Weirdhouse Cinema: The Gate

weird houses. Maybe maybe yeah, I don't know that they really call themselves anything. Do do fans of your podcasts call themselves something? We call them toeheads, but I don't I don't know anybody who has self identified as a or you know, we we have fans, but I don't know that anybody's waving the toehead flag really loudly and proudly yet. But we're trying to get it in there. What's your quick uh you know, elevator pitch description of talking Tofu? Oh, well, so my wife and I are

a couple of goblins when it comes to snacking. We're both vegans. We couldn't really find a fun podcast about vegan snacking, so we decided to make one ourselves. It's i'd say, snacking and whatever else is going on in our lives. Uh. We just finished a recording. We went to Universal Studios, Florida try out the vegan food there. It was mostly about the rides that we rode and the things that we encountered while we were there, a little bit about the food, but just having fun with

our family. Uh. And and most episodes are kind of followed that that trend. It's a very funny podcast though, Thank you. There's a lot of laughter. Ah, you're too nice. Thank you. And you guys have done some movie episodes before as well. Uh talked about what are some of the movies you guys have chatted about. Let's see, we've done Scream three. I think we've done Scream too and Scream three, and because this is spooky season, you may

expect Scream four to happen. We usually pair that with some vegan candy that will we'll go through and snack on while we recount the plot. We also do We've done When Harry Met Sally, which I had never seen before, which it's an amazing movie. Rob. I don't know if you've seen it, this is the one with the big Foot in it. The sasquatch. Now that's Harry and Henderson's common misconception, very common misconception. That's the one I've seen. Not this one. You gotta see when Harry met Sally.

We should have done when Harry met Sally for Spooky Season. Fantastic movie, though, you gotta, you gotta check it out. I know the rest of the world was already there. I was kind of late to the party. But it really holds up. So yeah, we'll do that. Uh, we've watched singles, the Cameron Crow movie from that's the grunge scene and Seattle. It's probably not a very accurate representation of the grunge scene in Seattle in nWo, but had a lot of fun with that one. So yeah, it's

kind of all over the place. Things that one or the other of us have held deer in our hearts that the other one hasn't seen. Um. I think most recently we did Hackers from Johnny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie. Fantastic movie. I mean, there's the there's a good movie, there's a great movie. There's a fantastic movie. None of these are objective terms, really, but for me just really just hits me right right in the core. But hackers accurate when it comes to the the hacking lifestyle of

the time period. Accurate. All computers on the inside look like city escapes drawn in green lines that you have to navigate through and find the right door to put the right icon into. Yes, now, speaking of being late to the party on films, the film we're gonna be talking about here today is The Gate. This is a film that I think we're both in the same boat on this one, right. We we both have memories of like at least some of the promotional materials for this film,

but neither of us had seen it until now. That's right. I was really familiar with this one as a kid. I was pretty shy about scary movies as a kid, and particularly I remember getting specifically burned with Poltergeist because polter Geist I did see as a child, as an eight year old, It had a child in it, so I thought that it was okay for children, and that film is very not okay for children. Um, very not okay for children, not at all. I I too saw

poulter Geist at at a very young age. It was one of these where I think my aunt had taped a bunch of movies off of HBO, and I don't know, I don't even know how this ended up happening, but I ended up watching at least parts of Poulter Geist, and it just really scared the heck out of me.

I just I would even just hearing. It was one of these things where whatever the movie was that was taped there, like three movies taped per vhs, and whatever was taped directly ahead of Poulter Guys was a family film of some time, and so you had to like to be super on your guard to stop the tape before the Poulter Guy's intro started playing, because that alone

would create me out. I think Poulter Guist was one that really stuck out to me, not just as incorrect read that child means safe for children, but it was gross horror, it was, and and that was the first exposure that I had really had to gross out stuff being in a film. So I thought that horror movies were ghosts jumping out at you. I was a child. I had no idea. I thought that it was just you know, haunted house things that that would scare you,

but the grossness of it fascinated and terrified me. It was not I was not brave enough to overcome my terror to and old the fascination of it. And still it's one of those ones that to this day I can't really go back to, just because of how badly it scarred me as a child. But I guess my point being that around that time I was seeing the marketing for The Gate, I was seeing the marketing for House, which was another movie. I lump all of those together and kind of that not for me as a child,

uh not for me kind of category. The trailer and the VHS art really stuck out to me and kind of reinforced the not for me nous of it. I think the and and um specifically the the poster art, the VHS cover art. It's very sinister, very dark. Does not seem like it's it's going to be for children. And I don't want to jump too far ahead. I don't know that this movie is for children, but it's definitely kid friendly, I think more than I was expecting.

I'm sorry it's support The Gate is surprisingly kid friendly. And and yeah, that that comparison to polter Geist. I think is very apted. It feels in many ways like Polter Guys for kids. Like one of the things that I still find terrifying and terrifying and super weird about Poulter Guys, even looking back on it and having rewatched it as an adult, is that it seems like a movie where not just typical haunted house stuff happens, but

like you, but you don't know what will happen. There seems to be no rules regarding what's going to jump out at you. Um, one second, it's somebody thinks their faces meat. Then then pizza is crawling around, and then some sort of extra dimensional dragon is climbing out of the wall or something. It's just whatever the effects team can think of is gonna come at you. And there's

a similar vibe in The Gate. But at the same time, the kids in the Gate uh feel like like real central characters with with actual identities and relationships to each other, and the film doesn't have a mean of active in its relationship to those children, or presumably to the children that maybe watching the film. That's that's a good point, And I think a big difference for me would probably be the and Polt You Guys they they wanted you

to either leave the house or they'd kill you. And the Gate, I'm not really sure what the Gate want or what the what the demons in the Gate want. They don't They only seem to want to get out of the Gate, and I guess I guess that's it. I guess they don't care who's in their path or what happens to the people in their path. But then they spend a lot of time with the people who are in their path, and and that kind of confuses me a little bit about it too. We'll discuss when

we get into the plot. They do seem to have a couple of things they need to check off the Box and then maybe one big objective, but kind of a roundabout way to get there. Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's a solid plan that they can refer to. It's it's a lot of instinct. Yeah. I never saw this film as a kid. I remember seeing The Box sorry, weirdly enough, at some point I remember I watched the sequel, The Gate two on TV at some point in the nineties,

I'm sure. And the main thing that sticks out to me, and that is that it features a lot of demonic wish granting, in which the thing that you wished for literally literally turns to poop, like the next day. So there's like a scene where the night before some awful teenager wish for a sports car and you know he's torn around all over the place in the sports car during the night. The next day there's just like an elephant's worth of poop in front of the house. And

this happens multiple times. Well, I think, so, yeah, anything you wish for it turns to poop. What So I don't want to get too hung up on this, but is this the same big demon from the Gate one? I don't remember. The only thing I remember vaguely is the older Terry character and played by the same actor, like he's back in the sequel. Some of the creative team and the director of the same But the only thing I remember is demonic we should turned to poop

the next morning. And you know, at the time, it was like, all right, well, that makes sense that that's the that's a that's a bull's eye of a premise. And I love the idea that this demon tried his best to get out of that gate legitimately in this episode or in this movie. But then in his retirement he just kind of became a trickster wish fulfillment, and and that was how he went out. You know, yeah, I don't remember. I can't really speak to the quality of Gate two, but I do admire that they went

in a slightly different direction on it. They didn't just do the Gate again. But at any rate, Uh, the Gate too is a discussion for another time. We're here to talk about the Gate. So you mentioned that trailer. Let's go ahead and listen to that trailer audio right here. Great, there is a passage way to the most evil place.

You can imagine a gate behind which the demons winked dig back what was one's things, And now someone has opened the gate as weird tearing sound, decomposed corns her dead father, who knows, tearing out by the hands and halling the fleece. You got demons. I mean, you guys are serious about that demon stuff. Demons were kind, you've

been bad. They have great it's not truly alright, great trailer, probably not loyal to the actual tone of the film, but we have excellent narration by the great Percy Rodriguez, who lived through two thousand and seven. He was also an accomplished actor, but he did a ton of voiceovers for film trailers in the seventies and eighties, and his voice alone is to make is enough to make you think, well, this is not for children. Listen to this very scary

adult talk about the gate on this. This reinforces the hey, this is not for me. It also really showcases some of the movie's biggest moments and gives you some of the biggest effects. It holds a few things back, but the overall tones very sinister. It's very dark. It seems paced as almost kind of a torturous movie like the It really showed as is the peril that the kids are all in and kind of their reaction to that peril. So, yeah, if I had the GBS hearing about this movie, this

trailer definitely would have scared me away for good. Yeah, it's a lot of screaming kids, but you don't really see all the scenes of kids being strong in it, and there there are a lot of scenes where the kids are brave and and admirable in the film. But yeah, also it does spoil a lot of the big effects in the movie, So don't watch the trailer if you are looking to go into this one kind of fresh.

I think the uh I was blessed with distance between the last time I had seen the trailer for this movie and actually watching the movie, because I came into it pretty cold and then rewatched the trailer after the fact, and I was really glad I did, because I was very surprised by how competent this movie is and by how much I enjoyed everything that happened in it, even though it wasn't what I was expecting it to be. Yeah, all right, before we get into the connections the people

involved in this movie, Uh, where can you watch it? Well? The gate is it was a fairly big release. It's widely available for digital purchase and rental everywhere. I streamed it as part of AMC Plus, but I think it's also available on some free streaming sites. And there's also a pretty stacked Blu ray edition that came out in seventeen and that's loaded with extras. It's amazing to me that, uh, such a lovingly curated blue ray would exist of this movie.

It amazes me that there's a sequel to it and it you know, it strikes me as a largely forgotten film and that's clearly not the case. That's my misery to the of how of what his legacy is. All right, let's start at the top. The director is Taibor Talkatch born nineteen fifty four, Hungarian born director who kicked off his career with the eight Canadian dystopian rock opera Metal messiah Um. After this film, he did nins I, Madman, and The Gate Too. He directed four different episodes of

the nineteen nineties Outer Limits series Dave WHOA. I don't know if we've actually any of these. They include If These Walls Could Talk, The Voyage Home, White Light Forever, and Blood Brothers. The Voyage Homes sounds familiar, but that's also Star Trek movie, so I might just be thinking of that. His subsequent credits include a mix of TV

episodes and eventually some sci fi original programming. Uh you know that Caliber film, including two thousand five Man Squito, which, at the time when it first came out, I think looked pretty bad, but we had no idea about how bad direct to sci fi channel movies would get. And you know I I today, I am committing to come back for your your Man Squito episode. I'm not brave enough yet I'm gonna get my courage up, all right. So that's the director. The writer is Michael Nankin born.

Accomplished TV director, writer, and producer. He wrote seven Ruskies and episodes of TV shows such as Life goes On, Chica Hope, the nineties Flippers Show. As a director, he's done a ton of TV work, including episodes of Life Goes On, the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and one episode of The Good Lord Bird. And I think he also wrote

I Madman as well. Huh. You know, it doesn't surprise me that he's predominantly a TV writer because I got a very TV vibe from the snappiness of the dialogue in this movie, especially the way that the children talked to each other. I thought was very authentic first of all,

but also really snappy. Yeah. I don't clearly remember specific episodes of Life Goes On, but I think I watched some of it, and it was just that was a time during which I watched a lot of TV, so even if I didn't watch the show directly, I was very aware of it. And uh yeah, there was like there's a wholesomeness to that show that makes sense once you've watched The Gate all the way through. Otherwise you might think life goes on in the Gate. What could

they possibly have in common? Well, you know, there's you get down to some of the character work. I think it makes sense. I think there's there's definitely a thread in the amount of care and respect given to a family dynamic, and especially the way that kids interact with each other, which is really difficult I think for an adult to write, Well, let's get into the kids. In fact, I don't have any data in here on the adult

actors in the film. Uh, they all have just brief roles for the most part, mom and dad and dad and any any adult supervision is completely absent from the entire film, which was an interesting choice. Yeah. I think that the parents occupy maybe forty five seconds of screen time, and most of that time they are either punishing the children or bad mouthing the Glenn's friend to Glenn, which

is just just bad behavior. Yeah, alright, well Glenn. Yeah, Glenn is our central character, our main kid in this, and interestingly enough is played by Stephen Dorff. Yeah. This is the film debut of Stephen Dorff for nine. I think he's like twelve in this though he looks he looks even younger you by I am as even younger. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact he has a very you know, he has a little bit of baby fat in his face, still

has a you know, very childlike quality to his face. Definitely, twelve is a shock to me. I would have said eight, seven or eight. Now when we say the name Stephen Dorff. Most people out there probably familiar with him from such works as Uh His Blade. Of course, he plays the villainous Deacon Frost opposite Wesley Snipes in that film. He was in UH Stewart Gordon Space Truckers in nineties six.

He did some bigger also some bigger roles in the early nineties, including the Power of One and Post Blade. He was in such films as John Waters Cecil Be Damned in two thousand is in a what I remember is being a terrible horror movie from two thousand and two Fear dot Com. I've never seen any of these movies. Having not seen Blade is one of my secret shames, so I'm glad to reveal it here for your listeners. I do need to correct, especially before you know the

rebooted Blade comes out. Um, So, yeah, the The Gate is of my exposure to Stephen Dorf and and it's a good one. Now, prior to this, he he did have some rolls um on a few different TV shows, including the new Leave It to Beaver, Different Strokes, and in Love and War. I'm not familiar with that last one, but but yeah, he'd already gotten his feet a little bit wet in the whole child actor realm. And then he's off to the races as the star of the Gate and he does it competently. I can't. He carries

so much of this movie. It's it's really hard to overstate how competent of an actor is in this one. Yeah, it's it's shocking, especially that there are times too where you he'll he'll act in a certain way and you can sort of see the grown up um Stephen Dorff through him, especially if you've seen other Stephen Dorf films and you're like, it's it's it's kind of weird. It's like staring through a time tunnel or something. All Right.

So that's Glenn, the the the Brother, and then we also have Glenn's sister, al al Is played by Krista Denton. Born nineteen seventy two, and I think she has a great job in this too. She was only active from through nineteen nine. This is probably her most prominent role, but she also had some parts in Nive, the Bad Seed nine eight six is eight Million Ways to Die and some episodes of Silver Spoons Growing Pains, and the

new Leave It to Beaver. Now. What I lack in Blade knowledge I make up for in the new Leave It to Beaver knowledge. I was pretty fond of this series as a child. It was on some syndication for it couldn't have been more than a summer or a summer at a fall. But when it was there, I

was fascinated with the idea of reboots. I had obviously seen Leave It to Beaver on Nick at Night and was just fascinated by the fact that they could grow up and continued the series later, a premise that is just worn to shreds at this point with every show under the sun, the question of oh what would they be like now? You know, but back then it was still pretty novel. You know, you had your Return to Mayberry's, you had your new Leave It to Beaver, but this

one to to take kind of a sidebar. It started in nine three as a two hour movie made for television called Still the Beaver. That movie, UH featured Ed Bigley Jr. Featured a young Corey Feldman not I don't think this was his first role or anything, but um, some pretty pretty star studded made for TV movie back then. You know they were to some actors from the original Leave It to Beaver, right, I think so. Yes, Jerry Mathers does reply reprise his role as the Beaver, and

that's consistent with the series as well. Uh. Ed Baigley Junior Corey Feldman do not hang around for the series. I think the series doesn't happen until a couple of years later, mid to late eighties. So I think they rebooted the reboot kind of in that time, but it's all lumped under one new Leave It to Beaver umbrella. I didn't realize that it went a hundred and two episodes four seasons, because I I remember I remember this existing. I remember having watched reruns of Leave It to Beaver

on nickod Night. I remember parents and grandparents attesting to the fact that yes, this is a good show, and then I remember coming to them excited and saying, guess what leave it to? Beaver is back? And maybe it was. It was a little bit shocked that they weren't as

excited as I was. I specifically remember an episode where there were a pair of tennis shoes that some child in the show really wanted I guess the Beaver's son or something, and they were called Earth Angels, and they would play that song Earth Angel every time he was lusting after these beautiful sneakers that had little wings on them. That's pretty great. That's pretty great. I think with the show like this, theft is really getting the elements together

to make it. Once you've got that going, you can probably turn out a hundred and two episodes just as easy as you can do ten. All right, we have one more central child to get to here, and that is Terry. Terry is Glenn's friend. This is Glenn's best friend. Uh we we believe here, played by Louis Tripp, who was born three just a really pitch perfect performance as this awkward, nerdy eighties kid who's super into heavy metal and uh and also it's just just ready to research

the heck out of a demonic problem once it emerges. Yeah, he's he's such a great casting choice. I think he's this from the parents view, he's this bad influence to Glenn, but he doesn't really look that stereotypical bad influence part. He definitely does kind of nudge Glenn in a more destructive direction and in a kind of rule breaky direction. Glenn probably would have gone there on his own though

in a lot of these cases. Um, but he has the the awkwardness of a latch key kid who has yet to process some trauma from his past, which his mother died before the events of the movie, um, which kind of plays into the plot of it, and his dad. We just we see that he's not around. I don't think that we see him at all. So just a really specific character that he brings a lot to and delivers it really convincingly. Yeah. Yeah, he's he's really in a way. I feel like he's the he's right alongside Glenn.

I mean, it's you can't discount and Glenn as being an essential part of the film, but the Terry's right there next to him right from the jump too. I think he sets a lot of the action into motion, and um, he seems to want to believe just in general, he seems to want to believe in something, and that desire to do that also helps push kind of the events of the of the movie forward and ultimately the solution to the problem. Yeah. Now you said that he was in the Gate too. Is he the star of

the Gate too? Yeah? Yeah, he's the if memory serves correctly. And I did glance at some at a brief summary of the plot. I believe in the sequel, the ideas that Glenn has moved away and Terry is left there in the neighborhood. He's a bit older. I think he's a full blown teenager by this point, so he's an awkwardine and then gets, you know, sucked into another demonic plot. Is it a different gate or is it the same gate?

I don't know it meant, I mean, maybe the same gate, maybe different demons because now we have wishes involved, so maybe it's a different demonic scheme. I'm not sure. I mean, it's all from Hell, right, so maybe it's just different doors at the same house and different rooms in the same house, and different demon demonic inhabitants in those different rooms. But it's fascinating that, uh, that Terry is back at it. Good for him. Yeah, this this actor uh Lewis trip.

He wasn't in much. He was again he was in the Gate and the Gate too. Obviously. He appeared on the seven Canadian psychic TV show Seeing Things, which started Louis del Grande. This is the if you're not familiar with him, this is the exploding head guy from Scanners. The guy's head up, Oh my god, mustache, but he had a full uh like a pretty I'm not sure how long it went, but I remember it from my childhood when I lived in Canada that we had one TV channel and when Seeing Things came on, we would

watch it. I do not remember this child showing up on the show, but I remember the show. I gotta check this show out. It seems like it's right at my alley. It had a really jazzy theme song. Nice all right. Now, there are two other kids that show up in the film. These are friends of Owls. They are the lead sisters, and they're they're worth noting that they're fun in the film. They're not central characters, but the actors who played them um are each in their

own way pretty interesting. So first, there's Laurie Lee played by Kelly Rowan born five. This is a Canadian actor who was active up until I think two of them sixteen on screen and TV. She did a lot of TV work, but also had roles in Hook, Candy Man, Farewell to the Flesh, Assassins, also Lonesome Dove, The Outlaw Years, and The o C. Wow. I know that she's not responsible for this, but Farewell to the Flesh is a

fantastic subtitle for a movie. She was also David not one, but two episodes of the nineties Outer Limits in Another Life and Virtual Future. Virtual Future apparently featured both Josh Brolin and David Warner. Wow. So there's a there's a lot of Outer Limits thread flowing through this cast. Yeah, you well, you got Canadian actors. You a Canadian actors that were active in the nineties, and there's there's like a what s Champ maybe greater that they were on

at least one episode of the Outer Limbs. That's true, it's a write of passage. Now the other least sister, Linda Lee, is played by Jennifer Irwin uh terrific Canadian actor who has started a ton of great stuff over the years, done guest spots and plenty of other shows. And we're talking some big name TV comedies and she's she's still very much active. Yeah, she is fantastic and everything. Every time she shows up, even if it's just for a scene, she feels like she's a regular. She really

steals the scene every time. I know. We're most intimately from The Goldbergs, where she plays the across the street neighbor of the Goldbergs, the titular Goldberg's. The main character has his best friend who is the neighbor, and this is the mother of that best friend, and she and Beverly Goldberg, the mom, have a uh tough start to their relationship. They're kind of antagonistic to each other, but then become best friends. And she's a recurring character, just

fantastic and really nails that dynamic. Yeah, yeah, she's If you're not sure out there who she is, um, you look her up, you'll recognize her instantly, especially if you've watched such shows as uh TVs, the Canadian TV show Slings and Arrows, Eastbound and Down, Halt and Catch Fire, Superstore, Eye Zombie, And she said guest roles on such shows as Better Off, Ted Party, Down Ship's Creek Hacks and Physical so She's popped up all over the place and

is really delightful and everything. She said. Definitely, but this was only her third role, so so she's super young in this. She's if if you didn't look her up, you might think, well should that actor looks kind of familiar, but I can't really place her. I think that was the situation I was in watching this was I kind of had to be reminded that this was her. She's so much younger than the roles that I remember her in. All Right, Getting a little bit behind the scenes here,

this this movie. If you watch the trailer, if you actually watch it, you'll realize this is an effects movie. I went into it not expecting it to be just wall to wall amazing special effects, but it is. It is a showcase for the effects work as much as it is anything else. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that it's the full gallery of what you can do with stop mission, what you

can do with force, perspective, the whole gamut. Now, uh, there's a whole crew at working on this one, obviously, but the main visual effects credit here goes to Randall William Cook for one American Special Effects wizard and director. They really put together. He and his team really put together just so many strange and wonderful effects of varying things that really the poltergeist uh system of you. You never know what's gonna come at you. It might be

a horrific body horror effect. It might be a zombie or one of the showcases of this film, tiny demons running all over the place. Yeah, and being dismembered and turning into little wormy bits that reconstitute Yes. Yeah, the wormy bits are a lot of fun. So Cook He has been involved in just a ton of great horror sci fi special effects film over the years. Um. I mean some when I say great, sometimes they're a little on the cheap side, but they're they're in films where

you still love the effects. Like for instance, he worked on a Laser Blast, which is a film that it's not a great film, but it has just charming and lovable special effects. Yeah. The effects are not the reason that the film is bad by a long shot, and

in a lot of ways there what redeemed the film. Yeah. Uh. To a similar extent, he was in que the Wing Serpent, but also he was on the crew anyway for such films as The Thing, Ghostbusters two thousand and ten, Fright Night, Poltergeist, Too Highway to Hell, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It doesn't surprise me at all that he's involved with these big titles, seeing what what was pulled off in this movie, and his credits kind of go all over the place to For instance, he directed one episode of

TVs Life Goes On, which we already mentioned. He also did a movie. He directed a film from nineties six titled Demon in a in the Bottle. I had to look this one up. I was not familiar with it, but apparently it was the product of a one time deal between Disney and full Moon Entertainment Charles band Uh

production house. He acted in the Demon in the Bottle movie as well, and he also has cameos in a weird film title Dr Calighari, which has nothing to do with the Cabinet of Dr Calighari, but is instead more of an erotic peewee's playhouse sort of the art film. Yeah, it's a it's a weird one. But then he also has roles essentially cameos in in King Kong and The Fellowship of the Ring, So you never know where this

Guy's Gonna Pop Up. And finally, the music in this film really solid atmospheric electronic score by Michael Hohenig and J. Peter Robinson totally agree. I think the ambience score here is or the synthesized ambience score, is one of the standouts for this For me. It really nails the tone just right right from the jump and really just accentuates all of those moments just the way you think that they would and and really just elevates the entire movie. Yeah, yeah,

this one. I don't know for me personally, this would be a like a stands on its own sort of score that I would just like listen to and jam out too. But it's one that just works perfectly with the film. You can listen to it on its own

and jam out to it. It's I think it's streaming most places, and they're there even been a literally at least one special vinyl edition I saw online that has like a pink vinyl record and the sleeve is made to where it doesn't feature the movies art yet symbols a very important heavy metal record that is a prop and a plot piece in the film. I wonder if it has all of the ku trauma of the album too, with kind of the lore and the deep stuff that

helps solve the problems. Yeah, the the the Evil Book of Demonology, and that's just a part of the record release. I think you mean the Dark Book, the Dark Book, Yes, the Bible for Demon's right, all right? Well, well briefly Uh. Michael Hohnig Born two, German composer who briefly toured with Tangerine Dream in ninety five. So I assume that he's

responsible for the synthier parts of the score. Uh. He was a synth performer on One's Galaxy of Terror and other scores include The Max Headroom Show, The Blob, and he also worked on video game boulders Gate and It's two thousand sequel. Oh wow nice, Yeah, it's you know, I said it before. It's hard to overstate how effective the scent is it creating the vibe in this movie from the beginning. The other guy involved, J Peter Robinson Born. I suspect that he's may be responsible for the the

more traditional aspects of the film. Just going off on a limb here, I suspect he was responsible for the more traditional aspects of the score, just looking at the other films that he did. He did. He has composer credits on English Composer. He worked on such films as Return of the Living Dead, to Cocktail, Blind Fury, which is a weird, weird film. That one. It's one where Rudger Howard is a blind man. I believe Wayne's world

in Sino Man, New Nightmare, Mind Ripper, and many more. Wow, it makes me wonder probably this is the case, uh, that he wrote the metal song that is so pivotal to the plot, as well as maybe the party music from the Teen Party. I sound like such an old band calling it the teen Party. Now I was able to I d one of the Teen Party songs will come back to that one nice. All right. Well, let's let's get into the plot of this one. Yeah, all right,

how do we kick this one off? Dave? Alright, So, I don't know if I've made this clear yet, but I'm I'm a pretty big fan of the synth music and the opening credits. You get this ambient chime that just really for me. It tells me your home, You're you're in a good place. Enjoy the next eighties some odd minutes. Uh, and and it takes us right into kind of a I guess it's spoiling it out of the gate to call it a dream sequence, but it

starts out pretty dark. You know, a lot of films like this, I think would would maybe spend more time establishing a real world dynamic I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of films like The Never Ending Story and so forth, where you get to see, like what is day to day life like for this child or these children, and then let's throw them into the supernatural. But this film just kicks off right inside of a dream. We see

Glenn walking around, right, he's he's checking out. We see his bedroom, yeah, I think he he walks into his front door and the house is empty. It's an amazing house. It's actually a real house that they shot this in amazing gorgeous decor. And then he walks into what's basically my dream bedroom from the eighties, which you know, there are colored desk lamps, those metallic desk lamps that have

different colors to them. Uh, there're orange sheer curtains. There's this white metallic furniture, like a desk that's made out of a white metal. It's just very it's it's like a catalog shot and my heart that and the ambient chimes.

My heart was soaring at this point. I don't know about you, Dave, but as a former child, I'm always instantly interested in a little bit judge when any show, regardless of time period, presents us with a child's bedroom, uh, because it's always fascinating to sort of pick it apart, like which details that have either sloppily or lovingly been added, which ones feel authentic, which ones are branded, which ones

are like noticed some of them. Occasionally see something where I'm like, Okay, I specifically remember that generic poster from Getty Images. I know that you just bought the rights to use that or it's like free to use. None of these are things that a child would actually have hanging in the room. Yeah, I think sometimes you get that, uh, like what an interior designer at Sears would do for one of those model bedrooms that they're trying to sell

you the furniture pieces within. You get that vibe a lot. And Yeah, books that are just encyclopedias that are neatly stacked on a on a desk, or like you said, posters that are essentially clip art from that time, or sometimes you get. You know, I don't have a specific example of this offhand, but you get a snapshot of what the director's room would have been. But were they a child, And I think you see that maybe in Terri's room, which is almost skipping ahead a little bit,

but it's almost over disheveled in terms of messiness. But I will tell you as a father myself, my child's room does get close to that stage sometimes. Yeah, same as the as as the father of a young boy. Like you see that energy where it's like, yeah, I really like the image on this box of Pokemon cards. I'm just gonna take this box, flatten it, and I'm going to tape it to the wall because I want

to look at it exactly. So yeah, I I buy Glenn's room as well, though, and you get and it's a great peek into the personality of a child, and if it's executed right in the film, we see that Glenn is he's clearly into like a little bit of sports here and there, and there's a baseball you know, very you know, typical American kid in that. But also it becomes very clear that Glenn is a total rocket nerd. He is super into NASA he's almost always wearing a

NASA jacket. Yeah, Glenn is. He's a rules guy, He's an orderly guy. He frequently wants to call mom and Dad throughout the movie as things get worse and work,

which I think is very sweet. Uh. And he does have this jacket that is patched with NASA patches, And at first I thought that he was specific kind of kid like, like you said, a real NASA buff, but I learned throughout the movie that his sister Al also has the same jacket and they they both have it because they launched the rockets together and that was kind of their commonality that was had deteriorated at the start

of the film. Yeah, they they the film builds up over time you realize, Yeah, they have this sweet relationship, though they also are at each others throats at times, so you totally buy the sibling relationship. Yeah, definitely. And there's also this element of Al being a little bit older, starting to hang out with teens, starting to gravitate away from that family dynamic, and you see that in the

interactions with the whole family. But you really see how that impacts Glenn specifically and how left behind he feels, even as the events of the movie and the gate opening or unfolding, he still feels a little bit of that distance from now coming back to the whole dream sequence. Yeah, Glenn's wandering around this empty house. He goes into the backyard, he climbs into the treehouse. It's in the black backyard. He ascends into the treehouse, and then lightning strikes it,

the causing the treehouse to collapse. And then of course he wakes up. He hears chainsaws or buzz saws running, and then when he looks out the window, Oh, it looks like the tree was actually struck by lightning and

was completely destroyed. Workmen are clearing everything away. And I thought this was neat to in two different ways, because on one hand, this felt very like on par with the childhood experience, where important things like the destruction of a treehouse occur when you're asleep, and then when you wake up or look out the back then adults have

already tended to it. Adults are already on the scene dealing with it, and you're just like, I wonder whether that was about But then also like symbolically, yeah, that there's this innocence of childhood threatened imagery. That's clear in all of this. The tree house is the iconic fortress of childhood freedom and it was just destroyed by I guess, like a literal act of God here. Yeah, And the terror of being in a tree house in a tree that is falling over, it's not even it's worse than

being in a tree that's falling over. You're in a structure inside of it. And I can't imagine feeling more helpless than that. I do think from a narrative perspective, I was scratching my head pretty early on about did this happen while he was asleep? Had this Was it just a coincidence that had happened while he was dreaming about it? Did he cause this to happen by dreaming about it? The parallel between what was happening in the dream and what was happening in life while he was

asleep kind of confused me a little bit. And there's a little bit of both sides ng the line that this movie does in that regard throughout, And on the one hand, I think it is a little bit puzzling as a choice, But on the other hand, I kind of like the ambiguity of it because it's a question that doesn't need to be answered, and a lot of what is going on with these children and what these

children are facing, it shouldn't have an explanation. Children should not know exactly what the situation that no human would you know. And I think it's it's kind of a brave choice in that light to to play into that a little bit. What one one quick note I want to point out this wasn't party music, but there is a music video playing in the dream and we see a clip of the music video for No Pressure by

Canadian new wave performer Eva Everything This is single. She had four album titled boob Tube and she went on to be a science communicator and producer. I'm not I'm not super familiar with with this because I wasn't I don't think I was watching any of these these particular shows, but it looked like she was involved in something that was kind of like Channel one that we had in the stay Ate something like that. Yeah, I'm not familiar

with her. What I'm looking at this album cover now and it's got a very aha vibe with a little splash of color across the eyes and an otherwise black and white picture. It's very very cool, and and I was digging the video. Alright, so back in we're in the Waking World now, and we stay in the Waking World for the rest of the film, and uh, it's not long before we finally actually meet Glenn's friend Carry. Let's describe Terry oh Man. Terry rules first, First, and foremost,

Terry Rules. Terry's got you know, these dark rimmed glasses. It's got short hair. He's this lanky kid. Uh. Masters of the Universe T shirt, leather jacket. I keep wanting to uh, is it a leather jacket or is it a leather vest I keep thinking of it as a vest. I think there's a costume change. I think when we first see him, it's a leather jacket with a patch on the back for the English heavy metal band Venom.

And later he's wearing like a Jeane jack it vest thing and that has I think a patch for the Canadian metal band Killer Dwarfs. Wow, so somebody knew their stuff when they were putting this outfit together. Yeah, so right off the bat we realize, yeah, Terry's interested very

much so in heavy metal. Uh. And then we learned later a little bit into demonology via the heavy metal Yeah, I think, you know, without getting too ahead of ourselves, I really do like how this movie flips the satanic panic angle of the time and turns the satanic panic into what saves these kids and presumably the world is

using these demonic lyrics to undo a curse. Yeah, because in many of these the metal splitation films of the era, it's like, oh, the dangerous metal band is bringing demonology to the children, and he gets some in all sorts

of trouble. But in but in this film, as we find out, no, the metal rockers are actually wise wizards who have given us the tools for our own liberation and and and are actually teaching us how to defeat the demons well may and they do it pretty deliberately too, by minutes long and narration at the end of a song that is just an incantation basically all right, but before the demons show up, we we get we we have to deal with g odes because basically the way

the whole ball gets running here is as the workmen are hauling the tree pieces away, Glenn spots a g ode in the roots, you know, like you often see, well, maybe not often see a geode, but sometimes you'll see the roots of an uprooted tree gripping a stone. Uh, it's always kind of weird and neat, and in this case it's a g ode. So he and Terry realized, well, they're probably more g odes in that now filled in hole. Let's go dig around in there and get some more.

And they find one the size of a beach ball. And there's this great exchange where they like, they find this geode and they're both like, we're rich this. Yeah. I'm not sure what their sense of the market value of gds is, or if they're near a renaissance fair or a flea market or something like that that might give them an inflated sense of what they could do with the g O. But I I did have to

posit at this point because you know what's coming. They're standing at a hole, they're pulling out these rare crystals. They're excited about it. So I paused it and looked at the time stamp. This is six minutes into the movie and we're already at the demonic hole in the ground. We've already seen a scary nightmare. We've already seen Glenn in peril falling over in the tree. I mean this, this movie wastes no time. That's great. Yeah, you get right to the gate. It's called the gate. It's not

the road or the path to the gate. Uh. Here we are literally at the action point. That's right. So is this the point that Al comes out and she's bringing a bunch of trash out to the trash canners? This is that later in the movie. It's basically that she's bringing the rockets out that defined kind of her childhood relationship with Glenn and is tossing them in the trash.

Glenn's upset about out that because she was going to save them for him, and her comment is, well, they've been sitting there for months and you haven't touched them, so I'm getting rid of them. He kind of digs through them, and I think does take one out. But that's kind of your first realization. You saw the jacket with the patches. Now you're seeing that he has a love of rockets that he shared with Al, and that

that love is no longer shared. I have to admit that I didn't pay enough attention to this the first time I watched it, because I think part of it is with movies like this, usually it doesn't matter. This is not real. Character development is not really important. It's just about moving character from point A to point B.

But no, this is actually all building to something. Yeah, it's it's a really loving effort to tie these characters family stories together in a way that did you know I had an older sister, She's four years older than me. I definitely went through these emotions as she was growing into being a teenager, spending less time with the family, spending more time with her friends, and and feeling those

feelings that Glenn was feeling. We didn't shoot rockets together, but I can imagine, you know what that shared interest is that kind of morphs into just your interest, and it has a different taste and a different feel. So I think Terry talks Glenn into lighting off one of the rockets. Glenn, I believe, says, I'm not supposed to

do that, but Terry encourages him to do that. He does it, and it zings off into the house and leaves kind of a burned stain in the side of the house, and I believe that gets Glenn into trouble with mom and Dad, who show up to parent for for a good sixty to seventy seconds and they're quick to throw Glenn under the bus. Has been a bad influence, right, Well, I think that the dad explains to Terry, I'm sorry, this happens at a different point, but Glenn is talking

to his dad. He's he tells him a story that Terry told him about a workman and that was trapped in the walls of the house when they were building the house, and that the dad since kneels down to Glenn and says, yeah, Terry has some problems. Just a very dismissive and the dad had to have known what that kid's history was, you know, And and to be that insensitive is really a insensitive but be really on point with a lot of the parenting from that era too,

so it's not so so disparate. But whatever it is, it's insensitive to Terry, and it's not very thoughtful of glenn state of mind either, especially regarding his friend. And I think it's at this point that we learned that, hey, mom and dad really want to go out of town. I don't remember what they're going out of town for, but they want to do it. But they're having second thoughts about it because Glenn is being bad um, But Al the sister is quick to jump in and saying, hey,

look I got this. I can can, I can can. I can take care of Glenn, I can take care of myself. I can take care of the house. You guys go, Everything's gonna be fine. Yeah. I think that there's a babysitter that they reference that maybe they should call,

and I'm trying to remember her name. It becomes a pretty miss Vandergriff is her name, and it becomes a pretty clever through line throughout when uh, much later, when things are all just going to shambles, I believe he says, uh, I wish Ms Mrs vander Griff was here and just a fantastic call back to at this moment, this decision. Yeah, I wish that the the the parent approved auth already figure we're here because we cannot handle it. We cannot

handle it. But the whole time she's like no, like like he we There are multiple times later in the film where things are getting progressively worse, He's like we should call mom and dad, and Al's very clear and like, no, we do not have to bring mom and dad into this. Yeah, she's at this point she has already kind of ditched the family to go off and hang out with her

teen friends to go shopping. Uh. You can tell that she's got teen ideas in mind with what to do with an empty house, and that is borne out almost instantly once the parents go out of town and she throws a party. I thought that this party could have been just a full blowout nineteen eighties high school party scene. But I was struck by the balance of beer and cigarettes, which is happening. But also there's a lot of soda and bowls of chips set out, and something very childish

about that too. And it really showed how at that age and and I think Al at this point has shown a little bit of remorse for leaving Glenn high and dry and kind of comes back to include him a little bit. It shows how she's not really completely there like the other teens are, yet she there's still a little bit of kid left in her and and it's still a little bit of that bridge still the party of a lot of great eighties hair hit with some eighties fashion. The dog Angus, there's the sweet old

dog that the family. He has is going around helping himself to some of the human food. The human snacks that are left laying about, and the boys not at the party. Terry wants to be in the party, but Glenn's got them up in the room. He knows that Al doesn't want him down at the party. Terry's trying to talk him into it. They're working on this g o. Terry can't crack it for some reason, and then Glenn takes a shot at it and succeeds almost instantly cracks

open and let's out kind of a sigh of gas. Right, Yeah, it's like purple smoke, purple lights. When they start looking at it, it's sparkly like like geodes typically are, but it's it's it's purple light, sparkly like it's emitting its own light. And then also it seems to have left some sort of satanic message on their magic slate that they have. They're the one where you pull up the uh the I don't even know they still have these around, but they were. They were definitely a big part of

my childhood. Yeah, it's like that flimsy layer of plastic that you can write a message into and it'll kind of magnetize. That's the wrong word, but stick with something darker. Underneath it. Yeah, it barely works. It was we I remember loving these, and you could they were sometimes branded with different TV shows and whatnot, that they barely worked. Anything you'd write in it or drawn it would kind

of like unstick and become unclear. So really, the demons here trying to reach out and converse with humans through this medium. It was a poor choice. Yeah, it barely works. Here. You can barely make out that there is an incantation. I kept thinking that one of the kids had written something and just done a bad job at it. But it is the demon speech. They picked the objectively the worst tool to communicate with. Meanwhile, downstairs, the party has uh has gone on to the next level, which is

is storytelling. Yeah, they they're the camera pans across and there's a group of about twenty teenagers sitting around listening to one teenager tell a scary story, which is like a camp fire style scary story, not even a specifically or related to them or related to their lives, just a very kind of hokey scary story. Candle light all

over the room. Uh, these these party animals who are throwing down so hard just moments ago, I can't imagine what the transition would have been to candle light scary story time, but that's where they are, yeah, because there doesn't seem to be a clear leader of the party and we don't see al commanding them all right story time, But the next time we check in with them, Uh,

they've moved on to attempting levitation. And it gets a pretty plot oriented here because one of the jockey r teens that they can't get him to levitate, and he's like, well, let's get He sees Glenn and Terry coming by. It's like, let's make him do it. Let's get the little guy, and uh, he agrees, but he gets scary pretty quickly. Like this is where we get into that weird area of and we have to ask the question is Glenn magic? Because Glenn actually does levitate and he ends up hanging

onto a light. The light breaks and it's scary and Glenn runs off crying. Yeah, he goes like full Wonka with the lifting drinks and like you can't stop, and keeps kind of going up and going up, and then does break the glass, which I guess breaks the spell somehow, falls down, gets really embarrassed and cries, which again, like the way he plays these these childlike moments, the way he plays his excitement at being asked to come and participate in the levitation, They're so authentic and he does

such a great job at delivering those. Yeah. I think this was the point in the film where I really started realizing that when you have the moment of him crying, uh, you know, like a child, but also kind of unlike action oriented child characters in movies typically of this caliber, uh, they seem to really take the take him seriously, come together. Uh. So, so he's up in his room crying, Allan Terry come up to sort of talk him down. H Glenn says, I want to call mom and dad, and all insist

that it's not necessary. But me, I'm watching this and as a parent, I'm thinking, no, you shouldn't call mom and dad, Like lights have been broken at this point. Uh, mom and d should be called. But how overrules it? And I think Glenn speaks to this, but the focus is so not on the fact that this child has levitated off of the ground up to the ceiling, like nobody else acknowledges or it seems to care about that. And to me, that is like, don't just call your parents, like,

everybody's gotta go. We gotta get everybody out of this house. We've got to get over to Mrs vander Griff's house, get away from that situation. And it, you know, it speaks to this recurring sentiment that I that I had throughout the movie of what are these demons trying to do? Are these just the effects of opening the gate and they're just being a little bit more of a ethereal state to the world around the house, or are they trying to be scared? Are they trying to be manipulated?

Is something intentional happening to them? Yeah? Yeah, And we we never get a real and it's kind of nice that we keep it ambiguous. Nobody ever, like it would have been a different type of film if what's her name, Mrs Vanderbeek, Mrs Vandergriff, Mr Vandergriff were to show up at one point and it turns out she's actually like a Mary Poppins demon fighter and she's like, look, the demons are trying to inspire your fear, which they feed off off, and then they use the interview the fear

to open the gate. And then she's like, you know, killed by a demon before she gets help. But we don't get that, and then I kind of like that we don't. Yeah, yeah, I think it. It leaves it a lot more ambiguous, but also just leave space for fun. And that's what this movie delivers. And when you think fun, you think sleepovers, and we get the first of many sleepovers at this point. Yeah, Terry wakes up. Uh. I believe Terry is the first to wake up. Correct, Terry

sleeping over? Like it's kind of like Owl's solution is like, we're not going to call mom and dad, but you know, Terry can sleep over. There's a very cool effect happening at the transition to the scene where it is the moths that are surrounding the bugsapper outside of the window or being projected onto the wall of the bedroom, and it's stop motion effect that's really really effective. It makes the moths look enormous. Uh, and it really Chef's kiss

to that one. Yeah. Yeah, something unsettling is happening, and you see it reflected in in in nature before things start getting really weird, and then they get really weird

pretty quickly. Yeah, Terry has dreams of his mother. I think he wakes up and and here's her calling him, I think goes downstairs opens and she yeah, she walks in and it's like an angelic scene where she's there's like smoke and white light and she holds up her arms and she's like like, Terry, I'm back, and he uh engages in a awkwardly long embraced with his mother where they spin around. And then I believe that the Glenn and Al wake up and do they hear something?

Do they for some reason? They get up and they come out to investigate. There's like a sound, and then there's like stuff moving around in the walls, you know, kind of like for Krueger style where it's like poking up the walls and and uh, like the walls were made out of rubber, and so everything's getting freaky, and so Glenn and Al come out or Glenn comes out, Al hears this, or Al comes out or he wakes out up and then there's Glenn down there, um and well,

and then then he gets even weirder. Yeah, they call his name and he kind of snaps out of his dream or sleep and realizes that he's holding Angus the dog in his arms. And this is the point where I'll confess to being a little bit confused. He throws the dog down because he's surprised that it's not his mother. Justifiable. The dog is dead, and I cannot figure out was Angus dead while Terry was holding him? Did Terry throwing

Angus down kill him? I'm not even gonna get into at what point was Angus in the situation, because I don't think Angus opened the door and walked in on two hind legs, you know. I imagine that that Terry picked Angus up at some point to at the point he needed to hug something would be my take on it. But but what are your thoughts? Did did Terry accidentally kill the dog? Or was the dog dead? Slash? Did the demon kill the dog? I Am absolutely not gonna lump this one on Terry. I think it had to

be the demon. Um Nobody blames Terry for this in the film later on, when they're talking about Glenn's like Angus was super old. He they don't live much longer than this anyway, So other than that, they don't really engage with the whole scenario too much. But either way

that the dog is the dog is dead. And I will say that I know a lot of people do not want to watch a film and which the dog dies, at least in this film, when the dog dies, like like everything else we've been discussing, they take it seriously like it's people are affected by it. It's actually part of the plot and it's not just like, let's shock that audience by having a monster eat a dog. That's right. They don't spend a lot of time showing it either.

I think they There is a weird bit where Al's boyfriend or suitor offers to take the dog to be cremated or buried, but cannot do it, and he's kind of carrying the dog around in a blanket this entire time, puts it in the front seat of the car, tries to drive it uh to the animal shelter or the animal hospital, and then it's closed and has to drive back. We're not there yet, but I agree they do do it very sensitively and delicately, and most of all, they spend a lot of time on how Glenn feels about

it and how upset he is by this. And again he's like, look, how the dog has died. We should call mom and dad and she's like, no, no need to call mom and dad. And again I'm thinking is especially as the parents like, no, you call up my my dad, like the light is broken, the dog is dead. Calm mom and dad and at least let them know, because I think for a while there I'm not even clear that there. I was like, what they do with

the dog? Is he in the freezer? You don't? It becomes clear later that that one of the teen friends has been tasked with taking the dog unceremoniously to the like the animal shelter or the or whatever, to have it disposed of, and to be quick about it because they're going to the beach and they want him to join them at the beach sooner than later. So it's a weird friendly gesture. It's weird that Al isn't going with him on this trip, uh, And it's weird that

they want him to be quick about it. It is a little bit strange how removed Al is from the situation. She doesn't seem nearly as upset about this as Glenna does. Uh. And maybe it's because she doesn't want to think about these things that are happening. Kind of Stephen king it level of grown ups not thinking about this the same way that a kid is. But again she's on that bridge between childhood and being a grown up, so she's on and off with her sensitivity to it. Yeah and

and yeah. Sometimes something strange or traumatic happens, you gotta get your mind off of it, which is what this is what Glenn does. Because we Glenn go home, we get to see Glun's home. At this point. We see that it is a wreck. The living room is just like in the kitchen just has stuff everywhere. There's cold pizza out and he just grabs the slice and eats it, presumably for dinner, and we get the idea that like this is kind of par for the course these days.

Um home. Home is not maybe not all that great for Glenn at the moment, But then he goes to his room and it is a glorious site. We described a little bit already, but it's trans transformers, optimist prime kite hanging from the ceiling, heavy metal posters on the walls, many of which appear to be real. I do get kind of a clip art vibe from some things that are on the wall, but for the most part it's believable. And he even has a handmade banner back there that

just says metal. I think the thing that really says the most about his character to me is the posters on top of posters, which is a very genuine kid thing of Hey, I like these, and I'm gonna put another one up and it's gonna cover a quarter of it. But that's okay. It's gonna be at an angle. But this is the band I really like at this moment. I don't not like the band that it's covering, So it just kind of becomes this ever growing patchwork of stuff.

But yeah, just a filthy room. He's jumping up and down on the bed, rocking out, listening to some metal. Do we know the name of this band? Um? I think this is supposed to be the fictitious band Sacrifice or Sacrifice. It's s a c R I F y X. The album is the Dark Book because we see him handling it. But wait, at first, he just he throws a blanket over, like a rainbow blanket over his shoulders, and he's rocking out and he's he's lips sinking to all the cool metal voiceover stuff in it. But then

it begins to dawn on him. It's like there's something in these lyrics. It's matching up with what is going on in the neighborhood here. This is what that's going on over at Glenn's house. He busts out that that Sacrifice album and the record booklet for the Dark Book is the Dark Book. It's like basically a tone of demonology that's just ready to go in the vinyl record.

Just imagine put it yourselves in the in the in the shoes of whatever necromancer or or wizard this was who wrote this demonic tone of how to presumably both release and seal these demonic enterities. And you call it the Dark Book, like it's the Dark Book. It's gonna be the only dark book that ever exists. Well, maybe it's translated from the Latin. It sounds coolers Latin, you know, right, Maybe it's a dark book in Latin, and they acknowledge that they would be more and that this was just

one of them. Yeah, it's also not very long if you can fit it inside of a vinyl record. Uh, maybe there's just Ultimately, the demon summoning ritual is a lot more simplistic in this um in this film, because it can be actually accidentally done. The demonic realm is kind of a unitask thing is there's just one demonic realm, one demon and like a can opener, there's one tool to summon and seal it. So at this point in the film, they're like a few different things going on

at once. Um we uh, we have the team dude that's taking the dead dog's body around trying to drop it off an animal control. Like we said, he comes back to the house with it because they won't take it. Nobody seems to be home. But then he sees he sees that hole in the backyard, and we don't see him do it, but then we later see that the the hole has been filled in. Um, so presumably he dumps the dog in there, but he does a nice job laying the sad back in place using the sad squares.

So it's not as as lazy and act as you might think. I do wanna you know, I have in my notes here at this point in the film, and I'm not sure if it's in this scene or a scene that that we just went past. But you know, a lot of the kids insults to each other pretty unacceptable, pretty unforgivable then and now. But one that that shines through is quote buzz off clown face, which is delivered directly.

I think Glenn says it to one of the sisters, and it said so sincerely and so earnestly, And it's such a quaint, charming, but but no less sharp and cutting insult that I had to make a note of it. Yeah, the kids are in the teams are downright mean with their insults at times. But yeah, certainly some of these insults that are thrown by the kids have not stood

the test of time. That's right, that's right. Um. So Glenn's at home alone, he looks out and he sees that the hole is back, and then they pulled some wood over it. Yeah, that treehouse. They're like, well, let's cover it up. Yeah. I don't understand. I guess that's to keep things from falling into it. Uh. This is happening while Eric is bringing the dog back, right, So we're getting kind of a split back and forth between

the two of them. Uh. This is where Terry is talking to Glenn about the Dark Book and kind of onboarding him to the concepts. And this is where again Chef's kiss. He puts the record on and plays it backwards. And when you play the record backwards. It tells you how to seal presumably the whole, how to seal the gate. Yeah, there's there's a wonderful scene in Glenn's This isn't the basement. Uh, this is Terry's basement, right or is this Glenn's basement?

I think it's Glenn's basement. Okay, Yeah, there's like a drum kit down there, but more metal posters, like all the metal posters that didn't fit in his room or down here, and he's walking him through everything. He's given him the full pitch on this band about how they were really deep into demonology and they had this thing called the Dark Book quote that's like the Bible for demons, and this is where they got all their lyrics from.

But yeah, there's this They really stressed that this particular metal band sacrifice or sacrifice. Um, yeah, it's entually. They're wise wizards who are giving us information on how to not only summon the old gods but also how to defeat them. That's right, that's right. Um, it's just that simple. And it's as simple as writing a song with forward sounding lyrics that makes sense but also work as backwards sounding lyrics that actually in part information, difficult, difficult to

follow information. So at this point, with their newfound exorcism skills from having listening to the listen to this album once and read the liner notes, Glenn and Terry they go back to the pit. They like, let's go ahead, let's see this puppy up. Uh and uh, and so they start reading some stuff, reciting some stuff. Al walks up,

she's suspicious of this whole affair. But then we transition into this kind of sweet moment where we we we were we had the understanding that Al was going to go to the beach with their friends, but instead she reveals that no, she's she's not going to go to the beach, and she has a gift that she gives Glenn, this thoughtful gift that of course turns out to be more rocket stuff. And so we this kind brings back, uh, this bond between them. Uh. This is some nice uh,

some sweet stuff going on in this scene. Yeah, definitely, And they they launched the rocket right after that. And again as a testament to all the craziness that's going on, all the weird stuff that's going on, this hole that keeps appearing in the backyard, the levitation, this dead dog, and they're able to just kind of shrug it all off and have a really kid moment where they're launching

the rocket together. At this scene, Al does have the rocket patch jacket on as well, so they're both kind of in uniform, just like the picture that Glenn looks at on the wall earlier in the movie. It's a very sweet moment. Now, pretty much from this we transitioned to Al, Terry, and Glenn playing cards later that night. But then the Lea sisters come over. So even though the beach party was canceled, the Lee sisters decided to come over and hang out. It looks like there's gonna be.

They're gonna be yet yet again. More sleepovers, this time dueling sleepovers. Belief sisters doing a sleepover with Al and the interior and Glenn doing a sleepover. Of course. Yeah, there there's a scene where Glenn and Terry A are messing around in the parents closet and just just a rifle shotgun in the closet that Glenn's picking up and winging around. And again very of the time, I'm sure, but so so Bizarres. Yeah, there's a lot, a lot to be dissected about that theme for sure. Uh, certainly

kind of horrifying to modern viewers. It's like, oh my god, they've gone straight to the gun, Dad's gun in the closet. Uh. This will of course be a plot element later on, but we have, but we've established it for now. One thing that we kind of glossed over when Glenn, when Terry was onboarding Glenn into the Dark Book and the contents of the Dark Book, is that we do see

what I keep referring to in my notes as the minions. Uh, not those minions, guys, but actually little humanoid creatures that are probably what ankle now shin shinn hide to Kneehi, probably about that. Uh, that's the first that we see them kind of recorded in some official record. Yeah, yeah, these little um. I often refer to creatures like this as gromlins because they're sort of generic grimlins. But but these guys, these guys are tremendous. They're one of the

my favorite effects from the screen. We see more and more of them as the film proceeds. They're little homunculi dudes with with like glassy eyes and little little vampire mouths and pointed ears, their hairless and the effects here. You might expect creatures like this to be created via

stop motion, but instead it's a forced perspective stuff. For the most part, I think there's a puppet here and there, but for the most part, we're looking at multiple costumes worn by presumably full sized adult humans that are then

made to look like tiny, scampering, squealing creatures. Yeah, you know, I think there's a combination of the stop motion that a combination of well, no, it's the same combination stop motion, and then there's a little bit of forced perspective with humans and costumes, and then there's a little bit of that projection that you see a lot of in Ghostbusters or other other other worldly effects. And I think the projection really stood out to me because once you see

something like that, it's hard to unsee it. But to stop motion in the rubber suits force perspective, I found myself trying to figure out which was which in a lot of cases. And that's that's good effects. And if you ask me, I think if you're if you're even hesitating to to be able to tell the difference between the two, they've done their job really, really well. And sometimes they'll be back to back shots of uh, stop motion, Gromlin.

I like that better than Minion. Uh taken right next to a human in the costume looking through large stair banisters. You know. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty seamless. I like it. So a lot of a lot of weird stuff is happening, like this is the night where everything goes haywire. Uh. So a lot of different things start start occurring, a lot of weird stuff. So something's creeping around the house. A window in Glenn's room explodes, uh like something like

some forces busted in. So he wakes up Al. I think the least sisters get up now, or maybe they stay asleep for a little while, but they go and wake up Terry, and we get this switch this uh this uh this scene where they're trying to wake up Terry, and then Terry walks up behind them and he's like, hey, guys, what's up, And we get that Nightmare reveal that oh it's the dead dog Angus in the bed in Terry's place, But Terry's there in the room with them all through

your screaming, and then nightmare monster hands reach out from under the bed and start grabbing their ankles and they're trying to pull al under and it's a really scary scene out of nowhere. Yeah, it's it's a perfect one to punch of you think this is the impactful moment when they realize that it's the dog and that somehow the dog is back. Even backing up little bit more, it's really impactful moment when the moths are attacking the

window and the window shatters. Yeah. Yeah, and then you come up and see Terry, but it's not really Terry, it's Angus. There's a shock moment at that and then at that moment the hands reach out and grab her and it really is a one to three punch that it's thrilling. And so the least sisters are up at this point. It's and they realize what needs they need to do, need to get out of this house, so

they run for the front door. They they're actually going out the front door, and then seemingly Mom and Dad show up, but it's not Mom and Dad. These are clearly uh, demonic doubles of Mom and dad. Uh. And when who is it? Is it Glenn or is it Awl that runs up to Dad here? So Glenn runs up to him, and the reason that I remember this is this kind of kicked off a little bit of the wish fulfillment thing that you're referencing in in the

Gate to. Uh. Terry got it a little bit earlier with his mom during in the Dream, and Glen's getting it a lit a bit now because he's been wanting to call Mom and Dad this entire movie, and now he comes out on the door and sees them. He's so excited that he runs up to them and pretty quickly. I mean, they can't keep this charade up for very long. Uh. The dad's voice transform. He kind of does up you've been bad and grabs Glenn and and tries to squeeze him,

choke him. I think it's choked like that when like reaches up touches his face and like Dad's face immediately collapses into a stream of pus. It's it's horrifying. Yeah, it kind of folds inward on itself. Pus comes out of it. He drops Glenn. Glenn backs away from it, and then his head falls off. The Dad's head falls off and shatters on the sidewalk, which just an amazing, amazing effect. Yeah, they went nuts with these effects above

and beyond. But the kids at this point realize, oh loue better turn around, so they run back into the house. But the house is also where the monsters are, so they go for the back door, and when they're heading out the back door, that when the Gromlins the little Homunculi attack and we get the first of many tremendously fun scenes with these little guys scampering around. Yeah, I love it. That's we get to see him in the flesh. Literally. The combo of stop motion and reprojection is really strong

in the sequence. Uh. One of their arms gets cut off in a door when the door is shutting. The shot is in the trailer. You see the arm kind of descend down the crack, fall onto the floor, and then turn into kind of these little stop motion worms that kind of skitter off um off of off camera.

They seem like, I want to say, there was a Sesame Street sequence that had these little clamation worms on them, Uh, the same similar type of effect, but all white, all the same color as the Gromlin and presumably going to reform the Gromlins somewhere else. Uh was the other other strange things happened? They the phone rings, they pick it up, but it's a demon prank call again, we get that

dad voice going, you've been bad, and then the phone melts. Uh. And I love that you've been bad part because it's such a great demonic exaggeration of a very simplified childhood fear of of both doing something bad, having done something bad, but then being caught and and having your parents disappointed or mad at you over it. It's also a line that Sloth uses against Mow for Telly and Goonies, which happened a couple of came out a couple of years before this, and I kept wondering if that was a

reference to it. I think it's a stretch for it to actually be. But that phrase you've been bad is a very short, strong and powerful one that works really well in both movies. Well, at this point in the film that the kids realized, okay, well we tried running out the front door, didn't work. Tried going out the back door, didn't work. We've got to close the gate. So really, without much more terrying about, the kid's head out back to deal with the gate. The least sisters

are initially with them, and then they bail. They realized, well, this sounds a bit too dangerous and word side characters. So we're gonna go back again. Um. So they get to the gate. The gate opens, its spewing purple smoke and light. Terry tries reading the Bible at it a little bit. They got a Bible out of one of the drawers in the house and it seems to be working, but then the whole swallows Terry up and we get another homuncular attack sequence where Terry is attacked by tiny

demons in the whole. They're climbing on him, they're fighting him. They're swarming over him and pull him on it, pulling on his legs as he's trying to climb back out. That's right. I do wanna point out a small movie flub here in this scene is that Terry is reading the Bible. He he doesn't know what to read. He's saying, you know, he's asking for suggestions, and they're saying, just

read anything. And so he reads from Genesis, which you know, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, which okay, yeah, you're gonna pull a random line like, go for it. But the book he's holding, he's halfway through, and we all know that Genesis is the first book in the Bible, and that this is on the first page of the first book in the Bible. So I'm

gonna ding these guys a little bit. It's not gonna hurt their overall score, but just know that that somebody's watching this sort of thing unless they had to the route one of those reverse books where um Old Testament comes after New Testament. I don't, right, Yeah, yeah, there's a revised standard. Yeah, but yeah. The minions start to swarm Terry while he's in the hole, and this is a pretty intense moment um, particularly for Terry. I might be naive, but I had in my mind maybe we're

misunderstanding these Gromlins. I know, I'm going back and forth between millions and Gromlins. I just can't get the millions label out of my head. But I thought maybe we were misunderstanding these guys. Maybe there's a chance that they're helpful or something like that, which is like a wrinkle that they would bring into a horror movie nowadays. You know, like, no, the humans were the monsters, but now they proved themselves

out to be monsters for the first time. In this scene where they are actively biting Terry, they're chewing into his flesh. They're chewing into his neck. He's like fending them off, away from them, but their numbers are increasing. Yeah, luckily Alan Glenn are able to get a rope and throw it down the whole car. He's able to fight him off a good bed. He stomps one of the Uh. The creature is pretty good. Uh. They get him back

up out of the pit. They read a little more Bible at the pit, and then they just go ahead and pitch the whole book in and it explodes like a hand grenade for the moment, like they won. And yeah, it closes back up magically, and their sod there too, I think. Don't quote me on that, but they jump up and down in celebration on top of the hole to Hell that has just closed up. And I get that their kids and that they're not thinking this all the way through it, but they've been pretty competent so far.

It's like, maybe give it a little bit of clearance and give it some time to to cool and settle in. That's the advice I give my son. I'm like, look, if you ever open up a pit to hell and you successfully close it up with an explosive Bible don't just start stomping. Can't be one who to resent sure that it's close, give it thirty to forty five minutes, go have a snack and see if you still want to jump on the hole in celebration, and then go

for it. So they go back inside. Eventually they find the Lee sisters hiding in the closet, which I was relieved by, you know, and not that we're super attached them, but it's nice that they were not murdered by tiny creatures offscreen. Um comically huge layers of garlic around their necks and they're holding kitchen tools and kind of a cross in front of them. Very funny scene, Very funny, but also it made me think, like how much garlic

does this family keep? I feel like I've got We've got maybe two pieces of garlic in the house at a time that this is like like like three dozen garlic heads in here, easily thirty to forty heads of garlic. So they get them out and then well more teen boys appear. They have shown up with beer ready to part al. Wisely just sends everybody home. She's like, I've had enough surprises for one night. Everybody has to go home.

No parties are taking place, and they begrudgingly agree. Yeah, and really, you know, docs some cool points from her which the teens make clear and she does not care about, which good on al. You know, she's finally kind of realizing what's important. And you know, I might suggest she's

growing more than they are. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it took an actual portal to hell opening up in the backyard, but but still growth appreciated and seeing your father's face caved in and rolling off of his body. But of course it's not over yet. Things are not gonna end that simply. Uh. Later on Glenn and Terry they're hanging out, I think in the din Uh, they're kind of horsing around with the g od. It bangs into the wall. Suddenly the wall erupts and this dead

workman is hanging half out of the wall. This is the workman from Terry's story about someone workman being sealed up dead in the walls of the house. That's right, And this is where Terry reveals that he made that story up, which again another wish fulfillment kind of manifesting. This is less of a wish but more of an idea that was in his head made real. Uh, and Terry gets taken. Yeah, the creature comes alive. It's a zombie grabs Terry, pulls him into the wall, and then

the wall seals up. So at this point it's just Alan Glenn. They get attacked by the by the workman. They call him the zombie creature again. Um, there's a great scene where they're cornered by the workman. Al throws a boom box at it, hits him, hits the creature in the head, nail or nails him in the face. He falls over and immediately shatters into a whole bunch of these tiny demons are just running around. That's right, that's an amazing scene again in the trailer. Uh. Yeah,

that that he's made up of them. Again. I don't want them to explain it to me, but I do want an answer. You know, I'm living in that dual space. So at this point they're like, okay, well we gotta go for that gun. Let's get Dad's guns. So they go to the closet. But at this point two things happen in quick succession. That zombie demon Terry attacks, like Terry's head coming out and biting at him. So Al comes in and stabs Zombie Terry in the ice socket

with a Barbie doll leg So good, so good. This is for me scariest moment of the of the film, that he's poking his head out there, that he is actually biting, that he has then attacked, that the kids

have to attack their own friend. It's just terrifying stuff. Yeah, and the Barbie doll leg part of it is like knowing the baby Barbie doll legs are a little weird, Like, you know, we both had sisters, so they both were around Barbie dolls and they have that weird thing where it's like the Barbie doll kind of has like flesh and bone and it has it's it's rigid yet soft, And somehow the idea of it going into an ice socket feels more impactful than than if if if the

zombie Terry had been stabbed with literally anything right, and the fact that the Barbie's legs and feet are pretty firm and solid, and that those feat in particular are pointy, that you know, I had a note that it really shows the tone of the movie and the the intended audience of the movie that this is all pulled up.

You never see the barbie go into the eye, you see the wind up, you hear the impact, and then you see the blood soaked barbie like and the resulting stabbed I but you never get it's a punch that's intentionally pulled to be mindful to the audience, and I think it's a really thoughtful one and characterized by many other moments in the movie as well. Now, shortly after this occurs, the workman shows back up again, more chaos.

I believe the shotgun goes off, but then the workman grabs Al and drags her away into the wall, into the closet wall, and now both of them are gone. It's only Lynn. And earlier in the picture it was said, well, you know the demons, the old gods, they only need to sack human sacrifices in order to fully open the gate. Well, now it looks like they have to human sacrifices, so

things are not looking great. That's right, and you get what for my money, is probably the most impressive set piece of the film, which is Glenn running across this large living room floor of this, like I said earlier, amazing, amazing looking house, and that whole floor opens up as he runs across it, and we see that the entire kind of footprint of the house practically is now the gate and a purple light is coming out of it. Again,

that shot is in the trailer. Yeah, a lot of this away, but yeah, and in this we're getting into the final showdown because at this point I think Glenn seems to realize he's gonna need that big rocket, and uh, the demon little demons are swarming all over the place. And then this is when the giant Demon Lord arrives. We saw a drawing or a wood cut off in the liner notes to that that heavy metal album in the Dark book. But now he has arrived and he

looks tremendous. This is like a stop motion creature that it looks very very original, but also seems like it is like a like a fifth level mega evolution. All of the little demons and Ray Harry Howsing would be proud of this thing. This thing looks great. Totally agree. He looks like a leveled up version of one of those Gromlins. He's got twice the eyes, twice the arms. The second set of arms are much smaller than the

first time. Is just a lot of thought went into this creature and the articulations of this creature and the way that he emerges in arises out of the hole is just an effect that it works just so well. Yeah, and there's like the showdown with the big demon and Glenn. It like grabs Glenn and then weirdly it marks him. It like it touches him, and an eyeball opens and Glenn's palm, which is really well done effect. And and it's also just a real shame because Carrie has been

taken away and Terry would have loved this. This is all get out. Uh and then the demon leaves him. It's kind of like the demons like, hey, you you had a hand in this. Uh, so here you get a special demon gift from me and you get to live to see the new demon world I get. You know, maybe he's going to be an ambassador. I don't know. Yeah, that's what again. What the thing that I couldn't figure out was was the demon rewarding Glenn? Was the demon marking Glenn said that he could see through that I

that's now in Glenn's hand. All we know is that Glenn was spared. The demon retreated and Glenn looks down and he's just revolted, revolted by this eye that's in his hand, which I agree, amazing effect. I don't know how many times I can say amazing effect during this episode, because but there truly are so many amazing effects here. Yeah, and in different different realms, Like this is a different style effect than anything I think we've seen thus far.

It's it's weird, I said. It reminds me a bit of the Stephen King's story. I Am the Doorway. Yeah, you know where the guy comes back with with eyeballs opening up in his hands, and this is a way for alien entities to to see through him. That's right. And I think that that, to me suggested that Glenn was maybe now a minion of the dark One, the larger demon, and maybe we're was serving as his eyes at least in that space, and that was why he felt like he was no longer needed and retreated. But

it's it's pretty revolting, and it's a very convincing. I can figure out these other effects. I can't figure this one out. I don't know how they pulled this one off, all right. So we get down to the final bit here. So the Great Purple Vortex is rising up out of the pit. The demons are submending their control over the earth. Only Glenn can stop them, one assumes, so he if I remember this correctly, the way it goes down as he stabs the palm eyeball, presumably to call the big

Demon back. Big Demon comes back, is on his way back. Meanwhile, Glenn is setting up the launcher for the rocket, this big rocket from the closet, but also using part of a rocket kit that Al gave him. Uh. He's scrambling for batteries, you know, kind of like the classic must reloaded the last second bit from a from an action film, and I suspense. The demon Lord returns and Glenn fires the rocket into it. And this is great too, because the rocket has been cemented in the picture already. Is

this it's kind of this thing. This represents this loving bond between the siblings. It's uh, so it makes sense within the context of the film that it's not just a random child weapon. This is not just kid Rambo fighting off a demon like this is something that represents uh, bonds of love and truth that would naturally slay a demon. And it does just blows the demon all to glowing pieces. Yeah,

I loved this sequence. I do have to admit that this is where the movie started to lose me a little bit, this concept of this being the solution to the problem. I was on board with the demonic incantation. I would have been on board with them finding a way to more articulately work that into a message of love and light. I think I like the idea of a symbol of love and the shared bond and how

well they seated that being what saves them. But for some reason it lost that connective tissue at that point for me and just felt like a very convenient way to end the movie. Um but regardless, it works, you know, I mean narratively it worked. It saved the world. All the weird purple weather stuff goes away, that the pit seals back up, and then well, every everyone's still alive. Al shows back up. Here's Terry, uh so Alter, here

and Glenn are all reunited. The house is wrecked. The parents are not going to be crazy about this, but we get the sweet scene where you know, everybody's still okay and they have successfully defeated the demon. I do want to point out that when the demon explodes, there's a hilarious explosion scene where Glenn is held out of the house end over end overhead in a projection effect, but literally pin wheels out of the house and lands

to safety. We get one final scene to where we see the backyard, We see the place where the pit was, and there's like, there's a sapling growing up there, you know, the like the the tree that was there before is being regrown. And there is Angus, the dog still alive, carrying a shoe around, and it's it's sweet, it's nice that the dog didn't actually die but is back, but on this and the same level. And I didn't think about this till the second time I was watching parts

of the film. I was like, oh, well, this this scene is also very disconnected from the rest of the movie, almost as if a test audience thought it was sad that the dog truly died, and they're like, let's just bring the dog back. We don't need any of the kids for this scene. We'll just shoot the dog in the same backyard. But either way we'll take it. A wholesome music plays in the crest role. I think that

it makes as much sense as anything else. If too human sack prefaces were needed for the demon to enter the realm, then Al and Terry should be dead. Uh. Through that same lens, the dogs should be dead. They're all alive. I'm happy that they're all alive, don't get me wrong, but something doesn't add up here. It's not where they revived. Where they I mean, Angus had to be, so presumably Al and Terry are. It's asking a lot of questions that a child audience isn't really going to

want to or be prepared to answer. So it's kind of a wash at that point. And like I said, for such a thoughtful movie to have kind of that gap of of logic there at the end again, not of how the magic works or how the necromancy works, or how the gate works itself, but why everything turned out great at the end of it. It feels like it just couldn't find a way to do it, you know, And so I gotta I gotta take a another ding for that, But it's not gonna affect its overall score.

I think. There's also the final line that Glenn mentions too both Terry and Al as the camera pans away, is you're my best buddies, and that's the That's it. That's the Yeah, they cranked the wholesomeness up all the way and the news music is really um, it's sweet. It's it's almost sickeningly sweet at this point. But but let it, let it slide, Let it slide. It's kind of nice that a movie like this ends on a

good note. The house is still all jacked up. The parents have not returned yet, so there is kind of I don't know if that gets addressed in the sequel what the parents thought about the state of the house when they got back. But there's a reckoning coming that we the audience are no longer a part of because we've seen the happy ending. The best buddies are all survived, Angus has been brought back to life, and the gate theoretically is closed until all right, well, uh this was

the gate. Yeah, this is a This is a pretty fun one, pretty pretty sweet movie. I think holds up pretty well outside of a few bits of colorful and offensive language from the children. That that that I guess flew okay in the in the late eighties, but definitely it's not okay today, So that that would be my

main reservation about say, letting children watch this. Yeah, yeah, I think so I ran into a similar instance trying to show Bill and Ted's bogus journey to my son recently within the past year or two, and there are some insults that are along the same line as as are used here that are just unacceptable. And the lift of having to explain that to a child is you don't want it, you know. Yeah, but I think this. God,

I can't. I can't tell you enough how much I enjoyed watching this movie, how great it was, how fun it was, how deeply I connected with the characters in the movie, more so than I would expect from a horror movie, let alone, you know, a kid's movie. Uh, it's just really really thoughtfully and tastefully done. Absolutely, I agree, And it's it's been fun chatting about the movie with you. Yeah. Likewise, thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on.

So we're gonna go and close it out here before we go, Uh, tell usone one more time? Where what do you find talk Talking Tofu? Alright, so you can find Talking Tofu wherever you get your podcasts um it's You can also reach out to us on Twitter and Instagram at Talking Tofu pod. Uh. You can also find me aad line leader on Instagram and Twitter. If you want to uh and yeah, I think if you if you want to hear us jabber on about snacks. Sometimes we even eat snacks on Mike. I think a lot

of people are really into that sort of thing. Uh, come check us out. We'll have a lot of fun awesome. Well. I'll remind everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema, and that's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. If you want to follow the movies that are covered here, I blog about them at some mute music dot com.

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pod at gmail dot com. It's t A l k I n t O f U p O D at gmail dot com. And I do want to remind everyone talking Tofu it's t A l k I n um apostrophe, right, and then to Yeah, it's a little advice to people who are naming podcasts. Don't get silly with the language or leave off critical letters because it really does make it just that much more difficult to get in touch with somebody. But that's correct. It's talking without the G, talking without the G. All right, Well, thanks as always

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