Too much horror business, driving late at night Psycho 78 12 o'clock Don't be late I said all this horror business Greetings and salutations My is Justin Lohr. And my name is Liam O'Donnell. And you are listening to episode 156 of Harvest. Harvest! Not the 200th that Cinepunks recently celebrated. They guys put the new episode out today. Yeah, we just got it out. Here's the deal. I had to post the episode from my phone.
just takes i don't know i guess you you i feel like you edit things on your phone a good deal is that true that you use your phone for documents and such uh yes you could yes i I'm not going to say I manipulate documents on my phone. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. But yes, I do a good bit of document related activity on my phone. I never write anything on my phone if I can help it. But my laptop is.
being strange in fact right now i am recording using uh suz's uh laptop thank you to my wife susan uh but yeah for some strange reason my laptop just started going making all these weird noises which I had that I had the equivalent with my laptop of like the car meme where you take the car because it's making noise and then the
mechanics like i don't hear any noise it was the same thing this dude's like yeah i did all this stuff i can't make it the noise happen and i'm like god damn it i know he's gonna put it back together and i'm gonna get it back and then it's gonna make the noise again and i'm gonna lose my mind Yeah. Yeah, probably. You should blame Chris Reject for that. No, I don't have any problems with Chris Reject.
right now at this at this moment none at all he's great actually love you chris so on this episode we're going to be talking about two we originally set out to do two body horror films Sure. But I think only one of these movies. Right. Body horror. I'm going to go ahead and say whoever made the body horror list I grabbed from. Here's the issue, too, is like, I don't know if other people feel this.
I feel like people needed to stop fucking up their letterbox list because the whole point here is I'm looking for movies I haven't seen. Now, I guess we could have covered some classics that... we both know are pretty familiar with. But I said to myself, I want to pick two movies that we probably, you know, I mean, I've seen one of these movies before, but it was a long time ago and I didn't really remember it. The other one I had never seen. So I just grabbed two movies off this list.
that I found. And one of these movies is definitely not a body horror film, in my opinion, in my opinion. And maybe it's too slight of a category to be orthodox about, but it just felt like one of these movies didn't fit. What movies are we talking about? We're talking about The Incredible Melting Man. What year is that from? I don't know the year. 77. 77? And The Vineyard from, is that 87?
89. 89. Which was directed by... I want to remember his name, because if I used his character name from Big Trouble in Little China, that feels racist somehow. It doesn't feel racist. It is racist. Yeah, there you go. So what is the, what is the actor's name? It was in my brain and I lost it. Uh, Lil Pan. No, that's, I hate you so much. Uh, it's James Hong. Not only was it direct, here's the best part. Not only was it.
Directed by James Hong. He's in it and he wrote it. And it's like literally everything directed by James Hong. Scream people, the James Hong story by James Hong. I mean, it wasn't produced by him, but.
I mean, if he was the heroic main character, this would be the very essence of a vanity project. And technically, it still is a vanity project because you could argue... he's the only actor in it who knows how to act so therefore yeah he's the only one doing any acting but uh but in every other way you could think of it really is he just was like i'm gonna make this movie
It's going to be about these things, and that's how it's going to be. And it's not really a body horror movie, though there is body grossness in it. It's not a body horror movie, in my opinion. No, I would agree with you on that. Oh, well. Oh, well. But before we discuss these amazing, incredible. Oh, no. James Hong filled films. He's only he's only he's only in one.
It's only in one. We have a few people to thank. And first and foremost, we want to thank you, our patrons over on Patreon dot com. That's right. There are people who shell out their hard earned money. so we can say the things we say out into the internet ether. And if being a member of that click appeals to you, you can head to www.patreon.com backslash
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Yeah, exactly. Anywho, patreon.com backslash centipunks. We'd also like to thank. The LVAC, Lehigh Valley Parallel Creations. I'm especially salty at Chris right now because he can, he used his strange, like, Kwisak Haderach magic on me to get me out of the house Sunday, not just to a wrestling match.
But then he had me over his house for dinner. So you're mad at him for being nice to you? Yes, because I'm not comfortable with it. I feel that. I understand. I understand. I got to say, as your friend. Thanks, Chris, for getting Justin to be slightly less of a hermit. So if you want some quality goods printed by a man who despises hermits. You can head to www.xlvacx.com for all your niche apparel needs. Hey, check out EssexCoffeeRoasters.com.
Enter the code CINEPUNKS for 10% off. Here's the deal. Our buddy Aaron Dahlbeck, he roasts the beans to order, so you know you're getting the freshest possible. Bag of beans. And it's high quality coffee from all over the place. He also has tea and merch. Cinepunks, C-A-N-E, P-U-N-X on your way out for 10% off.
This episode, of course, sounds any good. Also, real quick, I just want to say, Aaron, that guy that posted in your Facebook wall defending any number of the horrifying things that has been happening in this country as of recently, fuck that guy. Yeah, straight up. This episode sounds good because of our buddy Sharky over at Mechanical Shark Media. And I think by the time this comes out, we should have our martial arts double feature up at Rough Cut. Rough Cut Fan Club. Check it out. Okay. Bye.
Now comes the time in the podcast when me and Liam travel to Saturn. But we don't really investigate, you know, what happens when people go to Saturn. And I'm hit with a blast of toxic radiation. And as I'm melting incredibly, I turn to Liam and I say, Hey, this is him. This is something she's doing, evolving hard. And then my jaw falls off.
Meanwhile, I'm waiting to turn into the thing. Isn't this what happens? Turn into the thing? Well, Justine, I just yesterday went and saw a little movie that you may have heard of called the monkey how was it i liked it actually uh i would say i would say that it achieves the levels of silliness right
that I think some people accused long legs. You know, like there were those of us who actually enjoyed long legs. There are those people who hated it because they just didn't find it scary. And then there were those people who hated it because they thought it was silly, right? The monkey is actually as silly as people thought long legs was. It is, I would argue, more silly even than people thought long legs was. It is, in fact, almost as much of a comedy.
as it is a horror movie, though there aren't a ton of obvious jokes, the pitch at which it is played suggests to me that you are meant to laugh through large, large portions of it. That's what I've heard. That's what I've been hearing. Yeah. But I kind of went into it not knowing it would be like that exactly, but knowing that it wasn't going to be a very dark movie. I think the trailers make it pretty obvious it's not a very dark movie.
My worry about the trailers just in was that they gave away everything. There was nothing for the movie to reveal to me. That's not actually true. There's actually some twists and turns I was not expecting. So I thought that was interesting. And there's a moment I don't want to spoil, but there's one particular kill that happens after a very important plot point. that I thought was very wittily done, the timing of it all. So I thought that was really great.
uh was it like the best horror movie of 2025 i fucking hope not because it's yeah i'm hoping a lot of things coming out are going to be really great but it's a it was a fun matinee you know it's seven bucks i got to see this movie i thought it was pretty cool Definitely not. I don't know why at my local theater they were showing it in the D box, you know, which is not a box they shove a dick into. It's actually.
Some sort of theater where you move around and there's sounds and everything's crazy. And don't know why that's a thing. It doesn't need that. It just needs to be seen in a normal movie theater. What was moving around? I think, I could be wrong, but I thought the D-Box was where your seat moves. I've never heard of it. The D-Box, I thought it was like one of those theaters that's like five seats wide.
Oh, maybe. I don't know. All I know is it costs more money, so I just did the normal one, and I was happy with the normal one, so whatever. Anyway, yeah, The Monkey. Other horror things, so... I don't know. I've told you about this before, but I've gone from watching the first season to now finishing all 186 chapters of Dan to Dan. And it's the thing about Dan to Daniel.
Don't laugh at me. Don't laugh at me. Here's the thing. Let me just say this. This is why this is all embarrassing, y'all. So today is Wednesday, March, what is it, 5th? Is that right? Yeah, March 5th. A week ago, right? February, whatever that date was. I'm so bad at fucking shit. 26th, February 26th. I was in the comic shop talking to my man, the comic shop guy. Very nice gentleman.
And I was mentioning something about looking for copies of Chainsaw Man. And then he goes, oh man, do you know about the Shonen Jump app? And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, yeah, you can get an app. And for $2.99 a month, you can just read all the manga on your phone. Just read them all on your phone. And he said, so that's a help. Or maybe it's bad. Maybe I just ruined your life. And Justin, it's closer to the life-ruining one because I got the app.
And I didn't even get it on Wednesday. No, I did get it on Wednesday. Like Wednesday night, I downloaded it. So that was Wednesday night. So here we are. And I finished all of Dan to Dan. two days ago so that means I did 186 chapters in like four days and uh five days but fuck man it was I don't it kind of took over my brain for a while and the thing about Dan to Dan is that It doesn't, to me, feel like horror necessarily, but it has some very scary moments, and it is partially about yokai.
so to me that's horror but also it has sci-fi elements you know i mean literally it's you know i think you'll understand this the x files manages to do both science fiction cryptid stuff and spooky monster ghost stuff right like those two things so that's the vibe of this uh, you know, anime or manga, I guess is what I, cause I already watched the first season is one character is connected to spiritual stuff. One character is obsessive with cryptid stuff.
And then slowly they learn that both of these realities exist. Anyways, the point is, it's very much two friends. One is a not a popular girl, but like a cool girl. One is a nerdy guy and they slowly get to know each other while they're investigating ghosts and aliens and monsters and all this stuff. And they also are on the search for something because the first ghost that the dude encounters.
is a ghost called Turbo Granny, which by the way, I thought they made up for the manga. No, that's a real urban legend in Japan, Turbo Granny. In the context of Dandodan, it's not really... The urban legend doesn't go this way, but in the context of Dandenan, she takes men's genitals. She takes them. She takes them. And so she steals his junk, and then he gets his...
He gets his shaft back, but not his balls. And then they have to search for the balls, not just because he needs his balls, but apparently because they've become these focuses of spiritual energy, and they'll attract... dangerous yokai and so they got to get him before anybody gets hurt but meanwhile he has absorbed this curse he got from turbo granny so now he can use her powers so basically he can deploy
her powers to like fight people and shit okay yeah and then it goes on from there and i gotta say when you're reading the manga it goes on so they're they do a real thing of like there's a lot of like uh Everything is funny and stupid. And then somebody's backstory is actually mildly heartbreaking, you know, like just like. and then they reveal another yokai and you're like well that's fucked up and disturbing like the the and the art is just so anyway
So this feels like it's taking forever just because we keep cutting out. But those are basically the two things. I saw the monkey and I finished Dan to Dan. And that's about it as far as horror. I'm listening to. the vegetarian which is kind of a horror novel at least it's it's built as a horror novel and it's upsetting but i don't know it it feels i'm not there yet with it to understand if it's
you know, how it fits into horror per se. But that's about all I got at the moment. What about you, Justin? What have you done related to horror? Absolutely nothing. Oh, buddy. Well, actually, no, I didn't talk about it on here, but I brought it up on CinePunks. I took my 15-year-old niece to a showing of Mulholland Drive, and I'm pretty sure that I, you know, I held her head underwater in the font, the baptismal font of David Lynch.
And I think it took. I'm into that. I'm into that. Yeah. It's had to be done at some point. Yeah. She also understood. She found it very scary. And not just like, I didn't know what was going on. Like she picked up on how, you know, just gut emptying, frightening that movie is. So that's kind of horror, Jason. But other than that, I haven't. Now I haven't done anything. Well, I'm sure you'll get back on that horror horse, Justin. Yeah, we'll see. Hopefully. So.
I guess we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about 1977's The Quote Unquote Incredible Melting Man. We'll be right back. Rick Baker's creatures for The Exorcist, King Kong, and Star Wars are the height of motion picture magic and mystery. Now Baker has created the first new horror creature, the Incredible Melting Man. Hero astronaut Stephen West returns from outer space. His body is melting at an increasing rate. To survive, he must get human cells. He is.
The Incredible Melting Man. Come prepared. astronaut Stephen West was returning from outer space but something terrible had happened Even West had turned into the Incredible Melting Man. And the more he kills. And we are back to talk about 1977's The Incredible Melting Man! Um... Written and directed by William Billy Sachs, William Sachs. Now, what's funny about this movie, this this is the first time I saw this. But I've seen this poster.
Everywhere. It's in video stores. I've seen it in art books. I had no idea that this movie was this. this bad. Okay, let's talk about what it is first. And then I have a little story about it real quick. But what happens? Who's the incredible melting man, Justin? What's going on in this thing? This guy, he fucking goes to Saturn. He comes back. He's melting.
And he has to eat people. Unfortunately, that's a pretty solid description of the movie, right? It technically has more things going on in a way. But really, that's all it is. And, you know, this is I got to say, this is one of the first movies where I made people on social media mad at me. Why is that? Because this played at a horror-a-thon, and I expressed that I didn't love the movie. Now, I will say I was kind of setting myself up for a problem here because...
It's possible that part of the reason I didn't love the movie is that at a certain point I fell asleep, it being Harathon. And someone did, in fact, point that out, that I was asleep for part of it because they were also at Harathon. Yeah, but what could you have missed? I'm serious. Did the incredibly long scene about the weird, horny old couple that took fucking forever and there was no payoff? I mean that.
They were killed by the melting man. That's kind of a payoff. We don't even fucking see it. Okay. I think my initial thought, which kind of coincides with yours, that it's more boring than you would think based upon the hype. is still kind of true, but I found it less frustrating this time. I think there's something for me, Justin, where...
the 70s version of the creature feature, right? Which is really a 50s thing, classically speaking, but continued on through the 60s and 70s. The 70s version is still very cornball. in its way it's still very silly and goofy but then has just like strange notes of darkness like the fact that he has to fucking eat these people and it's not clear why he's eating them
Meanwhile, his own body parts are coming off. That's a little bit darker than you would think from like a 50s creature feature. The constant theme of him like serving his country and maybe like.
regretting going to space and all that stuff or that he is like kind of targeting his friends and a little like he's trying to find his friends and then you know killing people whatever there's certain aspects of this that are dark and I think The two things that really struck me as super dark, and this is spoilers, but who gives a fuck, is A, that the government has still...
is still claiming that not only he, but all of his other astronaut friends, who, by the way, are dead, are very dead, that none of them are dead, that they're all recovering in a hospital somewhere. So this melty man... is on a Melty Man murder spree, and they're getting ready to send a bunch more people up to the Melty Man murder spree factory called Saturn. They're about to do it again. Interesting. I thought all of those elements were very fun for me, like how dark they were.
Right. And the fact that it ends with a fucking. of fucking custodians sweeping him into a dustbin and throwing him out is like also brilliant so there are aspects of this that are really great however The people who are yelling at me, whatever, that was like almost a decade ago at this point, who are yelling at me because I didn't like the movie. It is still basically boring. It's basically a boring movie.
You know it's a boring movie because at a certain point, Justin, I became obsessed with how the one guy... So we get two characters we see a lot in this that are looking for him. There's a scientist guy who's like his friend, right? and then there's like a is that guy like a general or something some sort of military man right who ends up just like drinking a beer and eating some cold cuts at some point or a turkey yeah yeah some shit right those are the two main main dudes we get right
The scientist man, whose wife we also see, she's freaking out a little bit. He is so proto-hipster in his outfit. Did you see this? Did you realize this when you're watching this thing? No, what was he? Okay, let me lay this out for you. First off, the first thing, and this is a common 70s thing, but he's got one of those...
blue parkas on with the fur hood and the interior of it is orange. It's the sort of parka that you would wear if you were in like Oasis or like you were like a skinhead. You know what I mean? Like that kind of parka. He's got one of those on, right? Then it's particularly cold, so he puts his hat on. He's got a little beanie. He's got a teeny beanie on. And then when he's running around trying to chase the Melty Man, I realize that while his...
pants are a little 270s. I think they're a little 270s to be hipster. He's definitely wearing red wing boots, like the moccasin front boots. And I'm like, if this dude had dark salvage jeans on, he would be a caricature. of like a barista somewhere. You know what I mean? Like he's, and now I realize that this is partly evidence that this movie isn't that great, that I was able to fully analyze this man's outfit. Also a lot of the movie, he has a great, uh,
zipped hooded sweatshirt on with no shirt underneath. That's not a proto hipster. That's just psychotic. Why doesn't he have a shirt on? I never understood that part of the movie. He's just walking around with a zip up hoodie and nothing on underneath the hoodie. And I'm just kind of like. bro put a shirt on like what's happening right now is a strange a strange part of the movie but
I realized like, oh, I must be getting kind of bored with this movie because I'm fully looking at his parka hat combo and going, fuck, I'd like to rock that actually. That's a nice parka right there. Though I will say that's a kind of look. If you say to someone like, you know, like 70s horror movie parka, they should know what you mean by that. Like, that's a style. Like, that should be.
in a lookbook somewhere of like yeah you're in a 70s horror movie and you want a thick wool rich parka you know what i mean like whatever anyways you know what's really you know what's even weirder about this movie yeah Jonathan Demme is in this movie. Yep. I didn't realize that. I mean... It's for like a few seconds, right? It is. So that ties in with this other... I'm sorry if I cut you off. For whatever reason, when you first mentioned this, I just saw, oh yeah, The Incredible Molting Man.
That's that Corman movie. This is not a Roger Corman movie. And I realized that within 45 seconds. But I understand why you might think it is. It has that vibe. It does. But what's funny is that like. And coincidentally enough, I'm looking at Jonathan Demme's Wikipedia page. Homie was friends with Roger Corman. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's like, I don't know. That was.
you know, a weird coincidence that it would have been possible for him to, I mean, not that Roger Corman did this movie, but for him, it's not weird that he's in this movie. No. Was there a particular moment that the movie kind of lost you? Like it went off the rails a little bit. Uh, yeah, it was, you know, that shot in the beginning when the nurse is running in slow motion down the hallway. Yeah. That was the best part of this movie because it was actually like a creative shot. Yeah.
and everything else after that like i thought the ending was kind of like when he's like it's like zooming in on his fucking human eye i was like oh that's a bit much like it like you're looking at something in like complete fucking agony right um yeah I would honestly say that was probably the best part of this because it was what I sort of wanted from that character during the rest of the movie. Because in most of the movie, he's just wandering about in silhouette.
Hiding in bushes. I like the idea that this was like agonizing for this guy. I thought that was a, you know, it goes back to the darkness you were talking about earlier. Yeah. But there's not a lot of tension. No, there's no tension. I mean, first off, they introduced the idea that he is very radioactive, which I believe them. I believe you. If he's walking around melting, probably radioactive. I'm on board.
I'm on board with that. They established that, but then for some reason they can't trace the radiation. You know what I mean? Like, is everything there so radioactive that they can't just follow his fucking radioactive trail? They're always like, he's so radioactive. But then like they describe when they find the bodies of his victims numerous times is mildly radioactive. It's like, well, what is it? Is he like a walking like carcinogen?
Or is it just like an interesting, oh, it's weird. Victims are mildly radioactive. Like, what the fuck is it? Do you know what radioactivity is? I think the reason it, I'm willing to give this movie a little more grace, I think, than you are. But I think the reason it falters is it's trying to have a bit of like a drama aspect to it, right? Yeah. And that drama aspect is we got to find this guy so he doesn't kill a bunch of people, but...
We need to not let the public know. And so they're trying to low key look for this guy, right? Without telling anybody what's really going on. And the tension between the general and the scientist guy about this.
you know uh balance of like we got to find him but we can't like alert everyone it doesn't work does that make sense like it's just it's just yeah i think that's what was that because I'm sorry to make it sound like I'm just discovering this, but I think that's really what it is because I personally like, yes, it's corny when we just see him kind of.
you know, lumbering around, but that's okay. That's the kind of movie this is. That part didn't bum me out. I was okay with that. Even the attacks. Here's the thing. When they only show it briefly, the melting man effect, I fucking love it. I think it's unsettling and gross.
occasionally they just show it too long and you're like, ah, they just got smeared stuff on this guy. He's just smeared a little bit. You know, he's just got smear on him. So like, I get it. There's a limitation to the special effects of it all. I'm okay with that. But there's a lot of these two dudes talking and they have zero. Despite my obsession with this man's outfit, he has almost zero charisma. None of them do. It's just crazy, right? You get more charisma.
from the crazy melty guy like at least he's compelling when he's on screen you're like oh he's so crazy and melty and he's in pain and he's having memories of going it also would help with the had more footage for him to have memories of like this is what happens y'all like we see him go to Saturn and then every time he has painful memories it's just him
melting in the rings of Saturn. You're going to the rings of Saturn. You know what I mean? You haven't seen the sunrise if you haven't seen it rise through the rings of Saturn. There had to be other... painful moments in his life he could i mean this is very cruel sounding but it's just true there had to be other painful moments that they could be playing on a loop by the like
10th time you're hearing the audio from when he went to Saturn it's like yeah I get it it's painful he's bummed out he's a sad man so I just feel like that got a little repetitive and then we have sort of the big scene is this like you know, battle at the factory, quote unquote. And when he throws the fucking cop into the power. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jesus Christ. Like, I just think that that whole.
sequence it just doesn't make like i i guess that's the other thing is like at this point when he's killed this many people and he's so melty you gotta just shoot the guy right like like yeah like oh we gotta capture him to study him To study what? Yeah. He went to Saturn. He got melty. What are we doing? Like, yeah, we need to justify going back to Saturn. Yeah. So I definitely don't think it's great. I think I talked such heavy shit about it previously that I actually left it just to be.
like oh that wasn't as bad as I thought it was but I think I just I really dug my heels in last time about like this is the worst fucking movie and it's really not the worst but It is boring in a way it doesn't have to be boring. And it bummed me out only in that there were moments I thought were really good. And I think the ending for me is awesome. Just like.
yeah then the guy shows up and he just is like what's this junk yeah just throw this away i just love that well as we're hearing the audio of the next group of fucking uh uh well-meaning astronauts being sent into the meat grinder apparently that is saturn fucking that is everything about that to me is great but this movie just it just lags it just lags unnecessarily yeah uh
So yeah, that was the subpar melting man. Well, at least it's technically body horror. You know, there is a body horror element to it. This next movie, not so much. So we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about 1989's American horror film, James Hong crafted masterpiece, The Vineyard. We'll be right back. something beyond horror is happening here within this island inside this mansion
And underneath this earth, a secret that lies buried in the vineyard. This is a passageway. to unholy evil. An evil ruled by one man. A man without a soul. Show me away, Lord! who survives on the souls of others they must die so that he may live far from the civilized world Seven innocent visitors have journeyed to this isolated land of beauty, luxury and mystery. Dr. Poe, may I introduce you to the most charming young ladies. Let the party begin!
Dr. Paul, you're a truly fine winemaker. Almost obsessed. He flatters me. I'm not that successful. In fact, I'm still looking for that balance. Perfect ingredient. Dr. Pope, are they not a healthy looking group of young people? Yes, they are. They are no longer guests. Dance up to the vineyards! They are prisoners. and the next victims of the darkest powers in creation. Help me. To new discoveries.
I feel like I'm looking into the past. You are looking into the past. But it can be your future also if you want it to be. I got a strong feeling about this, Jezebel. I know you do too. Yes, I do. Dr. Cole is a special man, Jeremy. And he's good to me. But that's something that you don't see. Or you don't want to. Every impulse and every pleasure is indulged and fulfilled through your wish to give yourself to eternity.
Yes, Dr. Poe. The powers of the Forbidden are unlocked and the undead are unleashed. There is a place where your deepest fears come alive. And we are back to talk about 1989's The Vineyard, directed by James Hong, written by James Hong, starring Harry Mock and Michael Wong and James Hong. I love, I love James. I love him. Everything I've seen that dude in even like, cause I was like thinking about it last night, whether or not I should count Wayne's world too, as a James Hong film. And I am.
And it's perfect. I love it. I even like it when he does voices, right? Whether it's the first Kung Fu Panda or a bunch of different cartoons he does voices on. Yeah. Even like Invincible, right? I think he has a role on Invincible right now. But my man just does voices. Really? It's great. I thought he did. I could be wrong. Because I definitely heard him on a cartoon recently and thought, James Hong, isn't he dead? But he's not dead. That's crazy.
I mean, no offense, but he's an older man. He's up there. Yeah. So, okay. The Vineyard. This is why. Okay. It's funny because this is a weird combination. We thought this was going to be a body horror and it's not. It's gooey, right? But it's not really body horror, really.
It's gooey, and I would say it's tangentially body horror. Sure. In the same way that Kronos is tangentially body horror. Okay, okay. It's a movie in which we have a... it turns out, ancient Chinese fellow who is doing a combination of chemistry and magic to make elixirs to extend his life. As long as he can. And it's starting to wear out, guys. It's starting to lose its effectiveness. He also, to honor the god that he's getting some of this magic from.
makes a blood wine that he serves to people for a lot of money and people love his wine. It makes him feel very good because it has the blood of tortured young people in it and other magical shit, right? Hillary Clinton.
100%. Here's what I was going to say, though. This is a weird combination because I personally think if we had combined The Incredible Melting Man with... a similarly boring sci-fi horror movie we would be like yeah it's fine it's fun you know it's not great but whatever the thing about it is the vineyard is a bad movie it is Not well written. It is not well directed. And it is only well acted by James Hong. He is fucking owning the scenes in every scene and every.
quote unquote hot person he hired that's the other thing it's filled with models who are clearly trying to make it and they're supposed to be hired because they're hot but like none of them are hot it's really weird right it's like it's also kind of weird how they're always hanging over him like he was telling him to hang all over him music director, maybe, you know, flexing the, flexing the, the Hong.
Maybe. I don't know. All I'm going to say is none of them connect. Not a single person in the movie connect other than him. And so he's like fucking doing James Hong shit and being awesome at it while everyone else is just kind of like, oh, Lisa, what do we do?
But here's the thing. It's bad in all these ways, but Justin, it's not boring. It's actually not boring the whole fucking time. In fact, it is... entertaining enough that I think you could play this at like a horror marathon and people would be on board they might say oh that was stupid but it's not boring and it throws so many things at the wall goddess of the moon
Zombies. Yo, the zombies in this are cool as fuck. Undersold element of this movie is the zombies. Like Return of the Living Dead style zombies. Like crawling out of the fucking ground. That was... That was a, yeah, that was a very like, that should be the, they should put that up front.
Right. Well, I think the thing is, is that the zombies are meant to be almost like an annoyance to the main guy. Like they're just the corpses of the people he's used for the wine. This is true. Yeah. But he doesn't want to get rid of them because something about them. makes the various spiritual forces happy, I guess. Anyways.
The plot of this is a fucking mess. It's literally like he's a famous wine guy who is also involved in filmmaking. And so all these beautiful people have come to his island to sort of like... get into his next production and here's where the movie immediately goes off the rails justin the first night he's killing people and putting them in the torture dungeon for his wine
I thought there was going to be a little bit of whining and dining, a little bit of like subterfuge before he starts murdering. He's like immediately murdering. That would require like patience. And tact in setting up a scene, James Hong doesn't have enough time to explain how the whining and the dining. James Hong needs more time for young women with their boobies out to hang all over them.
I mean, I'm a little less worried about that. You seem really worried about all the hanging on. That didn't really bother me as much. I just don't like old Dusty James on like when he's weird. Let's be fair. He's not that dusty at this point. No, not yet. But anyways, okay. One of the things I really liked about this that I think is something interesting for us is...
It's one of the few supernatural horror films you can watch made in America that is not even brushed against slightly by Christianity, right? Yeah, it's voodoo. yeah it's so and and and chinese folklore and whatever you know what i mean but like it's so funny how that really stuck out to me because it's like in this
sort of world in the United States culture, if you're going to do anything supernatural, 99.9% of the time, there's going to be some hint of Christianity on it. You know, even if it's like ghosts or werewolves or anything. There's going to be something. And this is a thing that there is not a note that isn't either pulled from...
some sort of Chinese culture aspect that James Hong is pulling from or just classic horror movies, right? Like he's borrowing from other things, but that's it. And I love that part of it. I also love, wow. you know, maybe it's a little creepy, all the ladies. I do like that he also has an army of toughs doing his will. These dudes are just, they're like, yeah, man, this guy has been alive forever. I want to be part of that. That sounds like a thing I want to participate.
I fucking love it. It's so good. I think the henchman aspect is good. And while none of these side actors can act for a fucking... you know, for worth a damn. By the end of the movie, a couple of them have like fun moments that like, even though they're not great actors, they're able to sell. It's, you know, I'm sort of overselling how bad of actors they are. They're like standard B movie.
or exploitation movie acting to some extent it just stands out because even though James Hong wrote and directed this he still showed up for it so it's like they just look bad next to him right like they're doing their best job not being like the one guy who sort of looks like a more Asian Dean Cain. He's like the focus, right? He's like the hero of the movie. He could not deliver a line that sounded like he believed in it.
in a single scene but like it's not terrible terrible it's just not great right like he just he's just taking up space But it really stands out because he's in a scene with James Hogg, like just doing his whatever the fuck he wants. And it's just a tough place to be in, I think, for that dude. Yeah.
But yeah, there's a lot of unnecessary violence in this. Yes, please. There's a lot of like, I mean, there has to be, honestly, a lot of world building. We don't know who this fucking goddess person is that he's got.
chained up or whatever and yeah i mean it's also worth pointing like you said you know you were talking about how it doesn't brush up against christianity he's you know i like the fact that he is he just has this god yeah yeah yeah that grant and i'm like i kind of like that because and then like it actually does shit for him so it actually means it's real um yeah yeah
I yeah, that's another thing that just that just clicked in my mind. But when you were talking about how it didn't brush up against Christianity. Yeah. And I like that. I like that. It's like and of course, someone who's more familiar with. actual legends and stuff could tell us how much he made up but just drawing not from the devil is already like okay cool you know for an American film now graded
It did remind me a little bit of Hong Kong films and its lack of references to church and stuff or whatever. But the fact that there's a whole mythology and world building and at a certain point, fake Dean Cain. is in the library doing research and sort of discovering this long history of this dude being this winemaker and doing all this stuff. And, you know, it keeps saying like he assumes it's like his relatives, but it doesn't take a lot for him to figure out like.
oh, maybe this guy's just been alive for a very long time. And I really like the aspect of the... goddess he basically has like locked in a room in his mansion right like all those little aspects really work for me there's some really like humorous moments in chases and stuff uh The what little gore there is is fine. It's not a big special effects movie, but there's some stuff that's kind of gross. I don't know. Something about this was very charming, even though on paper.
this is a bad movie. Right. But I don't know. I just found it kind of compelling, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's objectively a bad movie, but again, it seems to be like, it seems to be that like. Hong cared enough about this where he contacted people to help him write a fucking screenplay and then he directed it so it's like there's something to be said about even if the movie is unsa...
Even if the movie isn't great, it's still like, well, you know, this dude put a ton of work into it. And, you know, that that says something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's definitely watchable. It's just I do think it's a shame we. we did like, and this is not just as far. I did this. I combined it with incredible melting man. Cause it does, you know, if the incredible melting man had been this entertaining the whole time, I would be less inclined to like this.
You know, some people, that's one of their favorite movies is Incredible Melting Man. And to those people, I say, you must be old. Yeah. Or have never seen any other movie. I mean, that's what it feels like. I'm not trying to be unfair, but it feels like, why do you like this? Yeah, I just want to ask, what is it you like about this movie? What exactly are you into with the movie? Because...
It doesn't seem great to me, but, you know, I don't know. I don't know, man. Yeah. I mean, there's lots. There's people get they put their claws and choose like weird movies to be like their favorite movie. I don't know. Like that's fair. That's fair. Like not everyone can have the immaculate top 10 films that I have. Sure. That's what you want to say. But that's whatever. But yeah, I don't know. Like that, the, that, that, cause that's like.
the a classic example of like a of a cult film like a real cult film um and it just i just i don't i just it didn't seem like even interesting enough to be considered bad I guess. Right. So I don't know. Well, I would say. If you're in the mood for a certain kind of, correct me if I'm wrong about this, the movie feels very 1989. It feels very, not just 1989, but a movie you might see a couple of years later on like Skinamax, like that's sort of the vibe of it.
The Vineyard? Yeah. Yes, 100%. If that sounds up your alley, folks, then I would recommend... It is that. It is, you know, oh, I stayed up till 2 and this thing came on Cinemax that I was like... what is this shit? That's what it is. And for some people, that's torture. You know what I mean? Some people are like, I don't want to watch that cornball shit. For me, that was John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness.
Oh, see? Yeah, that's true. You saying that is accurate, but I love that. To me, that movie's art. Oh yeah, no doubt. That movie is actually, you know, this is just like, oh. what did i like that was a weird thing to yeah experience i don't know yeah it's just it is what it is i guess well anyways okay well we wanted to do a body horror episode we kind of failed but Still pretty good. Pretty good. We owe a body horror episode in the future. Yeah, let's say that. That works.
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And also, I guess dry rot for Chris. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is he even still doing that? Oh, he is. Yeah, he definitely is. Oh, OK. Dry rot. And a rough cut. Yep. All right. We're going to get going. Fuck John Fetterman. Oh yeah. For real. Peace. Bye.