Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dying time is here. That's right. We're talking about Life Force on Kill by Kill. Greetings and salutations, Internet. It's your old pal, Patrick Hamilton, coming to you once again from outer space. This is the Kill by Kill podcast, where we're dedicated to celebrating the least discussed component of any horror film. the characters. And we're going to unpack all the goriest details of 1985's life force in the hopes that a pasty British man's untimely end.
is just the beginning of the jokes we might make at their expense. And as always, there's only one person I trust to slap me around because deep down, I'm a huge masochist. So it's fine. The one, the only. Gina Radcliffe. How are you doing today, Gina? I'm doing my blood vomits, so you quorum in front of me and then just turn into a big pile of splatter on the ground. Blood mail.
Why did we go through all this bullshit of electronically sending messages to one another when we could just vomit our form? threw Jean-Luc Picard to one another. Exactly. Stand there for a minute, stare intently, and then disappear. And just splat on the floor. And even the spy is like, this is too fucking gross for me. I don't want to scare you, Gina. But we are not alone. That's right. We have a special guest. He's an actor and comedian that you've seen on.
The League, The Mindy Project, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and many a late night program. And his new stand-up special, Hyperbolic, is out now on YouTube. The One. the only Matthew Broussard. How are you doing today, Matthew? I am so thrilled to be here. Thank you so much. I really watched this movie. I experienced this motion picture. This movie definitely was a thing I witnessed.
And I'm not afraid to say it. Yeah, like most movies, it is filmed and portrayed, you know, displayed at 24 frames per second to give the illusion of movement. It's a film, all right. It is two hours of my life. Right. Yeah. If you were to clock it, do you think, Matthew, how much of that time would be spent with the camera riveted to one corner of the room and you're just watching British guys spitball? what might be happening in this motion picture instead of showing you.
I think it's very avant-garde to tell, don't show. They always say, show, don't tell. What a pleasant surprise. How rebellious to really flip that paradigm. It is... rather odd that a filmmaker like toby hooper who i think deep down his best movies are these contained insane showpieces where people are locked in a space and they can't get out and slowly but surely they lose their sanity and he is
I would think the most premier displayer of that, it is why you know he directed Poltergeist and not Steven Spielberg. Because Steven Spielberg has never been able to portray that on screen. He's great at like, hey, those people are looking.
lights off camera that he fucking rules at and but most people can pull that off you know abrams was fucking doing that in star trek and shit but What makes Poltergeist Poltergeist is that Toby Hooper takes those actors and goes, all right, now your last thread of sanity just broke and you're in a swimming pool full of skeletons.
Please lose your mind. And they can do that. He can bring that out of people. And there are times when Steve Railsback is able to get there. But I don't think... international spy chase movie is toby hooper's brand of cola necessarily i did not know anything about the director until you told me all this and now i'm looking at his resume and the guy the guy was around Wow. Yeah. I mean, he is you could arguably put him on a Mount Rushmore because Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so.
incredibly good and then poltergeist and he did poltergeist before this movie i didn't know i thought yeah he signed the deal off of the success of poltergeist now he's a little bit haunted Because an L.A. Times reporter got wind that Spielberg was directing second unit, which he was not allowed to do in terms of unions. And so... He decides that he's going to, that reporter's like, so to Spielberg, like you directed Poltergeist. I mean, I can, I know your movies. That's your stuff. And the.
crew is all of the ET, the extraterrestrial crew. The location is next door to where ET filmed. But because of DGA rules, he couldn't direct two movies back to back. But Spielberg... writes that movie Spielberg is producing that movie and Spielberg is around and yeah he's totally directing second unit stuff you can tell but the Cooper part of that movie
is what really gives it the juice. The Spielberg part is what keeps it on rails. And it allows both ends of the spectrum to shine. You really feel the Spielberg parts. You really feel the Hooper parts. And then here he signed to Golan and Globus in the cannon group. And they're like, we're going to spend all this money. We're going to let this guy go ham. And then he shows up to England with half a script. Yeah. And he's like. He just starts filming. Only a quarter of the script remains.
Truly, truly wild. Matthew, when was the first time you saw Life Force? It was also the last time I saw it, so this week. I never heard of this movie. So we pitched you Life Force, and you're like, this seems insane. Yeah. I like sci-fi a lot. I'm not a big horror fan. No, no, I do like horror, but I just really quite love sci-fi. I read it incessantly. This was not sci-fi. There happened to be a spaceship. It starts like a little 2010, the year we made contact. And then kind of becomes...
What I think the movie wants to be is Species, 1995 Species, where it's a bunch of people chasing an alien on Earth, and she keeps killing people, dudes in particular, and half the time she's naked. And it's just moving so fast. You don't have time to ask questions. Yeah. For reasons known only to everyone being paid so much money to make this movie.
Hooper keeps slowing it down to make a hammer horror film with a bunch of white guys who you can't distinguish from one another. No. Talking in a room and you're like. My God, can we just move on from this? None of you know what's happening until mystically, you know mentally what's going on. Did you see the new Nosferatu? I was reminded very much of how Willem Dafoe's character kind of just arrives and knows all this stuff. And he's...
I think it's a good movie, but kind of a cheap exposition tool. There were nine of those characters in that movie. Just theorizing. They're trying to explain what's happening, and it still doesn't make any sense. Yeah. really, it just sounds like a kid was telling a story, improvise. But boy oh boy, the puppets were good by today's standards. The corpse waking up scene was...
I was like, someone put a lot of passion into this. This is a real work of art. That someone made this corpse that stands up and looks at you with big cabbage patch kid's eyes. And just, yeah. There's a reason for it.
It reminded me of the scene in Seven where the sloth character... turns out to not be dead that yeah similar moment and life force did it first yeah life force did it first and there's kind of a reason for it so let's go and do a little bit of backstory before we get going on the film itself believe it or not this began life
as a novel, a legitimate book with words on a page. And it was entitled The Space Vampires, written by a guy named Colin Wilson, in which energy vampires nowhere near as entertaining as what we do in the shadows, Colin Robinson, are brought to Earth via a long-range spacecraft. and they escape.
By draining life force and swapping bodies until they take over London and the prime minister's office. And all is saved when a higher life form of energy being offers these three castaways the ability to regain their. true energy powers, and they, I don't know, fuck off into the multiverse? It seems like a giant cop-out for a book, but whatever.
It's a decent idea. And what a title. The Space Vampires. That's a movie I want to see. Yeah, that's the biggest mistake that Minds behind this movie made was changing the title and not calling it The Space Vampires. Because Life Force... What the fuck does life force mean? That could be anything.
The space vampires, you are telling me right away what we are dealing with. It is the name of a lot of health startups that I had to scroll through on Google before I could actually find the link to it. It does sound like a company that would be run by that guy. who's pretending he's never going to die. Yeah, I can picture the same person. The guy who's measuring his erections and posting the data on Twitter. The guy who's decided he knows his penis age. And it's like...
My guy, if you have to think about it that fucking much, it can't be that good. I think we can all agree the less you think about sex, the better it is. And that guy's like writing on a fucking whiteboard about it. You're like, Jesus Christ, you must be the worst label. No amount of your son's blood is going to make it.
it any better honey balls yeah so this movie is partially at fault because it's a canon films movie canon acquires the rights to the novel and they first tried to get michael winner on board to direct but i guess he was too busy filming a movie that we've covered on the show called scream for help in which a teenage girl just fucks everything up and it's fantastically stupid but he was also prepping his sexual misconduct allegation project death wish three r.i.p giggler
Death Wish 3 is bat shit. And my guess is, is that Winter wouldn't have put any grandeur into this, but absolutely would have made a rip-roaring $10 million piece of trash. But... Cannon had signed Toby Hooper, hot off of Poltergeist, to a three-picture deal with a caveat that one of them had to be a Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel. But he would have free reign to choose his other projects. And so he was offered the space vampires as a potential film. Canon.
does something smart here, and they hire a couple screenwriters who know their way around sci-fi and horror. Dan Jacoby, who would go on to write Hoopers and Vaders from Mars remake, comes up after this. And of course... A genius who is very easy to get along with named Dan O'Bannon, who... People were primarily known as one of the two writers on 1979's Alien. Although how much of the screenplay he and Jacoby wrote ended up in the finished product.
Ease up for debate because O'Bannett and Hooper instantly hated one another. They clashed over this script. They clashed over a script they weren't even making. They just hated one another. And so O'Bannon's like, fuck you. I'm taking Return of the Living Dead, which he would direct just one year later. And he's like, I'm out of here.
And if you notice, as you mentioned, Matthew, the delay forced zombies here and the return of the living dead zombies are essentially the same fucking puppets. Ah, that saves money. Yeah, well, I mean, they're developed here, but he obviously is like, I love that design. I'm going to use it elsewhere, which is what he did with the original version of Dune and eventually Alien.
He likes to borrow from development. So he did that, and it worked out for him. Not so much Hooper. Hooper is given 17 weeks. He ended up taking 22. There's $25 million poured into this thing. But... Because they're making it in London, there's a limited amount of production space because Ridley Scott is filming Legend and Disney is filming Return to Oz at the same time.
And all those two movies end up going over time and budget. And all three of these fucking things flop at the box office. Real stinkers, yeah. They're not great. I mean, they're remembered for awesome makeup. Because I would say... Ridley Scott's. The, you know, the devil or what is he called in that, Gina? He's like the dark beast or something. Darkness. Darkness. Like the darkness make up fucking rules. And the wheelers in return to Oz gave a whole generation fucking.
nightmares and the the space zombies in here look fucking cool and there's a reason why they look so cool because the the special effects here are handled by academy award winner and long beach's own john dykstra who headed the creation of the motion control camera and led industrial light and magic during its filming of the 1977 star Wars film Dykstra fucking rules, but he also.
He spends money. He spends money to develop shit that he's going to use down the line. My fiance's in the bay right now for work, and she gets a $70 stipend every day for food. And she's just going to Whole Foods and buying groceries every day. So that per diem is per another diem. So I think she has probably some sense of kinship with that.
Yeah, I'll use that money on me currently, on this current project. Wink, wink. She could probably mail half of that home, and you would be fine. Oh, yeah. We're thinking non-perishable. just stack up stack up some canned goods but on life force in particular hooper is aided and abetted by two particular chaos agents golem
and Globus, the two Canon Films honchos who loved to make deals and hated to complete normal motion pictures. And Canon had kept to smaller budget fare up until this point, but Life Force would be part of their efforts to graduate from... mini-major to full-bore studio, and they were completely unprepared for it and fucked it up royally. Their run of high-budget fare would end in the totally normal masters of the universe.
Another movie that looks great when it comes to its special effects, but at the end of the day, you just have one actor in skull makeup going ham, and the rest of it is He-Man talking to teenagers. Oh. Famous orator He-Man. Dolph Lundgren? Dolph Lundgren spends a lot of time talking in that movie and not putting giant swords through motherfuckers.
That's very interesting. It feels like we've kind of come back around. That was an era where things just got too about the costumes and too about the big stuff. And then Marvel got a little too cheeky. And now the new Superman kind of looks like we're going back to that. Let's see. Let's get big and campy. And, and I think it might be appreciated this go round. You know what people just, you show them so too much of the same thing. They're going to rebel.
I think it's kind of what helps horror kind of always stay bubbling up because someone's always trying to do something just a little bit outside. just using a little bit of a curve ball magic. It's on the lower end of budget so you can try shit. You know, it works out that way. The other thing that I just want to tee up in terms of life force.
Is that this is basically Bram Stoker's Dracula before Bram Stoker's Dracula? Oh, yeah. Carlson, the main character here, played by exposed nerve in the form of a man, Steve Railsback.
is playing both Harker and Mina in one role. And while Space Girl is our... space count carlson is corrupted by space girl like harker inside the castle and then acts he acts his spaceship acts as the demeter transporting her across the ocean of space and retains a connection to space girl after she arrives on earth and starts feeding on you know people's life force and body hopping and shit so although the horror here is less xenophobic than a typical dracula film and more
That lady way too hot and she melted my brain. Frankly, the only way to view this movie is that every man you meet is afraid of girls because that's the way they act. If they get too close to this lady, they melt down. They literally just start shaking and going cross-eyed. One of my favorite scenes is they go... I felt such an attraction to her. They go, was it sexual? And I expected it to be, like, I really expected the answer, like, no, it was some kind of life force.
And instead he was like, very, very, it was just like, I was very horny just looking at it. It was such a weird thing to write into the script. I'm like, why would you say that part explicitly? That's the whole job of it. That's what chemistry is. Again, tell, don't show. Really remarkable work. It's like, were you drawn to this nude woman who looks like she's all about 20 years old? I have no idea what you're talking about.
As he's pulling on his collar like Rodney Dangerfield. I did the math, by the way. She was 20 or 19 when this filmed, and he was 40. Boy, that doesn't hold up well. We hear it. Yeah, Steve Railsback, he played Charles Manson in the TV movie of Helter Skelter. And I feel like that role never really left him. I see he had a good career. It's one of those things where you are cast in one thing. And it's not that he's always defined by being Manson. It's just that his definition of what Manson was.
is so clearly what everyone wants him to do from that moment on. And it doesn't matter what movie he ends up being in. He's just shaking and sweating and, and. bug-eyed the moment he appears on screen it doesn't matter if he's being hunted in the australian outback and turkey shoot or whatever that fuck else he's doing at any given time like he's just absolutely losing his shit 24 7 which genuinely works in a toby hooper movie but this movie basically saddles him with
You only show up in the first 15 minutes and then the back hour. And half that time he's like. People are going, why do you know this? And he's just like, I just know. I've seen her before. Yeah, it's like, I'm not getting sexually obsessed from him. I'm getting that he's going through, like, heroin withdrawal. When it comes to these people's interactions with Space Girl, I don't think they're ready for this jelly.
And I don't think they're ready for this jam. No. On a meta level, there's like only... two women's roles in the entire film, and one of them is naked nearly throughout, and the other is occupied by the former, and when that tenant leaves, she's slapped around by the quote-unquote Hero. And the other heroes, like, let me sit down and really, I want to sit in this cuck chair. You go at it, you tell me when you're done. These are our heroes, ladies and gentlemen.
This episode of the Kill by Kill podcast is brought to you in part by our good friends at Mando, the clinically proven family products to block odor all day and control odor. for up to 72 hours. And I know you're going to say to yourself, Patrick, how do you know so much about Mando? Here's the thing. Not only did they provide me with nice talking points, but I didn't need them because I was already a Mando customer.
before they ever approached us. I use their body wash and whole body deodorant stick every single day. And that's why I know this stuff works. It's skin safe to use anywhere on your body from I always use in the shower. And now we've got a new favorite, bourbon.
They're so confident in that. They're offering our listeners a pretty sweet deal on the Mando Starter Pack. What do you get? A solid stick deodorant. Cream tube deodorant. And then you get two free products of your choice. You can choose a couple different products. wipes. That way you can smell fresher anywhere at any time. It's a really great deal and a real easy way to support us here at the show. So you go to shotmando.com and you get 40% off when you use the code killpoth.
That's K-I-L-L-P-O-D at checkout. That's shopmando.com. S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O dot com. Enter killpod at checkout. Turn that five bucks off the starter pack. Plus, you get free shipping. Man, I can't tell you how good this stuff is. You deserve to smell this good. I believe in it. Smell fresher, stay drier, and boost your confidence. better smelling body count continues. One little side note. Can I complain about something? Of course! One of the first lines in the movie was...
They were able to accelerate it exactly gravity so that they could experience gravity on the ship. I'm like, why is that the part you thought I would find implausible? Like you justify a good science. A good sci-fi to me is how they justify the science. There's, if you read sci-fi, they talk about how they create artificial gravity all the time. Sometimes through acceleration, that's harder to do. Oftentimes just through centrifuge. If you spin the aircraft around at a given.
consistent rate you will experience gravity towards the walls. I think the ISS does this. I think a lot of spaceships do this. The one thing that is not a good way to create artificial gravity is to stay at constant acceleration, especially when you're approaching an object that is definitely not accelerating or not accelerating in the same direction or at a constant rate. This is such a weird thing to specify.
Three sentences into the movie. It's like they're trying to explain they park so well because they approach the parking spot at 50 miles an hour. Yes. Okay, sure. 50 miles an hour per hour. It's, it's. Wow, I found that part very silly. Yeah. And also the acting really struck me in that I saw an analysis of like what made the acting in episode one, Star Wars episode one bad. And it stuck with me through this of basic competent acting typically comes from.
your reaction to the other person you listen to what they say you internalize it and what you say is in response to them that is what makes a line start to sound less more canny, I guess, that human thing. Every person looks like they set the camera up on just them in an empty room with no one they're responding to and just got all of their lines wild. Like no one is responding to another person. Everyone is just saying their line and that's it. One by one.
I'm sure all these people came through some sort of Royal Academy. They've been on stage, you know, and they've done Shakespeare in the round. They're all competent to a certain degree. So they don't sound like. aliens themselves. We're not in Neil brain territory, but there's also so little script. for them to grab onto, so little relationship to one another, that they are all approaching their roles as if gravity is created by going 50 miles an hour per hour.
We open here in the vastness of space. The HMS Churchill is apparently a crew made up of European astronauts and American astronauts with Colonel Tom Carlson being in charge, played by the aforementioned Steve Ramsey.
back and when they notice a giant space penis they're like holy shit we gotta get inside that comet and check out that space penis because it won't be back for 77 years and The early parts of this movie are partially why it went over by five weeks, because I think Hooper and Dykstra and everyone's like, we're going to make this look so fucking good that.
People are just going to be in awe. And they're kind of, weirdly enough, following the Alien sort of format here. But what O'Bannon and Hooper kind of forget, weirdly enough, about Alien... is that part of the inspiration for what makes Alien work is Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ridley Scott's like, I want to make... Texas Chainsaw Massacre in space. It's fucking crazy in there. They're trapped. They can't get out. And you've already told the audience.
This shit hits Earth and we're stuck for 20 minutes in outer space watching people float around and take fingers off of space bats. And it looks great. Even if you're going to go, oh, it's 1985. This looks great. But it's also ripping off so much of Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires that you're also kind of like, I don't know. I forwarded this to Gina, and Matthew, I'm wondering if you would be on board with this. I think this movie would be vastly improved if you took this front portion.
of the movie where they find the space girl and they go inside the space penis. And you make that a recounted backstory that Carlson tells once he's on earth and you just shorten it up. You show me the best parts. And then everything is then a chase from that moment on. Yeah, I agree with that. Have it open inside a burnt out space shuttle. And like, how the fuck did this happen?
Who's this naked lady? Don't tell me anything about this stuff. And then just make it a chase picture. You cut out like 20 minutes. I think this fucking thing flies. You can kind of do it like Zod. in the original Superman series where they just appear on Earth and you don't know why they're there. You just see them land and you see them kind of like skulking about in a threatening way and you slowly build their backstory. But yeah, I mean...
So much what I love in movies is, oh, that's interesting. I wonder how that came to be. And instead, they just spell it out from the start. It's such linear storytelling. I just feel like they felt like because it works in Alien, it'll work here. It's just All the crazy things about that are, you know, how it makes you feel weird inside. And they try to get at it because at one point they're floating through the spacecraft and Steve Reelsbeck goes.
I almost have a feeling I've been here before. Yeah, Railsback. You have. We all have. That's a fallopian tube. We've all been there. We came out the other side. I get it. I get it. But this is not. This is not scary. And it kind of needs to be scary or upsetting. They come into a room with a bunch of space coffins that's kind of trying to evoke a xenomorph egg room.
but it just comes off as a space nudist chamber. Yeah. And they just grab Space Girl and her two cuck-chaired male companions, and they hoist them into a space shuttle, and off you go. And then Chiron, 30. Days later. And it's just not the start you want. Yeah, you could just, you know, have it jump into that and then do 30 days earlier and just show the flashbacks as you were saying. Yeah.
I think if this was a bit more epistolatory, like a Bram Stoker's Dracula, you might have had a more effective storytelling device. That's not to say that there aren't moments which are so fucking good. You're like, why isn't the movie all this? And the problem with is the parts of the movie that are so good involve John Dykstra just like spending money like it has no limit to make.
ghostbuster streams occur in the, in, in the sky. And Toby Hooper's like, we're going to put this room on a centrifugal force machine. And you don't know it because they tied everybody down. Oh, that's a great effect. That's so practical. When you see it, it looks good, but I don't think he's able to quite, because of the scale of everything. it kind of outpaces his normal visual language. Like, he's not an incompetent guy. He really, really isn't.
but also he doesn't have a script. His producers are so fucking on cocaine that they, that cocaine deserves a producer. You just end up with a lot of trash swirling around. He was alien. Aliens 1979. Oh, okay. Yeah, they have no excuse. I mean, it's just a good... Alien's such a great lesson in, like, keep it simple, stupid. Like you have that in just like one location. That is where Hooper does best because Texas Chainsaw is primarily one location.
Oh, the Fun House? The Fun House is one location. Even his killer alligator movie, Eaten Alive, is so one location, they have an outdoor set built in a soundstage. He just wants it to be theatrical. And Poltergeist is primarily one location. It really helps him. And I understand his desire to make a movie that...
is bigger and more grandiose and travels from place to place. It's just, if you're going to do that, you really need to be on rails. And the only rails happening here, we're being snorted up either a Golem or a Globus. So Space Girl arrives on Earth, immediately wakes up and drains the life force out of a guard. And for whatever reason.
Only one guy in the entire facility is happening to watch this interaction on a closed circuit television. And he's like, I got to run there and stop it. Call somebody. Alert somebody. Radio somebody. Space girl woke up. This guy's becoming a human skeleton. Let's go. And he just keeps it to himself for some fucking reason. I think he thinks it's kind of sexy. I think we all do. It also turns out that Space Girl has Doom voice. She can just...
tell people to do shit, and they kind of do. Yeah, she also, she can force choke people. She can shoot lightning. Yeah, she can shoot lightning out of her hands. Yeah, I mean, again, Palpatine, like, it's just OP. As we say in the video game world. She has all the powers and her two space twinks kind of have lesser versions of it. For whatever reason, as...
Gina has noted before, she walks around naked for a good 25 minutes and they're tastefully shown from just the waist up. We never get to see what that hinder does, Gina. No, we don't. We sure don't. And one of them is Mick Jagger's weirdly more human looking younger brother. I don't know how he came out of the same gene pool as Mick Jagger, but outside of.
Yes. Wow. He is a Jagger. Like, same parents. And you're kind of like, it's weird. He looks way more handsome than Mick Jagger. But obviously, you know, Jagger has the hips. You can't fake that. There's almost no opportunity for him to flap around a stage like a chicken with his head cut off. He might as well have. I mean, everything else happens in this movie.
You just have one guy calmly walking down a hallway while space lightning goes off, and the other guy's going, oh! Sure, why not? I love it. This is the energy that needed to be brought to this. Also, I love how they're like, oh, no, there's a naked woman. Everyone watch out. They're like, oh, well, we need to go find her. That's a security concern. Got to go find this naked woman walking about. And there's two naked men. Everyone's like, shut it down. Just shut it down.
Kill them. Shoot them. Shoot them immediately. Why are London's dumbest pasty men on the job here? And by the job, I mean just drinking tea and eating bland sandwiches while people have space lightning coming out of their fucking hands. Like one guard tries to lure Space Girl. With a biscuit. Like she's a dog. Like he's trying to train her to sit. Like here, here's a hot dog. Bow. bow and it's not fucking happening no one's motivations made sense and that they found
I mean, I guess they have this spaceship arrive with potentially alien life forms that are almost invincible that they can tell back on Earth. And they're just like, let's just keep him in this room and we'll see what happens. It's the greatest scientific discovery in all human history. Listen, so long as we keep them in this room.
No, as long as we keep them in a broom closet, I think we can stop this alien invasion. They survived a fire on a spaceship coming from the Oort cloud. I haven't seen a cloud. This ridiculous. Did either of you see Green Lantern? No. I was invited to a screening on the Warner Brothers lot for. Green Lantern. And I was only informed when I arrived there that it was, quote unquote, a producer's screening. So I had to keep my reactions to myself for fear that someone...
really in charge, might hear my genuine reaction to the film. And I watched it like Kevin from Home Alone, through my hands, silently screaming. It's my favorite superhero, so I was very sad that. I'll tell you, he's not represented well when a cloud with teeth shows up. A cloud. With teeth? That's the villain. Because that's what I'm afraid of. What if clouds could go chompy chomp on? Like Galactus and Silver Surfer? Like that kind of?
Almost worse because it's a dirty cloud that's brown and has yellow teeth and also sucks the life force out of Green Lanterns. Lame. It sucks in almost every way, shape, or form. Like this, you're watching talent. waste their time and someone else's money which sometimes can be very entertaining but it's not nearly bat shit enough like life force is at moments i like the bat shit segments of life force like dr falada
Who the fuck named him Dr. Falada? Dr. Falada. Hans Falada. Hans Falada. And he just has ice cream on top of his head and just flits about and goes, people are like, Why do you know what you know? And he's like, I just kind of think. I just know. I just know. And then he gets sudden oatmeal syndrome on his face and fire comes out of his back. But don't worry, everybody. He has a collection of swords. Why? We're never told. He's just...
scientist who works on where you go after you die and just happens to have a lot of Klingon swords around. Yeah, he knows what swords work with the space vampires. It's leaded iron, as we're told numerous times. Leaded iron. Why don't, why are there so many, so few leaded iron swords around? Is it because of woke? It might be because of woke. It's the woke folk. Damn it.
And now, if space vampires come down, what are we going to do? We're just, we're screwed. Thankfully, we have a crypto reserve. What the fuck else happens in this goddamn movie? What doesn't happen in this movie? The spy is wearing a turtleneck. That's the only reason you can tell him apart from any other white guy is that one person with a widow's peak has a turtleneck on. You're like, okay, okay.
That's the domestic spy. Keep that in mind. It doesn't really matter where he works or why he works there because he doesn't do jack shit until he throws a sword to somebody at the end. He sort of like reacts to everything up to a certain point. with a very British, you know, right then, that's very unusual, until the space girl forms, you know, from flying blood vomit, and then he's just like, eww!
Like, this helicopter is unclean now. And the helicopter, the helicopter pedal looks back and immediately crashes the helicopter. He's like, fuck this. How do I walk out of this helicopter? Is there a ladder I can use? Like, is there a parachute? So many parts of it.
Sounds like seven different movies. It really is. Are your movies you go over usually this convoluted? I just didn't expect it to be so. I had trouble keeping up. This is particularly convoluted. I mean, keep in mind, like some of the movies. we're watching are the most basic shit in the entire world. We covered a movie called hide and go shriek a couple of weeks ago. That is so basic in so many ways.
but also decides to be bat shit in parts. And a lot of the scares are very mannequin dependent. It's unsuccessful. But sometimes we're covering very, you just, you never know. Like I didn't expect. Hello, Mary Lou Prom Night 2 to be as good as it was. I wasn't sure that Mikey was going to knock it out of the park. Sometimes you find gems, but sometimes they're life force. And you're like, I remember this being batshit.
crazy and for 25 minutes it is but for an hour and a half it's a tough yeah what's the lore so what's the lore here it is vampires exist in space it's that there's a bunch of space vampires who float around in that comet and every 77 years they come down and they suck up some local city center that Apparently, we don't pass down via someone like, oh, I remember in Fallujah when this happened. I remember in mainland China.
When this happened 150 years ago or whatever. Almost like Derry. Yeah. Only, yeah, only there's no turtles. You don't have to. make out with a demon in order to curse it. You know, let's not get into it lore. We'd be here all day. That's convoluted but delightful. Well, the backstory does kind of ruin it, actually. I like it less. There's another case of, I mean, similar thing. Maybe that was inspired of, like, here's this very body horror.
you know, if that's the right word, just a creepy, scary, and such a visceral, you know. human way that's also an alien. It just feels convoluted. So aliens exist in this comet, and they come down every 77 years, and they destroy a city and then leave. That's how it works. They suck up all the available souls they can get their hands on. They zap it up to their spaceship and then big umbrella at the end of it. They airdrop it.
Yeah. And they're like, Sia wouldn't want to be. And it's just those three vampires? Are those the main three vampires? All the other ones have had all the juice sucked out of them. Okay. So there seems to be a lot of empty space coffee. in that throne room and only three remain. And what were the bats? The bats are the real form of the space vampires. And they're all dead. they don't have enough juice to make it around the sun for another 77 years. Really? So it's just once they go bad.
they just free float around. Like they don't have a trash can for whatever. And why was, they don't want to pick up after themselves. Why was he, why did he know about them already? He just knew. I mean, that's how anybody in this movie knows about anything. They just sense it for reasons, question mark? I mean, it could have been like his grandpa was like a vampire who stayed and got someone pregnant, but no, they don't want to do that. Well...
At one point, Steve Railsback goes, she shared her energy with me because she needed the information I had about our age and how to defeat us now. And so she learned English through this way. She decided on London because that was where the space shuttle was supposed to land. And that's why it's hard to catch her because she's jumping bodies. God. And she chose her form based on his tastes in women. Yes. Yes. She is the ideal woman he needed at that time after so many.
years, months in space, we're never told. And who fucking cares? How did he get back to Earth? I was so confused about that, how everyone else died, but he came back separately. He went like an escape pod. Everyone else dies slowly. They're drained from afar by the space vampires, and he's kept alive specifically so that he can escort. It's like the Demeter in Dracula.
he's left alive to steer the ship towards home and he was supposed to die. And then he's like, no, I'll just light this motherfucker on fire and take an escape pod out of here. And that'll work. And it turns out. Fire don't work on them. And also the big reveal is, and this doesn't make any more sense than anything else does, is that he is also a space vampire. Yeah. He's part space vampire. Not practicing. He converted. He just, yeah, he's just like Harrison Ford. He's just.
you know, just a little does you for whatever reason he's kept alive. And then because he has all this knowledge, she has to suck up. that part of space vampire she gave him before she can ascend back into the space umbrella, which is why they're kissing so badly at the end of this movie. Matthew... Is this the worst makeout sessions you've ever seen in your life? I feel like this is terrible kissing. It makes me never want to kiss again. It was grosser than the blood throwing up.
I was mentioning this before. Roger Moore, one of the famous James Bond people, was a terrible on-screen kisser. His mouth would become an anus and he would just cinch up. And so for whatever reason, it looked like he was sipping another person's kiss through a straw. And I was like, this guy is supposed to be sexy. And I can't grasp how he kisses. Conversely.
This is all open mouth and like their lips are numb. They have no idea where they're exactly supposed to go. And they just keep mashing mouths against one another in the hopes that it looks intense. Yeah, I don't get the... I don't get the...
impression that that these two are madly passionately intergalactically attached to each other the love story kind of sucks the reason why we love so many of the dracula movies we've covered is that even some of the worst ones the love story element still kind of works and here They've got zero chemistry. I mean, she is a very attractive woman. And Steve Railsback is an actor.
And he can't quite sell that she's super hot, which is hard because that's pretty obvious to anyone just looking at her. But he is trying to get as naked as her at various points, so I'll... give him that he does get more he is allowed to get more naked than her two companions are yes we're allowed to see what steel rails banks two Flat muffins are accomplishing. And we've come a long way in male ass technology. We really have. The other.
bit of lore I guess that is internalized here is that once your soul's been sucked out by a proper space vampire You have two hours before your corpse reanimates, searching out another life force to suck down. And then you're just like, when SpongeBob needs water. That's exactly what it is. Water. gulping for air while a hedgehog or a beaver. I'm not sure what she, what's a squirrel. She's a squirrel. She's a Texas squirrel. And she's asking, are you all right?
And so this is just, it goes on and on and on. My favorite, favorite part of this outside of the puppets looking cool. is that one of the guards, I think, wakes up in like a supply closet that they've locked him in, and it hits the two-hour mark. He takes a runner for this gated door and just explodes. He explodes in dust.
And it gets in one of the actor's mouths and his visceral reaction is like, see, that's what I should be feeling. I should be wanting to throw up right now. I'm glad I'm being represented. I feel seen. We need more civil servants taking dust to the mouth, I guess. I should really be on the side of civil servants right now. But that being said, officious British dudes. I like to see somebody who just came out of a dinner party, get vampire dusted in the mouth. So Matilda.
space girl she escapes because she doesn't take a biscuit from a guard she explodes a couple windows and then she's just out loose in the world she kills a girl in the park two of the And I don't like to shame people on this podcast, right? We're all God's unique creatures. But they picked two of the most unique British lads to witness this crime.
And then we get space SVU as they're interviewing them. Like, why didn't you prevent the space vamp? What are you doing here? And like, Oh, we wanted to see these ladies. Calm the fuck down. But then the spy's like, no, she has clothes. We're not going to be able to find her now. Cancel that APB for the hottest naked chick you've seen in a while wandering the English countryside.
I close now, everybody. That's stunning. Not for nothing, but British men have the danger awareness of a fucking toddler. Country without guns. They just see a hot chicken and they're just like... When the redheaded lady who Space Girl is occupying her space seduces a guy on the road, and she, like, starts hiking up her skirt, and he's like, and you're like, dude.
You must have seen Legs before, right? Why is everyone Benny... Is Benny Hill a documentary? Because that's how I feel right now. Yeah, everybody in this movie is... The space twinks break out. We visit Britain's Arkham Asylum. And here's where we finally hit a real good patch. Because if you wouldn't know it.
Things are about to get hot. It's John Luke. Okay. Now, if he's the captain, I want to earn those stripes. Some guys just know how to give dome. It's snack time. So make it. So if he's on screen, I'm in. Just like Shakespeare, he's will-versed. Like a sandworm, he's doing it for me. It's Patrick Stewart. Oh, he just walked that street. Bye, Patrick. You know, I've seen this movie probably...
five or six times at this point over the years. I still don't know what his character does in this. Other than be possessed and then blood vomit. He's got, he's got three scenes. Like, I don't know. I don't remember what his character, I never remember what his character's name is or if he has a name. I still do not understand what his, what his function. in the plot he is he's real sassy he knows where like a queer eye yeah he is like a queer eye guy now we're doing it this way
Yeah, he's judging. He's helping you eat healthier. He's doing a lot of things. He just knows where all the apartments are inside this mental facility. And. Then he is possessed by Space Girl. And we get that scene in which he's smacked around by Steve Railsback, whose main, he's got two modes. I'm kissing you. in a very awkward way, or I'm slapping you, demanding information I can later just feel and communicate. Yeah, this scene where she is possessing Patrick Stewart.
and Steve Rose just, like, shaking him. Like, they move him away from Patrick Stewart, and he's, like, still moving his arms like he's shaking somebody. That's his modus operandi. That's what he knows how to do. I know how to shake these other actors. By the way, Patrick Stewart loved his experience. Really? Talks about Tobey Hooper like he was a gem among men, which is how I promote.
primarily heard toby was on set yeah it'd be pretty fun to work with him where he was like wow everyone's great at acting you're all so good at acting every time We got it on the first take, guys. He's never seen acting before. Wow, everyone's really good. Everyone's choices all make sense, and don't convolute each other at all. I think Patrick Stewart is a very nice man, and I...
Don't think he's easily rattled. And I think he had fun being sweaty and he looks so snatched in this movie. He looks hotter. hell. I don't know when he went bald at 14. I don't know. He's been bald since before I was born. Yeah, he's been bald for 40 years. At least. He was very bald then, too. What was he before? What did he do career-wise up until that point? I mean, he's a Royal Shakespeare Company actor. So the movie he did previous to this was The Lynch Dune.
Is he Duncan Idaho in that? No, Gurney. Oh, he's Gurney in that. Duncan Idaho was the rock star, right? No, I'm sorry. No, Sting is playing one of the black and white aliens. He's one of the... Fade Rousha, yeah. Dune is one of those things where I've read the book. I've watched the new movies. I enjoyed them very much. I've watched the Lynch Dune.
It just slides right out of my brain. For whatever reason, I can remember every character in a Friday the 13th movie, but this shit does not stay in the brain folds. I am the opposite. Yeah, no, I love that movie. It's understandable. I love the movie. I never actually watched the Lynch version. I think...
The Lynch version is a lot like this. If you were sitting in a bar and it was playing wordlessly in the background, you're like, what the fuck is this? This looks cool. And it does look cool. But if you're really paying attention to it, you're like... Oh, there's a lot of holes here, guys. Not just the ones dug by the stem worms. Have you tried watching it since seeing the new ones?
Oh, I'm sure it makes all the sense in the world because you know who the fuck these people are. They really do fill in a lot of the empty spaces that the Lynch one leaves behind. So it honestly makes a lot more sense. There's a reason that you... Universal released it with a cheat sheet because the best place you want to read about characters is in a dark movie theater. It was a problem. Anyways, Carlson.
somehow becomes the lead cop investigator in this and everyone starts following his lead and he does not seem like somebody you should be like listening to about anything frankly No, because he can't meet anybody without slapping the shit out of them, including that redheaded lady who's like, deep down, she's a masochist. And then he's like, I'm just going to threaten to rape you. And the spy's like.
I've got a cuck chair. I'm just going to sit here. I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this. Carlson can seem to read minds, but only at a time when it's really convenient to him.
They keep chasing the other two vampires, make it to London. They're like, take this helicopter to London. That's when Space Girl becomes a... blood zombie and that's really cool to look at and that goes it goes on for a while too just just cutting back and forth between you know here's blood spray out of this guy's mouth now here's blood spraying I'm with them. If I meet a lady, I don't care how hot she is, but if she emerges out of two dead... Dead guy's blood.
In front of me, at best, I'm going to have a halfway stiff. It's just not going to take me all the way. At one point, the spies were like, listen, Carlson, you've got to level with me. What the fuck happened on that? spaceship and again this is when you should have all that backstory but steve frills banks like i was in love on a level You'd never understand Cain. And the next thing that just went through my brain was like,
I was straight tripping, boo. It just instantly got there. Also, excuse you. He might have been in love on a level that he and the space girl were in love. But he's so weird that I think his level is... just weirdness because all he does is shake and sweat all the time we never see steve rails back be halfway normal true yeah i don't like that with an actor yeah but they just go like
It's crazy. Leo does that in a lot of movies. And I think it's fair to compare Leo to Steel of Rails in terms of cultural import. I would say at least Leo's a skosh more grounded, but I do think you're... Right. And then Leo starts at an eight and increases to a 12. And, you know, I'd say. There are times when that really, really works and times when it doesn't, but at least you know what you're getting into. Steve Railsback is also what really feels like high as shit. Like, just...
tripping balls 24 seven in this movie. And Toby Hooper's like, great. That's what I love. I love to film that. And so he never asked him to be grounded at any point. He never pulls him back to the eight. He's just. Pedal to the metal. If you're at 50 miles per hour per hour, just keep going. We learn once the copter reaches London that NATO is in charge. Thank goodness we're still a part of... Oh, fuck. Well, you know, when the space zombies come, it's every man for himself, I guess.
This is a Europe problem. Maybe, you know, Trump can negotiate with the space vampires to give up most of London and the UK, perhaps Scotland on top of it, but carve out where his golf course is. NATO is like, listen, we can't let you loose for two hours. And, like, we don't have two fucking hours. We actually know what's going on. You don't. Let us out of here. And so.
The spy goes back to meet with Volada, who, again, his face starts to melt, and then he goes substance in the back, but with flames. And it... is cool to look at. But before he goes, Flada's like, also, I have a lot of Klingon swords. They're full of lead, so you might want to grab one or two. So convenient. Why do you have so many swords? I'm sorry. Matthew, if you're general practitioner.
was like, here's your blood pressure. I think you need to work out a little bit more. I like your liver function. How do you feel about swords? Would you go back to that person? Unless they're like a Naruto fan or Demon Slayer. I feel like that's a sword. There you go. Yeah. Being prescribed a sword. I mean, with current health care, it's probably expensive. I mean, I don't know what my copay for leaded sword would be, but I'm guessing even.
With an HMO, it's going to be through the roof. But Falada explodes. The spy brings the sword back to London because I guess the roads are open for him. And he gets back there and it's fucking chaos. But I was also reminded. So much of this kind of looks a little bit like Ghostbusters, which they couldn't have known about because they were filming it at the same time Ghostbusters is happening. But when Ghostbusters has a more explainable plot...
you might be in trouble. Yeah, I mean, this is a point where you wonder if, like, you take that Kane has driven into an entirely different movie. Because now we're dealing with zombies. And they're fucking cool. Every part of this is cool. I love to watch it. I love how the zombies look. I love how the zombies act. I like how they suck each other's blue souls out and they all vacuum straight to a giant space vortex in the middle of the city, which again.
We didn't know that Avengers would essentially take this over, but we've all seen this before. Yeah. I like this part. I like when it's batshit. I wish it was more this movie. than a lot of guys standing in a room talking to one another, even when some of them get a little space vampire dust in their mouth. So he finally comes to the church where...
I guess space vampires don't care about crosses, but space girls just lying on a crypt, sucking up everyone's, you know, souls and beaming them into the space umbrella. And Carlson's like, Only I can fix this. And he goes down and they're like, let's fuck. But with our knees touching, kneeling in front of one another, which. I know we've railed a lot about weird sexual positions on the show, Gina, but this might take a look. Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't understand the logistics of this.
Even if I said, hey, honey, tonight I want to get a little freaky. Let's stand face to face. Now let's kneel on a hard marble surface. Then let's have sex. That's going to be. tough you know what i mean there's not a lot of you have to be real loose in the hips to really even This is worse than shower sex. I have to say it, Gina. We found the worst thing. Yeah, I think it is. It's certainly harder on the knees, I think. You have to have very compatible heights, too. It's very dependent on that.
But also, you can't be at exact heights. You know, you have to have an angle to the dangle to make entry. I hate to explain to people how sex works. Talk to your parents. They'll run it through for you. There are examples online right now. But. I am happy to report that for twice in as many weeks, although these weeks might be separated by an entire month because we just talked about the monkey, but that episode just came out. But finally.
we have another get bunked for 2025 because Carlson kills space girl by shoving a sword through her and into him. And that folks. is a get-bunked. It is a get-bunked, and it is a metaphorical get-bunked, because he's basically impaling her on a long, thick sword, baby. And himself. Yeah. A little friendly fire. Yep. Well, you know, sometimes you got to take as good as you give if you really want to enjoy yourself. That's a lesson.
from me to you, are listening on. I mean, one way or another, you know, a dick metaphor got him killed. Yes. Listen, you don't have to just watch Deadpool or Hello, Mary Lou Prom Night 2 to watch Peggy on screen. Or... Commando for that measure. My other favorite pegging movie.
So just to explain, Matthew, get bunked is when someone's killed through something else. We came up with it in the first Friday the 13th when an arrow gets shoved through a bed through Kevin Bacon's neck. And why is it called that? One of our guests, when we referred to what getting killed through something else was, they shouted, oh, tonight I'm going to get bunked. And we just went through a bunk bed. Oh, got it. That's clever.
I like that. Listen, Amy, if you're out there, you still fucking cool. You branded the show. This movie, any final thoughts about this delightful, fantastic looking, sometimes boring, sometimes batshit insane? Motion picture. It just made me feel stupid. I do feel like I actually need to watch it again, as painful as the first watch was. I can't believe it, but I think I'm going to have to revisit this over time. When you do.
Make sure you pay attention to the wall art in that redhead's apartment in the sane asylum that she lives in because her poster art is out of fucking control. The only thing missing, Gina, is somebody's 8x10. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Just see the headshot, yeah. I mean, she has, I guess, proof of concept for Pink Floyd's The Wall is going on at the background. She is...
She's a very big Prague fan by the looks of things. Gina, any final thoughts? You know, like I said, I have seen this a couple of times, and I find that much like the films of the late David Lynch, that... the sooner you stop trying to figure out what's happening, the more enjoyable. the viewing experience will be. I do think this is a marvelous example of when you have multiple people working on the same movie with multiple and very different visions.
for what kind of movie they want, and nobody is conceding or giving way in an inch. So you very much have just two entirely different movies just clamoring for space together. And it's fascinating to watch. It is crazy insane. And I think... the right movie is in there. It's just, you'd have to assemble it a slightly different way.
I think it's kind of a bummer because it starts to redefine Hooper's career. And I do feel like he does such a better job re-centering himself with Invaders from Mars. Texas Chainsaw 2, those just work better because they're on a smaller scale. And that's the scale he should be at. But he's kind of put in a mobile director's jail after his canon films. And I think it comes down to Golan and Globus are not good producers if you need good producers. And I think he did. But before we go, of course.
there's one more decision that needs to be made. That's when we choose our own death venture. We decide of the deaths portrayed in the film, if you were forced to die in one of those ways, which one would you choose and why? Here's the problem.
Almost everyone dies the exact same way. So really, we're choosing location. You're either on a space shuttle, you're... at europe's nasa you're in a broom closet you're in an autopsy room you're in an insane asylum lanai you're on the streets of london you're in a church you're somewhere on the british countryside you're making out with a lady in the british park system any particular part of this lovely countryside that you would choose to die in by exploding into a dust skeleton
Matthew. Oh, no, I would die. A sword threw her into me. Okay, I'd get bunked. I'd bunk myself while in standing coitus with Space Vampire. Sure. Kneeling coitus. Kneeling coitus, my bad. Because I grew up religious, unfortunately. You're not going to be freaked out fucking in a church because I'm not really sure I can do that. I'm Jewish. We're all about fucking in holy places.
Matthew, I'm breathing easy now. Thank God. That's a mitzvah, honestly. Gina, what say you? I guess I can't blood vomit to death because they're already technically dead, aren't they? Picard is hanging on by a thread. Yeah, I thought he was kind of like just unconscious. But the blood suckage does put him out of his misery. Yeah, I'm pretty sure like him vomiting every... ounce of blood from his body to turn into a sexy lady probably probably killed him and you know what I
I'll make that sacrifice. You know, it'll be like a, like a substance like twist where, you know, I give up my body to, to, you know, to give life to a sexy lady. You know what? You're making a lot of sense, Gina, but I have to stick with exploding into a grate and having part of my space vampire dust get in the mouth of a conservative PM. I think just on a protest level.
Just scream as hard as you can and run into a wall and explode? I mean, it doesn't suck. Your family doesn't have to pay for cremation because you're already ashes. Just sweep me into an urn. Yeah, they just gotta get a little dustpan and dump you into a container. You're good.
Yeah, just spread me on some rocky-ass British beach. That's the way to go, baby. Josh Hollis does a little of our artwork. Go to RevengeBodyMemphis at Bandcamp.com for this theme and all of our remixes. Go to our Patreon for bonus episodes.
find us online rate and review us on the podcatcher of choice we'd love to hear from you and matthew where can people see and hear more from you out there on the internet social media at monday ponday but uh please check out my special hyperbolic on youtube for free it is very good thank you
I enjoyed the hell. Thank you very much. I laughed my ass off watching it. I think you're excellent. And that special in particular, I thought was incisive. And I really laughed hard. Thank you so much for checking it out. Good stuff. Gina, where can people find you on these here? I write about television and movies and pop culture on my sub stack. Gina watches things.substack.com. And I am mostly on blue sky and Instagram.
under Gina does things. Do it today, people. Check it out. Don't worry, folks. The body count will continue. For myself, for Gina, and for Matthew, bye-bye, everybody. Bye. Bye-bye.