Can you hear me and see me? Yeah, I can hear you and I can see half of you. Okay, but we're. Everything's working. You're just standing a little bit too far to the right of your phone. To the right. Hold on. I got to figure out which is my right and left. You're so going to get this wrong. Now you're gone. Okay. What? So welcome to Imported Horror. This is the podcast that brings you the very best of chilling Samurai with deaths glitches in the matrix.
And believe it or not, horny zombies from beyond the shining seas. I'm Marcus. I'm here with both my macab death. Holy cohosts. Melissa, I don't know if I like the term death. Holy. And Grady, and I was going to brag about my sea skills bringing Melissa back from our cat's butt hole. But now I'm just, you've ruined it with all of your death hole talk. Do we not do phrasing anymore since archer's no longer around? Do we not do that? I liked phrasing. It felt like a more mature,
y'all know me. I'm a big fan of the That's what she said. But phrasing is a little bit more challenging. I'm still stuck on that. You called phrasing mature. I mean relatively speaking. There's a sliding scale here. But yes, Melissa is back. She's on her phone. So the audio is a little different because she said her internet is interneting and she just let Grady's comment just fly right past her. So I'm assuming you haven't listed to last week's episode. No, I haven't.
It's funnier. If you find out later, don't worry. About it. Yes, it's better this way. Okay, I'll listen to it immediately. I do not believe you. That's okay. So this week Grady is bringing us classic folk horror with death holes. Apparently only Baba from Japan on HBO. I think you watched it. Yes. Then Melissa's got a short film from our friends up north and then over a little bit the Quebec quo called Deja vu. If you IMDB it. It's not the one with Denzel directed by Tony Scott.
Although I heard that was pretty standard. Tony Scott Denzel Fair, if you're into that. No, this is much, much different. Much different. Okay. And then I got lucky because the last drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs last week showed cemetery man, which is very Italian. It's very Italian. One. Might say aggressively Italian. Yes. Does that have anything to do with house by the cemetery? No. Okay. So the gore, no disrespect to faulty whatsoever, but on a,
it's a Friday night. What am I looking at? Scale, we could call that the Eugene Levy Scale because of that great gif where from Schitt's Creek where he is like, what am I looking at? So on the Eugene Levee scale house by the cemetery is maybe a six. This is like a 13 maybe. It's considerably weirder because House by the Cemetery at least had a plot that was mostly linear. Did it though. Stupid can still be linear. As Grady said a moment ago, sliding scale. Right.
But before we get into that, I want to tweak our show description a little bit because I realized it might make us sound a little more serious than we are and we're not serious, we're not professional. We barely have any idea what we're doing at all. Fair enough. I make a penis joke or fart joke at least once an episode. So whatever's below amateur, I'm thinking entrepreneur. That makes sense. Where are you going to say, Melissa?
No, I just said that Grady's penis and fart jokes are always really good. That's true. That's true. Thank you. And you phrasing. Anyway, I thought we might lean into that just a smidge more and I got bored and I wanted to play around with a trivia segment and if it works, great and if not, that's okay too. Alright. So I tried to base this on movies that y'all have some familiarity with. Nothing too wild, nothing too out of left field, and y'all can collaborate,
but you cannot Google and you're free to agree or disagree. Okay. Which of the following major Asian cities has never been attacked by a Kaiju or other giant monster in a streamable or rentable movie for the laws? I'm going to say Tokyo, but obviously that's not the right answer. Yeah. Soul, Hong Kong, Bangkok or Hanoi. I know Soul, isn't it? Because I'm pretty sure that one found footage one. Yeah, I was thinking about that too.
I think that was actually the one with Anne Hathaway. Anne Hathaway? No, not her name. We are thinking of completely different movies, but we are both right. Oh, what do you think you're thinking about? Oh, that was good. Yes. Yes. Oh, what was that? It's killing you, isn't it? Because it's. Killing. Thinking of Colossal. I'm thinking of that one movie that's actually from Korea that I can't remember the name of. The host? Yes, the host. Thank you. Yes.
Okay, so we know it's not Seoul. What other, I'm sorry. Hong Kong, Bangkok or Hanoi? I think it's either Bangkok or Hanoi. Yeah, I think I remember Hong Kong showing up on the podcast too. Well, I mean Hong Kong's showing up on the podcast several times. I don't remember if it's been for Kaiju reasons, but. Why do I remember there was some weird Kaiju one and I want to say it was Noy, so I want to say Bangkok is the correct.
I'm going to trust your judgment because I feel like I would remember Bangkok being the subject of a monster movie because it is literally the name Bangkok. Yeah. The jokes write themselves. I mean, look at One Night in Bangkok. And the world, your oyster. We chess musical ever written. I'm just saying. Or the greatest musical chess. Musical. What? We have wildly different frames of reference. What chess musical. That's where the song one night in Bangkok is from.
Chess, like the board game. What. Grady? Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I'm the one that said The world's your oyster. Oh my gosh, I missed that. Yeah. No, I know the song. What does it have to do with the Game of chess? There's a big chess tournament in Bangkok that takes place during the climax and they sing about how messed up Bangkok is and it just kind of is like a whole spiral of sleazy debauchery in the chess world. And one night in Bangkok is.
I'm assuming I've never actually seen the musical. I'm just guessing based on the lyrics of the song and the fact that it's in a musical about chess. Yes, that is actually correct. If you listen to the lyrics and go and listen, this guy is basically telling everybody, Hey listen, I'm not going to go and play around in your debauchery. I have other things to do. I'm a chess player. Yeah, chess the musical. I mean, I've heard the song I just assumed. Yeah. Okay. That I didn't realize somehow. Wow.
Wow. Maybe I'm the trivia person. So, okay. Melissa, are we walking in Bangkok as our answer to the actual trivia Western at hand? Yes, I think we are. Normally, I would've said Hanoi, but I really think Hanoi had some kaiju going on. I don't remember what. It was. Yeah, that feels like it'd be an obscure one that Marcus is trying to trick us with. Yeah. And he is smiling smugly, which tells me we're wrong. So go ahead, Marcus. You were wrong, but you're almost right.
So you are correct that there was a weird Kaiju movie that nobody liked that we watched for the podcast in either Bangkok or Hanoi. It was the lake. That's what it was. Yes, I remember that. It was so. Weird and we had really high expectations and hopes for it, and then it was just no bueno whatsoever. But that was Bangkok, not Hanoi. To my knowledge, Vietnam has never been invaded by Kaijus or giant monsters.
I am open to being proven wrong, but to my knowledge, Hanoi Canonically is safe for now. Damn. For now. And for Hong Kong. Godzilla went there at least once, but I was also thinking of Pacific Rim, which has that whole big fight in Hong or in the Bay right outside Hong Kong. Okay. Kong. Yeah. I didn't. Remember a Pacific Rim having a fight in Hong Kong. I just figured Hong Kong is such a famous city in that part of the world that there's no way it wasn't a victim of a kaiju at some point.
And it may have been in some others as well. That's just one I know. Okay. I also have one more just for fun if y'all want to keep playing. So this is the same question sort of, but for the locals, we're going to go with Houston. So which of the following horror things have never attacked Houston in a streamable or rentable movie? And one of these is a freebie. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. In a streamable or rentable movie.
Yeah. Something you've seen or could see. Not something super ultra obscure. Okay. I was thinking real life continue. So aliens, slashers, werewolves, or a giant swarm of bees. I know not aliens because Independence Day. And also 10 Cloverfield Lane, and I think a couple of others too. Do you know how bad, I want to say a giant swarm of bees, but for some reason I think that Houston was probably in a movie where it was attacked by a hoard of giant bees. No, those are two different things.
So a hoard of gigantic bees and a giant swarm of bees are two very different things and a swarm of the bees are small and there's a ton of them. Okay. Run through the non B non alien options. Again. Slashers and werewolves. Slashers and werewolves. I feel like if Houston had a werewolf movie, we'd have talked about it by now. I also feel like Texas has had slasher movies, but maybe not Houston. Yeah, maybe not Houston specifically. That's a good point.
So we can assume a fair bit of by Houston, I'm not meaning just inside the loop. I mean theoretically everything from Galveston to Livingston. I still don't remember a Slack chain. My head. I'm desperately trying to remember which specific part of Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place in. Yeah, I really thought that was like West Texas, but maybe I'm just. Did two, but we've got some technicalities going on here. We do. I can help clarify the technicality if you want. Please do.
Okay. So Texas Chainsaw Massacre was filmed in Bastrop and the gas station that they shot, a lot of that has been converted to a barbecue joint and we really need to go at some point, Bastrop is a real life, very scary place. Not because of the gas station, but because that was the birthplace of the Jade Helm movement, which was basically the first great MAGA Russian conspiracy thing that just went hog wild what, 10, 12, 14 years ago?
Something like that. Yeah. Not that, not that, but there is at least one slasher that I know we've talked about that. I know you have seen Melissa that may or may not qualify. Fuck, I guess I just kind of spoiled that, didn't I? Okay. X starts in Houston. Yes, it does. That's right. And we just talked about that. Okay.
And for that matter, there is a movie called Night Game from 1989 with Roy Schneider that is apparently awful, just truly terrible, but is shot in Houston, a serial killer starts killing people whenever the Astros win, which in 1989 and a couple of years ago would've been a pretty high body count. Maybe not so much anymore. Now he, no one dies. They've had a comeback this year. Oh, okay.
I mean, beginning of the year. Yeah. No, my parents stopped watching out of disgust, but they are actually back in contention for the playoffs. Oh good. Okay. Alright. Assuming. That Seattle doesn't win a single game for the rest of the year. Anyway, continue. I'm going to go werewolf. Yeah, I'm going to differ here. I'm going to go with slasher and thinking that the other Texas thing might be a double bluff. Okay. Blocked. In. You're sure you don't want to guess the giant swarm of bees?
Well now I can. As you can tell, I take my trivia tips from the one and only Regis Philbin. Giant Swarm of Bees. Giant Swarm of Bees. What movie? I mean, I'm trying to think. See, I feel like this leads to an obscure streamable movie where that Houston getting swarm by Tri Bees that you just can't wait to tell us about. See, I'm kind of meditating here. I feel like that. As you can tell, I would be a magnificent poker player. I can bluff with the best of them. Alright, I'm werewolf.
Yep. I'm sticking with a serial killer. Probably wrong. Go ahead. Okay, so I wasn't trying to double bluff you or anything. There are, and there is actually a movie where Houston gets hit by a giant swarm of bees. You're right, it's called The Swarm. It's from 1978. It is with the last person you would ever expect to be in this movie, and it's got him. It's Michael Kane. How have we not started a religion around this movie? I. Have no idea. What War?
The swarm from 1978. Apparently the entire city gets destroyed. Oh my God. The trailer is a banger. By the way. The YouTube tagline for this is Killer Bees on the loose, or should I say fly? I don't even understand. Or on the fly. Oh, I got it now. That's still a weak tagline. It's a really. It has 9% on Rotten Tomatoes guys. Yeah. Excellent. But I mean Michael Kane, nobody does bad movies or good movies like Michael Kane. It's based on a novel. Yes. Okay. This dare I ask where it's streaming.
I sure. I can make an educated Yes. I actually don't know. So I just googled horror movies set in Houston and there's a Wikipedia thing about movies set in Houston and there was I think a Houstonian magazine article that had a couple. There are not a lot, but let's see. Richard Chamberlain, isn't it too. You have to rent it, but it's rentable from Apple and Amazon and if you have a YouTube TV premium subscription. Yeah, hot. Duke was in it. What is up with this movie?
Yep. No, I'm telling you this. This came out of nowhere. Either the producer and director for this movie were just magnificent salesmen, far more than they were Good producers and directors or all of these actors had severe gambling debts at the exact same time. Yes. Alright, so this is by Irwin Allen. He's known as the Master of Disaster for his work in the disaster film genre. The movie poster. None of the buildings except the Astrodome look, especially Houston.
But I'm assuming the Astrodome plays a critical role. Yeah, it was, I think at that point, the only famous building in Houston. So it would. Have to be, yes, arguably it still is. Dude, the guy who directed and produced this was also created and produced, lost in Space, the original. Yeah. This is just fascinating to me. I know, I know, right? I know this was a rabbit hole. I fell down instead of doing my class prep, which I am very, very, very far behind on.
This was a better use of your time. Holy shit. Absolutely. Were people just bored? Were they just bored? Did they just stand around and go, oh my God, this book is so weird. Let's do this. We have nothing better going on. I mean, it was the seventies disaster. Movies were in vogue also, there was a lot of drugs. I'm going to say that that probably had more to do with it than anything else. So obviously we'll be. Watching this obviously awkward time between the weed years and the cocaine
years. There were some magical things that happened during that transition. Wow. Yep. So apparently, sorry, now I'm doing a deep dive and this will be the last thing I say about this. I know we got to go on, but Oh my. God. Don't spoil anything. This is a masterpiece.
Don spoil anything. I'm not spoiling anything about the book. Okay, so he produced and directed the big Budgeted the Swarm Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and Produced When time ran out, these three films were back to back to back box, office disappointments with the final failure of when time ran out effectively ending his theatrical film career. So swarm was start of his downfall. Yeah, Houston will do that. Wow. So I'm watching it this weekend. I don't know about y'all. Absolutely.
So we've only got two movies dropping this next week and one of them doesn't really count. One of 'em hits Friday, August 23rd. It's called Hellhole and this one is American, but it's by a Canadian family who has done a lot. Actually they did. Hellbender got a lot of press for that. That was great example of a really low budget movie that went big and huge. This one's American, but I mention it. Let me read the summary.
Hellhole hails from the filmmaking family behind Hellbender and Centers on an American led fracking crew that uncovers a living French soldier frozen in time from a Napoleonic campaign whose body hosts a parasitic monster. Now I brought it up, parasitic. Monster does, but stuff. Not why I brought it up, but very important detail, presumably. Yes. Is that the death hole? No, I'll get into the death hole. Don't you worry.
Did you happen to recognize anyone from this trailer in particular, the living French soldier hosting a parasitic monster? He looked so, so familiar. I did not. So would it help if I gave you some hints in the form of lines of dialogue. Maybe? Yes. Well, the sun draws an eye. Oh dear. Hello. Pretty one. I would not have recognized him without the fingers. The finger demons. I know. Oh my God. Yes. I need to watch that now. Yep. That is Anders Hove.
AKA better known to this audience is Hove and Ronald Vlo from Subspecies one, subspecies two, subspecies three, subspecies four, and wait for it. Subspecies five. Which one? I just. Had to. Which were just masterpieces. I mean, shit. Honestly, there's a worm in my butt. Get it out. I tried to use the finger demons and they, no, out of that really, really quickly. I think it's after the Bloodstone. I will use any excuse to do my Redu impression. To do.
I mean, he's the best. He is absolutely the best. So I will not rest. And by that I mean I'm going to do literally nothing to help make it happen unless there's a Kickstarter. But I will not rest until Subspecies six is brought into this world. There are, by the way, a lot of movies called Hellhole. There's actually 22 film that is a Polish film as Polish horror film in a Polish monastery in 1987 called Last Supper. I think that that is going to be my next installment guys.
Oh, did we all watch it or did I just watch it and talk about it? Which one? No. We've talked about it. Hell, the Polish one. Oh really? It's magnificent. If you haven't seen it, you should absolutely watch it. I loved it. Did we talk about that? Maybe it was an episode I wasn't on. Am I crazy, Grady? I don't remember it. And we've talked about Godzilla minus one on four separate episodes. So even if we have talked about it, there's nothing preventing Melissa from watching me and.
Giving her Absolutely. Yeah. No, I loved it. I thought it was magnificent. It's got a little bit of food horror. It's got a little bit of body horror. It's got a great sense of humor. I thought it was great. So yeah, watch it. 10 out of 10, it's on Netflix. Nice. Yeah, that's totally different from this hell hole. Yes. Which. I must stress is about a parasitic worm that crawls up people's butts. I'm not spoiling anything. They bring that up right in the trailer. Yes, they do. Yes.
Plus it's just this love crafty and tentacle. You just expect it to go places. We. Probably could have used this movie when we were doing our Lovecraftian theme where we couldn't find much. That was where sex was that we still haven't done. Where? What was. Sex? Medusa. That's true. Sex Medusa. I've still got the dvd. Oh God, I forgot you got the DI. Did. I bought the dvd. Yes. Maybe I'll just break down and watch it. Every time I suggest it, y'all look at me like.
I'm up for it. It's just out of respect for Emily and Dan. If they're there, we need to give them something else to do. Do we though? Well, We have to do it because we do the podcast. We're contractually obligated to watch this movie. They're innocent bystanders. Fair enough, fair enough. I like that logic. I will admit, I sprung the whole horror podcast thing on Emily after we met and after she was more or less invested. It wasn't a first date. What do you do?
I really like scary movies. I mean, maybe it came up, maybe it didn't. Spent a lot of time talking about True Crime, which is sort of similar. Yeah, They're both grizzly podcast fodder. I mean. Yes. So the second one dropping this week, and this is the last one I've got for August, and I'm assuming September things are going to ramp up pretty quickly.
I hope so, because Lowe's, Roz and I went to Lowe's today and they've already, they already had on the side of the door, like the front door when you walk in a whole row of Halloween stuff and they were setting up the little display right opposite the front door right when you walked in. So. Halloween's doing the Labor Day. What Christmas does to Thanksgiving is. Yeah, I'm not a fan. Holidays are meaningless. If time is meaningless, like October, maybe late September is for Halloween.
Thanksgiving is November, Christmas, late November, December. If it all just blends together, then what's the point? I am with you on every holiday except Halloween. If I could have Halloween every day, I would have fucking Halloween every day. I mean, sure. But kids aren't even in school yet. They're excited about back to school or not excited as it were. But. Yeah, no, that would be my main issue. If this as a kid back to school should not be tainting Halloween.
When I was going back to school, me and my mom already had a plan for paper Machine, my costume for that year, and we were already working on it over the summer. I had already picked my choices. That is important. Well, fair enough. In fairness, that was Emily's response too. She said, well now wait a minute. People like us who take time to plan things and whose lives are chaos, can't do anything really on short notice. We need time to strategize what my phone, my computer.
We need time to strategize Halloween decorations and I mean, yeah, sure, but I'm going to give that back to school stuff before I get my Halloween on, so I dunno. But anyway. Tuesday I always plan my Halloween costume two months in advance regardless of whether or not I know for a fact there will be a cause to use a Halloween costume. Fair. We will definitely do something this year. Last year was a little crazy the year before that. Yeah, it was also crazy.
But this year definitely doing something. The year before that we did the silent disco. That was fun. Yeah. Oh, that's right, because Emily. That's right. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. Emily was the world's most pregnant. Winnie the Pooh. It was great. Well. Maybe that was Dr. Mann and Melissa. You were the little kid from Trick or Treat and almost asphyxiated. And we got the best out of that.
We really did. We really did. Okay, so Tuesday, the 27th of August on screen box, we've got the funeral from Turkey. Kamal drives a hearse for a living. He's entrusted with secretly carrying the body of a young girl at the request of her family. One night he hears strange groans from the back of the truck, even though she hasn't got a pulse. And the screen box publicity folks say it does for zombies what another movie did for another horror thing. And I'm betting
y'all will be able to pick up on it. Maybe if not, I'll just come out and say it. Wait, say that. So say what you said again. I'm trying to wrap my head around what you said. So the screen box publicity folks are saying that this movie does for zombies what another movie did for vampires. No, du. Not that far back. No. Let the right one in. Oh, okay. I like it. Because young girl afflicted with something guy kind of trying to take care of her. I could see the overlap.
I can see the overlap too. Yeah. So one thing I will say, and this is largely independent of the movie itself and more to do with the people making it. I've never heard of B-I-F-F-F before, but I love their logo. Like a Raven in a Top Hat is just something I trust to bring me horror movies. Yes, it. Loses some points for not also having a monocle, but the top hat works. Like an evil Mr. Peanut. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. But this one looked all right. What y'all think.
I don't normally like zombie movies, but this one, no, it looks good. Looked pretty good. I'll say I had a little bit of a difficult time telling what was kind of going on in the trailer. This is one of those kind more vague repeat kind of trailers that we get. And it was really difficult to find out on my own because the funeral is almost impossible to Google. There's a song by Band of horses.
There is a couple other movies called The Funeral One, which is a big one, which is like a mobster movie. Even adding 2024 didn't help because that just got me a reality show. Storying Alan Cumming. Yeah. So what? Yeah, like Boris, I am in Bowl. Alan Cumming. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We're just doing the greatest hits of classic British actors here. Alright, so who wants to go first? I'll. Okay, tell us about Deja vu. Yes, so movie is deja vu. It's from 2023.
And again, this is from the Short verse website, my favorite new short film website where you can look by genre and by countries and things like that. And you emailed them them and they were cool. They. Were very cool. They were very, very cool. So huge. Shout out to short verse com. I highly, highly recommend that you go there and check out their movies and especially because these are up and coming filmmakers just trying to get their name out
there. And I think it's really important that we support up and comers. So this one is by, and I'm going to pronounce this really badly, so I apologize. Olivier le Lemoine, L-E-M-O-Y-N-E. It is French-Canadian. And the synopsis is a young woman meets with her best friend in a local diner to tell him about the fantasy she recently accomplished. But when a mysterious man enters, she is struck by a feeling of deja vu. So this was a nine minute short, but it felt like it was an hour long movie.
And I'm not saying that in a bad way. So for someone like me, one of the two things that are scariest for me, I have really vivid dreams. Incredibly vivid dreams. They sometimes include horror, natural disasters, things like that. But. Bees. Bees. Well they certainly will now, now. But a lot of times I can't. Sometimes I can tell 'em in a dream and sometimes I can't. Whether it's lucid, lucid dreams or not, I do have lucid dreaming.
And one of the things that happens in dreams that also I see as a trope in horror movies that sometimes works well and sometimes doesn't, is looking at yourself in a mirror and you're mirroring the actions of the person that's staring back at you. But if you're looking at yourself, those actions are lagged behind by a couple of seconds.
But if you are scaring at someone else and they're not supposed to be you, and they're doing those movements as well as you, both of those things are terrifying for me because it's a big feeling of not knowing what's real and not knowing what's going to happen happen. But having the feeling that you've been there before, I see you Grady. Grady, it's, But to have a movie that is so very, such a normal movie, a woman is just kind of waiting for her friend in a diner.
She did some naughty, naughty things the night before. She can't wait. She can't, can't wait to tell her friend what happened.
And to have all of these unsettling things happen where she'll be looking at a booth one moment and it'll have a couple in it and she'll look down and the next moment there'll be somebody else entirely in the booth and the colors changed a bit or the waitress comes over, takes their order, she starts having a conversation and the waitress comes over again and takes their order and everybody else is acting. Yeah, the waits kind of like a guest lighty sort of situation.
Yes. And so that's always, again, a huge fear of mine because in my head I'm like, how do you know things are the way they are supposed to be? Right? If I start seeing fricking ghosts or demons, how do I know that that's just not my brain tricking me And those things are actually going on because either way it's real to me, but it's not necessarily weird about everybody else. And both possibilities are equally bad for different reasons. So either there's monsters or you're crazy.
This filmmaker did such an amazing job of making you feel unsettled from the moment she walked into the diner till the end of the nine minutes. And one of the biggest comments under all the comments of these that I resonate with, it leaves you thinking, and you'll be thinking about the short days later. And I really was, it was incredibly unsettling.
So he wrote a statement, the filmmaker statement that I want to read because I think it's really interesting and I do think that what he's saying is kind of powerful. So deja vu is a film I wrote after a dream I had where a woman experienced a traumatic event before it happened through a feeling of deja vu.
I've seen many powerful films that relay the horror of the violence of the event through its aftermath, where the emotional impact on the character can be much more dramatic than seeing the actual events with deja vu. I wanted to see if I could tell a story of horror through the protagonist experience of the events, but this time setting the story before they happened, therefore experimenting on the notion that anticipation can be one of those most horrific ways to experience pain.
And I think that we have, he's absolutely right. We have so many films where some event happens and you don't see the event, but you see the aftermath and it brings you into the feeling it brings you into the scene. But how many movies really talk about that anticipation of something is going to happen to you and you can't do anything to stop it and you don't know when it's going to happen and that just builds and builds and builds and this ends before the horrific thing happens.
And that somehow makes it even scarier because you have an idea of what's going to happen, but you don't know what happens. You dunno what it's, and you can't see the aftermath. Well and you don't dunno when maybe it's right after the cut, maybe it's three days later, maybe it's you don't know. And I sat with that for a long time because anticipation is one of the things that scares me the most as well. I don't like not knowing.
So when you have a movie that is all about the not knowing and you don't know what happens and you just have to sit in that uncomfortable horror, that blows me away. I think that he could have made this into such a great feature length film except I think it worked really well as a short because he was able to build in that tension without the tension getting boring.
Boring or loosening, which what would happen in this type of movie if you made it into a feature length film because you do have final destination, things like that. But again, that's really more about, yes, the anticipation, but it's them avoiding the thing that happens,
what's going to happen. It's not necessarily about the anticipation, it's about knowing that something's going to happen and you actually then see it happen and you can follow the characters like that and it gets repetitive and boring after a while. So because this was so short and because he did it in such a way that it was just the anticipation of horror coming onto her but never actually reaching that climax, terrifying, 100% recommend. I'm going to say that one to five scale of one to five,
quality and enjoyment. Five. And on the horror scale, I'm going to give this a three because what you can make up in your head to what happens is so much worse than anything that could have been put on screen. That sounds right. That sounds good. So he's done a couple of more films, so I'm going to kind of delve more into his filmmaking style because I really think it's so interesting and I like what he can do with just feelings. Can I give you a homework assignment? Yes, absolutely.
Have you seen come True? No, I haven't. Okay, don't Google it. Don't look anything up. Just watch it. Grady. You might like it too, but it's dream horror. It's definitely going to push your buttons. Melissa, I think you might like it for different reasons, Grady given your superpower, but I think Melissa would, so if you all want. Come true. I think it's on Hulu, but as far as dream horror goes, you're going to want to watch it in the middle of the night pitch black.
This is one, it came out during the pandemic and it was denied a big theatrical release because of the pandemic. It wasn't its fault, but this is one of those movies that I would've loved to have seen in a theater. I'll also tell you, my brother hated it, hated it with a passion. I'm probably really like it. I understand why Quentin hated it. I get it. Quentin hated it for reasons that I think you might dislike it Grady, but I'm not sure and I don't want to give anything away because. Sometimes
Quentin and I have differences of opinion. Sometimes we have the same opinion, but Quentin's a little bit more vocal about. It, let's say. I think this one might be more in that direction, but I think you would have fun hating on it in a way that Quentin doesn't. Okay. I'm excited for it. Yeah. It's not foreign is it? It's Canadian. Nice. English Canadian. The. Asterisk of foreign.
No, we haven't. I've talked about it before, but I haven't put it on the list and we haven't all watched it because there are parts to the ending that I think would both, I don't want to say anything, but if you watch it, you'll understand why I hesitated, but also understand why I think it's great. Okay, so I'm. Curious what that French Canadian, because that's what this one was too. French Canadian can do dream horror apparently. Well and French Canada.
I've been to Montreal for a conference and I thought all of Quebec was, yeah, they speak English too. It's not that big of a deal. My conference was right, the hotel was right nearby where the NHL team plays like their arena and you go 30 minutes in literally any direction and it's a different world up there. We've got a friend who's going to grad school in Quebec City and it, it's fascinating to hear Brian talk about it, but it's different.
It is much more different than I think the English speaking world realizes. Nice. But it's also the same. They've got the same currency, they've got the same government. It's a little yes, and. Just everyone speaks a weird moon language. And they've got an accent that is very unique, let's say like French. Even if you don't speak French, you can tell when somebody's from Quebec and speaking as opposed to France or Switzerland or Belgium or anywhere else. Okay. Anyway.
Should we talk about horny zombies or do you want to talk about Fulco Grady? I'll go ahead and talk about fulco. Okay. So I did. It is Japanese from 1964 written and directed by Shindo. Here is the summary paraphrased from the TV tropes article during one of the many bloody wars of Japan's feudal period are two unnamed female leads. An older woman and a younger woman await the return of Kechi respectively, the oldest son and the younger husband who was taken away to fight in the war.
If the farmland ravaged and made barren by the conflict, the two women have been surviving by murdering, wondering soldiers, throwing their bodies in a dark pit that I have affectionately nicknamed the death hole and selling their swords in armor to ushi, A skeevy black market dealer, Kiki's friend and fellow soldier Hachi returns and tells the two women that Kechi was killed on the way back.
Eventually the younger woman in Hachi embark on an affair, which the older woman does not like one bit leading to dark consequences. Things are further complicated when a creepy samurai and a creepy mask shows up. That has so much going on. I don't even want the official summary, I just want That sounds great. Yeah. This movie has a lot going on and could arguably be considered one of the very first slasher movies.
There is a villain in a mask that wrecks up a impressive kill count, and most of the characters are unpleasant, horny assholes whose unpleasant horny assholeness dictates the plot. I mean, that's a slash or flick. That's literally the definition I think of a slash or flick. I am maybe cherry picking order and the cause and effect of things, but the elements are there. And there's a death hole. There is a death hole. The death hole.
Plays a prominent role in the movie and actually looks pretty creepy. It's just. A dark hole that things happen in. Anyway, that's what she said. No, no, no. So alright. The proverbial, she is always very sex positive, but also very happy. She enjoys her many escapades and adventures. What you just described as a not fun. No, no, the death hole. No. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. So the way this movie was. Yes, yes. Yes. So serious. We talk about serious, important cultural issues. Truth.
The horrors of war in ancient field of Japan and death holes. Oh my God. The way the whole movie is shot, it's really cool. They found this really thick, it's called Suzuki Grass. It kind of looks like those bamboo forests that you see sometimes where it's just really thick and really tall. That wasn't deliberate setup and just There aren't very many aerial shots in this movie.
So most of the time, the time the camera's just down there in the weeds with the characters, so the audience can't really see too far beyond what's going on right in front of them either. And it just makes the whole thing really claustrophobic and especially the night shots.
It's kind of cool that I watched this so soon after Godzilla minus one and Godzilla minus one minus color, because this movie, a lot of the cinematography in this movie, because it's black and white obviously, and there are a lot of really cool shading effects in it they do that would not have worked in a colorized movie.
Just there's some shading and there's some night shots that are just really creepy when the masked guy shows up the way that he just kind of slowly comes into frame and you see the mask before you see anything else and just, it's neat.
I like that. And I was reading some trivia about this, and the casting crew actually filmed in one of these giant Suzuki grass fields in the middle of nowhere, and it was in the middle of summer and it was very unpleasant To the point that it is actually a major plot point in the biographical film about the life of Taji Tanama, who's a fairly prolific Japanese actor that played the black market guy in this movie and was also directed by the same guy that directed this movie just several decades
later. I think it may have been one of his last movies. Was it unpleasant because of the heat or because of bug? The heat. The bugs, the mud, and apparently they had to, the death hole that we see characters claim in and out of was not the actual death hole in the ground. They couldn't have an actual death hole in the ground. It kept filling with water so they had. Death hole.
So they had to build a false death hole that was like 10 feet tall and have the actress climb up there when they had to film the scene where she's climbing down into the death hole to retrieve the armor of all of the people that she killed. That sounds incredibly unpleasant. You're either up for that or you're not. Well, and it's the kind of thing that you think it's funny to be slimed and muddy for a little while and then it starts to get.
Old. It got to the point where they had to threaten to not pay people to get them to stick around until filming was done. It was that. Yeah, I believe it. Anyway, this movie is based on a Buddhist folk tale, and I say based, it's actually, they take the name only Baba and the general likeness of the mask, and otherwise they just kind do their own thing with it. That's where the name comes from. It's a specific kind of old crone demon in Japanese folklore that could be fun.
It used to specifically be one that stole fetuses from pregnant women, but it's kind of just gradually become just old demon woman. One thing that I do need to kind of issue a disclaimer on the Council of Dogs has some issues with this movie. There is a scene in order to showcase the horror because they can't grow food, they're just having to eat rats and little wildlife. And there was one point where the two women see a stray dog and promptly kill and eat it.
We don't see any violence, just the dog runs, the woman catches it. There's this very obviously 80 yards and possibly not even actually a dog Yelp. And then it smash cuts to them eating an obviously fake crop dog that's roasting on a spit. But it was still kind of an unnecessary scene. I don't think the Council of Dogs would pass judgment. They'd just growl at the movie until it left their chambers. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's reasonable. I think that's reasonable.
Well, I think so this was a wheel pick, right? Yes. I think I put it on the wheel because I read something somewhere about it being a classic Japanese folk horror, but I don't remember it literally anything else. Yeah. Now this movie is, I feel like I'm not doing it justice, but this is one of the most famous movies in Japanese cinema. Really? And just, yeah, I did not have time this weekend to do quite as much research on his cultural
significance aside, have liked. But this is one thing that I got from this is it's one of the first real post World War II anti-war movies that was made in Japan is they are not shy about how messed up war is. And I kind of feel like maybe they used ancient futile Japan as the setting in order to get away with making that statement.
And they don't explicitly say that it was this specific battle, but some of the research that I did on it and just some of the timing based on what other people that watched this movie and know way more about Japanese history than I do wrote about it. It strongly applied to take place either during or just after the Battle of Mina Tagawa, which long story short, it was kind of a Japanese equivalent.
The Alamo like a big famous losing battle that was just kind of ultimately a rallying cry for Imperial Japan. And all of the sacrifices will not be in vain. And this was used kind of as a Japanese parable for loyalty and sacrifice to your government all the way through World War ii. This was a thing that kamikaze pilots were told to emulate. And this is one of the first movies that really painted this in a just unambiguously negative light.
I, so I pulled up the IMDB and I'm looking through the images and I think I found the death hole in the grass. Yes. It's just this big. Black. Batch of nothing. I mean, I can see what you're saying about the shading in this photo and a lot of the others because you, nothing looks cool the way a good black and white movie looks cool, but also the way the dude is just looking down the death hole, it's unsettling in a way that I can't quite put my finger on.
And if you know behind the scenes that dude is actually perched up on a ladder and hanging on for dear life, it kind of add some humor to it. Yeah, I could see that too. Oh, you can kind of tell if you know what you're looking for. It almost kind of looks like a well that he's standing up on. But if you hadn't told me, I never would've guessed that. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. So you'd recommend it. I would. Ocean picture Terra scale.
I'm giving it a two, which is honestly a little bit generous because this movie's not really that scary in a traditional horror standpoint and a lot of the horrors of horror aspect of it, it's more sad than scary. But I am giving it a two just out of respect for the time and culture in which the film was made. I could see some 1960s Japanese audience being pretty freaked out by some of the stuff that happens here and quality, I'm giving it a high four. Cinematography is great.
Writing's great if the stuff about the cast being mistreated is true. I can't in good conscience give it a five, but I couldn't necessarily find Fair enough. The only source I could find was guy's biography, which from everything I've read, there were some liberties taken, let's say. Yeah, fair. Fair. And enjoyment. I'm going to give it a high three. This is a movie that I liked reading about and learning about a bit more than I actually enjoyed sitting through. I do recommend it.
It's just like a lot of old movies from its era. It kind of drags a little bit at points. Yeah, well you want to talk about something completely different. Horny zombies. Horny zombies, maybe the horniest zombies ever. And I know that there aren't that many horny zombies out there, but it's still like a worthy title to award this film. This is cemetery man. A cemetery man must kill the dead a second time when they become zombies. I would like to nominate this for worst IMDB summary. Ever award.
You kill them by fucking them? No, no. He shoots them with a pistol and there is a great deal of that. He does pew pew quite a bit, but that really underscores the craziness. So the original Italian title, and I hesitate to put you on the spot here, Melissa, because you let me for over a year, pronounce it GAO instead of Are we ever going to get over that? No, we're not. Because I trusted you and you brought shame to your
ancestors. I. Did. I brought shame to the rest of my family that's still living. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're right, they're right. The double L in Italian is not the same as in Spanish. I. Know, I know. And you weren't even doing it to troll me. I would respect you if you'd managed to keep up that bit for that long. You honestly thought I was saying it right. I was not. Jl LO.
Anyway, the original title for this is De la Morte de la More, which if you know anything about Italian is of death of life or about death, about life depending on your translation. Yeah. So I'm confused about the horny part still. Okay. Do the zombies want to have sex with the cemetery man? So let me walk you through what happens here.
So the cemetery man is hanging out at his cemetery and he's got a best friend who was a prolific French actor, but the character is special needs and only responds to everything with nah, nah, nah. But the way he says it, you can tell if he means yes or no or if he is being suspicious, something like that. And the dead basically. Yeah, exactly. After seven days, the dead come back and he has to shoot them in the head or brain them with something. But it's that. Standard zombie disposal.
Standard zombie disposal. But it's simpler than most zombie flicks. They're not coming back in hoards. It's one or two at a time if that. Well, so he's really lonely and he likes to read the phone book and cross out the names of the people who have died. And he gives this really morose narration. One of the earliest lines of dialogue he says is I would give my life to be dead. Which if that sounds melodramatic and grandiose
and Italian. Yes. Seems like a. Gen Z comment under a movie about global warming. Also. Yes. And then there's a funeral because he's in a cemetery and the cemetery is really impressive. Joe Bob talked about it. Some of the shots they did in an actual nice big cemetery in Italy, and they found another one that was deconsecrated, so it wasn't still technically a cemetery. So they could do a lot of the shots that you can't do in still an official
cemetery. It was almost like the daytime shots are in the nice one. The church still considers sacred, and then the zombie, the gnarly, naughty shots were in the other one or in a studio, but it still works across the board. Anyway, there's funeral and there's just the most gorgeous woman that he has ever seen. And she's mourning her husband who is considerably older and he hits on her and they fall in love and they do it on her husband's grave.
And Joe Bob described it as the best sex scene ever committed to film. And he might honestly be right, but the zombie husband gets upset, comes back from the dead and bites her, which. Is completely reasonable. Honestly at that point. That's a completely fair reaction. I got to say, I'm with the dead husband on this one. Well, I mean in fairness, he was dead and she said that she never kept anything from him in life and she wanted to share this with him, which I think is a sweet gesture.
Wait, wait. Whoa. So this was an adultery, this was a threesome with a severe misfire in communication because one of them is a zombie. Not quite. No, no, no, no. So she didn't expect him to come back. She just wanted his spirit to be aware and present and compersion type of thing. Wildly. Underestimated the spirit's willingness to. She should have had the polyamory talk with him before he died. She did not. And things, communication. Say all that. Communication.
Okay. Alright, hold on. It's important. I'm still stuck on the fact that this was on purpose. I assumed that they were just so horny that they ripped off their clothes and had to do it right there. No, they had sex on his grave. On purpose. Because that was on purpose. And in fairness, they were both very horny and they are both dropped dead gorgeous. And you see a lot and you see a lot of different times. I know I bring this up a little bit too often.
I don't mean to just make this a constant one issue wink for me, but I am ace. That's okay. I feel like if a woman was like, Hey, you want to have sex on my husband's grave so that we can share this moment with him, I'm not sure, even if I wasn't taste that I'd be up for that. Even if she was really hot. I feel like there's a bunch of issues that would need to be addressed.
And if I killed zombies for a living and knew that corpses periodically rise from this exact graveyard that we're going to do this thing, and I would have even further questions. So in his defense, they only come back on the seventh night and the husband has already been dead. She says, well, she claimed that he had been dead for longer than that, so he thought he was safe from that particular zombie. So when she gets bitten, she into a zombie. And then he also has sex with her zombie.
So that's where I'm going to stop, because up until now it sounds like I'm spoiling stuff. But that's just like the first 20 minutes of the movie and it somehow ratchets from there. So I am not exaggerating when I say this is a bizarre fever dream of film that I can't decide how I feel about it and it's just preposterous and ridiculous.
But it is the perfect midnight or drive-in movie. Like you get a beer, you have some friends around, you want to just watch something where people say wacky shit and you see lots of skin. Skin. Yeah. This may be the very best movie for you to watch to scratch that itch. It's a very Italian movie. Bob was saying, and if you're going to watch it, watch it with the Joe Bob commentary on Shutter, because that was really well done. But he said this was the first or the last Jello.
I'm not completely sure I buy that because in my head, jello still has at least some police procedural element to it. And this kind of does. But this also just feels like wacky, weird fever dream. If this is the very last yellow, then the genre by 1994 had evolved quite a bit away from its roots. And that's possible. But it is generally considered the last Italian horror movie because Italians just haven't done horror really ever since in 20 plus years.
It's like they all collectively decided, okay, we've achieved zombie six. That's what we set out to do with this whole genre experiment when we started. We're done, we're done. Rev it up guys. Basically. Wow. I'm still also stuck on the fact that that was only the first 20 minutes of the movie. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Things happen. I figured that was at least a second act thing. Nope, I could tell you more that would blow your mind, but it'd be better to, I don't want to spoil it.
I'll tell that part because that communicates the soul of the film, the soul and the. Establishing moment. The rather generous ambiance that really brings the film together, if you know what I mean. And I think that you do. Wow. So anyway, it's on Tub. Was always going be. It's on to me, the original and the Joe Bob commentary is also on shutter. So yeah, it wasn't scary. I don't know. I enjoyed it. It was at least four quality.
The cinematography is much, much better than it has any right to be. And the acting is better than it has any right to be, just because people were, they just decided we're going to do this crazy movie quality. I'm honestly not sure because that Eugene Levy scale. What am I looking at? I don't even know. Part. I mean, I dunno. I don't know. Other body parts have very decisive answers, but not holistically. I'm just not sure. So yeah, cemetery man. Cemetery man. Glad we ended on that.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Do y'all want to spin the wheel or Nah, I'm good either way. That's going to depend because while I was watching the movie you did last week on Tubi to see what I thought about it, which incidentally, plus one to most of what you said, I discovered a movie from my past that I think should qualify for the podcast. But I know that it technically, because most of the funding came from the States, probably doesn't, but I kind want to put it to a vote. What is it?
The Belco experiment. Yay or nay. Oh, yay. Sure. 100%. Okay. So I swear. Yeah, the funding came from the States, but it was filmed in, I want to say Columbia, but I don't know if that's right. Yeah. And I remember us watching it when it came out. We saw it in theaters and hated it. And I kind of want to watch it now in a way, different head space as far as work culture and just my own personal life than I
was in 2016. And if I like it now, I want to explore why it works for me now, but didn't work for me in 2016. And if it turns out I still don't like it, I want to give it a very public kick in the balls. Do. It. I love it. Do it. So I swear I've looked that up on IMDB before and I swear at least once when I did it, it said Columbia was a country of origin. It doesn't right now, but the Columbia part is actually part of the plot and it was genuinely shot
down there. So I'm counting it. Alright. Do it. Okay. Absolutely. And I actually have a, I want to do so maybe we don't. Yeah, no, I'm thinking pause the wheel for a little while. Thank you for your service wheel. We'll come back to you. Yep. Thank you. You do love you. Yeah. Thank you for one way used you last week giving me on Baba and not some weird alt-Right. Crap. That always we'll continue. It's always a concern when we don't use you for a while.
Yep. Yep. Well, if you're still listening to our super professional podcast, give us a super professional review on Apple Podcasts or your podcast player of choice. Follow us on threads, follow us on letterbox, shoot us an email. Tell your friends about us. Tell anybody that's into horror that, Hey, these guys are cool. You should check 'em out. It would mean a lot to us. And we will see you next week for Belco Experiment. And I'm not sure what Melissa's going to go with,
but I feel like we gave you a lot. Maybe horny zombies, maybe Dream Horror, I don't know. There's a couple of different ones. I might have to maybe do one or two. Sure. I actually have no idea what I'm going to do, so I'll figure something out. But we will talk to you all next week.