Yautja Fest - Predator 2 (1990)

Weary way.

We can kill a.

Shouting out their way? What the hell are you?

Yahuja Fest? That's right, we got a name. No, thanks to you listeners, it's Yaucha Fest because I couldn't bear to keep saying predator Fest because it sounds like a Mara Lago mixer HP. Hey, how you doing, brother?

Doing wonderfully? How are you?

Father alone? I'm in the midst of a yaoucha fest. I couldn't be better.

What's better than youch youcha fest?

Youchta yaoucha? Come mom? Brother?

Yeah with j Fest.

Winky dinky youcha?

I thought you were going to say it was blinking, blinking and nod, winking, blinking and nod.

Winky dinky dog. Say it with me, Winky dinky. Do you want the hoe cakes?

Hoecakes?

You want the wine ho cake? A little bit of Hollywood shuffle for y'all.

Witherspoon, right, John Witherspoon.

The Great John Witherspoon. Absolutely, we're not here to talk about John Witherspoon or Hollywood shuffle. We are talking Predator.

To Los Angeles nineteen nine seven. It's the hottest summer

Whoever killed it's gonna be I'm a fish.

It has almost no weight, but it cuts like steel.

Incredible. Who did this?

Took out four men art with machine guns by hand.

You don't know what you're dealing with. Other world life forms drawn by heat and conflict.

He's on Safari, Lions, Tigers, the bears, oh.

My, Danny Glover, Gerry Busey, Ruben Blades, Maria Councta, Alonso, Bill Paxton.

Predator two.

He's in town with a few days to kill this Thanksgiving.

Predator two directed by Stephen Hopkins, written by Jim and John Thomas, based on characters by Jim and John Thomas, Produced by Joel Silver, who Else and starring Oh geez my list shit and starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Rubin Blades, Maria Concitta, Alonzo, Bill Paxton. Finishing his trifecta of alien murders and things from the future sci fi murders. Let's call it the Paxton Trifectair also with Robert Dave, Adam Baldwin, Kent McCord man from fucking car fifty four.

Adam to Merant, Adam twelve. Yeah, I was gonna say emergency, but it's Adam twelve.

Adam twelve. My favorite episode of Adam twelve. Can I just say there's an episode where he and his partner are discussing how he's decided to start taking a bag lunch to work, and the scene goes on for ten minutes and it's just this back and forth just makes economic sense for me. Adam twelve anyway. Also within also with Martin Downey Junior.

Oh, go ahead, No, I was just about to say Adam twelve was my oldest brother's favorite show that in chips you can't get enough of them.

There's a reason I love your oldest brother best. And also featuring Kevin Peter Hall returning as a The Predator, but not the Predator because this is a different Predator. He's very different. Indeed, HP Predator two released November the twenty first, nineteen ninety Sir, I guess we were seniors in high school.

Yeah, there was we were rising. That was early in our seniorhood, and I believe we both I don't know that if we saw.

This, Willow, did we not see this together.

I was going to say, I don't think we saw it together, but I did remember. I did see this in the movies, though I do that much, I do remember.

Now this is the second film in the series. Evidently twentieth Century Fox immediately wanted a second film once the first film was a massive success, so Jim and John Thomas were called upon. They provided six different possible scenarios and everyone agreed and urban Jungle is the way to go. Now. They set this one in Los Angeles, but they needed to make some adjustments because Los Angeles doesn't have a subway system, and some of our techniques here are going

Overall thoughts overall in the movie.

Overall, we'll get granular in the moment.

Sure, at the time, I remember enjoying it quite a bit. It was a departure from the first one. They I liked the substitution of the urban the concrete jungle. If you will for the Leafy Jungle. I liked it at the time. That's my short review. How about yourself?

Yeah, I really liked it in a lot of ways. I liked it more than the first film only because I enjoyed putting it in an urban setting. The jungle setting was great for a one off kind of remote scenario, but the thing scenario or alien to aliens more like, which this film parallels in more ways than one. So I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I remembered it nothing but fun. Then it probably sa not a few times since then. But what are your thoughts now, friend? You know what?

So the story is as you said, it's nineteen ninety seven. There's it's it is. But it's an exaggerated, heightened version of la in the future. Not to say it's like a Judge Dread type of situation.

But it's a Demolition Man scenario, certainly.

That's it. It's as if Demolition Man took place. It was a few years before the beginning of Demolition Man, where there's still elements that look like the real current world, but you have Morton Downey who's playing this sort of the video telejournalist, the sort of muck raking. That's a terrible word that makes me sound like I live in you know, the forties or something. But he's playing Morton Downey.

There was a regional fella in California named Wally George and basically, if you were able to tune into a Wally George show, you saw the Morton Downey Junior Show. In fact, Mortin Downy Junior appear on the Wally George Show before he had his own show, so it's safe to say that the format and the character he portrayed were already in existence, but not nationally. So he basically he's Oreos to Wally George's hydros.

Hydrox, Yeah, which I think we all can agree. Hydrox was the superior cookie, but it is not remembered now because Oreos had better marketing. But anyway, it's a future. There's a gang war going on, and it's the hottest summer on record or something. It's a very hot summer and there's a gang war going on between the Jamaican gang and the Columbian gang and police officers are dying

If you will, you can tell you that Thomas Brothers are having a fun time caricaturizing Los Angeles because there were gang wars going on, and there were all like incredibly heat waves and droughts and such that had been going on previously. Not to this level. This is exaggerated, This is Judge Dread levels of exaggeration, but again without the satire.

Correct correct. And Danny Glover is leading a team of

When I saw this movie, I called him Ruben Blades and I thought he was shaking too. I thought he was the coolest motherfucker on You know. He was a musician and I had one of his albums and in the liner notes of the album it had his home phone number and if you called it, he picked up. And I know because I called him, and then I panicked and hung up afterwards. But it was Ruben Blades.

Good for him.

He was.

Also he was the Helado de Coco guy in Do the Right Thing. Was the little bit part he was, hey, come get you come you want coconut dear? What would you want? Yeah?

That was what I loved him. I miss him.

Ruben blood is I think he was. I want to say he was also in Mobid of Blues. Wasn't he the guy that sent the thugs to beat up Spike Lee?

We can only hope like one of his other noble deeds.

He's great. He's actually one of the things I really liked about this movie. Anyway. There's this gang war going on, and in the midst of all of this heat and chaos and destruction, the predator A predator, not the Predator has as Gary Busey's character says, he's on safari. He plunks himself in the middle of all this chaos to go hunting. That's true, that's the story on that show.

I love that he's just hanging out and watching this fight going on at the beginning, don't you. Yeah, I do.

It's I will say this, if we're going to start to get into this movie.

You know, let's get into it, because this opening scene is fucking ridiculous. I get they're trying to paint this as a comic bookie cartoony version of LA, a sci fi version of La heightened. The reality version of LA. The gunfight that's going on in the streets would be talked about to this day had it happened back in like nineteen ninety seven, Like there was a heat style gun battle you remember in Las on the streets of Los Angeles. There are a couple of guys with bank robbers,

He was good only that This is the kind of heightened scene where they're having this gun battle, and in the midst of it, some of the gang members are thrusting their faces into piles of cocaine to get themselves like hyped up for this gun battle. In drives in Danny Glover, they try to paint his character as being a renegade from the very beginning. There's some officers down and they can't get to them because of the fears

Are a couple officers in the middle of the street and caught in the crossfire. He breaks the door off of a car, uses it like as a battering ram, and then ends up blocking the gun toting fiends from the officers and they're able to pull them to safety. Hooray. What I love is if you read anything about the making of the film. Initially, director Stephen Hopkins wanted Patrick Swayze in this role, and he wanted it to be a buddy film of Patrick's and Arnold Schwarzenegger are running

It would have been And I have to I have to say part of my problem with this gun battle and the movie a lot of the movie in general, is the action I don't think is directed very well. It's there's not a great sense of context. I think one of the things that's wonderful about the First Predator is you always understand where they are in relation to the Predator and what's happening. And that's key to a

I remember really liking the direction for some goddamned reason because it it is poorly directed. What you're saying, you never get a sense of geography in this movie at all. There are fights going on with multiple characters involved in multiple situations, and you never know where any of them are or where they are in relation to each other.

And it only gets worse when the predator shows up because then he's camouflaged. The whole point is you don't see him until he wants to see you, and it's just now like it's all geography at all. Context is lost because now they're shooting at something else. It's edited, like you said, very poorly, very choppily edited. I guess that's partly the time that this movie was made is to blame, because that was the style of action picture at the Yeah.

But but just the moments where Harrigan gets the car in between the gunmen and the police the gunman at that point all run into the building and then suddenly, because they need them there again, they're there again. There's like a whole other line of guy shooting so that Harrogan can blow them all away. Speaking of which, Harrogan gets behind a group of four gunmen who are firing on his fellow officers, and he goes hey so that they can all turn around, because it would be somehow

I love Danny Glover. I think he's perfect in the lethal Weapon movies as the over the hill cop who's too old for this shit. I don't think he was right for this movie. As happy as I am that an African American got the lead role in an action picture, and I know he was psyched because of interviews where he said he jumped at the chance for him to go toe to toe with the predator and be a badass.

I think Schwarzenegger has a presence in action movies where you don't need to know anything about the character because it's Arnold Schwarzeneger. And in a case like this, where we were dropped into a whole new movie with a whole new set of characters, we need someone of equal standing. I think Danny Glever could have been that had this character been written a little bit better, had they given us one scene of introspection or his home life or

Oh you're going to say something. No, yeah, I remember enjoying him when I saw it for the first time. I thought it was pretty cool, it was interesting, it was an action.

Let's talk you know before you go there, because you brought up Stephen Hopkins. So I just want to double back on him for a second, because in my mind he was a good director, and rereading the list of movies that he made, no, he is not, because he made name Fordham Street, Dream Child, which is terrible. He made this, which is pretty good, but it's only it's good kind of despite him. Then he made the Judgment Night, which hilariously HP I found myself watching about two weeks ago. Really,

I was gonna say the soundtrack is still awesome, but I agree with you that it doesn't hold up. Another movie that I liked at the time, and then I rewatched it later and said, oh, this isn't so good.

Speaking of terrible movies, he follows that up with Blown Away, the most adult one. But let me speak as an Irish person here, the most let me speak as a Boston Irish person here, the most insulting, IRA fucking knockoff, bullshit movie. I've ever seen a movie where Jeff Bridge jumps on a motorcycle in back Bay to drive to the Esplanade and then somehow goes over the Longfellow Bridge.

Yeah, not a lot of geography there either. I actually it's funny. I could have sworn that this was the same director who did one of the Bill and Ted movies, but I had him mixed up with Stephen Herrick.

Me nuts too, me the same thing. I thought, you know what, I don't know much about this guy, but I know he directed one of those Bill and Ted movies, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. As I was watching and going is this guy a bad director? Because this is not well directed at all? The ghost and the darkness. Remember that, Remember Lost in Space with Joey Tribiani. Yeah, in the gleap like merchandising monkey.

Yeah, that was the funny story. I came out. I visited you in Vegas. It was my fortieth birthday. Do you remember this? And I was staying. We were staying at the Planet Hollywood Hotel, which I don't think is even still there.

Is it Planet Hollywood the hotel?

No?

What is it now? I think it's still Planet Hollywood.

I don't know. We were staying in the Lost in Space room.

It had no Planet Hollywood as a restaurant is closed. Planet Hollywood as a hotel is still there.

It's still there, Okay. Like I said, we every room I think had a different theme, a different movie. And we were in the Lost in Space room that had a couple of props that were encased in loose sight in a table or something, and it was, oh, okay, it's Lost in Space with Gary Oldman.

All right, did it have Heathers? Did it have a display of Heather Gram's will to live?

No? But yeah, I agree when I looked him up and said, oh, this isn't the same guy I thought he was. Because I thought this for years, probably until fairly recently. I didn't know that it wasn't the same guy from the Bill and Ted pictures. But this was. It was not it was not directed. Well you know he the actors performances are all over the place. The action, like we said, is not very interestingly done, and.

It's just just the costume choices alone in some cases.

Oh, we haven't even talked about Bill Paxton. So Bill Paxton you mentioned him at the top. He's in this. The thing is I love that he was in it because we all were such fans of his back then he was in his prime with aliens and true lies and this he in this picture. He looks like he should be swing dancing to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy with Heather Graham. They put him in these like bowling shirts and Fedora's.

He looks of fire, which he's in pretty much.

The only thing missing was like a wallet chain. He just he looked. It was weird. And he's supposed to be. He's a cop who transfers to Danny Glover's Harrigan's unit because he wants to be where the action is the low ranger. But there's no evidence whatsoever with his performance or with the character truth be Told that he is this badass. He's he comes off. Think of him in True Lies, when he's putting on the charm to Jamie

But still, yeah, it's fifty percent Hudson from Aliens and fifty percent that guy from True Eyes, like an uncomfortable balance that doesn't ever come off. And yeah, I don't know if it's the writing or what, but I don't know. It's a weird combination of a poor writing and maybe poor choices on Bill Packson's part. I think, in an attempt to get away from Hudson, he was trying to

So that was disappointing rewatching it all these years later, because like I said, I love him in almost everything I see him. In this case, it was just a lot while. But but there are things. Let's let's turn this around. Let's continue talking about the plot of the movie. So in the midst of this gang war, the Predator

And it's all like Frank Lloyd right as Tech right. So it's so which also echoes the kind of blade Runner apartments, which is also that sort of Frank Lloyd right as Tech tile.

The funny thing is they're gonna they say that they hunt they this drug lord up by his feet and they're gonna cut his heart out because they say they want to do it ritualistically. They're gonna do voodoo. They're gonna they're gonna kill himvoodoo stuff.

And they they've dipped a chicken leg and blood and they're like writing on his chest sigils and stuff, like freaking him out with all the voodoo thisss.

But here's the thing. They're Jamaican. Yeah, they're not hate and they're Jamaicans. I thought that was I didn't catch that when I was a kid, obviously, but now I'm like, that's interesting. Anyway, as they're killing this drug lord, the predator is broken in and kills everybody in the whole room.

Alone, Uncle red Garabuse. Oh mah, I love Garret Busy. He's you know what he's post this is post motorcycle accident, but not he hasn't fucking completely lost it this.

I think think this was his first picture after the accident, so he hadn't it hadn't progressed to looney Tunes yet. So he's he still has a good he's still helding it together pretty well and good than this. Yeah, he's really good. Because so he Glover Harrigan knows something is up because these CIA goons come in and there.

They basically what if they swapped roles, Actually.

That would have been interesting because you would have been more likely to believe Danny Glover until you realize what he's actually up to. Because initially, keys, like the character Gary Busey plays, tries to come on, hey, you know, I don't want to step on your toes. I'm just trying to do my job too. But it very quickly becomes obvious that there's more to this whole situation than meets the eye. Because the CIA guys come in and

They because one explosion total total three hundred city blocks in area, and now they want that goddamned weapon. They want the predator.

They want the predator, and they've even there's mentioned they don't followup, but they've actually even interviewed Anna, the woman that they took prisoner in the first movie who actually helps them escape on the chopper. So they know all this stuff about the predator and they what effectively what they've done is they've tracked the predator here. They have studied his habits. They know where he is living, they know where he's feeding, and they know what his effective

And you may know, they know that the predator can only see in one spectrum of light. How they know this good question.

But and actually they're wrong about that.

In fact, it's hilarious. It's the best part of the movie honestly, where he's like looking around and he kind of hears something and he gets a sense that something's not right, and then he just goes switch switch, Oh, there they are.

Yeah, And that sequence, although it's the most indebted to aliens because what you have is so Adam Baldwin Linderman from My Bodyguard and from what I understand it all around grumpy guy, not a good guy.

You know what's funny about him? He's a up until this moment, I think I would have just said, oh, Adam Baldwin right wing lunatic, right, But now I don't know how much of a lunatic he is. Maybe he's just a conservative asshole, you know what I mean. Like, maybe he's not that bad anymore comparatively speaking. Maybe he is pretty mild, but at one time he was. Maybe he just doesn't want to pay taxes as much as everybody else, you know what I mean. But he doesn't

It could be maybe I should reap. Maybe it's time for a reappraisal given our currency.

Let's look at Charlton Heston like on a in a whole New light man, you know what I mean, Like patriot Charlton Heston. Yeah, so he.

Kind of made for a while, he made a career of playing kind of these second bananas in these movies. He is effectively Keys's second in command. He's the one with with Harrigan in the command center as Keys and his team are moving through the slaughterhouse getting ready for the final capture of the predator.

Get your people.

Right, that's that's because what you have is you even have that the view screen with everybody's remote camera footage and one yeah, and one by one they're winking out as the Predator's killing everybody in this slaughterhouse. Pun intended, but all kidding aside that this is my favorite sequence of the whole movie because it's what the movie is lacking for the most part, in my opinion, is from the first movie is suspense. The first movie, there's no

I would say, Oh, totally agree with you. Absolutely. It's we haven't mentioned that the scene before us, the subway scene, right, we haven't mentioned Ruben Blade is getting killed or any of that stuff. But anyway, none of that matters because

It's probably my favorite single shot of the whole movie. That and there was another sequence that I thought was actually interesting. I'd forgotten about it. So at one point we're going to backtrack a little bit. Danny Glover, I keep saying his name, Harrigan is going to go talk to the head of the Jamaican gang. King Willie is seeing.

Willy played by Calvin Lockhart, the amazing Calvin Lockhart from Cotton comes to Harlem and the Baron.

He's really good in this.

He's great man. He's so scary, and it's unlike any other performance I've seen of the guy.

He's exaggerated, but in a good way. Like this guy, he's exaggerated without losing the danger of this gang lord. So he knows sort of preternaturally that he doesn't know that the predator is an alien, but he knows he looks at it from a supernatural perspective. And after they have their quick conversation him and Harrigan, the predator goes to kill him. I don't know exactly why or how this happens, but they square off. First off, there's a

Yeah, we didn't need to see that fight, and it is a great transition, and that sequence and the slaughterhouse sequence are the things that I took away from this movie, I guess. So it's why I remembered it being well directed, because that shot is great, and maybe the prosthetic is really good that they've made of Calvin Lockhart, so you buy it that it's just we've cut to a close up of him screaming, and then it's just the head being dragged away.

Some of this there's bits in pieces, little fleeting images and shots that work that are frustrating because in the hands of somebody, I don't want to keep using McTiernan. But let's say for a minute that McTiernan could make I think by then, I think it would have been too expensive to hire McTiernan, because he'd already done Die Hard. He was his star Wars on the Rise. He wasn't going to do a sequel and at this point in his career, so it's hard not to think about what could.

This have been.

In a better set of hands Fottom alone, it would have been a much more interesting picture, I think.

I think so. I think the script needed to work as well, though, obviously like the Jerry Lambert character, the Billy Billy Paxton, the Bill Paxton character. Yeah, and just you know, a little more depth, Like they've created this big team so that they could pick them off one by one. But we're not given any character depth to our leads. So what are we supposed to get from our peripheral characters. And here's where casting is so important.

So to man, they wanted a female actress with edge, and not to say that.

She Latina does not automatically equal edge. They could have found a Latina actress who is a fucking badass. Instead they got the girl who's not good in a fucking romantic comedy.

It didn't work at all.

But I think specifically of Touch and Go with Michael Keaton. She ruined that movie.

That's another good call, another good call by you. I want to talk. I want to backtrack for one minute. I know we're jumping all over the places.

Is our wants That's okay. We're wearing invisibility cloaks. They can't see us doing it.

You made reference to a sequence that happens just before Harrigan goes to the slaughterhouse to see the Predator go up against the CIA team. There there's a subway. It's a subway sequence where Maria can cheetah Lonzo's character in Bill Paxton. They're on the subway and it's actually some of it's actually kind of funny because there's a gang of punks for a black a better term their textbook. They could have come from the movie Breaking. They look like punks, basically like TV chips punks.

Basically all the gangs in this movie could have stepped out of the Warriors. Do you remember that the fucking Jamaican gang the posse are wearing in that fucking sequence in the Mayan theme thing like the flashiest, stupidest, like shiniest clothing I've ever They seem Oh, I didn't even want to say it just seems awful anyway.

So this sequence, so the funny part of this, the part that I found amusing, was this gang starts to hassle this little nebishy guy in the suit, this white guy in the suit get Bernie gets and then he freaks out and pulls out a gun to say I don't want to use this, and the gang just laughs

Yeah around this time. No, not around this time. Okay, So there was no subway in Los Angele Less at the time, so this was they had to film. So whenever they're in a tunnel, they seem to have gone on location to some tunnel, But whenever they're in the train itself, it looks worse than the train from the Trial of the Incredible Hulk that we saw recently. Yeah, it really looks like a set on a fucking sound stage,

But it's again hearkening back to Aliens, where there are fights that happen in darkness that are only illuminated by the machine guns and the weaponry.

This is the scene in This is the scene in the lab when they come up through the ceiling when they're like, yeah, they're in the room. That's this exactly, except it's just it's all chaos. There's it. What's crazy about it is there's really just the predator and Bill Paxton's character, and that's the whole scene, him making his way to Bill Paxton slowly while Maria Cancio Alonso forces

It was a bummer. Really. What I kept thinking is I'm watching this is man, I'd love to be watching Aliens right now because it's so because it's so indebted, like I said, to Aliens, indebted to a lot of different pictures of that time. But I think most clearly in the fact that Bill Paxton is there front and center. You can't help but get that vibe that they were

Yeah. I was stoked for the futurism, and then it's not really futurism at all. It's just that they needed the subway there. And the technology that the CIA guys have is more advanced than they could possibly have. The lab at the police station has apparently like a radio radiography you know, a radioactive whatever the fuck that is, like a carbon dating machine basically, yeah, yeah, let's put it in this spear and find out, Oh, it's not from this earth.

Yeah, it's like an electron microscope in the middle of

My favorite line in the movie, which is reminiscent of my favorite line from Evil Did to the Workshed, is when Danny Glover at the beginning of the movie opens the chunk of his car to pick which weapon he's going to choose. You know, this average Joe. He's got like a dozen handguns and machine pistols in there, and he takes out this hand cannon and then says to himself, not big enough, and then takes out a shotgun.

It's really, it's bad. It's a bummer. It was really. I was bummed out watching this because I had such fond memories we both did and the it. But let's turn this around a little bit. Father Little we bagged on this movie pretty good. But let's turn this around a little bit. If I may, what worked for you in this movie? Actors, sequences, special effects did what was positive for you?

The redesign of the Predator, I think is really good. This new Predator. He's a little more sleek, he's a little more tribal, he's a little more fanged. I noticed his face is a little meaner. I liked that. I liked finding out that it's actually the Predator making those vocalizations and not just a recording back at you. This I did not like. Okay, I want to keep heeping praise where it belongs. But now that I'm thinking of it,

Were a few sort of typical art any lines in the first Predatory sorry, go ahead, that's okay. This was still the time of the Quippi action vehicle. You have to put a little humor in there, even like Freddy and night Right elm Street like he became a quip machine. He was more funny than he was SCARYO after a fashion.

But other than that, they wanted to make fun of journalism at the time they were taking the cue from RoboCop there, I think they were trying to sure that was their attempt at satire. You know what I hated about the Montinny Junior sequence. By then reporters, every reporter on any show, when they were holding a microphone, the microphone would have a little cube around the right around the bottom of the phone thing, right, a little cube

Yeah, but kind of looping at the stuff that I liked that I thought was still a sort of yeah, we're talking about like right, sorry? Is so the the

There's a low lying flat fog.

Yeah, it's a fog, and that's where you see there's a famous shot where he's looking around the ship and he sees a wall of trophies, and that's where the famous shot of the alien skull is there. Because it kind of introduced the idea that the predator and the alien are in the same universe coexisting. I thought that was really cool.

That is the one thing we can really thank Steven Hopkins for who when he was at stan Winston Studios, saw one of the skulls and went, oh, we can put this in there, and and then he opened up a door that has never been closed.

And then never ever been closed again. But the ship is it's giger esque where there's no controls, there's nothing that it's all sort of these rolling walls that have an odd texture, almost like bone or just I don't know, I can't describe the texture of it. And that's where the final stand between the predator and Harrigan takes place, and in fact he actually he finally kills the predator. But maybe the coolest part of this whole thing is after he's killed the predator, about five or six other

Yaouce yaouche yeaoch.

So I thought that was not only was that pretty pretty satisfying, but the weirdest part of this whole thing, and there's no way they would have known that this would be called back thirty years later, is they carry off this dead predator and knowledgement of yeah, you know, we respect you. One of the predators before he leaves throws harrigan an antique flintlock pistol that's inscribed to Raphael

But it's kind of cool.

You gotta admit, father Malone that somehow now these universes are linked and it creates this mythology around this pistol and these creatures.

Yeah, sometimes prequels are fucking cool. It's just that sometimes we don't need to know every little thing about every fucking tree branch. Sometimes you know, a little that was just a little, as you said, that was a little easter egg, just to let the audience know the predators have been here forever, and to open up the possibility

In its obfuscation, the ship becomes all the more believable to me, because I have a feeling if any of us ever got on an alien ship, it wouldn't like I said, it wouldn't look like lost in space to call back. It would look mysterious and weird and not meant for humans. And that's exactly what you get here. And I think that's if you're going to try to redeem the movie. It almost redeems the movie put it that way to me because it's so the mystery of it. I was captivated by all over again.

I here's the only good thing about it watching it again now in that final scene when you realize there's seven or eight of them, that this was a hunting party, What were they doing? Where were they? Were they just in other parts of the city, you know what I mean? There's this is where their ship was so and these

He speaks a line in the trailer Predator speaks.

Does he say speak in English or no?

No, it's subtitled it's his language.

Oh wonderful, Okay, good.

I couldn't look. I think I mentioned that Predator two was the last Predator movie that I saw in the theater. What I didn't say, was that was the last Predator movie that I even saw period until Prey popped up on my radar and it was impossible to ignore because the reviews were so strong, and that made me a

Here's another thing I like the bread Predator too, and it actually ties into what we're talking about in that we don't know very much about the Predator. So anytime we get a breadcrumb of anything, I'm excited. Here we get a much more extended sequence of the loving attention the Yaoucha pays to his trophy. He's buffing that skull by the end, he's got a buffing machine polishing it. I thought, wow, you know he really cares.

He does because I think in the first one you see him lovingly stroke one of the skulls. But you're right, you see more of the process by which he leaning that thing. Enf Man.

We get to see King William all manner of undress in this film thanks to our friend the Yauchi. Here. The other thing that I like that they show us here when Danny Glover and Harrigan to the au are fighting, he cuts off the predator's forearm. The predators has armed the explosive. I think a little prematurely, a little premature on the predator's part there. He should that's a last

Oh boy, that and that was such a weird sequence because what he does is he breaks his way into a bathroom in this apartment and he grabs, he smashes a bunch of the tile off the wall. I don't I have no idea what this has to do with anything with the practicality of medical triage. But he gets all of this tile, he breaks it up in his hands, he lights like a Bunsen burner. He puts it into the Bunsen burner with some kind of chemical, this blue chemical.

I love that I didn't understand what was going on. He knew what he was doing. He recognized that tile is apparently whatever's the some property in there is going to help him couterize his wounds.

Yeah. The other thing that is, it's funny, we're we're talking a little bit. All I was, I guess talking making reference to prey. And one of the things that is unavoidable. Which look, Kevin Peter Hall is awesome as the Predator. He is, there's menace in every move that he makes. But the thing that is is a bummer.

Yeah, I had a similar experience after the run of the recent Planet of the Apes movies and then going back and watch the originals and going, oh boy, these are really are some people in masks. I know, I've been impressed my entire life, but this is a little tough. Now I'm going to have to re re immerse myself into this.

It's true. You can say what you want about the Tim Burton reboot or reimagining, but those ape costumes were pretty fucking cool. That was if that really truly looked like an orangutan evolved to human like proportions.

Well, you're talking about practical makeup. I'm talking about the CG fest with Andy serkis all the recent rise of the Planet of the Apes, and we've got completely computer generated characters and they are talking and emoting and unlike anything that the nineteen sixty eight prosthetics could afford.

It's pretty amazing. But despite that, like I said, there's there.

Are saying you know, you made the analogy about Star Wars going back and watching the Obi Wan and Darth Vader fight. Now, it's kind of pathetic. It's they're practicing just kendo, so they're just kind of clacking the blades against each other. Was just how you fight in kendo. Nobody knew that they were going to be fighting a

I do remember that. Funny enough, I actually rewatched that recently. I saw it when it was when it went viral a few years ago, but I did rewatch it recently.

You know, at the time it came out, I was like, come on, you guys, calm down with this shit. Do you really need this? And now I agree with you. Maybe they ought have just cut that into Star Wars.

You know, there's a line between this, you know, making it better and making the special edition right.

Well, you know, mister Lucas is very fond of reimagining his own works, so maybe he ought to take the fans queue there and go back and do Star Wars again. Maybe that's maybe that's an experiment Disney ought to auto allow him to do redo the three again now any way you want.

I would go see it. I may not like it, but I would go seek.

Yeah, go see it. Man so yeah so.

But I guess that's maybe that's part of the charm thinking about it, of those early Predator movies where they're dealing with the constraints of that big, bulky costume and there's only so much that this actor can do. So I guess it. I don't know. I guess it works for the time, but it is pretty impressive to see what you can do with modern effects, like in Prey and bad Lands. That's going to be awesome.

That's not what we're watching next, friend, that will be

Oh?

One thing I didn't mention, and you didn't mention it either. I'm surprised, given our shared night mister Walter's podcasting and so forth, you didn't note the fact that in Predator Too, we have a full fledged DC CAB reunion. You never mentioned it.

Adam Baldwin, Gary Busey and they working together and Hackenberry. Wow, And we also have a Lethal Weapon reunion in Gary Busey and Danny Glover.

That's true. And Steve Kahan.

Steve Kahan is who Steve Kahan.

He was a big Richard Donner guy. He was in He was in Maverick in the Lethal Weapon movies. He was the captain. You know. That was another It's a minor thing. He's not in it that much, but he's there. But yeah, I was surprised you didn't note the fact that Albert Hackenberry was in this with with Gary Busey.

Hey man, I only noticed the Lethal Weapon reunion this time, watching it like my brain was too scrambled. Plus I had I was thinking every time I saw Adam Baldwin, I kept thinking the thought that I already expressed, which is he that bad? Now I'm going to have to reassess this guy.

Yeah, I don't know. And I thought, by the way, I thought just then you were going to make a joke and say, you know, I'm not going to hunt the predator on January eighth, because that's ill. This is birtha.

I let you say it.

I don't. I didn't do it justice. But but no, My final word on this is, you know, we've said it all it was. It's disappointing, but I'm hopeful that I know that by the time we get to Pray that there's a re rejuvenation in the series. I'm hoping some of these middle pictures are going to satisfy me a little concern.

Wait till we get to the Predator.

Is that the the Shane Black one?

Yes? All right, oh boy, you're gonna love it.

I can sense the sarcasm, so a little bit.

Ah well, anyway, until next time, until the next yahoucha fest? Where can people find you when they're looking for you? Mister h p all right?

As I alluded to her or mentioned earlier, I co host the night Mister Walters Taxi podcast with Father Malone here. I am also an occasional guest on The Culture Cast with Chris Dashu. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast. And finally, I have a band camp site hpmusicplace dot bancamp dot com.

As for me, you're listening to my show, Hey, people in Las Vegas and the Las Vegas area come around October, might want to stop by the Nightmare in Vegas Convention where you'll find the Midnight Viewing Crew on display. We will be We're going to have a full day, full two days of presence there at the convention October the fourth and the fifth stop by. We're gonna be recording all goddamn day long, and they're gonna be have special guests and such. It's a long ways off, but you know,

You know who he is.

I won't have.

I don't know who he is, but I know who.

Is the other aside, what are you talking about?

The spirit world? Man? You see, it's always the same.

There's no stopping what can be stopped, no killing what can't be killed.

Hey, make sense, man, the same that's killing your people and mind it's from the others.

I can feel him all around.

You can't see the eyes of the demon until him come carling.

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Time.

There's something out there writing in the spook. In languish, I look about

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