Speaking of, did you get a chance to watch, pause, play? Oh, yes. Oh yes. Yes, I did. It's very Melissa, little short, isn't it? Yeah. When I said that I was not being sarcastic or trying to mislead between the fact that you picked the movie and the thumbnail and all of the blood on her mouth, I was like, oh, this is going to end exactly how I think it's going to end, isn't it? So welcome to Imported Horror.
This is the podcast that brings you the very best of freaky dream leg night, Marish, phone booths, serial killers, walking very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very slowly through the woods, and the most Melissa Short film you'll ever see in your life that hass exactly the way you think it will, because Melissa picked it from Beyond the Shining Seas. I'm Marcus. I'm here with my intact co-hosts.
Melissa and Grady, and if we had two nickels, wait, if we had a nickel for every movie we reviewed on the podcast that ended this way, I think we'd have significantly more than two nickels. I know it's been more than two. Yeah, no, it has been. It's a theme. Melissa has a vibe. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. She's from New Jersey. To be fair, when I picked this short, I didn't know how it was going to end.
I only saw the words. No, listen, I only saw the words France and Feminist, and I said, okay. I suck at identifying languages. I thought this was German. Either movie sense make of that. What you'll. I'm not completely sure it was all that feminist, to be completely honest with you, I think equating this, if your definition of feminist is how this movie ends, then that that's how Republicans win elections. In a nutshell. That's how Republicans win elections.
Okay. To be fair, I didn't say the word feminism. That was one of the hashtags in short verse, which is why I looked through the hashtags and I was like, okay, let's do it. Yeah. Okay. Can anyone apply hashtags to movies on short verse and do they apply them sarcastically? I don't know. This is the topics for, this is feminist revenge, colorful killer, and female characters. I mean, all of those are true if for a certain point of view of, I mean, it's.
Colorful revenge. It is very colorful. I will give it that. Well, we. Don't know what the guy was doing before the movie started. Maybe he's been just a horrendous asshole to her for years and years and is blackballing her trying to get into this French screenwriting industry, and this is the culmination of years of planning. We don't know. That's the beauty of short movies. Well, I, I'm going to say that you know what?
We'll get more into this when we talk about it, but I am going to say that if you think about the fact that women on dating apps inviting men over, there's a significantly higher chance of the woman not making it out of that situation than the man. I mean, fair, sure, but that doesn't, I mean, still the numbers are still pretty. This guy didn't do anything on camera. No, on. Camera. Who knows? It's beauty. Of the Short movie. If we're making.
We can make up our own stories to make what happened morally acceptable or not, depending on how we're feeling. Today. Well, I know how Melissa's feeling. She always picks this kind of movie. Anyway, we've got, what was yours called, Melissa? Pray, kill, pray. Kill, pause, play, kill, pause, play, kill on short verse because Melissa's short. Get it. Get it. Anyway, then Grady got super existential and political, but also not political depending on who you ask.
With Laina from Spain in 1972, that. Does not translate to what you think it does. No, no. I was surprised. I shouldn't be because I live in Texas and my Spanish should really be much better than it is, but I was surprised, and we've also got in a violent nature because Shutter was promoting it because of New Year's, and I get why they do that, and I get why people like it, sort of, kind of. But it wasn't my jam.
That's from Canada and I'm going to talk about it, and I think maybe you've seen that, Melissa? I have, yes. Okay. Okay. That's what I thought. All right. First, I have not, but I'll ask dumb and irrelevant questions throughout. I challenge you because I don't know how many dumb questions you can find with this movie. Actually, it's kind of difficult. And it was lackluster, but. We'll talk about it. I wasn't crazy about it. But first we have the triumphant return of our coming soon.
Do you guys hear that too, or am I having a stroke? No, I think you're having a stroke. No, I'm just kidding. I heard it. It's creepy. I figured out how to upload media to Riverside to the web remote podcasting thing we're using, so I don't have to insert it in audition later, which is going to make my life a lot easier. Nice. So January is slow and it's usually a slow month for movies. It's going to be slow around here. The major highlight that I'm looking forward to is a Nick Frost movie,
dropping on Shutter maybe next week, maybe the week after. I'm not sure, but if you're thinking, who's Nick Frost? He's the other guy from Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and all those movies with Simon Peg, but that's not this week. So the first one we've got, I cannot pronounce. This is on Netflix. It dropped on the 2nd of January. This is Bull. I am so sorry. This is a Bollywood horror movie. Is. Horror comedy this one of these we've ever talked about or seen a preview of?
Because it feels like it's something that should be a lot more common than it is. I feel like either I miss something in translation or I miss something, having not seen the first two movies or even having heard of the first two movies, maybe both. I don't know. It did seem like we were expected to know who a lot of these characters were. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, this is apparently the third. I wish we would've seen the first two or heard of the first two because this looks awesome. It looks fun.
Well, all three of them are. On Netflix. Got the Indian equivalent of that lady from the second Beetlejuice movie. There's a lot of stuff happening here. Apparently. The first one was in 2007. Oh, okay. That would partly explain why we hadn't heard of it. So Han a fraudster posing as an exorcist takes on a lucrative case at a haunted castle unraveling a sinister plot involving mischievous priests, culminating in a hilarious yet thrilling ride, filled with unexpected twists and turns and scares.
Because I am reading my own notes. What I do know, what I did recognize is that the trailer makes a big deal out of this opening during Diwali, which is big, big religious festival celebration. I hesitate to call it the Indian Christmas because there's so many different theological differences that feels forced it. They're. A big deal. Big thing that they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this year it overlapped with Halloween, which was kind of neat.
My neighbors across the street had a whole bunch of multicolored lights and everything else out there that was cool. I don't know if you know this, but there is a translation of the title, and it's interesting because the same title of this movie is a title of a movie that from the late eighties that is getting remade that should never be remade. So can you guess the title starts with an L. American movie.
The movie that's getting remade? I'm not actually sure if it's American, but I'm pretty sure it is. English. Yes. Love. Actually, I know very few movies that start with L. I'm just going to kind of go through all of them. No. No. A. Horror movie. I take it, or not a horror movie. Fantasy. Lick My Ball. Three, the Liquor. A lot of young women built their fantasies around a character in this movie. Still sticking with my ball. Read the Look. Okay.
Lord of the Rings was not from the late eighties. We are not that old. And I don't know what character you would think of there. I'm talking like I'm talking. Nuts for Orlando Bloom for a year or two there, weren't. They? Ew. No, no, no. I'm talking about eighties. Yeah. I don't like Orlando Bloom. I'm talking about eighties quintessential rock. I'm more of a gimley man myself. I like Gimley a lot too, but I'm not going to hate on leg loss. What?
Eighties Quintessential Rockstar starred in this movie? Quintessential. Oh, no. Okay. Number one, that's not late eighties. Number two, they're not remaking that. Yes, they are. No, you can't remake. That. He's dead. I know. I know. Love. Labyrinth. David Bowie. You can't replace David Bowie. That's not how it works. No. Yeah, everybody's very upset about it. That's not.
No, the only way this will work is if they're casting Jermaine Clement as David Bowie, and they're just highlighting the fact that they should not be doing this. Okay. That I would watch. Technically, it was late eighties. It was 86. That's not late. It is the second half of the eighties. I mean, well, it's mid. Fine, mid eighties. Okay. Well, I was thinking like 88 or 89 we're pedantic today. Pedantic. Pedantic. So the Bollywood Horror, that is what that the title translates into.
Labyrinth. So. It's Labyrinth one, two, and three. Okay, that's cool. That's cool. Did you know Pop Quiz Labyrinth is the oldest word in continual usage in English that has meant the same thing throughout. That is. Interesting. Interesting. That was a pop quiz I gave to my students years ago, and they thought about it. Then I told 'em, and it was, oh, okay. It wasn't English originally, obviously, but it's maintained it's original meaning for thousands and thousands of years at this point.
The thing about a labyrinth remake that offends me the most isn't the idea of replacing David Bowie because I mean, even though he's an integral part of that movie, and that's why the movie shouldn't be remade. I get it if you have to remake it because he's dead. But the thing that offends me the most is they're almost certainly going to replace the Muppets with CGI. Yeah. And that. Kind of is the other thing, other than David Bowie, that that makes that movie.
Yeah. It's peak eighties puppetry and creature feature. You cannot do that with computers. Well, supposedly the director for it is going to be Robert Eggers, the guy who just did Nosferatu. And The Witch and, okay, all right. Okay. Okay. I'm no longer offended. I'm still skeptical. I'm incredibly skeptical. The, okay, okay. I'm listening. He did the Northman, he did the Witch. He did the lighthouse.
So he's going to make it weird. And I could see him going in a, you can't possibly remake this sort of direction. Now. There is a fake poster going around, so I want to dispel any rumors. There has not been a cast or anything selected for this. There was a thing that was spreading around that Tom Hiddleston was going to be in it, and I'm like, no, no, no. That's untrue. So the only thing we know right now is that in 2023, it went through a bunch of script rewrites and that Robert Edwards has.
A. Been. I could see Jennifer Connolly coming back on board and it being like the next generation or something like that. I can see that. But you've got to, if not David Bowie, you've got to have somebody who's an actual rocker who can sing, who has that same sort of aged vintage cool. I don't know who that would be. I don't know. I know. How could they do it? How could they do it?
And it feels like a trap because you know people aren't, they're going to go into that movie thinking this is third thing that a me not going to anywhere. They are going to be too cowardly to give replacement. David Bowie a co piece. Yes. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. This is not going to be the Young Girls Fantasies of the eighties. New No. And frankly, a lot of young Boys, because David Bowie. Yeah. That triggered some sexual awakenings. Yeah, David Bowie can get it. Even. Debbie can still get it.
Completely hypothetically. In other news sensor. Just hit Tubby. We did that for the podcast before. That's from 2021. Great, great movie. I really liked it. Oh, video Nasties in the UK on shutter, a pair of French extreme horrors have dropped, and these have been around for a while, but there's a French, new French Extreme or new French extremity category on Shutter, and they've got a reputation, so I figured we'd mention them. Say what? I've got a new French extremity.
Oh, damn it. I deleted the sound effects. The media that came with it. One of 'em was like a joke track, but I deleted it. Sadly. I will bring it back for next time. Anyway, ills or them is on there. That's definitely got a reputation. But the more interesting one for us might be irreversible, which is from 2002 as Monica Lucci and Cent Cael,
both of whom have been in everything. Cael was magnificent in Eastern Promises, and I still claim that is a criminally underrated mob movie that might, everybody talks about Scorsese, but honestly, Eastern Promises is on the same level as Goodfellas in Casino. It might be better, maybe I'm not going to get into that argument, but it's really good. Was kind of thrown watching the trailer for irreversible and having absolutely no other context for it, which I tried to do with these.
I watched these trailers as blind as possible, and then just rely on y'all to fill in the details and make up my own funny conclusions for laughs. But we basically had three and a half minutes of complete sensory overload and what I can only refer to as aggressively mean techno. And then it ends with a door that says Rectum above it. And I know that we're a foreign movie, and that couldn't possibly admit what I thought it meant, but it's a big, big boy that says Rectum over it.
It's French though. So that could go either way. It can go. Anyway. So I will admit the trailer made me dizzy except. In reverse, because it's irreversible. We'll do actually. So that's the whole hook of the movie.
So the whole movie is shot in reverse, so you see the end of the movie first. So yes, since Shutter also dropped what they called the Straight Cut, which is the movie, so the original 2002 version, you see the end of the movie first, and then it goes back to the end of the film is the beginning of the story, which is the horrific attack. So you see the revenge first and the Triggering event.
Last. And it's violent, it's French Extreme, and I'm assuming it's got a whole bunch of those crazy camera angles for the camera. Get some weird angle looking up at the sky. Yeah, that was basically the entire trailer. Yeah. And I mean, maybe I shouldn't give this away, but do you want to know what the door with rectum above it was. A door Door. I can't say. No, you can't leave us. Hanging. The DSM nightclub. So yes. It's actually a gay BDSM nightclub.
I kind of assumed that because rectum, but yeah, not the Guesses versions is just, there's a certain mystique that the combination of BDSM and the word rectum has. And. As the French might say, may we, which is, but yes, so damn, I wish I had that, but I'm Shh. I'm going to have to bring that back.
Anyway, if you're feeling real. S Muddy, I sent this to y'all before I read the press release from Screen Box, but a whole bunch of old school trashy JLo are dropping on screen box throughout January, including strip nude for your killer, which you don't even need to watch the trailer. It feels like a parody of Jello names. Yeah, but it both is and is not because it's Italian horror and fun story.
When I was watching the trailer on my phone for strip nude for your killer, I was watching it on my phone on the couch. Roz was in front of me watching Daniel Tiger on the tv, and my phone popped up and said, Hey, do you want to airplay this to your tv? And I said out loud. No, this would be a really good way to wane Ross off of Daniel Tiger. No, it would not do this. Read the room iPhone. No, I don't want to do that.
Or it would traumatize her into never watching anything other than Daniel Tiger again for the rest of her life. Yeah, good point. This would backfire. Realistically, she just turned around and look at me like, bro, what the hell, man? Because I get that look all the time. The side eye slash stink eye. And she was real happy with me today. We went and played at Cheeky Monkeys and we went and got Thai food and dah, dah, dah. But you take away dt, there's no coming back for that.
You can't do that to her. No, it's not. No, you cannot. You cannot. So we'll talk more about that. I think that one drops on January 17th. The one that dropped on screen box already is let pull it up here with. I'm just imagining Daniel Tiger spliced with that scene from Fight Club. Oh, that'd be so weird. I both like and loathe Daniel Tiger because he makes it all about him all the time.
And the physiology of this whole world really baffles me and makes me deeply uncomfortable in ways that I can't explain because owls are not that big. They're just not. Let's, let's save this for Marcus's second podcast Premiering Leader this month. Why? Daniel Tiger is a whiny bitch. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, wither, which is already all over. It's on two B, it's on plex. It's on fum. I'm just looking at it on IMDB. Anyway, that hit screen box as well. This is basically a Swedish evil dead Ida.
The makeup looks great. Makeup looks fantastic. Yeah. Ida and Alban, or maybe Ida and Alban are a happy couple. They sit off to a cabin in the vast Swedish woodlands to have a fun holiday with their friends. But under the floorboards waits an evil from Sweden's dark past. So the screen box publicity mentioned this as like a Swedish evil dead. I sort of assumed it was like that Japanese one mu muscle, what was it. Japanese? Wait, no, body building Muscle builder. And.
Hell yeah. What was that muscle? I know it was body building and muscles and in inhale, I just can't remember the exact. Bloody muscle bodybuilder. Inhale. There you go. Which was, that's what Japanese Fanfic of evil day. Moderate. Bloody muscle bodybuilder in Hell. Love. It. So I assumed this was sort of the Swedish equivalent. The camera work looks maybe a little bit on the low budget side, but the makeup and the special effects, the practical effects look great.
And I think makeup can make or break a movie. It can. It can. And honestly, CG, I can break a movie. Maybe I'm just a snob, but so of all movies, this came up during Gladiator two, which my brother was like, I don't want to go to the movie theater and watch a two and a half hour movie, man. I was like, okay. I kind of get that. That is long, but also it's Gladiator, so I snuck off. He and my sister-in-law left. So it's good. I enjoyed it.
But the first one was almost entirely practical effects and clever camera angles. I don't think the tiger was ever actually that close to any of the actors, but it was a real. Tiger. There are specific OSHA guidelines against that, so I would hope so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This, they just sort of made the baboons and the Black Rhino and all the other animals, including the sharks, just completely cg. And
I get that. I do, especially the Black Rhino, because there's a very, very small handful of those alive, and they're guarded 24 7 by gigantic Kenyan dudes. Yeah. They're not going to just let Russell Crow punch one, no matter how much Russell Crow wants to. No, no, not at all. No. But the first one was so raw and violent in a practical effects way that it really underscored all of its points. And the CGI kind of took me out of it. It made it feel a lot more processed.
Still a really good movie, just, I don't know. Yeah. But I don't think that wither had the budget to have that problem, so Fair enough. It's going to be interesting. I wasn't trying to cut you off, but I realized that has massive cutoff potential. Where'd you go? She just bailed. Oh, no, I'm right here. Oh, well, your camera went. Oh, is my camera gone now? No, looking at the, you're here. You just, oh, no. I thought I cut you off with the sound effect, and you were like, well, fine.
I'm going to go, wait, me, me, me, me, me. No, no, I'm. Here. I mean, we could just make cutting one of us off of the sound effect. A regular way to end the Yeah, like that. Exactly like that. So anyway, all right, Melissa, I don't have a sound effect for how short you are, but I feel like we have to start with your short. The reason I feel like you guys think we need to start with my short is because of how Melissa it was, how short it was, and how Melissa it was.
So think about the most Melissa thing you could possibly think about, and that would be this horror movie. So you have, oh my God, I'm blanking again on the name of it. Why do I keep doing that? Hold on. Hang on. I got a effect for this. Oh my God. Are okay. Funny. It's play, pause, kill. It's basic premise. Julie is a loner. She spends her Saturday off at home trying to write a new screenplay.
She keeps receiving messages from someone who's just known as H someone she might be interested in, and she invites him over, and it is a French horror movie, and it really feels like it's just a Tinder date, right? It's a Tinder date. Guy's coming over, he's bringing wine. He's like, Hey, you're writing this horror screenplay. If you're writing this horror screenplay, we should probably watch a horror movie together.
I was rather offended that he brought, I Know What You Did last summer, because I got to tell you, if I was writing a horror screenplay and somebody messaged me, if I was in the dating pool and told me that they were bringing over, I know What you did last summer, they might end up in the same position as this guy did, because that's.
Not a horror movie you bring to watch. I know this may be why she may not have been planning to do what she did at the end of this movie until she learned what movie he brought. I mean, it's a good movie. It's not what you want to use to impress somebody. I'm such a horror fan. I watched, I know What she Did last summer. I'm such an action fan. My favorite action man is Steven Egal. Yeah.
Exactly. What I do think is interesting is that, and I know what you did last summer, and one of the characters in it is Sarah Michelle Geller, and that was who she mentioned in this actual movie. She's like, oh, everybody loves this Sarah Michelle Geller movie. What I think was interesting was Sarah Michelle Geller in that movie played the damsel that was running away from the killer that the girl in Trouble from this unknown entity.
And I'd like to think that they did that on purpose, because this was basically that twisted around, and I almost wonder if that was the crust, the meat of the film. Oh God. I dunno why I use that phrase. I never use that phrase. I know. Anyway, but as a way to throw you off.
And honestly, if you're a woman and you're watching a horror movie and there is a girl and she invites a guy over and there's some kind of suspense or horror that you think is happening, 99% of the time that horror is going to be inflicted on the woman, and the woman is tense in those situations. And I know that we've gotten to the point where there's a lot of female serial killers now like that portrayed in movies, female evils, but really that wasn't the way it was years ago. And so.
There's a lot of catching up to do from years and years of cinematic tradition. Exactly. And so while. I. Also, the feeling. Yeah. I got the feeling this just wanted to have fun. It's not trying to make a big grandiose point, it's just trying to have fun and invert your expectations and kind of wink at the camera a little bit. Yeah, I agree with that. But I also think that you can read a little bit deeper into it,
and that can be kind of fun too. It also gave me an eighties vibe, and I don't know if that was because it was foreign or not. I know sometimes Italian movies can give me an eighties vibe, but that's because the eighties came to Italy, like nineties. I would pin it on the super aggressive techno soundtrack throughout the movie. Yeah, I did too. Yep. Yeah, I think the synth wave gave it the eighties vibes for sure. I actually thought at the end may or may. Not also be. Why. I thought it.
Was German. Fair enough. I also thought it was interesting at the end, I really thought that they were going to kind of show that she used that as inspiration for her screenplay, or that was actually the screenplay that she was writing. So I. Amed it didn't go in that direction was for her pin, and this is how she fills it. I mean, that works too. So I thought the ending, they had fun with the ending and it was open-ended enough that you can take it
in a bunch of different fun ways. I actually really liked the way they did that. Yeah, it's fun. It is just, I really hesitate to call it feminist. One of the characters happens to be female and it's a dating thing sort of thing, but maybe I can see how it's feminist. I can't see how it's revenge, let's put it that way. No revenge. I can't see. That's what it said. I can't see revenge.
I can see feminist though, and I think that if you poll a hundred guys and a hundred girls, they would have very different views on whether it was feminist or not. And I think that says something about it too. There. Are lot of things. French Live action adaptation of Ms. Pacman got a lot darker than it needed to. Now, I do have to say that the depiction of the appendage was. Obviously a hot dog. A lot less graphic than the depiction of the appendage in the other film.
That was Stalker, was it called? Yes. The one in the Elevator. Yes. I was trying to place. So I think Stalker had a much more visually impactful appendage, but this was also fun in the budget. And another part of that is also, and admittedly the short movie versus feature Link movie, obviously this is going to be the case.
Stalker had a whole lot more buildup to it and context and still, even though I didn't really care for the movie, still one of my favorite villain monologues in any movie we've done for the podcast. Oh God, yes. No. It's such a good monologue. This. Movie just kind of gets right to the point because it's got 14 minutes to bite off this dude's wiener and it needs to get. Stalker was like the Toby movie to end all Toby movies this.
And on the one hand, if you're not going in expecting that, you're like, oh, okay. Nera wasn't expecting that, but there's no way we can talk around it. Melissa picked it because a dude gets his wiener chopped off. No. Yeah, fair enough. There's no beating around the bush anyway, biting. Around the bush. No, that'd be the other way around. He can't beat around the bush because his beater's been bitten off. Exactly. So anyway, Melissa's short. I take it, you would recommend.
Oh, 100%. This was awesome. It wasn't scary, but it was fun. And I loved the blood as it's dripping down her giant boobs, which is just such a great visual aspect of this, a little short. Normally we try to just summarize the tip, but we couldn't do that with this short film. I would love to know. So I can't find it, but I would love to know what it was that she had in her mouth that depicted the appendage. I would be willing to bet money that it was a hot dog, but I'm kind of cynical.
It almost looked too stiff to be a hot dog and too pink. Well, I mean, it was a prop. I doubt that the prop that they manipulated on the floor just enough so you could see what it was, but not enough that it would get banned from YouTube or whatever. It. Kind of made me want Laffy Cappy. I want Laffy Cappy now Strawberry. That is the. First time anyone's ever said that. Should we warn Dan about this movie? We don't bro heads some.
I was going to say, you're right, Grady. It's funnier if you guys don't. Well, Grady, do you want to talk about phone booths or Sure, why not? Should we talk about slow serial killers? Okay. Phone booth. Alright, so I did Laina, which for those resting in your Spanish translates to phone booth. Yes. I thought it translated to the cabin too. The IMB summary. Well, a man gets trapped inside a telephone box and nobody is able to free him. The summary doesn't go into a whole lot of detail.
In fairness, neither does the shark fell. I was going to say. So it was written and directed by Antonio, and it was part of just kind of this broad counterculture time in Spanish cinema that I'm not able to pronounce and won't go to and to because I won't be able to do it justice. But the basic summary of it is this is when Francisco Franco or Franco, is it Francisco Franco or Francisco Franco. I think Franco. Franco. This is Fran. Franco, dictator of Spain for a long time.
So things were ad and media was heavily regulated, heavily controlled. So any satire against pretty much anything, but especially the less savory elements of the Spanish government at the time had to be very, very carefully coded. Like say in a silly 30 minute short film where a guy is trapped in a telephone booth and people go to cartoonish links to try to rescue him. And the entire first half of this movie pretty much plays like a Mr. Bean skit or a funny thing directed by Terry Gilliam.
And then the government comes to pick up the foam booth with the guy still in it, and things are still pretty funny, but they gradually get darker and more surreal like a Fran Kafka movie or a Fran Kafka story or a sad movie directed by Terry Gilliam. That kind of juxtaposition is just what really made this movie work. And it was a huge hit in Spain. I can imagine. Affected pop culture more than honestly. Makes sense. There were parodies, there were replicas of the phone booth.
There's one in some art museum in New York that's prominently displayed. It got so popular, and admittedly, this may be a rumor, but I really want it to be true because it's hilarious. There was a rumor that this actually scared people from getting into phone booths in Spain badly enough that the actor that played, the guy that gets trapped in the phone booth, Jose Luis Lopez Vasquez, yes. That's his entire name, actually had to be the spokesperson for the company that makes most of the phone
booths in Spain at that time. Like, look, see, I'm getting in this phone booth. I'm not trapped getting out. Someone closes the door. Just kidding. Look, I can come out. Commercial. Really interesting that I find it. Nice. I'll link. To it. Oh God, I need to find it. I'll link to it. The show notes. I find it really interesting that it became such a huge pop culture moment there.
And the reason is because obviously these movies are nothing alike the two movies I'm going to say, but it gave me the same vibe. This movie gave me the same vibe as Soylent Green gave me. I can see that. I can see that. I can absolutely see. That also. Yeah. That weird, terrible mix of bleakness and absurdity. Yes. Yes. And Soylent Green also became a big pop culture reference for the same, not the same reasons, but for political reasons as well in governmental overreach.
And the fact that it sounds really funny when Charlton Heston screams that it's made of people. Well, so the whole time I'm watching this, I was trying to remember when Franco died, and I couldn't pull it up because I was watching it on my phone, but he died in 75, so this was toward the end of his tenure. And the eighties in Spain were like the sixties in the us everything liberalized and democratized in a real big hurry.
We talked about that some with, I think we talked about it with Pan's Labyrinth. I know we talked about it with Veronica because that early nineties period was the same way people remember that era, sort of the HW years in Spain, not because HW was president, but that same time block where people really look fondly on those years in Spain.
It's something, I forget where I heard this, and they weren't talking about Spain, they were talking about Japan just after the reconstruction after World War II democracy without context. Oh, I like that. We're a country that wasn't a democracy suddenly becomes one very, very abruptly, and things get weird. And if you've got the economic structure to be able to handle that, and by Franco's death, Spain did then it's for the most part a festive experience. But this was from 72.
Otherwise made the new boss same as the old boss in a couple of years. Basically. Yes, exactly. Yes. But this was 72, so they had that absurdist sense of humor and everything. There was movement in that direction, but also the regime was still pretty strong. And I don't think that Franco of the seventies was the same as Franco of the forties or fifties or thirties, but it was still a dictatorship. It was still pretty bad. The media, media police were still out in full force. Yes.
If you watch interviews during the time, Antonio Mercer was just super coy about it. Like, oh, well, what do you think it means? And then interviews from later in his life. Yeah, it's about Franco. Of course. It's about Franco. Yeah. I think that they had all figured that out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, dictatorships are all about plausible deniability. If I can just make it seem, then nobody cares about accuracy. They just care about appearances and blame. Basically.
Saudi was the same way back when I lived there in the nineties, but this movie felt like a bad dream in a surreal sort of, I'm dreaming and I can't stop this, that it's just getting worse and worse and worse. And there's this epic soundtrack to it and I'm completely powerless. And the sudden inexplicable appearance of clowns at the three-fourths mark. Just like any other bad drink. Yes, exactly. Yep. So weird. I loved it. So how would you rate this?
I would say wavering between the two and a three on the motion picture terror skill. It does get dark, but it's silly and absurd enough getting there that it maybe didn't really do anything for me personally, but I could see this really rubbing someone the wrong way if they went into it blind. So I'd say two. Not in the same way that Melissa's short film might rub someone the wrong way. We have so many of these.
I wish Sometimes it's rare, but I wish we did video sometimes so that everybody could see my grin. Pantomime. You're smiling. Melissa's trying not to laugh. I'm just glaring at you because you made a pun be that's basically every episode at some point. It's a once an episode, usually more than once an episode thing. We should all take pictures for quality, for enjoyment. That face of ours, I could see that five definitely for quality. Well, especially getting it past the sensors.
We don't fully appreciate that in the States, but that's tricky. Yeah. Maybe we should appreciate that more now though. It. Goes away. I wasn't going to bring that up unless y'all did. But yeah, some elements of this movie we may need to reference as a how to guide in a couple of months. Or weeks, depending on how quickly it guys move. I dunno, I'm sort of on the, it's all just going to go like a fart in the wind at this point, but we'll see.
I mean, it's obviously going to be a fart in the wind. It's just we don't know what direction that wind's blowing or how slow it's going to be. Or how wet the fart will be. Truth, truth. I mean, it's obviously going to be soggy, but there are different levels of sogginess that the fart can be. Not if you're my 2-year-old who is a farese. That is fair. Ross is really good at that. Well, and you look at her and you go, damn girl.
And then you control and or drag her back to her room and the changing table and there's nothing in the diaper and you weep for the future because it's coming and you hope. In about 10 or 12 years, she's either going to be mortified that she inherited that from you or delighted that she inherited that from you. There is going to be no in-between. It could be both. It could be both. I'm banking on both. It's circumstantial. But you just hope that the storm breaks right after Emily walks in,
which has happened before. It's very nice. Anyway, so walking through the woods, walking through the woods. Slowly. I watched slowly, painfully, slowly. I watched in a violent nature a couple of weeks ago on Shutter, and it was, I hadn't watched a serious horror movie in a while because as y'all have probably gathered by now, I am a two B garbage person. And that was an accurate submission of your character. And it works in many different ways. I am a tubi garbage person.
I like garbage on Tubi, but I'm also a tubi style garbage person. Any way you break out those adjectives, it works. But I wanted to play around on Shutter and in a violent nature was one of those that was really hyped coming out when it dropped a couple of months ago. When locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that ENT tombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 70-year-old crime. His body is resurrected and becomes hell bent on retrieving.
They really hyped this up as a. Johnny seems like an. Revisable name for a vengeful. Spirit. I can't quite put a finger on Mark. Well, they hyped it up as a really brutal neo slasher, almost reinventing the genre. And they made a big deal out of the cinematography is from the Killer's perspective, that's not really accurate. Accurate. Oh. Yeah, I remember seeing previous with this now. Yeah, I feel like most of the movie wasn't like first person.
It was like third person. So Les didn't even follow. The conceit of its own movie of its own. Not really. It was less half-life and more dead space where. Every horror movie shows things from the Killer's perspective when the Killer's about to kill things. That's just what horror movies do. If you're not doing that all the time, you're not special and your trailer was.
Meaningless. Well, there were moments where it was the opening sequence in Halloween where you're literally seeing it from the Killer's eyes, but a lot of it, it was a couple of feet behind the killer and he's walking through the picturesque Canadian woods and he does it so slowly. And the premise was interesting. They clearly watched a lot of old school slashers. They got the backstory and the ethos and everything really well done. But it. Sounds like the ingredients are there.
Just. Not the execution. Well, you can go two ways with Slashers. You can make it funny and ridiculous and absurd or you can try to make it impactful and meaningful. And that rarely works with Slashers. The whole point is these young beautiful idiots are doing beautiful horny stupid things in the woods and they die cartoonish horrific deaths. Yeah. That's the whole point. But if they're not. It's very difficult to make that unique these days. Scream as great as Scream.
Is it kind of poisoned that? Well. It did. It did. And this, it made the characters actually kind of likable and kind of enjoyable in a, okay, y'all are college kids. I could see being fun to have in one of my classes. And maybe that's part of it because I have a hard time with dead teenager movies for that reason. But they weren't annoying enough to justify horrific deaths and the Bad Guy wasn't interesting enough.
It just felt mean like, okay, they did a 20 something thing and okay, I like that one. And that one's being kind of bitchy. Okay, now I watch them die a horrible death. It just felt mean. And some of the kills they were trying to make it so intense man, but at least one of 'em. I just laughed out loud because it wasn't intense, man. It was just kind of, okay, cool. It just felt like it was trying too hard.
When they said that it was going to be through the serial killer's eyes or the slasher eyes, I thought we were going to get more of a inside his mind type of situation and not just literally seeing what he's seeing. Okay, great. Been there, done that. What's the point? Every horror movie does this. It was just so lackluster. And the thing is, is that they have done things where you've seen behind the scenes.
So Cabin in the Woods is a great example of that where they've taken that behind the scenes horror and reasons why it's happening and adjusted that. And you're seeing it from the other side. Pearl is another good example of that. Pearl Maxine X, all of that where you're getting the other side of the story and you're seeing it through somebody else's eyes. This supposedly they hyped it up to be so experimental and so different and it just ended up being the
same shit that we've seen a hundred times over. So what was the point? But not fun like that. Exactly. Practic either be. Fun, the practical effects or have a point. Ideally both, but you have to at least do one of the two. Yeah. Right. In the. Practical effects. I always wish it was, I almost wish it would've been like a choose your own adventure. He saw three different weapons on the board and it was like he was going through each one. Which one should I use?
That kind of thing and make the teenage characters insufferable so that you just want them to die. That would've been fun. That would've been different. That's what I'm until Dawn should have been, or at least like an extra mode of. It. But they weren't unlikeable enough for you to root for their demise and you didn't know them well enough to really be rooting for them. It felt like it was two different movies. There was this awkward. Doable to kill, not likable enough to die.
Right, exactly. Exactly. And there was this not likable enough to. Live. That's what I meant to say. Yeah. This sort of 20 something dramedy and then a serial killer slowly walks up and murders everybody. And because it was so somber and it took itself so seriously, you couldn't even really geek out about the practical effects because the makeup is really impressive. But when you have really crazy impressive makeup, it's supposed to be fun. That's the whole point.
So I dunno, it was on my mind because Shutter on New Year's Day, it was talking about New Year's resolutions and they had a post on threads, new Year's resolution to work out more. Don't let a killer crash your routine. And that's because the big famous kill from this is a yoga kill. There's a woman doing yoga and terrible things happen to her. And. They really had the stretch to make this related to New Year's. And that's how they did it.
Yeah. It just, and that Kill Won the Ride in Chainsaw Award for Best Kill of the Year. I mean, just to tell you where my headspace is, I voted wrote in the Just Can't Get Enough Kill From Cocaine Bear, which is magnificent and fun. I love that. And objectively a better Kid. I think so. I think so. But I also. Holy crap. Can Bear came out this year? Well, no, but it came out within the window. That. Chain. I keep forgetting that the JaneSAW awards are in a horrific time
loop from which there is no escape that now. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And that's one where, yeah, they used a lot of practical effects, but it was also ridiculous and stupid. So you could have fun with it. I don't know. It felt like it was trying too hard. But I'm also not the super intense type of horror fan where it has to be brutal. I'm trying to think of the last brutal movie that I saw and actually thought was brutal and I am coming up empty.
It didn't even need to be brutal though. It just needed to be good or different. And it wasn't either of those. And the thing is, it's okay not to be that, but then don't bill yourself as an incredibly. Yeah, that's what I'm getting the most from y'all's description of this compared to what I remember with the trailer is just false advertising or at least accidental, misleading advertising. That's exactly what it was. And Overhype, I think is a lot of it too. It was way.
Over was not great about that. What kills me too is there were so many people that saw it and reviewed it and said all this good shit about it. And I was like, were you watching the same effing thing that I was? Have you never seen a slasher before? Well, and I think there's sort of a rush to be like any fan culture, the true fans or the serious fans. And so you double down to the point of overdosing and it's
difficult to tell how much of it's performative. Whereas if we say, yeah, we like this movie, we've got nothing to prove. And maybe we're all to be garbage people. But even so, we're not trying to impress anybody by how hardcore we are. And I think a fair amount of fans and a fair amount of reviewers and a fair amount of movies do try to do that. Yeah. It's like professional barbecuers versus regular, just people trying to grill.
There's all these rules that professional horror, horror movie reviewers look for in a good horror movie that doesn't necessarily translate to what normal people want to watch. Even normal people that like horror. And it's the same thing about people who go around and it's like, oh, you like this singer name three of their songs? Oh, shut up. You either like the person or you don't. You like the movie or you don't. It's objective. She's pretty, and. She. Wrote one song I like, shut.
Up. Yeah, exactly. There you go. There you go. So there were a few moments that got me, but I just felt kind of mean watching this. So terra scale, I'd probably put it maybe at a two. I never actually put it on Letterboxed because I kept writing the review in my head and then I got distracted and I'm falling asleep. And then. Which I would probably put it, which probably is the letterbox review in and of itself. Yeah. I mean, yes, true.
Actually. Yeah. I can't focus enough on this movie to write a proper letterbox review. That's pretty. Scary. Yeah. I mean. That. Says something and yeah. I felt mean watching it and got distracted. Two stars. So that's probably where I'd put it for quality and enjoyment. Not awful, but I don't know. Not great. Could do better. It wasn't for me. Yeah, it wasn't for me. So I don't know.
But anyway, other good news, I didn't get a chance to watch it, but I did locate the Joe Bob Briggs last drive-in version of Nosferatu, where he cuts into it Elvira style and that is on AMC Plus, you might be able to get it on normal Amazon too, depending on your subscriptions and everything. But I. Think I still haven't to watch that. Hasn't bothered to cancel my AMC Plus. So I'll keep an eye out for that. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to try to watch that for next week.
I feel like it's a hundred year old movie. I should really watch the original before I watch the Eggers version. But if I get a. Feel, we're not talking for one watch the one with the silly cut-ins. Yeah, I. What made that same judgment call with the Elvira episode on the house that screamed. Yeah. And that was a good judgment call. That was a very good judgment call. So anyway, if you're still listening, leave us a review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you happen
to be listening. Shoot us an email, drop us a line, follow us on threads, tell your friends, tell your horror friends about us. And we'll talk to y'all next week. And I'm going to push the button for the outro. I can do that.