250 - DeepStar Six

As always I'd like to extend an invitation to join our community. We host watch parties every Tuesday and Thursday night at seven thirty P.M. Time over on Discord. Tuesdays focus on the movies we talk about here on the show, while Thursdays focus on brand new releases. So you can stay connected with us over there on Discord and join our watch parties at bit.ly forward slash handle whisker. With me here tonight as always is my co-host Grantho Zombie Zombie Happy Episode 250.

And uh I'm really excited for this one because we have another movie that I hadn't seen since I was a kid. As I remember the first time I saw this movie was we rented two movies, and this is gonna be another movie, I'm sure I'm gonna mention it at some point during the episode because it's I mean the parallels are so common, and it was also the same fucking year. Um, but we rented The Abyss and Deep Star Six and we watched them back to back and

I love both of these movies for different reasons. Obviously there's another movie too that also came out that I also enjoy. Um But this is another one of those that every time I saw the VHS cover or if I saw the poster at the store, like I it always drew my attention. And you know, we talked about so many times how if you have a cool poster doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna have a good movie. And Deep Star Six is one of those

Just movies in general that I feel like is still so underappreciated even after all of these years. So I'm glad we had a couple of first time watches during a watch party. uh earlier in the week and it looks like it resonated with a lot of people too. So I was happy to see that.

That said, both movies have very different things to say. One is more about you know, undersea mining and like this the capitalist system and and everything else. And this one is more about the industrial military complex, right? And it it's funny that the movie waits for a very long time to actually tell you that. Like it kinda draws you in and gets you like, Oh, by the way, and then someone says the missile sled and you're like, Wait, what? Missile, what the fu uh huh?

And and so it gets a little bit deeper. But I mean this is also w we're also honestly it towards the end of the Cold War, right? So it it in a l lot of ways it's it's kinda relatable for the people that were there. Now with Deep Star Six, I honestly think There's a lot of things

Uh going back to your comments about the movie poster, the the front of the VHS cover for this was what pulled me in. And it's a little different from what you see if you Google now. It was definitely a little bit different.

With this one, I think probably the best part of it is that this movie and I I'd I unabashedly, I love this movie. I just love this movie. And it's a movie that has no nudity, which for the time was like

You know, uh R Richard Crenna, Peter Weller. I it's there's so much in there. And this was you know, it had one guy who like was like the dad in Two and a half dads or whatever the fuck the show was. It just like like okay. The story I think arguably is uh maybe just a touch better than Leviathan. I think Leviathan is maybe

a little creepier. But at the same time I think with the team that we have in this one, and especially with characters like, you know, our doctor in this one and then with our character of Snyder. Th the the the team in a lot of ways is a little more cohesive, but in a lot of ways they're also at odds with each other kind of constantly.

Whereas in Leviathan, the team was very cohesive and they were all at odds with like the mind boss, right? They all had to have somebody to hate. And I still remember seeing this for the first time and it's like Knowing what I know about horror now and know what what I know about effects and things like that, to know that

All of the CGI for this was just computer shit. It was like the things that they were gonna show you on a computer screen, that was the CGI for this. All the rest of it was ninety nine point nine percent practical, including the fucking monster. It's like The people that made this movie, if they made it today and had the dollar to dollar resources that they had back then, can you imagine the movie they'd make today? Oh my god, it would just be

In horror terms it would be a fucking masterpiece, right? And so knowing that you can have a movie of this vintage, I t thirty seven years, give or take. Shit. I mean it it makes me feel good that I'm a horror fan because There was a time and a place where they really did things well. And you know, we see so many movies now and we we were talking earlier about the movie Chum and how You hated it at every single twist and turn.

And I didn't necessarily and and for I d the reasons are the reasons. I mean to to argue it is just pointless, right? It it doesn't really matter. We're we're not here to argue if if you don't like something, you don't like something. It's nice that you can have a movie like this where almost universally people are like, yeah, that was pretty good.

for its vintage and for the effects and for the again the lack of star power. I mean that's that's saying something pretty profound and The movie is surprisingly rewatchable. Like you i y you watch it again, you're you you're you're always compelled. I mean, yeah, th there's definitely some parts of it where it's like, Hey, let's do this bypass and run this over here and do that and it's like

Like, do you know the mechanical components you'd need to do all of that? It it this is th this is not trying to fix an old car where you do it with a fucking hose clamp and a pop can. You know, it's just not that. But i everything is delivered in in in a a reasonable enough manner where you're like

Yeah. Okay, just go fix it. I wanna watch I wanna see what happens. Go fix it. And and oh by the way, hey you you young lady and you other young lady and you other young lady, make sure you're good and wet while you do it.

It's just fun to watch, man. I mean it it motivations being what they are and and you know, perversions notwithstanding, it's entertaining as hell. And that's kind of like that's what we are talking about, step one, was I entertained in this movie? Oh, you're goddamn right I was entertained.

And they've been tasked with setting up nuclear missiles, and they discover a huge underwater cavern which houses a giant prehistoric creature.

This of course comes from Sean Cunningham, arrived in nineteen eighty nine as part of a cluster of underwater science fiction horror films, alongside as I mentioned, James Cameron's The Abyss, and George Pancosmatos's Leviathan. All of them had released within Couple of months of each other. So really at this point the deep ocean was occupying in this specific place in the cultural imagination of the late nineteen eighties and

Now seem to demand this simultaneous expression across these multiple productions. Now, the fact that we had three major underwater films arriving in the same year without coordination is not, you know, coincidence, but it's this cultural symptom. No, the deep ocean was doing work in the collective imagination of nineteen eighty nine, and of course cinema needed to articulate that.

And it's it's interesting when you talk about these three movies together because like I've always felt that Deep Star Six has been the one that has gotten like the least amount of prestige out of the three. Terima kasih kerana menonton! like serious critical attention. And it's, you know, of course been obscured what it is actually doing beneath, you know, the creature feature surface of it. No, it's not the abyss in the sense that, you know, it doesn't have the James Cameron budget behind it.

or that same level of like visual ambition or the interest in like using that underwater setting as, you know, this space for, you know, spiritual and emotional transformation. This movie is just, it's tighter, it's meaner, it it has this more honest relationship to the genre of conventions.

And of course it does have these thematic concerns about, you know, human institutional behavior when you're under pressure that it develops with you know more consistency than a lot of these other B movies at the time really brought to the table.

Um, and I think just generally speaking are fairly underrated. And you know, and kind of for a variety of reasons. I think with Where Deep Star Six gets kind of the edge is It it put a lot of people in their non-traditional roles, right? You know, our our captain of the whole thing. is well, call call it what it is, our captain's black. Okay? That was like not a thing. Um our chief doctor was a woman. Our chief biologist was a woman. And huh. Friggin' hot woman.

But we still had a little bit of that, you know, kind of A little bit of a top gun feel where we have this guy who's like kind of the underperformer'cause he he's he's fucked around too much and done whatever else and I mean come on, that's always a guy that you can root for. There's just You know, I mean, and his fucking name, McBride. I mean come Jesus Christ. Okay. I mean it th if there's if there's ever you wanted to see a guy ride in on a Harley

Shoot down the bad guy and then fuck the prom queen. I don't know who it would be more than a guy named McBride for fuck's sake. But in the end I think one of the beautiful parts of this whole thing is that other than other than McBride and um what's her name? Joyce? Um, the the actress is whose name is Nancy Everhard. And how you doing, Nancy? Theirs is probably really the only personal relationship in the movie. The rest of it They don't give you a ton.

And while you could say that that's a lack of character development, I would argue that it was more a focus on these two characters. And th the more you find out about them, the more you find out that, you know

They're in love, they're down here. She's pregnant. They're talking about having a kid and you know how they're going to, you know, uh like erase that and do I mean it it kind of puts a hyper focus on on like the humans in the human condition and uh moreover for me like I'm a person who I met my wife at work

Okay. We've been what we're come this is we're we're we're creeping up on ten years of marriage. You know, and I'm the person who I like I I get sick of a pair of shoes after a couple of weeks. So I think it talks about that human dynamic and it really puts it in harsh perspective where it's like it doesn't matter if it's The grocery store, it's the corporate office, it's the military, whatever it be. Uh Proximity with people can make things that weren't necessarily there show up.

Once you once you get these feelings or these thoughts it's like it's one of those things that's it's hard to chase away and At the same time with some of the other characters in this movie. There's a lot of individuality here. Whether you're Snyder and you're just a fucking prick, or whether you're, you know, Scarpelli and you're fucking super hot and just wanna work out all the time.

Or whether you're the doctor and you're just like, you know what? I have to focus on saving all these people and helping them and I have to follow all these protocols and do whatever else. uh the the situations like this can like hyper accentuate who you are as a person. And I think this movie does a really good job of showing that.

Uh but then at the same time it's kinda like an onion. You peel the layers away and sometimes like an onion is just a fucking onion. It doesn't matter how many layers you peel, it's still gonna be a fucking onion. And that's kinda what we are as people. It doesn't matter how many layers you peel away from us at the a at our core, we're just people. And when you get to the core, we all expect to find the same thing and

All too often what we find at the core is influenced by a thousand other things and you never know what that's gonna be. And with this one As deep as they don't go into the characters, you also understand every single character's motivations. And it's always interesting to me that they're able to pull that off without really telling you a hell of a lot about who the people are. And in a weird way it kinda makes it more fun to watch because

You're looking for little details that are gonna give you clues and it becomes uh in a in a way like a character plot point scavenger hunt and it just makes it really fun to watch, man. And it's it's one of the reasons I think I love it so much.

You know, we see someone like that, we do stupid things. It's understandable. Uh but anyways we have this naval crew who are operating on this, you know, experimental underwater missile deployment facility on this ocean floor. And we end up disturbing something that's ancient and enormous. In this submerged cavern. Something enormous responds with this focused, destructive attention of a creature that was not looking for trouble and is found it anyway.

So what follows is really a survival film, uh, but it's also a survival film that has this pointed interest in just how human decision making within these institutional structures produces this catastrophe that's nominally designed to prevent. No, the thing that separates it from just this straightforward creature feature is the interest in how the disaster unfolds as its consequence of decisions, rather than just random bad luck or, you know, a case of like supernatural malevolence.

Now the crew of Deep Star Six is operating under a deadline. you know the missile employment uh deployment facility must be operational by this specific date and that deadline is not simply this narrative convenience it's really this central thematic engine for the movie The decision that releases this creature No, to collapse the cavern system rather than go in and investigate it. No, to treat this unknown quantity as an obstacle.

to be removed rather than a reality to be understood. You know, it's made specifically because investigation would take time, and time is, you know, a resource that the deadline has has made pretty scarce for this crew. So it's really this description of how, you know, this institutional pressure produces these catastrophic decisions. You know, the people who are making the decision

aren't stupid or malicious, you know. They're professionals who are operating within the system that's given them this goal and they have this timeline and they haven't been provided adequate space for, you know the kind of necessary assessment that the situation requires. So really, if we're talking about like antagonists in this movie, like for the first act, it is 100% the deadline. No, the creature just happens to be the consequence.

You know the externalized cost of this decision that was made under pressure, they really had no room for the precautionary thinking that might have prevented it in the first place.

Probably one of the most interesting parts. And and Snyder becomes in a lot of ways. I mean, he's obviously the most hateable character in the movie, but I think he's also one of the most interesting because. He is the one who is acting without emotion. He's just doing his job. And Through him just doing his job as the movie goes on, you hate him more and more because he's just doing his job. And he points it out frequently. Well, you know, the manual says or the protocol says or the mandate is.

And he just does those things. And the funniest part about that whole thing is that as people If we just followed the mandate, the protocol, the policy, the instruction, whatever it might be, if we just did that, life would actually be better for just about everybody. Now there's a slim percentage of the population that it wouldn't be better for, I agree with that. We've we've come to a place in our society where we're so focused on

the outcome for the smallest portions of our society that we're fucking everybody else in the process. And this movie shows that 100%. It absolutely shows what When you focus on this finite details and you just do the thing that you're instructed to do where maybe it's not better for everybody. You know, and it turns out, you know, setting off a nuclear blast ten feet away from where you live is not a good thing. Like who fucking knew, right? But that's what protocol dictates and We as people

I think are at a place in our modern society where we are so rebelling against the protocol because it's the man or it's the institution or it's the whatever whatever you wanna fucking call it. We all have we all have a name for it. But it it kind of shows you that I think for the most part, most of the protocol or whatever it might be is probably okay. You know, for the most part, it's what gets us through our day-to-day life.

But when you have that one person who doesn't take a second to go, wait a minute. It like is this the smartest thing? And at the same time, that person does not have all the information of say Our biologist or our geologist or whatever else, it's just a person who's been put in a place to make a decision. And Going back to the metaphor of like the DMV, it's like if your form's not filled out properly, guess what? You're starting over and you're going to the back of the fucking line.

And so as a person, it just in the scope of

He actually goes to the point of saying, you know, would you say that this thing was natural or was it aggressive? And he's like, Well uh and she was going, It's kind of aggressive and whatever else and he's like, Okay, aggressive and it's like, Okay, blow everything up. What? Like, how does that become the solution? But it's kind of one of the more glorious things to this because I mean at this point in the movie and and we're very early on, we've lost like a third of our cast already.

But nobody has come to the conclusion that something really bad is happening yet. But that kind of feels like life, right? Where where where bad things are happening but almost nobody has all of the details? We have ten people. Each of the ten has one detail, but they haven't all gotten together in a room and been like, so what did you see?

You know, we're we're just we're very reactionary. That's like this one thing happened, so I need to do something. But it it's it's kinda like how people are now. Like people people react without having all of the details. they don't bother to research things. They don't bother to go, Well, what w what are the actual facts? They just react and then to make things worse in this whole thing

They have a computer asking you for the facts. And Computers are driven by details and algorithms and things that in no way, shape, or form can rely on the human experience to interpret things maybe in a different way. And It's kind of our deep sea fishing sky net all over again. Like, okay, well the computer's just deciding because that's the most logical conclusion and it's like

No weight. You know, you have a biologist saying, hey, we should study this. You know, we have other people going, hey, my rotation's up. I just want to go topside. And so there's all these conflicting things going on and It just leads to ever increasing bad decisions, uh like I said up to including setting off the nuclear bombs or the the missile sled and like the in our in our half assed like Sean Connery English guy.

It leaves you as a person scratching your head. It it gives you that like that honest moment as a person like, how'd we get here? Like how did we honestly get here? To watch the rest of our characters try to rebound from that?

In a lot of ways, there's actually a little bit of hope in the whole thing, how everyone's like, you know what, we can pull together, we can fix this. And I think it's one of the things that makes the movie the most compelling is it's like, Okay, we're gonna fix this, we're gonna go here, we're gonna do the fix the decompression thing, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. And it feels like people like

As opposed to so many movies where everyone kind of fragments and separates and it's like, Fuck it, I have my own personal agenda. This is one of the rare movies where people actually pull together and it's like let's solve this I mean it in the end it doesn't really fucking matter anyway. But you feel good as a person watching it.

you know, which he's operated. You know, it's made the cost of delay more immediately legible than the cost of proceeding without adequate information. You know, which, you know, precisely the conditions under which these catastrophic decisions are made in the real world, you know, whether it's, you know, Challenger, you know, to Deepwater Horizon, to every other disaster in which the pressure to meet a deadline is overwhelmed. Uh the you know the signals that something was wrong.

And with Snyder, you know, like he's definitely the crew member here whose response to the crisis really escalates beyond, you know the survival behaviors of everyone else into something that begins to really threaten the crew survival more directly than the creature itself. Now his arc is really this Observation about, you know, how panic functions within group survival situations. You know, he has this initial fear, and that's entirely rational.

You know, the situation is generally terrifying and this assessment of the danger is accurate. But that fear, you know, it it's not It doesn't remain like calibrated to the actual threat. It gets amplified. It ends up like feeding on itself and it it produces these decisions. that are locally rational from within the perspective of, you know, his own terror and it's just catastrophically irrational from the perspective of the group survivor.

So when we have this, you know, accidental killing of Phipps, you know, which is one of the more shocking moments of Deep Star Six. Now it's achieved with this this suddenness that just refuses us as the audience, you know, the preparation that the Shrouder Convention typically provides.

you know, that direct consequence of the amplification. Now we have a man here who has been so consumed by his own fear that he's become just as dangerous to the people around him as the creature that generated the fear in the first place.

Um, you know, all the little small submarines that are controlled with a PlayStation controller and then everyone gets turned into fish food. Do we do we push the envelope? For the sake of knowledge or do we push the envelope for the sake of pushing the envelope? And it's always an interesting thing because I mean, I think this movie shows it where it's like

We we've gotten to this place where w you know, with our biologists, well we could learn a whole bunch of new things. There could be all kinds of information to be gathered. But the value of that information is often put up against the value of progress. in whatever, you know, the current thing is that we're doing.

I think it's a very In terms of like topics w when it comes to like, you know, the socioeconomic topics of the world today, I think it's one that is always At the forefront, but I think it's very seldom talked about. All you hear about is the hey we shouldn't mine here, hey we shouldn't drill here, hey we shouldn't travel here, hey we shouldn't cut these trees down, hey we shouldn't do this, we shouldn't do that.

But there's never a lot of data that backs up why we shouldn't do it. It's just that we shouldn't do it because it's bad, because we're fucking with the environment. Kinda like I've said, w you know, like where I live now, I've become uniquely aware of the environment and the things that are in it. And so like I uh there's a piece of me that I think i it for all these years I actually understand it a little better now, where like a a lot of this makes sense.

Uh forward progress as a society, I think, is always put first and foremost because that's just what we do. We always want to progress. You know, at the same time, I also saw a really fun video today of one of those little Food delivery cart robot guys get hit by a fucking train'cause it got stuck on the tracks. And it's like

And and to me th i in the end a lot of this is just survival of the fittest, right? And I I think it becomes uh whether it's uh an industry or or people, um uh or if brass tacks like a society, uh whoever's the most adept is gonna survive.

And I think one of the things that it shows me is that as a people, we often get into a situation where we don't bother trying to figure out what's what and and and even if the goal is to get the upper hand, it sometimes the the drive that we have to go forward is often countered by a lack of understanding.

that lack of understanding often is our detriment. You know, w we think we're plowing forward and we're actually not. You know, it's it's the whole, you know, one step forward and three steps back thing. And I think this movie does a really good job of showing us that it's like if we don't stop to understand things, we're we're often kind of in a lot of ways digging our own grave. Some of the simple things in this like

I mean it sounds dumb but it's like I think it's attracted to the lights. Turn the lights off. And it's like all of a sudden and then the sonar thing goes like it goes from beep beep beep beep to beep beep as it goes away. And a little bit of knowledge goes a long way in a lot of things like this.

And I I often wonder what this movie could have been if they would have been like, Okay, Scarpelli, go out there and investigate. And and by the way, do it in you know, flippers in a G string. That could have been really fun to watch. When it comes to these underwater movies, and there's there's so many times where we have these things where they try to show us new things. Like The Abyss totally did that. The uh watching the movie Leviathan.

It didn't show us anything completely new, per se. It was a Leviathan was a virus movie. That's that's what it was. This one showing us it's like I mean this one is basically An old age equivalent to like the Meg, where it's like we crack something open and we found something new. And I think as a as a society we do that. But I think at the same time we're getting to a place where our desire for forward progress has kind of quenched our ability to stop and listen and learn.

And uh for this one it's one of those things that teaches us that sometimes you should've just like You know, sometimes you gotta stop and you gotta put a thermometer in things and see what's what. And if you don't do that, you you you pay a pretty fucking steep price for it.

You can't see the moment when, you know, a colleague's fear crosses this threshold from, you know, understandable human response into just genuine danger to everyone around. And Snyder's Arcanist has like this. You know, explicit class observation too. This is not someone who's a commander. No, he's not a scientist.

He's a technician here. You know, he's this person who has this professional identity. And it he's, you know, most completely defined by that function within, you know, the institutional structure here. And he also has the least, you know, autonomous authority and diffuse resources for, you know, maintaining the necessary like psychological stability when that sort of structure fails. So the panic that he has is, you know, partly this.

personality failure, but it's partly a structural one. You know the institution that was you know supposed to provide that sort of framework for his confidence has completely collapsed. And without the framework, he doesn't really have anything to fall back on. You know, we have the people who had, you know, the greater authority and autonomy who've have these more internal resources drawn. You know, Snyder has the lease and the film you know watches the consequences of that disparity and

You know, out outside of that, you know, we have, you know, Tina Everly, you know, the crew member who You know, survival instincts and practical competence make her more than capable as a protagonist, and she occupies this position within that that same structure that's

I think it's worth examining, you know, carefully. You know, she's this professional in this, you know, military adjacent environment and she has this competence and it's evident and you know, whose authority is limited by her position within the hierarchy, but she has this practical knowledge of the facility. You know, she has this ability to maintain the functional decision maker decision decision making under pressure. And she has this willingness to act

on these, you know, accurate assessments of the situation rather than on, you know, institutional loyalty or professional difference. And it makes her the person who's most likely to survive. And also make her simultaneously the person whose judgment is most consistently either ignored or overridden by the people that have the greater authority.

But the reality of this whole thing is he only makes one decision that actually makes him a bad guy. And his his one decision where he kinda gives a middle finger to everybody else and is like, I'm outta here. That's the only thing in my in my book that makes him a bad guy. The rest of what he was doing, he was flipping through a book, he was making decisions.

The best part about it is that he was making decisions, but as he was making decisions, he was seeking out knowledge from other people to make the decisions. It wasn't just him making them. He wasn't just going, well, I fucking know better. He was asking other people. And then when he makes the decision everyone's like, What the fuck did you do? And he's like, I fucking asked you.

I follow the protocol every day and there's a lot of people where I work that are just like, Jesus Christ, what a dick and it's like, you know what? No, I'm not a dick. I was doing what this process said to do. I'm sorry that you don't like the outcome. But it is what it is. So I think for a lot of people it's really easy to relate to Snyder because it's like

That's what a lot of us do, right? A lot of us go to our job, we turn a crank, we read a we read a manual or a or a a a policy and we just do what it says. And then all too often if things don't go as planned it's like, Well how come you did that? And it's like, Well, I didn't actually do anything. I just checked off a list and then shit happened. You know, it wasn't like

I'm not the one who pissed in the Cheerios, okay? I I just it just so happened that the piss in the Cheerios got mixed together because of the process. As much as watching Snyder bleeds out bleed out in that capsule makes me happy, and it does every single time. Uh watching Miguel Fair with his head tipped back. And that beautiful blood flow out of his nose and then the blood flow out of his arms. There's something just ultra special about that.

At the same time, I'm I'm probably on the in the minority here, but I feel a little bad for him. I th I think in a lot of ways he got fucked over because he did his job. Once you understand in this whole in the context of this whole movie, it's like okay, they're the Navy, they're doing whatever else they're doing. Well, the Navy does a lot of shit, right? The Navy does you know, boat recovery and all like all kinds of stuff. And it's like, once you know that there's a missile platform involved.

And once you know that, you know, before they can leave it must be secured.'Cause like th when I think about securing something, I'm thinking about something in the back of a truck. I gotta have enough ratchet straps on it, right? No. That's not what we're talking about here.

But it again it all goes back to the data that he has and the input that he gets from other people and it's like Yes, this thing was aggressive, you know, it it did this thing and it's like Going back to all the things that we talk about in this modern age where we have so many computers that make so many decisions for us and so many algorithms that decide what you're gonna watch. I hate to break this deal, ladies and gentlemen. If you watch anything that has a reel on it

Like it was coming. Um The point being as we give away free thought and free decision making and especially the point to go I'm at a decision point and the data says to do this. But as a human and a and as a a free thinking moral person, I don't agree with that.

As we remove that from our decision making, this is when we get stories like this and we get outcomes like this. And I think there's so many people that are just like, Well, that's not what I would do. And it's like, well If you're like the rest of us and you have a job and you do whatever it is that you're doing

I think you're really overstating how much power you think you have because you just have to do what is the next step. And If you look at the rest of the characters in this movie, almost all of them, at one point or another, have to make a decision and almost all of it is based on like an emotional response, right? And Snyder's our only character who just does the protocol every single time up until he doesn't.

It feels like s like it feels like such a betrayal. Like, oh my god, how the fuck could you do that? But at the same time, he's just doing what everyone else has done the whole entire goddamn time. And then you're just like, oh you're so judgmental. So it's it's a really interesting kind of uh dissection of the like

The human psyche and how we do things as people and how when you're an outside viewer, you're like, Well this guy's just like stone cold, right? And it's like, No, he's not it's not stone cold. It's just like that was that was page four. So and and I don't think people really live in a page four world anymore. So it it it it's one of those things where it it's so weird to watch somebody who I honestly think is not a bad guy be portrayed as a bad guy.

Up until the point where he's actually a bad guy.

In several sequences to like register like the limitations rather than sustain in the productive, you know, ambiguity that the best monster films used to make the audience's imagination do, you know, the work that the effects couldn't at the time. But, you know, the the thematic function of the creature is more interesting than, you know, the physical realization of it. And

You know the creature here is ancient. You know, it has been in a cavern system long before this facility was built, you know, long before the ocean floor was understood as this, you know, potential site. From military and industrial activity, you know, long before human beings developed the technology to even reach it in the first place.

So its presence in the cavern system is not, you know, this invasion or an aggression. No, it's it's residence. It's law and predate in any human claim on that sort of space.

No, the facilities built in the territory and the crew in this case is the intruder. And in a lot of ways, it's this. inversion of the creature horror convention in which you know the monster is usually the one intruding on human space. You know, whether it's the shark in the swimming area, the alien in the spaceship. Or the creature in the basement.

Here, you know, Deep Star Six's creature is in its own space, disturbed by the human activity that encroached on it, and its attacks on the facility are defensive rather than, you know, predatory in any simple sense. you know, the crew survival situation is the consequence of their own intrusion. So of course we we do have this sort of like violence when it comes to the creature's violence rather than, you know, just straightforward monster who we're typically, you know, forecloses on.

At the same time, if you've if you've knocked open an undersea cave and you have no idea what's gonna come out It's one of those things where you can kind of forgive it because it's like People discover things in the ocean all the time that shouldn't exist but still do. And so it's not that far-fetched to go like, well, okay. It's it a a giant lobster that comes out is gonna go, feed me, Seabor. Like, okay, sure. Like I can that's okay. I can guess I can kind of see it.

In a lot of ways I think The creature almost takes a little bit of a backseat to our humans' desire to fight the creature. And the things that they come up with. They have these like these shark darts and these like all these other things where it's like we're gonna I I think it's honestly kind of one of the rare times where the the the human persona in the battle to fight this thing that we again still don't completely understand.

kind of uh overarches against what it what the creature actually is. And when we have the The scene from the poster where the suit gets bitten in half. That's kind of the moment in this whole thing where you're like Well shit. Okay. We um this is this is worse than we thought. And On the bright side, uh, we still have some weapons, we still got some things to do, and all the women are soaking wet. So, you know, everything's not gonna be that bad. But I think with that.

There's something about that crunch where we have this we have this piece of technology that can go to the depths of the ocean and can withstand all this pressure and can do all these things and it's like this thing can just go just just bite it in half like it's a fucking beer can. I it it it it it sorta knocks you down a notch as the you know, the technically superior species where you're like

Well we have all this, but apparently you can just bite it in half, so it it doesn't really matter anyway. And it's in a lot of ways it's really humbling as a viewer, where you're just like It's like, yeah, I thought we were winning.

But from there I think it's when we start really getting into the We'll call it the human horror of the whole thing and how we start to watch our our human characters in a lot of ways start to unravel because especially with Snyder and then Van Gelder and that Shark Dart. That is one of those things that I honestly think it'll in for Ten thousand horror movies I've watched in my life.

It is probably one of the most horrifying sequences was when a guy gets hit with that and it's just just chest explodes. And it it wasn't because of a creature, it wasn't because of a slasher, it wasn't because of a demon or a poltergeist or whatever else. It was because one guy wasn't paying attention and he fucked up and another guy backed into a thing.

And that feels very real and very personal as a person. B I w w that kind of shit happens. It it's why people on construction sites die. And it's why people in mechanic shops die. And why people driving on the highway die. Because one person wasn't fucking paying attention. A and to take this whole horrific situation that we have and and take one guy who I mean, Van Gelder's he he's he's a he's a pretty important character, right? I mean he's he's kinda like the knowledge guy. He's that

He's that old guy airwork that fucking knows everything and you don't want well, I mean, maybe that's me I get to this point. But he's that guy that just knows everything and you if you didn't have him, you'd be fucked. And to see him killed by such a stupid thing? But at the same thing, a visually profound thing like that, uh it's It's another thing in this movie that just it keeps you like

It keeps you sort of scared and sort of tense the whole time. And it's like, oh Jesus Christ, like what the fuck is next? Like what could possibly be worse than that? And well it turns out there's a few things. But as a build up, it's a great way to go like What we thought was going to be a weapon in our defence turned out to be a a small fraction of our downfall.

So we have the creature uh you know being what was in the cavern that you know nobody investigated before blowing it up. You know, it's this cost of the decision that the deadline had produced. No, it's given this physical form and it's driven by, you know, this reasonable grievance of something that was living somewhere until, you know, human activity destroyed its home.

And we have this, you know, facility at the center of Deep Star Six, you know, this, you know, missile deployment installation, you know, basically a a a naval military project whose purpose is the deployment of nuclear weapons from the ocean floor.

And you know, that's a detail that the film was savages pretty early on, and it doesn't like I say like develops it in extensively throughout this, but you know, it it's worth sitting with because of the specific historical moment that this film occupies.

You know, nineteen eighty nine was the year that the Berlin Wall fell. You know, it's the final year of the Cold War. It's this, you know, stable geopolitical condition, you know, the year in which These institutional structures that had, you know, organized global military competition for four decades began their terminal collapse.

No, a film about a military installation on the ocean floor, you know, built to deploy nuclear weapons that is destroyed by the consequences of its own institutional decision making. You know, being released in the year that the Cold War had ended is not an accidental configuration. You know, the facility exists to project.

military power into this space that was previously beyond human reach, you know, to extend the logic of nuclear deterrence into the deep ocean in the same way that, you know, the space race extended it into orbit. You know, this project was this expression of you know the Cold War's fundamental logic, you know, that every available space must be militarized.

know that the extension of weapons capability into new domains is always strategically necessary, that, you know, these unknown regions of the planet are just assets to be claimed rather than these territories to be respected.

And at the same time to your point about, you know, the Berlin Wall is falling. We're we're still a couple of years short of, you know, the beginning of the Iraq war, so we there was a little bit of For lack of a better term, things are getting better, right? The the global stage is looking a little calmer and and people are a little less trigger happy.

Now, you know, from what I know for what I do for a living, if those people had any idea that, you know, putting missiles under the water is about the least fucking efficient way that you can do that, it

Maybe they would have done something a little better or a little different, maybe, I guess. Um But still the the way that the movie it tries to support The military infrastructure and the sort of the the the military like just hyper kind of this borderline configuration between hyper capitalist and uh hyper oh what's a good word for it? It almost became like hyper anecdotal. Like it's like it's like they're doing it, so we have to do it. So it's it's this like tit for tat thing.

While all at the same time.

If you look at this movie. There's nobody saluting anybody. You know, there's no there's no uniforms. There's no like y you look at the Abyss for example. The Abyss, that was on its sleeve all day long to be read. Um, in a lot of ways You know, Leviathan. did it a little bit. They did a little bit of, you know, there's a there there's a pecking order and you're gonna salute me and follow my orders and do whatever else.

And w with this one, it's not about following a military hierarchy. It's just it's still goes back to following the process. Like I flip I flip open a book. Here's what's happening and here's the steps I need to take. So it was not so much about the the the superior military complex as it was just about Going step by step until things were done. And it was definitely in a time where we were, we were certainly getting there, where it was like.

People didn't want to guess or think anymore. They just wanted to know what was the next thing to do.

And and having lived through a lot of this and especially like, you know, going to school and now, you know, the Cold War is effectively over and it's like When you walked into your homeroom in school and everyone sat down and was like

So how are you? You know, w w like there was a long period of time where we didn't know what to do because we had lived under this umbrella for so long. And then once the umbrella was gone, it was like What feels like freedom is actually the opposite because you you've lived under one thing for so long, then it when it goes away, it's like

Trying to express any level of freedom or any level of free thinking just feels dangerous. So you don't know what to do. So when you don't know what to do, what do you do? You y you do nothing. And eventually you do nothing long enough and it's like someone comes up and shoves a book in your face and says, Okay, here's the new way to do it. And then you just do it that way.

And I mean with this movie, that's a lot of what they're talking about. It's like There's the obvious human reaction, which a lot of our characters have. And then there's the obvious process reaction, which a lot of our characters have. And it's only when things get super, super, super bad do the process people abandon the process and go the go the human route. And with our humans, it's only when things get really, really, really bad do the humans go

A route that nobody can fucking understand at all. Because it's like, why the hell did you do that? Like, you know, let's pour all the gas in the water, light everything on fucking fire. That sounds like a good idea. We're we're just in the middle of the ocean. This is the only thing that floats. Fuck it, let's burn it. That'll be great. So there are a couple of what you might call logic flaws in the whole thing.

But I think in terms of like following the human condition, most of it actually makes pretty good sense.

You know, the characters who survive the longest and most functionally uh are those whose professional identities are most closely connected to the more like practical, physical knowledge of this facility. And the systems here. No, the people who know how things work rather than the people who know how to manage the people who know how things work.

You know, the characters whose authority is, you know, most institutional, like whose position in the hierarchy is most dependent on rank rather than, you know, specific technical competence. are usually the ones whose decision making is most compromised under, you know, the pressures here and whose survival is, you know, most precarious.

So we do have this, you know, class observation and it's it's a very consistent one and it you know i it gives this movie this structural argument that operates independently of the quality of any individual sequel. You know, it's really interesting in this gap between you know authority and actual confidence, and it really explores that gap by you know subjecting you know this crew to conditions that make the gap impossible to maintain.

So when this facility is f you know failing and the creatures in the water and all the systems are going down one by one, you know the question of who actually knows what to do becomes the only question that really matters in that moment. And the answer that, you know, it gives you is not the one that you know the high hierarchy would have predicted. And it's it it it's so interesting because like you know, this is Sean Cunningham, you know, his

Primary claim to horror history is obviously the creation of Friday the thirteenth. No any brains to Deep Star Six, this, you know, specific skills that, you know, his background when it comes to like low budget horror had developed. You know, this ability to generate tension from limited resource.

You know, this understanding of how to use confined spaces to curate that sort of dread. You know, the practical filmmaking intelligence that produces this functional genre cinema under conditions of significant constraint.

The set design here. is by far like the film's primary visual achievement. You know, it's this convincing construction of, you know, the aesthetic of institutional deep sea infrastructure. You know, and it has this combination of high technology. And it also has this honestly functional ugliness to it that these such environments actually possess.

I think honestly to your point is it's Almost a magical accomplishment. where they are able to portray this underwater setting and all these vessels and all these other things like that. Maybe with the exception of the underwater bulldozer. The underwater bulldozer look like somebody put a bulldozer in a in a pool and drove it around. That's maybe the one point. But the rest of it is I it's honestly nothing short of a marvel, the way that they were able to pull off this setting.

And so much of it looks So real from from from being so deep and the water being so dark and having to have all these lights to be able to see anything. to eventually when everyone's kind of escaping and they're they're heading up and up and up and and how the water is is It does the subtle change from really dark to sorta it's like it's a black to a dark blue to a blue to a light blue to a boom to a white and we're we're at the surface. It's

It's honestly quite an accomplishment for the time. I I I I honestly believe that it is. Now w with our friend Sean Cunningham and yes, his his claim to fame being the fighter of the thirteenth movies. To be honest, I think that's probably where a lot of the money came from for this. Was probably that. For anybody to know that it was actually gonna make a good movie, I don't think anybody probably ever thought that.

So there was somebody in in production, somebody in costuming, somebody in everything. Well, I mean, eight d to whoever decided that there was absolutely no budget for bras in this movie, good job. That was that was fantastic. But then to to know that you can build these backgrounds, but in a lot of ways.

When you look at some of the backgrounds, a lot of them were not very technically oriented, right? You didn't have a lot of walls with flashing lights and buttons and shit like that. It was just kind of a a cold steel and pipes thing. Which is I mean, again, not a new thing if you go a if you go Leviathan, if you go Aliens, if you go a lot of loops like that.

But it was it was done to a point where you didn't even focus on it. You just kinda went, Well well yes, they're clearly in something that's under fucking water and It's odd that they did such a good job, but at the same time made it like not a relevant or a salient point. Like you didn't even care. It's like they're just there and it's it's and they always made you feel like that, that you're always just there. You you don't even if you were a fly on the wall, you were on the fly on the wall at

ten thousand feet deep. And it's like, you know, going outside for a stroll or to the walk the dog was just was not an option. It just wasn't gonna happen. So that was it was just just very well done, but at the same time almost the background and that's I think that's probably the coolest part about it. But it's like you just you just knew you were there and it but it wasn't all that important.

Monster design I think we've kinda covered at nauseum why somebody made it a like a pine cone with a fish head is okay, sure.

I think in the end with Between our characters and then but with some of the some of the things that they did that made so much sense and some of the things that they did that made absolutely no fucking sense. It's one of those rare things where we had we had this creature that was primordial and like literally out of the ooze and whatever else.

And in the end, the biggest problem was the fucking people and some of the stupid shit that they did. You know, the like the creature was almost an afterthought.

I still will. I will go to my grave loving Snyder's death. I would just The one guy who I felt the worst for because he was just doing his job, when he decided to panic and say screw it and pull the fucking pull the fucking uh cord on the parachute, it was like God I hope you die hard and Jesus Christ did he it's it's so fun to watch get into the end of this and get into the you know there's a lot of technical shit that happens in this as this little mini sub thing is coming up and

It's like well hey it's not gonna float and it's like well it doesn't matter if it floats if we don't get there and it While technically there's a lot of problems with with what they say, as your average person, it all makes complete fucking sense. It's like, yes, let's get to where it's daylight and it's dry and and things will be okay.

At the same time they do focus on some of the things that I think the average person knows like decompression and things like that. So they tackle all of the technical aspects in a really workable, a really believable manner. So you're not left you know, uh again, unless you're an engineer, you're not left going, wait a minute, you know,'cause there's so many movies where it's like

Well you said you had to decompress for three and a half hours and it's been f four minutes. Like what the f like how are you doing that? You know, so it's all really believable. And you and you can kind of get there and you can follow along with the characters and And root for them because I mean th this is one of those ones where it's like, okay, with Joyce and McBride, it's like you want them to survive, right? I mean you really, really do. And The story being tailored the way it is where

Every other character who's left kinda gives a little bit to their survival. I mean From the human perspective, like yeah, it it's totally cool. W we'll sacrifice this person and this person so, you know, the cute lady and her handsome man can survive and they can have their love child and things will be great. I mean th I mean I I'm not sure how much more human you get than that.

You know, this was a period of you know significant transition in the 1980s in how human beings had understood their relationship to the natural world. We had this environmental movement that had moved from fringe to the mainstream. You know, the consequences of industrial activity and natural systems were, you know, becoming impossible to ignore.

You know, the specific question of deep sea exploitation, whether it's you know oil drigging, mineral extraction, military insulation, that was all becoming increasingly relevant as the technology made previously unreachable ocean floor accessible to human activity. So it the deep ocean really was like the last generally unknown territory like on the planet.

you know, the space that human industrial and military ambition had not yet fully reached but was actively extended toward. And all of those movies, you know, place that same human activity in that space, examining it with, you know, what happens when that activity encounters, you know What the space actually contains. And I will say out of the three, I think Deep Star Six's answer is probably the most.

pessimistic out of them. You know, what the space contains is older, larger, and more indifferent to human purposes than, you know, these institutions that set people down there. And the collision between those two produces this disaster.

That uh, you know, the institution is constitutively, you know, unable to prevent because prevention would have required them to uh to treat the unknown with respect for which its operational logic had no category. But I do think You know, this is one of those movies that

It's more it it's a more interesting film than you know the reputation that it gets. You know, despite you know being slightly less accomplished than you know some of the others. Um and maybe like the ambitions weren't fully you know scoped out, but At the end of the day, it's such a damn entertaining movie. You know, regardless of the final creature result, you know, we can forgive that.

But you know, it it's still made for an Dribble movie and I I always appreciate the fact. Doesn't matter if it's a slasher, if it's a creature feature, whatever we get, like that final, oh but wait, it comes back moment. I'm always gonna cheer for those moments in any movie. Doesn't matter how many times I see it.

Leviathan is probably the one that took the cheapest way out. They just made it a virus, and it was the Russians and they put it in the vodka. I mean uh it's a story as old as time. That's that that's uh smallpox blankets given to Native Americans. It's it's just it's cheap in a lot of ways. I think with the abyss.

The Abyss had five to six times the budget of this movie. And it fucking showed, right? And it had uh James C I I okay. So With the movie that we're talking about, with the story that it told, with what it was able to do with the money that it had, the environment that it was able to show, the characters it was able to give us that and it was Probably the one that that best put us in a place where

I get up at 5 30, I brush my teeth, I put on my deodorant, I put on fresh underwear, I go to work. I'm doing what I'm doing and I can see all these people that are all there. It I I think it is honestly the closest to The human experience that you can have all while still trying to push the boundaries a little bit, because I think that's also part of the human experience is that even if you're just going to work, you wanna push it a little bit. You want to see

What better thing you can do? What greater thing you can do today. And while the abyss I mean If you had to put'em on a scale, th th The Abyss is this is the the superior movie. It just is in a lot of ways. At the same time, I still love the fact that with Deep Star Six we have a guy that we turn into a villain only because he was reading the fucking manual.

He's the bad guy because he was reading the fucking manual. I love that about this movie. I'm always gonna love that. It's also the same reason that ev every time I buy something, the first thing I do is throw the fucking instructions away. It's the same reason. So it's so human and it's so good and it it makes you feel so many different ways that Yeah. Depending on whether it's Tuesday or Saturday, you might feel differently, and that's perfectly okay.

You know, that comparison is just always gonna be a theme because of when they both came out. And you know, it is what it is, but you know, this movie is far better than a lot of people want to give it credit for. And it's a it's a damn shame that it doesn't get you know, its proper news at this point.

So it has so many things to it that They feel like just they feel like taking your garbage out. Or they they feel like I I I have to change the the filter in my furnace. It's just things that you do as a matter of course. And some days you never know how it's gonna go. Some days it's gonna go great and you just throw the old filter away and some days your fucking furnace explodes.

And it's like you don't know what's gonna happen. And it it just it feels like that and I think because it feels like that it makes it feel very real. And when it feels very real Having a movie that feels real and feels that feels like you could be there, especially when you're an underwater alien movie. So perspective there. Check right there. That's an accomplishment. When you do that.

You're making something that I'm gonna come back to time and time and time again. And like I said, my buddy and I, Trevor, were talking today. And I f I he I flat out he he asked me, he's like, What are you what are you talking about? I'm like, Deep Star Six he's like, That's a fucking great movie.

That was his quote. It's a fucking great movie. And I'm like, It is, but I don't think the rest of the world agrees with us. And he's like, Well, yeah, you know what? And it his one of his best quotes, he's like, Well, fuck the rest of the world. Who cares? And I'm like, There you go. That's all that matters. Uh y you either enjoyed it or you didn't. And that's that's every movie. This is one that when I watch it. I still get so many vibes. Everything from Snyder and his just buy the book.

i bullshit if you call it what it is. You know, we have a doctor who, if you could break it right down to it, the doctor's also very by the book. She's like, well we can do this, but we're not doing this until this is done. And then you just have these like this series of things that happens and it's like at the end of the day, Deep Star Six is the best moral equivalent to standing in line into D M V that we could ever possibly have. It just really is. And

We all have to do it. None of us like it. But if you're following the rules, you gotta be there. Just enjoy the movie, enjoy the characters, enjoy the ambiance of the whole thing, enjoy the setting, enjoy the one-liners.

In enjoy the quips between characters, enjoy that there's a there's a love story in here, that there's something for everybody. There just literally is something for everybody. And if you can pretend that the Abyss never existed, it's probably one of the better underwater movies from nineteen eighty-nine.

You know, he also directed the piranha remake, which is fucking fantastic. So that's I'm sure at some point before Crawl I'm gonna end up rewatching that and probably three double D for also very obvious reasons, uh, i in this case. But Left Evan gueston on that one from the kilt and a redneck. So I'm looking forward to that. Um part of me was like, maybe I should invite

Ian on first because you know do the same thing that they did since you'd guessed it before me, but I'm like, Yeah, fuck it. You know. I'm sure I'm I'm we'll we'll find a a time that works for for for Ian at at some point, I'm sure.

So I'm I'm gonna be really interested to see uh what Evan thinks. And then uh you know, at some point if we if we get Ian on for meth lobsters or whatever movie that we get on, um No, it'll it'll be fun. Those guys are you know what the the Scott and the Twat or as are actually known, the kilt and the redneck. Uh

As I said earlier, th uh they're really just th they're two horror loving nerds like we are. They really are. And they're There's they're still very interested in, you know, building the network and talking to people and just You know, as as we go on in society and we get ever more connected, but at the same time ever more separated by

Bullshit that doesn't even really matter. I think I think these two Yahoos have definitely gotten to a cool place where they focus on: hey, somebody bought Somebody bought a new t shirt or somebody bought a new record or somebody bought a new D V D or

But I also understand that at the same time there's a piece of it that does feel good and it's a little bit fulfilling. They've they've built an environment where it's like everyone's like everyone is literally like smiling and two thumbs up in your face like this is awesome, go do it, be you.

And uh that's kind of a rare thing. And so I I like I said before, I I applaud them for doing that because they've got a nice little a nice little community going. And you know, for as much as you and I are like the horrorist of horror nerds, we're also We can be a little antisocial. I'm not sure if you knew that about us. Um Uh no. Yeah, exactly.

So kudos to them for doing it. And uh yeah, uh like everybody else there, we we appreciate all the support, everyone. It you know, keep listening and if you if you don't want to, that that's okay too. You know, spend your time how you want to spend it. Um We don't do this for money.

We do this because we're fucking horror dorks and we just like talking about this shit. That's literally it. You know, I'm I'm not being paid, you're not being paid. And and and if you're being paid, you're not sharing it with me, so fuck you. Um uh But it's just it's a thing we do because we like it. And it's nice that we have in this environment where people are just kind of all doing the same thing. It's it it's really cool. It's really fun.

At the same time it's also i there's people get to people get to see what you did and then'cause I've just started using letterboxed. I think I probably maybe only got maybe a hundred or so movies on there, which probably to some people seems like a lot, to some people seems like a little. Um but the feedback is interesting, you know, and because it seems like the environment that we're in now, the feedback is not

It's not angry people wanting to just shout you down. It's like it's more people that are like, Well, why'd you think that? And it's like, Well, here's why I thought that. They're like, Well, interesting. I didn't think about that. So it's not it's not confrontational and it's not angry. It's just a lot a lot of people that like a lot of the same shit that we do, the horror stuff that we do, you know? And

You know, in the end, if if we can get through this next coming up weekend, and I'm not shipping you a brick to Tennessee, which I hope you will proudly display. Um You know what? As people, horror does something for us. I I don't expect everybody to understand it. Uh, what I do expect is everybody to just smile and condone it. Because we're just people.

Some people like skateboards and some people like uh uh I I don't know. It Italian food. And some people like whatever it is that fuck this is just the thing that we like. Getting through life is actually way simpler than people think it is these days. And I'm gonna um again rant, fuck social media. It's not good for you. Stop doing it. At the same time I understand it. We we all want validation, right? Um

Just if if if you don't get it from social media, do me a favor, don't kill yourself,'cause that's just stupid. Okay? I've said it before. Come on our Discord. Talk to us. I'll talk to you. I'll I'll I I I actually will. I'll I'll I'll say hello to you and talk to you about whatever. We gotta find a way to get back to a place as people where we get satisfaction out of different things. And Here's an example.

When I bought my house, I have all this furniture around my fire pit. And I'm like, you know what? I could refurbish that. I could I could do it. So I took the smallest piece, I took it into my shop, I started working on it, I bought some stain that's supposed to be really good. It was redwood stain. That sounds awesome, right? Redwood. Like redwood.

So I took the whole thing apart, I I refinished all the metal, painted it black, made some new wood, used my redwood stain, got it all done, and the wood was fucking bright orange when I was done. And I'm like

Don't let the world judge you. Let you judge you. And Orange wood notwithstanding, I Things just kind of are what they are. And you know, I for for for T and I here and the thing that we do. You know? I always wonder if this makes any kind of a difference. Like if it makes any kind of a difference at all. But then I've kind of come to the conclusion that the goal here is not to make a difference. The goal here is to Have a thing as a person.

Well like uh like I'm not terribly creative. I mean you and I have talked about this before. Like I I have all these great ideas for a creativity and so many of them just fall flat. Uh one out of ten for me comes to fruition. It works out great. At the same time I I'm also a person that wants to be heard, right? And so Being invisible is not necessarily a destiny. Th there's things you can do to not be invisible. But it's not being a whiny little bitch and it's not being an asshole either.

Just because you go out in the world and you go to the gas station or wherever else and you don't find your friends, i there's friends everywhere. Just Just make sure that they're like kind of in the same vein as you. And and like once you do and once you're there, Jesus Christ, just enjoy it. And you know and that's with with me and you, that's what I'm doing. I'm just I'm just enjoying this. It's it's just it's so much fun. So

Episode number two hundred and fifty. Yep. I would have to I would have to go back was it episode A hundred and thirteen or a hundred and fourteen?

On the bright side, we got to be creative, we got to have some fun, we definitely got to have some laughs, I that is for sure. And w and we most definitely got to have some cocktails in the middle of all that. And w but we also got to meet some new friends, you know? We got to and just have some fun in the things that we're doing and It's amazing to me that we live in a world where you and I talking about horror movies is a thing where other people will go, I wonder what they said.

That just blows my fucking mind. And not in the sense of I wanna make a gazillion dollars or I wanna be the most popular because I don't care about any of that shit. I think you know me. I don't I don't give a rat's ass about being number one or being numbered, but I don't care. Um It's just fun to bullshit. You know? And it's f it's fun to assess things with a critical eye.

And it's fun to take that assessment and go, how does it apply to the current world? Because I think there's so many people that don't do that. They just They just go, Well I know what's best and you're wrong. And it's like I will fully admit I have no idea what's best. Like don't follow me as an example at all'cause I don't know what the fuck is going on. But it's fun to talk about. And I'm I'm happy that we're here doing it. I'm happy that we've hit two fifty.

I mean and j Jesus Christ, that's a lot.

Why did they even do this? Uh th well I think there was one we called the bastards. Like w why? Like and good movies, but in terms of the uh the the series are in they're bastards. So there's so we're I mean We're constantly thinking of things and I and and to be perfectly honest, I think we're at a place where it's like we kinda make a really good team where one of us is like, Hey, let's do this, the other one's like, um

And then but it's not no, I don't want to, you're bad. It's like this is why I think it might not work. The other one's like, Oh Yeah, you're probably right. Okay. But we talk about that kind of stuff. So I mean Again, the metaphor for life. You gotta compromise. You gotta think. You gotta talk. Right? And that's what we do at the end of the day. We just we think, we talk and we compromise. And that's how we That's how we do it. It's how we get to two fifty, maybe. That's how we get there.

But we do also have a life size Chucky doll. It's right there. Yeah. I dumped it by camera so you can see it.

We already have it picked out, right? We're doing uh that one vampire mobile, yeah?

A prior week with uh with Sick Puppy. Minor very m you know, small scenes of side that were probably shouldn't have been in the movie in the first place. Not to say that really impacted The scoring.