Selects: Josh and Chuck's List of Horror Movies that Changed the Genre

this October. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Bryant Towdy, middle names Wayne, middle names Malcolm. There we have. I always forget about that Malcolm. Yeah, Wayne named after Wayne Coin, right, Uh? No, John Vane and you were named after Malcolm in the middle. That's right, right. Frankie Munis is my name saying? I hope he's okay. Early, Brian Kranston too. I used to

love that show. Oh, it's a great show. I watched it, um like within the last couple of months. I was cleaning the house and put it on Netflix and still great. Yeah. Yeah, it's really is a good show. So you clean your house, you put on your VR goggles and just cue up Malcolm in the Middle. Yeah. No, I just walk around and bump into things and right exactly. But I put on like a huge feather duster suit. Yeah, so you're just cleaning and bumping into things. That's right, That's how

I do it. Yeah, it works kind of Well, someone's gonna take that idea. Yeah, they like the shark Nado. Yeah, but they should just they should sell that suit with purple drink. I think you get one spot on the floor really really clean. Uh, what are you gonna title this one? By the way, because this was your pick, and we title our own shows some horror films that change the genre, all right, and you should add this a k A. How could you guys forget blank? Yeah, yeah,

we should say like this. First of all, this is a Grabster article, So it's Grabster's list, and he knows what he's talking about. If you look at some of the entries, some don't even have source tags. He's just like, I just know he should just Grabster. But we even took his list and carved some out and put some in. So this is how about this. This is Josh and Chuck's idea of some horror films that change the genre,

featuring the mind of the grabster. Yes, in other words, it is not a complete list of every horror film that changed the genre. Yes, because I would argue that well, and actually I see grabs or put Texas Chainsaw Massacre in there. He said that if this were a top fifteen list, that would be in there. So would Alien. Yeah, he has that Alien ring Goo and the U S remake Ring and I would lobby for Well, Psycho didn't make it onto his list, which but we're going to

put that in. And there was one more. Oh, even though I didn't really think it was that great, the movie Saw, I think kind of changed horror films. And that's what this list is. Not best horror films, but things that kind of changed the game. Yeah, it seems like Saw kind of kicked off that that torture porn, Yeah, didn't it. I can't remember if it was that or hostile, one of the two. It was definitely one of the two. For a sub genre. Well, it's pretty accurate, actually it is.

But most of these are movies that either uh, We're or the first of its kind and maybe did start a sub genre, or movies that were so popular that they just you know, kind of rewrote how people view horror movies. Some of them because of marketing, some because they were really good movies, some because of box office, but all of these I don't think anyone could argue did not change the genre. How about that? Yeah, I

think that's well put dude. Uh. And before we get started speaking of horror, I want to give a plug to bow my friend Toby's movie that's coming out. He's a producer on a movie coming out called The Ghost Story. Yeah, Toby. Uh. When we met Toby, well you knew Toby before me, of course, because he's your friend and I know him through so really, but he was he was small time doing short films and stuff. And since that time, and this has been within the last like since we've been

doing this podcast, he's now big time. Yeah. They did Pete Dragon yeah, um, and then yeah they have this this they did Ain't Them Bodies Saints was I think the one that they kind of broke out with, and then this one, um definitely kind of falls into that same look. And mood and feel what. It's called The Ghost Story, and I think it comes out in July, and I think it's labeled a drama rather than horror

or even supernatural or thriller um. But the reason I tie it into horrors because A twenty four is releasing it and A four is killing it with horror movies lately. Yeah, that's a good Uh, that's good outfit. They did The Witch, they did The Black Coat's Daughter. Have you seen that? Uh? No, it's on Amazon Prime. It's on Amazon Prime right now. Dude. It's one of the best fourror movies I've seen in a while. I think The Witch is probably my favorite

right now. Black Coats Daughter is a close second. And then last night I saw it is at night in the theater and it comes at night. Actually upset my stomach that ending did it? Was? It was that rough? Yeah. I think we're we've we're at a place with horror movies that we haven't been in a long time, like a really genuine good spot. Yeah, like the whole torture porn sort of era is over and the found footage

thing is so played. But I think we'd like with movies like the which I think we've really like there's some really creative uh it follows. Did you see that one? Yeah, like some just really creative ways of bringing scares that I haven't seen before. Get Out. That was amazing. I still haven't seen it. You're gonna love it. I'm I'm envious of you. It's really it's great movie, Chuck, you're gonna love it. Well. I don't get to the movies much anymore, and the only time I could was a

couple of weeks ago, and I elected to see Wonder Woman. Yeah. Not a good choice. A long way of saying congratulations to Toby and his new film, Well, it's funny. We also need to congratulate Toby too, because Toby just got married. Toby and and Nell are now married, so congratulations to them as well. So this is this new movie with his uh directing partner David Lowry, Yeah, yeah, and Rooney Mara. Yeah, they definitely do. So it's gonna be good. I'm looking

forward to it. Okay, So let's get started. Thanks for indulging that, Thank you, everybody. So the first the first movie on our list is what's widely considered the first horror movie, and it's a nine movie out of Germany that um basically was the first film that undertook what's the artistic movement known as German Expressionism called the Cabinet of Dr Kaligari. Yeah, I mean some say, like you said, it was the first horror movie. Some say it was

the first cult film. Um it Uh, well, just you may not be able to get the whole thing if you're not into silent movies, but you should cue up a little bit of it and watch a little bit of it because it's hugely impactful. Um and still to this day like very disconcerting to look at because of it how um ominous and weird it looked, just physically looked. Yeah. Like the sets that they built are obviously um constructive manufactured. They were not in any way shape before him going

for realism. They were going for surrealism for sure. And so like the staircases are at crazy weird curves and angles and um, like everything from the house, the houses, rooftops to the blades of grass are super pointy and sharp, and and the shadows that they employed were just perfect. You've never seen a better use of shadows than this. They didn't get in the way they just created this mood. And it was the first movie to really kind of do that, to just take to use the camera for

something other than capturing realism. Uh, and it it it for that reason, it's considered the first horror movie because that that's such a standard part of horror, whether large like in large part like in a Tim Burton movie, or in small part. You know where you're um, you're using small spaces to create claustrophobia. The idea of using the set to mess with the viewers mind, I think is born in Dr Caligary's cabinet. Yeah. It's almost like they they took a child and gave them construction paper

and said cut out scary things. Uh. And then like like that movie The Baba Duke, I think the actual book within The Baba Duke was hugely inspired by this, uh, the actual movie itself. Um. The plot is about a sideshow operator, a hypnotist who um has a patient that he takes around of these side shows with sleep disorders. Supposedly he's been asleep his entire life, and he uses this patient to commit murder. Right, he's like a sleepwalker, Yeah, somnambulist.

So that in itself is a pretty frightening plot. And to think about that being cooked up in nineteen twenty when there weren't really not such things that you think of as horror movies is pretty impressive. Um. And then some of the deeper critiques I've seen of it was like the the explanation for why the filmmakers chose like these weird odd angles to kind of depict insanity or that kind of thing, Um, was rooted in World War One.

The horrors of World War One had just been seen and revealed and recently taken place, and it upended Europe in general, and especially Germany as well. Um. And that the idea is that they might not have had this idea, They might not have had this desire, this drive to create this this weird set and in fact this weird

movie had World War One not happened. Yeah. This there's this writer Jeff Saparrito, who um kind of put it this way about German expressionism because I wasn't exactly sure how to define it, but you're kind of right on the money, he said. Germany was largely isolated from the rest of the world following World War One, so expressionism therefore became confined to the country refers to a number of creative movements from World War One through the nineteen twenties.

Expressionist works examined the current in future state of the culture through bold and artistic creations of creativity, and often explore topics of madness, betrayal, and other intellectual concepts. And nothing encapsulates these ideas more than the cabinet of Dr Calla. That's basically what I say. Yeah, you did you read that or were you just uh that? I don't know that that one or not? It sounded kind of familiar. Yeah,

not to say you came up with it. Um, so the I of the this set is creating like a creepy tone and texture to everything. Um, that was Dr Calgary. That's how it changed the genre. Yeah, Tim Burton say thank you. Yeah, Um, have you seen Coraline? No? But I know it. It's a They did that to a very good effect. You know. I think Hodgman does a voice in that, doesn't he does? He does the dad. He did a spectacular job because you actually forget it's

Hodgment while you're watching it. That's impossible. Alright, Chuck, Moving on, That was We're Gonna fast forward all the way to what nineteen sixty nineteen sixty three. If you're talking about Blood Feast, well I wasn't, but let's uh. Cybern Simon Abraham's of Roger Ebert dot Com says, this Blood Feast is a terrible film, and a historically important one too, And I think that's sort of the deal with Blood Feast. It is not good by any accounts. Did you watch

any of it? Yeah, sure, it's not good. No, it's not good. It's terrible. It was written on a basis on a fourteen page outline, didn't even have a script. It's got the same cult cloying technicolor of like an early Hawaii five oh episode directed by Herschel Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman. And basically the idea was this, these guys did not see films as art. They saw them as a business and thought you were foolish if you thought it was anything else. So they sat around

they brainstormed movies that they thought no one else would make. Yeah, because they started out making like Porky's esque type movies, and they were they were doing fine with that. But apparently they were successful enough with it that theyre started to be imitators and the market was crowded, so they said, where can we go make movies that no one else is gonna make? Yeah, because we want to shock people essentially.

So a couple of ideas they had that did not make the list was Conman evangelists and Nazi torture, which which were later made exactly. And they finally said, you know what no one's really done yet is hardcore gore yep, Like everyone always cuts away when the knife comes, and you're like, what if we showed the grossest gorrious stuff

imaginable on screen? Yeah, And even still they didn't show so like one of the first murder a woman stabbed through the eye and then the murderer hacked their legs off of the machete, and they didn't show the knife penetrate the eye. They didn't show the machete making contact with the skin. But what they did in Blood Feast, and what made Blood Feast the first of its kind, was they would show the what came after that. They would show the brains on the ground, they would show

the entrails like on the knife. Um, they would show the leg being you know that had been dismembered being put into a bag and like the wound that was left by like that. This was no one had ever done anything like that on film before. No, and it paid off. They depending on who you ask, the budget was uh, anywhere from like twenty to thirty grand and it made between seven and thirty million dollars, Like I said,

depending on where you get your info. But by all accounts it was a huge financial success compared to what they paid to make it. Yeah, and they shot it in um, I think six days or something downe in Miami. Um, based on a fourteen page outline. There wasn't even a script, it as an outline, and basically it was like, murderer

goes and kills this girl. Yeah, next girl, murderer comes in, kills girl, cuts off leg that kind of thing, right, Yeah, I mean, if it matters the movies about serial killer caterer, Yeah,

that's it. There's your plot right there. Um. But the the it was just such a revolutionary movie that the sensors at the time there wasn't such a thing as the m p a A hadn't been formed yet, um, And there was basically no one except for local sensors overseeing movies, so you know, you you could be playing in one town um to all audiences, and then the next town over it could be banned. But these sensors had never seen anything like it, and they didn't know

what to do with it. So it was hugely successful commercially too. Yeah. And another big impact it had was it inspired a generation of special effects. But basically, um, let's be honest, young boys who were doing this on their own Super eight films right and said, wait, uh, I can get a job doing this. Yeah. So including Tom Savini I think was inspired by it, wasn't he or was he inspired by Yeah? I think he was inspired by Blood feast um. And then we should also

give a mention to the Grand Gun y'all. Is that how you think it's pronounced? Grand Guen y'all. It was a theater in Paris, I believe, from the late nineteenth century onto I think sixty two, so the year before Blood Fees came out it had closed up. But it used to do this stuff on stage. It was like a gore fest um, and there was lots of like blood and sex and and like depraved themes in the plays that were put on at this theater. People loved it.

They were crazy for it. Um, and this was kind of like the grand gun y'all tradition, put onto film for the first time and who right for that? You want to take a break, Yeah, let's do it, all right, Charles, we're back. So nineteen sixty or nineteen sixty, not eight. I've got nineteen sixty eight in front of my face. Uh, and that could be no other movie. The Night of the Living Dead classic George Romero film. Romero was a TV director, making TV commercials. Commercial director. Rather, he was

also making short films for Mr Rogers neighborhood at the time. Yeah, and he was he was young. Yeah, I don't I don't know how old he was, but he was pretty young guys still. I think when he made Shot and Not in the Living Dead, he was like twenty six or twenty seven, so uh yeah, but any standard, that's still pretty young unless you're twenty three. So he I'm he had um. He and his buddies were like, let's make a horror movie, but let's not make a stupid

horror movie. Let's make on with like an actual plot that explores like deep themes too, like a good movie. Let's let's make the first good horror movie. Well yeah, so, and we'll delve into that little more, but that that

was definitely a different thing at the time. And the other different thing was that all the horror movies up to that point, uh, they were called the Universal monsters from Universal Studios, you know, all the kind of the classic Frankenstein and Dracula and Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Werewolf, and that was where that was mainstream horror. And George Romero comes along and says, um, how about zombies,

And everyone said, what in the world's a zombie? And he said, well, let me define that for every future

generation of movie and TV goers and lovers. Yeah, and there have been zombie movies before, but they had been things like like Dr Caligari's Cabinet, somebody who was under the control of something someone else or something like that, there was a hypnotist or this was like the first time what we think of a these were ever introduced, like flesh eating ghoules who were dead and come back to life, just what you think of as a zombie.

This guy started that genre, like you said, Yeah, they shot it outside in in Pittsburgh on about hundred and fifteen thousand dollar budget ended up grossing twelve million domestic not bad, and I think close to twenty worldwide. And um was eventually selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. It's a good movie. It's a very good movie. He shot in black and white to save on cost, even though color was the standard by that point, and black and white is also

a little more forgiving for rudimentary special effects. And one of the revolutionary things he did was cast a black actor as the lead, and for no other reason than hey, this guy Dwayne Jones is really good, exactly right. Like, he didn't go back and go, oh, well, you know, our our heroes black, so we need to make the the whole thing of meditation on race and have him confront racism. It was just we're here's the script. And then the guy playing the lead just happens to be black,

and he was the best guy in the auditions. And you know this didn't really happen. You didn't just cast a black guy as a lead actor for no with no like ulterior motive, basically right. So I read this review from the from the Time from nineteen sixty nine. The year after it came out, young Roger Ebert went and watched it and he wrote, um a pretty pretty interesting review, which is basically it was about the reaction

of the audience. And he went to a Saturday matinee that was populated almost entirely by ten eleven year olds, and they were used to seeing the Creature from the Black Lagoon for Frankenstein or um. You know, just just movies that any kid could handle and could enjoy watching, and you know, fun, scary kind of stuff. And he said, that's how that that was how the crowd reacted for the first half of the movie. But then about the

point where and here's here comes spoilers. Everybody, if you haven't seen either Living Dead, just hit yourself in the knee with a hammer. Um. You the the teenage couple go to get gas and when their car blows up and his engulfs in flames, they die. They're burned to death. He said. Right about that time, the tone, the mood of the theater changed and there was no like gleeful

screaming anymore. Kids were starting to like not move and we're afraid to like move in their seats, and some were quietly crying to themselves, and from that the whole, the whole point on, it just got worse and worse for these little kids watching this movie. So it was

a huge impact on horror movies. A uh, like you said earlier, it was kind of the first one to really sort of delve into other issues like if you look up, like significance of not at a living dead or um meaning of not a living dead or something like that. There scores of articles that have been written over the years of how it was a metaphor for the Vietnam War, or an allegory about distrust of authority

or the collapse of traditional family. And I think Romero said, like I didn't necessarily mean all these things, but you can certainly find it in the movie. That is art. Like one of the great revelations of my adult life is that the artist, the writer, the songwriter, the um, the author rarely intends to imbue as much meaning into

their work as people take from it. That that's part of art as interpretation in that neat like you don't if you're a writer, if you're a young writer right now who's just sitting there racking your brain for how to insert metaphor and meaning into this. Just write your story and people are going to find it for themselves. Yeah, agreed. I wish somebody had told me that. When I was younger,

I had teachers that said stuff like that. Oh, I didn't like good college professors in English that would when students would argue like I think he means this, he would say like, you know, he may or she may not have meant anything. Right, I's the revelation. I had teachers that would just go wrong. Uh. The other thing about Night Living Dead is it spawned um obviously the zombie genre and uh sequels Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, the Walking

Dead remakes shout out, shout out, Stephen. You know, yeah right, why not? I'm still into the Walking Dead. You yeah, we talked about this. Yes, yes, okay, Stephen, you listens. Anyway, zombies are at still hot and we can so hot. We we owe that all to Mr Romero, master of the genre. Yep. Check one more thing too, that that NYA Living Dead did that they weren't the first, but very famously Romero did was kill off his hero senselessly and shockingly. Yeah. At the end, good point. Thanks man. Okay,

so let's move on. Like I said, yes, stay after Christmas. If you've ever been uh in Washington, d C. At the end of M Street, you might have noticed very uh during the daytime, ordinary set of stairs. At nighttime, maybe they look creepy to you because those are the Exorcist stairs. Yeah. I'm trying to conjure the music in my head, but all I'm coming up with is the unsolved mysteries music. It was not quite right, so close,

but it's not. I'm so unsatisfied right now. So The Exorcist was based on a book by William Peter Bladdie who wrote this uh in one and then in seventy three the movie was made. Uh. And there's I think I referenced not too long ago a great Mark Marin interview with um William Friedkin where he talks about the audition process for Linda Blair. So you should go listen

to that because it was pretty insightful. But um, the Exorcists really kind of changed the game, UM and that it was a It spawned a bit of a sub genre of um demonic movies. Sure, I were like religious based. Yeah, even though I guess Rosemary's Baby was before that, but The Exorcist was such a mega hit and it was nominated for Best Picture, the first horror movie to be nominated UM for for that, and so it was just like it was a big deal. It was. It sold

six million tickets in about two months. Yeah, it's amazing. This is a horror movie, right, and it came out in nowhere. Um. Apparently the effect I had on audiences was extremely pronounced. There was a woman in Boston who had to be carried from the theater and she goes it cost me four dollars, but I only lasted twenty minutes. So we're like that's the stories of that got around and and people wanted to see, you know, this movie can't be that scary, and they went and they were like,

oh my god, that movie is that scary. Yeah, and it holds up too. I mean, um, special effects are they'd never quite hold up. But it's still a very creepy movie. Um. Very famously, Linda Blair played the little girl who was possessed by a demon, and uh, the the heavy hitters were called in to exercises demon, including um A Max van Style who was only forty four when he played this guy in his easily in his seventies. Yeah, is he Benjamin Button? Well know they made him up. Wow,

they did a great job. Yeah, which I don't see why they felt the need to do that. I know they God, who else did they almost cast? Oh? Brando? They almost cast Brando? But that would have been a colossal mistake. Well, Friedkin said, you know, as soon as you do that, it's a Marlon Brando movie. Yeah. And I think he said picture a Brando picture. Sure, that's what they said. Uh. And he'd wanted to be a Brando picture. He wanted to be the Exorcist. Um, so that you said. It was based on a book from

two years before by William Peter Bladdie. He he he apparently was known as a comedy writer and he wanted to do something different. He said, Hey, wouldn't it be funny if the little girl's head spun around and she keeped green bile? Wait, what do you hear? What I ever do with the crucifix? Hey? So? Um? He actually wrote the book because he wanted to scare America back to church.

That was his aim with the book. He believed that there was real evil going on the world that part of it was because of a a loss of faith or a loss of religion, I guess, and that's what he wanted to do with it. UM. And when the movie came out, there was a huge pushback from religious authorities like Billy Graham said he believed the movie itself was possessed by a demon. I'm not sure how that would happen, but that was like a huge thing at

the time. UM and a lot of a lot of other UM religious establishment types were like, don't go see that movie. It's evil. But there were some who who were part of part of religion, major organized religion, who kind of saw through it and said, no, no, this is it's good that we're talking about this, that there we're telling people, you know, or people are seeing that there there's such a thing as like good versus evil literally combating on earth, you know, and people are talking

about this and thinking about it. And so in that sense, the Exorcist like really kind of went to bat for

organized religion. Interesting. I saw another um criticism of it though, that that said, one of the themes of the movie that the book hadn't really intended but the movie picked up on and expounded on, was intergenerational conflict, that that it was Reagan the child represented the younger generation who was at war with the establishment, and that it even goes um so far as to where her mother, the actress the movie that she's working on is about campus

takeover by young radicals, so that that's kind of a theme that was apparently part of the subtext, but was a major part of it in the movie at least interesting. Yeah, I thought so too, because apparently, I mean, you think of intergenerational conflict now, apparently in the late sixties and early seventies it was sharper than it probably ever has been before or since. Yeah, m hm. The only other thing I got is that the the green stuff that she projectiles was Anderson's P soup and a little bit

of oatmeal texture Anderson's PC. Well, but you can't give that anymore, Chuck. Let's do Jaws and then we'll take a break. I love talking about Jaws. Yeah, I mean, Jaws is on you know, I did my top favorite movies list at one point on our website, and I listed Jaws is my favorite movie favorite of all time. Yeah, I mean that list changes, but it's Jaws is always in my top five. I can watch it anytime it's on. Uh. It is one of the I've all. I've often said

it's a perfect movie. Um. And what I mean by that is there's just not a misstep. Like the casting was perfect, the acting was great, the script was great. It played out just perfectly throughout the film. Um. He, like Spielberg, was just a master storyteller with that movie. You were talking about how young George Romero was in Night of the Living Dead. Olberg was twenty six when he made Jaws. He was thirteen years old. He Uh, and he was apparently scared to death when he finished filming.

The schedule had been for fifty five days, it went to a hundred and fifty nine. Yeah. He had I think been allotted four million dollars. He ended up spending twelve million on it. Um. Yeah, largely because a shooting on water is notoriously difficult and be the shark mechanical shark they used was legendarily um wonky and how it are not wonky but wonky wonky. It didn't work. It

rarely worked. So they spent a lot of time and burnt a lot of hours trying to get this shark to do its thing, and uh so much so that it didn't even make that many appearances in the movie. I think they even kind of scaled it back, and that ended up being better for the movie because you didn't get as much shark. I looked up the um the urban legend about the shark being named after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce,

and apparently it's true. Really, Yeah, Bruce Rayner was the name of Spielberg's lawyer, and the that was the nickname for the mechanical shark on the set was Bruce. That's pretty funny. So with Jaws, right, we're talking about horror movies that changed the genre. Jaws not only changed the horror genre, it changed movie making to this day, and in multiple ways, multiple massive ways. It changed the entire film industry, almost single handedly. Yeah, it was at the time,

there was a there was no such thing. You take it for granted now, but there was no such thing as a quote unquote summer release. No, a lot of theaters closed down because a C wasn't in every theater and people didn't want to sit around in a hot movie theater for two hours. Yeah, a summer release or a tent pole for home or a blockbuster feature like

Jaws was the first one of all those. At the time when Jaws came out, they used to UM release a movie on maybe one two screens and say New York or l A for a week, and they did make its way to you know, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago for a few weeks, and then eventually make it to your small town six eight weeks later. That was how movies were released, not Jaws. Jaws was released on four hundred and thirty five screens across the country, which is huge, which is part of the part of the UM Summer

Blockbuster release playbook now. Yeah, and it was also the first movie to to spend lots and lots of money on marketing UM and so I think the studios were like, wait a minute, if you spend some dough on marketing, you released this sing wide, you can make a ton of money in the first month that the movie's out and you're kind of set, like after that it's anything else's gravy. Yeah, and that's after the first week or

two probably, Yeah, it was. Yeah, the whole the whole point of blockbuster now is to get that opening weekend to make all your money back in the opening weekend and then everything else is gravy on top of it. Right, Jaws was it didn't make it. I don't know. Maybe it did make its money back in the first weekend because it hit a hundred million dollars in like seventy eight days or something incredible like that, because it was the first movie too had a hundred million dollars and

it did it in just a couple of months. Even. Yeah, it eventually went on to make about two hundred and sixty million dollars domestically, which is I mean, that's a great take now, Yeah, you know, much less the mid nineteen seventies for a twelve million dollars spend. For sure. My only beef here is that I would not consider Jaws a horror movie. Yeah. I think it's an adventure film. Yeah, I guess you're right, with a scary antagonist. Yeah, but um, it's amazing how much I quote that movie in my

day today life. Yeah, just Shark, that's a great that's a classic. All right, let's take a break. I'm gonna meditate on that line, and we'll talk about a few other scary movies, including one that was originally titled Scary Movie Okay, moving on to Halloween. Halloween Chuck eight, I believe Halloween. Yes, John Carpenter, Uh, the youngish John Carpenter who originally titled this movie The Babysitter Murders. No, A little on the nose. Yeah, pretty terrifying title, I guess.

Young Jamie Lee Curtis her very first movie, was it really Yeah? Well, she went on to become known as the scream Queen for all the horror movies she was in. Totally and this was shot in twenty days and uh South Pasadena as the Midwest and um it's credited as being birthing the slasher genre. Yeah it did, so there were slasher films before. The Town That Dreaded Sundown was like based on a true crime story actually in Texas of one called Black Christmas The Grabster sites from UR

haven't heard of that one. But the idea of um of a faceless almost a like non entity entity coming at you, uh and relentlessly stalking you, be impervious to harm, as the Webster puts it, um, and just coming at you again and again trying to kill you. That that was that was all established by Halloween, and it was done like too too great effect as well. Yeah, and it holds up. It's still scary. Uh. Michael Myers, of course was the killer. Um the music that John Carpenter score.

I mean, he scores most of his movies himself, but very iconic, uh, basic thing. I think he only took a couple of days to come up with it. But like the Michael Myers character and the mask or so iconic, the music is so iconic. Do you know about the mask, right, Chatner? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I went and check that one out too to verify that it was true. And it definitely is true that Michael Myers mask is actually a Captain Kirk

star Trek mask painted white. That is history. Yep. The in the in the script when it came to the mask, it just a pale, neutral features of a man. Yeah, which makes the whole thing even creepier because he's an implacid or is that the right word. I don't know. He's just it's just almost like just an emotionless killer. It made the fact that he was merciless, ruthless, pitiless and and all arbitrarily killing people almost all the more

pronounced because his expression never changes. Well, to me, the two things were creepiest about Halloween was the expression never changed because of that mask, and he did not run, like oh yeah, he would just walk and you still got the feeling like you can't outrun this guy even though he's walking. That was another creepy part about it. It follows with the walking aspect of it for sure. Yeah, in the same way that like twenty eight Days Later

was freaky and that it took zombies and made him run. Yeah. Or I remember when I saw Friday I'm sorry, h Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time and Freddy Krueger was running around. I was like, that's not what scary dudes do. Yes, scary dudes don't try now they walk very creepily towards you and still somehow gained speed on you even though you're running full speed. Freddy scared me to death the first time I saw that movie. Yeah,

the first one was a pretty good one. But Halloween established this, Like you said, it established the slasher genre, and everything about slasher films still today all rooted in Halloween John Carpenter's tropes. Yeah, and again, like you said, there were a couple of other slasher films before, but none of them grossed close to fifty million bucks. Wow, is that how much Halloween made? Yeah, forty seven million

domestic at about a three hundred thousand dollar budgets. So it uh, you know, that's sort of like with The Exorcists, Like there were other movies that sort of did this thing before, but when you have a huge hit that does it was when it sort of redefines the genre because it's money. Yeah, that's everyone starts paying attention after all, Right, what's next? What's next? My friend? Is a movie that

came out when I don't know, were you still in college? Uh? No, you must have just been out then I was out a few years. Okay, Well, regardless around our college era, this movie came out. Because up to this point, everything's come out either when we were little or before we were born. This one was right in our wheelhouse. It was The Blair Witch Project, which came out. Yeah, and uh. One of the big things that um Blair Witch Project

did well two things. Really, it established the found footage genre or sub genre that is so overplayed now, uh in the viral marketing campaign. And that's how I came upon it. I remember very specifically being in the apartment of Scotty Polito, who you know, he shot our TV show, one of my oldest friends. And I was sitting in his apartment on Claremont Avenue Indicator and I happened upon this. And this was pre Facebook. I don't even know how

I found it. You before things were being shared around and I happened upon this website, the very first Blair Witch Project website, and I was like, dude, come over here and check this out. This is the scariest thing I've ever seen. And I remember the website set it up as if it was real, and that this found footage thing, it's so overdone now it's hard to go back in time and remember when it was fresh. But I remember looking at and being like, did this happen?

Did they really find this footage of this murder in the woods? Liked to see this? That was the rumor that this was actually real, man. And this is, like you said, I mean, this is before the found footage genres. So people were being exposed to this concept for the first time, and we're kind of falling for it. I mean, you're either in college or you're just recently out of college, so you're maybe slightly more guldbal than you are ten

years ready to believe it? You want to believe right, So yeah, the idea that this was actual found footage, it just made it all the more enjoyable and people were buying into it. And I think the other part of it too, was that the filmmakers, partly because they didn't have the budget for actual effects, left a lot of the scariest parts to your imagination. Yeah, nor did they have the talent to make a good narrative film,

I guess. I mean, they worked on a sixty four page script, which I was surprised that it was that that big. But they shot it for eight days and originally they were going to make it like a documentary about the found footage, and then one of them had a flash of of perspective was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's just release it like it's found footage. And that was that. The rest was history. Yeah, and I'm poking fun.

That was not very nice at all. Um Eduard of Sanchez and Daniel Myrick or Merrick, the co directors, they they should be credited with the truly ingenious uh campaign and invention that well, they weren't the first to come up with on footage, right, there were some films before. Um, I've never known how to pronounce it, Mondo Kanne, ermando Kane, I think Connie. It's from nineteen sixty two and it was supposedly a documentary about um like some like weird

tribal rituals. I think there's head shrinking maybe involved, and it purported to be like real footage. Same with Cannibal Holocaust, where if you've never seen Campbell Holocaust, go out and watch it right now. It's very disturbing. Um. And it's so disturbing that the director of the movie was charged with murder because they believed that the actual murders depicted they were so realistic. They thought that it was a snuff film basically, but it was supposed to be a

documentary as well. So there was an idea of like found footage or documentary style horror movies that had come before, but nothing like The Blair Witch where it was just straight up these people we found their their old camera, uh, and this is what was on it. Well, and they were smart enough to kind of dig up an old thing that never went huge, you know, and they're like, hey, man, like these other movies, they never really hit it big,

and they it was a timing thing. They they, I mean, hats off for them to them, yeah, good for them, and to them. Nice going to a right chuck. Scream, Yeah, scream. I tease that it was originally titled scary movie. I'm glad it wasn't because scary movie is awesome. I don't know, it's scary movie ever would have been called maybe it would have never been made, or maybe they would have called that scream. Oh yeah, I guess so. So. Scream

was a very big deal when it came out. The writer Kevin Williamson, um, and this is still the highest growing slash of film of all time, basically Scream one. Yes, it was huge. I got Nev Campbell's haircut as a result of it. Like it was a big, big pop culture water mark. It was. And one of the big things about it, aside from the boatloads of money that it made, was it spawned a sub genre called meta horror, which is um even though it had been done by

no less than its own director Wes Craven. With Wes Craven's New Nightmare Uh two years before Scream, it wasn't nearly as popular, but met a horror is this idea? And if you've ever seen Scream, you know they're constantly just referencing horror movies, like this is where you know, you don't go out and make out in the car because that's where you get killed. And then they would do that and get killed, right, although I don't think

that specific thing happened, like don't go back into the house. Yeah, like all the tropes of horror movies are addressed in the movie, and they're talking about them as the horror movie tropes. Yes, yeah, exactly, maya horror. Yeah. And there are plenty of other things that came along better met a horror um examples like have you seen Tucker and Dale Versus Evil? Uh no? Check it out? Man, all right,

that's a good movie. Zombie Land. Did see that where he's rattling off all of the things that you need to notice survive a zombie apocalypse that he learned from zombie movies, right, And then Cabin in the Woods. Did you see that? One? Great movie? It was a great movie. I thought it was really good. I mean from beginning to end, it was a great movie. Did you like Scream? Yeah? I love Scream. I liked all the screams. I only

saw the first two. The second one I think might have been even better than the first to me, And that the second was shot Emily worked on that it was shot here in at Agnes Scott College. Parts right to go back and watch it knowing that now I'll be like, oh, I've driven past that place. Uh. So I got a few tidbits, like I said. Initial title of scary movie um number two. The Weinstein Brothers initially offered it to George Romero and Sam Rami, Um, what

else do I have here? Drew Barrymore was originally supposed to play Sydney, the lead character, and then she said, no, how about if I just played that girl at the beginning, which kind of was a big thing because you see Drew Marry Barrymore And it was a big shock when she died in the first scene. You know, you can't kill off your heroine right away. Yeah, I mean, like I remember, I remember that first scene really really scaring me when I saw it the first time in the theater.

Yeah it is. It's a scary, gruesome, gory. Yeah, very well played. Uh. And then before he went to um NEV Campbell, he went out to Alicia with Britney Murphy and Reese Witherspoon Cambell your christ choice. Uh. And then the mask, the iconic screen mask apparently wasn't off the shelf mask. Wow, that made that company's money. Yeah. And the wine Steins didn't like it. They were like, I hate that mask. Everything else is fine, huh. But west Craven said, no, it's got to be the mask. It

would be stupid. Bob m alright, we're gonna finish up with our own edition here. Finally, nineteen sixty Psycho. I can't believe this wasn't in the list. I think Ed kept this off the list to toy with somebody he doesn't like specifically. That's the only explanation. Yeah, because Psycho changed everything. Yeah, it really did. I mean it was the you could say that it was one of the first slasher flicks. It was a early psychological thriller. Um. It was based on the real life story of Ed Geen.

I mean, it doesn't exactly mirror a Gaen's life, but the idea of um being obsessed with your mother so much that you will commit murder. Uh. It was definitely rooted in a Gains story. Um. If you're not familiar with ed Geen. He not only he was I don't even know if he was a serial killer. I think he. I think he murdered one, maybe two people, but more than anything, he was a grave robber. But he likes to um dress up in people's skin, women's skin and

pretend he was his own mother. Which, man, that's a lot of years on the couch work and that one out or you can just die at the hands of cops one of the two. Um. And he also inspired leather Face from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah, and and Buffalo Bill of course. Oh yeah, yeah, Sounds of the Lambs. Yeah, one guy inspired all those two, all those guys. So I found this article Psycho Colan The Horror Movie that Changed the Genre by Owen Glieberman or is it Gliberman?

Think he wrote for Legendary Critic, wrote for e W for years and years and now writes for a variety. Oh he does. Yeah, but he uh he put it best. He said, um, well, you know, the iconic shower scene, first of all, is hugely important because it was Hitchcock really kind of ripped up the script, not literally, but the horror movie script when he kills off Janet Lee halfway through the movie. It was you just didn't do

that at the time. We came out of nowhere, and we've seen that come up later on, like at the end of Nither Living Dead or Drew Barrymore and Scream. Hitchcock was the first one to do that. Yeah, And Uh, Glieberman puts it this way. He said he was also slicing through years, decades, centuries even of audience expectation that the hero or heroine of a fictional work would be shielded and protected or would at least die usually the end in a way that made some sort of moral

dramatic sense. Uh. In Psycho, the murder made no sense at all, right, And he really kind of hits it on the head there. It was like, if you've never seen Psycho or heard of it, the movie is just going along about this woman who likes steals some money from her work, and she's kind of on the lamb and checks into this hotel and you don't even know

it's a horror movie. You're thinking it's a a movie about a lady who steals money and is trying to get away from getting caught, right, and then just out of nowhere, she's hacked up in a shower and at the time, audiences and still if you haven't seen it, it's shocking. The audiences were just like they didn't know what they'd seen right exactly, So you're not not only is is the hero no longer safe? That means maybe you're not either. So it has it had a really

huge unsettling effect. And then Owen Glieberman points out that Hitchcock was so smart that he even he he even made a nod to the the type of pat expected horror that the audience was used to. In the house that he used for Psycho, the Bates House. There was this huge, rambling Victorian mansion on a hill. There's lots of taxidermy, and it was like over over decorated and just creepy. But up to that point, like that was horror. That was what a horror movie looked like and felt like.

And this was this was kind of Hitchcock's homage to that, but at the same time he was also putting the heel of his shoe on it as well. Yeah, and that house was, I mean almost a character in itself. Like if you've ever seen the recreation of it, at in in Los Angeles. I think it's a universal Did you see it? Oh yeah, I never did. The closest I came was I think when different Strokes went there.

That's the closest you got to it. Yeah, uh yeah. Man, if you've ever seen the thing in person, like it's it sends a chill up your back just seeing this thing in like a sunny Los Angeles day. Still, it's such an iconic house, it's like, oh man, uh, there it is. That's where Norman Bates lives. He's the most disturbed human of all time. Right. So in the movie, of course, there was the mother character who is sort

of referenced throughout the movie. And it is not until the end that you realize that there is no mother. Mother is dead. There's just Norman Bates and all his rage and hang ups. Yeah. So all the monster movies about giant ants and or the creature from the Black Billgoon, monsters, things that were and other that a normal person had to do battle with that was gone. Now the monster had been on screen the whole time, and you had

noticed it. And now what do you think about your neighbor who has seemed a little weird from time to time before. Could he be a murderer who thinks he's his mother, who knows this is what Hitchcock did everybody back in nineteen sixty And you almost get like I think, Owen Gliberman points it out. Yeah, he does. At the beginning, he basically says like, UM, we probably didn't see Psycho.

If you're reading this, you're probably too young to have seen Psycho in nineteen sixty And we should all feel sad that we didn't, because it's so changed everything that we can't do anything but take it for granted now. And everything that's comes since the and has been trying to regain that shock and horror that it instilled in audiences, and and thus far no one's actually been able to do it. Yeah. And the other thing, I remember when

I saw it when I was younger. I think I saw this when I was like fourteen ish, Um, and I think I had this impact on just about everyone. I don't think I took a shower for a month. I was straight up bathtub curtain open, doors open, windows open, making your mom watch, she's keeping watch. You know. That would have been full circle back to yeah, yeah, you didn't even want to have anything to do with your mom No, man, like it changed the shower curtain industry

for a while after that. Yeah, bet, very good movie. And um, there were a couple of Hitchcock movies in the last few years. Uh, two different ones, one with Anthony Hopkins and one with Toby Jones that were both really good. And one was about the years that he was making Psycho. The other was about the years when he was making The Birds, and they were both really really good movies. And you should check those out too.

You should repeat that. We just got a interjection from Noel, so go ahead and say it again, Josh, in case it didn't come through. So Nol just said that. Um. The director of The Black Coats Daughter is Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in Psycho's Son. Wow. He also did another movie now that Noel says that, Thanks Noel. Um. It's called The Pretty Little Thing That Lives in the House, which was another horror movie, a ghost story that was his first one, and I think that might be on Netflix.

It's great. It's a really great movie too. Man. This has got me fired up to see some horror movies. It's a renaissance of horror Yeah. It's tough though, because Emily doesn't really dig it, so I have to just find a loane time to do that, to watch in the bathroom. All right, Well, if you want to know more about horror movies, go watch horror movies. Go forth

and let us know what we missed. For God's sake. Yeah, if you want to check out the grabsters list, type in horror movies on the search bar at house to works dot com and will bring up this fine, fine list that you will disagree with. And um, since I said disagree, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This from Eric, and I'm gonna call it what he called it, a Schoolhouse Rock and nostalgia theory. Alright, I think he's pretty right on this just came in. Actually, there's a hot take, hey,

guys in Schoolhouse Rocks. So Josh made the statement that gen xers are most nostalgic generation attributed to this success of Schoolhouse Rock. I'm going to offer my own theory. I propose that gen x is nostalgic mostly for pop culture because of the prolifer uh that word of child targeted advertisements and marketing in the seventies and eighties. Certainly

something We've talked about this. Theories got like, while our little impressionable brains were developing, we're being taught by those who are steering pop culture to long for and find fulfillment in the toys and other products our cartoons were pushing on us. Now it's adults, those messages are still

deep in our psyche. We can't shake the idea that we still really need those Star Wars action figures to be happy, not because the toys and the shows were so great, because we had been tricked into believing we need them. I have nothing scientific to back this up, just a hunch yet. What you mean there hasn't been a study from m I t alright on Star Wars toys. I'm kind of surprised by that as well. I thought you were being facetious at first. Yeah. I don't know

which ways up at this point. Nothing scientific to back this up, but I'd love to hear what you all think. See if anyone out there is any respectable and informed input, which Eric, that is from Eric Lewin and Erica. I think that's super valid. Yeah I do too, Eric. I think you've really hit upon something here, and that's all I have to say. About it. If you have a great theory, fan theory, real life theory, whatever, we want to hear them there, especially if it's interesting. You can

tweet to us s y s a podcast. You can send us an email. The Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot Com has always joined us at at Home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.