Weirdhouse Cinema: Psycho Beach Party

film before you brought it up in email. Could you share your history with this film?

copy of this. We eventually found a copy at one of the best record stores that ever existed in Meba Hollywood, And yeah, we watched it, and it immediately became just a perennial household favorite of ours, and we just watched it whenever we had the chance. And yeah, I have to ask her where she first heard of it, too, because this does seem like a chain of like, all right, who's the one person who knew someone who was like, you know, a grip on the movie, who told their

friend and it just kind of continued on. But yeah, I mean, honestly, there's there's quite a few people of note in this film too, So maybe that's kind of where she first came across it, but I'll ask her later.

I think, unpack that for a lot of listeners. So we certainly have listeners out there who know the way around sixties beach movies. But I think even if you haven't watched a lot of them, you probably have some idea of what we're talking about here. There are a lot of common elements. Bikinis, romance, oftentine romance, there's comedy,

there's surfers, there's rock and roll. Occasional appearances by other subsets of youth culture, you know, so pre hippie generally with beat nicks and greasers, maybe some bikers and more and Seth, I'm delighted that you have done a much deeper dive into the world of beach movies. Give us a little primary here on the beach movie so we can better appreciate what is being lampooned and subverted in this picture.

twelve movies. And they just keep going and going and going, and they are so much better and so much stranger than I thought they would be. So, for example, here's the few of my favorites. There was one called Pajama Party from nineteen sixty four Tommy Kirk Old Disney actor favorite you know from like you know Old Yeller and

many other hits. He plays a martian named Go Go who he is in an advanced scout for a Mars invasion, and of course he has to kind of disguise himself as like a local teenager and he kind of learns, you know, the fun of like being an earth teenager at the beach, and that ultimately, you know, dissuades him from destroying the Earth. Another one which I think a lot of people have heard of. It's such a ridiculous title. It's called Doctor Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. This is

from nineteen sixty five, still the same film series. It stars Vincent Price as a mad scientist and he builds an army of female robots to rob rich, gullible men, and of course that ties into Frankie and Annette having their own melodrama as well. And well, one more I'll mention, let's see one more year later The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini from nineteen sixty six, again same film series. In this one, Boris Karloff is a ghost that needs to perform one good deed before he can finally get

into heaven. These just they're the strangest franchise of films. I mean, I think Buster Keaton appears in nearly every single one of them for one reason or another. And there's also this reoccurring character I love he is. His name is Eric von Zipper, and he's the dim witted leader of a biker gang, and he is often referred to both outside and inside the movies as a middle

aged teenage delinquent. And I think what what they were doing is in the sixties, the idea of the rebel without a cause, greaser motorcycle gang was now long in the tooth. So the concept was that, hey, what happens to all these what happens to the previous generations youth? Where does it go? Do they just stay? You know, these leather clad biker gangs that are gonna be middle aged teenage delinquents. And it's just I suppose, perhaps a subtle dig at their parents, perhaps, But it's a far

better film series than I ever would have realized. And I'll throw in one more because I think it ties in directly to what we're talking about today. There's also a series all about Gidget. The first film was called Just Gidget, and then there were many many others which

you can go into if you like. And this film is almost a direct Gidget parody, like all of the setup of her like befriending a gang of surfers who then give her like a cute scene nickname, and you know, falling in love with one of them, all that stuff, that's all pure the first Gidget film. So yeah, I would say in many ways, I when I first saw this movie, I had not seen Gidget. I had not seen any of the beach Party Frankie in Anette films, and so I just took this almost like as its

own creation. I knew obviously the beach parties had existed, but after seeing those, I'm like, oh, this is nearly direct parody. Yeah.

They would just be like, next next week's show is going to be a gidget goho psychotic And apparently they just once the idea was unleashed, they were like, oh, what if we did it, what would it consist of? And it grew from there.

it's all the same. It just at least this poster is from eighty seven because they were doing it that long ago. That's how long this play took to become a film. I'm sure you'll talk about that soon.

cult classic of burlesque, lampoonery and maximal camp. So yeah, I mean, obviously it's a very campy film. It gets into some subversive elements and some social commentary, but the laughs always come first, and I think the burlesque observation is key here as well. It's that kind of like at times body humor, but the pasties are on too, so it's not going too far, and it's again laughs first.

Dunwich Horror, among other things. This was general This is generally regarded as the beginning of the beach movie crazy, and it spawned the sequels Gidget goes Hawaiian, Gidget goes to Rome, so that's where we get the natural continuation

of that Gidget go Psychotic. There are also a couple of TV movies, but it goes on from there, like there are Elvis movies that are clearly beach party movies, and there are a There are also some other genre examples, two that come to mind for me, and these are the two that I had really seen before because they

were on Mystery Science Theater. Three thousand would be nineteen sixty four as the Horror at Party Beach, which is both a beach party movie and a monster movie with ridiculous monster and a musical performance by the dell Airs. Another example that I really like is the nineteen sixty seven film Catalina Kaper, also featured on Mystery Science Theater. That one had Tommy Kirk in it and a musical

number on the Beach by Little Richard. Pretty amazing, so that one's worth checking out, if for nothing else, for Tommy Kirk, for Little Richard, and I believe there's a scene where like surf dudes battle beat Nick, not beat Nicks, they battle greasers on the beach.

which of course includes the Blu Ray. I know there was a DVD director's commentary at some point because I've seen it reference, so I'm assuming it might be on that disc.

only has a handful of movie credits. Nineteen ninety one short titled The Disco Years, which he also wrote, two thousand and two She Gets What She Wants with Michael McKean, and he also co wrote that one. And then there's twenty Eleven's Bad Actress, which he directed. That one features Beth Broderick. More on her in a minute, and Ryan Hanson, who a lot of you know is Kyle from Party Down. All right, but then we come to the writing credit here for the screenplay, also the original play of which

he adapted. This is Charles Busch, who've already been talking about. Born nineteen fifty four, writer, director, actor, and drag performer who initially made him a name for himself in off Broadway theater, often in drag performances, where he apparently initially found his voice.

one man show he was doing. But most of the male characters, he said, felt very locked down, very static, And it was in the female characters that he was able to really bring everything to life. And so that becomes like part of major part of his work moving forward.

His first big off Broadway hit was nineteen eighty four's Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, a very provocative title that He says that the New York Times in their their advertisements for local theater, they were very hesitant or even refused to use the full title. He says, you could have called it vampires, lesbians or sodom and they would have been cool with it. But he put all of them together and it's gonna make people want to push the elite button.

And then after they would finish their off Broadway performances of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, they would be invited to go perform like these little one act plays, like on tiny little stages, like just you know, a little hole in the wall type places, and because he loved stage time and loved to perform, he always said yes, he always took them up on it. And those little ideas there are eventually what turned into Psycho Beach Party. Nice Nice.

and it was a hit with audiences. You know, it's campy, over the top, a send up of beach party movies, you know, has some social commentary in there and more.

any other function since it's the Adams Family, right. He also was on Let's See nineteen ninety Wars, it Could Happen to You, nineteen ninety seven's Trouble on the Corner, and eight episodes of HBO's ODZ between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand. During this time, there were efforts to bring Psycho Beach Party to the screen, but it apparently took a long time, and it wasn't until two thousand

that it finally comes out. You know, so late nineties before this thing finally begins to roll in earnest and then they end up shooting it in twenty one days, which pretty pretty tight schedule even for a film you know like this that you know, it doesn't have space stations or anything like that in it. They cranked it out in it and it looks good for.

was seemingly not a hit. I don't think it made its money back. Critical reviews were also kind of mixed.

It looks like and I'm not sure again that it's truly established the cult following that it's that it's that it deserves at least not to not to the degree that you know, it feels like it should have because you look at some of the I don't know, I feel like some of the elements here it strongly reminds me of me of say, John Waters movie or an episode of say Strangers with Candy, which is probably a solid comparison to be made there, given the time period

and the sorts of humor you could get away with during during this period.

Jason Priestley. He pinned a Very Serious Person in two thousand and six, and in twenty twenty one he co wrote, co directed, and starred in the sixth reel his book Leading Lady, a Memoir of the most Unusual boy, release just last year.

American girl. While also, as we'll discuss, you know, she gets we get into these alternate personalities, and she's able to just really throw herself into those as well, and she gets to sing a little opera because Ambrose apparently is trained in opera. Now, a lot of you are going to be familiar with her from her work as Claire Fisher on HBO's Six Feet Under. She was great on that, and let's see. More recently, she acted in

a couple of series that I haven't watched yet. One is the Apple series Servant and the highly regarded Yellowjacket series. Other credits include two thousand and nines Where the Wild Things Are, twenty eleven's Torchwood Mini series, and twenty twelve Sleepwalk with Me.

Files during seasons ten and eleven. I don't know if this is absolutely true, but this is the way my wife and I always interpreted it that they were trying to make a backdoor pilot for basically, hey, what if you know Scold Mully, No, not Molly and Scolder, Scully and Molder, what if they left the show, could we replace them with two new actors and kind of like just keep the show going with like a brand new set of FBI agents because her character, Agent Liz Einstein,

was absolutely a Scully replacement, Like it was just a redheaded young FBI agent who was very skeptical of everything she saw, et cetera, et cetera. And I really dug her. In fact, anyway, I could go on for X Files all day, but I'll skip past it. But between that role can't hardly wait six and six feet under. I have real affection for Lauren Ambrose. I think she's great now.

around and are too busy with their own careers. That was my guess. But anyway, I'm speculating entirely on that.

This is Greg from Darman Greg, which ran a bunch of seasons twenty five through twenty sixteen. He was also on Chicago Hope, Actor of Stage, Screen and tv AT. Their credits include ninety twos Far and Away, ninety nine's Eyes Wide Shut, and two thousands The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. I don't remember who he played in that one.

born nineteen seventy one. Yep, it's Xander from Buffy, the Heart and Soul of the Scooby Gang. Yeah, it's a fun performance. He gives it is all here. This was only his I think second film role, following Children of the Corn three in ninety five, and Buffy would have kicked off in ninety seven. So he's worked on plenty of other projects over the years, and it's still active, though I think mostly smaller productions.

house with a dark history. And this character is played by Kimberly Davies born nineteen seventy three, active on screen from the mid nineties through twenty twelve, with credits that include small roles in nineteen ninety nine Stormcatcher in two thousand and ones made, as well as one shots in such TV shows as Silk Stockings and Friends. It seems like her longest gig, however, was two hundred and thirty seven episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbors from ninety

three through two thousand and five. So it's a pretty fun performance here.

in science. I Believe I've read, with just a brief return for a guest shot on the TV series Grim in twenty fifteen, but his credits include ninety four's Quiz Show, ninety six is Waiting for Guffman, ninety eight's The Last Days of Disco, two thousand Scream three, and Ooh this one kind of flew under my radar until the last minute.

But he was in the two thousand Dune miniseries on Sci Fi in which he played fade Rotha Harkanan, so a major role in the Doom miniseries that I completely blinked on until the last minute.

more like Erotic Fair and then some sex comedies. There's a spoof of women's prison movies in their titled slam Girls, and then you know, this would have been early in mid eighties, before transitioning increasingly into TV roles. She also pops up in film. She's in nineteen nineties, The Bonfire, The Vanities, and Yeah. She acted in such TV shows as Murphy Brown, Hearts of Fire, The Five Missus Buchanans.

She plays one of the Buchanans in that I think CSI Miami Lost Sharp Objects, which we'll come back to in a second, and two episodes of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I believe these are crossover episodes in which they kind of like travel back to the previous adaptation.

episode of Buffy. I don't remember her from that either, before hitting it big in Spielberg's two thousand and two film Catch Me If you Can. Subsequent movies include Let's See There's June Bug. That was two thousand and six, I think, two thousand and nine's Doubt, twenty eleven's The Fighter, twenty thirteen's The Master, twenty fourteen's American Hustle, twenty sixteen's The Arrival. In twenty nineteens Vice, she played Lois Lane in the DC Snyder Verse movies and was nominated for

an Emmy for the twenty nineteen series Sharp Objects. So it's one of these you know, she's great in it, but it's also one of those roles that it's just interesting because you know how big she's going to become, and you can and you can see the tools already present. In her craft for sure. The queen Bee of the high school is played is Roda, played by Kathleen Robertson. This is a Canadian actress with a lot of TV and film credits, including a series regular role on season

six of The Expanse. She was also in Bates Motel and earlier on a series called Maniac Mansion. All right, but okay, so I don't think we've really hinted at this yet, but this is a murder film as well. This is in addition to being a send up of sixties beach comedies, it's also a little bit of a send up of seventy slasher picks.

I'm one hand. Drag performance has certainly always been a part of human performance culture, but it's also come a long way in American culture over the past few decades, and Bush played a big role in popularizing and elevating it early on. So at any rate, he said in ninety three that his performances, he felt fell somewhere in between.

And I'd say I'd see Starkling's more classy, you know, more of a classic Hollywood feminine strength kind of a role, but of course again with lots of camp layered on, and ultimately for laughs.

what the Ben Von Combo, the Ben Vn Quintet. His nineteen ninety seven album Rambler sixty five is apparently of note, as he recorded it entirely in his car, a nineteen sixty five Rambler American. So were you familiar with Ben Vaughn prior to this picture.

going to mark that one is uncertain. But his scores certainly go back to ninety seven's Lewis and Clark and George, then Psycho Beach Party, and you followed this up with work on TV's Third Rock from the Sun, that seventies show, that eighty show and Grounded for Life makes sense now. The soundtrack is also of note here. The film score features several tracks by Love Strait Jackets, who also appear

in the film. They get to perform at the titular beach party that happens late in the picture, you know, very much in the style of you know, having Little Richard pop up in your your old beach party movie. And other artists featured on the soundtrack include man Or Astro Man, The Fathoms, The Halibuts, four Piece Suit, and the Hillbilly Soul Surfers.

that's the route you're gonna go down. In many ways, it seems very limiting, but I think in many ways it's also very liberating that once you're kind of in that realm, you can just kind of like mess around all you want as long as you kind of hit certain like, you know, as long as you have like certain tropes that you revisit every once in a while, everything else is free game. And a quick shout out to an Atlanta based surf rock band, I really like the Mystery Men very very good. Yeah, yeah, yea.

So that being the case, surf rock never really got that like mainstream success, and so therefore it's always just kind of like been this like casual fun thing that everybody likes in the background, just for funnel throughout. Another surf rock band I really love this is a band called La Louse La Luz and they're from Seattle, and they are often called surf Noir, which is very fun, very very very slow. I mean, honestly, just picture what you think surf music out of Seattle would sound like.

That's what they sound like, kind of sad, depressed beach music.

their sub shows, and yeah, there is. I hadn't really thought about it, but there is this kind of sense where like SKA was just ragged on so much that to enjoy it you kind of have to sneak it in under the radar, sometimes alongside like you know, sort of other reggae inspire.

a quick little plug. There's a documentary I saw not too long ago called pick It Up SCA in the nineties, and it goes through all of like the stages between like you know, first wave SKA, second wave SCA, third wave SKA and it's like backlash against that and hopefully what's coming now, which is fourth wave SKA and hey, another plug for someone who's not paying me. It's on Tooby go watch it.

they probably were playing jackets as well. I listened to a bunch of them while working on the notes for this episode, and in particular I was really taken with a great horror themed surf album from twenty thirteen titled Mondo Zombie Boogaloo. They're one of three artists on there. There's the Flesh Tones, Southern Culture on the Skids, and lots straight Jackets and it's a lot of fun. There are tracks of I think Southern Culture on the Skids

has a track about the Tingler on there. I know that song yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tingler Blues, I think Southern culture on the skids. By the way, their first EP was nineteen eighty four's Voodoo Beach Party, so they have a little bit of that beach party DNA as well.

serve people food waitress? A pizza waitress.

And we now see that this is a film within a film, and we are at a drive in, and we are going to be introduced to some characters in pretty quick succession. At this drive in, we see little glimpses of what happens on the screen, and we'll get to know this character who's playing on the screen a little bit later. But yeah, suddenly her two heads are gone and she's a giant attack of the fifty foot

woman style monster, and like where'd her heads go? I always wondered that, like why when she got bigger, did she lose the other two heads?

woman that he's in love with. It's like you can only you know, view her through this like thin window, this thin frame. And then when that frame is torn away, it's too much for him, like he loses his mind, she goes on a rampage. Like It's probably like a nice way to summarize sort of the shackles of nineteen sixties and or just general mainstream American culture as seen by people by everyone who has any any kind of inclination to break free from those confines.

played by Danny Wheeler Nice Burdeen. Yes, So Florence and her very nerdy friend Berdein are at this drive in, and as you mentioned, they're the only ones. They're not on dates. They're just two friends trying to watch the movie while everyone else is making out around them and being very sexually charged, et cetera, et cetera. So they

are frustrated with this situation in general. But as Florence goes up to the concession stand, we do get a quick kind of introduction to many little characters all over the place. We see this gang of surfers hanging out in one car. We see our main Xander character. He is on a date with some girlfriend of their school. We meet the popular girl Marvel, and she is very enticed with this boy. She doesn't know the Xander character.

We slowly, not slowly, we briefly pass by the Swedish exchange student, who of course knows Florence, and we meet him briefly. It's actually kind of fascinating because they quickly throw you into all of this. It's not a traditional structure for introducing characters. It's very much just like almost like an overture to the film we're about to see with very little, like hand holding, very little. There's plenty

of exposition, but it's not traditional exposition. It's just it's almost just like a pile of exposition that you are expected to kind of sift through and catch up quickly. And it works, It works just fine. Yeah, yeah, So we are given a very subtle hint during this scene of the character. Florence suddenly goes into a bit of a trance, and then more or less she just kind

of like disappears from the scene. We aren't really sure what's happening, what's going on, It's just we know something happened to Florence when she was up at the hot dog concession stand at this drive in theater. Then very quickly afterwards, we see that someone has been murdered.

or like Rosie Perez is dancing along to it. It's that kind of just extended solo dancer over music while you are being introduced to all the actors and directors and and whatnot.

be very tongue in cheek, very intentionally corny. But here's the compliment I can give to this entire movie, which I really think is outstanding. Everybody's giving the same level of a corny delivery. Therefore, it's clearly intentional. Everything is happening in a very molded, very directed way, and therefore it works perfectly. Like to compare it to something that doesn't work, think about the movie Batman and Robin Right,

the Joel Schumacher second Batman movie from him. That movie is incredible if you only watch Uma Thurman playing a Batman sixty six character like she she understood the assignment. She got it. Uma Thurman delivered the Batman sixty six character that I think Joel Schumacher was looking for, whereas, you know, no offense to every other actor in the movie. They did not. You know, George what's his name, George Clinton played Batman in that movie. Cloney, Yeah, thank you,

George Clooney. He was absolutely playing as like a jaded ninety Hollywood star, like that's not the role. He needed to be Adam West in that film, and he didn't. Anyway, Everyone in this film knows that it's Batman sixty six. Everyone is camping it up, all giving the same style of delivery, and it's really wonderful. This is going to be a bit of a strange association, but I do

mean it. This movie is almost a trauma film, but it's like a G rated trauma film, which by comparison, is still in R but compared to trauma, it never goes that extreme, but it's still it feels like a gentle light trauma film for the family. That's what it feels like. The pasties are on exactly. Yeah, the bur last click you mentioned, so the murder investigation is happening in the background throughout this film. We will we will check in more with the police captain as things go on.

But Florence and Burden are now at the beach and Florence sees all the surfers and she decides that she really wants to be a surfer. You know, she wants to go do this, but everyone is telling her she can't because of her gender. They're saying, no, you can't surf, you're a girl. Get out of here. And ultimately she goes up to this same group of gosh I has to call them a gang a crew. Yeah, I suppose a surf crew is the best word for them. None

of them are particularly intimidating. This is where I'm gonna keep calling him Xander. This is where Xander and all his surf friends are all hanging out. Gosh, I want to say, there's like five of them, and they're all more or less, you know, the same kind of guy. So they inform her that they're definitely not gonna teach her how to serve. Florence because they're like boss, the like the head surf bum. The Great Kanaka would think that they were, you know, being completely ridiculous if they

were teaching some girl how to surf. So Florence, being a driven female protagonist, goes no, no, no, I will go talk to the Great Kanaka and I will convince him to teach me how to surf because I am driven. So she goes off. She's being very proactive when she goes and finds the Great Kanaka in his very archetypical surf bum shack. Then when she goes in there, he gives the same reaction at first, go away, go away,

get out of here. You know, I'm not interested in like hanging out with like a teenage girl and teaching her how to serf. This is ridiculous because I think even in this context her his character, the Great Kanaka is supposed to probably be in his oh thirties at least right late twenties, early thirties.

And suddenly we see that she has thrown herself into a completely different personality named Anne Bowman, and Bowman is now in charge, and Anne Bowman is a is a no nonsense, you know gosh in many ways that is referenced later very much a dominatrix type role, very much an I'm in charge, shut up, I'm getting my way. I'm in Bowman, you know, Yeah, and.

with this, including the audience. But he brings her down to the beach and shows her to the guys and goes, no, no, no, we're hanging out with her. She's gonna she's gonna be a part of our crew and we're gonna do this. Uh. She learns how she's introduced to, you know, the gang, and everything's going fine, but quickly they still tease her for for for being a girl, for not being very good at surfing yet to all that stuff, and they give her the nickname of chick Lit because yeah, she's

a chick, but she's not even a full chick. She's a chick flat.

is definitely like the first, let's say, potential killer. They set up several, well a few potential killers, and Florence is definitely the first one, with her discussing how when she goes into these alternate personalities, the Florence character blacks out. Basically, she goes through these spells of not knowing what's happening at all. Therefore she could be doing anything during that time.

So not even Florence herself knows if she is this potential killer that the police captain is investigating.

to be like a cursed house. It turns out that it's Betina Barnes, the actress that played the three headed woman in that drive in movie. From the beginning of the film, she is renting this house and staying there, and she's staying a bit incognito, just trying to like, you know, have like a nice separation from her Hollywood life. But she very quickly befriends the surf crew and more specifically Burdeen is that's her name, Yes, the nerd friend

of Florence. She's feeling a bit neglected by Florence with her finding her new friends with the surf crew, so Berdein becomes like the Gal Friday, the assistant personal assistant to Beatina Barnes. And so that's setting up like another like you know, b story happening throughout this movie. So lots of clues, lots of backstories, lots of setting up all these different little threads and potential red herrings, et cetera,

et cetera. But ultimately we are setting up four killers. Okay, we're going to kind of skip the middle of the Scooby Doo episode and kind of kind of get towards closer to the end. The four killers that are being set up. I mentioned Florence, I mentioned Betina Barnes. They never really give Betina Barnes much of like a motive. It's just basically that she's like an outsider, that she is just like like she by coincidence, has arrived around

the same time these murders are happening. The other character is Florence's mom. We only see these little bits and pieces of her, but she's strongly implied to be a killer just because she's quite the stickler, quite quite regimented, which ties into the kind of victims we are getting, which I'll get into soon. Yeah. Then the fourth and

last is the Great Kanaka. Once again, barely any reasons are given why the Great Kanaka is considered a suspect in this but the Captain is definitely investigating him as one of the four potential killers. I suppose it's just because he's a loner on the beach and he could kind of like get away with whatever he wants, et cetera,

et cetera. We also see in a flashback that he's a former police officer and he was the partner of the police captain and they had a romantic relationship that fell apart because of her ambition to raise higher and blah blah blah and not just be a housewife and all that stuff.

played for comedy relationship with Kanaka. And then, like you said, we learn that Kanaka was previously in a steamy relationship with Captain Monica Stark. So there's there's a lot of intricacy to this scenario.

get there yet. But it's it is funny. They're homoerotic wrestling on the pose. Yes, just just it comes out of nowhere. It just lasts for a very long time, and we even see later on, Like I said, this whole movie is very queer coded. Bettina attempts a kiss with Florence pretty late into the film as well, and it does seem, like you said, a cat's cradle. Everyone wants something, and everyone's a little repressed, and no one

can quite just say what they want. No one can can quite just kind of get there and be honest and communicate openly and in many ways just kind of be themselves. That's that's not really in anyone's DNA at

this point in this story. So more more kills are happening, and during each of these murders it's very jollo and by that I mean all we see is that the camera is the killer's perspective, and we see a gloved hand performing these deeds, whether it be a stabbing with like a butcher's knife, or whether it be a gosh, what's what are some other murders, they're all pretty ridiculous.

not a nice woman at all. And then we have let's see, one of the beach guys has psoriasis, and the only way we know that is because he's the one who's always wearing a T shirt because he's embarrassed. And then the other one is this other guy who there are many references to his testicles. That's just like he's like psychic through his testicles or something. It's many references are made to this that don't quite make sense,

and I don't think it's supposed to. And then we had the woman from the drive in at the beginning. So those four are the four victims that we are given throughout this film. What the police captain discovers is that each victim has some sort of like biological otherness to them, something is making them not the average American straightforward person, which of course seems to be like this ongoing theme about here is that, you know, what's the appearance,

what's the facade, what are we really? What are we inside? Et cetera. So the first victim from the drive in, she had a hairlip, the second victim, as I mentioned, he had psoriasis, the third victim he only had one testicle. And then the fourth victim, as you mentioned, Robert, she was in a wheelchair. So so there was something quote unquote wrong with them, and by wrong in the eyes of the killer, just means not average, not perfect.

high up on the suspect list. And for me, as a viewer, like you know, if this war were indeed an Italian horror film, I would be like, oh, well, it's chick lit, right, we were investing this much time in someone's mental illness, like they're probably going to be the killer unless you go for the twist. But it's probably going to be her, but not in this film, Like we like chick lit too much. I feel like she's safe. But the mother seems to be the prime

suspect that they're building up. And so that's where I thought it was going.

kind of formed together. So Florence has like this memory of herself when she was younger, where her mom like you know, she liked to like, you know, meet the sailors at the port and like, you know, I guess just be promiscuous.

know she had, were playing on the swings. Florence, I guess, pushed him too hard and she went over the top of the bar and just flew off like a bottle rocket like it definitely the most ridiculous death in this fiel.

going on. She's not having a great evening. So I'm not sure if you all remember early on we mentioned that there is a Swedish exchange student staying in the house with them. His name is Lars. Lars goes here, I'll drive you home, Florence, come on, let's get out of here, so that they leave, and oh, we got some twists coming. Big twist, Lars is the killer. Spoilers,

I'll take that back. Spoilers, Lars is the killer. And ultimately it turns out that when we were referencing that beach house earlier in this film, the one that was like cursed, that there was a big murder spree that

happened there where very Michael Meyers esque. It was the young son who was fed up with all of the what he viewed as like weaknesses in his family, all the abnormalities, like I believe what did they say, like you know, one was deaf or something like that, Like each family member had a non average, you know, physical thing, and he hated that. He just wanted to be normal. He wanted everyone to be normal, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So he killed his whole family and he

went on the lamb. So he's continued this that this has been his serial killer thing that he's been doing. His real name is Larry, He's not from Sweden. This is a whole facade. Now. He thought Florence was a perfectly average, normal American girl, and that's what he is fine with. He wants everyone to be normal. But in the revelation that she has a multiple personality disorder, he now has to kill Florence too. So now it's a big chase that they end up at the drive in again.

I love the symmetry of the film starting at the drive in and ending at the drive in, very very nice filmmaking there, and you know, chase and chasing, running, running, all that kind of stuff, and Lars is he falls off the top of the drive in screen and falls to his death. Everything is resolved, happy ending, right, Everyone's everyone's happy. This is all I think.

electroshock therapy. She's looking around at her and everyone around her are characters that are inside of this psycho beach party story, like I believe Roda was like the nurse who was like applying the electrodes, and we get a bit of a wizard of Oz like oh and you were there, and you were there. We got one of

those moments. And then twist, twist, twist. It turns out this is a movie in a movie in a movie, and we see a couple of youths at a modern drive in watching this film, the film of Florence inside the mental institute. So they're upset about this. They're like, what's it was all a dream? What a terrible ending? This is corny, And then we are treated with a final scare in which Anne Bowman jumps out of the back seed of their car wielding a butcher knife. Yea then we cut to the go Go Dan serum, we

get some credits. I love it.

of the film. Yeah, so yeah, they they ended with laughs, end it very broadly and ridiculously, you know, repeat yourself. It's just a show that's sort of a feel. But yeah, this one was. This was such a fun film, you know, never a dull moment, a lot of a lot of laughs, and not everything necessarily lands. And this is I think I've got to come back to the Strangers with Candy compare, and you know, like this is this is again a nineteen eighties like late eighties comedy that was adapted to

a two thousand comedy film. So not all the comedy, especially since it's you know, it's kind of burless dragstyle humor of the time period. Not everything's going to necessarily translate as well to for modern viewers, but for the most part it works really well. And yeah, if you're if you're a fan of things like Strangers with Candy, if you're a fan of John Waters films and anything like that, I highly recommend it. I think it's a really fun flick.

we do get a beach party. Late. We didn't really talk about this much, but this is this whole scene where there the surfers are going to do a virgin sacrifice to some sort of a god, and of course chick Lit ends up she's going to be the virgin sacrifice, but then goes into Ann Bowman mode mid sacrifice, and they're like, oh, and Bowman's not a virgin. We can't do this shuts the whole thing down.

I guess synergies. And so we were covering a lot of the the monster craze, beach music and surf music from the nineteen sixties this last October, and gosh, it's fun. It's such a fun, fun genre. In fact, as long as I'm talking about sixties movie monster surf music, I will mention one of my favorite compilations of that era. It's a three disc set called Halloween Nuggets Monster Sixties A Go Go Oh. It's like every novelty sixties surf

monster song that's ever existed all in one collection. It's incredible. So yeah, yeah check that out. Halloween Nuggets, Monster Sixties A go go have a good time.

Needles Record Club every week. And what have we been up to lately? To answer your other question, Robert, we are currently doing a alphabetical trip through the record store where each week we are going one letter deeper into the alphabet and we're trading between our listeners, myself and my co host and deciding which album is next. So let's see. We did o Toboke Beaver this last week,

an incredible punk band from Japan. I believe next week we're doing the Pete's Dragon soundtrack, which is utterly ridiculous. Oh wow, and the ultimate goal. If you've never heard my show before, Rusty Needles Record Club is a show where I am going to listen to every single album that has ever existed. I am greedy in my music consumption and I must hear it all and then I must talk about it with my friends, because that's what I enjoy doing. So so far, so good, so far.

I am on track to listen to every album ever made. We do one episode per week, every Friday, and it is one album per episode, and it's a fun time and ultimately we are very genre agnostic, and it's just about being a music fan. It's about loving all music and wanting to hear everything that's ever been So that's that's Rusty Needles Record Club. It's a fun series.

Weird House Cinema. If you want a list of all the movies we've covered thus far, as well as sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming out next, go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R B O x D dot com. Our user profile on there is weird House, and there is in fact a list, and it's fun to interact with. If you can, you know, divide things up by genre a decade, and just in general, you know, you can give your own little reviews and cataloging and wish lists for films that you've watched or

wished to watch in the future. Thanks as always to jj Possway the excellent Jjpossway for producing this show, and if you want to get in touch with us, you can email Joe and myself at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.