah. I think that is kind of the thing is, you know, it's very Twilight Zone-y and X-Files-y in that regard where...
You know, the audience is meant from the beginning to pick up on all of these little like patterny things and be like, oh, what's that? What's that? That's weird. That's weird. You know, but we never get confirmation as to the inciting incident or if there is an inciting. incident, if it is all just coincidence and, you know, it is just death chasing them. We never...
find out about that. But it's fun to kind of speculate. And I had forgotten about some of that going back into this movie. And it was really, really fun to start clocking all of that in the beginning, because it's a lot. And I'm betting there are actually more that I didn't notice. time around when I was reading through the trivia while we were watching this movie there are so many things
I'm not sure that all of them are deliberate. Like some of the situations seem like they might have just been environmental or coincidental. One of the examples is that when they're like at the airport, they're off the plane, the group is off the plane and they're watching. watching the plane take off, the plane crosses Sean William Scott's face, Billy's face, like, you know, in almost exactly the same place where he gets decapitated.
That's very Hitchcockian. That probably on purpose. Yeah. But the other thing that they said is when they pan back to Todd after Alex is like looking at each one of them, when they pan back to Todd, there's a bus. behind him but he doesn't get killed by a bus right he gets killed by the
the laundry line and the shower. So I don't necessarily think that all of them were specific, especially because that's like airport decoration. Yeah. And I don't know if they would have been like, let's... completely change the way that this airport is decorated for the purposes of this like premonition i don't think that that was a thing that gets into the whole like hitchcock theory of you know what is conscious in the filmmaking and what is perhaps
unconscious but still factoring into the choices that the filmmaker is making like where are they deliberately saying like i want to have you know the image the shadow of the plane fly across this person's face and where are they just in choosing their shot, contributing to the vibe and feel and the symbolism in the film. And it's really hard to tell. And some directors will not kind of participate in those conversations in terms of what was deliberate or what was...
You know, they want you to either believe that everything was deliberate and planned out or that everything was just, you know, air quotes, movie magic, when really it's probably a mix of both. Yeah, like that's not to say that they weren't clever in like some of the shots and, you know.
It may just be that this movie was so big in scope that there are things that overlap and they might not even have meant to or like made a conscious decision to include some of this stuff. And people are just like reading far into it because this is a movie that lends its... to that absolutely that lends itself to being like really really really highly analyzed after the fact because that's sort of the nature of this sort of fear
is like this paranoia and this sort of like, what do they call it? Not totemic, but like the way of thinking where you are. using these signs the sort of like superstitious thinking where you're using these signs and you're thinking that each thing means this thing you know like oh yeah um so he's He's engaging in that. And like it comes to a peak where Alex is like completely.
can't do anything because he's thinking in this way where he's like well this thing happened so this is this thing and this thing happened you know and the beginning of this movie is exactly that is like he is looking at every little thing and me being a person who at a certain point in time also could not fly on planes you definitely do that like everything is representative of something else so if you see like
your flight number and the time is the same, then you're like, shit, that means something. And it's not even because of this movie, because I was scared of flying before. I ever saw this movie. When I had my really bad flight, that is what caused me to be very scared of flying. And I had not seen this movie until after that. But it happens. This sort of superstitious thinking. It dogpiles. So it doesn't even matter that none of it makes sense. It's like...
Oh, well, I saw this thing and it means this and now I'm going to see everything. It's like the red car thing, right? Whenever you buy a car, like then you start to notice that car more. Well, when you get scared over something, you start to notice all of the reasons why.
should be scared. Well, and likewise, this movie, you know, I feel like perhaps like traumatized a generation of soon to be ultra anxious millennials like literally everything can and will kill you right you know like um especially toward the end when alex is in the cabin it's like he's looking around and essentially like baby proofing Cabin.
for himself and you start to see like all of the dangers around you like oh no like you could slip and poke your eye out you could do this you could do that this could poison you this could catch on fire and uh i feel like those of us a certain age have sort of learned to uh to to live like that yeah we're probably over we probably overdo it yeah but nobody is ever going to slip and fall and get caught in a laundry line
No. In their shower. Also, I never hung my laundry like that in the shower. No. Never really had a laundry. The only time we ever had a laundry line was like outside. Yeah. I have one in my basement now. Oh. But no, when I lived in an apartment, we just hung it on the shower rod. I don't know. It's weird. Some of the stuff is like, I mean, I think that that was probably a criticism of this movie when it came out as like.
they're forcing it in some instances like they absolutely are but that's like sort of the point is that death is making it so that these people can't get out of these situations like sure if you you know are in your kitchen, you're probably not going to turn on your gas and then
get a bottle of vodka and you know set your computer on fire and then grab a towel and glass explode into your neck like it's probably not going to happen that way but it might it could and that's why this movie is effective yeah because it would make you think about stuff like that yeah i do think it's really funny that in the airport when we see clear for the first time they're going up the escalator and she's reading the tropic of cancer by henry miller
And I was like, is she just trying to tell all these boys that she's horny as hell? Or like, why exactly is she reading, you know, Tropic of Cancer? And also, they probably don't know. you know, anything about Tropic of Cancer. No, I don't think the high school boys would be picking up on that particular cue. I don't know if it's because Henry Miller lived in...
Paris and that's why she was reading it she's like oh you know literature and I want to seem smart so I'm going to read a Henry Miller autobiographical book or she was just like I'm horny I'm DTF I'm reading about Henry Miller's sexual Look at me. And like the only person who notices is probably like her 55 year old French teacher. And he's like, oh, you know.
I'm not really sure why specifically they added that in because there are so many other things that seem very deliberate in this movie. Yeah. Why Tropic of Cancer? James Wong, let us know. Yeah. Yeah. I have questions about that choice. It could have been. Anything. It could have been so much more... like obvious so i'm just interested why specifically tropic of cancer and the only reason i even noticed it was like why is because there's an episode of seinfeld about like jerry checked out
Tropic of Cancer from the library when he was in high school. And then he like lost the book and the library is now coming after him all these years later. And he's like, I remember why I got it because it was so horny and I was like reading all of the sex scenes. Because I'm a freaking teenage kid, you know. That's why I was like, why would they make that decision?
And that episode was in 1991. I thought maybe it was an homage to like a Seinfeld episode, but it definitely wasn't because it happened nine years before this movie came out. So interesting, tiny thing that I glommed onto for some reason. I do like that Clear is...
And although this would be a little early for this, she is not a manic pixie dream girl. Yeah. She does have the late 90s, early 2000s glow up at the end. Yeah. But it's like not a huge plot point. It's just something I clocked in the... very last scene yeah like she's kind of an orphan and she also like welds metal art yeah which you know just the casual like welding art studio that you would have when you're a teenager yeah
That's totally normal and reasonable. I thought that was kind of hilarious. Also, I like that she's like super down for Alex, but also in the weirdest way. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And almost like. Alex is almost like, no. Yeah. No, thanks. Yeah. Like, I'm good. I guess that was supposed to be a plot point.
They were going to have sex. And then at the end of the movie, Claire was going to be pregnant with Alex's baby. And that was going to be like an ongoing plot point. But I'm glad that they ditched that. Yeah.
You know, there are so many super horny teenage horror movies in this time frame that it's kind of refreshing to be like, oh, it's not like... clear definitely has the hots for alex and it's probably returned because he's a teenage boy and super horny you know as evidenced by the fact that after his entire class blew up i know the day after he was like oh i'm gonna bust out this pen house real quick. Yeah. Like, dude. Okay.
I mean, we all cope in different ways, but dude, just go to sleep. Yeah. I mean, nothing ever comes of it. He's probably like even disappointed in himself. Like, oh, shit. Yeah. I probably shouldn't do this. But yeah. But yeah, I like that they didn't like go the horny teenager route and be like, oh, now they're in love. They've trauma bonded. They didn't do that. They were just more like.
pre-dating yeah you know although alex was willing to sacrifice himself for clear which is very nice yeah very noble of him Well, he also was like very convinced that that was the thing that he needed to do in order to break the curse. Yeah, it was less about being in love with her and more about like, I feel like Alex's thing is kind of about being right.
ultimately you know like proving that he's not delusional or he's not making it up but that he's right and that he is indeed having these visions and they are coming true and he has gotten to the bottom of this and figured it out and now he's going to stop it yeah also like is pretty messed up from like oh yeah being either in close proximity to or suspected of a bunch of people dying so he was like he was having a hard time
And it makes sense why he would be having a hard time and why he'd be like, I want this to be done and over with. I'm tired of seeing people hurt. You know, his best friend, Todd, who died, he was the first one, I think, to die after the plane crash. So there was 39 days.
after the plane crash. They had a memorial. They had all the funerals. And then Todd was talking to Alex and saying like, hey, you know, can't wait to get back with you. Let's go to the city. They live in New York. Let's go to the city and like do some stuff. And then. Todd, you know, dies. Everybody thinks that he kills himself because his brother died in the plane crash or in the plane explosion. And Devin saw was like, no, that wasn't a thing, you know.
He wouldn't have killed himself, which Devon Sawa has insight into this that the others don't like his friend really did seem like he was doing OK. But to his parents, you know, it does look like he hung himself and that was on purpose. I can't remember where I was going with that. But well, it was the line that we talked about when we were watching it, which was Alex says to Todd's father.
Why would he make plans with me if he was going to kill himself? Oh, yeah. And we both kind of cringed at that line because, you know, in the year 2000, we were definitely... starting to have conversations about death by suicide but not in a way that was particularly productive like they were starting to teach young people like
here are the signs you need to look out for if someone is dealing with depression and might be self-harming or something like that. But when I think about... the advice that we as young people were given back then or like things to look for and how far the sort of science and, you know, wisdom and study about this has come.
it was all wrong you know like wow i just that lined me i was like oh that's yeah that was always a thing like when i was in um middle school and high school they were like well you know, people who are harming themselves, like they need help, they need you to intervene, they need you to tell somebody. And I was like, everybody I know who was doing that definitely did not needed the opposite of that. Number one, and number two, people who were
very depressed like they would say things like oh well they'll stop making plans and they'll start giving their stuff away which is not that's not something that I ever encountered and I'm sure that this was all out of like you know good intentions yeah Yeah. Where people are like, they don't want to see somebody hurting. Yeah. But also.
I also remember in 2004 that there was zero access to mental health care. Correct. It was like, oh, well, you can tell a teacher and then your teacher can tell your parents and that's going to exacerbate the problem even worse. Right. And if you went to see the school psychologist, it was. like a really big bad deal you know i mean we've come so far like in the fact that we're like hey you know first step let's get you some mental health care yes let's not
make a bad situation worse. Let's not involve your parents and administrators and people in your school. So it's just interesting to see how we handle it a lot differently now. Yeah, definitely. And that's even a plot point in a lot of movies at this point. Like Smile was around a therapist. Yeah. Well, and Smile 2 kind of dealt with it from a different angle of, you know, addiction and recovery. And how people treat you differently, you know, and maybe like even now.
Although I would say that that is probably a realistic portrayal of like people who are trying to quote unquote help when it comes to somebody who's recovering from addiction. is depressed still we can see as viewers like oh this is not helpful right right yeah because it might still happen but and i mean Think about how many people like our parents and older generation who probably still think those same things about suicide.
that we were told then they probably still think them now absolutely like oh my child will not commit suicide because we have plans my child will not commit suicide because they're not giving away their items right you know like right that's not that's not how that goes yeah no
I mean, disappointing, but also good to know that we've made progress. Definitely. Yeah, I think that line just stuck out to me as being very emblematic of the times. And I am grateful that we have a better understanding of... how to assist people when they find themselves in that sort of, you know, self-harm or, you know, suicidal ideation state. You know, it's not perfect and we are not.
far enough along yet but I do think like that just really that line just really stuck out to me I was like wow That was over 20 years ago. And we have at least made some progress in our understanding in the way that we talk about it. So that's good. Yeah. To brighten things up. Yeah. Way that Todd talks is so absolutely ludicrous in this movie. I know. There's a moment where he tells Alex that they should probably go ahead and go to the bathroom and...
like poop because otherwise they could be in the bathroom, quote unquote, torquing a wicked cable, which I've never heard in my life as a euphemism for pooping. But I mean, maybe it was in New York. Teenager thing. Maybe. I'm going to Google it after this. Twerk a wicked cable.
But he was basically like, what if we take a shit in the airplane bathroom and then some girl wants to come in and give us a blowjob? It's going to be gross. We should probably poop now. Like the hoops that you have to go through in order to think about this. age boy logic man yeah but then they like todd says that and alex is like oh gross but then he goes and takes a shit right so like what
So you really think that there's I mean, maybe it's a nervous poop. Like, yeah, I don't know about you, but sometimes when I'm like getting ready to fly, I'm like, number one, airplane bathrooms are closed in. And also like. Lots of people have to poop on an airplane. I gotta say, like, being on an airplane is probably...
It's probably like a yawn effect where one person yawns and everybody's got to. It's got to be like that where you're like, well, I don't have anything else to do. So might as well go take a shit. But I just thought that the way that he talks is like absolutely ridiculous.
ridiculous and fun like it's fun to hear the way teenagers like process and think about stupid shit like that it is very of the era you mentioned american pie earlier like being a contemporary of american pie you know and even like idle hands which we covered um earlier which was a 1999 movie with Devin Sawa it is that very like late 90s early 2000s like teenage boy like gross out centric thing that seems to be happening where you know
They were just saying things that I'm like, but why? Why? Why are you like this? Like an American pie. I don't know anybody who's ever had sex with a pie. No. That's not really a thing, but they put it in American Pie and it became synonymous. Jason Biggs can't go anywhere without not being a pie fucker guy. You just can't. It's kind of hilarious now that Eugene Levy is...
Yeah. Famous now for Schitt's Creek. Mm hmm. When he was the walk in guy, you know, for so long. Well, yeah. And like, it was so weird. Like, Alison Hannigan. Oh, yeah. In American Pie, like being famous for the whole flute line. And I'm like, but it's Willow. I know. Sweet baby angel Willow who's never done a bad thing in her entire life except when she was dark Willow. But that wasn't her fault. Right. It was kind of her fault.
Not really. It wasn't her fault. Yeah. Like she that was her thoughts. But she didn't. Yeah. She didn't want to do those things. Yeah. You know. Willow can do no harm. Literally protect Willow at all costs. Yeah. Willow is a cinnamon roll. I mean Amber was too. But. Yeah. Heart broken. First time my heart was ever broken. I was like, why? Why would you do this to me? Well, anyways. Buffy was cruel, man. Buffy was cruel. Ugh.
It was. It really was cruel. This was the first theatrically released teen horror movie to not feature a corporeal murderer. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, um, I mean, I know that's a lot of caveats. Well, but. Are we calling Freddy Krueger corporeal? Yeah, I would say so. Because at the end of the first Nightmare movie, he kind of comes through into the real world. Okay, I guess. Yeah. I mean... I guess.
It's a lot of caveats. And it's also, they also have to throw in there three theatrically released because who the hell knows what was happening on. In the home video. Right? In home video, shot on video, you know, all kinds of shit was happening there. Oh, yeah. It also has the shortest beginning premonition scene of all of the Final Destination movies. This one is only two minutes long.
And I think it is because later in the movie, the Miss Luton death scene and the Todd death scene are very long. And I think they probably got feedback or got audience reactions and they were like, dude, more of that. And so the movies that followed this one are a lot heavier on those long.
premonition and long death scenes i feel like this franchise became known for the opening sequence absolutely if you know nothing else i mean we we kind of said this earlier in the episode if you know nothing else about the the sequels most people know and wait for like i know everybody's waiting to see what is the opening sequence in final destination six bloodlines going to be because it's going to be something
weird and ridiculous and unexpected so that really became the reputation of this franchise you know in the same way you know you look for what are the traps in Saw? You know, you're looking for what are the opening sequences in Final Destination? Who are the killers in Scream? Exactly. Also, an interesting note about this franchise is that for the Final Destination movies...
We never figure out the lore. And I appreciate that so much. Like maybe Bloodlines is going to deal with that. I've heard it will. Considering the name of it. But it's kind of fun to have a movie where nobody figures it out. Yeah. Nobody ends up stopping it. And it's just still wild.
Yeah. It is nice, too, to be able to dip into the sequels and not need any knowledge. Like, I feel like you can't do that with Scream. Like, you can, but you're missing a lot of information if you're, like, just dipping into Scream 3. Without having seen the prior ones. Oh yeah. Or even like the newer. Five and six. Five and six. Like if you haven't seen the original ones. I think you're going to be. Well and truly lost.
But these, you really can hop in. You know, you could hop into three or four. Or if you're unfamiliar with this franchise, and let's say you're listening to this in the future. I hope everybody's okay in the future. Hello from the past. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry about your luck. But if you're listening to this right before... Final Destination 6 Bloodlines comes out and you haven't seen the first ones.
You're going to be fine. Go see it and you'll be fine and you can double back later. Yeah, absolutely. The only thing that you're going to be missing out on is Bloodworth, who I'm going to talk about for a minute now. Bloodworth is Tony Todd's character. particular case he is the mortician slash funeral director slash dude at the funeral home yes so For some reason, Claire's character is like, hey, you want to go see Todd one last time? Which like...
Okay. I'm not really sure why they made that decision. I know why they have to get to Bloodworth because he basically gives a shitload of exposition that they wouldn't have otherwise had. But they decide to break into the funeral home where Todd's dead body is so they can see him one last time. and they encounter Bledworth, who is Tony Todd's character. Also want to say he's like exceedingly chill about them just breaking into his friggin... He's so fine with it. Yeah. Yeah.
He's just very chill about the whole thing. He's like, it's OK. You know, no harm, no foul. And then he starts to lay this super heavy shit on them, all the while also embalming their dead friend. in front of them, which is really gross. The embalming, there's a reason why there's a mortician who specifically does this because nobody wants to know the nitty gritty of what happens to a body before it's ready for a funeral.
And if you want to watch this movie, Tony Todd will show you why. Yes, exactly. Because it's pretty gross. But he basically helps postulate what's going on with Alex and Claire. Yes. Like, hey, you guys cheated death and... it made death mad. And now it's going to come after you guys one by one in the same order that you would have died. And Alex kind of gets that too. He sort of hypothesizes that and it sticks in his head.
There's a funny line during that scene where he says, and now you've pissed off the Grim Reaper. And Bledworth says, you don't even want to fuck with that Mac Daddy. Yeah. And I just thought that was so funny. It's so random that he would say something like that, you know, but it was funny. And then they leave. And later on, Tony Todd's character comes back in five. He actually comes back in two. I misspoke earlier. I completely forgot that he is in number two. Clear brings...
Kimberly and Thomas to him to talk about cheating death. Yes. I remember that. And then he shows up in five. He was not in three and four. Okay. Yeah. I do remember that now. Okay. I haven't seen two in ages. He still plays Bledworth in both of those other two movies. He's always that character. Yeah. This is not a situation where he is.
showing up as a harbinger but in a different persona he is always the same guy and he does seem to as the franchise goes on reveal that he has some kind of special knowledge we don't know where he got said knowledge why he has said knowledge but he has knowledge yeah um he's not death though and he's not the grim reaper he's not like supernatural in any means by any means he's just because i guess that was a question that a lot of people ask
James Wong after this movie was like hey is this death which like for good reason he is like strangely yeah into present yeah but they were like no no he's just a guy yeah But now we know he's got some special knowledge. We just don't know how. Yeah. Also, I think it is hilarious that you could take somebody as pure as John Denver, sweet baby angel John Denver, who wrote some of the most peaceful songs ever, right? Performed with the Muppets.
form of the Muppets, you know, very iconic looking guy, golden hair with like the little round glasses, farmer dude, you know. Everybody loved him and then turned him into a harbinger of... Death. Yes. It's kind of hilarious. Like multiple times in this movie, like Miss Luton's death. She's listening to John Denver, John Denver album when she is brutally murdered. The very tail end of the movie, a French busker is playing a John Denver.
song in French. And then you have Billy, or not Billy, Kersmith's character. I can't remember what his name is. He dies. I just think it's really funny. Yeah. And of course, John Denver died in a plane crash in 1997. So that's a little hat tip there. The creative team behind this movie actually said that when they were making the first one, they wanted this... movie i don't know if they were envisioning as it as a franchise just yet but they wanted this movie
to do for air travel what Jaws did for like boats and beaches and the ocean, which is to kind of get into the 9-11 of it all. You definitely see that getting dropped like a hot potato in the sequel. And I don't think this movie ever would have made it if it had come out just a year later. This would have gotten axed because...
After 9-11, we saw lots and lots and lots of movies that either never came out or came out way late or had drastic changes to them. Because anything with like... a building exploding or a plane crashing or a plane exploding was just like no go like we were not doing it so we're kind of lucky to have this movie uh by virtue of timing but you could definitely see
In the non-connected sequels that they decided to go with other dangerous things. They did not stick with the airline thing. And I don't know if 9-11 hadn't happened. or the timing of the movie was different, if they would have pursued the plain thing for the entire franchise. It's an interesting kind of thought exercise about what would have happened if we hadn't had that kind of smack in the middle of the development of the sequels.
Yeah. Poor Devin Sawa for being in several different now that we've covered idle hands being screwed over because of the Columbine shooting. Yep. You know, not to say the Columbine shooting wasn't bad, but. Idle Hands had the unfortunate coincidence of being released during the same week. So it did very, very, very poorly, even though in retrospect, the movie is actually...
It's funny. It's goofy. It's silly. It's certainly harmless, I will say. Yeah. But it doesn't have a super nice way of handling a lot of like pretty intense, you know, teen. subjects and then this movie had it come out a year later like it would have been absolutely crushed now devon saw it does not return in any of the other movies so like you know
Oh, well. Yeah. It wouldn't have hurt him any, I guess, because he went on to be in other stuff. But yeah, like, wow, that he is attached to those. Other separate sort of conversation, though, is kind of an interesting thing. You know, we talked about censorship and how I think we both pretty unilaterally think that censorship is bad.
However, when it comes to, you know, a world changing event like 9-11 and the fact that so many movies had been changed or axed or pushed back, you know, because of the subject matter, it's interesting to think now in retrospect with, you know. 23 years since that happened is it better to as a studio be like oh like let's not you know add fuel to the fire or
do you let your audiences decide? Because I really think on the one hand, I'm not about censorship. I definitely think it's very bad. But on the other, I think from a business standpoint, studios have to make the decision, will we allow a movie that... we know to be poorly received post these events.
go on to be watched and then maybe, you know, make that a huge financial disaster for us. And a social responsibility standpoint. Sure, yeah. Do we want to... upset people unnecessarily like is it worth it to release this movie that could harm a lot of people you know like i'm sure from the studio perspective it is fueled more by capitalism than like morality and ethics but there is that kind of ethical question
I think the interesting thing in 2000 is that we didn't have a lot of other avenues. Sure. There was theatrical or home video, period. You know, streaming. It was not a thing in 2000. It would come a few years subsequent to this. But, you know, you had two options in 2001. Your movie goes to theaters or it goes to home media or it just doesn't come out. So I guess that's three options. I had wondered in 2020 if we would see the same thing surrounding the pandemic.
if we would see movies getting changed or moved around or postponed that had like pandemic subject matter, if we would see a change to the zombie genre. And aside from production delays, which...
were more about the mechanics of the movies. We didn't really see that in the same way, but the media landscape was very different. Theatrical was kind of not... really possible like it was it was possible but it wasn't like a lot of studios were not releasing movies just in theaters at that time because moviegoers were very tentative about going to theaters but you had
way more self-selection options on the audience's part. It felt like because we had a streaming option where people could opt in or opt out, that studios weren't as concerned with like the content end of it. It was more just what... is the release vehicle and then the audience gets to pick so it's it's just really interesting to look at then versus now ish although the pandemic and 9-11 are not like an
a total like one-to-one analog in terms of like big social events but it was kind of the closest event that I could think about you know when it when the pandemic happened I was kind of thinking about like would that change it because it was like the biggest collective thing we had experienced since then, at least from my experience. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how things will change going forward.
you know i'm sure that we're not at the end of our like world changing events cycle unfortunately i wish we could live in precedented events for just like a minute would love that just like a just a hot second yeah like five minutes please yeah um just like a regular normal couple of days That'd be great. Yeah. But anyways, I will be interested to see how we will handle that, especially now when it comes to social responsibility. I think there's a lot more folks who are tapped into that.
To say like, hey, maybe not the best time to release this movie. But the other thing is, you know, movies do have a shelf life, unfortunately. Especially movies that deal with like the topic of the day. So something happens and you can't release your movie. Well, if you release it in two years, you know, when when maybe stuff's died down, might it be as well received? Maybe it's not topical anymore. So then it's a big loss of cash and, you know, a movie that might be really good.
that nobody's going to get to see. So just an interesting thing to think about when you consume media, especially ones that narrowly miss the... You know, because I don't think that a movie like Final Destination, especially revolving around a plane crash, could have been released even within like two...
three years of 9-11. No, probably not. Yeah. Because it was all very much still on people's minds, like 9-11 and then the War on Terror started in 2003, the invasion. So... it would have taken a long time and if it had been released it probably would have a lot of people would have been like hey this is like really poor taste yeah so it's an interesting thing to think about
You know, we always like to talk about horror movies about being political statements. In this case, it was like sort of a pre-statement. Yeah, an unintentional. Yeah, unintentional statement. And not specifically about 9-11. Like this movie doesn't have, there's no discussion.
of war or invasion or anything like that. But I do find it interesting how we could even talk about how movies can be political statements in... being released absolutely you know after a thing happens so it'll be interesting to see how the next four years four and a half years will play out uh yeah yeah cool uh well what are we doing next time Next time, so we've moved our schedule around a little bit. We will get back.
to wreck in a couple of episodes uh we decided to uh because we were making this change we just took a look at our schedule for the next few episodes and did some moving around a little bit to uh kind of meet the moment we were already thinking about doing rosemary's baby because of the new television series based on it and we decided to go ahead and move that up because we thought that the discussion would be more fruitful that will also be
our anniversary episode oh wow shit is that three years yeah wow yeah entering year four damn yeah so we'll do rosemary's baby you know iconic horror film iconic film really that's one of those uh horror films that i feel like has transcended genre um Everybody seems to at least have a working knowledge of what Rosemary's Baby is about and what it is. And I'm really excited to dive into it, especially in a year when we also have movies like The First Omen.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm really thankful that we get to talk about this movie because I love Mia Farrow. I think she's absolute queen. I love this movie, even though it was not. It's not everybody's cup of tea. I also am going to be interested to talk about Roman Polanski as a director, as a human, you know. Yeah, absolutely. So this is a timely, pertinent, specific and relevant movie, I think.
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where people can find the show. I'm Juliet. And I'm Teresa. Until next time, stay scary.