Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dying time is here. That's right, we're talking about the monkey on Kill by Kill. Well, greetings and salutations, Internet. It's your old pal, Patrick Hamilton, coming to you once again from Casco, Maine.
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 2025's... the monkey in the hopes that a random individual'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 not to scratch her head with a loaded fucking pistol. The one, the only, Gina Radcliffe. How are you doing today, Gina? I don't know. you can trust me not to do that. Oh boy. See, here's the thing about this, right? Sometimes we strain the credulity of our...
of the sort of raison d'etre of Kill by Kill, which is discuss characters. We get into other areas. We analyze the movie. We like to go into backgrounds. We like to make japes and jabs. But... This movie is filled with characters. Yeah, very broad characters. And it's intentional. It knows what it's doing. Yes. and we should because this has just come out, and this will come out, you know, one week.
after it's landed in theater. So not everyone will have gone to go see it, although it opened very well in a very competitive box office environment. We love that for Neon. We love that for Osgood Perkins.
And we love that for this movie in particular. That being said, before we go into spoilers, what is your sort of, I'm not going to reveal anything attitude towards 2025's The Monkey, Gina? I had a lot of fun with it. I don't think it was particularly... I think that, you know, the choice that he made to turn a very, very bleak short story into something almost...
Well, I want to say almost, it was a lot of fun. Yes. And, you know, I don't know if hopeful is the right word, but sort of like, you know. The attitude being, you know, fuck it, we're all going to die. Might as well have fun with your life. And I appreciate the personal angles he put into it. Yes. In fact, I have a quote from Mr. Perkins that...
I enjoyed very much. One thing I didn't know going into this was that this was a job he was hired to do. It wasn't an Osgood Perkins passion project. The Black Bear. had the rights to it they hired him to come in and write and direct i had a previous script that they developed with atomic monster so james wan and company and perkins goes I took liberties with that script like a motherfucker. Atomic Monster had a very serious script. Very serious. And I felt it was too serious. And I told them...
this does not work for me. This thing is about a toy monkey. Then a whole lot of people die around it in insane ways. So I thought, Well, I am an expert on that. Both my parents died in insane headline-making ways. And I spent a lot of my life recovering from that tragedy, feeling quite bad. And it all seemed inherently unfair. start to personalize the grief. Why is this happening to me?
But I'm older now, and you realize that this shit happens to everyone. Everyone dies. Sometimes it's in their sleep. Sometimes it's in a truly insane way, like what I experienced. but everyone dies. And I thought maybe the best way to approach that insane notion is with a smile. And I appreciate that. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, 100%. I went long on this for my newsletter, which will be out the same day as this.
you know, came out of a very personal angle because I almost died a few years ago. Sure. You know, it does... change your attitude about things a little bit. If you've read the short story, and I think it is the first story in Skeleton Crew, which is funny because I read a review of the movie, a very positive review. who described the monkey as one of the lighter stories. Oh dear. No, I don't know. One of the lighter. Oh my. The one where like a dog has an explosive brain.
That's one of the lighter stories. One thing I will say that in making it humorous, he does kind of... pull his punches a little bit because in the short story it kills animals it there's a lot of children a lot of dead children and he doesn't quite go that far here although there is a flaming a baby stroller there's a flaming baby stroller yeah we don't see what happens to the baby or if there's even a baby in there
But yeah, that's about as far as it goes. This seems to reserve its randomness towards adults. So I would still say that if you're looking for something that's going to give you nightmares, go with the story. Right. But this is a lot of fun. It definitely was an emphasis on comedy over horror. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's hard to find that perfect... Right. Like, nobody's dying of a heart attack or anything. It's the most ridiculous deaths.
Yes, it is all over the top. It is all Grand Guignol. I hadn't seen one snippet of him talking about it, that the physical effects crew had a giant truck. And they had to calculate how much blood would be in a regular human body. And he said they would always arrive to set with five times that much.
So he always knew how the effects were going to turn out, which is bloodier than you would imagine. And he's just rolled with it. This is a movie in which you just roll with it. My audience, as I had mentioned to Gina before we started rolling. I was very into enjoying this movie and laughing along with it. And the rest of the audience was stone cold sober. And almost as if...
They didn't understand the movie they had come to see. Yeah, the cinema score for this was not great. I think it was a C+. But horror movies always, it is the rare one that's going to come away with the best. Like even Hard Eyes, which is about as audience pleaser a horror movie as you're ever going to come across. That was still in the beats.
Like, you just, you cannot satisfy people who go to horror movies. Yeah, I'm just wondering, like, did people feel misled? Because I think the trailers do a pretty good job of letting you know that this is, you know, meant to be funny. Yes. It absolutely sold the movie it is. So coming into it, and that's the other thing, is that while...
Horror has always has these elements to it that someone can harken back to and go, I was creeped out. I was genuinely scared. I jumped. So therefore I am satisfied. Comedy is much more. a personal tuning fork. You don't know what's going to make some people laugh and what actually cause that reaction in other people.
So I do think it is a bit more dangerous to go the horror comedy route, as we will discuss in greater detail a little bit later on in the year when we tackle a whole bunch of successful and unsuccessful. horror comedies when it came to my experience with the film i enjoyed it very much but my audience was a little bit of a limp noodle up until the trailer for his next movie which is coming out this year Yeah, I did not expect to get a James Bond-esque until Oz Perkins will be back.
With this other thing with a John Carpenter font on it, just so you can differentiate the kind of Osgood Perkins movie you're going to get. But Perkins has always had, you know, an undercurrent of madcap humor to what he... doing it's just that he tends to tune that into shock and surprise and a disquieting nature like
Is this that far afield from Longlegs? It certainly is for the first half of Longlegs, and the second half of Longlegs, I would say, is much more along the lines of the monkey. Yeah, no, you can, when you'll... when you watch Long Legs, you can see that, you know, there's an absurd sense of humor to this. I remain convinced that the singing scene...
was meant to elicit uncomfortable laughter. Right, yes. Because you can't believe someone would keep doing that. Right, like what in the fuck is happening here? Right. Someone tell me what is going on. Because this isn't normal. The longer this goes, the less sure I am of understanding anything that's happening on the screen. You know, I mean, I think that Nicolas Cage...
supposed to be an absurd villain. He's so dissatisfied with his own body, he can't wait to get into other people's. That's the shtick. Yeah, I mean, just because absurd... doesn't cancel out being scary. Right, yeah. Whereas here... There are jokes. We are going from the moment the movie begins into series joke categories. People literally explode. Yeah, these aren't just like, oh, I had a heart attack, or oh, I got hit by a car. I mean, this is just like, it's nonsense, but in a good way.
basically doing is is exaggerating the fact that you know death is often sudden and very messy i mean i i couldn't help thinking that the the you know I can't no longer remember the number, but a percentage of how many people, to put it politely, evacuate themselves at the point of death. And it's just like, you know, you think that you're going to get this, you know, oh, I love my family.
And then, like, your head, you know, drops to the side, you close your eyes. But no, people die with their eyes open. People die with dumb expressions on their faces. You know, people have to be scraped off the highway. It's like, you know, you don't... And it's something that happens to all of us. I mean, this is not giving anything away. The movie is very much about death in the sense that it is something that...
occurs all around us all day long, only you're not always personally connected to it. And when you are, it feels like you're the only one personally connected to it. And one's reaction to that, obviously, sadness. grief are part of that. And that's completely understandable. But how you deal with those things really can change and sour who you are as a person. And we kind of get two sides of the same coin in our main characters who happen to be twins. Those kid actors.
I honestly had no idea that was the same kid. I was very impressed with that. Absolutely. Some of the best kid acting I've seen in a really long time, the younger version of Hal and Bill. You know what? Let's get into spoiler territory because I want to go into detail and we both really like this movie. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. This is kill by kill recommended all the way. If you're listening to the show, you're probably...
gonna like it. Although, hey, if you don't, no worries, man. One's personal reaction to art is... does not you know dissuade me from enjoying what i enjoyed or not enjoying what i didn't so you're fine too let's get into spoiler territory right away we open with a cameo i did not know was going to be in this movie this had not been
spoiled for me. I had no concept this was happening that Adam Scott is in the cold open of this motion picture. Oh, you didn't know he was in that? I think I read it somewhere that he was in it. I tried to go in as cold as possible, and I had just been lucky with this one. Also, my fucking... Oh my god, my trailers were the same goddamn trailers over and over and over and over again. Just...
Some variety, people. What did I get? I got Until Dawn, which I had seen before. It was all horror. Oh, see, mine was half action shit. It's the same. It was Novocaine. It was a... Working Man. It's the same shit over and over and over again. The only thing new I got was Hell of a Summer. Yeah, I got that one. Yeah, I got that one. Well, it's a neon movie, and it's also a horror comedy.
So we'll see how that goes. Only two I can remember off the top of my head are that and Until Dawn, which I didn't know that was based on video games. I have no knowledge of video games whatsoever. Yeah, I know it exists. Yeah, but I've never played it. My son doesn't do horror games yet, but I know of its existence in the world. Can't remember anything else I got, so I must not have made a cute impression on me. So...
Getting into this, Adam Scott plays. I guess he was an airline captain. He wasn't Justin Dressa. We meet him. Absolutely covered in blood. He's trying to offload an organ grinder monkey that is the titular monkey here. And for whatever reason, he's trying to play very fast and loose. with how he gets this off his hands i don't know why he can't just walk away from it or he feels like that because it teleports he has to get somebody to pay money even if it's a dollar
Yeah, I would assume that he thinks that, you know, money has to be exchanged for it so that it essentially belongs to someone else after that. One of the things I appreciate... and this is true of the short story too, is there's really no explanation about where this monkey came from or why it has attached itself to this family. And I...
I think the explanation is because everybody has one. Right. You know, there just happens to be physical, right? You know, it's, you know, you could use that. You could define the name of the phrase of monkey on your back. And, you know, I think just, you know, everybody has one of these. Over the course of the movie, there's all of the grief and anger, you know, bargaining that happens with...
with death metaphors. And since we've already had one of those this year, I won't drag the audience all the way through it yet again, but it is this thing where you want. You figure safety is getting far away from the possibility of death. And what you always have to remind yourself is... While sometimes it comes from outside, more often than not, it comes from inside. You cannot escape it. You cannot avoid everything failing within this fragile shell of fleshy blood.
Surrounded by fun skeletons. Yeah, and we're never actually... certain if Adam Scott's character we don't know what becomes of him he just disappears and it's like well did he like disappear as in he just keeps you he's like gotten as much you know miles between him and this monkey as possible, or is he just dead naturally, or did he die in some...
horrific way, which is also natural when you think about it. You know, that's a thing we distinguish is, you know, there's a natural death, which is, you know, a heart attack. And then there's unnatural deaths, which is everything that is in a heart attack. Well, I mean, either way, your heart stops. Yeah. They're all natural deaths. I mean, there's a difference. When you say unnatural, what you mean is untimely. And then that's to you. Not to the forces that are...
that determined that kind of thing. I really enjoyed Tatiana Maslany as I do almost every time I catch her on screen. She's just a very grounded presence and she can do comedy and she can do drama and she can be.
high-strung characters and she can be the high status and low status she just has the ability to morph into whatever you need her to be and in here she is that warm calming, grounded motherly presence that these boys need, even though for whatever reason, she seems disconnected from them being two separate people. She almost views them as two halves of a whole. And as such, she views one's behavior as the other's behaviors. And Bill is way tougher a sell.
He's got an attitude problem. He's like a Bart Simpson. Yeah, this review I read described him as a classic Stephen King bully. True. Which is interesting because that's not present in the story. There are brother characters, but they're not twins.
For as long as the one brother is in it, they get along normally. But I think so much of this movie is Stephen King coded. Oh, sure, sure. It's just stuff that Osgood Perkins wants to... enrich the story with like he obviously understands how a Stephen King story works even though he doesn't want to do it as dryly And as serious as the short story or the adaptations that had come up to this point are trying to do it.
But he's still infused. It's like he's basting a turkey. It's still being all the drippings are being basted on top of it to really cook in the Stephen King. Yeah, I do like. Tatiana Misalani's character. She's very pragmatic. as a lot of hard-working single moms tend to be. She's not bullshitting them about their father, that he just ditched them and probably isn't coming back. She's very straightforward with them about death.
As parents, we both understand that that's harder to explain to a kid than how babies are made. I remember when my father passed away, that was the first person in my daughter's life that she was fairly... close to that died and you know she she took it pretty hard she was about 10 or so and and she you know she starts to cry and says why do people have to die and i'm like
and i'm like you're dealing with you know a lot of complicated emotions about losing my father and i'm like i'm not ready for this conversation It's hard to manage somebody else's experience while you're in the midst of your own. And I don't want to end up like, and this is not the first time that King has confronted this. you know, the failure or refusal, let's say, to have a frank discussion about death with your children is, you know, leads to...
disastrous results, as in Pet Sematary. Yes. When you have character Rachel, who, understandably, you cannot and will not talk about death. Right. But it is to, you know, to her detriment, let's say, to put it mildly. But yeah, so King, obviously, being a parent, gets that this is a hard thing to talk about with kids. But she's pretty straightforward with it. You know, everything dies. You're going to die, too, someday. I'm going to die.
Since we don't know when it's going to happen, let's have fun with the time that we have. Getting back to the Stephen King bully thing. In a way, it's absolutely true. You take away the trappings of a Stephen King bully and you just infuse it into different types of characters. And these people are absolutely Stephen King bullies. The young, it's a girl squad. that seemed to terrorize younger version of Bill. I think Bill thought Howell was the...
The quote-unquote good one. Oh, yeah, yeah, true. Hal is the one who has the glasses, who's getting harassed. And Bill eventually joins them to smash a bunch of bananas on top of Hal's head. But... They are, every part of that reads as Stephen King. And that's what part of it I really enjoyed was that it was just, it was another beam off the tower.
in terms of how things happen in a Stephen King story. And I love that they just finally end up in Maine. I love that it's a truly odd small town of Mainers. I love that... It's Casco is the name of the town. Casco. And they list their motto as the birthplace of its locals. It's just so imaginatively unimaginative.
And then, you know, you end up with Osgood Perkins with Wolverine chops and Sarah Levy, whose face I could not exactly place. I knew that I knew who that person was. I just didn't know. She barely speaks in it, so it's hard to actually hear her voice, which is pretty identifiable. You know who I had trouble placing? And then I was like, I looked him up and I was like, oh, that's right.
Do you remember what movie we've seen Ricky before in? Yes, he is that our favorite babysitter slash killer slash adult who is beaten up by band geeks from Halloween ends. unbelievable wig. You know what he reminded me of? You ever played the LucasArts video game Night of the Tentacle? No, no. Okay, so there is a character in it named Hoagie. And he's got the same, like, long black hair and, like, sort of, like, big dumb metalhead look. Yes.
Could not get over him. Like, he looks like a hoagie. Why did he make him look like hoagie? See, to me, Ricky was dressed like the worst Ramon on the set of Pet Sematary. Yeah, that's possible. That's what they were going for. But he's like an out of time. sort of 70s punk rocker. Yes. And he's the only one in town who looks like him. And then his brother is the only one in town who's in the ROTC, I guess. And it appears to be catatonic.
Catatonic until asked if he has any ammunition, and the broadest smile crosses his face. Yeah, this is, as you say, this is a... Classic, you know, there's some weird shit going on that we can't put our finger on, like small town. It's very much... in that vein of, like, if this was a three-hour movie, it would be something like Tommyknockers, right, where we would learn all the weirdness within these people's lives that made them like this. but at a crisp 90 plus minutes.
It's they're just brushes and you're just picking up. It's there if you want it. Yeah, it's up to you to decide why the school, the local cheerleading squad shows up to cheer. When a body is removed. When another body shows up. One week into the craziest death this town has ever heard of. And already the high school's like, well, we don't have anything better to do. Let's cheer on the next corpse. That's how injured they are.
But in a way, that's also Stephen King coded because this starts as a very intimate portrait of. two brothers and their experiences with death and at the end of this it is a patented stephen king this town is going to hell tale right and that to me tells me that You know exactly how to Stephen King up this story. It's not just the idea. He's really infusing it with the most mad cap of Stephen King-isms that he can possibly do it. Other references I caught.
where the babysitter is named Annie Wilkes. Annie Wilkes, right. The neighbor is run over by his own lawnmower. which I believe happens in Lawnmower Man. And that character's name, which they say out loud, is Mitch McDonnell, not Mitch McConnell. But you can tell... He wanted it to be Mitch McConnell. And then Bill's boss in the supermarket has a very sideshow Bill-coated hair, and then he dies by stepping on a rick.
Which I very much enjoyed. The cackle that came out of me. And again, someone looked at me like, what are you doing? What am I supposed to do when you see a vape sticking through the skin of a guy's throat? Am I supposed to take this seriously? It's interesting to note that to me the most horrifying death is in the mother. Because, you know, now granted, I don't think that's how brain aneurysms actually work. But, you know, it's also the most plausible death. Yeah.
And, you know, and obviously her child sees it happen and traumatizes him for life. And, you know, that part isn't funny. The rest of them are very funny, though. Stephen King reference that I caught, or at least projected one onto, because it's in a book rather than making it into the movie, is The Wasp's Nest. Oh. Oh, from Shining. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's a good one. Listen.
These are some things I, at a certain point, I'm like, you have to stop worrying about the physicality of this. Can a shotgun destroy somebody like a mortar shell? Not that way. But in this movie. Bodies are very loosely held together. Yeah, I mean, apparently, like, you can, you know, fit an entire rather large, you know, wasp nest pool of wasps inside your mouth. And then they will work their way back out. Yes. They come in to visit.
And they come out. They Jumanji in, and then they Jumanji out. I'm pretty sure that electrocution does not explode someone like a water balloon. Right. Yes. And that character who's taking that midnight swim, obviously that... Now that is a National Lampoon's vacation reference because she's in a red bikini, which is something that happens in both vacation and Christmas vacation, that this random hot babe is...
take any swim in the middle of the night. And somehow when she touches that water, she gets scannered, but it's her entire body. Yeah, she like goes up like a piece of popcorn. She explodes like a clay pigeon when you're shooting. See, that's the one that I hooted out loud. I just don't know how else you react to it. It's just so over the top, and it keeps telling you how over the top it is.
you know, humor is individual and everything, but I was just kind of astonished that no one else was along for the ride with me. It's kind of like you once heard people like, y'all are taking this seriously. Yeah.
I mean, that's what made my screening of the substance so much more fun was the audience was... into it and was reacting constantly but more importantly the two people next to me who I had no idea who they were were having as good of a time as I was and like I said in that episode I turned to them at the end like hey
We'll never see each other again. But we had this. Like, thank you for making this so much more fun. And I wish I had those people with me at this screening because they would have gotten it, baby. And... For whatever reason, you know, there was a lot of black t-shirted horror bros, and everyone seemed to be in a uniform for horror, but they didn't seem to want to enjoy it, or at least not out loud enough.
It was a 915 on a Monday night. It's not exactly known for its hot crowds. Well, yeah, but still, I mean, it's like, again, I don't feel this was misleading in its marketing. No, you're right. No. Absolutely not. I don't know who came into this thinking this wasn't supposed to be a comedy. It absolutely was sold as a dark horror comedy.
but one that has over-the-top gore and laughs and you're going to talk about death and feel better, in quotes, afterwards. So as far as my attitude going into it, I felt like I was rewarded. But you just, you never know how a movie is going to strike certain people. You know, I've certainly seen...
A few online people were like, this wasn't for me, wasn't what I was hoping it was going to be. But I also think, as you noted a little bit earlier, there's some things that are being played with very loosely. And I do feel like that is, Osgord Perkins is not a precision filmmaker necessarily. He's gone for a general sense.
It's not about expert craftsmanship necessarily. It's whether or not you're on his wavelength for what he's trying to do. Right, right, exactly. We learn that Hal has grown up. He's taken... you know, jobs that don't require him to put much out there. He's very disconnected from life. At some point he fathered a child, but has made it his mission to be in that child's life. as a minimal amount, primarily because he's afraid something terrible will happen to them. He's living his life as if...
it's a guarantee that the worst will happen. Right, and he thinks that by staying away from people, he can forestall their death. As opposed to any amount of engagement. Whereas his brother... What we learn is that he's kind of done the same thing. But my question to you, Gina, about Bill is where he get that.
abandoned warehouse money? That's a good question, because Cal does not seem to be doing so well for himself. So it's not like it was some sort of trust or something like that. Although maybe it was. I don't know. Maybe they did get something from their... their uncle or something. A small amount of money to live on. That obviously, you know, you didn't have to pay for much once they're in Maine. No. That's a very dire set of services.
But it's one of those things where, you know, once Hal learns the secret of the monkey, or at least kind of entunes that that is what has caused their babysitter's death. His next thing is to use it for ill intent. And he learns the hard way that when you turn that key, someone dies.
But it's probably not the person you want to go. And that comes down to, you know, the whole classic question of, you know, why this person and not that person. Where's the fairness in this world? And as much as I would love it. To be fair in many respects, the one place it is almost never fair is when somebody dies. Right. It's rarely the person you want it to be. I mean, just close your eyes. There's somebody. I can think of two right now.
Yeah. You know, we don't have to say the thing is legally we shouldn't, but you all know who we're talking about. And so the thing is that doesn't matter. The fairness of that. Absolutely does not matter at all. You know, and, you know, right now, you know, somebody, you know, nice old granny in somewhere, somebody's baby is dying. And instead of them.
and you can rail to the heavens all you want, but it's not going to change anything, and the best you can hope for is, well, it'll happen at some point. I just hope it's embarrassing and painful in those two particular reasons. I keep saying you've got to shit themselves to death. I will settle for nothing less. Although there was that one time. Remember when Twitter was fun and we all watched.
That dipshit get off of a helicopter and walk up to the White House. And he was so out of breath because he had just gotten past a respiratory disease, a virus. that it killed, you know, millions of people and he could not catch his breath. And it was so fucking funny. God, it felt good to laugh again. We used to be a proper society. But you know what?
Hopefully we'll get to laugh at that again. I don't know. Listen, I literally just got a tattoo last week that says need to see them die. So now I have to do it. Listen. I'm cursing myself. I realize that, but... Well, no, no, no. That is the thing. There are no curses. There is no good luck, bad luck. What there is is a randomness of it's either all an accident or none of it is. What's more frightening?
And my interpretation of that quandary has always been, it is way more frightening that someone is definitely in charge of this. That feels fucking buck nuts to me. Well, that's true. That's true. Sometimes the randomness makes it easier to handle. where it's like, well, you could die tomorrow. You probably won't. So you might as well just go about your life as normal. And there are things you can control and things you cannot control.
And, you know, this year has been a big lesson in what I can't control, right? I can't control political elements out of my hands. I certainly can't control the industry that for a long period of time I did very well. very well in and it absolutely is collapsed. So those are things I can't control. What I can control is whether or not I drink enough water today.
What I can control is whether or not I start my day by actually eating breakfast and not starving myself at the moon. No, my body is not going to like what me doing. I have to take care of me. control that, but I can't control these other elements. And there is some amount. It's certainly not enough to allow me to close my eyes at night every single night, but. It helps more than it hurts. Right, exactly. And many of, you know, my fears are more existential than they are...
personal. I'm not always worried about my personal safety. I'm obviously way more worried about Becky and about Oliver and about our parents and about you and our friends and all those things. My personal sphere. But I also can't control that either. I have to simply control what I can. And make the best choices I can within that. And understand that I just have to be prepared for these other elements to go sideways. Because, I don't know, people wanted...
the things to get worse. I think part of it was people thought if it got worse, directed towards these other people, that would be fun. And I'm just not... That person if if whomever I want in government to control government is I want They're them to make benefits for everyone, not just exclusively me, but apparently there's not enough of us this time to go around. No, unfortunately. Let's talk about...
A fake horror movie instead of the real one we live in. When Annie Wilkes is killed at the teppanyaki restaurant, something I've thought a lot about over the years. Because there's a lot of loose flying knife wear in a teppanyaki situation. That doesn't seem to be big. in New York, but I could be wrong. We have a couple. I mean, we have, like, you know, Benihana and all. Actually, the first one I went to was in Epcot. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, just the flames alone.
And he's like, should I feel like my eyebrows are stinging off? Am I sitting too close? This seems a little... This seems a little... This is the benefit of part of your life being sitting too close to explosions. The bad part is I don't hear so well anymore. The good part is I'm not so afraid of fire in controlled circumstances because I've seen a lot of it. But I don't...
There's a lot of showmanship when it comes to knife work. There's a lot of flinging things. Everyone's got a Motley Crue drummer solo that they're doing at all times at a teppanyaki restaurant. Is that a Bradley Cruz solo or a Tom Cruise in Cocktail? Yes, it's a combination of those two things. And that is the part that always weirds me out because that is one of those things where you're like...
Yeah, you're obviously very, very skilled with these things in your hands. But I know all it takes is one moment of taking your eye off the ball. And you chop a babysitter's head off. Right. Or your own fingers off or something really horrifying. Especially if they're flirting. There seem to be, I haven't seen two people eye fuck one another.
that long in an inappropriate situation since Friday the 13th. And those two just eye-fucking one another while singing Jonah Road the Boat Ashore, where the fuck that song is. Those two are so uncomfortably like, I want your penis so inside me. We get it. Go off and do it, I guess. That's the weird thing about killing those two. It was like, did anyone else learn that lesson? They went off to dry hump on fucking hardwood on a boat deck.
Let the wood shards in their ass be the thing that tells them not to do that anymore. But no. Death had other plans. Exactly. Who cranked the monkey for that one? Exactly. Who cranked the monkey, I think, will be my new catchphrase on the show. The monkey cranks me. Like the belt. tolls for thee. The monkey was cranked for thee. Oh my goodness. What a year. What else haven't we... I mean, that's the thing. The movie doesn't have so much of a plot. No, and the comedy is very broad.
Like, you've got a lot of, like, you know, a character says something and then immediately smash cuts to their funeral, which I love. I think that's hilarious. That hippie priest, he's got to get cast in more shit. Yeah. He's fucking hilarious. Like, not since that one girl talking to the one cheerleader in Scream. Have I seen a one-scene wonder quite like that? He's really good.
He might go places, he might not. But that is a perfect encapsulation of what this movie is, his attitude towards that funeral. I do like that Offgood Perkins' brief time on screen as a... Chip, he's trying to connect with his young nephew. Just letting him know, we're going to let you down. Also, we are swingers. That's important for them to know. And then he gets trampled by, I think the number was 67 wild horses. Yeah, it's a very specific number.
But I also love the voiceover that he says. And they were, when they... Whoever the Quincy was of that town. So you may say it looked like cherry pie filling. Like cherry pie filling inside of it. Those horses must have really enjoyed running over that guy. Yeah, well, you know what I mean? It only takes 67. Really? Yeah. And you know what? They don't know what's inside that tent. But, you know, I guess then the other part of that is, though.
We saw Jason take a couple people inside his sleeping bags and bash it, but we never got to see what was inside. We got to see what was inside this time. Yeah, definitely. That's the thing. Like, I feel like. especially right now, we're getting a lot of people who said, listen, these other vampire movies aren't doing this and I need to do that. And then you get...
Nosferatu. And these other killer robot movies are very concerned about killer robots, but what I'm concerned about is this other plot, and you get that. And Hard Eyes was absolutely... So many different slashers jammed into it, but it is also absolutely a good rom-com. Those are two hard things to pull off, and they managed to do both.
You do that with fucking a plum. And it's a lot. There's one kill in Hard Eyes that is so Hello, Mary Lou, Prom Night 2 coded. As soon as you see it, you're like, oh. that's what I'm getting. And then there's all these other slasher movie elements that they just keep peppering in throughout that tells you, Hey, we're fans. These are the things you want to see, but also.
you're going to be entertained beyond just those kills. And for me, the monkey has that absolute core of the hell of being trapped. with the knowledge that you probably just don't get along with your fucking family. Well, yeah, there's that. I mean, you know, there's a certain sort of bittersweetness in... that Hal and Bill are now estranged and both dealing with their family trauma.
Different, but equally depressing and unproductive ways. Whereas Hal is denying himself a relationship with his son, and Bill is just... trying to kill people to to you know deal with you know his own you know sorrow and grief over the loss of his mother and and the knowledge that that that Hal was indirectly responsible for that because you did not mean to target her.
when he when he wound up the monkey it's just it's just how it happened but that is the thing about a kid that age is that they can understand what death is but they don't always understand their connection to it or how they might in any incremental way play a part in it that read like he is an experiment the first time but that experiment could absolutely be randomness
And so when it happens the second time, it's this focused rage from Hal towards Bill. And of course, fucking Mrs. Because you can't will that. on somebody else and expect it to happen. That's just not how death works. And that's a lesson he has to learn. But Bill only takes away from that fact that, according to him, his mother died and is is shocked when how later in life tells him she was my mom too. And he's like, Oh yeah, I guess she was.
He's so wrapped up in that he cannot see outside himself. And I think that that is something, you know, when you lose, you know, a parent. you know, either it is going to bring you closer to your siblings or it's going to drive you apart. Because, you know... Every, you know, you're all going to deal with it and process it in a different way. And yeah, I think forgetting that, you know, your siblings are dealing with the same loss as you are is a very realistic...
thing that can happen. There's a certain selfishness that comes in grief and that no one else could possibly be hurting about this as much as I am. No one could possibly be missing this person as much as I am. And it's very likely not true. And there's a very emotional core to this movie that's very poignant when you consider the real-life inspirations behind it. You know, I wonder if Oz Perkins and his brother didn't struggle, you know, with, you know...
Accepting that this is a shared grief in, you know, in losing your parents, especially in their mother's case when, you know, you're not prepared for, you will never be prepared for losing your parent. let alone losing your parent in a terrorist attack. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I can, and they were both very young, like in their 20s, I guess. And you're not, that's very young to lose your parents.
You know, it's just, yeah, it's very, you know, I appreciate, because I tend to do this myself, that he seems to be working out his grief about the situation with humor. which is something that is very close to my heart. And I do love that you have this very poignant moment where, you know... Hal and Bill, you know, sort of reconcile, and then Bill just does.
And dies the way that Hal wanted him to die, Rachel. Takes a bowling ball right to the face. Takes Lois' bowling ball right to the nugget. And it's a Looney Tunes death. I mean, like, literally, like, he just... Like, he just, like, you know, eyeballs and, like, mush against a wall. It's...
Every death in this movie with the exception of the mother is like a Looney Tunes death. We'll discuss this a little bit more in detail when we get to Choose Your Own Death Venture, but I was surprised it took so long to have anything that even came close to qualifying as a guest. Get Bunked. That's true, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes I mourn for the bits we lose, only because you can't keep up with it. Like, Get Bunked was very much a Friday the 13th phenomenon.
getting killed through something else i'm like how long has it been since we had to get punked and really hoping for one in hard eyes and you don't really get it i was like i don't know the were we oh for everything in 2024 with Get Bunked? I think so, yeah. It's been a dry fucking season for Get Bunked. You know, I sometimes think, ah, we should put that, that we should make a Get Punk t-shirt because that's ours. That's ownable. But also if you came into this podcast in the last four years.
Do you even know what the fuck that is? Yeah, no. Stand off in the comments of whatever thing. Like, tell us on social media. Do you know what... hashtag get bunked is from how and when did you start listening to the show because That would be a very interesting experiment. I do believe like every podcast has generations that come into it. Where were you on that journey? Do you know what it is? Do you miss it now that it's so rare or is it precious because it doesn't have?
happen all the time i'd love to know and we still haven't come up with a get bunk design although i do think Really, I got to rush skeleton hugs into the pipeline because every time, and this has been a more recent phenomenon, just because I know Joe and Trace just did an Amityville movie. And like every time Amityville comes up, all I can think about. is Skeleton Hugs for Man and Eagle 3D.
burnt to a crisp, but I want a warm hug. I'm so bony. You see a lot more skeleton hugs than get punked. But, you know, we have to find joy where we can. I do want to say, because we... We mentioned that he's in the movie and obviously we're into spoilers, but the Elijah Wood of this is a very interesting proposal that he is, quote unquote, a leading expert in being a dad. but only seems to view being a dad.
In the theoretical sense, he certainly doesn't appear to be that good of a dad to the actual kid living in his house. No, he seems to view him as a trophy that he has won away from Hal. you know, let's say he kind of gives up pretty easily. Yeah, this is not something... He views it as abandonment and I'm such the better guy from this. Whereas Hal's viewing this is I'm keeping this person who I...
do love, but I have to keep them at arms distance because this monkey will always fuck up my fame. Personally, I was a little bit distracted by Elijah Woods' visible nipples through his... It's a very cold set. It's a very tight shirt. But the size of the water bottle he's using. I'm not sure. Will people remember the Oscar, you know, performance of that water bottle come next year? I don't know. Yeah, it reminded me of how in Popstar, the TMZ parody.
Will Arnett's increasingly enormous water bottles. From the water bottle tour to its absolute jug at the end of it. Yeah. And. The fact that when he feels any amount of pushback, he's like, okay, arm wrestle. You are a slight individual. I don't know that you're going to be able to arm wrestle Theo James, who no matter how much they...
dowdy him up in here. It's just smoking fucking hot. Not that Elijah Wood is someone I would kick out of bed for eating crackers, but they're different body types. But yeah, I mean, Theo James basically looks like James Franco without all the baggage. Yes. Listen, I'm fine with this switch. Just sub out all the Franco and funnel it right to James.
That works for me. He's just as funny. He's just, he's more charming and comes with zero baggage of sleeping with students in his acting school. There's really no. bad performances necessarily in the movie. It's just whether or not people are directly into the... tone of the piece. I think some people are more successful at it than others, and some people are given more opportunities to be successful at it than others. The younger PD who plays Hal's kid.
That's a pretty damn good acting, you know, kid acting performance right then and there. I don't know that I've seen that kid before, but he's pretty good in this. You know, he's got... you know, sullen but desperately wants to be loved down pretty well. And he just wants to connect. Like, he just can't figure this guy out.
Possibly because Hal has never really figured himself out. So how can he actually project anything approaching parental care when he's done everything within his power to avoid it? The Theo James version of Bill. I don't know that the costume of your 12-year-old funeral suit. is going to have the Halloween run that long legs did, but I love the reveal that like, It shows him very studiously trying to... Because apparently he learned how to use a sewing machine at some point.
Him and Peter Parker are two people who learned how to use the sewing machine. Make it look like he has altered it to fit his adult body. And then the reveal that he has not managed to make it fit his adult body. No, he's turned it into a bolero jacket and this napkin of a white shirt. And like capri pants. Capri pants, but he's also wearing some sort of Bam Bam Bigelow flames up the side bodysuit with it. I think he's just trying to keep his, you know.
torso from being exposed from wearing it true yes but it is it is a jarring juxtaposition of this the suit top third and this where did you get that body suits beneath it. To me, it absolutely read like he's wearing a Bam Bam Bigelow costume. Of course, again, in what is keeping in the whole tone of the movie, it's sort of touching when you see 12-year-old Bill talk about how he doesn't want to take his funeral suit off because...
If he does, that means someone else is going to die. If he leaves it on, that means you've got kid logic. And now he's like, what, 35? Yeah. And that he's rigged his entire house with all these traps that don't work. that that was also a nice touch to see that he's so death obsessed but also so bad at it right it is a fun time at the movies and it's not trying to be anything more than it is and i just enjoyed a lot about it. It's not as clever as...
let's say the script was for companion and I don't know that it was as overall successful for me as hard eyes was that comes and goes. Um, but again, a fucking killer streak right now that we're going on with theatrical horror. Oh, absolutely. Just... mind-bendingly good times that we've got going on. And so do you have anything else that you feel like we haven't covered when it comes to 2025's The Monkey? I think that, you know, if you are, you know...
take it or leave it on horror. Other than the fact that it is pretty gory, but again, it's so silly and so over the top that like, I don't know, I feel like that even people who are a little bit, you... iffy and that kind of thing are not going to be bothered by it. Yeah, I think this is actually a pretty, this is a lot of fun. I don't, I think as dark as a subject matter is, I think they managed to do it without being particularly scary.
And maybe that's why instead of getting a C+, maybe people thought it was going to be scarier. I don't know. you comparing it to the short story it's got the bones of the short story there but if he's gone in a different direction with it and i think that that's i think that's to its benefit just one last quote You triggered something in my brain from Stephen King from Dance Macabre, which I read every five years like clockwork.
I recognize terror is the finest emotion, so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify. And if I cannot find a way to horrify, I will go for the gross out. I'm not proud. That's what this movie is. Yeah. They're not attempting for terrify. They're not really going for horrify. They're absolutely going for gross out and emotional connection. And I think it's succeeded very well in that. So now it is time.
To choose our own death venture. Get out that scroll. Here we go. Buckle up, everybody. There's a lot to consider here. And keep in mind. This may not be a complete list. I did not want to take out my phone while watching this movie to take notes. There's basically like a montage of people in town getting killed. If I miss one, my apologies in advance.
as best a list as I could come up with. So we'll start off with hit by spear gun through gut. Spear retracts to pull out your intestines. Decapitated by a teppanyaki chef. Death by boomerang aneurysm. Trampled inside of a tent and sleeping bag by horse stampede. Flaming face impaled by for sale sign. Explode via electrified motel pool. Gourd. by lot lawnmower face steamed off by espresso coffee maker bitten by a cobra on a golf course
Blown to bits by falling shotgun. Vape force down throat via rake. Death by wasp stampage down your throat. Parachutes don't open during your nighttime skydiving wedding. Head caved in by Lois's. bowling ball impaled by a surfboard into a tree. That's your get bunked, everybody. Then emulated inside of a stroller and decapitated by semi-truck trailer. I think there's a couple of plane crashes. True. There are a couple of plane crashes. We just don't see those bodies.
But yes, plane crash could also be in there. I won't be choosing plane crash. Did you mention stampeded? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Trampled inside of tent and sleeping bag by horse stamping. What say you? Gina Rant. These are all really good. Well, no, I don't want... lois's death i don't want to dive a brain in
No, it seems unfun. And she seems to be feeling every second. Yeah, I don't want that. That's the only not fun death in the whole movie. You know, I'm always going to take the... I mean, a lot of these were pretty... quick like i don't i don't think i don't think bill saw that bowling ball coming no no his last thought was lois and then it's through his head his eyeballs are separated to either side as you mentioned like a looney tune but uh you know
My brain keeps going back to that exploding as soon as your foot touches water in an electrified pool. That's ridiculous. There's nothing left. And you don't have to worry about, well, did she look good in a bathing suit? You won't be able to tell that bathing suit. Yeah, I think there's like a foot. Leftover. That's about it. I think there's a foot and an arm are basically left over. You clean, you drain out that pool. You're fine. You know what I mean?
Nobody has to spend the money on, you know, undertaker services for me. It is really, really fast. I mean, not to copy you, but that is the way, the only other way, as you mentioned, is Bill's. Getting his head caved in by Lois, Lois' bowling ball, is so instantaneous. There's no way in hell I'm choosing that wasp thing. No. Or anything where you fall. And as much fun as getting bunked. via surfboard and tree is, you're probably still around.
Far too long. Yeah. And, you know, your dying thoughts are, you know, rather than like your loved ones is who the fuck has a surfboard man? Someone who really cares about it. At the end of the day, someone who finds joy in bowling, which I do for about two games. And then after that, it is a very steep decline in terms of my skill level. I just get... My arm get tired. I'm so tired. You have to use your body to fit momentum behind it.
You're just looking for an excuse to bring that back out, right? Yeah, I am. People love it. And now you're making me picture him wearing like a bowling shirt with warlocks stitched on it. Did you know I was in the Vietnam War? I'm going to grab a hot dog at the snack bar. Do you want one? Should we get a pitcher of beer or we buy our own? Watch me tippy-toe up to the line like a fredding stone. That's how he would bowl. He would tippy-toe.
and then throw it with this inhuman force. It goes right through somebody's head like Bill. And then, yeah, and then his shadow is, like, slightly guiding it as it gets close to the gutter, and everyone's like, come on! Just bull Nosferatu. I told you it's Orlok. Look at my shirt. So...
That just about does it. People, you can find us on the socials. Rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, your podcatcher of choice. Talk back to us on socials. We love to hear from you. And, of course, we have a Patreon. We have... Plenty of bonus episodes, including answering your questions, doing commentaries. And Gina has lots of extra fun stuff on there as well that's exclusive to the site. You're going to want to get on board. Gina, where can people find you on these here internet?
I write about movies and television and pop culture on my Substack, you know, watchesthings.substack.com. And you can find me mostly on Blue Sky Energy That Does Things. Do it today. People check it out. Josh Hollis does their artwork. Go to RevengeBodyMemphis at Bandcamp.com for this theme and all of our remixes. Until next time. Don't worry, folks. The body count will continue for myself and for Gina. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye.