Welcome to the cult classic horror show. conversations you've always wanted to have about the films you love. Shut up! Get rid of your distractions. And prepare yourself. You got a big surprise coming to you. You're not going anywhere. Welcome, welcome everybody to the cult classic horror show. Danny Bonin here with you. Welcome guys. Scotty Bonin with you. We are the Blood Brothers and Carmelo Chimera.
Oh, yeah. Sweet and sexy. Sweet and sexy. Apparently, we're a three-man podcast now. Threesome. I don't know what's going on, Rob. And the Rob. Come back, Rob. No, we'll miss you, Rob. Rob went out for a pack of smokes, and he hasn't been back. Exactly. Rob, yeah, he went for a pack of smokes, but he's got some, he went through some health stuff lately. It's getting so old, I have to stop even saying this at the beginning of every episode. So this is the last call out.
Yes, right. Yeah, if you want Rob, please, you know, call him. Text him, hound him. We'll publish his number in the show notes. I guess it's 10.30 East Coast time, but still, no excuses, right? Yeah, but Rob's hit this time. He picked this day and time. That's true. Whenever I visit him, he's always up to 2 a.m. Anyways, no matter what. I had to leave my Annie musical rehearsal to come get this in time. Annie, Annie, Annie.
like the least popular show that's the one everyone knows yes guess what i'm playing are you are you daddy warbucks i am daddy warbucks yeah i might be a little young but i'm i'm almost 40 so hey But I refused to take part in the show. I'm using my bald head for my advantage now. playing this role. My wife and daughter are in it, and me and Elliot are not, so we've been having some father-son time. Tonight!
Yeah, we went to Chipotle. We hot tubbed it together. Sweet. Nice. Played some catch. He's getting pretty good at hitting the ball, actually, in my backyard. All right. See, and me, Blakely, and Liz are all in it, too. So the whole family. So maybe when you come out in April, Carmelo, you can watch us all in Annie. Yeah. We'll see. If all the dads out there with kids past, I don't know, eight probably know this, but there's a science to underhanding a ball in such a fashion to wear a...
Small child can maybe catch it in their mitt. Because if you underhand it, it's really loopy. But then you don't want to go too fast because you'll nail them right in the face. Right, exactly. It's tough. It's tough. And if you overhand it, though, you could come down the same way. You can't overhand it. It's too fast. Way too fast. You cannot overhand a ball to a small child until they're catching that thing. You can underhand a pop fly to them.
but but you try to like underhand a straight shot as much as possible because because it's easy you know you want to replicate like a normal throw right right so you're like you're sort of lobbing it yeah it has to be like a slow throw though but And you can only throw it overhand so slow. You got to underhand it to the mitt. Sort of straight. Yeah, exactly. It's a little frustrating. The gate! You'll get it.
Speaking of kids. Speaking of kids in backyards. Yeah. The Gate. Quote-unquote kids horror movie. As so says the director and writer and many of the people involved in this film, which I didn't really think of it that way. Yeah, I... Well, we'll get there. I have thoughts. I think it's fairly... If you're going to have a horror movie appropriate for children, this is one of them.
I think. There's some look-away stuff for the kids. It's kind of ooey-gooey and stuff. I was watching a featurette where... Steven Reardon. His last name is Reardon. He did special makeup effects.
and he was commenting and i had to pause it rewind it and make shannon listen to it he said that most you know this is a film with 10 11 year olds in it for kids mostly they they really toned it down and he said yeah i mean i most of my memories i saw all the the really the horror movies that stuck with me that i love i saw by the time i was 10 years old and parents these days don't realize they don't remember what a magical time that was and what uh
a time to see those kinds of things, a fantastical time, you know, but I don't know. My kids would also be scared shitless if they watched this movie. Yeah. Yeah, because they remember it like a kid is 10 to 15. I'm saying he probably remembers it because he's slightly traumatized. Yeah, from the melting dad's face or whatever. There's something to be said for seeing horror movies, though, when you're young enough to be scared.
of them right it's true you know i mean that's part of the part of the fun of it is is you know i mean at the time it's pretty miserable having nightmares and not being able to sleep but then like the fascination starts and you're just oh for sure why do i want more you know yeah i remember that that because it's gone now right it's gone i mean i remember the
I faintly remember the feeling of something scary about to happen or looking at pictures on the back of the VHS at the video store because sometimes they have the good stuff on there and just... ready to be scared and now of course we love horror we still love it and we watch it but it's for different reasons we don't really some adults might still be really freaked out but and sometimes you get that
eerie feeling or something if they do something right but it's mainly just for the a good story and and to see what they do with it oh yeah
I remember being scared shitless of Nightmare on Elm Street, the first one as a kid. And my uncle had the whole set. We're like... we have to watch the second one i mean we didn't want to but it's so scary but like we wanted to because it was like that was a that was a thrill of it you know so we ended up getting through all of them i think as well i mean we were what eight nine ten so it was
It was scary as hell back then. I couldn't sleep, but it was the thrill that I loved as a kid then, and that's what stuck with me. Believe it or not, this is the first time I've seen The Gate. I recall the cover art. vividly from when I was young and going to Blockbuster.
and i just i've known and recognized it ever since but never watched the movie i've seen the cover art so much that i thought i had seen the movie you know and i this is what i have seen but it was a while ago and it was all like tbs back when i lived with me and josh bella back in the day bachelor pad and i i watched like half of it and with commercials and i do remember it but uh but yeah the cover art's great like we were just talking about that before we started the poster art is so good
Yeah, and even like the icon on Shudder or Amazon, wherever it was I watched it, there was like... artwork that they used for that too it was just awesome just yeah it's really good is this the first time you've seen it carmelo yeah first time i've seen it first time i'd heard of it actually um yeah i was not familiar with this one but it's exactly the kind of like
Stranger Things-esque influence. This is what Stranger Things is aping is movies like this one where it's like the kids versus monsters. Totally. um i i we're doing first impressions yeah i liked it a lot um it felt like evil dead for kids yeah um the there are parts in it that did make me scratch my head because there's parts where i'm like Oh, okay. The little demons are biting them.
They're not going to show a lot of gore. If this were a scary move for adults, there'd be tearing and stuff. And then, like, a kid will take a Barbie doll right in the fucking eye. I'm like, what the fuck just happened? With, like, blood everywhere. Yeah. movie four because I was all aboard the no gore train and then all of a sudden like the father's face melts yeah although blood there was no blood but like well there's blood with the barbie doll
With the Barbie doll leg. There was blood on the Barbie doll. And when the mom's head cracks open and there's like... brains everywhere and there's like a like a one eyeball and survives the yeah this is gory as shit like evil dead-esque man yeah that part so my point is just the there were some choices in here where they did go
pretty heavy with the gore and and i i was i did find myself wondering who the hell was this movie for because like like you said you could show this to your kids would be
They would be freaked out. It would be better than showing them plenty of other things. That's true. This felt like Gremlins. It felt a little bit lighter than Gremlins. Or like Poltergeist. Or... yeah yeah something like that just along those lines like a family of the big pit in the house and they're all sinking into that pit and falling down like poltergeist you know that the house almost felt like falls in to this sinkhole spielberg-esque
You know, horror kids thing. It's funny you mentioned Stranger Things because one of the producers and maybe even someone else on the team said that they got a strong... nostalgic gate vibe while watching stranger things. And one of the producers said after binging stranger things, he went on the internet and found.
sort of a post or somewhere a community where tons of people were agreeing that this is like the gate this is the gate stranger things is like the gate you know yeah yeah that's i'm glad you said that because it makes me feel less silly comparing it but i feel like That's exactly what Stranger Things was trying to capture was like that. Your kids against this force that's, you know, well outside your league. Yeah.
you know um there's there's a little bit extra terror there when the main characters are vulnerable and you can kind of put yourself in their thought you know that's why the main characters in horror movies are rarely you know, big tough guys, you know, because you, you get a sense they can handle themselves or it's predominantly women or children or some other marginalized.
someone weak yeah something yeah yeah yeah because that's what you want is you want to see the protagonist get strong and become strong right so like this like the kids in this and that's what stranger things does look like uh true nerd because he's wearing a Stranger Things shirt and talking about Stranger Things. Hellfire Club! It has that feel, though. Less characterism. The big sister comes in and the big sister's two little friends that are...
scare shitless the whole time. The cast grows from the two boys and then the sister comes in. The kids grow as it proceeds to the movie. Then it narrows back down. Speaking of, Carmelo, do you want to take us through a little quick synopsis? Did you like the movie, though? Danny? Oh, yeah. I was saying, yeah. I did, too. I think we all agree. It had a great feel and, you know, remnants of poltergeist. And we're going to dive into it, but there's...
so many nostalgic things about the way this was filmed and the way they did things. And, and it was just a totally different time. And it was, it was top of the, I'm not going to say top of the line. Cause it wasn't like a big budget movie, even for that time, but it was.
Top of the line in this horror world back then. And it's just so they did in the way they shot it. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a big one. And now it's just super nostalgic with the stop motion and the force perspective and all this stuff. Oh, yeah. and seeing tiny little steven dwarf uh now yeah then now to where oh yeah that was it's so crazy so if you haven't watched the gate in a while here's a little reminder yeah so um
The Gate is about Glenn and his sister, Al, and their weird friend, Terry. And Glenn and Al's parents go out of town and leave them alone for an indeterminate amount of time.
So Al, of course, starts throwing parties. You know, she's a teenage girl. Her relationship with her brother's getting a little stressed. They used to be like best buddies. Well, Glenn and Terry find, after an old tree in their backyard is taken down, they find a... a geode that cracks open and gives them a magic spell and they read the spell and they open a gate to hell that was buried under that very tree and now these these mischievous demons have escaped and
And start messing with everybody. They levitate Glenn. They impersonate his parents and melt. They start pulling people into walls. trying to kill the family. Well, they do kill the family dog. In a kind of twisted scene, they even impersonate Terry's dead mom. That was... Kind of fucked up. Anyway, the kids have just no idea what to do. They start yelling some Bible verses at the gate. They think that maybe closes it up. It seems to, and then it just gets much worse.
Finally, it's just Glenn all on his lonesome after his sister and Terry are taken out. I think there's something about the power of love or something. I'm not a hundred percent clear on, on how this works, but he had a rocket that he and his sister used to fire rockets together. And so he, he fires this thing at the big demon and it explodes. And it seems to be that this.
gesture of love this being this representation of him and his sister's love is enough to kill the demons close the gate to hell uh and just leave a giant sinkhole in the house wondering of course begging the question if the father is going to Burt Young them as soon as he gets home. Of course he is. At that time period. The house is annihilated. There's some awareness at this stage in the 80s, I think, of child abuse. But yeah, not back in the late 70s when Amityville.
Yeah, definitely. That was its prime. I had a thought when I saw the movie that like if... like if you're the kids in that situation there's like kind of a false ending where like the house is trashed and the window's broken and you're like oh shit how are we gonna explain this but then like by the time the movie's done there's like a sinkhole in the middle of the fucking living room the staircase is collapsed and like you almost
you're almost glad if you're a kid at that point because you're like oh there's no way i'm gonna get blamed for the sinkhole like yeah there's no way demons demons i could not have done this yeah i could have broken the window but this and even if i'm gonna lie to you I would never have told them demons. That would have sounded like bullshit. But I would have been like, yeah, sinkhole, earthquake, whatever. Yeah.
I clearly did not do this. Like the worse the damage is, the better. Yes, exactly. Then there's no way I could have done this. Yeah, there's a line where I can clean it up. And then after that line, I just want the whole house just burned to the ground. Thank God the same call came. exactly god yes all right well that yeah that's the gate well yeah the gate uh the gate was released on may 15th 1987 um
So I was two years old. And with the budget, so this might fluctuate with your numbers, Danny. Budget of $6 million. They opened up second-ranked box office for the opening weekend of $4.5 million. But with a budget of $6 million, the total box office was $13.5 million. So that's what I got here. That matches up. So I heard $6 million.
Or found 6 million in my research, but then I heard a producer in one of the featurettes say like 2.5 million. And then I heard a different producer say 5 million Canadian, which was like 3 million US. Yeah. And so it's a little all over the place. I see here on IMDb, it says 2.5 million Canadian. And then the gross box office is still 13.5 million. But who knows?
It was a success, though. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they actually filmed in Canada on purpose because of the dollar. The US dollar went a lot further back then in Canada. And this was sort of in the early stages of Toronto now is a massive film hub. They film a ton of shit there. It's like in Atlanta or, you know, probably not quite in L.A., but whatever, like the secondary, large secondary market. Yeah, it's huge. Right.
And one of the crew members was saying that that all started happening in like 1980, 81. This was 87, obviously, but it was still just this ragtag bunch of people that were in the industry at that time. And so all these people got in real early. And this was really one of the first, one of the first productions there. Actually, they filmed at Kleinberg Studios in Toronto for most everything. There's some exteriors elsewhere.
The movie that was there right before them was Cronenberg's The Fly. Oh, really? Yeah, they took over the soundstage, two soundstages, right after The Fly got done filming. Wow. That's pretty awesome. That's pretty cool. One of the crew guys was like... All just goo everywhere and slime. One guy was like, what is this? We were nervous we're going to get inside and there'd just be flies everywhere. I don't know what we were thinking. Too literal.
Right, right. Yeah, Scotty, it sounds like maybe they found a tub of David Cronenberg's lube. Oh, definitely. Lots of lube. Lots of blueberry. I mean, if there was lube on that set, it belonged to Jeff Goldblum. Let's just... He's, you know... She's the kind of guy. They had Mama on the set from Alien. Mama. That's a good reference. That's a deep track. Everyone needs a Mama. I just see there's a second gate.
I just saw that. There is a gate, too. I've never watched it. It's not ranked that much lower. Terry's in it, though. Yeah, it's all about Terry. Lewis Tripp's in it. Okay, well...
Well, yeah, let's dive in a little further here. The whole idea for The Gate came from writer Michael Nandkin. He wrote it at a rough time in his life. He was freshly divorced, unemployed, and he decided to channel his... childhood nightmares into a script he actually had been working for months or up to a year and a half i think he said on another project that was right on the verge of going he had written it for him to direct
uh he got a producer on board he had half the money the producer had half the money raised this all happened right at the beginning and they thought it was going to go right away but then of course things started delaying and the producer was trying to raise the second half of the funds and
It all fell apart last minute, and Michael Nankin was living in New York, blew his wad of money and had to move back home with his parents. Oh, he blew his wad and moved back with his parents. He was like 30 years old. And right when he... got home he's like well i mean the only way to move forward is to start something new so he wrote this script that he wanted to direct now his original draft is way darker and gorier than what this film ended up being
It had, like, dragons, demons, or sorry, demons dragging neighbors into the street and, like, throwing them down the hole. A giant 12-foot monster made of guts, like entrails. That was going to be instead of the... stop-motion creature way more yeah way more explicit death scenes and it was just supposed to be this r-rated splatter flick i want to see that yeah it sounds awesome yeah hell yeah super dark he talked about how um
it was like, he's Glenn. He said, this was based on his childhood. He's Glenn. He actually had a friend named Terry. And when he moved into this new neighborhood, when he was four years old, he vividly remembers.
As they were moving in, he walks down the street a little ways and there's this kid in front of his house. Oh, did you just move in? And he's like, yeah, your house is haunted, you know? So he's like, my neighbor kid Asher down the street who just like... tells lies and you know the kids always trying to one-up each other so the kids look like a compulsive liar your house your house is haunted and sure it is
proceeded to tell him what they say in the movie. Yeah, yeah, you know, one of the workers died while building it. They walled him up inside the house. So that's true. I mean, that's not true that it happened, but the kid... Yeah, that's hilarious. But they became like best friends and
They did. They dug a hole. They tried to dig a hole to China. You know, kids. Digging and digging. Yeah, they dug a couple really deep holes, and apparently the kids... uh like the gardener fell in the hole and sued the the friend's dad terry's dad and so they had a garden without consequence yeah yeah so this is sort of a story from his childhood um
So, yeah, the producers at New Century slash Vista, there's the first entity that sort of bought this thing. They love the concept, but wanted something more accessible. It was a horror movie starring kids, so they wanted it to be accessible to kids. For some reason, they couldn't get on the thought process that a horror movie could have kids in it and not be for kids. I don't know why.
But so Nan can rework the script to tone down the gore while keeping the creepy elements intact. And the changes work. The final film still delivers nightmare fuel, but remains a getaway horror movie for. i mean younger audiences i don't know if i'd say 10 year olds you know like we were just talking about but so originally he was supposed to direct he wrote this to direct um he what was it um
I'm trying to remember because I didn't write this part down. He wrote it to direct, and it was optioned by a producer who had raised some money. This was sort of going like his first project. They thought it was going to go fast. They raised a good amount of money, and they still were waiting for the last bit. And then suddenly he got a call one day that the producer sold it to this new Century Vista.
he was no longer directing. It was not going to be him directing. Oh, man. So he sort of just took the wind out of him. I mean, it was like a good call because they're going to make his movie, but he was supposed to direct it. It's like his childhood story. But they did let him. Yeah, so the film became a Canadian co-production and the investors insisted on a more experienced director and chose...
Tibor Takax. Takax. Tibor Takax. And he was more experienced, huh? Yeah, he's a Hungarian-Canadian filmmaker. He agreed to direct on condition that Nan can stay involved in a production. uh ensuring that the original vision remained intact so he was you know in his interviews he's saying that it was an awkward situation he he was aware that nanakin was supposed to direct and uh but he wanted to work super close with him they end up getting along really well
and collaborating really well. So it ended up being good. So they probably were almost more or less like co-directors on set too. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they never said that, but I don't know. Takax made a few key changes. He aged up the child character slightly and swapped. I think in the original script, they were seven, eight years old. He aged them up to like 10 to 12. He also swapped.
Glenn had an older brother, not an older sister, but he swapped in the sister. And he leaned a little more into the satanic panic of the 80s, changing the kid's research method from...
dusty library books to a fictional heavy metal album. The Dark Book by Sacrifice. That's what it was? That was the... the big heavy metal or that's where the lore came from that's where the lore came in all the backstory of the demon and what the words the word gave it like a rock and roll horror vibe i heard from one of the crew members that uh in in some of these interviews that It was like someone's friend's band that they used, and then they took the pictures of that band.
One of the art people really put their all into making that dark book. It was really cool. It was a great looking prop. Including band photos and the record album and all that. The photos of the... Like the three-headed demon with like the eight hands and stuff, which we saw at the end there. The photo looked better than what we saw of the stop-motion creature coming out, but it was still really good artwork on that album.
No, it was. It was. So, yeah, we talked about filming took place in Toronto. They used a real suburban house for the exterior home scenes, but they had to add on. Some brickwork on the backside to get the entryway door, the back door coming in to sort of match.
what they had in mind and what they built on the set it's i never noticed i don't know if it's something anyone would have noticed it looked like an 80s suburban house like yeah that you see around here even still but uh it was a new development at the time and it was still under construction like other houses around it um and so they had to have a crew build a large fence around the backyard sort of to hide all the construction equipment and everything that was around them um
And it was originally they were supposed to film in like 1985, but got delayed due to some financing issues again and gave him extra time for prep. So that ended up being a good thing. But the big thing the director and a lot of the producers talk about is working with child actors because of the strict labor laws. I mean, they should have known what they were in for because the whole cast is basically kids the whole time.
It's just kids in every scene. I mean, Stephen Dorfson, like every scene. Yeah. And there's the parents and then really don't have anyone else after that, really. And they can only work for six to seven hours a day. And so there's a lot of stand-ins, a lot of over-the-shoulder that's not really the same kid or anything. Right.
Yeah, but that was tough for them to deal with because they wanted to be doing, I think they still did 12, 14 hour days, but that's with effects and stand-ins and other work that needed to be done as well. Jeez. Yeah. So, um, they're in a tight schedule probably too. Yeah. Yeah. Getting this thing out. So yeah, the studio with these young actors was worried about some of them sounding too Canadian. They hired actor Carl Cranes, who played the zombie worker stuck in the wall.
to coach the kids, not only to do that. So this guy, Carl Cranes was actually a friend. So his, if I remember right, it was either his sister or his sister's friend. His sister's friend's boyfriend was Tibor a few years before this, I think, in L.A. They were all in L.A. together, so he knew him already. They were friends.
This guy was an actor. Tibor's trying to break in as a director. And finally, I mean, they had both worked on some things, but when this project came along, Carl was there and was... got hired by Tibor to play this role, but then was also asked if he could coach some of these kids into speaking more American, just making sure they're on point with that.
But then he talked about how he also just would like drive Tibor around and would help with anything possible. He just sort of helped with whatever was needed. But yeah, Canadian though. No, he's not. But the Lewis trip who played. terry is canadian and maybe i think maybe the daughter in canadian too yeah she's i forgot her first name um christy didn't i think um so yeah he had to he just dealt with that and and wrangling them and stuff but
He actually was in the industry for another 10 years after this and then became a drama teacher for like 25 years, then retired. Oh, really? I guess that was sort of his shtick was coaching other actors anyways. Nice. um yeah yeah so um but yeah we talk we should talk about some of these effects because it that's sort of what set this movie apart at the time and makes it so nostalgic
I was wondering how they filmed. Oh, it's crazy, man. And I didn't fully understand it until I saw it explained like five times in these featurettes. So it's... Yeah, there's great effects. Yeah, and a lot of it is, and you'd never notice, is this forced perspective stuff. Now... There are some mats, and you can see the outlines around them sometimes, and there are some layers and things going on like they used to do, but it's crazy. So I'll get into it a little bit here.
Yeah, no CGI at their disposal at this time, obviously. I think it was just starting to come into play. And they did a mix. Stop motion animation, forced perspective, camera tricks. So the minion demons were created using mainly force perspective and rubber suits. Basically. So adult actors in the rubber suits performed on oversized sets designed to make them look knee high compared to kids. Oh, really? Yeah. And then, of course, they use stop mode. So let's see if I can.
uh remember an example uh there was actually adults in those suits those little yeah so here's the big one the big the big awesome thing and they were super happy with this too is when the worker in the wall falls over And then turns into like the scrambling minions, right? Yeah. That was one of the, that was like the money shot. That's like the army darkness when he falls and all those little, little ash, ash Williams are going around. So the way they.
quote unquote do this forced perspective is so you see the worker from behind first of all that's a dummy because they have to drop him flat on his face so that's a dummy in front of him where the minions scramble from is actually a floor built to look like the room floor, but it's like 20 feet down.
Whoa. It's like below, like they're on the third floor up here with the back, with the camera to the back of the dummy and they're down there. And then the kids are also on like the third floor on a little platform. And just the middle of the room is like 20 feet below everybody. What? And so when the guy falls, he is stopped. Like his forehead hits something that you don't see. He stopped.
And then they traced with the camera on it, showing where he followed. They traced where it would be or had it in their minds where they would be. He said he put a piece of glass you could see through, traced. Where the back of the dummy was from the camera's perspective. Remove the dummy. Told the people in the suits to line up like where the dummy lands. Like where it would be. Because the dummy would fall in the way of the camera. Yeah.
and the guys would be there and then um they so that was like a cut like a trick they removed the dummy right away but then those guys had to jump up and scramble around wow so this is just a way to explain that like The back of the dummy and the camera was 20 feet above the minions running around, and those are full-size people in suits running around. It just looks like the floor is right there. I thought it was stop motion.
No. And so one of the other, like the first time they ever show up is when the sister comes out the back door and she's standing on like the. stone patio or the rock patio or whatever you know that sequence is great yeah and so then you it pans down and you see them by her legs if you look real closely you can see that the stones that she's standing on
has like a slightly different texture than the stone sort of around her. And that's because the ones around her again are like 20 feet below with, with real size people in suits running around. How do they get that on camera? I don't see. Because, like, the camera's lined up just perfectly so that what she's standing on is, like, seamless to the forest painted the center to look like. You know what I mean? There's, like, not even, like, a line.
that's crazy it's crazy so that's that's how they did a lot of the dummy stuff on the sound stage that they did or yeah on the sound stage and they did that part there so then uh then they made a lot of people-sized things like when they're biting terry's leg and his shoe and stuff they actually have pictures of the people in the like normal people in the minion suits and then like a massive tennis shoe you know or a massive dummy leg that's that's really tall um
So yeah, forced perspective, they called it, where it's pretty much from the camera's view. It looks seamless between the two fields of vision, but really, if you moved your head to the side, you would see that...
One people's 20 feet down. 20 feet's big time. That's a lot of... Like the Indiana Jones Bridge, right? He throws the... the gravel on it so he can cross it in the last crusade it's like if you but if you look at it yeah look at it straight on it's not there but if you like yeah turn your head and look at it is there so it's all the perspective it's all the point of view that you're looking at yeah
I mean, do you think they took that – that was a thing back in the 80s, like that type of film, or was it something that they – No, it was. I mean, other films have used it, but they were – I don't know which ones, but it was a thing. A lot of people couldn't wrap their heads around what Randy Williams, yeah, Randall William Cook, Randy Cook.
who was basically in charge of all these effects. No one else really could wrap their heads around what the fuck he was talking about and explaining until they just saw it. And then he shot it.
okay i get what you're doing now yeah so people just know their stuff like that man yeah yeah so it was nuts the but then so there was that and then yeah a lot of stop motion the whole creature at the end was all made out of stop motion was made with stop motion and miniatures you know so miniatures for sure miniature room that the creature standing up in but then they layered them so seamlessly it was like the stop-motion monster holding up
the real steven dwarf uh but then the shot before that was was the uh minions on the banister but and they were real people and you were set back but then stop motion the background it was just a lot of crazy layers and combinations Wow. Yeah. How genius is that? That's so cool. And that rocket that he shoots just punctures the demon. That was pretty funny. He penetrates deeply into the demon.
It didn't even go out the other end. It just stayed in there. I think I was going to talk about the zombie. What about the dog? Did you see that they did a fake dog, obviously, a dummy dog. They did, yeah. They had a dummy dog. Then the dog comes back to life. Poor Angus, dude. Yeah, I know Angus. And then that stupid, well, the boyfriend that Alice is trying to get with, Al's trying to get with, he ends up kind of being a douche.
buries the dog in the backyard and gives the sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah. That dog looks, you could tell when it was fake. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm glad he came back at the end there. Craig Reardon is the guy's name who did the makeup effects. He was physical makeup effects. Did the... the carl cranes on the zombie um that was like a six hour makeup job to get the guy on the wall done up uh and a cool little tidbit that would never happen probably in today's film is when he falls out of the wall
And the kids go up to see him. When he pops alive, some smoke comes out of his mouth. And the way he simply did that was he took a drag of a cigarette before he came out and then just let the smoke out. Like right. Clever. Yeah. It was so funny too. When he, when he falls on the wall and Terry's like, it's the workman.
I just made that up. Yeah. No. Yes. I don't think they would let you blow smoke in a kid's face these days or allow any smoking on the live set. And I guess maybe, well, even if it's called for, they probably, maybe they use real cigarettes. I don't know. Smoking was good for you back then, though. Back then, doctors did it. They loved it. While performing surgery, probably. People used to smoke in airplanes. I know. It's nuts. Oh, yeah. Everywhere. They smoke restaurants?
It's true. Airplanes? Yeah. Venus doors? Yeah. It's kind of mind-blowing when you think about it, how much we tolerated that. No, it's crazy. Dude, remember, you go to a restaurant, do you want to sit in the smoking section or the non-smoking? Non-smoking or non-smoking. Non-smoking. They just don't exist. Our kids are going to hear us say that one day and they're going to be like,
Yeah, yeah, Dad. You can still smoke inside in Vegas, can't you? Or some places? Yeah, you can in certain places and casinos. Most casinos in Vegas let you do it. But the casinos, like, will pump in fresh air. Yeah. Consistently. Because they want to make sure you have no reason to leave like a smoke break. Yeah, that's true. That you're not scaring anybody off with secondhand smoke. We should just go to Vegas and smoke cigars inside.
Honestly, I'm persuaded. You've convinced me. We got to go to Vegas, man. What the hell are we doing? Why have we not? How have we not gone to Vegas? That is crazy that we've never been to Vegas together. We could go to the big cigar.
convention in november if you want oh do they have one out there oh yeah it's like a big deal it's called big smoke oh we should go we definitely should go our buddy john always two years in a row has invited us to, there's like a big one here in Denver at the convention center that. that comes through. You mentioned that one. Yeah, we've never gone, but he says that it sounds like a smoking deal. No pun intended. It sounds like a smoking deal. He said something like,
If you pay a little bit for like a special ticket, I think it was $175 or something. And that got you in. But you leave with literally, what was it? It was like... 100 cigars? Like a bag of 100 cigars? You go by each stand, and they give you one from each stand. Yeah, you get one from each stand, and then you also get a couple bottles of liquor, too.
shit you show up 100 pay like 175 bucks for your ticket but then you you leave with you know that's got that's like 500 for the shit i could potentially It would take me a year to smoke that many cigars or one weekend with you guys. That's true. His humidor is filled. I remember going to him like, damn, you got tons of cigars in here. I go through cigars much faster when we're together.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I just had, I was telling Danny, I just had this sober mesas he gave me for Christmas. Oh, yeah. Nice, nice. Did you smoke? So smooth. One or two yet? Yeah, you smoked one. You and Chris had one in the hot tub you were saying. Yeah, I had a cigar the other day. So good. National Cigar Day. You deserve it, Dad.
Dad, you deserve a cigar and a whiskey. You have a little one. Thank you. I do deserve it. It was much needed, right? Yeah. Yeah, much needed. Heck yeah, man. Well, we're doing good, though. I know we're getting off.
No, no, no. That's fine. Well, attaboy. I feel like this podcast has two sub-themes, whiskey and cigars. We'll talk about kids. We'll morph into – maybe we'll start a side podcast that just rates and – talks about whiskey and cigar yeah i like a companion cast yeah we should do pairings with the movies we should be like the gate it pairs very well with a a nice uh woodford reserve yeah
We need to be back at that place we rented in Florida when we were all together with Rob. They had a TV out under the covered patio, so we smoked cigars while watching a horror movie. Yeah. yeah then we can talk about the dreams yeah then we can talk about cigar and whiskey pairings with the horror movies we just have to have the or a cigar lounge that shows horror movies you know yep
I love all of these ideas. All the smoking cigars inside our houses. Screw our wives and what they think and our kids. This room would be perfect to have a smoke in. It's just... There's no, I mean, I'd have to. It looks perfect. You have to open a window. You open a window. No big deal. I mean, fuck, man. Shannon grew up and her dad.
And stepmom smoked inside the house, you know? I mean, back in the day, that's how the parents did it. Oh, yeah. That's right. I mean, it was one of my ex-girlfriends. Her mom smoked. And, you know, you walk in every single – it's just all weeks. you couldn't get rid if i smoked if i smoked one cigar in my house it would reek for like a month dude oh my god yeah yeah especially
Yeah. Sorry. Go for it. I was just going to say, I mean, cigarettes linger and they smell like shit. So like that's especially bad. I love the smell of the cigar, but it lingers. That smells. I made a mistake once of smoking a cigar in an old car of mine. And like you said, it smelled for like three months. Did you even have the windows down? No, I did. I did have the windows down. You did. I still didn't. Wow.
Yeah, it was just so powerful. I smoked one. Scotty and I smoked in my garage once when it was pretty chilly out. And I opened the doors afterwards and everything. Dude, my garage smelled for like seven days. It was nuts. And I had the big doors open afterwards, not during because it was chilly out, but.
right right don't do that again please but you go in your garage like oh it smells good yeah but it was like cold out and and the smell was getting old so it actually didn't smell that good after a while yeah you know if you uh yeah if you hadn't open the door like if i hadn't had the window open in my car it would never have not smelled oh yeah yeah oh yeah yeah god dude anyways uh back to these kids so they had
They had a massive casting call for these kids in Canada. Hundreds of kids auditioning. This whole movie was open casting, which you don't really see anymore. There were no stars involved because no one knew any of these people at the time. We know Stephen Dorff now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they had an open casting call and they had hundreds of kids. They narrowed it down to about 20, which they did screen tests with. Basically, they had a set.
And a handheld camera and they tested them out and with each other and just about with other kids and certain parents and finally landed on the cast again, Terry. Lewis Tripp was local Canadian. So were the parents. He was good. Yeah, and I think Christy Denton. I'm not positive about her if she came from L.A. or not. I know Stephen Dorff came from L.A. Yeah.
But the tax credit at the time, the producer talked a little bit about some of the stuff that we geek out about not on this podcast, but the tax credit was like 40%.
at the time or something out of here yeah it was nuts and uh there and they obviously didn't care they had no creative say on anything and one of the i wonder if that's different now because one of the producers said yeah not now like with tele like with can't telefilm canada i'm wondering if their government actually uh has a say in like what type of films they do in some jurisdictions like like the uk for example
where we're dealing with the tax credit right now is they care a lot about how many actors are from the UK and, you know, how many crew members were from the UK. But not the genre, right? Not like the... No, I mean, as far as I know, no, but there are other jurisdictions where they give you grants, not not tax credits, but straight up. Here's a check to make your movie. And like like, I believe.
where were we looking at we were looking at south africa i think for a movie yeah and they they have like a substantial grant up to like 50 of your budget just like here you go but it has to meet like like their film office will review the script and stuff yeah okay and have a certain can't be a porno yeah probably probably not for our porn our our porn collection that we're working oh yeah
I say it jokingly, but I mean it. We got to get into Vice, guys. We got to make some real money. The money is in Vice. Why are we sitting here trying to do legitimate business? We know what the people want. We do. know what they want we know what they want it's like it's funny because i do like comic books on kickstarter from time to time and
The most funded Kickstarters for comic books are always the non-safer work. Really? They're always. If I was just like, you know what? Fuck it. I just want to make a lot of money. And I hired an artist to draw me like a comic book about some girl with giant boobs. Yeah. Done. I've seen those on Kickstarter. I'm like, damn, this is some good art here. Man, they clean up. Of course they do.
Yeah, well, I'm a Johnny Sims lookalike, so I can hop in there. You can come on in. Get in there. You're actually a stand-in for him, I think, sometimes, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. We'll keep that on the DL, but yes, yes, I am. Stunt talk. Yeah, they also mentioned how, again, this is in the 80s, they were making a lot of these films and getting the money from well-to-do people looking for a tax shelter, which is what's...
It's Carmelo's specialty at the moment. I don't know if it was structured. I prefer to say that the tax benefits de-risk your investment. Sometimes lead to huge profits. I don't know. I like that way of saying it. I wonder what their – it would just be – I'd be curious to see what their system looked like back in 86. Yeah, I'd be very curious to see if it looks anything like what we do now. Yeah, that's crazy. But –
So actually, the producers of this film, among many others, formed, it was called Alliance Entertainment. Before this film was made, these guys all got together. in toronto and formed alliance entertainment and then this was one of their early on projects and they were the ones that were specialists in utilizing the tax credit and quote-unquote tax shelters for all these lawyers and dentists and doctors and people that you know needed to shelter some
funds and they felt confident this is the next big thing we got stop motion we got this perspective viewing you know this is they probably felt pretty confident in it yeah and i get one sort of hilarious thing is uh when producer andres hamori He was one of these guys in Alliance Entertainment, met Steven Dorff first time on set. Dorff, I guess, was like, where are all the chicks at? Where's the chicks? Where's my Winnebago? He's like, 10! He's 10!
And he said he was halfway. He seemed halfway serious. Like, where's the chicks in my Winnebago? You've got to be kidding me. Winnebago? Get out of here, you old pranking camper trailer. I don't even know. Let me look at this. This was Stephen Doris first. In my notes, it said 14, but there's no way he was 14 years old in this. He does not look 14. Oh, no, no.
He had to have been 10 or 11. He had to have been. So he was in two TV series before this, and then one TV movie. This is his feature debut, right? Maybe. Yeah, feature film debut. Yeah, this is his feature film debut. He was born in 73. Okay, and this was 87. 14. You think he looks 14 in this? No fucking way. He was born in 77? I lost my virginity when I was 14. Look at him. There's no way. So he was 14. He was 14.
Yeah, but there's no way he looks like it. I mean, come on. No way. He's short as well. How tall is he in real life? He's so short of this. All actors are shorter than you think they are, except for one of you. I've never did anything. I've never met. Yeah. Yeah. I did deputy with him. How tall is he? I didn't meet him, but I saw him sitting in a chair. Oh, now you'll never know. In, like, the break room. So I didn't really see how tall he was. Damn it. But, yeah.
Duh. Yeah, I did deputy with him. But I wasn't in the scene with him. He was just there. Well, because he was busy with his chicks. Yeah, he was busy with his chicks. Exactly. He was too busy. He was too good for me to come and say hi. Isn't that sort of funny when before you know it, you've come far enough where you're like, what? Do we know Stephen Dwarf from anything? And we're like, no. And then he's like, actually, I did do something with Stephen Dwarf. He was there. He's 5'8".
It really is a small industry because if you bring up almost anyone who worked on anything, not even actor-wise, like this crew member or that, it's like... you find out you're only like three people away from them or something oh i worked with so-and-so who worked with so-and-so like oh they probably know this person and that person probably knows this person you know
yeah like for instance i'm i'm producing a movie now that you i can't say the name of it but you guys saw the lookbook for it five years ago before they went into production and you passed on it and then they started shooting it And it got interrupted. So now we're trying to fix it and finish it. But then I found out someone, our friend of ours is going to help out with sales. I won't say his name either, but.
uh someone who uh doesn't doesn't like me very much after we had some negative interactions What a small world. I don't like him very much either. Anyways. But yeah, small world, small industry. That's all I'm trying to say there. And even smaller back in the 80s. I mean, it was like fucking mining for gold back then if you were an actor in the industry at all. Maybe you weren't making a...
ton and ton of money but there wasn't a lot of people doing it and so it was right it was there for the taking you know yeah and that's what these people talked about being up in toronto at this time period some of the crew members they interviewed who are i think they did these interviews in like 2017
so it was years and years later but they they said that exact thing they were like yeah this was we were it up there and we got in early and now it's a madhouse wow yep that's crazy they got the gate in Yeah, yeah. But anyways, so yeah, that's, I mean, the dog did die in the original script. That was one of the darker things. I mean, he died in the script, but then he was okay.
At the end. Yeah, and then he's all right. Well, he was 97. They don't live much beyond that. So that's right. That's true. 97 and dog years. That's true. She said that twice. He was 97. Yeah. A couple other things I forgot to mention. In the opening dream sequence, actually, right when the movie starts, there was a lot of locations. So the kitchen scene, all of the interiors was soundstage. The treehouse.
Yeah, well, the exterior was a house, but the tree was in a different backyard. They said at the time when they were filming in Toronto, in Canada, they had to... They were very picky about what trees they could demolish. The government or whoever they're dealing with. They had to ruin a tree in Canada. Yeah, exactly. They had to find this sick...
tree that was going to die anyways. It was dead. All the branches were dead. There was no leaves. They had to move to it and they had to build part of the kitchen set next to the tree so we could walk out of the kitchen into the yard.
and see the tree be demolished. And that was for real. They actually... I mean, the lightning bolts are fake, obviously, but they actually... pulled down that big ass tree wow but but as they exploded some pyro techniques to while doing that uh a bunch of shrapnel flew flew out and like whizzed by a couple people's head and it was just like
Yeah, it was a little bit crazy. Oh my goodness. They also tried to shoot like a thousand moths out of an air cannon and they just vaporized. Oh yeah, the moths. So some moms were harmed in the making of that didn't work. You know, I love that. Can you imagine that shit? Guys, the moths, they didn't make it. It didn't work. They are done. They did it on camera and it just showed up as like a poof of dust on screen.
So they got the close-up of the moths, though, of all, like, the window. They did. And their shadows on the wall were used by putting moths onto an over... overhead projector like the old ones used to have in school yeah you know oh yeah that looked good yeah it did and they talked about having a moth wrangler come in I don't know. They must have interviewed a moth wrangler and he brought a moth.
that had a string glued to it, and he had it on a leash, and it was like flying around. What? That's what they said. That's great. They didn't get it on camera or anything. This is my pet moth. His name is also Terry. Yeah. Oh, my God. Anyways. He eats chicken. He eats human food. Oh, God. Well, they also had – they grew their own moss. They had a little moss farm.
And they just had them on call, I guess. They had their own moths. So maybe they replenished the moth population that they so, you know, what I want to say, brutally murdered. Yeah, yeah. This is my own personal. I did think it was sort of funny that the metal band just starts talking about demon lore on their record. You know what I mean? Out of nowhere. That's when Lewis, when Terry's...
mouthing the words and everything. I remember they, they played their last show in Los Angeles or whatever. And then they got on an airplane crash the next day. Right. I'm waiting for our time. Poolside's going to die in an airplane crash someday. No, that's not going to happen. Don't say that. Don't ever say that. I don't. We won't go on a plane. We drive the van. What are you talking about? That's true. You may have noticed the outdated terms retard and faggy. I did. Both times I was like...
Dude. I know. Isn't it like Al's boyfriend? Yeah, which is funny because We use a great deal of profanity, like a tremendous amount of profanity. But I heard those two words, and he just drops them all casually. I know. Dude, when I heard, yeah, when you hear Stephen Dwarf call Al's boy.
friend you know just shut up fag i don't even want to say it it's just yeah and you know it's ridiculous it i we used to say all the time like middle school like yeah that's what it reminded me i was like in the like the mid to late 90s you know my friends and i would play video games and call each other names like that all the time yeah
But I'm with you. I hear that now and I'm like, oh, that's like the C word. Yeah, it is. There's a scene in Freddy vs. Jason where one of the characters calls Freddy... says Freddy looks like a... You can't even say it. I can barely say it. And it's like, again, in 2003, she was just shit-talking him. And now she might as well have called him the N-word. I know. She'd be canceled. That was dialogue.
early 90s movies I find that it is relative not just to those terms but like a lot of things that older People say that I never thought I would give a shit about. Like when I was younger, I used to joke like that all the time. or something but then like someone i won't name any names but someone who is older than me of the previous generation will say something jokingly like it's not a big deal yeah and i'm just like what the fuck did you just say
What are you doing, man? But if he would have told that to me, he or she, in like middle school, I'd been like, yeah, fuck yeah. Right, right, exactly. You want to know twice about it, yeah. So, but yeah, times have changed. You know what I did like in this movie too was when, like the last 40 minutes is really when all like...
The bread and butter happens. The shit goes down. But when they're trying to call on the phone and there's someone talking on the phone and then you see the phone just melt. Yeah, actually, that was my next note. That gives me like the Freddy Krueger, like, you know. His tongue comes out. It reminded me of that. It reminded me of Nightmare on Elm Street. They actually melted a phone for real with a heat gun sort of laying on a flat.
And so that's why if you look at the quick cut when it's over, it sort of went to the sides and pulled up a little. But they actually melted the phone with a heat gun, and it took about 10 minutes, and then they just sped it up. That's cool. That's neat shit. I love that shit. I love when shit just goes backward. Those are some neat tricks that...
Like, I'm sure it happens at one point here because the smoke starts, like, sucking into the ground. Well, you know, they talked about – I couldn't understand if he was joking or not because the effects guy basically – referenced some type of vacuum thing that he used for that oh really but i almost thought it was like is he joking like they did that in reverse right but then you do see terry like fall down while the smoke's being sucked and i don't know so
maybe for like the close-ups i don't i i don't know i just yeah i love that this stuff i love thinking about this stuff yeah yeah and then the whole you know obviously we talked about that too when glenn he sees his parents he's He's seeing things or whatever, and his mom... Oh, yeah. The mom's head cracks open, and then he grabs his dad's face, and...
It just sinks in. His thumbs just sink in his dad's eyeballs and it's like melts in his hands. Yeah, it's so gross. Yeah, and so for that, they didn't want to go blood and gore per se. So it was all... They called it, like, a seafood soup. It was oysters and this, like, seafood mix. That's almost worse than blood. I know. Like, ugh. Yeah. I was worried, too.
During that scene, he opens the door, he goes and does it. His sister and Terry and the two girls, the two sisters are staring at him. Do they see it or do you think Glenn just sees it happening? No, I think everyone sees it because they're all freaked out. I think everyone sees it, but that's an interesting question.
They're all freaked out because they hadn't seen anything up to that point, right? The friends. When they walk in on Terry with his mom, they don't see Terry's mom. They see the dog. Yeah. Yeah, so I think they did see that, though. And then Al didn't see anything until the big demon hands from underneath the bed catch her leg. Yeah, that's right.
I know you talked about when it released May 15th, 87. It was number two at the box office gross, $13.5 million. But the big news at the time was the movie Ishtar, which I've never seen. was a big budget movie at the time it's about i looked it up it's about two lounge singers that aren't very good that book a gig in like a third world country and then get caught up in like
scheme somehow and I don't know but it was they spent like 40 million dollars making it and this movie beat it out it was both their opening weekend really? 40 million? yeah gee that was like the big everyone was so proud of that it's like oh hey we beat out ishtar like opening weekend yeah so it was it was like a big thing but um but yeah critically it got mixed reviews some saw it as like a gremlin style ripoff while others like appreciate it for a childhood adventure horror
But over time, of course, it found its audience on VHS, cable TV, DVD releases, and is obviously a cult favorite. And that's our bread and butter. Yeah. They planned. There was a planned 3D remake in the late 2000s with Alex Winter set to direct from Bill and Ted. Oh, really? Yeah, but it never really materialized. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. It's a shame. This is a good one.
it was oh the last the other interesting note i had at the end that big like tornado at the end obviously there's a lot of there's like a map painting in the background and there's a there's a blue screen stuff there's blue screen back then not green screen and they did all this stuff but that is like uh It's like cotton. It's a cotton tube made out of cotton. It's stop motion. They would spin it a little. Then they added these elements to it. Oh, that's crazy. That's crazy.
yeah so the whole tornado is like cotton and then of course i was wondering how the fuck they did that yeah you said something about when the clouds clear and the then the matte paintings guy comes into interview um something about i don't even remember like
They poured oil onto the balls that moved out of the way in water to make the sky clearing. There's some weird shit like that. I don't even know. And then it was a matching thing and they layered it and then they had... stop motion on the map painting and it was just it was it was weird but they did it nice now you'd see those these days and and they're laughable but
It was sort of cutting edge back then and just the reason people love these movies. That's why, like Carmelo just said, that's why we love to cover these. You find out still like that. There was no CGI, no digital effects. Yeah. I was wondering while I was watching it, you know? Yeah, me too.
you know we've heard things before other movies we've covered terminator 2 or things like that where they'll use like force perspective or rear rear projection yeah and so it's kind of fun to to watch these and think about like how i would have done it You know, and one of those is when the floor is breaking apart and you can like see straight to hell.
under the floor i thought was a really cool shot that was really cool yeah might have been some kind of rear projection thing i think it was they talked about how yeah obviously that wasn't really there they had to do i think back then it was like layering it was like layers yeah it's like it's like layers That stuff's always really cool to learn about. That thing about the tornado sky beam was really cool. A tube of cotton. That's crazy. There were some other...
wall shaking on the house. Since it was a set, they had something. They had little handprints and fingers pushing the wall out too. When it was... the stretchy wall. Yeah, the stretchy wall. More towards the beginning. Yeah. So, I mean, they just did a lot of practical type things. It's good. It's really good. So, yeah. But, yeah, I thought it was a good movie.
Definitely worth covering. I'd be interested to see where they went with the second one. Maybe I'll check that out. That'd be fun. I kind of do want to see it now, actually. I like the first one enough.
yeah yeah and and what lewis trip comes back as terry and he's i think he's the main guy in it now too so i'd like to see what yeah couldn't afford dwarf anymore huh yeah i guess it was made in 1990 so it was three years after this uh well he could have yeah they could have he was only he was still 14 he was still well he yeah he looked 14 finally you said yeah he finally looked 14. Cool. I think that wraps up the gate. It seemed a little shorter than normal, but it felt like we...
We sort of covered it. Lengthwise, we hit our hour. That's perfect. We still got a... What did you watch? Yeah, what did you watch? I always have to pull up my fucking... prime watch history because i don't even know i've been watching so i've been watching uh yellow jackets that series i don't know yeah yeah it's semi-horror related they call it a horror thriller series um that's cool
It's good. It's got cannibalism and some gory shit. It makes it horror. It's tame enough that Shannon watches it. Let's just say it's got enough drama in it. along with some horror that Shannon will watch it with me. It actually gets a little too girls arguing sometimes for me, but it's still good. There's some good performances, especially Christina Ricci.
She does really good. And Juliette Lewis, who we just talked about in Dusk Till Dawn. 50-year-old Juliette Lewis now. Yeah, I will say she... Looks a little haggard. Maybe that's her character. Still a great actor. It is her character in it. She's a total co-core in it. She's played this before. She does good. She does a really good job.
So I know I watched that. Did you guys watch anything? Yeah, man. I saw Long Legs finally. Oh, yeah. What did you think? It was excellent. It left me with a lot more questions than I wanted at the end, and there were a couple of... elements of that ending that I found very frustrating. But in terms of how the movie looked and was presented, it was so creepy. I was thinking about it at the beginning of the episode when you said, oh, it's rare now.
But once in a while, you get that feeling of being creeped out. And I had it. And I can tell you why. It's because he went for that 70s aesthetic. It's because Nicolas Cage's performance is unhinged. It's because a lot of the shots are weirdly symmetrical, which is not a thing you see in most movies. You could see the heavy Kubrick influence, very Shining-esque shots in a lot of it.
And I like that long lead doesn't spoon feed you the story. So you do kind of have to, you have to go into it, go inside of it in a way you don't with some horror movies. But I just, I thought it was very creepy. Very creepy movie. Yeah. That's awesome, man. And I also saw The Monkey. which i've been wanting to see that oh yeah yeah i all i knew was right yeah stephen king and uh james wan and all i knew was and it was the same director as long legs i was who's i think anthony perkins son or
He's related to his son. And that's all I knew. And I was like, I don't even want to know. I didn't even watch a trailer. I just wanted to go see it. And it was fantastic. Really? It was so much fun. It was just a blast. I didn't know what it was going to be like. terrifying scary if like you know after long legs i'm like who knows what this guy's gonna pull out and it has a more comedic tone it's a it's a real like dark comedy in a certain way black black comedy
but it's super fucking gory. And it is just, it is right up our alleys. I got to see it. It's fun. You're going to have a blast. I mean, just trust me. Go see it. for sure i did i did watch i'm remembering now smile too um i want to see that which actually i can't remember if the first one i remember the first one was uh like this good the second one was pretty fucking good and not just um the movie itself like the story but the soundtrack and the sound design is what really got me
paired with the cinematography it just felt maybe the first one is like this and i'm not remembering it well enough but felt very sort of like long legs more of an artsy uh kubrick-esque uh, creep fest, you know, nice. Yeah. Yeah. We did a really good job with it. I was pretty impressed. I just, I don't remember. I just don't remember the first one capturing me that much. Like the second. Yeah. I remember the first one being pretty freaky, but yeah.
I remember the first one being okay. I enjoyed it, but it was exactly what was advertised to me. Exactly. No more, no less. A lot of the good scares had been ruined in the trailer. Yeah, it was. The monster was really cool looking. Yeah.
you know the i mean it's the same we talked about it was sinister again right it's the same like you pass it on follows you and you gotta yeah it passes on you gotta you gotta face your inner demons because you've got this dark trauma you gotta overcome it was all that But it was one of the better examples of it, I thought. Yes, it was. But now you got me excited for two now because I want to rewatch one almost to be like, did I?
was it as good did I miss like the stylistic elements in the first one or is it just interesting Yeah, is the second one going to be its own animal now? Don't spoil this for me, but I will tell you this. If the movie does not end with the main character killing herself live on stage in front of 40,000 people and infecting all of them with the curse.
I will be very disappointed this morning. That doesn't happen with the first one, does it? Well, the whole thing is if you kill yourself in front of somebody, then the curse is passed on to them. From the trailer, anyway, it looks like the main character is some kind of pop singer or something like that. You may or may not have just called it. And you're talking about the trailer for Smile 2. What you saw is what you're saying. In the trailer, she's obviously a pop singer.
Yeah. So I'm like, Oh, perfect. Then if she kills herself on stage, like I just, I always ask myself, what's the worst possible ending? Because that's how the horror movies should end. It's the only genre where you can really do that and see. The first one in previews already gave it away for you. That's why I can't watch trailers. I will figure out a movie with just a scrap. The reason I couldn't figure out long legs is because...
Even when you see the movie, you can't figure it out. Yeah, they don't spook you. Well, didn't you? First of all, I loved Long Legs. It was great. Very stylistic. It was awesome. But I thought for all the hype.
I thought the eventual story that you find and sort of the ending was like a little more generic than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was a little more generic. Yeah, I was expecting a more clear... motive for long legs other than just you worship satan yeah i was like well all right but then like to what like to what end are we doing this is just to fuck with it it ends up being just to fuck with people and i'm like
I thought he was trying to summon something or rake some kind of like. Yeah. Well, again, yeah. I thought maybe there would be more too. I'm like, oh, it's like this just like, this just happened. This is what they do. Like, there's not much to that. Like, yeah, I mean, it's just creepy. It's cool. It's like.
whatever but i thought there'd be more yeah more to it you know what i mean yeah yeah totally so but uh um i did like the ending to smile though um even though it's yeah just because it's brutal like she fucking sets herself on fire and then but then you're like yeah the guy still sees it and you're like fuck Right, exactly. That last minute. And if there's anything, this doesn't give anything away because you'll just see it the minute you press play on the movie. Just...
a cool stylistic thing is like, it's, it's picked up right where it left off. I mean, it's like, Oh really? I was wondering about that. Oh really? It's basically is like, it's set.
starts it just starts and it's him ragged as fuck like behind the wheel of a car parked and it's like seven days later it says so it does like a little recap or it doesn't even do a recap it just says it's like boom it's him it's like seven days later that's why you gotta watch the first one like back to back with it and it's cool this doesn't give it away but this
tells you what style it is like he because they start hallucinating you know right and he like gets out of the he like there's a cool moment there he does some good non-verbals and he gets out of the car And it's shot beautifully. And he just walks right by.
her burning to death like in the front lawn right here if somebody's and he just ignores it and just keeps walking you know because he knows already like it's not yeah he's been seeing these things for days so he's yep so it's really cool you have to watch it it's cool It's on Paramount Plus for free right now, but it might be on some others too. I don't know. I'll check it out. I didn't watch this.
Is that all you had? Yeah, that's all. I didn't watch. I mean, Liz and I are watching TV shows right now, but it's not horror related. But I took Ace to the Captain America Brave New World because he really wanted to see it. And I'm like, you're three. I don't know. We should go see Paddington instead. And he's like, what does he get in America? I want to succeed. Like, he watched the cartoon stuff. And I took him there.
It was a mistake, I think, because he was very scared of, like, the Red Hulk. But I did bring some headphones for him, and he wore them most of the time because it was in, like, the RPX theater with loud as hell. Loud as fuck, man. I thought it was a pretty good movie, though, and it was entertaining. I found something similar to you where I let the kids, we let them watch Avatar for the first time, like a few days ago.
and when like right now we're sitting here as adults and if you would ask me i'd be like oh i'd be kids could watch avatar like yeah it's not that bad there's no real there's not really any like blood or gore and there's nothing really scary but then i watch it with the kids and you don't think of things like the rhino type beasts that come through the woods you know they're like knocking trees down like the kids that like scared the kids they're like oh my god
i'm like oh okay i guess there is and then it's like the when they're trying to get on the what do they call the flying things i forgot yeah yeah the band like that sort of scares them and then i've noticed other things that scare them are stressful situations in the movie because we're so jaded like we know oh that's the main guy like he's gonna be fine you know right right yeah exactly we know
Like the stakes are high right now, but we know that it's going to be wrapped up in a nice little bow. And you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. This is act two. It's yeah. And the kids are like, is he going to die? Like they're all, they're all super stressed and fucked up.
I'm like, oh shit, maybe I should have let him watch Avatar. See, that's why I felt like Ace is three. It kind of goes over his head. He can't like... put together but there's a lot of shootout scenes and next break here and there and it's pg-13 but i thought yeah i know but i i had to cover his eyes like four or five times we fast forwarded through the whole like stephen lang Avatar fight, you know? Oh yeah.
yeah where he's in the mech warrior thing and you know the ending yeah yeah i mean it's not really the end but it's close because the movie's like two and a half hours long but right yeah because the movie's so it's it's like the first ending you know It's like the Lord of the Rings with like three endings. God. We can just keep going on tangents because I saw the fucking Lord of the Rings with my buddy John opening night.
We got there sort of late, so I had to sit in the very front row. Didn't you do the midnight showing? Midnight showing, very front row, staring up. Return of the King. Lord of the Rings 3. Yeah, with literally three. You thought it was over three times. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank God. 4 a.m. turns around. Yeah, yeah. I got home at like 4 a.m. It was like 4.30. I was like, holy fuck.
yeah it's like even it even blacks out the music like fades you're like okay i'll tell you what just hearing you say I was at the movies till 4.30 in the morning. I'm like, I don't have it in me anymore. There was a time I would do midnight movies and just you saying that I'm like, if I had to go see Lord of the Rings at midnight, I would be. Starting at midnight, you'd be asleep by like.
like 10 minutes in. So I was younger, so I could handle it, but I was not, I didn't seek it out. I was not like a, like I liked Lord of the Rings, but I wasn't a hardcore Lord of the Rings fan. Like he, he texted me. He was like, Oh, Hey. I'm going to, I got my buddy bail that I got an extra ticket to this movie tonight. You want to go? And I was like, Oh, I guess I'm not doing anything. I was like, sure. And yeah, you show up front fucking row.
three and a half hour movie, midnight showing, three endings. I'm like, what did I sign up for? Right, right. Oh my God, man. Anyways, but... All right, guys. This was fun. Yeah, I'll keep you in mind, but it was a good one. I actually don't know what we're doing next, so we'll pop out a goodie. We'll talk about it. Yeah, we'll get it out there. We'll let you guys know in the group.
Or we won't show you a preview. We'll just release it. But make sure you rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to, and we'd really appreciate that. Thanks for joining us. We'll catch you next time. Later Don't you blame the movies movies don't create psychos movies make psychos There will be blood.