show features two hosts and rotating guest content experts tackling the nitty-gritty complex horror topics with the hope of making the genre more approachable for frequent flyers and newbies alike. The goal of this show is to highlight diverse voices and perspectives in horror. This is your reminder that there may be discourse on the show that will challenge the way you look at the genre. So let's get ready to get ugly.
i'm the ghost with the blog lonely and i'm joined by my co-host and partner in crime I'm Susie, aka ProjectileVarmint, and a couple episodes ago when we were talking to Poppy... You mentioned how you love getting mail and like actual letters in the mail. I wrote a letter for like the first time in years and I sent it to Stephen King.
I thought this was going to get political and you'd be like, I wrote my senator. What did you tell Stephen King? Did you tell him a secret? I don't know. I asked him to come on the podcast. If we're going to get a hold of Stephen King, I guess the best way to do that is snail mail. except like the address I used was one that I found like in a deep subreddit.
Who knows if it's the actual address or not, but I tried to put like a little bit of like secret window, like little clues in there that like I'm a huge fan come on the podcast. And the only reason I wrote the letter is because one of our guests said she wouldn't come on the podcast unless I wrote that letter to Stephen King because I was talking about it for like weeks and weeks and I just didn't do it. But we shall see.
I also recently found out that, so you know the iconic Stephen King mansion in Maine with the gates and everything? I recently found out that he obviously does not live there anymore. I didn't realize that he doesn't live there. And I guess it's just owned by his like writing foundation and they have like writers in residence. So if you were planning a road trip.
to go stare in his windows and make sure he got the letter. I hope you didn't send it there. But would they have forwarded it to like maybe his real residence? They probably open all the mail and sort it out. They're preventing misery from happening in real life, so we'll see. We'll see. But tonight we're talking about something even darker than Stephen King. If you can imagine, we are diving into the darkest depths.
like kind of headfirst into three feet of water, of the horror genre with the first episode in our Extreme Horror Iceberg series. So we have convinced one of our brave guests to return and christen our first episode in this very disturbing series. We are welcoming back Horror Heart aka Libby, a lifelong horror fan hailing from Portland, Oregon.
They were our first choice for the extreme horror iceberg because Libby notoriously loves horror that is pitch black, bleak as fuck, and set in reality where the worst monsters are human. And we know that from The Nightingale. Did everybody die? Libby probably loved it. Libby Roach is a musician and a photographer who has written music for short films, podcasts, and for the Portland jazz band Fractal Quintet. Welcome back, Libby.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me back. This is such a treat. I feel like you really must have been scraping that bottom tier to get me to come back on for this episode. We're actually begging. We need somebody as brave as you to come back, Libby. So you're showing the people that it's possible. Nice. And Libby, the episode that like way, way back on Horror Movie Weekly, when you came on, the film we talked about.
I'm shocked is not on this iceberg, but I'm going to mention that later on. But so iceberg, we're talking about icebergs, but not the one that have. cute fuzzy polar bears on them if you're chronically on the internet like lonely you might not have any idea what this iceberg is that we're talking about but iceberg charts, also known as iceberg tier lists, are usually images of an iceberg that internet users divide up and label into levels or tiers.
The tip of the iceberg outlines the content that most people know about, whereas the parts of the iceberg that are underwater outline more hidden or unknown content, and usually it's a little bit harder to find. No one is sure where the iceberg meme began, but there's evidence on the internet dating back to 2011 on Imgur and 4chan. Did I say that right? Yes, 4chan confirmed. And Imgur. Is it Imgur? Libby? Imgur? Does that sound right? I have no idea. Okay, we are officially two.
In psychology, Freud used the image of an iceberg to describe the conscious versus the subconscious. In literature, the iceberg theory or the theory of omission is a style of writing coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. This strategy of fiction writing where most of the story is hidden, much like an iceberg underneath the ocean. The largest percentage of the iceberg is underwater, not visible and is subsequently the strongest part of the iceberg.
In the same way, the strongest part of Hemingway's stories are what is hidden from the reader and, if applicable, revealed later.
And also an iceberg in real life is a giant ice cube that is becoming extinct. If you need a reference point of an iceberg, you can watch the Titanic. But the extreme horror iceberg... is one of the versions of this meme that went viral on TikTok and YouTube relatively recently, where reviewers began to rank and review some of the most gruesome horror media in existence.
Some versions of the extreme iceberg are actually pretty insidious and not in the James Wan way because they often include banned media, dark web content, things like live animal death, and even some rumored snuff films. The kind of banned media on these icebergs is obviously illegal for a reason. They portray real violence, potentially real death and can potentially scar a viewer.
aware of what they're stepping into. And in some ways, curiosity can in fact kill a cat when you are looking into some of this really dark stuff that is sitting here. Blindly setting out to consume anything on an extreme horror iceberg could potentially be a dangerous experience, especially for young or inexperienced horror viewers. we have found a version of the iceberg that does not include any banned or illegal content.
Throughout the entirety of this series, our iceberg will be posted on Instagram, and I will include a direct link in our show notes as well if you want to check out the iceberg and recommend some films yourself.
But before we get into the films, I want to talk a little bit about the ethics, because, you know, I can't let anything go without talking about the ethics. So we talked about the ethics of extreme horror media a long time ago, back in season one, at the very early, early days of the show. Tonight, I really want to focus on sort of the ethical implication of these other versions of the iceberg and this idea of putting something like a snuff film.
under the same umbrella as fictional horror with this all-encompassing term extreme horror. What do you guys think separates these two things, snuff versus fictional horror, and what are the dangers of speaking about them as if they're the same thing? Susie, you want to give it a try? The huge problem with that is if you're putting snuff films in this horror category, you are just furthering the stereotype that...
Us horror adventurers are depraved weirdos. So no, get the snuff films out of there. Those are for some people that don't deserve to be on this earth. But I see nothing wrong with films that are showing extreme violence and death, but obviously not snuff films. I think the real issue with the idea of this iceberg of horror is that it's really it is showing this descent into depravity and it's almost like you were saying earlier it's like a gateway especially for younger kids.
And when they're watching something, they could say like, oh, well, I can handle this film. So maybe I should see if I could handle the next one. And you just kind of like domino to like some things you never would have sought out ever. some things that don't deserve to get any recognition or be viewed at all because they are unethical, and then you're freaking scarred for life.
I agree 100% with everything you just said. I really would like to have more separation between these kind of snuff type films and the other films that are in this list. Because, yeah, it's disgusting. I like disturbing movies and. especially ones with a message or that might have something to say.
but they're just sort of mixed in here within this list. I guess I was looking at the... the the tiered you know list of films to begin with and at first i was like oh yeah just i've seen so many of these and there's so many great films here and then when i started kind of looking for ones that i hadn't seen and was
kind of getting into the weeds with what they were and what they were about, I was sort of realizing that I feel like some of these are sort of falling into that category of just kind of beyond the limits to which I'm willing to put my eyes and heart through. So I obviously agree. I mean, imagine if I was like, no, yes, put the snuff films on the iceberg right now. Imagine if I just disagreed with all of you right now. But my biggest issue with this is the way that the social media has.
sensationalize the iceberg and the iceberg challenge basically for particularly younger horror fans. I understand that everybody kind of has their own limits in terms of what they want to watch but you know I've mentioned my younger cousin on the show before she's a big fan of like the teeny bopper slasher she's a big scream fan And I could never in any reality, like, want her to ever view anything on this iceberg at her age.
I didn't want to start viewing at 26. There are still some things that I think are just really disturbing to consume. And to your point, Libby, as you get lower on the iceberg and you get deeper into things, you start to really understand your own limits on what you will and will not consume and the way that this media pushes the boundary.
There's a notorious film at the bottom of this iceberg that I hope nobody makes us watch, but we will see what happens. And that is Black Metal Veins by Lucifer Valentine. And Lucifer Valentine is known for putting basically anything except literal rape and murder into a film. And there's rumors that Black Metal Veins actually does feature actual death, just not a murder.
So it begs the question, you know, like, where are we going with this and where does it end? And Susie, I think you might be able to chart the waters a little bit better than I because you've had quite the experience with these kinds of movies. Oh, yeah. Well, I've been around on this earth a little bit longer than you. And I was thinking about, like, what is our background with the films on this list? What is your experience now with these movies? Has it changed?
I guess, what has your journey been with these movies, Libby? Yeah, good question. I think my sort of history with extreme cinema would probably start with back when I was in middle school. I think I feel like I saw this movie Faces of Death. Oh my gosh, me too. That was my entryway. Go on, go on. I really, I mean, I didn't like, it's just, it's horrible. It's a horrible movie, but I did watch the whole thing.
i was relieved to know that a lot of the stuff was sensationalized or maybe uh a little bit fake but i didn't know that at the time really and uh it was just really disgusting but that's sort of the my sort of entry point into it I think also, I just think in general, maybe... Just in my consuming of media and sort of art and culture, I've always been attracted to things that were kind of on the outskirts.
of the mainstream and that would be with you know with music that I liked and imagery that I liked so I guess that's sort of where I'm coming from Yeah, and Lonely, you know a lot about these films, like you've read a lot about them, but what's your actual experience with them, watching-wise? Oh, well, I'm so glad you asked because this is an excuse for me to talk about religion again with the passion of the Christ.
Because, believe it or not, The Passion of the Christ actually appears on several extreme horror lists for some reason. And I think it kind of falls in that weird gray area that a lot of the films on the top two tiers of the iceberg kind of fall in. And the Passion of the Christ has been described as being very gruesome and graphic in the depiction of the crucifixion. the very gruesome religious imagery. So my first exposure to extreme horror media was when I was probably
Six or seven, I was home alone, and my mom had always told me, do not watch this movie. She would hold up the DVD case of Passion of the Christ and be like, do not watch this. It's not a good movie. And I sure did wait till my parents left and I watched the first, I think, 45 minutes of Passion of the Christ and I absolutely lost my marbles. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen.
And from there, you know, I didn't really consume a lot of extreme horror. I had to go back through this list and see like when was the first time I really engaged with it since then. The first extreme horror film I saw, like, by choice, knowing exactly what I was getting into, was The House That Jack Built. That was also my first experience with our pal Lars von Trier, which we'll talk about later.
I really don't consume a lot of extreme horror. I think it's just not something I'm attracted to. It's not something that really interests me. So I don't know. I don't know if that makes me like the pansy on this discussion, but I haven't consumed a lot. So the watch list for this episode actually exposed me to many, many things that I hadn't planned to see in this lifetime.
so you were mentioning the passion of the christ like sometimes being on these icebergs i'd love to see an iceberg list of critically acclaimed films because they have equal amounts of extreme content and they do it without flinching and they win oscars
But I feel like when you put the label of horror on something, all of a sudden it's too extreme or too unethical. I mean, I'm thinking about some movies that aren't horror that were harder to watch than a lot of the movies we're talking about tonight, like Full Metal Jacket. Apocalypse Now, there's a movie called Polytechnic from 2009 about a school shooting. Oh my gosh. And even like The Place Beyond the Pines.
so it's funny that you know when something gets labeled horror for this iceberg it's like too far down the realm of what people will want to consume even though they've consumed so much worse and in my life Just like Libby, I watched Faces of Death when I was like nine. I clicked on a link and there it was. I think I saw JFK's like dead body. But then I kind of went into that down the bad road where it was like, what can I watch? How far can I go?
Like, what can I put myself through? And that was like in my 20s, mass consumption of these films. And that's why I've seen so many of these films and I'm like disgusted with that fact. Good thing I have a terrible memory. But as soon as I got out of college, I kind of just fell off of that. And then when I was pregnant, had kids, I completely withdrew and absolutely will not choose to watch anything.
even remotely extreme anymore. I couldn't even watch the sadness. So that's where I'm at. Yeah, I can understand that. Really, honestly, from what both of you are saying. It made me think of, you know, horror being sort of automatically dismissed as, you know, comes up a lot as a theme and with horror films in general. Once you tack on extreme horror onto that, it's like just another... sort of you know tick on the do not watch list for lots of people and then when you go and mix in
Like we're talking about these snuff films and pseudo snuff films and other things that just kind of muddy the waters of acceptability there too. It's just. really kind of hard to know where to begin with this type of media.
But I do think that there are some... excellent examples like you were saying i would love to see the iceberg of extremes with a you know with some critically acclaimed films and some of the ones we're talking about tonight are will fall under that category but i'd love to see a full list of that that would be awesome
So let's talk about these tiers. You know, we've been talking about the tiers so far. And like I mentioned before, the full iceberg will be in the show notes and on Instagram. But since it's our first episode on this series, let's talk about the tiers. So on the iceberg, there are six tiers, at least in the version we are using. Tier one is the tip of the iceberg above the water. These are films that most horror fans have seen and contain various degrees of jump scares and some mild gore.
Some of the examples of films in this category are Psycho and the Exorcist. We're not going to be reviewing any of the films from Tier 1 in this series because these are actually a lot of films that we feature in most other forms of our content. Tier 2 begins our journey underwater. The gore and violence begins to escalate in this tier, with examples like hereditary and hostile. Tier 3 marks the halfway point in our journey, where most horror fans begin to push their own limits.
Body horror, gore, sexual violence, and depictions of death become a little bit more unsettling for a typical horror fan here, and these include some films like Last House on the Left and The House That Jack Built. Tier 4 is where many people begin to call films either unfinishable or unwatchable. These are films that many people turn off or only watch once.
Themes like cannibalism, the death of children, and body horror are prominent themes in this tier. Some examples include the Antichrist and Mae Chan's Daily Life. Tier five is where we truly get into what many people deem unwatchable. These include depictions of torture, death and sexual violence. that make up the bulk of the viewing time in the piece. So that's also a key thing here is how much time on screen are you spending watching this?
Topics like war and human-on-human violence is also a core theme here. Taboos are often pushed to the limits of what audiences believe should actually be created, let alone what. Examples include salo and guinea pig, the flower of flesh and blood. The final tier is tier six with marks are depth below the iceberg. So we're not even on the iceberg anymore. We're below it. And this is the darkest, most deplorable media that is still on the market legally.
And like we mentioned, this does include the works of the infamously problematic Lucifer Valentine with his movie Black Metal Veins. And a category I had not heard before researching this episode, which is Japanese splatter porn. So our goal in this series is to cover as much of the iceberg as possible. And we will be very clear that there will be parts of this list that we will not get through because we won't.
watch them or we won't recommend that other people do, but our goal is to cover as much of the iceberg as possible with all of your help. So tonight we'll be covering some of the films from tier two through tier five and Libby actually chose all the films for us to watch tonight so you can get mad at her not us. So the women from our Femme Revenge episode wound up on this first tier somehow, but we're going to be talking about Dancer in the Dark from 2000.
An Eastern European U.S. immigrant with a love for musicals has to cope with the gradual loss of her vision. So first off, this is a Lars von Trier movie. I really admire his work all the way back to the early 2000s when he came out with this series called The Kingdom. It was about a haunted hospital. He's got this way of creating a really creepy atmosphere, but also making things super dark and satirical.
I'd like to think of it as like quirky horror. It's hard to explain, but if you skew more towards Me over Lonely's taste, you will eat his shit up. But Dancer in the Dark is like Lars von Trier dipping his feet into the extreme because later we'll see him with Antichrist and the house that Jack built.
Both are on the horror iceberg. But Dancer in the Dark is kind of like just disturbingly quirky. I think the fact that he... juxtaposed this horrible story with a musical number and a musical background just made it like quirky and creative and I thought it was kind of amazing but what did you guys think about the movie opening thoughts as far as you want to get to I wonder I wanted to just talk really quickly about the opening of the film. It was kind of like art, you know? Artful.
kind of opening with painting renditions of maybe representing the degeneration of her eyes or maybe eye spots. Like almost when you close your eyes and you see little... Yeah, exactly it sort of it sort of looked like that and then I really liked the way It was sort of fragments of that that at the end sort of dissolved to a blank white screen. And then the title card for the movie.
I just thought that was really creative. I think there were so many creative elements to how the film was put together. I didn't like this. So this is incredibly slow. Oh my gosh. It takes so long to get anywhere. And I realized while watching this that I am not smart enough. to get Bjork. Is that how you say the artist's name? Bjork? I think it's Bjork. Almost like work.
But so work is how we say it here in the States. Yeah. So I'm just not smart enough to get what she's got going on. And I, you know, she's an icon in her space and eclectic media, but I just don't, I just don't get it. Actually, I've looked up some of the controversy on this film. There was apparently some controversy with Bjork and Lars von Trier.
Come to find out, Lars von Trier has been accused of some pretty interesting things in his time. Apparently, he has a very intense substance problem and a very intense mental illness, which... I don't want to perpetuate the stereotype, but yeah, the movies kind of point towards that. But I ultimately skimmed this. I thought it was really, really slow.
I would say a very small amount of extreme horror in this. I think the extreme horror of it is probably 20 minutes tops of the entire runtime. And we'll talk about that in a second. Like what is the actual portrayal of that horror here? But ultimately, this feeling this leaves you with at the end is like so nauseating. And honestly, this is such a cool precursor to what Lajvan Trier will do later, because this is just like a taste.
a taste of the horrible capability he has later on. But Libby, you picked this film. So what are your opening thoughts on it? Do you like this film? Tell us. Tell us what you think. Yeah, well, I am a huge Bjork fan. So I did really like this film because I thought it was really great to see her in a whole new medium as. you know, being primarily a musician before. I don't know that she's done a whole lot of acting. I was just really impressed. I thought the music in it was really cool.
It was very artful in how it was made. I loved the opening. I don't know. I can absolutely agree that it's very it's tediously slow. In fact, while I was rewatching it, I wondered, you know, as it was going, I was like, God, is this extreme? I know I picked it, but is it even extreme? But then I did feel like it sort of started meeting that criteria as we get closer toward the end and whatnot. It's just real bleak.
Well, that actually is a great conversation topic because this is on the same level as Midsommar. It almost begs the question, you know, what makes something extreme? Is it the gore? and the like graphic content or is it more of the story and like how depressing and heavy it is for me there were two scenes i think that put this movie on the iceberg and i think one of the scenes was when she killed jeff you know it was pretty like in your face they went right up in there
Before we get more into it, I feel like we've missed a key plot point here. So did we talk about the fact that she's going blind? Yes. Okay. So she is going, so the story here is that she is going blind. She is living in poverty. She has a son who is also suffering from this, you know, degenerative eye disease and everything she does throughout this movie, the main character.
Selma is to potentially get her son the surgery to save his vision while hers is continuing to decline. So that in itself is very, very depressing because we have this. you know european immigrant who's come to the u.s like to try to fulfill this american dream and it is just a very very pitiful very depressing existence and Yes. So Susie, to your point, when she kills the police landlord guy, the death scene is really fucked up.
Because she can't see anything that's happening, or she sees very little with what she's doing, which is why it's so hard for her to kill him. she tries to shoot him several times but can't see so that's why she misses which is already a painful thing to watch which don't you think is so interesting because that like cues ahead to the house that jack built Where there's a scene with the kids and the gun. But anyway. So she's trying to shoot him. Doesn't work. So she has to.
beat him to death with a metal head in yeah with a metal like case and that is crazy and then it goes immediately into a dance number but the fact like almost the fact that she can't see what's happening And then the second extreme, like what puts this in the extreme category is the ending. So obviously, spoiler. So ultimately, Selma is arrested for killing the landlord guy.
And we won't spoil the whole film. Go watch it and find out why she kills him. But regardless, so she kills him. She goes to jail. They don't want to pay the fees for the lawyer. So she is sentenced to death. She's charged being guilty. She's sentenced to death by hanging. Okay, so fact check me here. Do we still hang people in the United States? Do we do that? I don't think so. I don't think so. But also, if I remember correctly, the movie takes place in Washington State in maybe the 1960s.
So I don't know. Yeah, possible. I don't know. So she's she's sentenced to hanging and there's two songs in the jail where she's singing eventually going to her death and. Libby, would you like to walk us through the last 10 minutes of this film? What happens on the... I don't know what we want to call it. Walking 107 steps to the ending. Yeah, exactly.
fantasy world that she resorts to often throughout the film and you know it's it's different than a typical musical it's not like musical numbers every five minutes or anything And the way they sort of slip into the music in the movie I think is also done pretty creatively and seamlessly. Well, the scariest part I would say, and Susie, you can tell me if you agree, is so she's about to be hanged. She knows that she's going to be hanged. She sings a whole song about it.
But she can't see anything. And what posters it over the edge is when they put the hood on her to be hanged. And she begins panicking. And it's like for the first time, she realizes that she's going to die. And that kind of begins this downward spiral of the last five minutes of the film. And there's a touching moment where she discovers that her son has had the surgery and he's actually going to be able to see again and she accepts her fate. In typical Lars von Trier fashion.
They proceed to hang her on screen and you see the entire thing. She literally is like, I think in the middle of a sentence, right? And they just hang her. Yep. yeah i think she's like maybe sing is it part of the singing yeah she's singing because then they have they put the lyrics right on the screen and it's like very oh it's like very sickening it gives you like a nauseated feeling because
One thing about Lars von Trier is that his gore is almost hyper-realistic. He doesn't rely on blood or anything to make the gore happen. It's a weird thing to describe. and the way he uses the camera in that last scene it's very voyeuristic like you almost feel like you're somebody in the audience like turning your head trying to see and the camera's like going in and out you can definitely tell that
He's doing his handheld style there. And that just made it feel like even more realistic, which made that much worse. So I have one question for you both before we go on to the next one. One thing that came to mind for me as we were watching like that ending scene where Selma is hanged, it made me realize for the first time what it might do to an actor. Seeing themselves die on screen. I have never considered that. Until I saw this movie. Because I was thinking. How does Bjork.
go about her daily life knowing that there's like this yeah I guess so right like there's this hyper realistic like visual of her being hanged I never thought about that before So I'm really glad you brought up sort of that artistic touch with the opening and the ending of Dancer in the Dark because... What I found was really similar between these two films that we're talking about at the top of the iceberg is this weird dreamlike.
subversive feeling of we're in reality but we're not quite in reality and we see this in the next film which I know I think, Susie, you like this film, but tell me more. What is our next film? Our next film is Requiem for a Dream from 2000. The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island people are shattered when their addictions run deep.
And I really did like this film and mainly it was because of the way it was shot, that really artistic cinematography. And it also had Jared Leto in it and I'm a big Jared Leto fan until I found out he's probably an asshole. But again, this was kind of a shocking addition because I don't think this one's that extreme, but it does do something that I think makes it hard to watch. And it is that. you know, like shaky camera going up close.
And the way you're almost in the same body as the people experiencing what's happening in this film. I just wanted to jump in really quick because I had noticed. the techniques of how they were achieving this sort of extremity we're seeing on screen. And I think that the use of extreme close-ups, which you mentioned, and then there's also just lots of jolted cross-cuts.
There's lots of split screens, a lot of wide angle lenses to kind of discombobulate and distort the perspective and use of time lapse. whatnot. So anyway, I thought that was some kind of elements of how they were achieving that look.
In Requiem for a Dream, I think it's really clever how they're showing different addictions and how they ruin someone's lives. So obviously we have the main addiction of the heroin, but then we also have Tyrone and his addiction to... you know getting this approval from his mother and then we have the mother's obsession with escaping her reality and being thin. All of these characters are kind of brought together by this one big theme of like feeling isolated and alone.
I also agree that it's kind of a it's a it's a harrowing look at addiction and consequences wrapped up in loneliness and depression and isolation. It's just a real sad movie. That one shot, that close-up shot where he's injecting heroin into the open wound, that was like, cringe. I just wanted to rewind it back a tiny bit to an earlier scene where they were using the split-screen effect, and it was Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly laying in bed together.
It's shot from above, so you're getting this bird's eye view from above, but there's still a split screen. So it was like, even though... They're like literally in the same bed talking to each other. There's still like a barrier between them. This drugs, you know, this, the things still getting in the way even. when they're right there together. And it's just so sad. And I thought, what an effective way to show that.
Yeah, so this was my first time seeing this. So I have heard of Requiem for a Dream being on a lot of these like depressing film. movies, film lists for a while. And in my brain, I had this film confused with Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind, which I have also not seen. Oh, my gosh. But I've been told those are two different films, I guess. One of them has Jared Leto in it, and it's this one.
But so, yeah, this is what intrigued me the most about Requiem for a Dream is that it strikes me as also a dark comedy. I think particularly with the mother character. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, her addiction and then her ultimate downfall because of this addiction is really joked about in a way that just isn't touched when we think about. Jared Leto's character and Jennifer Connelly's character and their addictions to heroin and even Tyrone like they have these harrowing
you know, experiences that were like, oh no, this is what you think about when you think of somebody in the throes of drug addiction. And then you have this mother character. who is just withering away in isolation and going into a speed-induced psychosis and is treated like an animal. And it is just... Somehow it's laughable in the way that it's portrayed, the way that the characterizations are done.
But then it comes to a head at the end of the film. And what's interesting about Requiem for a Dream being on this list is, yes, it is bleak as hell, which I think we also established with Dancer in the Dark. And it isn't until, I would say, the last... seven minutes of the film that we get that extreme horror. The final sequence is what makes it extreme. We have three scenes that flash between each other. There's a scene in the prison.
tyrone is what is what are they even doing he's like what is he doing what is what did they make him do is he like making he's smashing something right making glue i don't know
I can't remember. It's like cement or something. He has a large, it looks like a giant butter churn, but Tyrone is doing this incredible manual labor while... detoxing from drugs actively also in the woes of his trauma being separated from his mother and now in prison feeling like a failure we have jared leto who's about to get his arm cut off from sepsis
We have Jennifer Connelly who's been tricked into this horrible, like, exploitative sex party. And then we have the mother character who is getting electroshock therapy. And those scenes were pretty intense, I would say. I think the one that got me the most was the flashing between the sex party and them like chanting at her and the shock therapy.
It was like to Jennifer Connelly with the other girl and the accessory. Like if you just go to the beginning of this film and you see her as she was then and then like this. huge transformation to what happens to her at the end. That is shocking. And you were saying about the mother and her like descent into her demise. That one scene where the refrigerator is eating her and the people from the game show.
That like really nightmarish dream sequence-y, but it's like her psychosis. I've had, I had a nightmare from that scene. It was like in my nightmare. And that is like a nightmare of a scene in this movie. Absolutely. That's that's pretty terrifying. I also was noticing in that in that same scene that you're talking about, that scene where.
The mom's kind of world is colliding between her fantasy world and reality. When the game show host and... crew kind of pop into all of a sudden they're in her living room. And they're kind of mocking her and looking around at her apartment and the state it's in and all of her things. And they're just kind of picking every single little thing apart. And at the same time, the camera's kind of swirling around in a circle.
And it's kind of reminiscent of that Texas Chainsaw Massacre dinner scene. You know what I'm talking about? I see that. That same kind of technique is used in a movie we'll talk about later. I thought that was just really effective and just really... just awful to watch and makes you feel so insecure i could just feel it The two films on tier two that we talked about, Dance for the Dark and Requiem for a Dream,
it makes you feel something. You feel deeply like for these characters as people. And then as we get deeper into the iceberg, I feel like we start feeling things for humanity we start thinking about these larger ideas of what is wrong with us like as people that these things are happening and I think at this point, moving away from tier two, we are going to get significantly less dreamy and less artistic for a while because we're going to be talking about
some really fucked up shit in tier three because it's about to about to get intense so we're going to be talking about a film that i have probably talked about too often on the internet which is eden lake 2008 Follows a couple on a romantic lake getaway and their quiet weekend is shattered by an aggressive group of kids. So in this movie, we have Jenny and Steve. We're in Britain. And they're on vacation. And these group of...
Teenagers is just here to cause havoc. There's no real reason why these teenagers are harassing them very like a la strangers there there's no real reason why this this violence doesn't sue in my one soapbox i will give and then i will hand it over to you too is that this
whole film was based off this movement in the UK called Broken Britain and it was this idea that the that exposing children to, like, poor influences and violence was literally going to cause the downfall of the country and that the youth were going to ruin everything. When in reality, it was a really sharp decline in children's access to things like education, transportation and health care.
caused by poverty so the flaw in this movie for me is that this whole thing was created to insinuate that children in poverty are going to become evil and kill people and cause the downfall of the good society symbolized by Jenny and Steve. So that's my moral and ethical issue with this film. But Susie, tell us a little bit about why this is an extreme horror film and what your opening thoughts are. See, I'm a little confused about it because...
We're talking about two films in tier three, and this one in no way is going to match up to the one we're going to talk about after. That is extreme. Oh, no. Yeah. But this one, I feel like could have been in tier two. I mean, there is a bit of gore. It's kind of relentless. There's a crappy ending, but I just didn't see it being here on tier three.
I mean, the movie definitely fell into this heavy sadness that you see with these extreme... like horrors and it kind of like makes you think that there's no faith people you have no faith in people but especially like inbred people and jerky little kids but there's a good chunk of this movie that is like a cat and mouse chase It's really good, but I just don't think it's that extreme.
Okay, I'm going to weigh in. Yeah, I think the extreme quality comes probably from the ending scene is my guess. Because I agree when I look at this just on at face value, I don't necessarily think that it is nearly as bad as some of the other ones that are in some of these tiers. But I do think that it brings up some interesting. things. And Lonely, you touched on this as well. Obviously, it's dealing with...
ideas of gentrification. And there's like this, you know, this public park that's being turned into this future kind of gated community. There's the theme of disparity of wealth. the vilification of rural communities, which, which sucks, you know? So, but also I, I, I'm not sure that it's pointing a negative finger at that. I feel like it's like, it's like communities that have slipped through the cracks.
Maybe maybe showing you what it could be without pointing a negative finger. I don't really. And, you know, that's so, I'm so glad you mentioned that too, Libby, because I, when I first saw Eden Lake, I saw this about maybe two years ago, initially, I...
Lost my marbles. And I was like, this is an atrocity. I must talk about it on the internet as I do. And I had some... some friends from the uk who were like actually we don't see it this way at all and it was just a really interesting conversation because i think from different different people perceive it differently and it may not be an entire like call out or If this, then that. when it comes to the vilification of the impoverished
And in the same vein, we could say the same thing about, you know, Texas Chainsaw, right? We could say, oh, Texas Chainsaw is a commentary on why rural communities are evil because they're, you know, inbred. killing people with chainsaws so i think that's a valid very valid take but you could also say about texas chainsaw massacre that i've heard this and it's a great joke that you know From Leatherface's perspective, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a home invasion movie.
Yes, exactly. And, you know, in that same vein, Eat a Light could be an antihero story in that, you know, we have these rich people coming in and taking away. A community that may not belong to them. But you guys mentioned that you don't think this is that extreme. And I agree. I think the film that is coming on the heels of this.
is maybe overshadowing a lot of our opinions and that's okay because it's a fucked up movie but the couple parts of Eden Lake I wanted to highlight as like particularly gruesome I would say there's a scene where i think this is the crux of it there are a lot of kids who get killed in this and that's probably why it's considered extreme there's a scene where a child They stick a tire over his head and then set him on fire.
And it's called necklacing. I didn't realize this happened so frequently it needed a term. Yes. So that's one of the things that I think is quite extreme. And the kid doesn't die right away. He's literally running around screaming with the tire on fire on his head, which is kind of fucked up. In another scene, a dog gets visibly stabbed. So I think for some people that animal violence is a little bit extreme. And then there's one scene where Jenny is stuck in a septic tank.
So Libby, to your the poop comment earlier, this this checks the poop box in that she was in a septic tank for some time. and she's actually covered in it as well like she's covered in poop for the rest of the film so yeah and i think about that when she is that before or after she steps on the spike Oh, I think it's going on there. That's what I was thinking. I was like, I feel like that happens before she steps on. Yeah. And then I'm thinking of.
The future of that wound is... Well, good thing she doesn't need to worry about that wound after the finale. Right. The finale. What makes this movie... A little understandable why it's on the list is the finale. And you're rooting for her the entire time. And when she finds that house, you're almost like, oh my gosh, yeah. You know, she's gonna, she's gonna get away. And then she's in the bathroom kind of like hearing what her own fate is going to be and like realizing.
You know, I'm still stuck. I'm still trapped. And, you know, you know what's going to happen. And that was just so bleak. It's so bleak. And I feel like this. movie has several times throughout it where like one tiny little change could have happened and the whole thing would have been different you know like for instance when You know, earlier in the film when they're talking to Adam, who's the little boy who they meet on the trail originally.
You know, he's he's drawing in his book or whatever, and they're walking down the trail and they ask him some question. I don't even remember what it was, but they ask him something and he just kind of responds with like. My mom says not to talk to strangers, you know, and and they're like, oh, yes, of course. Your mom is right. Like, that's OK. And so they continue on their way. And, you know, he at some point he meets up again with Jenny.
later in the film and she um asks him to help her like get out of there she's like i need to can you please take me to your mom and he says okay and he just starts kind of like walking her down the trail and then kind of like off the trail and she's getting kind of more wary because she's Getting a little unsure about like, where should we be going this way? I'm not really sure, but she's totally turned around and lost and kind of just leaving it up to him to kind of.
uh bring her back to people and um then it as it turns out you know he's really kind of brought her back to these other teens that are the source of this havoc and uh and he's doing that of course to try to kind of get in with those guys and then the way that That is not reciprocated back toward him, which you mentioned a second ago in the with the tire scene. It's just it's heartbreaking. And then also there's a part that I found really interesting.
with jenny another kind of like oh a second where if one little thing didn't happen that everything would have been different you know so she's in the woods she's hidden in the horrible garbage can of filth and muck and then she gets out she finds a map she's like gonna get out of this place and Out of the woods comes one of the teens, you know, and you can just tell by the look on his face that he's right about to say something like.
um I'll help you you know he's right about to like help her and and but she's in such a panic that she just like turns and in a just defensive reflexive moment, you know, she kills him and it's, you know, not on purpose. And then she, I mean, he doesn't die right away. She holds him in her arms. is devastated by what she's done, but she also doesn't... I don't know if she even realized that it's clear to us as the viewer who gets that split second of...
seeing his face, knowing that he was gonna totally help her. And that would have just completely changed the whole direction of the movie. Would have been a happy ending. I know, I know. And that's what makes, like, Susie, you mentioned this, that these first three films are incredibly bleak. Even though I feel like Eden Lake is probably one of the more known films on this list that people have seen and have heard about. But the next film...
That is probably the bleakest thing I've ever seen in my life is much less known. And that is Threads from 1984. And this follows the effect of the nuclear holocaust. on the working-class city of Sheffield, England, and the eventual long-term effects of the nuclear war on civilization. So a little bit of background because Threads is actually a pretty pivotal piece of media. This was shown on British public television in the 80s. So it wasn't even like a blockbuster. It was a TV movie.
Because this has been so iconic, I had not heard of it before seeing this iceberg. But I reached out to Poppy and I was like, have you heard of this film? And she hadn't heard of it either. I don't even know where to start with this film. I will just do my open thoughts and I will hand it to you, Susie, because I know you've been dying to talk about this one as well.
This follows two families in this smallish town in England as it's a couple, they realize they're pregnant, and it's the days leading up to what we know is to be the nuclear fallout. There seems to be a war going on. Tensions are high. There's threats of nuclear bombs. And society obviously continues to move. They think, oh, you know.
It's what it is. Nothing's going to happen. There's multiple scenes of the family and the community talking to each other, and the news is always on in the background. And you get this omnibus, like... day one day two type of situation as we go through the first 20 minutes of the film
The writing is super clever because this couple is planning their life together. They're talking about the baby coming and the wedding coming. But we know it's a double meaning because you know what else is coming? The fucking nuclear fallout. And I don't know. This is just insane. It is so insane because it takes about 20 minutes and then the first bomb falls. And that's when the true horror of this movie begins. And I will stop here, Susie. Opening thought.
Definitely tier three. We got a tier three winner right here. But before I talk about how I feel about the movie, I think this is the first example I can really remember of a movie having tech. in it that's really an integral part to the storytelling. So throughout this movie you have text on the screen that's almost like a tally. Or it's like CliffsNotes even. It's keeping us up to date on like one week, one month, you know. And it's also telling us the death toll.
i thought that was a really clever aspect of the filmmaking in this movie but now how i feel about it so i'm huge on character development and i like how they had different people and groups of people that aren't related or connected to each other in any way other than living in the same town. And they don't really build up the characters or their stories that much, but you do begin caring about them.
And not for any other reason other than they really seem like real people, especially that couple you were talking about when they're having the conversation, which is like a natural conversation. You felt like this could be. your husband this could be your neighbors these this could be like the old couple that lives like that you run into at the grocery store. The realism in this movie I think is what really brings us to that extreme level because
You know what's going to happen and then you see it happening. It builds this sense of dread in that first 20 minutes. Because they're reading on the news or hearing on the news what's going to happen. And then the people start hoarding and getting nervous. And you know it's just going to keep getting worse. And then it does get worse.
So Libby, give us your opening thoughts and then I will... talk about my what what impact this had on my brain after the first bomb but you again you picked this film we suffered tell us more okay um so threads uh is Obviously, this is a film about nuclear fallout, societal breakdown, system collapse, absolute destruction. And it takes a while for it to get there. I love the pacing of this film.
To me, it's gripping just right from the very start. It's like, you know, techniques that we'll see, you know, in the future, like you were saying, the writing on the screen and whatnot, where you're kind of getting these sort of time points. marking the sort of calendar of when this is going to, you know, what's going to happen or whatever. This to me is like one of the most terrifying films I've ever seen in my whole life. Like this just really hit a nerve with me.
And yeah, like I was saying, I love the pacing of the film. You're sort of confused about who is this about? Because it is kind of cross cutting between a lot of different aspects of things. And then, you know, with these inserted news clips that are kind of.
getting more and more dramatic as they go on. But at the beginning of the film, it's just all in the background. It's just... behind the narrative and nobody's really paying too much attention and as the film progresses it's not until i think it's the 49 minute mark where the uh explosion finally happens. And then the movie just really takes a whole different turn. Watching how this film unfolds and how nothing kind of goes to plan is just devastating.
So let's talk about that first, where the horror actually sets in, which is that about the 45 minute mark when the first bomb hits. So leading up to this, like Susie mentioned, we're watching. the news, we're seeing the prepare for the fallout. So the rich are kind of securing their homes. They're making sure they have places to go. Where you start to get an inclination that something is about to go horribly wrong is when they start showing instructions on the TV what to do with a body.
Like that, that is when I was like, oh, no, oh, no, this is going real south real fast. So they start to tell you like. what do you do if there's a body in your fallout shelter and how many days do you wait? And it's like, oh my God. And the people in the, the characters you're watching. They have still not responded to this. No one at all has referenced the fact that this is coming. There's one comment made, I think, the day before the bomb dropped.
from the the main guy and he mentions he makes a joke about the planes flying overhead and then that's it they don't reference the bombing the fact that the bomb is coming The craziest part of this film, to me, even though we see all of these horrible atrocities after the 45 minute mark. They know the bomb has fallen because they hear it.
I don't know much about nuclear bombs, but there's a time that elapses between the bomb hitting the ground and the radiation reaching where you are, depending on how far you are from the bomb blast. So there's like 20 minutes, what feels like in the film, where people are like running and screaming and just dealing with the debris, like the buildings collapsing. And you're panicking, like as a viewer, you're like, holy shit, like the bomb fell, like you're watching everything.
And you go into this hellish montage, this silent montage of this blinding light. being obliterated and it was the shit that nightmares were made of truly that is the scariest part of the film for me for me then you have the people in the fallout shelters thinking i'm safe and they're not and they're not because you see there's a couple of examples of people who've made like a makeshift fallout shelter and oh the scene where the woman she's in the room and she lights on fire yeah
So that's when the horror of the film sets in. So as a viewer, you're sitting there and you're honestly kind of numb watching this happen. And then what happens in the days that follow the bomb falling are the main character who we begin to follow for the rest of the film, which is the woman who's pregnant. She goes out to try to find her lover, her husband, or fiance, I guess, who's died in the blast. And she knows that he's dead because she knows he was outside at the time of the blast.
And she is going through the destruction that kind of surrounds her. And some of the montages that you get in these, even in the first few days after the blast, are insane. The burning bodies. the cat like stumbling over like over and over it's like so sickening because you can imagine there are things you can imagine seeing in real life particularly the cat stands out to me because
You can imagine like walking down the street and seeing a cat like injured in a way that you can't understand. And then they snuck this in. I don't know if you guys saw it, but she's walking through. And there's blood spewing like out from under like a fallen piece of debris, like a whole blood fountain just like spewing out of something. It is just insane.
And after the initial like burnout that we have here, then society begins to collapse, which is what Libby alluded to. And then we see the fallout of society. So Susie, I don't know if there's anything you want to talk about. Because there's some commentary on maternal horror here as well. I don't know if there's anything you want to touch on.
Yeah, well, first we get 15 years later and the fallout is almost worse than the bomb because you've got the military coming in and these different groups fighting over supplies. And I think they kind of rushed that part. But then I was thinking about it. They couldn't really add much more time onto it because it was a long movie. And I was thinking, should they have shortened the first 45 minutes? But we needed that buildup.
But to what you were saying about the end scene here in this movie, we've got Ruth. baby who's probably you think like 15 years old but then I think she's I think it's 13 years after the blast okay so she's about 13 years old and then she has she gives birth to a baby And the baby has some issues. That's not even like the terrible part. The terrible part is she's 13 and got pregnant. And you just think about like, how did that happen? And that is just.
the fallout of something like this happening absolutely and it's also it's so It's so sad. It's like by the time we've gotten to this point in the film. The people that are left have these kids that have been born or whatever. They don't have any of the language skills or societal information that we carry.
with us and so you have this kind of community of of kids that have just had to figure it literally figure out life survival in the worst possible conditions and the way they do it is is it's just it's just really sad to see like they they can barely speak they don't you know Ugh, you know, it's just it's awful. This movie, especially like the aftermath and the ending, reminds me of two other movies. One is called Aniara, and I talked about it on my mixtapes episode with Billy. That's from 2018.
And the other one is Darkness Tower from I think like last year, the year before, where they're stuck in a tower. And it just goes into that theme of like children that come out of. a disaster and are born during a disaster and how that affects them like their life is forever just like So the content and the tone of this is incredibly heavy. And I think it's significantly heavier than the films that we've touched on from the iceberg so far. And that's what makes it extreme.
but also there's a significant amount of visual horror on the screen. And the only other part that I wanted to touch on, which is something that you started talking about, Libby, which was how... The structures that society has put into place to sort of save itself also fall through. And another horrific scene visually is the hospital.
And this is about the midway point. We haven't gone to the flash forward yet. We're not 15 years later. We're just about to be 15 years later. And there's a hospital scene where people are just screaming like literally just like wailing and there's one doctor trying to save people and there's this really like abysmal text that floats across the screen
That there's like no hope. It basically tells you there's no hope for a doctor because he can't do anything. He can't give them clean bandages. He can't seal wounds. He can't give them medication. So they're all going to die anyway. And it pans out and you see this shot of these marble stairs and there's just blood like flowing down the stairs like in a weird dripping.
sensation and it is just so it's like nauseating to think about and as I watch this film i kept thinking oh this looks like analog horror and i realized like this is the generation of films that truly inspired what we see nowadays in analog horror this like camcorder shaky text like splashes of really graphic imagery mixed amongst like story so I don't know if you knew this, but when doing a little research for the film Thread...
I stumbled across some information that it's actually so maybe, you know, 15, 20 years earlier in the well, in the 60s, the BBC produced another kind of docudrama. type movie about nuclear fallout in, and that one's in black and white and it's called, I believe it's called the war game. And so that was new information to me. I didn't realize that they had sort of stuck their hand in this type of film before.
And that's just so wild. Oh yeah, it is wild. I wanted to just say that one they thought was too bleak and terrifying that it didn't, I don't think it got aired for like... either at all or maybe for a long while but it was it did get some critical acclaim eventually so yeah interesting And I think that's why Threads is also so interesting on this iceberg because it aired on public television.
yeah the british public television and apparently you could watch this children could watch this and it was like almost i don't want to be saying it was encouraged but this was supposed to be a psa they wanted people to watch this and know the risk of the nuclear fallout and i mean i guess it worked Kind of like Passion of the Christ. Yes, precisely. Maybe people should watch it. It's horrible and it is traumatizing, but...
I mean, I don't think there could ever be a stronger PSA for anti-war. Yeah, there you go. Hey! This film was just insanity. This was just so... I will never recover from this. I had nightmares for probably a solid three days. oh no i'm so sorry and i think that's kind of where We need to wrap it up for tonight and watch something happy. Talk about something happy or else we're never going to sleep again. Kittens and puppies. Let's say goodnight. Let's say goodnight, Lonely.
Thank you, Libby, for coming on the show and especially for depressing us so much with this disturbing part one of this episode series. And where can listeners find more of you and your work? Well, firstly, I really would sincerely like to apologize for any trauma that you faced while watching these movies. And I appreciate that you gave it the time that you did. There are very hard movies to watch and I tried to pick.
Movies that weren't or that had some class to them um and anyway okay that's an aside but my uh my socials are the the best way to find me there is on instagram i'm at libby roach underscore And you can find me there. I'd love to talk movies with anybody that wants to talk. and when i'm not here i will be crying in a corner and petting my dogs probably chewing on a xanax but you can also find me on filmstagram at projectile underscore underscore vermin
And you can find my horror reviews and rants for lonely souls over on Instagram at lonely horror club. I try to post reviews whenever I can and cause problems on filmstagram whenever possible. You can also find my writing on my website, lonely horror club.com. Thank you, dear internet, for tuning in to episode 53 of Nobodies. As always, sources, additional reading, and all that fun stuff will be in our show notes.
Let us know what depravities you would like us to watch on the next installment of this episode series. You can give us a call at 617-431-4322 and keep up with our antics on Instagram at Nobody's Horror Podcast.