Weirdhouse Cinema: Gate II

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. My regular co host Joe McCormick is on holiday leave this week, so for this episode, I'm joined once more by my friend and fellow podcaster, David Streepy, the co host of the podcast, talking tofu.

Hey, Hi, thanks Rob, Sorry I missed you again, Joe, and hello again to the stuffies. It's good to see you all, because I can't I can see you all.

So during October of last year, you came on the show to discuss the nineteen eighty seven kid centric horror film The Gate, and we were talking about, well, what films shall we do this time? And of course, right there staring back at us was the possibility of doing the nineteen ninety sequel, The Gate to aka Gate to the Trustpath also Gate two, Return of the Nightmare. I

Yeah, I think, you know, classifying The Gate one as kid centric is a really appropriate way to capture what makes it kind of I mean, let's let's be honest, it's it struggles as a movie, but it has some charm in that charm is largely in the kidness of it. I think Gate two does grow up a little bit because it is more about teenage fantasies. But yeah, I don't think I think Trespassers is maybe appropriate because I think that is kind of what and I'm doing a

Yeah, basically, we in this film, we're gonna follow Terry from the first film, and due to some situations we'll get into, he's decided, you know, I'm older, I'm wiser now, I'm probably as wise as I'm going to get, like peak wiseness. I think I can do this dark sorcery thing again and do it right this time and greatly benefit from the match.

Yeah, and it is a very teen hubris of I can do this. I've got this figured out, and yeah, we'll get into it, but the degree to which he technically seems to have it figured out is one thing, and the degree to which he knows what he's getting into is kind of a different matter altogether. I do want to say that Gate two, like just calling it Gate to not the Gate too or anything like that, really leans into the cultiness of it, which it kind of self proclaims. Gate want the Gate as a cult success.

Yeah, the kids just call it Gate. So to refresh, Gate one again was largely, I would say, largely good hearted supernatural tale with lots of monsters, lots of cool special effects about suburban kids and they're brushed with demons from beyond this magical gate that they open up through

Yeah, for sure, I think the movie knows what it likes, it knows what it enjoyed from the first iteration of this, and it's trying to extend those things. But there's not really another story here. It's just more some stuff that happens to some people, and there are some branches of that make more sense than others, but really it is just kind of what happened the next year, the next two years whatever to Terry and how did he kind of mine this darkness further?

You know.

So it's interesting if you're interested in that sort of thing. But I don't know that it has the arc that Gate One had.

Yeah, I had read. I don't know to what degree this was true or not, but supposedly at one point had a PG. Thirteen rating, and it was I think, on the shelf for a year or two before it finally came out in nineteen ninety. But I'm to understand they added some stoner humor in there, some stoner elements concerning some of the characters in order to make Get appeal more to horror fans, and in doing so, bumped it up to an R.

I wonder what part of the movie you're talking about, right, I can't even get there.

But uh, I have to say, for an R rated film from nineteen ninety, this is a I think that's a pretty soft R. Yeah, for the most part, there's As we were discussing off Mike, this film's a little grosser, yeah, the first one, and maybe leans a little less on the just you know, the special effects, but also has some fun special effects in it.

Yeah. I think this, you know. It stuck out to me that the special effects were more present throughout the film than Gate One, but there are fewer of them, I think, so it takes more smaller swings and nothing really matches the power of that big moment in Gate One, which is like legit impressive, I do want to say. And speaking of talking off Mike, we discussed how I'm in Orlando for the holidays, and I am. I grew

Though again, it's interesting this is the kind of film that parents might not have left their kid rent. But on the other hand, again pretty tame compared to many of the other things on the shelf during this time period.

Yeah, I think it levels up the insensitive language unfortunately, which Gate one was kind of problematic and did not age well in that regard. But yeah, I think there's grossness, but it's not even really gore grossness. It's just objective grossness.

So if I was to do an elevator picture this one, I would say it's I was a teenage sorcery. That's basically the idea. Terry from the first film is now an awkward teenager and he's going to solve all his problems with sorcery, and to a certain extent he does, as we'll discuss.

Yeah, it's hard for me, there's one thing that Terry wants to fix. But he does seem to be interested in a larger idea of sorcery than the movie really gives him credit for or bothers to explain, like there's no what then to what he unleashes, you know.

Yeah, and in a sense, I guess it kind of vibes with this idea of where he's supposed to be in his life.

You know.

I think one of the things that works well in the film is that they did seem to really care about trying to capture Terry as a teenager and put a lot of thought into like, you know, what is supposed to be going on in his head and in his worldview and and and I think there are aspects of that that you know, you can connect with watching the film.

Yeah, Terry definitely has a few different dimensions to him, arguably the only character that you could say that about in this movie. But they do try to do right by Terry's teen angst for lack of a better word, all.

Right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to the trailer.

Addie the first time was just a warning. Gate two. Problem with him that well, in the Gate problem was that we didn't do it right humanology. You've all against the interdimensional contact with beings. Just power can be used for anything you want anything.

It's like the circle, it's mark.

This time it's not coming through your backyard.

Oh my god, this time it.

Comes through you. Jake two, it turned to the Nightmare.

All right, sounds pretty fun. Right, Well, if you want to watch this film before proceeding with the rest of the episode, well, it's widely available for digital purchase or rental. Shout Factory put out a really nice blu ray of the film in twenty eighteen, and that's also widely available right now. I watched it on a TV in my living room. And did you watch it in a basement or just a childhood bedroom.

I was just in a childhood bedroom, and I was on an iPad, which, to be fair, would not have existed in nineteen ninety. But I got it through screen picks, I believe is where I was able to find it.

I believe that's where I got it as well. Yeah, all right, well, let's jump into just talk about some of the people involved here. A number of these are the very same individuals from the first film, which I think is one of the reasons everything lines up so

Yeah, it definitely feels like it's woven from the same thread as the original, and it's not just look and feel. It's the reverence for what's important in this movie world that extends into this one.

Yeah. So the director once again is t Boar Tacas born nineteen fifty four, Hungarian born director who kicked off his career with the nineteen seventy eight Canadian dystopian rock opera Meta Messiah. He followed that up with eighty seven's The Gate, which of course we previously discussed, and after this he did eighty nine's I Madman and The Gate two. He directed four episodes of the nineteen nineties Outer Limits series. I think, as we discussed last time, these are not

Yeah, I don't think so.

And his subsequent credits include a mix of TV episodes, eventually some Sci Fi original programming. He did two thousand and five's Mensquito. He did some Christmas movies, and he's still active making I think, you know, largely lower budget actually action film, but action films that also have recognizable names in them.

Yeah, I think mansqito, I'm mad man. These are great things to title your projects.

It makes you want it was mansqito, like the working title, and then they're like, no, it's too good. We got to keep it. That's the heart and soul of this picture. Or did Sci Fi come along and say, hmm, looks like you got a Mansqito on it. That's how we're pushing it out.

I like to think that the deadline for a better title or the final title came and went, and at some point he was just like, yeah, no, no, it's Mensqito.

All right. The writer, once again is Michael Mankin born nineteen fifty five. Accomplished TV director, writer, and producer. He also wrote nineteen eighty seven's Ruskies and episodes of such TV shows as Life Goes On Chicago Hope in the nineteen nineties Flipper series. As a director, he's done a great deal of TV work Life goes On Battlestar Galactic or reboot one episode of The Good Lord Bird. And he's still very active today as a producer, a writer and a director.

And he also wrote I'm Adman.

Oh that's right, yes, which I haven't seen, but I guess now I have to keep going at some point in order to get the full Teaboard Tacus filmography.

I just got that partnership. If it goes. If it's a partnership of three titles, two of which we have seen. We've got to see the third one. I'm not suggesting an episode. I'm not pitching that we do I'm Adman. Next, though, you are something of a completist this. We'll get into these franchise right, like once you start a film franchise, you cannot stop. Unfortunately that's true.

Yeah, all right, we'll come back to that in a second. But getting to the cast here, of course, we have Terry back again. The awkward nerdy kid from the first film. This time he prefers to go by Terrence. But he's still going to get called Terry a lot, and I'll probably keep calling him Terry.

Yeah, he's Terry in my heart. The movie, I couldn't tell who was trying so hard to push Terrence, whether he was insisting on it with others, or whether it was being used as a pejorative or what. But all my notes say Terry. He's Terry to me. He'll always be Terry to me. Sorry, Lewis, You're Terry.

Yeah, Lewis tripp Born's nineteen seventy three. I thought he was pitched perfect in the first film as the awkward, nerdy eighties kid best friend of Stephen Dwarf's character Glenn. Now he is in the lead, and I think he once again pulls out a very nice performance. I think it's a great continuation of the character. You know, just just totally selling this idea of this awkward dungeon master who gets way too much on supervised time in his parents' basement.

Yeah. I think Terry in the first one is total latchkey kid. Hard emphasis on the latch key part. He's by himself most of the time, or that's the vibe you get from seeing the state of his room, the state of his house, and how much he's hanging out with Glenn, and you see it he's kind of disheveled too. He's like a metal head kid who doesn't really know what that is and doesn't really know what a metal head aesthetic is, which is a really cool and authentic

Yeah. Yeah, he seems like a kid who does not have a group, you know, not one of the bad kids with the leather jackets who will play an important part in the film. There are no jocks in this film. It's just the bad kids are the only other faction he'll encounter.

Yeah, I could believe that John will get to him, but I could believe that John was a sports standout star as well as the greaser, as well as the bad kid, as well as the bad influence. Like I can imagine a small enough town to wear He's everything. But the film doesn't do any work on the jock angle.

Yeah. So, Lewis Tripp was a Canadian child actor who wasn't in a whole lot else aside from the Gate to Gate One, of course, some Canadian TV work. He did apparently make a brief return to acting in twenty twenty to play Terry one more time in a short film called Sacrifice. So, you know, I don't know anything about this production, but I'm guessing it was maybe sort of a fan you know, filmmaker passion project, sort of a thing.

In the Gate of Verse.

You think I think it is supposed to be the gate of Verse, if you will, but I don't think it's like official gatea Verse. It might be, you know, kind of like when you see on IMDb that there are various Star Wars movies that even have like second or third tier Star Wars actors in them, but they're clearly not official entries.

Right, But if you got Terry, that's that's like ninety five percent of the way to Cannon at that point. I think it'd be interesting to see what I'm sure that t Woars weighed in on this, So after this, I'm going to look up whether this is blessed by t Boar or not.

You mentioned how disheveled Terry is in the film, and I do think that his tennis shoes are key. He has these like enormous white tennis like sneakers. I'm not sure what brand they are, if they were, like if there's the Nikes, I didn't really notice, but I feel like I could smell them through the TV set, you know, like there's something just authentically awkward teenage boy of the nineties about those shoes.

Yeah, every just about everybody in this movie, I'll give I'll give some people a pass, but everybody in this movie looks like they smell.

Yeah, all right. The next actor of note here is Pamela Adlin. Credited on this film is Pamela Siegel. She plays Liz. Liz is the love interest. She's one of the bad kids, as we'll discuss, but she might just have a heart of gold. We're gonna find out. But Pamela Adlin here born nineteen sixty six, known to many of you American actress, writer, and director. Probably best known to a lot of you as the voice of Bobby on the long running animated series King.

Of the Hill.

That's right, and once you hear it, you can't unhear it.

Yeah. Now, she's also done a lot of acting out She's not just a voice actor. I feel like most of her filmography is voice at this point. But she also had notable appearances on I think fourteen episodes of Louis before heading up the series Better Things That that was quite good and very well received. That ran for

Yeah, I think you know, if you got King of the Hill, which over two hundred and fifty episodes right there, if you got fourteen episodes of Louis, you got five seasons of Better Things, that's a lot of Fox, rob that's a lot of Fox. Sign in your checks.

Yeah, she see the same year as this film, she appeared on an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. Other live action roles include Life Goes On, Sergeant Bilco, Lucky Louie, Californication series we already mentioned, of course, but her voice acting credits are just all over the place. I think her earliest voice acting credit is nineteen ninety two's fern Gully The Last Rainforest. I think she's in like an l for a fairy in that. But after that,

Now for the nineteen ninety three Day cartoon, are you talking about cartoon All Stars to the Rescue where it's the it's all of the characters from all of the Saturday morning shows getting together to keep kids off of drugs and like push joints away from kids' mouths and things.

I don't know, let's see, I mean that would I think maybe not, because I don't know that she had extensive cartoon credits at that point, gotcha, So it might have been just her doing like the voice of a kid who's saying no to drugs.

Well, next time I come back, if you will have me back after even introducing this cartoon, that's the one we're doing, is cartoon All Stars to the Rescue A right, technically a movie, guys technically a movie.

So naturally for her, this was pretty early in her career. I think she would have been something like in her early twenties when they filmed this. It's a perfectly fine performance, but like we've been saying, this is not a character that's really fleshed out all that much, and it's just really a hint at where she'd excel later in her career.

I think you both have an accurate read on the fineness of her performance. But let's take the larger picture into consideration here. I think we need to be clear about who's doing the work in this movie. And she is carrying every scene she's in, She's carrying on her back. Terry occasionally gets out to help push. But you notice every scene that either of them are not in, because it's almost like you're watching a different movie or a scene from a TV show adjacent to that movie.

Yeah, or scenes that were shot after the fact to bump up that r rating with some of stone or humor. Which brings us to the other members of the bad Boy click. Really the prime members of this clique. We have John. This is the lead bad Boy played by James Vilmari born nineteen sixty six, another Canadian actor of

It's about killer birds, right, it's not about killing birds, like the act of killing a bird.

I assume not. I haven't seen this one about. I assume it's a bird's knockoff, a kind of a pre bird demic, if you will. And of course, a lot of films were released as zombie movies Zombie one, Zombie two, Zombie threes on before, et cetera. They have nothing to do with each other, but they said they were released in Italy.

Wild He's great, though, he's he's He is what he needs to be, nothing more, nothing less. He sells what he is supposed to be. If you want more from him, you really want more from this movie. And that's not really his fault.

Yeah, he's just a slimy, punchable bad boy. We're not supposed to sympathize with him too much, but I mean enough bad stuff happens to him that you can't help but feel something for even this cardboard character.

At one point, yeah, there is a moment. We'll get into it when we get through the plot, but there is a moment where it took that to make me realize, like he's not unsalvageably hateable, or don't you don't hate him to the point that you don't sympathize with him, you know?

Right now he has a sidekick, and this is Mo, played by Simon Reynolds born nineteen sixty nine, Canadian actor whose credits include episodes of Friday the Thirteenth series Forever Night Again. A lot of these are the Canadian series of the day that a lot of people were involved in, but he also pops up in two thousand and seven Saw four as a SWAT team member. Dave, you're the Saw movie expert? Is this one of the good ones?

I just want to clarify that I'm the Saw movie expert in the pool of two of us, so I am, by no means a Saw Movie expert capital E. Saw four is, interestingly enough, a pretty big page turn for the series in terms of, like the scope widens a little bit, and I love hate Saw. I love Saw because I think people complain about Saw because it's it's got a lot of soap opera elements to it that

So he doesn't come. He's not a character who comes back and you're like, oh, he's Jigsaw's secret nephew.

No. Unfortunately, Now, okay, but you're very close. You're making fun, but you're very close to what things that actually happen in the sol franchise.

All right. We also have Terry's dad as a major character in the film. Again not terribly developed either, but a little more goes into the presentation of art Here played by Neil Monroe, who lived nineteen forty seven through two thousand and nine, another Canadian actor connected to a lot of Canadian productions for screening TV of the day,

I haven't seen this, and I kind of want to. It got me thinking about, like, is it Stephen king Cell or something like that, but it seems a little bit more analog than that for sure. And yeah, this poster is incredible, incredible.

I guess it's maybe it's going for like the killer is calling from inside the house sort of a.

Thing, right, Yeah, but then how can they murder you? As the thing like the whole when a stranger calls is like that's how you find out that the guy behind you is about to kill you.

Yeah, I mean the poster says, a madman pushes a button and kills by phone. So yeah, it's got to be some sort of a crazy technological angle here.

In nineteen eighty two. It's got to be either joy buzzer technology or a doctored phone that has something sharp in it that gets you through the ear when you pick it up. I can't imagine. I got to watch this just to answer the question.

Maybe it's like an alternate reality where one of the phone company actually put out like a kill button they and they're like, oh goodness, this was a mistake.

The test market self defense for this one like random chance that this specific thing might happen anyway.

In this film, Monroe gives I think a pretty pretty solid performance given what he has to work with is Terry's still grieving father who's struggling with depression, alcoholism, and unemployment. Yet you feel for him. It's it's not a performance that feels completely like bumbling. It's not going for comedy, it's going more for melodrama, and he does a good

You're really nice, Rob. I was gonna say that he gives He does both I love alcohol and I regret loving alcohol really well and doesn't really do anything else. There's ambiguity to his part in the plot that I think he's supposed to carry a little bit more of the lift of making us understand it. I think he's why it's so it was so darn ambiguous to me, because if he's not doing those two things, he's just saying lines and carrying the story to its next beat.

I guess one of the things too about his character, like his character is basically that the reason Terry is going to get back in the dark arts he wants to help his father. But in doing that, it's like the film is, on one hand, about how trying to use artificial means to affect change in your life or certainly someone else's life is not going to work. Like

Well, I'm glad you asked, because as the resident Saw expert, I need to speak to this one, and specifically it is one of the If there can be a better Saw movie, this is one of the better ones. Plot wise, I think it makes the most coherent sense as a standalone thing. To me, it's a takedown of the health insurance industry, and the Jigsaw's whole thing is about choosing life and the choices that you make and appreciating life

So.

Again, I'm not saying it's great, but this is one of those plots that rattled around my head more than the other confusing mess plots of the other Saw movies. This guy actually had a death. He was in a trap, and it is a pretty gruesome, memorable, tough trap to watch, more conceptually gruesome than it is just flat out gross, which I tend to lean in that direction more than just seeing the squirting and the blood and the guts

All right, And this guy had a pretty decent death in it.

Yeah. He was a janitor for the health company, which is or the health insurance company, which is why he was plucked to be one of the people in these traps.

But he's not a bad guy. He's just somebody whose life is used to try and teach the bad guy lesson.

Right he is without spoiling too much. He has difficulty breathing because he's a lifelong smoker, and he's put into a trap where if he breathes, he becomes constricted, and if he breathes too much, he'll get crushed with another guy. So it's kind of a race to see who can

Interesting. I had no idea about this this jury in the Saw franchise, so this was kind of like their message movie.

Yeah. The only downside is you got to watch five Sol movies to get there. Otherwise it makes zero sense. So you got about ten hours of work ahead of you if you want to understand this ninety minutes.

All right, One more actor of note here. It's Carl Cranes, who was in the first Gate movie played the workman oh bombie character.

Yeah, that's he's the guy. That's the guy, Like that's iconic.

Yeah. Yeah. In the Gate verse it is, Well, he's back in this one and playing a character that I don't want to reveal yet, but there's a certain monsterish monster character that he also plays. Now, this guy wasn't exclusively a monster suit actor, but in the Gate verse he's a monster suit guy, and he weirdly pops up in the nineteen eighty two horror drama The Slayer, which I don't know if you've seen this one, Dave, But this is the movie that was filmed on Tybee Island

That's awesome. Yeah. I hadn't seen this movie, but I do you know. I love Tybee Island and it is a setting that I think would lend really well to a unique beachish horror movie. I would definitely be interested to see that just for the scenery alone.

Yeah, haunting beach that that people go on vacation too.

I do think like these two roles that you've highlighted him in the Gata verse though he's the ringer's on a phone call away if you need me to be an effective actor at delivering a certain scene, and he does it twice in a row Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and then this layer They're like, oh, we got five minutes left in the film and we haven't showed the monster yet. Get him on the get him on the horn. We're bringing him in.

Turn him into a workman who turns into several little minions.

Yeah, direct flight LA to Tybee Island. All right, Randall. William Cook is back doing visual effects. Also second unit director. I'm gonna largely skip over him. We talked about him and at greater length in the first episode that we did on the Gate. And then the score is by a different gentleman. It's George Blondheim, who lived nineteen fifty

Okay, yeah, I got to be honest, I'm struggling to remember parts of the score for this movie. I felt like there was a lot of quiet going on. I think that, and that's not necessarily to specifically dig on this score being necessarily bad or anything, but I don't think it was particularly memorable to me. I think that there's a case to be made that it worked really well with the scenes that it was emphasizing in that I didn't pick apart the score to it. But again, maybe I'm just being charitable.

I mean, sometimes an effective score is kind of invisible. I think I mainly I was listening for it, and I wanted to see, what, you know, to make some note of it, and so a leary couple of times where it's turned up a bit during car chases and whatnot, and during those moments it was like, Okay, all right, there's some nice electronic vibe here, but yeah, there's no like theme from Gate To that everyone needs to go out and find on Spotify right now.

Well, and that's what I was about to get to, which I think like the Gate had, at least in my personal memory, like a pretty memorable Gate One, had a pretty memorable campaign behind it, and a pretty memorable theatrical run in that I remember it at all Gate two, I think open to I looked it up. It was like three hundred and fifty theaters when it came out,

So not knocking the music, but again it doesn't really perhaps stand out all that much. Yeah, all right, well, let's let's get into the plot a little bit. This film, I think rather effectively starts out with the condemned ruins of Glenn's old house, Glenn being the main character, the little kid from the first film, and also like his house was the focal point, that's where the gate was opened.

Yeah. I was excited and relieved to be like, all right, here we go. We're right back where we left off. A little bit of time has passed, and it'll be fun to see the ways in which the time has passed. The thing I gotta flag here is that the rest of the neighborhood looks fantastic. It's a really nice neighborhood. And then you get to the lines of the plot of Glenn's house. Yeah, and it's all chain link fins, all overgrown, tumbleweeds, all disheveled house. And this may be

Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe the idea And I'm being generous here because they don't explain any of this or even suggest it really, but maybe like the place is considered haunted now. Yeah, it's just it's abandoned. It reminds me a bit of how they end up treating

Now, or maybe there's a superstitious layer to it of if you want things to stay as nice as they are everywhere else, you will not touch the Demon House or disrupt the Demon House at all, which Terry is pretty eager to do.

Yeah, I mean, ownership of the house is probably all tied up because once you open a gate to another dimension, a whole new set of laws are involved, and like the bank can't just sell it off at that point.

Well, arguably it's kind of a squatter's right thing because the gate was there first. So the demons, the three demons which we'll get to later, argue that plot.

Still. I have say great initial central set piece for the film, like the literal ruins of a happier childhood, a testament to this lost friend is no longer a part of Terry's life. And of course this is where the gate opened, this is where the gate can still be opened, so we have the dark temptation of this place as well.

And there is a monologue of Terry I think, talking to his dad. It's revealed he's talking to his drunk, past out dad, but it's him kind of summarizing where we should be at this moment, and it stuck out to me that Terry referred to the events of the Gate one as quote, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

Oh yeah, like when the demon pretended to be your dead mother and scared the crap out of you and the little minions tried to murder you.

I woke up and I was dancing with a dead dog I maybe had killed.

I forgot about that part.

Very exciting. Yeah, see why it's eager to get back into it. But yeah, I think he says in that monologue the problem wasn't that they had opened the gate, it was that they hadn't done it correctly. And I think that that's not to get too far ahead of where you were headed, Rob, but that seems to be what Terry has poured himself into, is how to do it correctly.

Yeah, because yeah, if you if something wrecks your life or the lives of your friends the first time around, you just need to do it differently the second time. That's that's the lesson of this film, or that's what's that's Terry's approach anyway.

And his like, his approach is pretty involved this time around too, like not just tech wise, but like you you really think that he has spent every waking moment thinking about how to do this differently since however long ago Gate one was, which that's another ambiguity. Has it been five years, has it been one year and he just got much bigger? We just don't really know.

But clearly he's been doing nothing but reading Dungeons and Dragons manuals and Michael Crichton novels, because that's his approach. It's like the cong go approach to doing the magic circle. As we'll get too, but before that, like, yeah, he's talking to his dad, who you know, it was revealed, has passed out drunk on the couch. It's revealed not all as well in Terry's world. This was something I wasn't entirely sure about, Like he's concerned about his father.

Sounds like a huge flop. Boy. Yeah, so that again led me to believe, Okay, there that's still a fresh wound, not like something like that ever stops being a freshmoan, but it still is. Your head is still in the can I fix that mood? You know, although again getting ahead of ourselves, Terara never tries to do that. So you got a hand it to Terry, who at least is aware of some limits to what power he's tapping into.

Right, but still he's going to give it a try if he does it right this time at a peak of his powers, and maybe he can get his dad back on the right track, because as as they continue to lay out, his dad is unemployed, has has an alcohol problem, and is still wrecked with grief. Yeah.

Yeah, he plays sleeping very well. That's great. He wakes up a little bit. This is actually a pretty sweet moment. He Terry kisses him on the forehead as he's leaving to go do his dark ritual and he wakes up and kind of does that like you know, you're waking up and trying to click into the world around you. He played that really well and it was very sweet. You know. You hear this a lot about children of alcoholics, that they are the parent to their parent, and you

Yeah, yeah, it does work. Again, this is a film that does try to get into some serious issues and use them in the development of character and rolling out the plot and all. But you know, generally horror movie are not where you look to find thoughtful and sympathetic treatments of things like alcoholism and other topics this will discuss. Yeah, all right, but it's time for some black magic. Like

He's got himself marked up with a bunch of symbols all over his arms. In his hands, he's got this huge book that he's referencing, which I like. Is that so in Gate one he's listening to a metal album and the lyrics of the metal album are the lyrics of the Dark Book, and that's what they're using to summ in or do whatever they need to do with the Gate. I don't think that they ever had the Dark Book in Gate one, did they?

I thought that the Gate Book was like it was just referenced in the lyrics and maybe in the liner notes of the album. Yeah, like the album was their entry way into the darkness. You know, I had that nice kind of like metal sploitation element to the whole picture, and that's largely not here. I guess after the events of the first film, he was able to get a copy of.

The book, and it's like it's like three feet tall, this book, and it seems like there is no binding to it because he keeps flipping like full pages of it from top to bottom. So he's got that, He's got the symbols that he's written all over his hands and arms. He's got a cape because he need a cape, and he grabs a hamster too on his way out.

Yep, yep, grabs that hamster. Oh, he just sets up this wonderful magic circle inside of Glenn's old house. You got crimson candles, yeah, the unholy symbols. But then he's also brought some computer equipment with him, sets up a kind of like holographic Michael Crichton circle of protection and you know gets so it's got like a high tech approach to sorcery. Before he calls on the sentinels, he calls on the minions from the first film to come forth.

Yeah, yeah, And he kept calling it a circle. It was a pentagon. And I only remember that because I was like, oh, this is so that it's technically easier for them to make a laser pentagram and not have to, you know, reconcile a circle with the points from a set design perspective. It never happened. There was never a pentagram, so that theory just went right out the window.

So he's not far into this, this whole ritual here before the bad kids show up. It's John, it's his girlfriend Liz, and it's the sidekick Mo, And you know, at first, it seems like this is going to be kind of like a jockson Nerd situation, right, They're just gonna immediately make fun of this kid, wreck his equipment, mess up whatever spell's about to be cast. But what happens is kind of fun because Terry tells them that they're like, what is this Satanism? And he's like, no,

Yeah. His it's not Satanism, it's demonology, had big. It's not a comic book. It's a graphic novel energy to me, but delivered with the confidence that I wish I had as a teenager of No, this is cool and I love this and it's cool. Obviously Terry's more driven than just I love this, but yeah, instantly, a D twenty roll is a great way to put it. They two out of the three of them flip and are into it as well.

Yeah, and this is one of the moments of several moments in the film that it does feel like Ninety's Keen Nerd power Trip, where it's like the idea that you would have this confidence and win people over because you are essentially this capable sorcerer, right exactly. I was not a capable sorcerer in my teens, but I understand the desire to have been.

I do wanna And the movie doesn't do a great job of this. But just a few seconds before this, as he's setting up the altar, he takes an audio cable and we know it's an audio cable because it's giving audio pickup sounds whenever he moves it around and plugs the cable into the hamster.

Oh yeah, what was going on there?

And then the speakers start to hum. So I don't know where he plugged it in. I don't know how the hamster just allowed that to happen. But it was just one of several preparation quote unquote scenes that he was doing, and that one just stuck out to me as really really bizarre.

Yeah, I saw that now that you mentioned. I remember the wire going up to the hamster, but it's just kind of like just touches the hamster and we get the sound effect and it's like, I guess it's working. Whatever's happening. Yeah, all right, So anyway, now we have four people present for the unholy ceremony. Uh yeah, they go through the whole rigamarole. There's this bit where they're they're making little sacrifices, burning sacrifices for the ritual, and

Yeah, I don't remember that either. And it the transition from setting up your ritual to getting busted by these kids to getting these kids on your side to them actually performing the ritual. Like I want to say, they just rushed through it. I don't think that we saw what mowen List put in, but maybe there was a quick shot that I missed.

Yeah, they should have emphasized it more since they are going to refer back to it later. Yeah, I remember what what happened. But we get to the point where, okay, obviously somebody's got to cut the head off of that hamster. Care gets that as cool dagger to do it. But and this is, you know, perfectly believable in a nice character moment, he can't quite do it because as much as Terry wants to be this uh, this you know,

Yeah, and Moe again, Moe and John are kind of like the good cop, bad cop of the bad Cops. You know, Moe's the good bad cop. H He has a line here that again went to bed thinking about this line. As he kills the hamster, most says hamster sushi anybody, which just because it's dead doesn't mean that it's sushi. Like that's such a leap, and that's the

Yeah, I mean it was a time period though when there I feel like there were a lot of sushi jokes. Like sushi was weirdly new enough of a concept that it was like regular fodder for like late night you know TV monologues where you make a joke about about raw sushi.

Yeah, I think like it was a euphemism for chopping for something that is chopped up was sushi. So maybe that, yeah, maybe that was it. I can sleep well tonight, thank you, Rob.

So we get a scene where the yeah, the magic begins to take hold, like the walls are bleeding. You expect that some sort of like black blood of the earth is flowing around on the on the floor but can't pass through the magic circle or the magic laser pentagram here. And then then everyone is like momentarily transported sort of phantasm style to some sort of like green otherworldly desert, and then they're back in this world and ope, finally one of the minions from the first film shows up.

A couple of things like one the flashing to the other world again. We're like ten minutes into this movie and we're already seeing the other side. Like, I'm pretty excited at this point. I'm like this, we're getting ready to deliver. Then we see a minion again ten minutes in. We had to wait so long to see the first minion. Last time, I will take a movie that gives me one minion for ninety percent of it, then one that gives me one hundred minions in the last ten percent of it.

Every time Yeah, and this minion is going to be with us for a while. It gets up to some cool antics. Yeah, it's pretty fun.

He rules, his animation is fantastic. Yeah, this is this is the one hundred little small swings that I'm talking about. You believe that that minion is there, and you believe what's about to happen to that minion actually happen weapons, Yeah, because.

What happens is John gets freaked out, pulls out a pistol against firing it, and kills the minion. Shoots the minion through the heart. Minion's dead. He roughs up Terry a little bit, pulls his crew out, despite the fact, again the whole thing is, as we've established, the crew here has teleported to another realm and come back and then seen a magical creature. But they everyone proceeds as if there wasn't such vital proof presented to them of the supernatural reality.

Yeah. John treats it like you put us in danger and I saved us. And that's not untrue, but it's such like the I saved us part is so presumptuous that you know the situation well enough to know that you did that. I think legit Okay to be angry at Terry for transporting you all to a demonic realm and putting you in the same room as a dem minion. But I think that's the point at which you need to pump your brakes on what you know about the universe. Yeah,

Yeah, he's had a peek at a at a wider reality and just immediately turns his back up. Yeah, so what's Terry left to do? He lovingly wraps the dead minion up in his cape and and like the next shot is like we see to just preserved in a jar of I don't know, vinegar.

I guess I just assumed it was from aldehyde. Vinegar makes a lot more sense. It is opaque. So there's something again. Maybe he was ready for something like this to happen and had a tank of preservative at the ready.

Well, you know, Stephen King in a book would have had a lot more. He would have just like, oh, well, Terry stole it from the chemistry lab at his high school and brought it back. We don't know, we don't have room for that kind of description here. So yeah, maybe he got some some from Autohyder. Maybe it is just.

Vinegar Stephen King. It would have been two chapters and a flashback.

Yeah. Now the next morning, it seems like Terry's dad is back on track, right or is he? He seems like he's off to get his airline job back, seems pretty confident about it. Terry seems a little bit worried, and I think we as viewers of the film are also supposed to be a little worried about Terry's dad. Here.

Yeah, he's again. It's abrupt. There's not a lot of explanation there. I think it's supposed to be intentionally vague. But all he is saying is that he's got an interview at his old job. They want him back. And he looks at his pilot's outfit that he's not wearing, finishes up his suit, then gets in the car and then you get a scene where Terry's looking out the window or no, you get a scene of him in the driver's seat of the car. You see him taking a nip from a flask inside the car. Yeah, so

Yeah. So at school, Terry's distracted winds up in detention. But in detention he ends up bonding with Liz because Liz is there for some reason. She's up to no good. She's having trouble concentrated. I don't know. We don't know the full background. It's not revealed to us. But Liz does reveal what wish she made when they were putting together their ceremony, and it is to meet her true love.

It's such a Disney wish. Yes, and maybe that's why there was nothing to put on the altar. Again. We'll get Moe's later too, and that's another one that is like what would manifest for you to put on an altar?

Yeah. So meanwhile, John and Mo are not in school. Moe has apparently has a factory job at this big, scary factory. There will be a set piece later on in the film. Yeah, and John is apparently there just to hang out, to force him to smoke weed and to encourage him to quote be a man and quit his job.

He also wants some most pills, and Mo makes a point to be like, these are heart pills. They don't do anything to us. John is essentially just like, shut up and give me one anyway. So John loves.

For his heart yeah, kind of makes fun of him for his heart condition too.

Yeah. And that's where Moe reveals that he wished for aliens.

Yep, he wants to meet aliens. And then kind of like as an afterthought, is like, oh yeah, and then maybe they could fix my heart condition.

Maybe don't wish to have your heart condition fixed, which is something you could put your pill on the ritual altar for, but wish for aliens. Oh yeah, and also maybe they could fix my heart Yeah.

But it's kind of a pure wish, Like it shows like most most not really that bad a guy. He's just easily led. John, however, reveals his wishes. He wants to be king of the world. He just wants straight up power, with no details about how to get from point A to point B except through like supernatural wishes.

Well, just the John and Liz really deserve each other when you boil down the broad strokes of their worldviews that these are the things they are wishing for.

Yeah, it's not surprising they've wound up together. Now. Meanwhile, back in the basement, the minion in the jar is healing like the bullet has been like pooped out of the wound. The wound is closing up, and Terry's Terry notes this, it's exciting. And then meanwhile Terry's dad is celebrating because he's he's he's not a pilot again, but

Yeah, and the dad is wasted at this point. He's doing the comical slurring alcoholism is not funny, but the way that he is playing it is very vaudevillian. Yeah, the way that he's it's very exaggerated.

Now, the next thing that happens, of course, is the minion comes to breaks out of his prison and we get more shots of the basement there. I know, as there's a like a Motley Crue banner.

That he's a fully displayed huge banner.

Yeah, I feel like some of the other posters rock posters has a kind of obscured now, but Motley Cruz front and center. I don't know what we're supposed to do with that in terms of figuring out Terry's care.

Yeah, and it's good to take a pause and acknowledge that the walls are clean and readable. It's not posters on top of posters on top of posters like it was when he was a child. His decorating game has leveled up a little bit, but maybe not to a presentable level. There's also exposed scaffolding in his room for some reason, which was not there before. Again, this looks like a pretty finished house, so maybe he's moved into the basement and the basement was always unfinished or something

Yeah, I mean, now that you mention it, it's a fairly sizable looking house. How can it possibly just have a master bedroom? Right? Like, there's got to be at least two bedrooms up there. Why isn't he in one of them? I guess maybe he just wanted to live in the basement because it's cool.

And yeah, that's a very teen thing, you know.

Yeah, all right, so the minions escaped and we do get some pretty fun minion antics at this point, the minion running around and Terry having to fight the minion dressing up in hockey gear. He gets very grimliny here for a minute. Yeah.

The minion gets some scissors, like the legit scissors with the black handles the scissors, so he's got a weapon. He's coming at Terry. Terry's dressed in hockey pads. He eventually gets the wastebasket and puts the waste basket over the minion, trapping him, and then this seems unnecessary, starts hitting the side of the wastebasket to make the loud clanging noise, which disorients him. Then he pulls the waste basket off, which is like, why just put something underneath

And then it's into the hamster cage.

Yeah is it? No, it's a bird cage.

I think, oh, that's right, right, but what the hamster was in earlier, rightly, it is clearly a bird cage.

Yeah. The reason I thought about the bird cage was because there is a very sweet scene later on of him swinging on the swing, yes, like a little boy.

Yeah, with his legs crossed. That's that's great stuff again. All the stuff with the Minion is tremendous. Yeah. Now the next morning, Terry's dad is throwing out all his booze, filling up really to a comic degree. He's filling up an entire garbage can with liver bottles and reveals that not only does he have his job back, apparently he is flying again and he's going to do quote the London Run. Yeah.

I couldn't tell if he was doing the I'm done with drinking throwing out of bottles, or if it was meant to be this is how much I drank last night throwing out of bottles, Because it really is just it never ends, like it goes on for forty seconds just about of clang, clank clank. The Manion hates it. This is when he's on the swing, he's swinging and like screaming at all the noise that's going on. And then yeah, the London route. That his first day back in the plane, he's doing the London route.

Yeah, it seems like a bad idea. But also it's just very confusing because like what changed overnight that he's not in baggage, he's actually flying a plane and I don't know, And is this the dark magic? Again? We have this whole idea that magic keeps changing Terry's reality and therefore it does take some of the agency out of the surrounding characters.

Yeah, I think that this has to be the magic at work. I don't think that him getting the call and getting the baggage expedite her job because that was just the night before. Yeah, so reality has changed overnight.

Yeah, it would seem yeah, or something's missing, there's there's a scene missing here. That's always the conundrum. But anyway, the scene we cut to with the minions swinging on the bird swing is absolute gold. Terry takes photos of it. Liz just appears as she does because she later described she doesn't like to have to wait for someone to invite her in, like it's a power thing. It's like, no, no, I just walk into people's thousands.

Okay, there's probably an articulate statement to be made about these teens hunger for power, and these teens the way that the little micro choices that they find to exercise that power, where you have some going to a cosmic level to tap into demonic entities to gain power, which again Terry speaks specifically to that that he wants that

Yeah, So Terry explains the lo Is how all this works. He's like, Okay, don't this minion is cute, but don't be too impressed. He's just he's a mere roadie. The true rock stars here are the unholy Trinity of demon lords, the ones that are on the other side of the gate, and they're so angry at being locked out that they generate immense energy that can then be manipulated in the form of unholy rites and manifested as wishes nothing a capable teenage sorcerer can't handle.

Yeah, and they're named the three demons Israel, Shagor, and Zyklon. Oh nice. So those are the three that apparently were like the John and Mo of the cosmos, where they were just going around messing stuff up, and finally somebody got it enough together to trap them away from everything else somehow, like all dimensions, and that is what the Gate is a portal too, all.

Right, So yeah, we get we get some some explanation of how this demon worship works, and then it gets super heavy as we immediately translate into Terry discussing his dad's depression after his mom died, and he describes like catching him with a gun in his mouth. Yeah, so uh, real, real heavy, all out of all out of nowhere here again. Horror films are generally not a great place to look for compassionate treatments of things like alcoholism, mental health issues, suicide.

Yeah, I think that it tries to get at something that if you're gonna do it, shoot it and make a scene with it, and find a way to have that work within the larger story that you're trying to tell. I think adding it as a one line description of what your dad was going through a while back doesn't

Luckily, Liz has a solution. She's like, well, let's just use the dark magic to wish for more stuff. She says, we can just wish for a cherry red corvette, and Terry says, well, you can't do that, it's not that simple. And then she immediately like burns just a random like piece of a Chinese takeout box in front of the demon and wishes that the rain stop, and it does, and then Terry's like, okay, I guess it is that simple.

Could you imagine if because the thing that's always stuck with me about Gate one and Gate two, always over the past day, is that there is a wishfulfillment thing happening in Gate one, but it feels so unformed, and it feels like the wishes that the kids are having are so generalized and broad and that they could not put specific words to the things that they are wishing for. But that's where you get Terry in a dream with his mother where he ends up waking up and realizes

Yeah, yeah, it basically it just goes all wish master, honestly, and so, yeah, they get their corvette. They're going on an epic shopping trip, just filling this corvette up with stuff, tearing all over town. We get a scene where there's a there's like a brief discussion of sexuality in Terry's virginity, which I don't know, was kind of a nice moment. It's kind of it's kind of tastefully managed. It's not played for laughs.

I think that what the film gets right about Liz and Terry, and I wish that they had kind of kept this intact throughout the movie was there's a sweetness there. There's a friendship there, and there's an attempt to understand each other happening, and it doesn't really seem romantically driven.

Yeah yeah, so yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point. Now, at this point in the picture, it seems like they're flying to France. We cut to them on this really colorful air aircraft here and colorful interiors.

And a black leather jacket. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I gotta point out this wardrobe choice here in a black leather jacket and white scarves.

Yes, yeah, which should this should have been our first morning that this is, of course the dream sequence. It becomes all the more obvious as Terry walks up to the front of the aircraft, and despite the flight attendant telling me, you know, you can't go in there, he goes into the cockpit, and of course what does he find. Here's Terry's dad, just comically bobvillianly drunk and piloting the

Yeah, it was. I mean, if he was playing it up before, if he was at a ten before, it's at a fifty now, if you expect ragtime music to be playing in the background the way that he's just just exaggeratedly drunk, and then he grabs the this is my ignorance of airplane equipment. He grabs the yoke in the middle and pushes it all the way up, which

Yeah, so Terry wakes up, Liz calls, and you know, we get it was just a nightmare situation. But then we get one of the big reveals. The most memorable thing about this movie from when I watched it at least part of it back in maybe the late nineties, is that we realize that, okay, demon wishes that have been granted, they have a half life. They turn to little literal excrement. The next day, they turned to poop, that is that takes up the same space as whatever

Why are they wrapped? Why did they get gifts wrapped?

I don't know, Like, yeah, you'd think they they're just spending like crazy. They're just like gift wrap at all. We want the added joy of unwrapping it later.

But yeah, then it's all like half gift, red box, half pile of poop.

Yeah, and then a look, Gansa is out the window, and this is the part I really love. There's a corvette sized pile of poop just parked in front of the house, which I thought was I think a highly memorable site. Gag. And the poop is just gross looking, and.

Little parts of corvette sticking out of it too, like it hasn't fully turned into poop yet, like it's a gradual process and we will see you later on that it is a gradual process. But there's like the fender of the corvette is still sticking out of the pile of poop.

Maybe those were add ons and therefore, like the rustproofing doesn't turn the poop all right. So we get to enjoy this comedic moment for a little bit. But then the doorbell rings and uh oh, it's people from the airline. Terry's dad is well, fortunately just in the hospital, but for a second theary it seems like he might have died. No, he's in the hospital, another example of the wish having a half life, because there was some sort of a cargo plane misapp Luckily he was not flying past human

Well, and so I have two questions. One was it a cargo plane on the London route? And two, so Terry's visiting him, and as Terry's leaving, we see one of the repersentives from the airline on the phone with somebody talking about how the father should had no business being in that plane. And so again I'm trying to operationalize all of this in my head and figure out did the dad go rogue? Was the dad convinced by the dark powers that he had been given a job

I'm assuming the paperwork just turned to pooh, because we don't have anything else to go on. There's it would also I would have also gone for a scene where we see the minion at a desk like making phone calls, and you know, making connections to get this to happen. Just full Grimlins too at that point, yea, yeah, that would have been another interesting direction, and Forrigate to have gone full Grimlins too. It holds back.

From that, and the representative also says on the phone call, he never got off the ground. Yeah, So where did the accident happen?

Somewhere between here and London. Maybe it was London, Ontario. We didn't think about that.

But if he was in the airport the whole time, did he just run into something at the airport?

I don't know. They don't They just don't give us the details to go on.

T boar.

You got to get at us and let us know what specifically happened to the dad. We just know that he's out of commission, way out of commission.

Meanwhile, John and Moe they'd seen they'd seen the corvette the night before, so they know something's up. So they confront Liz and she ins this note Terry's just a friend. But of course John is not going to be happy with that. He ends up going over to Terry's house, roughing him up in the face. Yeah, and they say, well, we're going to take the little dude for a ride, reveal that they have already broken into the house, trash the place, and they've stolen the Minion.

And put him in a drawstring bag, which seems not enough.

Yeah, yeah, because it's not a magic bag. It's just a sack. There is stuff ym in a sack. They're going there, tearing around town in their car. Now they have the Minion in the back seat. And then I guess this is one of our stoner moments that was perhaps added after the fact. They're shotgunning the Minion. So Moe's in the back seat smoking the reefer and then blowing the dope smoke into the bag, and I guess

Well, I think that what you're saying. And this is the scene I thought about earlier when you said that they added some more drug humor into this or some more drug elements into this. You never see the Minion in this scene. You see they blow it into the bag, the bag starts to shake and refer you hear the Minion's voice, but you don't see him, And you would think that a scene like this has the obvious visual payoff of the minion being high, that you would get

Tacked on.

But what wasn't tacked on was the scene where the minion eventually does get out of the bag.

Yeah, jumps out of the bag and just starts clawing them up, just clawn them in the face, biting their faces. They almost run head on into a tractor trailer rig they barely avoid death, and then John beats the minion down, Moe uses a fire extinguisher on it for some reason, they tie it up, and then now they've decided they're going to actually get something out of this, they start burning money and front all the minion and wish for more money.

Which how did they know how to do that?

Yeah, or wouldn't they remember some of this from the beginning, because again they had this huge peak into the unseen world, and then they just kind of forgot about it and until they roughed up Terry and took his minion, and then they're like, oh, yeah, we can do black magic now, so let's do it.

I guess they didn't need to go around that corner that Liz and Terry went around to say, Well, if we just burn the thing something resembling what we want in front of him, it will give us that wish. Again, don't know how the piece of the Chinese food box makes the rain stop. Don't know if they explained to that, but everything else seems to be pretty one to one

I use his hand on the brake. And also it's pretty pretty complex action scene.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty effective horror. So I gotta get flowers where they're.

Do So at this point, the plot is going to continue on two rails that will eventually come back together. On one hand, we've got Terry's dad in the hospital Terry visits, and we also have Liz to show up on and out behind him like a vampire. And then meanwhile John and Moe they might not have really known how black magic works, but the minion is like, I

Yeah, yeah, this is the best the movie gets as far as I'm concerned. This basically everything from the Wishfulfillment on is as good as the movie gets because it's fun, the action is moving, and then here you get this. These guys could not be more fish out of water, but they have all the cards because they have the money, and this place has completely folded to them to give them whatever they want because they are just They're just

That's right. The staff sees that Moe has just a fat roll of bills here, so they're not worried. John is beginning to experience body horror symptoms. However, it's a little vague about why these are, why of this is happening to him. I get it's like maybe they're scratches from the minion. That would seem the most logical connection

Yeah, and you get this look on the server's face. So Moe takes the wad out from his pocket and he's feeling pretty smoke about it. We the viewer see that it's a wad of cash, but the server has a strange look on his face. Oh, and I think that he sees it already as poop. So oh, that's the server has seen Mo pull a handful of poop out of his pocket, thumb through and start to slap it down. Both roads converge at the point that he slapped it down on the on the table and sees that it's poop.

Wait wait, wait, Does that mean that the previous night the corvette was already poop and they were there at least some period of time where the corvette was poop.

I sure hope not, but it's entirely possible because the note that I had at this scene was, these other people in the restaurant don't smell that this guy has a pocket full of poop, Like it does not seem to have an odor to it, So it seems like it can exist and be unrecognizable until the moment you either touch it or put eyes on it. I think in Liz and Terry's case, they went to bed and

Yeah, and for maximum cinematic zeal too, I mean, just did a maximum cinematic effect here.

Yeah, the level of freak outness that the rich people in this restaurant get from this point through the end of the scene is chef's kiss.

Yeah, Because meanwhile John is having a terrible time in the bathroom, experiencing again all these body heart symptoms like crazy z it's popping. There's a gross, gross, like monster zip popping scene on the mirror. And then he goes into the stall and is screaming, and the server who comes in or one of the employees at the restaurant is like, Suria, okay, and he screams, and he's like, well, I better better pass this up to management. I'm not

Yeah yeah, bust out of the door, bust through the wall of the bathroom into the dining room, runs through it, knocking tables and stuff out of the way, jumps out the window seemingly, So you get this vibe that he's like Tasmanian devil level uncontrollable. Then the very next like seconds later, you see the car pull into the scene, so it's like, okay, So this guy then like reached in his pocket, got his keys, got in the driver's seat, started the car up, did a three point turn and

All right, So at this point things are going to begin to come back together. So we uh, you know, we hear more from Terry and Liz on their side of things, like Terry has decided we had to do something about these deams that that again he resummoned at the beginning of the picture, I've.

Decided to do something about the demon.

Yes, and so I guess there's some research. We didn't get to see the research happen, but he knows that there's basically the scheme that needs to be employed involving a vessel of the dead, where a certain box is going to be prepared and you're gonna, you know, there's gonna be a number of items you have to put in the box, and this is going to allow you

Yep, that's right, that's right. It felt a little bit dis x machina at this point, but again, it's not a Hey, we don't know if it's going to work or not, but we know that it's it's it's a step towards a more formal resolution, which is in line with what Terry was trying to do in the first place.

Yeah. Meanwhile, Mo shows back up. He's frantic. He's in a bad place. He's like, something's happened to John. Come with me. He's in the depth of the factory. So I guess that's where he took him. You know, it's like nobody's there at night.

I don't have an steel doors steal doors of course, that's yeah, Moe says it. He's like, he, well, all right, let's be half charitable. Mo says steel doors several times. And it took me realizing, Oh so that John can't break out of them.

But yeah, so that's where they're headed. They're like, Okay, we've got to go see what's up with John. He's a character we clearly care about. We don't want him to be a gross monster, and so yeah, they they spend an enormous amount of time wandering in this factory looking for John. It felt felt like to me they pad this out a little bit.

It's a big factory.

It is a big factory, and he's just in there somewhere, and we see that he has fully mutated into a hulking stop motion demon. Very ray Harry Howsen. Yeah, nice effect, very similar to what we saw in the first movie.

There's a moment here where they are looking through this endless factory and Liz is about to climb a ladder and you see a demonic hand reach out from the darkness to the other side of that ladder, and that's where you hear John speaking to Liz and credit where credits too. He pulls off this kind of fearful I'm a teenager, but really I'm still a kid voice of

But then it seems like something's happening to Moe's body as well. He's experiencing symptoms, but as he's climbing the ladder, his heart gives out or seems to give out, and he seems to fall to his death. Then John, in full demon mode, leaps down and carries his body away. He seems like he can no longer speak, but his shrieks and howls like a monster.

Now, yeah, he accelerated quickly with Mo. It is Chekhov's Heart where the heart finally gives at the worst possible moment. It feels like Moe is now firmly aligned with Liz and Terry because he has seen what happens if you're not. Yeah, he's solutions oriented at this point, but yeah, the heart gives. He dies and unfortunately gets swept up into whatever John's mixed up in.

Now at this point, Terry realizes, uh, oh, the demon lords are not coming through a physical gait. They're coming through each of us, or at least through the three male characters here anyway, And so he's like, well, we gotta, we gotta again. I gotta stop this now. And at this point I did get a chuck out of the fact that he calls upon the noble gods of Light to empower the magic vessel to stop everything. Like suddenly, now he's like, oh, non demons out there in the

Yeah, I got a real mom. Yeah I'm from this.

Yeah, isn't it always the case? But the gods of noble gods of light, and they're like, okay, we'll empower your magic music box, and they do it. It glows, it smokes it, there's some some fun light effects, and they take this thing to Glenn's old house, the site of the original gate opening and the site of their previous summoning earlier in the picture. We get another minion attack, we get the scene where Moe is suddenly back and

Yeah, yeah, he's pretty. He's pretty smug too, And I gotta say I got a real Buffy the Vampire Slayer Angel vibe from this scene where maybe it starts with the smugness, but the creature designed as well of the articulate demons, they're a different special effect than the stop motion demons. Like if they've got to speak and you've got to be convinced that they are saying actual words, that's where it becomes a costume. And that costume work

Yeah, And the actor playing Mo it seems like he gets to to do his own acting in the suit, so yeah, it seems like he has a lot of fun with it. So yeah, we get the demon body revealed. John grabs Liz Terry falls through a grave through the gate into like the green other world, the desert world

It does seem unnecessary that Terry has to be the one to sacrifice. It would be so much easier, and it seems like it's within the rules for any of the demons to sacrifice her. It seems more cruel to say, well, you're the one with the heart, we need you to do this to demonstrate that you're on our side, which is a very human layer to put onto this what I would presume to be an uncaring, unfeeling cosmic demon arrangement.

You know, well, I think it's the screw tape principle, you know, like the demon has to ask themselves, Okay, I've only got to do this one thing to conquer the Earth realm. But have I tempted the protagonist enough?

Right?

And inevitably the answer is no, I have not got to do a little more of that before checking the box right now. During all this, we get this scene where Terry transforms and his monster suit is even more grotesque, to the point where it's a different actor in the costume. We alluded to this earlier talking about the monster suit actor. And he's ready to do it. He gets the knife.

I kind of like this in a Gallimsque sense, where all of the pieces that have been arranged are doing their I won't want to say predictable parts, but they're playing the one role that they're there to play. Yeah, and you see that this was the reason for the minion from a plot perspective, to be this thing that snaps Terry out of his trance. I do want to say that Terry's transformation is the most impressive of the three to me, because we it's the one that we

It's like a buff Nonsfaratu, a really hulking Nosferatu character, also very buffy, very shades of the Master.

I would say, yeah, yeah, and you know, a partial hair loss and a scraggliness of hair that is really visually kind of grotesque and unkempt, but also a spoiler alert when when he's not a demon anymore, all that hair coming back is kind of alarming as well.

The Gods of Light they bring everything back, so we get the predictable thing at this point, you know, the empower the vessel again. They throw it into the pit slash gate. There's light screaming, and then the demon lords are defeated. Liz is back in the house, Glenn's old house, seemingly alone, but no, she finds Terry's body and he does not seem to have survived.

That's right, that's right, all right, p Terry, It's not clear. It's I had to wait until the next scene until I was sure that he was actually dead and not just unconscious or passed.

Out, because we cut to the cemetery. It's a funeral. Oh, and there we see there's Terry's dad, he's attending, and there's Liz. This is Terry's funeral.

Yeah, Terry, Terry's dad and Liz, who do not know each other, I have never met each other. Liz has seen him, but he has not seen her, and her early vision of him, or view of him, has been in a hospital bed with an unintelligible face because it's all covered up in bandages. They're sitting next to each other at the funeral. Terry's dad has a crutch, so he's field almost completely, just one crutch.

That's another gift from the gods of light, I guess. But I really thought, Oh, I guess this is our ending. They're going to give us a real downer and Terry's dead. I was just I was already writing it up in my head. I was like, all right, fun film but unnecessarily bleak ending. Yeah, But then what happens. Terry busts out of the casket. He scares everyone away. Everyone runs off comically into the woods. Everyone except Liz and Dad.

And Terry comes out of the casket wearing the black leather jacket and the white scarf from the plane dream. Oh man hugs Liz, who is also wearing the black leather jacket from the plane dream. So it wasn't a dream. They got these clothes from where?

Oh? Or we're still in a dream.

That's what I thought it was, because, yeah, I thought that the movie was going to be that elegant.

Oh yeah, they're gonna have like a Freddy Krueger moment.

Yeah, but no.

Instead, Yeah, Terry is like, this is awesome. This is exactly everything I want as a teenage warlock, is to emerge from my own funeral and scare the heck out of everybody. He and Liz kiss again. I you know, especially from a modern standpoint, I feel like it would have been cooler if if they'd just been bff's. But you know, what can you do? So they walk off, the three of them. Everything's everything's fixed, everything's thing's light

Yeah, which I was legit delighted at this point, like this movie was so silly, and of course it needed to have a silly ending. It didn't need to take itself too seriously. Where this movie fails is when it takes itself too seriously, and I feel like it needs to do it to explain some of the more cosmic aspects of what's going on. It still doesn't explain them, but it needs to take itself seriously to kind of

Yeah, John says demons. Man, who needs chicks when you've got demons? I'm not sure what that means.

Well, calls back to an earlier line where when Liz tells John that Terry is just a friend, she leaves and John turns to Moe and says, who needs demons when you got chicks?

Ah sop and verse of that. Yeah, it's the last line in the film. We rolled the credits, but then there is a stinger, and we see one more creature crawl out of the casket and it is the Hamster of the sacrifice earlier in the film. It crawls out of the casket as well. It is okay, it is no longer dead. This echoes I believe their treatment of the dog from the last film.

Yeah, I gotta I gotta be honest. I texted you last night when I finished the movie with a woof, at which point you said, well, did you watch all the way through the credits And I said no, I did not, and you recommended that I do it. And I'm glad you did because that was that's what that's what stingers are for.

Yeah, redeemed the whole picture. Yeah, and Bitigan also shows that, like, despite it playing, this is a film that, despite playing with some tougher subject matter and a few scenes and toying with life and death, ultimately this film has this heart of gold where it's like, no, we're having a zero body count, not not even the Hamster dies in this film.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's tough for me because just make a fun movie, just have fun, and then you had to make it an R rated movie, You had to add stuff into making an R rated movie. You're setting a bar that you don't need to clear, that doesn't need to exist. And the Gate suffered from this as well, Like it just wanted to be a fun movie, but felt like it needed to be something a little bit more than that, or something a little bit harder than that.

So are you saying maybe we need like a Gate three Minions at Manhattan.

I think we need a full Gate remake. Just reboot the franchise from Gate one. Make it a kid's movie, Sell it as a kid's movie, do a trailer as a kid's movie, make it a little bit scary, go like Jack Black goosebumps, you know, and then you.

Can you can call it Minions, right, because I mean they had them first.

Yes, Capitol and Minions our minions or what was the would the Ghostbusters do the real Minions?

Yes, these will be the real Minions.

That's it. That's it. I think we got something.

I think so let's let's let's get the director on the horn. All right, Dave, Well, thanks for coming back on the show to finish out the Gate franchise the Gate Verse with me here, Rob, It.

Was my pleasure. We're gonna do Survivors at some point. We'll do a miniso. Maybe we'll do it on the Talking to Foo feed.

Yeah, what's what's going on with Talking to Food right now? Anything you want to promote, anything you want to hype.

Well, yeah, we're in a bit of a holiday break right now, which means we're doing minisodes. But but I mean that's just for a couple of weeks. We'll be back probably second week of January. I'm not sure when this is coming out. With our full episodes, what we typically do is we'll do some takeout from somewhere. We'll focus around a snack that is either intentionally or accidentally vegan, but something that's appropriately junky and accessible to mini folks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well let's line something up. Yeah, So check out Talking Tofu. You can get it where we get your podcasts.

Right, yeah, yeah, anywhere, and you can reach out to us at TALKINTOFU pod at gmail dot com. That's talking without the G. Talking TOFU pod again without the G is our Instagram handle. So yeah, you can reach out with us there. We're pretty chatty awesome. Well as far as Weird House Cinema goes. So just remind everybody that here in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns.

You just talk about a weird movie. You're on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a list of all the movies we've covered on Weird House Cinema over the years, you can go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R B O x D dot com. Very fun website for chronicling your own cinematic adventures and discoveries and explorations and your favorites. We have a profile there weird House look us up. We have a list of all the movies we've covered over the years, and you can you can pull them up and organize

What do you think the gate to community on letterbox looks like?

I mean, it's probably pretty sizable. You know this. These are films that I you know, I think they may not have had a huge impact on everyone's upbringing. You know, they're not like Central Pillars, but I think they're films that that people look back on fondly. You know, they're films that that that when they're when they're succeeding, when they're working, they are capturing this sense of like young supernatural adventure.

Yeah, yeah, I think I was shocked that this had a theatrical release at all. I would have sworn that it would have been a straight to video. But I agree. It's a comfort watch.

It's charming.

It's uh as comforting as a movie where lots of stuff turns into poop can be.

Uh.

It's it's it's it's a fun time.

It's a great olm. I'm surprised he didn't like re Explore the Sun. Beavis and buttheads and butthead get a minion and it turns all their wishes into poop. It's perfect. I can just see it unfolding right.

Or from you got pictures for Days.

I love it. Yeah, that's that's what we do, lots of free ideas. That's why that's why you listen to Weird House Cinema. All right, we'll go and close out here. Thanks as always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing the show. And if you want to get in touch, with me. You can email me at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.