Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb and hey, you know we're all kind of writing high I guess on a little alien fever here. So here is another film that clearly was inspired, at least in part by alien and aliens. We're going to be talking about Split Second, which takes place in the future of two thousand and eight. This is an episode that Joe and I recorded back in let's see it would have been March of twenty twenty one. But it's a
real fun one. Rugger Howard as the grumpiest detective of all time going up against some kind of monster. Let's dive in and explore the film.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Jim McCormick, and we have got a post apocalyptic buddy cop movie for you today.
That's right, So peel a chocolate off the side of your fridge, sugar down your coffee, and prepare for the ride that is nineteen ninety two's Split Second.
Now this was new to me. I actually just finished watching it minutes ago. But you had already seen this one, I think last year or the year before or something, so you brought it back up for the show.
Right right. I had watched it in one setting sometime in the last few years, and I was watching it late at night, so I got a little sleepy towards the end. Not not the film's fault, but but my fault. This time around, I watched it in chunks, often first thing in the morning, while I myself was having a cup of coffee, So I really got to appreciate every detail, every nook and cranny of this film. And I feel like second helpings of split second yeah really paid off for me.
Now, did this movie convince you to use about three quarters of a cup of sugar per mug of coffee?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, as well, we'll get into in this we there's just such all reckless disregard for our hero's health as he does he doesn't drink, which I think is anymore anymore. Yes, he's given up the alcohol, but has taken to just reckless consumption of chocolate and sugar heavy caffeine.
And like his teeth are like Swiss cheese, Like he is just and I bet this world. So this is a dystopian future buddy cop movie that is set in a future London that has been flooded by global warming.
So like the water levels have risen, the Thames is now creeping out into the outer burrows, I guess, so all the streets are now like the canals of Venice just flooded with gross, muddy rat water, and the cops have to like drive around in them in these big jeeps that can drive in the shallow water, or actually navigate them in fan boats like it's a bayou movie.
Yeah, yeah, this is the again, this is a ninety two film, so this is the future of two thousand and eight. But one of the things about this film is that I feel like it does have a really solid visual feel. It has a great esthetic. You know, just all these scenes of just a two wet London and everything's at least partially flooded. It's just a soggy mess and everything else the rest of the world has a suitably industrial grime to it as well. It looks.
It looks great. I really enjoyed the look of the film.
It's the steam injected, microbial matt future of Highlander two, where everything is always just dark and moist and unpleasant.
Yeah, there's a little bit of a blade runner DNA in this for sure.
Yeah, we'll discuss.
Another great thing about this film, and we'll touch on this time and time again too, is that it has all the hallmarks of the film in which the script has been reworked multiple times with different intense in mind, and it's result it results in a kind of chaos in key places, kind of ambiguity that can in the right proportions, work really well for a detective story or a monster story, and luckily this film is both.
I would say for me, this was one of the funniest movies we have watched so far for weird House cinema. And to explain what I mean, so it has it's like a cargo truck just packed with every grizzled, macho buddy cop movie cliche and every dystopian sci fi cliche all together, but at such a volume and velocity that it does not seem just like lazy hack writing, but more kind of transcendent parody. But at the same time, it doesn't go to the level of parity where it's
winking at you about it. It plays it straight, which makes for a much funnier end product.
Yeah, so I feel like when we laugh at this film, and I laughed at it at two, we're not laughing, you know, at somebody's face, old art or something here. You know, we're not just we're not. It's not like a mean laugh. I feel like we are laughing in a way that was intended by at least a large number of people involved in this film.
Yes, Split Second is not a failure. It succeeds.
Yes, though that.
Seems to have been lost on people when it originally came out, who seemed to just regard it. Why or at least some of the reviews we were looking at people were just saying, like another you know, hackneyed, cliched dystopian sci fi movie, you can skip it. I think this one is worth a solidly worth a watch.
Yeah. Well, when I looked it up after i'd seen it the second time, I looked it up in the Psychotronic Video Guide from Michael Weldon, and I found he didn't care for it. He called it a quote boring, dull, misty science fiction movie. And yeah, I agreed to disagree on this one because I think it's pretty terrific. It's a lot of fun. Maybe it was just too fresh in nineteen ninety six and hasn't hadn't aged enough yet.
I'm not sure. But then again, you could also argue that the tropes wouldn't have been as trod well trod in the early nineties as they would be in the year twenty twenty one.
Well, a lot of the funny stuff in this movie would continue to be used unironically for the next like decade or two in straightforward like a list cop moviees. Oh, but I don't know if we've been mentioned. Also, this is a monster movie, so it is a dystopian sci fi movie, a grizzled buddy cop movie, and a monster movie all crammed into one.
Yeah, your here's your elevator?
Pitch okay.
In the Gritty Future of two thousand and eight, a murderous horror emerges from the flooded London underground, and only the gruffiest cop imaginable, supercharged on a diet of anxiety, coffee and chocolate, can stop it.
I don't know if you noticed that you said gruffiest, which I think is that is the right term, because he's gruff Andy's scruffy.
Yeah, it's a combination. It's a hybrid that he has absorbed the DNA of both qualities.
Let's say that trailer audio.
He can hear it's heartbeat.
He knows it's out there.
Somebody must have seen something.
He knows what it can do. You're telling me, but's something running around loose in this city, ripping a half out.
Of people any kingdom.
Maybe eat some for breakfast.
Now it's really pissing him off.
But and his new partner work makes.
Two paranoid people with guns are a menace to society. You need paranoid too. If you like this, follow you rutger howerd split second, nice timing, split second.
All right, well, oh sorry, did you specify before that this is a rutger Hower film.
I don't know that we did. It'll probably be obvious to a number of people. And maybe there's a picture of rutger Hower, you know, capping this thing off. But yees, this is this is a rutger Hower extravaganza in the same way that modern film fans a lot of you like the cage rage. This one is filled with Howard power.
Yes, yeah, oh yeah, but.
There are other people involved too. Let's start where we tend to start. Let's start with the director. Okay, the guy by the name of Tony Mayleem, English director who also directed the nineteen eighty one slasher film The Burning. Mayleem also went on to do a fair amount of documentary work, and I'm to understand Split Second was a particularly grueling project for him, and he had to step away towards the end of the production and let Ian Sharp finish directing the picture.
M Yeah, I can imagine this might have been some trouble because you're dealing with a lot of flooded sets. I mean almost you know, like every other set in this movie. There's just water everywhere, and I would imagine that makes filming very difficult and tedious.
Yeah, and you gotta have a pigeon wrangler. You gotta have a rat wrangler. Oh yeah, you gotta have a Hower wrangler, and every every everybody's got to be on hand.
I didn't check for the credits, but was there an assistant to mister Howard in there?
I didn't notice. Yeah, I should have. I should have looked. Somebody had to get him his coffee.
The HOWERD power generator.
Uh, he might I think he might be self powering. I really don't know enough about We'll get We'll get to Howard in a second.
How power is renewable?
Yes. Now, the writer on this is a guy named Gary Scott Thompson. Not a lot that I know about him, except that he is the guy who gave us Too Fast, Too Furious. He also wrote The Hollow Man Joe, it was Too Fast, Too Furious, one of the good fast furious movies.
No, you generally want to stay away from the even numbered ones until you get to around six or eight.
Uh huh.
Once you get once you get past five, everything is like bad but worth watchings. Everything's kind of good bad after that's where you're in, like the Flying Cars era. The real ones you want to stay away from, I think are like two and four, which I remember being rather boring.
All right, cool, I'll keep that in mind well.
And also the Hollow Man. God. I love Paul Verhoven, but that is just a dreadful movie.
Yeah, I don't remember anything good about that one. Now. As for split second here again, this script seems like it was probably changed a number of times, and I think that was the case based on some just IMDb stuff I looked at. It has a lot of the obvious signs of Blade Runner and alien on it, as you would expect at that time, and certainly casting Rudger Howard is that was one of the films he made a big splash in a Blade Runner. But it also to me anyway, I feel like there's a huge two
thousand a d comics influence here as well. I have
no proof of that. And Gary Scott Thompson, I believe, is an American writer, not British, but there are a lot of British folks involved in this one, and I feel like it thematically has a lot of the elements you find in those original Judge Dread comics, you know, where there's a grittiness, but there's also this comedic and satiric vein going through everything like everything's over the top, like, and we lose some of that in the americanized versions
of Judge Dread, you know where in the films, Yeah, Judge Dread is, you know, grumbling and blasting things with an enormous gun, but he doesn't have a humorous maid or funny robots in his life like he does in the comics.
So one thing that's funny about this movie is that it is very British. It's not just incidentally set in London. Like the setting is very pointedly British, and some of the characters are very pointedly British in the way they're characterized. But our main hero, Rutger Howard, despite being Rutger Howard, is a very American cop character. He's very much like an American tough guy cop lead.
Yeah, that's right, despite of course being Dutch. Rutger Howard was born in nineteen forty four and died in twenty nineteen. In this he plays Harley Stone, a character we will discuss at length here, but yeah, he was a wonderful actor, environmentalist.
He also had a nonprofit aimed at HIV and AIDS awareness called the Rugger Howard Starfish Association, and he wrote to prominence in the films a fellow Dutchman of filmmaker Paul of Villehoven, who we just mentioned and made a huge splash in American cinema in nineteen eighty two's Blade Runner.
He's also very notable in nineteen eighty five's Lady Hawk and nineteen eighty six is the Hitcher, and he's worked with Hooven culminated in the nineteen eighty five medieval adventure film that I have not seen, Flesh and Blood, which co star Jennifer Jason Lee and Ronald Lacey. And I understand that the two disagreed on the nature of his character. Howard wanted to get away from villain roles, but Verhoven
wanted him to play a more morally ambiguous character. And that's an interesting wrinkle to think about because in this obviously he's our hero, and I can't think of a lot of films like Later On where he played anything other than a protagonist, you know, like what are the big rudger howand villain roles? Yeah, you named Blade Runner the hitcher, But anything else.
Well, I would argue that maybe you shouldn't even think of him necessarily as the villain of Blade Runner. I mean, in Blade Runners, I would say he's something more like the creature in Frankenstein, as someone true does bad things, who harms people, but in other ways is sort of a sort of a babe in the wilderness, Like he's he's lost and desperate and doesn't know what to do with his own mortality.
Yeah, but you can easily imagine, like the filmmaking system that after Blade Runner is like, oh, can we get Howard to play this terrorist? Can we get Howard to play this evil king? And it sounds like he was like, I don't want those type of roles. Want I want something different and I want and you know, you know, my mind come turns to Batman begins.
Right, he's a corrupt businessman.
He's a corrupt businessman, but he's yeah, he's a suit in that.
Oh, I think he's also I remember, God, I haven't seen sin City in many years, but I remember him being some kind of evil corrupt, like yeah or something in that. Also.
Okay, well he maybe managed to sprinkle some villainy in the later movies, but yeah. He went on to be in a ton of films and TV projects, one hundred and seventy five acting credits on IMDb, and they really run the gamut from B movies to blockbusters. Like he was just in a lot of stuff and he's just I've never seen him in something where I'm like, ah, that's boring. You know, he's he's an exciting element even in a bad picture.
Oh, you should try to watch Dariu Argento's Dracula.
Okay, yah is the second time you've challenged me on that one.
No, I'm not saying I've watched it. I'm saying I've never been able to watch more than like sixty seconds of it. Okay, But so, I guess if we're talking about Rutger, how are we got to talk about the tears in the rain monologue? Which this is a famous moment, probably the most famous moment of Rutger Howard's career, also the most famous moment of Blade Runner the movie. The context is, of course, Harrison Ford in the movie plays Deckard, who is a type of police officer or bounty hunter
who is hired to quote retire escaped replicants. Replicants are you know, sort of androids or humanoids who are created by this company to essentially be forced labor, and they have a very short lifespan so that they don't you know, get off and get ideas about independence. They can only live for something like four years. And so the plot of Blade Runner is that there are a group of replicants who escape and they're trying to find a way
to get more life. They want to extend their lifespan. Meanwhile, Harrison Ford deckerd is trying to hunt them down, and in the end of the movie, he's chasing around in a building while the rain is pouring outside. He's chasing Rutger Howard's character, a replicant named Roy Bates, and there's a moment where where Deckard is almost about to fall to his death off the roof, but then Roy Batty grabs his arm and saves him, despite him being there to kill him. He saves him, and then he gives
this speech. It's a soliloquy. He says, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orian, I watch seabeams glitter in the dark near the Tanhuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like Tears in Rain. It's a beautiful moment and a beautiful metaphor. But what I've read is that apparently there was a line similar to that already in the script, which I think was written by David Peeples.
But apparently Rutger Hower himself rewrote the line before filming, and he was the person who added the comparison to Tears in Rain, the most famous part of it. So that's from the actor himself.
Yeah, I've always been impressed by that and of course that that monologue we've talked about on the show before. Oh here's the line that DJs should be using in their tracks. They they they definitely got the memo on Tears and Rain, because man, I can think of so many different mixes and tracks where something from from Roy pops up, that props up on it's a I mean, it's just a great piece.
Yeah. Yeah, it's such a great line that in a way it's kind of lost its power by being over analyzed and over quoted.
There's a band called Grumbling Fur and they have a song titled the Ballad of Roy Batty and it's this this kind of somber British song, but it's the lyrics are that that monologue.
Oh wow.
Yeah, So check that out if you want.
But here a very different role in this So he plays in Blade Runner. He is a tragic Frankenstein's creature type character who who doesn't understand the point of his own existence. He wants more life, but he can't have it, and he and he ends in this tragic, introspective state. In split second, Hower is just Hower is the ultimate like beef steak grumpy cop.
Yeah, yeah, he is. He is something. It's worth noting that he was I believe forty seven or forty eight at the time, so this is, you know, slightly older Rutger Hower certainly compared to like Blade Runner and stuff. He's carrying a bit of weight in this though, though nothing that feels like awkward or anything. But I think it feel like it feels like his physicality works perfectly well portraying this cop on the edge, he's not taken care of himself, who lives this reckless lifestyle and the
bit of a slob. And yeah, again, while they avoid the hard drinking stereotype in this because he's apparently quit drinking, he does smoke like a chimney, just constantly smoking, consumes copious amounts of coffee, sugar, chocolate. And man, that name too, Harler Stone. It's motorcycle plus rocks. You know, you couldn't do any better than that.
That was the thing that convinced me to watch this movie. I looked it up and I saw the main character is named Harley Stone, and I was, yeah, I'm in.
Yep, I mean yeah, and he has I think a Harley in his apartment, so it's I guess that's part of it, but actually no, no.
It was multiple things. I'm sorry I have to add on his name is Harley Stone. And then of course it becomes here's your new partner, buddy cop movie. It's like Tango and Cash, but said in the future, where there's a he's got a partner who's the opposite of him in every way, and this partner is named Dick Durkin.
Yep, Harley and Dick. The Adventures off. Well, we've touched on the tropes here, but like one of the big tropes with this guy with Harley Stone is he's the worst. I can't stand him, but he's the best. We've got to use him, like he's just a walking disaster, but nobody does it better than Harley Stone, so we have to use him. He's the only one who can get our man and or monster exactly. It's the you're a loose cannon, you're off the force, you're the only man
for the job. And Howard is I mean, he is so good in this because this character, this Harley Stone. At time, there are all these moments where you realize that the film is winking at you, that it's you know that he's just so over the top he's just doing what he's doing in the way he's acting is just it's it's just ridiculous. But yet Howard also walks
that line to where he is, you know. I feel he is definitely cool in a lot of the film too, in a way that the mini actors wouldn't be able to pull that off, you know, like like here's this uh this, you know, this this over the hill rundown cop. But yeah, he looks pretty cool in those glasses and that giant leather coat.
Yeah, it never gets too juicy.
Yeah, so it's ultimately just a joy to watch him. I think some of the best scenes are ones where they're just we're just going about about a day. You know, it's a ride along with Harley Stone as he does things like like shave at a bar where he has shown up for breakfast, you know, things like that.
Yeah, he goes to like a moody night club for breakfast where they're playing Knights in White Satin on the jukebox and they give him a big old play to full Inger. I think it is a full English breakfast that it's not just eggs and bacon, but there's baked beans on that plate and he's slurping it up and shaving with an electric razor over his plate.
Yep. And yeah, so, oh my god, he's just so good. But let's talk a little bit about that partner. This would be again, Detective Dick Durkin, played by an actor by the name of Alistair Duncan.
You know I love this guy too. I think he's great.
In this role. Like again, he hits just the right note, like he's he's not too comedic, he's just comedic enough.
He's the perfect foil to Harley Stone. So they're setting it up like a you know, a Rigs and Myrtle or Tango and Cash kind of thing where they're opposites, but they end up complimenting each other. And this guy, this guy is the the wimpy bookish nerd who went to Oxford.
Yeah, well, I mean not completely wimpy. He's a he's very fitness conscious, right, that's true. And uh and and he's a yeah, but he's by the books. He's he's I think he's doing tai chi in one scene. And he of course course Rutger Howard's character Stone is like just so anxiety written. At one point, he's like, let me give you a massage, let me, let me help you out. He's like, don't touch me, like's take the gun in his nose. But but yeah, yeah, he's great in this.
Uh.
Duncan perfectly fine actor. He's done an increasing amount of high profile voice work over the over the years, especially in major video games, but he was a steady actor in the nineties as well, showed up on things like Highlander of the TV series Hercules Murder. She wrote, so a bunch of stuff.
Wait, he's not the voice of Wheatley in Portal Too, is he?
He might be. I don't know. I didn't look that one up specifically, but I did notice that he's okay, you know, for instance, you know the Mortor games where you know.
I'm sorry I looked it up. No, that's a guy named Stephen Merchant. But but for a second I thought it was possible.
Stephen Stephen, they're kind of cut from the same cloth, though, I can imagine Merchant in this role. But no, Alster Duncan. I believe one of his more high profile roles is those the Shadow of Mordor games. He played like the raith elf that is your alter ego or whatnot? I haven't really played the games, but he's that character.
Oh okay, but let's.
Not forget our female lead, Joe Ooh.
So this movie has Kim Katroll in it. She plays Michelle McLain and so of course. Kim Catrall is a Canadian actress, probably best known today for being part of the main cast of Sex and the City, but with a long career of lots of interesting movie and TV roles. More in the Weird House, Wheelhouse, you might say, Big Trouble in Little China and which she plays Gracie Law or Star Trek six The Undiscovered Country, which I think she was filming either right around the same time as
Split Second or simultaneous to Split Second. Yeah, because of the hair right right, And I gotta say I love Kim Katroll. People who have only seen her in like more straightforward roles I think might not appreciate just how good her comic timing is and how good she is at walking that fine line, which is like exactly what she's doing in this movie, that tight rope of like absurdity and parody but not quite Yeah.
Yeah, I agree, absolutely certainly. Big Dub and Little China is a great example of her work. But prior to Sex and the City, she was in a fair amount of genre pictures. She kind of reinvented hersel herself, I guess with the Sex and the City role. But before that she was in she was in an episode of the nineties Outer Limits. I don't think one I've seen yet, but I'm going to get to it as I steadily
make my way through all that. But she was also in a nineteen ninety eight TV adaptation of Peter Binchley's Creature, in which she and Craig T. Nelson battle a Nazi engineered killer shark.
I watched that on TV when it premiered when I was a kid. I think I was in I don't know, it would have been like sixth grade or something, and yeah, wow, it was a it was a winner.
So Kim is great and split second given the limited amount of stuff that she's given to work with. So this is a film where she doesn't have much of a role, but she manages to shine through that role anyway. Yeah, all right, let's talk about some of the other bit players in this. Oh, you have this guy, Alin Armstrong is Alan. I'm sorry it's a Alan, but I guess it's Alan Alan, I don't know. I'm just gonna call
him Thrasher because that's his character's name. So. Born in nineteen forty six, Armstrong is a great British character actor. You would recognize him for instance, very recognizable face. But he's been in films such as Kroll, Braveheart, Van Helsing and Sleepy Hollow, The Double There and tons of TV work and he's great in this because he plays the I mean, this is a trope too. You have your problematic cop, but then you have their just just completely
enraged boss who just can't take this guy anymore. But he's the best, so you got to work with him. And that's what Thrasher is. Thrasher manages to be like the angriest, foulest police chief ever, like just bristling with with with rage. Just his face, his kind of already gargoylish face is just twisted with anger and just resentment
of Stone. And he also has I love his hair in this because he has this great dying widow's peak, you know where it's like it used to be a widow's peak and now it's barely anything, and it somehow elevates the character to an even greater level of just again, just such visceral hate in every breath he takes.
At the British casting office, they were like, get me the actor who's every breath says you're off the force. Here's your new partner.
Yes, except louder and more intense.
Yeah, because he has some expletives in there.
Yeah. So he's wonderful in this and he has some great scenes. Now the next actor of note Sale doesn't really have any great scenes but is just by all accounts, was a tremendous actor, Pete Posselthwaite who from nineteen forty six through twenty eleven.
I love Pete.
Yeah, so if you don't recognize the name, look him up you'll recognize the face. Tremendous English actor with instantly recognizable from such films as Alien three, In the Name of the Father, Amistad, The Sharp Films, The Lost World, Jurassic Park. I believe he was the big game hunter character in that.
Yep, Yep, he was yep.
Great look great actor. Again, not much of a role for him in this, but you know, he's great in so many other things. We have to point him out.
Well, most of the parts in this movie are sort of underwritten compared to the main two cops. Yeah, but the cast members really do shine through, Like you were saying with Kim Cattrall and Alan Armstrong, they all kind of bring you to attention.
Now, one interesting thing about Pustlethwaite in this is that he's a guy who largely kept out of the spotlight, but he was passionate about various causes, including anti war protests and environmentalism, which is which is interesting given the you know, the environmental I don't want to say theme of this film, but like mild sprinkling to the plot.
Because he starred in a film in two thousand and nine titled The Age of Stupid, in which quote a failed archivist looks at old footage from the year two thousand and eight to understand why humankind failed to address climate change. So basically it's a documentary, and at some point in making the film they decided they wanted to add a like a fictional narrative structure to it, where it's like somebody from the future looking back on today.
And they reached out to him because they knew he was great, and they knew that he was interested in these causes, and he ended up signing up for it, and it allowed the film to just to reach a lot more theaters and to really reach far more people with its message. So it's a documentary but has a sci fi narrative structure.
Interesting. Now, there's another character in this movie that is very weird, but we don't get to until like the last ten to fifteen minutes of the movie.
Yeah, Like I kept thinking, did I miss Michael J. Pollard Because Michael J. Pollard who is in this He plays this rat catcher character and it's a very small role, but he has a very fun scene with our detectives. Now. Pollard, American actor, lived thirty nine through twenty nineteen, probably best well known for his one of his earlier roles in
Bonnie and Clyde. Well, I say earlier roles, but he also was in a lot of TV stuff before that, like Andy Griffiths Show, Classic Star Trek, Alvert Hitchcock Presents. But he was in sixty seven's Bonnie and Clyde.
That's the one with Warren Bady, Yeah, Faye Dunaway.
Yeah, yeah, the Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen that, but I can picture it, like I remember his character Pollard was also, I mean, he was in a bunch of stuff, but you might recognize him from Scrooged. He was in Roxanne in nineteen eighty seven, and some listeners to Weird House especially might remember him from Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses. He was also, like a lot of actors of that generation, he showed up on Tales for the Crypt in an
episode titled Came the Dawn. So he wasn't a lot of stuff always good, all right, just a couple of more two small acting roles of note here. Ian Durry plays his character JJ. Very small part, but this is Ian Durry of the Blockheads, and he was part of the new wave in post punk scene, lived forty two through two thousand. I don't really know him or his work, but as a fun easter egg, I imagine for some of you music fans out.
There, I don't remember who JJ was in the movie.
I think I'm like thirty five percent sure he was the bartender, but I don't remember. I just know he's in it. And then there's this also, this character in it named pad O'Donnell, played by an actor by the name of Tony Steadman or Steedman. I'm not sure, but this is an English character actor who played Socrates and Bill and Ted. Oh okay, yeah, so in this he's just the guy who checks out weapons at the London Police Department.
Well, actually all he does is he says like, no, you can't have that, and then they grab it behind his back.
Yeah. He's like that gun's too big and they're like, no, we're taking it.
We need big guns.
He's like, all right, I did what I could. Now getting into some of the other people involved in this. This is also pretty interesting because you listen to the musical score in this film, and it's from my point of view, it's not bad. It's it's at least not you know, classical piano, but it's it's you know, it's ultimately kind of lukewarm. It has kind of like hell razorily hell Hell razory synth chrals at times. You know, it's got some synth drums and so forth. So it
works for me. I never hated it, but it's interesting considering what might have been.
Oh that's right, now, how did you come across this next fact? Give me the story.
Well, there's not much story, like a lot of these things. I think I was just reading IMDb too much, And it was noted that the filmmakers actually rejected the original score, which was composed by the legendary Wendy Carlos.
How could you reject Wendy Carlos score?
Yeah, I mean, Wendy Carlos is a legend basically twofold. On one hand, she wrote the scores for this like the Shining Tron Clockwork Orange, but also just in general, she's a true pioneer of electronic music and the use of the synthesizer. Yeah, Andy, as we touched on on stuff to blow your mind before. She's also a great solar photographer. So how could you say no?
Yeah, it's crazy. So yeah, the score they ended up going with, I feel like it is extremely generic. It's just doo doo doo doom doo doo don is a standard ominous future drums and drone. And I went and I looked up some clips because you provided a link. There's like an AllMusic page where Wendy Carlos at some point released a collection of lost or themes from movies, including a couple of things she composed for this movie
that never actually made it into the film. The two tracks here are Visit to a Morgue and Returned to the More, which I thought was funny, but I checked him out, and having heard both side by side, I'm certain her complete score would have been one hundred times better.
Absolutely. I listened it to these tracks as well, and I think they sound great. I'd loved it to hear the whole thing. If you want to listen to these tracks, the album to look up is Rediscovering Lost Scores, Volume two. I'll try to include a link to it on the post I do for this episode at samoodomusic dot com. But yeah, it's quite good. Sadly, I don't think you can find this on Spotify right now.
Wendy Carlos is still alive. I don't know if she's composing anymore, but filmmakers out there, if you have the opportunity to get a Wendy Carlos score in your movie, don't pass it up now.
One last interesting individual involved in the creation of Split Second, Stephen Norrington was involved in the creature design, so some
of you might recognize the name. This is London born effects makeup artist who worked on such films as Aliens, Young Sherlock Holmes, Hardware, Alien three, Jim Henson's The Taylor, and then he would go on from this to direct a film titled Death Machine with Brad Dorif and Richard Brake before I think any I don't think I knew who Richard Brake was at that time, but he's since gone on to make a name for himself as a
as a reliable, intimidating character actor. But he followed this film up Norrington did directing nineteen ninety eight's Blade, the film that started all of the Marvel Cinematic universe, starring, of course, Wesley Snipes.
Now I know you're kind of a bladehead, and I the only I think. I've only seen the original Blade once many many years ago, like in middle school, and that's that's about all I know.
Oh, well, you need to see it again because it absolutely holds up.
I do remember. I remember a lot of gross scenes where they're like they're like shining a flashlight on a on a big fat vampire to like burn his skin and make him talk.
Yep, Yep that happened. Yeah, that that's that's a fun thing. I love the first two Blade movies and uh and that that was that was Norton here. But from there he went on to make a film title The Last Minute that I don't know anything about, and then the film that caused him to I think peace out on directing entirely The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But I believe he has continued to work in effects in other areas of filmmaking.
I never saw that one, but it is notorious. I remember the day that my friends had been out and seen it earlier in the day, and then I was hanging out with them later in the day and they could not stop talking about how awful. It was.
Yeah, I never saw it. I read the graphic novels by Alan Moore and loved those, and it has so many tremendous actors in it. But yeah, it was. It was apparently no fun for anybody that was involved in it or solid. But you know, this brings me to a good point that I feel like we need to, you know, make sure we hammer home every now and then.
Is that, you know, between norm Rington's case and Meleem's experiences that we mentioned earlier, I think it's always worth reminding ourselves that it's an endeavor for any motion picture to be made, and it's ultimately kind of a minor miracle that any creative process of the scope actually reaches completion. And the stresses of creative projects like this are very real.
So you know, it's you know, it's surprising you don't see more pictures where people you just have to step away from it because it's too much.
Yeah, it's one of the kind of beautiful things about B cinema, emphasized in even in great movies like the movie ed Wood about the actual director ed Wood, that B movies, to whatever extent they succeed or fail, can often be funny, but it's also it's kind of it's kind of magical that they get made at all.
All right, well, let's get into the movie itself. This one starts out with an opening scroll and opening some text to read, which I always like because I feel like that way, time travelers from the early days of cinema won't be instantly out of place when they go to the movie theater. You know, it's going to be a talkie, it's going to be a lot, but it's going to start off the old fashioned way with some words on a screen.
And a guy playing the piano in the side of the theater.
Yeah, basically, the opening scroll is after forty days and nights of torrential rain, the city is largely submerged below water, a result of the devastating effects of continued global warming. The warnings ignored for decades have now resulted in undreamed of levels of pollution where day has become almost endless night.
You know, I'll have to check, but I do not recall endless night being one of the one of the proposed consequences of a warming climate.
No, it's day for night sometimes now, Yeah, this one this and also it also brings up the idea that it was just it recently rained a lot, which also seems out of keep. Like I thought it was just the fact that London is pretty flooded these days because of rising you know, rising sea levels, but also some other like sinking issues that have been going on with the city for some time.
Yeah. Well, so they start while they're showing this text crawl like the Star Wars thing. Instead of a starfield, it's panning over an aerial shot of a flooded London with a kind of sinister tangerine sun flaring in the background, and it's brighter in that opening panning shot than it is at any other point in the movie. True, true, But I did find myself wondering how did they achieve this shot because it does actually look like an aerial shot of London and it does actually look flooded.
Yeah, there are details you see, especially as they sort of re use this footage later in the film. You can see like, oh, yeah, that looks like a lake over here. And you know they didn't do it digitally. This is nineteen ninety one.
Yeah, so I was wondering what was going on there? I mean, did they did London actually flood at some point and this was real footage of it that they digitally altered somehow, I don't know.
But it's convincing. It does set the stage. And again, let the city is just a flooded mess throughout this entire picture. You buy it completely. It's not like they just give you this bit of world building and then that it's is ignored for the rest of the film. No, It's present in virtually every shot.
And one thing I like is that before you see the title of the movie, you just see Rutger Hower read.
Letters as it should be.
Yeah, but then when the title of the movie comes up, it looks really funny.
Yeah, for a film with such a strong sense of its own aesthetics, the title card just looks really dumb. The letters are like these big blue balloons, like there should be floating in the sky of a Mario Brothers level.
Yes, yes, and it's so it's it says split second. But I was experienced a kind of I was seeing a kind of selective dyslexic effect where it was hard for me do not see the title as spilt second. And then also because of the way the L and the capitol I come together sput second, kind of like the celebrity Jeopardy four and flicks problem. And I've just now I wondered for the first time, what is the significance of the title split second.
I don't think it has any significance at all other than it just implies a pacing that is largely backed up by the picture. You know, stuff is just happening, and characters are especially stone. It just has a gut level response to everything. So I guess that's the extent of it.
Yeah, the movie might as well be called exciting exciting.
Yeah, so, yeah, they didn't take long for rug or Howard to pop up. He has a lot of screen time in this and the first I think we see of him is he's walking up in leather, scratching his groin, putting on a pair of shades. He's got a big old gun. And then shortly thereafter my favorite, one of my favorite sequences in the film, he lights his cigar with a blowtorch, then gets out of his vehicle calls a dog a dickhead on his way into a grimy nightclub.
For some reason, it's just so, it's such a funny scene. Like when I saw that scene the first time I watched the film, I was like, oh my god, I'm watching all of this.
I'm in Before he even gets in the car, we just get this corridor advancing scene. This is our introduction to our protagonist. And god his costume. So he's got the sci fi stomper boots. I guess these are these are actual all weather boots of some kind. I don't know what they're called, but they're the ones with a bunch of straps and buckles poking out all over the place. And then we get holster vision, like an extreme close up of all his different holsters and the guns in them.
Of course he's wearing a long coat, right, kalflinth coat, because hey, you know, how else are they going to know that you're bad?
Yeah, despite it being like really humid looking in this city, Like I don't know, it just seems like the smells, I don't know, you would.
Not want to wear that coat, I don't think. And then and then he's wearing just plastic pants with a gut stabber silver belt buckle. It looks like if he bends over to tie his shoes to cause internal bleeding and is large intestine.
Yeah. Yeah, And you don't get the sense that he's purchased any new This character has not purchased any new clothing since he's let himself go, you.
Know, right exactly. Sunglasses with tiny frames like the beady little circular frames that are about the size of a quarter, like they simultaneously like they kind of look cool but it's also funny. Yeah. And cigar in his mouth at all times, just pathological oral fixation. It never leaves his lips.
Yeap constantly, just a halo of smoke around his head.
Uh huh. So in a way, he's kind of a dystopian sci Fi Pouci.
Yeah. Yeah, but but again is rugger Hower and he manages to strike that balance where it you know, you in any given scene, you're either buying into the coolness or noticing again the wink in his performance and or the writing.
So here's a question I don't know if you have an answer to. Maybe if you don't, maybe the listeners can add some input. Where does the law coats as cool thing come from in movies? Where you got a character who's just a real like just bad to the bone, he's got to wear like a calf length coat.
That's a great question. I don't know, but it's it's been around for a while at this point. It doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.
Like it was already in place at this time, really realized in Matrix Chic. But yeah, but this was way before that, and it was definitely in movies even before this.
Yeah, I don't have an answer for that. Maybe that's one we can our listeners will have some insight on.
Yeah, okay. Oh, and also this movie is if anybody out there is actually like a gun owner or into firearms safety at all, this movie will just make you shudder because all Rutger Howard does is just walk around swinging big guns all over the place and tossing them around like Duffel bags.
Yeah, yeah, gesturing with them. He'll stick a gun in your face for virtually no reason.
Yeah, just to play around, you know.
Yeah, other character, other characters to pick up on this this recklessness and start engaging in it. And boy, there's some big gun Like the guns look good in this, like the gun these are some some video game asque weapons, you know, Like he has this pistol that just looks like a big just sci fi cannon. And then later these like mini gun looking combat shotgun things. It's pretty crazy.
Yeah, you're not joking about that. They literally have like it's like a mini gun barrel, so like the multiple barrels and the rotating I don't know what you call that piece, but like like like what Jesse Ventura has in Predator, except it's supposed to be shotgun barrels.
Yeah, like a shot gun gatlin gun.
Yeah. And then at the very beginning, so we see him coming down the corridor showing off his cool look, and then he gets into a jeep and drives away, and of course we see that his car is just a rolling sty It is full of garbage, mostly coffee cups and the containers of sugary products.
Yeah, there's like he's a one brand guy when it comes to these sugary things. I think maybe they're donuts or chocolate balls. But like when we say that he lives on a diet, like that's directly from the film that they say that he lives on a diet of of what caffeine, sugar and anxiety anxiety? No caffeine, no sugar, chocolate in anxiety or is it sugar?
I think coffee sugar or sugar chocolate in an anxiety?
Yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah, I think so. And so that's like literally if he's not smoking, and or if he's smoking, he's also liable to be consuming chocolate and putting just tons of sugar. Like it's a scene where he fills up his coffee in an office and it's just like thirty percent sugar and then the rest is coffee.
Yeah, And so he's driving around. You mentioned that he's on his way to this filthy night club he's going to. But also for some reason at the very beginning, it's it's not established why this is at all he's being pursued by police, so he is a police detective. But he's also like, while he's driving around, there are cops
chasing him, being like where there's Harley Stone going just unbeatable. Yeah, But he ends up in this dirty night club that he has to enter through like a corrugated aluminum sewer tunnel that has a bunch of wet socks dangling from the walls. And I don't know what the deal with that was. But he goes inside. He's told there's a two drink minimum, and he orders two coffees with extra sugar, and he seems to be here trying to scope things out.
It's like he's got a sixth sense that there is a that there is Duin's afoot in the club, and he's just scoping around and eventually ends up trying to make a phone call I think, but it's hard to understand what he's saying on the phone because he's still got the cigar in his mouth.
He's not here for fun, though, because I don't think Harley Stone does fun, not anymore.
No, he does not go to the club to party. He goes to the club to find the killer. Yeah, and he's looking for somebody I guess the killer. But then meanwhile there's a scream and we find that a woman has been murdered in the bathroom. There's blood splattered everywhere, her heart has been removed, and there is there are the words I'm back scrawled on the mirror in blood.
Yeah, And this is one of many scenes that will come in this film where a filthy environment is sprawled with blood and it looks it looks great like this film man Like Again, the aesthetics of this film are pretty tremendous, and there's something about like it has an almost erotic fixation on blood and death. And you see the first taste of it in this scene.
And we see that Harley Stone, the character is also fixated because he's he's not just on a case. He is obsessed. He starts chasing down the blood trail that's running out of the bathroom. He's freaking out. He's pointing his gun at random people as he runs through these alleys. Other police are trying to like join in and help him, I think, but he's screaming at them to get out of his way. And here I believe we have a classic case of take it too personal.
Yep, he's taking it too personal.
She says, he's taking it too personal. That's right, you can't stop. I mean, he's the best, even if he is taking it too personal. And the whole chase we get this doom doom. We hear a heart beating and heavy breathing that suggests a psychic connection somehow between the killer and Harley Stone. But I guess somehow he gets subdued. I think he ends up like on a fire escape, just kind of I don't know, hyperventilating and leaning against
the railing. And then we cut to the fan boats, you know, the Bayou boats, except they're out on the Thames, and we hear the Chief of Police Thrasher, talking to this other guy, and we get some backstory on Harleystone. Is he talking to Dick Durkin?
I think so, yeah, because he's preparing him, because again, he's the best. We've got to use him. But we need a good cop to pal around with him, to keep tabs on him and keep him from getting out of hand.
Right, We need a nerd cop to put a leash on the loose cannon cop. Yeah, And so it's just perfect cop movie cliches. Butt on a fan boat on the Thames, and Thrasher talks about how it took four officers to subdue Harley Stone and now he's in lock up and Dick Dirkin is so curious what happened to Harley Stone to make him this way? And Thrasher says, well, a serial killer murdered his partner Foster three years ago
and he was there when it happened. And Dick Dirkin says, oh, is it survivor's guilt and Thrasher says, nah, just plain guilt. He had an affair with Foster's wife, left her, hit the booze went over the edge. Now he lives on here's the quote anxiety, coffee and chocolate. Oh. And they specified that he's worked in every hell hole in the world and he's been fired from all of them, and they say he's the best.
S Yeah, what are these other hell holes? I wonder It's like there's a whole there's a whole universe of Harley Stone adventures we don't know anything about.
Right, So he's worked in like every city in the world or something, or only the ones that are hell holes, which are those yep?
Just every like flooded, monster ridden Metropolis on Earth.
I guess we may have missed our chance for a prequel that's like the Adventures of Harley Stone in I don't know, New Orleans or something.
Yeah, I don't know who the young Rutger Hower would be. I mean, he can't really replace him.
Yeah. But so Harley Stone's back in the station. He's raging against the bars and lock up, rattling them, and then he gets out eventually and he's getting coffee. And here we get one of the great coffee scenes where he puts like, you know, eighteen spoonfuls of sugar in. And then we meet Pete Postelwaite and they have a big confrontation. It is clear that Rutger and Pete do not like one another, right.
I think it's later revealed that Pete's character was also the slain partner's best friend, and so he holds it against him.
Right, And then there's a great chief chewout scene. Yeah, and so he gets invited it into the chief's office to get Harley Stone gets chewed out. We hear all about how he's a loose cannon, how he's taken it to personal, how he's off the force, and then here's your new partner. And the new partner, of course, is Dick Dirkin, the nerd from Oxford who is getting filled in on the case. And he's like, I thought we
were dealing with the psychotic, not a psychopath. But the scoop on Dick Dirkin is that he's an expert on serial killers. He's a sort of lily livered college boy who went to Oxford, and Harley Stone does not like him. I think Harley Stone, I think, clearly believes that the book Learning is weak and puny.
Well, it's like any kind of premeditation is is puny. Like Stone again, he rules from the gut. He's he's just all action and no chill. There's just his brain is just like an exploding rat of anxiety and of you know, fueled with caffeine and sugar.
Yeah, and then oh oh oh, and then so can you explain to me what you think is implied to have happened in the following scene, because right after the chew out, Harley Stone goes back to his desk and there's just a cooler with a heart in it. There, like a cooler full of ice that's got a chewed up heart. And I don't know why it's on ice, because this is not going to be a successful transplant or like donor organ, it has a bite taken out of it, but for some reason, it's on ice in
a cooler sitting right next to his desk. Are we to understand that this heart has been delivered by the killer to his desk?
I think, okay, so out of picture, I would say this is a clear sign of an earlier draft of the plot. I think at one point this screenplay did not have a monster in it. It was just a serial killer flick, or supposed to be a serial color story. I think if I'm going to try and read into the movie, I'm going to want to live within the narrative of the film. The monster killer villain and must
have hired at delivery service to deliver this heart. And they must have stolen the cooler and some ice from like a local store in order just to mess with Stone.
Why the ice? The heart's not going to be used for anything.
I think it basically the well out of picture. The reason is that because it looks really cool glistening among the ice. You know, it's a beautiful one of these scenes that again things that are dead or bleeding in this film are the only things that are beautiful aside from Kim Katrell. Everything else is grizzly and dirty. Yeah, and so I think that's the real reason. Otherwise, I guess just shock value, just to be like, hey, here's this heart on ice.
Maybe the dewey, glistening cubes of ice as they slowly melt into a puddle, they symbolize the fleetingness of human life.
I guess. So, yeah, it's impossible to say. With this monster slash Killer.
They pretty much go straight out into the field. So it's Harley Stone and Dick Dirkin learning to be buddy cops and finding out about each other, finding out about each other's minds and bodies as they investigate the scenes of the crime.
Yeah, and oh man, there's so many great hijinks that come out of this as they feel each other, and it's basically you know, odd couple mixed buddy cop kind of stuff. But it's just really well done.
There's a part where a murder gets called in and they go to investigate the murder and it's like on the top floor of an apartment building and we see that Harley Stone has trouble climbing the stairs, I guess because he's out of shape, and he asks to stop for a cigar halfway.
Up, out of breath. Got to stop and smoke.
Right, But so we find there's another victim of the killer up in this apartment. It's a twenty eight year old man who has had his heart torn out, and Stone somehow knows intuitively what the time of death was. And this is one of the hints picking up on the thing at the club earlier, that there's a psychic connection between Harley Stone and the killer.
Yeah.
Oh, and here we get a there's a really funny part here where there's just a rat execution, Like the partner he Harley Stone pulls out his gun and it looks like he's about to shoot Dick Durkin in the face, but instead he shoots right over his shoulder to shoot a rat that was going to bite him or something.
It was a monster It looked like a monster rat too, because there are plenty of live rats in this picture, but right before he shoots it, it looks like it's a like a puppet rat and looks extra gross. So I don't know, you know, couch that within the narrative as you will.
Oh, and clearly the killer is trying to send a message with these crimes, because there are multiple messages for Stone, his dead former partner's gun is at the scene of this crime, and there is an occult symbol in blood on the ceiling and Drkin immediately starts coming up with theories about this. He's I guess he knows all about astrology, and he's like, it's the symbolifical it's gonna used in the occult.
Yeah, there's a lot of occult nonsense that it's brought up as they try and figure out this killer.
Oh and then there's a there's a great moment where they get they get to Harley Stone a dental cast based on the bites on the heart and it's a giant beast mouth. But still, after this, everybody's talking about a serial killer, like this isn't just an obvious piece of evidence that it's a monster they're dealing with. Yeah, is this a serial killer with a panther's head?
Because as well, we'll find out later and becomes increasingly clear this is not a human we're going up against. This is a monster. This is essentially a grindle beast.
Yeah. Yeah, And meanwhile, some things happen. Harley Stone has another like anxiety attack in an alley and starts shooting his gun randomly at the sky. I think he has to get talked down, but eventually, finally we get to meet Kim Katrol. So Harley Stone goes to I think the grave of his former partner. Is that right?
Yeah?
And she's there, she's placing memento on his grave. Is she supposed to be his dead partner's widow? I might have missed that, Yes, yes, okay, because they've previously had a relationship, right, Okay, Well, as soon as he arrives, she shows concern for his well being. She observes that he is he is not the cleanest or the most well rested, and that he needs caring for.
I think, yeah, yeah, So they go back to this apartment.
Yeah, they go back to his filthy apartment that just looks like the inside of of like an unethical animal enclosure.
It is it is. I mean, it's like every scene in this film, it's like they went wild decorating it. There's so many grizzly details in this this just pig style that he lives in, including live pigeons and live rats.
Yes, live pigeons, live rats. So a few other details I want to run by you to make sure I'm not mistaken here. Number one, does he keep his gun in a refrigerator?
Yes, though we don't have a clear indication that the refrigerator is on.
Okay, maybe it's just using a broken refrigerator as a shelf.
Yeah, he has an actual refrigerator in which he keeps other foul things. But there's like a convenient store refrigerator that might not be plugged up. It has like a shotgun and some AMMO in it.
Okay, that's what I thought. And then also, yeah, the apartment's full of live pigeons and motorcycles. There are just his apartment is full of motorcycles.
How motorcycle signs as well?
Yes, how did he get them in there? Did he get those Harley Davidson's up the steps?
I guess so?
And then also we at one point we see inside his refrigerator, which seems to contain exclusively coffee. And then like mud, there's just a big, just a big canister of mud that is spilled everywhere.
Well, I think there are chocolates in there, or perhaps don't. I don't know. They're chocolate things that he eats out of those little bags. So the refrigerator has those bags in there. Yeah and yeah, and also these foul looking chocolates.
And so basically, as soon as they get to his apartment, well, Kim Katrol is still surveying the land of disgust. She she he like falls asleep on the couch with a cigarette burning right next to his eye, and she has to go put it out for him. But I think the implication is this, this this filthy down on his luck cop uh just just needs his own his own personal Kim Katrol to help make his house into a home.
Yeah, and she's really she's not tremendously disgusted by this environment.
No, she she kind of rolls with it.
Yeah, despite being like this angelic being really yeah.
Oh. At some point also, I think to emphasize how dirty he is, he combs his hair with like a shoe polish brush.
Yeah, yep, yep, because he does groom himself. He's not like, you know, completely abandoned self care. But what self care he does, it's reckless in the wrong place, is like at a bar.
At some point later, Durkin and Harley Stone are driving around and they're trying to like outmacho each other. Rutger Hower is derisively tossing aside books that he finds in the car. The implication, I think is that like books are for weak, puny men.
M yep, yep. I think. This is also the scene where we find out that Durkin has sex every night.
That is what he claims. Though you wonder if he's just trying to impress Harley Stone.
Yeah, Stone is doubtful.
Oh oh oh, and then there was this fascinating strain. So meanwhile, while they're out doing something, I don't remember what they're doing, they're driving somewhere and we see Kim catroll back at Harley Stone's rancid cell and she finds a bunch of chocolates that are just stuck to the outside of the filthy refrigerator in the shape of a heart, and then she plucks one off of the refrigerator facade and she eats it. Disgusting.
Yeah, this made no sense that you would like, why are they stuck there? Why are they being stored there again in a place that clearly pigeons and rats have access to. It seems like a terrible move, even if you want ready access to your chocolate. And then for her to be like, oh, this is fine, this is normal. I'm hungry for chocolate.
Oh wait, no, no, no, I remember where they were going. Now, this is when they're going out to get quote breakfast, but they go to like the moody night club that's playing Knights in White Satin.
Yeah, and then that's where he shaves.
He shaves over his plate at the bar.
But they're getting work done. They're figuring out what the killer might be.
Right, Durkin has a theory. He thinks that he's like, I think you and this killer are on the same psychic wavelength. What sign are you? And it's revealed that he's a scorpio, and Durkin has all kinds of astrological theories about when the killer strikes. And then meanwhile, there is a tent scene where the killer breaks into Harley's
apartment while Kim Catral is taking a shower. It's very psycho and he's sneaking around doing his heartbeat thing, and of course Harley gets a bad feeling, you know, get through his psychic connection and him and Durkin run back to the apartment and they're they're rushing up to the rescue. I was really afraid Kim Katral was going to be killed, but nope. Instead they heard her scream earlier, but she screamed because the water got cold, and instead somebody somewhere
else in the building got their heart ripped out. So Stone and Durkin chase, and then a lot happens really fast. We find somebody else with their heart ripped out. Durkin gets blasted with a shotgun by the killer.
And what looks like he's blasted through a window with it as well, so you just think he's dead at that.
Point, yeah, And then yeah, yeah, he goes out the window after getting hit like in the belly with a scatter gun. And then we also find out Kim Katral gets bitten on the shoulder by the monster somehow.
Though we do not see that happen, though they're.
Still talking about this being a human killer. And again, this is one of the things where like I think the script I don't know, like like you were saying earlier, like the earlier drafts are showing through, because are we to understand in the final version of the movie that the monster shot Durkin with a shotgun.
Yes, yes, and if I was watching for it this time, and it's the shotgun is clearly held by monsterous hands. So our monster is clearly capable of utilizing modern tools, well like the cooler that he somehow got delivered through a shipping service, but also he can handle a shotgun.
Okay, all right, But anyway, we find out after this big shootout, we find out everybody's okay. Durkin is in fact, is not dead. He's like, haven't you ever heard of a bulletproof vest? And Kim Catral's okay. But Harley Stone has another panic attack again. He starts freaking out in the alley and he has to get sedated by cops.
And I have to say, it is kind of interesting to see a hero suffer a panic attack in a film like split second, like a believable panic attack, you know, not like a and not one that reeks of like machismo all that much, because generally in a film like this, it's kind of a rule that stress never gets on top of your hero. You know, there they're up for
the battle. You know, It's like Beowulf doesn't have a panic attack, so I don't know, in a way, it's kind of a nice human element that that Harley Stone is is human enough to, you know, to not be able to stay on top of it all.
Yeah, it is unusual. So he is a gruff and absurdly macho in that classic cop protagonist's style. But he also clearly has real anxiety issues.
Yeah, like to the point where there's a medical intervention here because he's having such a panic attack.
Yeah, that does not seem usual. I can't think of other examples of that. Maybe there are some, but oh oh, And then we get a good flashback scene where it's revealed that he saw his partner get slaughtered by the killer. He just like, they're walking around in ankle deep water in some gross place and and his partner just gets yanked down under the water and then the killer somehow mauls him, mauls Harley Stone, leaving a big scratch on
his arm. And then after Harley Stone comes to later, Durkin sees the big scar going down from his shoulder to his arm and he's like, that's it, that's the psychic connection. But back at the station, there's another great chief chewout scene where there's suddenly just an exposition dump. They're like, oh, we got to move this plot along. So there you find out that during the gunfight earlier, Rutger Howard shot the killer a bunch of times and
yet it's still alive, so something's up. And then they also get some lab reports back where they say that the Killer's DNA is polymorphic. It has the DNA of all its previous victims put together, including Harley Stone I think from when he got scratched by it, and it has his dead former partner's fingerprints, and it has like rat DNA and rat virus DNA. Yeah, this scene is a supreme pizza. They're getting you everything.
All the topic click all the boxes.
Yes. Oh, and then there's a great so right after this, there's a great scene where Durkin and Harley Stone go to the morgue because they realize, oh, the killer didn't manage to get the last victim's heart. The heart is still in them. So they're like, oh, it's going to come back to the morgue and try to get the heart. So they go to the morgue. This is actually kind of a cool looking scene the way it's set up, with like all the plastic and there are these nasty like ivy bags everywhere.
But otherwise it's a very sterile and wide environment. Yeah, because again this film it there's an eroticism of death. So the cleanest, holiest place, the holiest scene in the entire film, the holiest setting is the morgue. Yes, it feels like a heaven with corpses in it.
And since they're returning to the Morgue here, I think this would have been the occasion for Wendy Carlos's return to the Morgue theme, which you can hear a clip of online. Yeah, and you know, once again we wish we'd had that score. But so they're creeping around trying to find things. They end up pointing their guns at some unwitting lab technician who's.
Like, oh, know what's going on.
And then there is a really funny part where they start they start to see that the ceiling panels are jiggling. Yeah, and I think that means, oh, the monster is up there, and they have to face the monster, and there's a big scene where they start shooting at it while it's running around, and eventually it escapes, but Durkin, having now confronted the monster, firsthand is a changed man.
Yes, and here we get to probably my favorite part of the whole film, the conversion.
Yes, this is amazing.
Yeah, this is where so Durkin has encountered the killer and he is shaken by this and he undergoes what is kind of a religious conversion, and Stone is here to guide him along the way. So he's like that anxiety you're feeling, now, well here, First of all, that anxiety is good. That will fuel you. But you need more fuel. You need these chocolates. Eat this chocolate, drink of this burnt coffee that's thirty percent sugar. And now let's get you a giant gun right out of you know,
some kil's video game. This is the Harley Stone Way, and this is how you're going to live your life from here on out. And I am not exaggerating.
Chocolate, sugar, coffee and the guns from Doom. And he converts him to the religion of Harley Stone. You are one thousand percent correct.
Yeah, And he stays converted for the rest of the picture.
It's beautiful, and he basically reverts to adolescents. So he like really starts loving Harley Stone's motorcycles in this apartment, sits on them and he goes like.
Broom, broom, yep, yep, and he keeps mumbling it's like a mantra. He's like, we need big freaking guns. Yeah, we need big freaking guns, big freaking guns.
And he also starts dressing like Harley Stone. I don't remember when this starts, but he puts on a big leather coat.
Yep. So again it's it's so like, this is this was no accident, this is this is brilliant.
And then I guess maybe after this point, I'm going to describe the plot in less detail, but we'll just say it goes into third act Overdrive, and there are various people getting kidnapped. Durkin gets kidnapped and then Harley Stone goes back to get him. Michelle McLain gets kidnapped. That's Kim Cattrol. She goes missing and then they're trying
to find her. There's a great part where after Durkin has been kidnapped to the monster has apparently like carved all of this like occult symbology into his chest and then they realize like, wait, it's not a cult symbols, it's a map, and they're like holding a map up to his chest while he's bleeding everything.
Yeah, bleeding chest. It looks it was awful, like he needs to go to the emergency room. But you know it's like, all right, bundle up, grab some chocolate. We're going out in the field.
And there's a big set piece at the end where they have to go rescue Kim Katrol in like a flooded subway tunnel, and they confront the monster and there are various kinds of like traps and weapons setups they use against him. They try to use electricity, and they try to use explosives, and then in the end, I this was totally inexplicable to me. Did you understand why Harley Stone was able to do a Temple of Doom style reverse heart ripping on the monster?
I think it was. I think it's kind of like when obi Wan battles General Grievous, Like General Grievous has damaged enough in the battle that obi Wan is able to target the inner weak spot. Okay, So I think
that's basically what's happened here. Is like all their attempts to blow him up and shoot him and to electrocute him, it managed to expose the heart enough that he was able to reach in and pull this grotesque like black, just solid black heart out of the monster that continues to beat like NonStop after he rips.
It out, and then he shoots it while it's in his hand point blank. Yes, it looks like he would have shot his fingers off.
Yes.
But so one of my favorite things about this movie. I kept thinking, like, Okay, so what are we going to find out about the monster in the end, We're going to find out like it's actually his former partner as or something like that, But nope, like it has no, it's not any character we previously knew. It doesn't really have any causal connection to anything else that happens in the story. It's only really apparently after Harley Stone, just
because they happened to have met before. Like, it's just a random monster.
Yeah, But it's increasingly difficult to try and figure out what this monster's supposed to be, huh, because we have all these strange qualities that are brought up, some oftentimes conflicting. So we know it's it's humanoid but not human. It lives in the sewers and flooded ruins. It has rat DNA but it also has DNA from all of its victims, so it's some sort of a gene stealer. It's intelligent, it knows human language, it knows occult symbology. It can
use weapons and tools and delivery services. But it's also this total grindel monster. It's a bestial killer. It has monster hands and monster teeth. We're largely left to assume it is completely organic and or naked, but in one of the rare mpses we see of it, it has this kind of motorcycle visor kind of head that makes you think, well, maybe it's part robot or something, or costume or something as well.
It looks like a cross between the xenomorph venom and like Judge Dread with the helmet.
Well, this more specifically reminds me of Judge Death. I believe, one of the foul evil judges where you have like the big teeth underneath the Yeah, I think that's Judge Dead. I may have my Judge all.
I don't know Judge Dread world all that. Well, I just being like, yes, you're exactly right. Its head does look like a helmet with a solid black visor.
Yeah, And on top of that, it may think it's the devil, or is the devil? It eats human hearts. There's a psychic connection between it and the people it's harmed, or at least with stone. Is itself obsessed with the occult and the Chinese zodiac. It's active during the year at the rat and again it's weird. Black heart continues to beat outside its body, so you're left asking, like, what exactly is this thing? Did a human killer mutate into this in the sewers? Is it an emergent horror,
a genetically engineered monster, an alien? We just don't know.
Is it a rat virus that took on bodily form? What was the part about it being a rat virus? There's just like one line about that.
Yeah. Again, perhaps all these rewrites are the cause. But ultimately I really liked this. I love not knowing what this thing is because again, monstrosity is often about category confusion, and this monster is confusing.
Yes, yes, there's a.
Chaotic ambiguity about it, and I find that. I ultimately really like that it's emerged from the inhuman realm and humans are able to kill it. Possibly we have that stinger with the bubbles, but human understanding fails any attempt to comprehend it, and so it has this kind of pure monstrosity to it that it works. And they also don't shoot it a lot. We don't see much of it, so there's a lot of mys regarding what it is.
Yeah, I wouldn't change a thing.
Oh.
One thing I forgot to mention that I thought was great about the conversion to the religion of Harley Stone is that you also see after the plot is resolved, like further religious disciplining to keep him on the path. Because Durkin at one point they ask after they've beaten the monster, I think Kim Katral says, is it dead? And Durkin says, existentially, that's difficult to answer. Philosophy of death is one of my hobbies. And then they both
yell at him like Drkin. I think the implication is that, uh oh, it sounds like he's reverting to his puny milksop intellectual personality and they need to like, you know, whip him to make sure he adheres to the harley Stone Path.
Yeah, eat some chocolate and have some more coffee and cigars right now. Ah. Yeah. I feel like the Harley Stone Way is also similar to like my taste in films, and perhaps someone out there might see one of the films we cover on Weird House and for the first time and experience a similar conversion, you know, like something has shaken you, something has changed after seeing a film like Split Second or Mad Love or Teens in the Universe.
What do I do now? Well, let us recommend this cinematic diet of chocolate, brain jarring coffee and violent excess.
Yeah.
Put that coat on.
Yeah, put this coat on. Have a seat on this motorcycle.
Gets you some plastic pants.
Yeah, So this one's really fun. I recommend it. Let's see places to see it. I think we both watched it streaming on Amazon Prime. It's part of the Prime streaming plan right now, at least in the United States. It's probably. I think it's one of these films is ultimately available wherever you buy or rent things digitally. Got to check, Yeah, yeah, I forgot to check if there was like a really good Blu ray or anything of it. But I hope there is. If not, there should be one.
Wait, I thought you, I thought the last time you watched it you rented it from videodrome.
No last time, or did I hmm hmm.
Our local video store where yes you can still rent movies on disc.
Yeah, excellent place. Well I would have rented it there. Oh well, you know, I take that back. There is this is not the addition that I rented if I did rent it, But there is a very handsome looking Blu ray of this available now Criteria not Criterion. It looks like it's MVD, I'm not familiar with that. But it has some wonderful brand new art on the cover that looks absolutely snazzy. Looks like this came out. Oh, this just came out in August of last year, so
I would say, yeah, check this out. I feel kind of foolish for not picking this up on Blu ray now. And it looks like it. Oh my goodness. It has audio commentary, teraries, it has a bunch of stuff on it. So yeah, if you're into this, go check it out.
The tagline on the cover. So a few things about the box art. I think this is the original box art that may have the newer version may have something more elaborate. Yeah, first of all, the old box art looks like a Sega Genesis game, Yes you see that. And then second I want to talk about the taglines says rutger Hower split Second, and then it says he's seen the future now he has to kill it.
Ah, and he does.
Yeah, he kills the future. Oh and it also says he'll need bigger guns. It's like they couldn't decide, so they included both possible taglines.
Yeah I think that.
So.
Yeah, this this Blu ray looks impressive and has a mini poster that comes with it with the original style VHS artwork. But I don't say see anything about a Windy Carlos score being an option on there. So sadly that will remain lost to history.
If you got connections in the film world you want to put out a new remastered version of Split Second with the all new, original Windy Carlos score, I would pay top dollar for that day.
Yeah. We're talking thirty to forty bucks here. Yeah, so make it happen. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close this one out, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there, you know, people who saw Split Second back in the day when it came out, people who've discovered it since then. What are your thoughts on the film with the performances yeah, everything's on the table. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, this publishes every Friday in
the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. You can find that feed wherever you get your podcasts, and we just asked you rate, review and subscribe as I have been doing. If you go to Summuta music dot com, it's se m U T A m U s I C dot com. That's a little personal blog, but I will put up bits about the episodes of Weird House there. So some of these other media bits that I've discussed here, I'll include them there for your easy.
Access huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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