I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, die-in time is here. That's right. We're talking about I Know What You Did Last Summer, 1997 edition. Greetings and salutations, Internet. It's your old pal, Patrick Hamilton, coming to you once again from Southport, North Carolina, home of the Ms. Croker Contest. This is the Kill by Kill podcast, where we are dedicated.

to celebrating the least discussed component of any horror film, the characters. And we're going to unpack all the goriest, and there's not many, details of I Know What You Did Last Summer in the hopes that a recent... high school graduates untimely and it's just the beginning of the jokes we might make at their expense and as always there's only one person i trust to spin around in the middle of the street yelling what

the only Gina Redcliffe. How are you doing today, Gina? You know, you mentioned that this is North Carolina and I completely forgot about that. I'm pretty sure the movie forgot about that because nobody in this movie even... slightly attempts a southern accent. This could be Delaware. This could be Massachusetts. This could be New Jersey. It is just like, you know, a seaside town. For the first 25 minutes of this movie, it is Central California coast. And you can tell because once again, Gina.

the ocean is on the wrong side of the screen. It's just like, I don't come to this for fucking reality, but like. We talked about the fog just last week, and you're seeing a lot of the same vistas in that first 25 minutes. And then you see a lot of actual North Carolina show up. But you're right. There's none. none accents in this entire thing. Yeah, this was basically just a screenwriter like taking a dart and throwing it at a map and being like, North Carolina.

Needs nothing. No relevance whatsoever. No, there really isn't. And it's not an entirely, like, locally steeped movie. I will say, I think it's best moments. are the actual location filming they did there. Because at least you're like, you're seeing a real town. You're seeing real facades. You know, I think that they are trying to go for that, you know, little, you know, you.

picturesque small town where suddenly evil is afoot. And that's fine. But you could do that in California. You could. I think they were going for something that felt more exotic. But outside of Anne Heche, I don't know that we really get to anybody, even coming close to someone approaching the top. Of the South. No. This might as well be Maryland. This might as well be Rhode Island. It might as well be Massachusetts. As you say, like, there's no...

real attempt at that level of verisimilitude outside of the location filming. Correct. So when was the first time you set your eyeballs on I Know What You Did Last Summer?

Well, I know I didn't see it in the theater. It's probably just popped up on cable, so this would have been like 99, 2000 probably. Okay. I definitely saw it in movie theaters as anything in the 90s. I just saw. That was how... my social life was going. So, yeah, I told, and I was so very hungry for anything that approximated Scream that I had very high hopes for it. And I think as we go through this.

you'll discover that neither of us are particular super fans of I Know What You Did Last Summer. You know, for me, I think that... For this, this was the third time I had seen this movie. And I don't want to say it gets better with each viewing. It gets less bad, if that makes sense. I remember not caring for much at all the first time I saw it and thinking, you know, that the characters were all, you know...

uniformly unlikable, that it only has, you know, one good, you know, one good kill in it. You know, that I just, you know, I thought that the plot was stupid. And then I watched again. Maybe a decade or so later. And I was like. I guess. It's bumping up percentage points. I like that Johnny Galecki is a creeper and the creeper gets his due. For this, it moved up too. It's fine. I think it is fine. This is a patent pending Gina Radcliffe.

It's fine. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, that the upcoming reboot is targeted to a very specific audience that is not us. And that's fine too. It's one less movie I have to worry about making time to see in the theater. It's not really something I need personally. I think this movie has some... high points and it has several low points. And as such, it's kind of like, it's all right. You know, it's not.

what Scream is because Scream bumps it up so many other levels. I do think there are elements to this that I do enjoy. I enjoy the photography of it. I think it is a well photographed film. I don't know if it's particularly awe-inspiring, but you look at it and go, wow, someone lends this really well. They know how to light it. They know how to light these attractive people. They know how to make scenes seem to pop. I will, you know...

It is competently made. Yes. And so let's get into some of the backstory here because this is an interesting little moment in time.

where this comes out 10 months post Scream, two months pre-Scream 2. And in between, there's a fervor for Scream that people... cannot get to in time they've not put enough into production they're like sony's the only one who's kind of like what do we got anything is even like this so i just want to warn people We're not going to be going through this movie beep by beep because the plot is both stunningly simple and astoundingly overcomplicated.

Yeah, you'll be, if you somehow don't know it, somehow this warranted a sequel. And the only reason I think of that it warranted a sequel is because dollar sign, dollar sign, dollar sign. I mean, the wild thing about this is, Gina, is it benefited so much from coming out. post scream and having you know people in it who you go well that that's got to be kind of just like scream from the writer of screen but what it comes down to is you got four friends who are

who drunkenly run over a man standing in the middle of a foggy road by the sea. And instead of admitting to the accident, Barry... convinces his local glamour girl girlfriend Helen, the stone-faced fisherman Ray, and low-cut top enthusiast and college-bound Julie. to dump the body into the sea and swear to never admit to the crime. Would you say convinces or bullies? More bullies. I would say convinced by bullying. Let's merge the two.

A year later, they start to receive notes stating, I know what you did last summer. And this movie was number one at the box office for three. weeks in a row. That's how big of a hit it was, Gina. It made more than Scream 1, Scream 2, and by God, Scream 3. Yeah, and when you... When you ranked them all, it is less good than any of those. Scream 3 is far and away a better motion picture from stem to stern. Then I know what you did last summer. And we don't evaluate art.

by making it compete with one another. It's just a truth. And the thing is, this movie kind of has a leg up on screen, which is a complete invention based on a true crime phenomenon. This is adapted from a Lois Duncan novel. She, for the record, hated this adaptation, which is her right. But in that book, it's about four high school friends who accidentally hit a child with their car.

and cover up that crime. There's no slashing involved. It is all tension between them of whether or not they will finally reveal that they accidentally murdered a kid. Well, yeah, you've got this one and you've got the pretty much almost forgotten Teaching Mrs. Tingle. You ever see that piece of shit? Yeah, that is a nadir. That's also based on... what is now called a YA novel. It's a mystery that also resembles it only in the fact that they have the same title.

And what happens here is you got a producer named Eric Feig, and he works at Peter Gruber's post-Columbia Sony Pictures. co-CEO run vanity shingle called Mandalay Productions. Mandalay made a shit ton of movies. And Peter Gruber, it should be noted. supervised one of the high periods of Columbia Pictures run to the point where when Sony comes in and they bind them to a deal and Sony never reads.

The actual language of the deal they hired Gruber under. So when he leaves, he just has the most golden fucking parachute of all time. But... Eric Feig's at Mandalay, and he's convinced that the bones of this book would make a good slasher flick, but they haven't been in vogue for years. But Feig decides to hire Kevin Williamson, who's... killing Mrs. Tingle's script had been picked up by a different studio, and he had not written Scream yet.

And so he says, can you come in and let's convert this? And they bond over two particular whodunit slashers, Gina. And this is going to take you back. 1980s prom night. and 1982's The House on Sorority Row. And if you're unfamiliar, you can check out our previous episodes on those particular films. But the seeds are there because both those movies...

are a particular type of slasher. They deal with the fallout of accidental deaths that inspire a killer to dish out bloody justice to those they decide are responsible. And One of them has a disco ball mask. The other has an acid freak out in the third act. And honestly, this movie. needs both of those things. Oh, yeah. Even just one of those, it would immediately improve in esteem for me. And I think it starts the joke that...

Williamson will eventually make him scream with Randy yelling. If they would just watch prom night, they would figure this out already with the exception of. Prom Night has less to do with Scream and far more to do with I Know What You Did Last Summer, which once again continues the trend of Randy being right about people and absolutely terribly wrong about movies.

That is for another day. Speaking of acid freakouts, Gina, the plot of this movie is goddamn wild. We're just going to get this out of the way up top, okay? So spoilers for a movie that came out. 30 years ago or so on paper the idea that four kids ran a dude over and they dumped that body in the ocean and they swear not to go to the police about it but are in actuality prompted by a different killer to solve the murder.

that they, in fact, did not commit, but, in fact, hit a guy who murdered another dude playing another dude, my brain is actually melting through my nose. And, I mean, the funniest thing is that basically... the killer is the hash-leaning slasher. from Spongebob Squarepants. He's just this like shadowy figure in like a slicker with like a hook. And it's like, you know, it's just...

You know, dead on, you know, campfire ghost story villain. And the movie starts with a campfire ghost story urban legend retelling of them switching up. different elements of that legend as they've heard it. And there are all kinds of variations on the theme. Weirdly enough, and I didn't initially plan it this way, but this movie.

plays in so much of the same sandbox as John Carpenter's The Fog. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, it would also have been much better if it opened up with John Houseman telling the story. Go, Eds. Go up to Lookout Lane to get busy. A hundred and twelve year old shot. They were raring to go. She was wearing that thong, the thong, thong, thong. Struggling to come up with other 90s euphemisms. What a time. On paper, that seems like an interesting mystery.

And in practice, I don't think people remember that there's any mystery involved in this whatsoever. With that whole, you know, he killed someone else. I completely forgot about that. I thought this guy had every right to be pissed. Oh, God. In a way, he does have, because he is, our killer is hit on the road and dumped in the ocean. And then after that.

He's just like Monty Python in it. I feel better. And then a year later, he's back on his feet just killing motherfuckers. He... miraculously recovers and the only sort of moral blanket you can put over these numb fucks is the fact that they murdered a murderer but unsuccessfully but not the kid they thought was a murderer, who our murderer is pretty convinced is a murderer. Oh my God, I've done it again. Are we in 1955? Am I about to try to fuck my mom? This is a very complex plot.

Like unnecessarily so. So unnecessary. The thing is, like, I think if you lay it down on, we make fun of a lot of like blank movie explained videos on YouTube. But I did have to check multiple sources and rewatch the end of it to confirm that I understood the plot of this film correctly that I have seen at least five fucking times. It's just what I think it comes down to.

It's confusingly delivered, in essence, to try to make the mystery work. But it's also really not helped by the fact that two of the leads here appear to be more confused throughout the movie than I do. about what happens in it. and i'm just watching this shit it's like what's my motivation and they explain the plot and they're just like kind of working it out in their mind like that gif of the woman figuring out calculations and they just go ahead and just

Oh, it's a start filming, start filming. They'll get it. They'll get it. It's just, we're going to get to them. The thing is, like, they survive. So, normally, we might talk about them first. But other people die along the way. So, we do have to get to them. But I just, if you. I know what you did last summer. It just sparks joy for you.

Our conversation about this should not change it whatsoever. There are charms to this movie, and I will go over what I believe are its best charms a little bit later down on the line. But please know that your... emotional attachment to this movie is valid, but I don't happen to have one. It's fine. It's fine. I just, like I said, I, you know, post Scream 2, I tend to look at...

horror movies that came out during this period with a bit of a jaundiced eye because it became very apparent that I was no longer the target audience. And I was just like, well, all right, I'm going to let the kids have these. Yeah, true. I'm still going to let the kids have these. have these. It's fine. Because I do know there's a large quadrant of people who really have a Julie James thing. For whatever reason...

And all of them are valid. You love Julie James. And God bless you. You can have her. We're not in competition. Please know, my evaluation of this movie should not tinge your love.

But let's get a few of the minor players out of the way. Now, you mentioned him earlier. Max is played by a post-Roseanne, pre-Big Bang Theory, Johnny Galecki. He's Lovelorn. He's whiny. He's super creepy and he's willing to call the cops on your college quarterback ass. But the way the film was restructured post its initial screening, it's like test screening.

He was not originally, he just kind of fades away. He's not seen until the, he's kind of like, oh, he's a red herring because he's not around. And after that, they're like, oh, shit, we need to put some murder in this murder movie. And so they shot his death scene well after the fact.

In the summer months leading up to this film's premiere in October. So that being said, killing him so early also doesn't help the movie's plot. Because he's the absolute... best red herring in the film and they dispatch him so quickly that there's no suspense as to whether or not he is the actual guy right yeah

So they kind of undercut their own plot a little bit. Not to mention the fact that Johnny Galecki would have to be walking around on fucking stilts to be the fisherman. I mean, you don't know, but he could be three Johnny Galeckis under the... Under his fishing slicker. So the first thing people should be doing when they see the fisherman is like, oh shit, he's got a hook. Number two, how many Galeckis you got underneath there? At least two. You've stacked at least two Galeckis.

What I think of Sweaty is, is, like, you can tell that this is based on a book that was written in the 70s because you've got these teenage characters in 1997 named... Helen. Barry. Yeah. Ray. Elsa. Yeah. No, Ashley's. You know, no Brandons. Yeah. Helen and Barry.

And so like when Max is killed, like all of a sudden there's a splash of blood. But the way the movie was actually filmed, it was much more of a, the aesthetic was we're going to go for a John Carpenter's less is more. And then they test screened it and they're like, oh. shit, we got to put blood in the slasher movie. And so they filmed it getting a hook underneath the chin and being dragged off to bleed out in the ice in a ship's hull somewhere. Bye-bye Max. Then, as mentioned...

Brigitte Wilson's Elsa, who may or may not be able to spontaneously produce snowmen, but she plays a pretty good ice queen. We don't really know why. Elsa and Helen don't get along outside of general sister shit. Well, I mean, they are, I think they are trying to, to, you know, imply that it's, you know, because, because Helen is the pretty one and they've done this by just.

By just giving Bridget Wilson some glasses. Some glasses. Oh, my God. Don't you feel sorry for internationally known uggo Bridget Wilson? I think she wears a cardigan. couple scenes too which is coded as well this is the ugly sister like is it jealousy it's like she's the smart sister and hell and helen's the pretty one but also don't cast Bridget Wilson, how are you judging which one is more attractive? Is it literally coming down to fucking glasses? I am quite...

Serious when I say, yeah, I think the glasses are supposed to be coded as, well, she's the ugly one. Oh, my God. Listen, you grew up in the 80s just like I did. I know, I know. You've seen how many, you know, quote unquote. makeover scenes have you seen that involve taking off somebody's glasses? Yes. She's just consistently shitty to Helen and I can't say that Helen isn't shitty to Elsa, but...

It's very underbaked. We just have to accept it. It's not the focus of the movie. Elsa is pissed off that Helen is going to get to leave town and then she comes back to town. Now she's pissed that she's back. It's a whole fucking thing. Anyways, Elsa gets her throat slashed. And again.

That was originally filmed without blood. But then on the note cards of the test screen, people are like, how do you slash somebody's throat without any blood? And they're like, fuck, we better redo this. Was this supposed to be PG-13? Initially? No, not necessarily. This was really an evidence of Columbia believing that Gore... was not going to be a core component of the movie. It's not that they were aiming for PG-13, it's they wanted to be classy. They wanted to be Halloween classy.

And they were told by test audiences post scream that what they wanted was this plus some fucking gore already. And they're like, okay, we'll just like. put insert shots into this to make it gorier. Um, it's just what it comes down to. Uh, now one actor who I think is really giving it their boast and Delivering a moderated performance is Anne Heche. And she appears to be what I assume is the Mrs. Voorhees cosplay.

throughout this as missy david's sister who is david he was in the car accident with susie willis who's the daughter of the fisherman who was run over by Barry and company after he killed David in a way that made it look like a suicide. I'm sorry. I'm dizzy. I need to sit down. I am sitting down. Put your, put your head between your knees. Take some fresh air.

I need to grip the desk. I am on earth. This is me breathing. This is me breathing. This is me breathing. You know, look at, you know, think of, you know, a thing you can touch, a thing you can see. The thing you can smell, the center, center. You're okay. And I'm sure. There are going to be people in the United States because it's not that fucking complicated. But every time I watch it, I'm fucking confused. And we have been doing this for nine years. It's not.

incomprehensible yeah but it is much more complicated than than a a minor slasher movie needs to be yes this movie is a lot but she's quite good And for all intents and purposes, she lives. So, at least as far as we know. So now we're going to, I'm going to reverse things. And normally we would talk about two people who die in order.

But I like those performances, so we're going to talk about the people who don't die. First up to bid, we have Jennifer Love Hewitt, or just love to her friends, if every fucking article about her from Party of Five onward is to be believed. And then you have Freddie Prinze Jr. And they are pretty, pretty. They're phlogenic. In my opinion, they are laughably bad at various moments in this movie. They're neither served by the script nor the direction nor the editor. If they're great in this.

I'd love to hear about it. Please tell me why you love it. You know, again, like Freddie Prinze Jr., I mean, obviously, Sarah Michelle Gellar finds something to like about him. They've been married for a lifetime by Hollywood standards. It turns out he has a very good dad.

And later, he becomes an excellent VO artist. Like, I think well after the fact, he actually develops the ability to not be betrayed by his face. But throughout this film, he is so... unemotive that he, I know is supposed to be a red herring, but he almost comes off like a co-conspirator against the facts. Based on his reactions. You don't buy for a second. Because, I mean, I guess, like, well, he's supposed to be the kind of, like, you know, edgy working class guy. And it's like, no.

No. If edges are involved here. He's like a big teddy bear. Like everything rolls off of him. There are zero edges outside of the fang. That whoever decided to do the hair design on this movie has given every guy some sort of Pentagon-based haircut. Everyone's rocking a modified Wolverine for whatever reason.

I suppose this was the hairstyle at the time. And I can't say that my current hairstyle is all that tremendously different other than the fact that I'm many decades older. But it's not that I think that Jennifer Love Hewitt... or Freddie Prinze Jr. are terrible actors overall. I believe they are terrible actors in this particular movie. Yeah, they are required.

To do things that may be a little bit outside of their wheelhouse, like being scared. Yes. What they often project as being scared or concerned. Looks like confused. And as such, I am also confused. It's not to say that there are moments of delicious camp here.

But we are, neither of us are particularly in love with 2000's Scary Movie. But I can say that Anna Faris' performance in that film is 95% based on Jennifer. Love Hewitt in this film, and she is fucking brilliant as a result of it. It is a knockout comedy performance of simply channeling julie james essence and the manic aesthetic of her at times of discovery or when she's supposedly unhinged and

She does that like the running thing in the one scene, right? Yes. That's pretty funny. She does the running thing. She does the spinning around in the circle. Where are you? There's a lot of it that she's bringing to the fore here. And obviously, it's more based on the Sydney Scream plot line. But deep down, what she's giving is Julie James. And I would call Hewitt's performance unhinged. But that implies that at some point... hinges were installed. I think she's free hinging it here. I mean,

I do always think it's, I mean, I realize the scene is considered more or less iconic in horror, but she got the little, little crapped up. She's all like, what are you waiting for? And I'm like, I'm like, okay. Listen, there are two big reasons why she worked for audiences at the time, Gina. Let's be honest with you. I mean, yeah. She was a great girl next door look, and she has massive Disney princess eyes.

And those worked with it. Audiences wanted that. They saw her on television. They loved her to death. And that's perfectly okay. Those are the two big things. Those are the two big things that she definitely had to do. And, you know, they do everything in their power to emphasize those big things here, including putting her in the saddest pair of overalls you have.

ever seen in your life for a good 20 minutes of the movie. They also try to minimize her bangs for some reason. And I'm going to be honest with you. Bangs do her a lot of good. And thinning out the bangs is a fucking crime. Well, I mean, there was a lot of questionable hairstyle choices in the late 90s. I mean, you can't really just lay that at the feet of this particular movie. That's true. That was a big, those little wispy bangs.

That was definitely a thing. But obviously, Jennifer Love Hewitt is a very attractive young woman. But I will say, they make more effort to declaim her than any moment in 2013's Carrie does to that Carrie White tweet.

Yeah, well, I think they're trying their best to make these look like these are just, you know, some ordinary working class kids from this seaside fishing town. And it's like, eh, sure. And I... I think some of what I have as an issue with the movie is you have a non-teen killer who performs some of the... pettiest shit you've ever seen in your life as a get back to you sort of scenario like i'm gonna steal your car i'm gonna cut your hair

I'm going to fill your trunk with a dead body and hundreds of crabs that disappear magically. Gina, we have had some cleanly killers in our past, but this guy. is fucking amazing. Is he like taking a shop vac to get those crabs out of there? Did he line the fucking trunk and be able to just pull it all out in one fell swoop? Where's his getaway vehicle? How is he able to clean up an entire, like, it would still smell like dead body and crabs.

Especially crabs. Especially crabs. Crabs, not an unsmelly seafood, everybody. And yet somehow she lifts that and it's been for breezed into. He's neatly put the carpet back, put everything that was in there. It's like, here's your jumper cables. Here's your wiper fluid. Here's your Madonna, you know, Vogue tape.

Here's a casingle. Anything you might still have in your trunk is still there except for the dead body icing crabs. And it's just one of those things where I know it's a movie and I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, this guy hooks people in public spaces with zero blood. There's just no blood to his murder spree. And he's able to cover this shit up so goddamn easily.

Yeah, he's just like walking around with his little cleaning kit. And he smells too. That's the other thing. He's a fisherman. He's got a stink to high habit. Listen, this is not a man doette. But if it were. This would be another, he's a seafaring dirty peanut, this one, because we don't know what's going on inside of that. And when we do see him, we're like, well, fuck, he's got to smell. He just absolutely has to smell. Conversely.

Freddie Prinze Jr. also has to smell, but somehow he comes off better. But only because it helps the plot that he's constantly underplaying revelations in every scene he's in. They go, oh, someone knows what we did. And he looks at him like...

What's English again? I don't know what's going on. This is very early in the man's career. Yeah, and again, he... Had his peak in a period, you know, starring in movies that were geared towards people a little younger than me. Yeah. Like your, what is the one with the, another one where the girl gets her glasses off. She's incredibly beautiful. She's all that. She's all that, yes. Uh, there was, you know, a few of them, like, like those all completely.

passed me by i mean i i knew they existed didn't watch them so i never really i i obviously i i knew who he was but i was never able to determine you know yeah this is a this is a charming fellow i'd like to see more of him and but but by all accounts he's in general a charming fellow i just i don't know this does not serve him well and every time i watch it i'm like it look it looks like you don't know what you're doing on camera

Other than the fact that you got a nice, put him, you got a nice face. And that's great and everything. He's very broad-shouldered. He's handsome. But I don't... understand what makes his character tick. And I do somewhat suspect that he is relatively tickless.

Boy got no tick. Now, the scene with Freddie Prince Jr. And Jennifer Love Hewitt. Now we're going to the very end of this. Okay, fuck this plot. We're like leaving out a glaring character. We will get to, we're just, we're wrapping up these two. That's important. Okay. So at the very end, they have dispatched this villain without knowing whether or not he's dead. Because if he's put in the ocean, he seems to... This is...

The fountain of youth, and it's the Atlantic Ocean. That bracing seawater wakes him up each time. He just manages to come away from things, and the seawater just makes him whole again. So. They've come back to shore. They're in each other's arms. They realize neither one of the other one. They both knew it was a mistake to leave a man dead.

Not that they went back to try to pick him up out of the ocean this time either, I might add. So Freddie Prinze Jr. says, and I quote, no one gets me the way you do. And Jennifer Love Hewitt responds, I understand your pain. I... This is like nuclear levels of stupid. Like in the annals of history, in the nine years of doing this show, this has got to be one of the worst.

dialogue exchanges i've ever seen committed to film that we've covered yeah i mean especially considering the circumstances that it's set around yeah If you want, like, a stupid line of dialogue, you have one of the turtles and it's like, wow, that was weird, huh? Like, they have both evolved into better presences and actors, but they are...

Truly, truly wouldn't in this film. And I am surprised no one has made a Yule log of their performances. You know, I would just guess that for a fair amount of horror fans and fans of this film, those words seem harsh.

Anyways, there's another person I do feel we should talk about before we go any further, and that is director Jim Gillespie. This section is titled, How Do You Turn Success Into Failure? Because Jim Gillespie basically does a couple of indies, short features. And one of them was 1995's Joyride. That's not...

2001's Joyride about two dipshits who lure a sexual predator into meeting a trans woman in a bar, and then it goes on a murderous rampage. No, it's a different short movie about two thugs who lock a guy in the trunk of a car. Anyways! This caught the attention of Mandalay Pictures, so they made a deal with him, and his debut film is made here. And as I mentioned earlier, makes more money than either Scream or Scream 2. So what did he do as a follow-up?

To this, a gigantic success is made for $17 million and makes $110 million more than that. So he ended up following this up with two. fatally flawed, but interestingly gonzo movies that Gina, we're just going to have to cover for episodes in the next to near future. And I promise you. no one in our audience will show up to listen to, but I would love to talk about them with you. The first is Detox, aka ICU, which is like Predator.

and that it's filled with a bunch of fun character actors, but also it's the most cursed version of that. because it sat on the shelf for over four years before it was released to collective yawns and a lack of memory. More on that later. Then he, two years later, followed it up with a film called Venom. No, not that Venom. A different venom by a group of teens who are hunted by a man who is just trying to help them out of a car accident, but then he is bitten by dozens of demon-infested snakes.

The animals only attack him and then he attacks people. So it kind of fits, but it kind of doesn't. But I think it's like this, really well photographed. And I think... better movie than i know what you did last summer in a lot of respects that being said both those movies are far weirder than the brief explanations i've just given but he followed it up a uh short 20 years later

with a film that also does not exist called Billionaire Ransom that premiered in Kuwait, Gina. That's where it premiered. Kuwait.

Going back to Detox, a.k.a. I See You, Gillespie and Sly, in the aftermath of that movie, were supposed to team up for another film under Universal, which is where Detox was originally funded. And I'm just going to read the following paragraph to you because I need you to hear these words so they don't haunt me for the rest of my life like a ghost that I can't get out of my head.

During the original filming of Detox in 1999, Sylvester Stallone became attached to star in another Universal film, an action horror flick entitled Fatalis, written by... novelist Jeff Rovin in 1998 and sold to Universal for over a million dollars. The script for the film concerned a huge pack of saber-toothed tigers who come back to life after El Nino. hurricane awakens them from being frozen inside an ancient sinkhole for thousands of years. They start attacking any humans they run into.

while moving down the mountains through the woods before eventually going to grandmother's house. Oh, I'm sorry. Los Angeles. Roman. who wrote the novelization of Stallone's Cliffhanger, the 1993 film, and his biography, wrote Fatales specifically with Stallone in mind for the lead role of an Anthropologist. Sure. Sylvester Stallone, PhD of anthropology.

You know what? I think that if that movie had been made, the world would be a different place. I think we would be... Possible 9-11 wouldn't have happened. To continue with the rundown of what this film would have been. This anthropologist, played by very bookish Sylvester Stallone, befriends a female reporter and they both want to capture the tigers alive as they are the last link with the past. However, a local sheriff...

wants to destroy. I'm feeling Michael Rooker considered for the sheriff's role. Sure. Oh, absolutely. That would be a cliffhanger reunion. It makes perfect sense. So. That movie's in development, but Detox, it goes into pre-production rather, Fatalis goes into pre-production in 2000. But Detox is considered a gigantic failure.

Right. No universal looks at the movie and like, no, this is not something we are going to release in theaters. And let me just remind everyone of Stallone's other films post cliffhanger. and Demolition Man, to judge about movies that were released in theaters as opposed to kept on the shelf for four years. We have The Specialist, or as my friends used to refer to it, The Speckleckalist. I can't remember why.

Judge Dredd, a movie I saw in movie theaters in Burbank, and a five-year-old child screamed for his life to be taken out of the movie theater when a robot tears a man apart. and the parents would not. Why? Too invested in Judge Dredd, a movie I actually like, Assassins, which is, it might not be good, but it might be fucking great.

A movie I was shown for free and I still feel like I paid for it. Daylight. The Oscar play Copland. Get Carter avenging Angelo and a voice role and fucking ants with a Z. There may be some commentary here. I feel like him playing an anthropologist who tries to stop a resurrected bunch of saber-toothed tigers would have been in just fine in this period. Buckle up, Gina.

It gets better. Universal ceased production of Fatalis, and it went unproduced. Although Roven, our author, later turned his script into a successful novel by the same name. Now, that didn't stop Roven from... from trying this sort of thing because he actually wrote a different movie called Vespers, which was another canceled action horror film. from around the same time, which would have focused on giant bats that attack New York City. Oh, my God.

Why? Now I want them. These are great. These are great fucking ideas. When asked in 2021, the author. About the chances of either Fatal specifically being produced 20 years later, Rovan revealed that Sylvester Stallone still owns the rights to the original story, and he suspects it will never be produced. Added commentary by me, Sylvester Stallone, hates America. I agree. I think that he has denied us something that could have brought so much pleasure. Anywho.

The other pesky element of I Know's box office success that was drafting off the screen and use the fact that Williamson wrote both movies. In a tricky way, the original posters and first trailer proudly announced I Know What You Did Last Summer as, quote, from the creator of Scream. And while I may not agree with it, or not, the creator in cinematic terms is assigned to the film's director. For the record...

When Williamson saw this on the movie's poster, he immediately called Sony and said, please remove from the creator, just say from the writer. But for a certain someone we all know, hey, and was convicted of sexual assault, that person decided to sue because they owned the rights to scream. And they did win that suit in court, which hopefully will...

was the last time he ever won in court and will ever win in court. But no award was ever publicized and Sony just removed the slug line from publicity and promotion. That being said, that other rapist dipshit was like, I'm suing for damages.

fuck you fuck you anyways back to jim gillespie he's yet another horror film director who's very embarrassed that he is directing a horror movie here he had no intention of employing gore he thought of himself more in the carpenter halloween mode of it being magic tricks and implying and so forth but he's No John Carpenter, neither am I. But he was forced by test screenings to add blood and dead bodies to compete in the marketplace. So he cuts off a dude's hand with a splash of blood.

Guts a guy under the chin with a splash of blood. He slices a throat with a splash of blood. The fisherman is one of the cleanest slashers of all time for a nautical dirty peanut. Anytime you do see blood, it was just added after the fact. So. Now that we've gotten that out of the way and taken an entire detour into Sabretooth Tigers.

Now I'm going to be brooding over this now. Like how different things could have been. I know. Our lives could have been completely different. We would have had this. And maybe the slights that we feel now. would have felt easier to deal with because I could always put in a Blu-ray of Fatalus and relive the time that Sylvester Stallone played an anthropologist.

Just comfort myself with YouTube clips of giant bats attacking New York City. Oh, my God. And pointing out, hey, I've been there. Sabertooth Tigers in Los Angeles.

So let's get to the things I like about this movie. There's two things I particularly like. The first is Ryan Phillippe, who plays a douche so convincingly. Gina, I don't like saying this, but it kind of has to be partially real. Or at least that's how most easily he is digested. I don't know that I have. ever seen him in a role where he wasn't playing a complete douchebag. Of course, I cannot remember any other thing I've seen him in besides this and cruel intentions.

A movie that made me realize, oh, I'm really getting old. Well. You know, maybe it was the fact he was born and raised in Delaware, known for two things, crab cake, football, and kicking your ass. I know what I'm saying. That's Maryland. That's Maryland, Rhode Island. My mistake. Anyways, maybe it's because every time he's on screen, no matter what character he's playing.

He's always unrepentant. And he might not always need to repent. He just comes off that way. He might be a sweetie pie for all I know. But he sure comes off like a fucking chode. A handsome chode. A chode? with fun muscles and a massive set of hair and shiny teeth, but it showed nonetheless. And this movie weaponizes that. to make him the person you most want to see get a hook through his gut. Yeah, he is the one the audience is like...

Counting down till. Yes. And I do believe that the other characters are not as insufferable. Now, they do an insufferable thing, but deep down you see them paying for it. psychologically. So at least they feel guilt, whereas he never feels an ounce of guilt for anything that he does. outside of not wanting it to be repeated with an earshot of his mom and as such like over the course of the movie he goes from this is stupid nothing fucking happened to slowly discovering.

A level of humanity. Now, it's not humanity that would benefit a lot of people. But for him, this is a gigantic journey, that character. And so, I at least feel that. in his performance and he's well cast and he's attractive and um he gives awkward hugs when he has casts on his arm and he's got one of those crazy bodies where his arms are so long

that it feels like he could casually scratch his knees with his arms. Yeah, he's got a little bit of a shaved gorilla thing going on. Yeah, yeah. That being said, he wears it well.

And then I think most importantly, we have Sarah Michelle Gellar. Now, audience, am I in the tank for Sarah Michelle Gellar? Probably. Okay? I'll admit it. I'm not innocent here. Buffy the Vampire Slayer premieres in the spring of 1997 as a mid-season replacement on the WB. And she was cast in both I Know and Scream 2 after she had filmed both the scrubbed pilot and the actual 13 episodes of Buffy that air. So Geller, I think.

bring something to this film and scream to that I wish more slashers copied. And that is the point of what I want, why I wanted to do. I know what you did last summer. And that is. fucking chase scenes, Gina. This is what is missing from a lot of horror movies that would take them from interesting psychological puzzles. And, you know, slashers that have some gory kills but could use something else. You know what they could use?

fucking chase scenes baby the highlight of this movie is a 10 sec 10 second a 10 minute sequence in which he has chased all about town By the fishermen. And it's the best the movie gets by a fucking country mile. Yeah, this is by far the highlight of the movie.

Like, you know, there aren't any really good, I mean, you could say it's the best kill because it ultimately does lead up to a kill. Yes. But there aren't any really good kills in it. But this is the closest the movie gets to having genuine suspense. Because the film has made us realize that there's depth to her, that she is damaged from what has happened, that she is unable to kind of figure out how to...

she could possibly make restitution, that she's probably changing as a person. And while she is harsh in many ways, you don't really want to see her die as a result of it. And when she witnesses shit, society ignores her. She witnesses the death of Barry.

And no one will believe her because no one will turn on the fucking lights to look for the massive piles of blood that must be everywhere. But of course, when you look around in the fucking dark, you don't see them. So the sheriff then drives her back. in the cop car. And this is where you start to see elements that Williamson remixes into Scream 1 and 2, the alleyway distraction.

being locked in a police cruiser, suddenly abandoned streets from Halloween, running upstairs when the killer is downstairs. A slasher who loves to surprise more than kill people effectively. Needing to leap out of a second story window. This time into a trash pile rather than a boat cover. And a death scene. just outside of a crowd's view. These are all things that...

he would reinterpret and scream and to a degree do better and sometimes not. But they're all stuff that he are playing around in his head. I think crystallizes in those two scripts. Whereas. Only this remains pure in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Right. It's hard to laud a scene in which a man chases a woman for 10 minutes. And you would be right. Like, that's not really something we should be holding up as fine art.

to a certain degree, but as such, like the goal of this sequence is that no matter where Helen runs to seek shelter from her attacker, He's always just a few steps behind despite never ramping up into a full sprint. He just walks everywhere, Gina. It's fucking infuriating. Yeah, he's just taking a nice little stroll. Which makes a lot more sense if you consider it could be a couple Galeckis enter there.

Yeah, I mean, they can't move too fast. They're going to fall over. You're top heavy to a certain degree. And it would make a sound I would assume is like knocking bowling pins over. Sure, absolutely. Very wooden. So. This sort of combination of elements, I think, really combines into a great editorial piece. So good, in fact, that... It works even in truncated form within the music video for Coolish Acres cover of Deep Purple's Hush, which played on a fucking loop.

Yeah, that was a thing, yes. That was an absolute thing. It's a very good cover. I don't think it's good as Deep Purple's cover because their version is a cover of a different group. That being said, it just... when you saw it you're like well if the movie's half that good this has got to be great and it sold the fuck out of this film only it's just one sequence out of it it doesn't really make a lot of

It doesn't make the movie on the whole better because it's so good. Instead of a U shaped film in which we have a great opener and closer, we have a camelback and it's just a single hump. So there you go. The path of the sequence weaves throughout the town as its citizens are dazzled by a parade and fireworks above and distracted away from giving the least amount of protection to the young woman.

They had one year previous crowned their croaker queen. That's my, that's a big part of my fucking rant. I just love this sequence. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's worth it for that. Again, I don't think it's a.

bad movie. No, it's not bad. It's competently made. I just, you know, I think it might be a decent, you know, introduction to slasher movies for, you know, a young teen audience. Exactly. Because it's not like, it's not like, there's no, there's no, like... gratuitous nudity, and it's not rapey like a lot of early 80s slasher movies tend to be. It's a little bloody, but not over the top.

And it features that Lois Duncan moral quandary to it. Right, exactly. So you've got, you know, these aren't bad kids. I mean, you know... Brian Phillippe, he's kind of, he's like a rich asshole, but he's not villainous. He's just a big jerk. And, you know, so I think on that level, it's fine. It's just, it's not, it's not scary. You know, it's just like.

It's fine. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to go out of my way to do a hatchet job on it. It's too slight for that. It didn't make me mad. I just think that the very convoluted twist in it is completely unnecessary. Yeah. I think you could easily just make it that, well, they accidentally hit a guy. Yes. And that's what the book is. Only they hit a kid, which I think is a lot less morally different. Not that anyone deserves to get hit by a car. Should we talk about Karen Reed?

I heard a thing or two about that case. Anyways, I've been into it since trial one. Anyways, by the time this airs, that whole shit will be decided. So anything I would have to say about it. Really wouldn't make sense. But let's start a side Karen Reid podcast and let's see what kind of numbers we get out of that. Sure. You're not on Karen Reid Talk? Read by read. Read by read.

Hey, maybe we'll do a recap. Who's to say? But I've been into it for a long time. Anyways, we've got bigger fucking problems on this planet right now. One of them is that we have to choose your own death venture, and that's where we decide. of the deaths portrayed in this 1997 film. If you were forced to die in one of those ways, which would it be and why? Up for bid. You can get mangled in a car crash. You can get thrown off a cliff in a fake suicide.

And then you can get impaled through the mouth, stabbed several times in the chest, stabbed in the stomach and hold around like you're some kind of gym bag. You can get your throat slit or you can be just stabbed a whole bunch of times in ways you don't really see because the camera angle is too high. Uh, and the final kill doesn't even kill this motherfucker because less than a year later, they come out with a sequel that I don't, I saw in the movie theaters and Gina.

I don't remember anything about it other than the fact that one of the characters has white guy dreads and speaks with a patois and became a children's movie superstar for over 25 years. Yeah, let's leave it. Like, if y'all want to answer the trivia question, who was this actor? Yeah. Don't cheat. Use the honor code.

You can, you can, you can, don't look it up on Wikipedia or IMDB. If you know, just tell us in the, in the, in the, in the Facebook group, you know, who this actor is. Yeah. There's, you can live on YouTube, on, on. Spotify. You can email us at killbykillpod at gmail.com. We won't give you a prize or anything, but we will say, hey, yeah, good job.

Any social media handle, you can tell us and also tell us whether or not you want Gina to be forced to watch this movie again. Because I can tell you from conversations we have had, she does not. Want to watch this movie? Not particularly, no. And I don't think you would like it. Although I do think there are a lot more people in it who understand what movie they are in.

Unfortunately, neither of those people are Freddie Prinze Jr. or Jennifer Love Hewitt. What are you going to do? So, Gina, what say you about this? I know, not I know what you did last summer, Choose Your Own Death Venture, whatever. It's a very long fucking title. I know what you chose last summer. You know, I'm probably kind of the Elsa. in this situation just you know sort of

sort of bitchy and, and, and, you know, jealous. I'm not the pretty sister and, you know, got my glasses and my little cardigan on, even though it's like, even though it's 4th of July weekend. And so, yeah, I think, I think I'm just going to take it. I just get slammed in the neck with a hook, right? Yeah, she just gets slashed. So she's bleeding out pretty fast. Yeah, I'm going to take Elsa. Okay.

You are going to end up on ice inside a dude's fishing boat, but you won't be around for that. No, no, no, no. That's the way I'm going to. Come on. What am I going to do? Like take a couple stabbings? I'm going to get hooked underneath the fucking rib cage like that dipshit sheriff? Fuck that noise. Yeah, and Max is working in this stinky fish kitchen when he dies. Stinky fish kitchen. Do you really want that? No one wants that. Gina, where can people find you on these ear internets?

I write about television and movies and pop culture on my sub stack. Gina watches things at subset.com. And I am on Instagram and sometimes blue sky under Gina does things. Do it today. People check it out. You know, our socials, but please rate review us on, on iTunes.

Talk back to us on Spotify or YouTube. Please subscribe to our YouTube if you haven't already. You don't have to really consume us there, but I would love to up the amount of subscribers we do have. Maybe you will fall back in line. with an episode that our podcast audience has seemed to have forgotten about, but YouTube loves. And then it's Skate Town USA. Skate Town USA is our highest listened to episode. It has the longest amount of people. They listen all the way through that episode.

On YouTube, what our audience is are people who are demanding us talk about more 70s roller skating movies. I mean, there's this and... Xanadu and the Roller Boogie. Yeah. I think that's about it. It will be a short run, but maybe YouTube exclusive. But that just about does it. Don't worry, folks. The body count will continue. For myself and for Gina, bye-bye, everybody. Bye! They're all gonna love-