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. Everybody. Classic order show. I don't even care anymore. This Rob just does it all the time. I mean, it's sort of like the lazy intro. Like last podcast does where.
You can just catch us mid-conversation, maybe. Anyways, I'm Danny Bonin. Half of the Blood Brothers and... I'm Carmelo Chimera. The Rob. This is the Rob. It's just the two of us today. Oh, my God. Yes. It's nice when it's just the talent. The podcast gods have spoken, and there's only two of us on the episode.
Yeah, Scotty is in Peru, possibly. Yes, he is. We don't know. We don't know what Carmelo's doing. Carmelo has been fighting a hard, hard, hard battle, losing battle with erectile dysfunction. And he's unable to join us. I thought you were going to say cancer. Carmelo's no longer with us. Thoughts and prayers. No, everybody would know that because he would have posted a GoFundMe.
What are you talking about? Kickstarter, not GoFundMe. I'm sorry, it would have been Kickstarter, my bad. So yeah, here we are, the Rob and me covering Leviathan. Leviathan. And finally, there's a movie that I actually like. wow all right is that let's let's let's start there with opening rob thoughts this so is this do you have a history with this movie have you seen it multiple times what's good i've seen it many i've seen it at least five times now okay um okay it's good
It really is good. It's one of those movies, I think I watched it for the first time because I got it confused with The Abyss. As many people probably did. Yeah. I was like, oh shit, Ed Harris. harris looks just like the guy from robocop um no it's solid it's it's fun uh i got no idea what the numbers are on it or how popular it was um but not very Kind of a star-studded cast for 1989. It is. It was the... Peter Weller from Robocop. You got the general from Rambo. You have... Oh, God.
Me and Savannah just Googled it. Daniel Stern from Home Alone. You got Amanda Pays, who we just watched in The Kindred. That's right. And then Martin, the lady. She was in Rambo? She was in They Live. Oh, They Live. Never mind. This. She was in several others. It's not Claire Higgins. Claire Higgins is from Hellraiser, and that's who I always confuse her with.
I'm going to forget all the names now. They don't have them pulled up, so I might as well just pull them up as we jump into this discussion. Megan Foster? Megan Foster? Yeah, that's her. It's a pretty star-studded cast. Not sure what the budget was either. Ernie Hudson. Yeah, Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters. So this is 89. Ghostbusters was like 84 and 88. So I mean, these people were big. I mean...
Maybe looking back, they're big names, but they had to have gotten paid to do that. No, it's a big budget. Meg Foster actually was the... The sort of villain who they talk to on the video call all the time. Yeah, but it's still. Lisa Eibacher is the blonde. Yes. So, yeah, as one of I watched a commentary on this with a couple of quote unquote film historians and their comment was that.
for the 80s this is one of those where every single person was a recognizable face if not known by name one of those where you're like oh that's how you just saw that i know that that guy from this this and that and the other you know so Strong cast. Strong cast for the 80s. So for me, this is the first time I've watched it. I didn't realize all these people were in it. So as...
I was going to say it cuts you off, but Hector Elizondo. Yeah, he's in a ton. He's in everything. Yeah, he is. He's like... the stepfather and the dad or stepdad and step bros who we talk about all the time he's not he's not the dad and step brothers no no no but he's like the actor oh he's like the actor he's just in everything
oh yeah okay everything okay especially hector from like probably the late 70s of the early 2000s i mean every tv show he's in like law and order um yeah he was in yeah beverly hills cop three runaway bride princess diaries uh he was in monk that tv show you know i mean and he's hilarious he's uh He's just great. So when I turn it on, I'm like, oh, I recognize that. I recognize that. You recognize everybody in this movie. Yeah, yeah.
yeah and so yeah it's just it's a i forgot i was saying before but it's oh i was saying that i had never seen this movie and so i went into it blind
hit play, started it up, and all of a sudden you had the opening credits with all the casts. I'm like, holy fuck. Oh, Peter Weller? Oh, blah, blah, blah. And I was just so naive. So, apologize to you hardcore horror fans, but... we like to do on this show i'm watching we're watching some of us watching these movies for the first time along with some of you and not all of you and you know you'd like to hear our reactions right so well some of them do
Most of them just bitch about how I don't like the movie. That's true. Yeah. Like you. Yeah. All right. Well, if you haven't watched. Leviathan in a while. Let me give you a little synopsis here. That means I got to do the numbers. Yeah, well, I actually have some numbers pulled up, but if you find them, you do them. I was hoping for, fingers crossed, a Rob's rundown. Well, I thought I was going to do the synopsis.
Oh, well, you do the synopsis then, and I'll do the thing. It's like the Rob's rundown is kind of like the synopsis. Oh, okay. Well, you do the synopsis then. Except it's much better and funnier because I'm the one delivering it. All right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Unlike the other guy who's got ED. Please feel free to do the synopsis then, Rob. Please. Well, as I was saying, as far as interrupted, if you haven't seen Leviathan...
This is a heart-wrenching story of a bunch of underwater miners somewhere in the ocean mining some materials, silver or otherwise. Atlantic Ocean. Precious metals. Okay, but I mean, where in the Atlantic Ocean? I mean, they filmed it in Malta, so they weren't even in the Atlantic Ocean. I see. I thought it looked like the Gulf.
at the end when they popped up. I was like, that looks like the Gulf of America. I was about to say Gulf of Mexico, but it's no longer called that. Well, that was filmed in Malta. The rest was in Italy, which I guess is technically... malts is sort of is there but yeah well they did spend a lot of money then because there's nothing in italy but any which way um so it is a heart-wrenching story about a bunch of underwater miners
in malta or the atlantic ocean wherever malta is um hunting down precious metals silver and otherwise in giant space suits when the kind-hearted yet wannabe Roughneck geologist played by Peter Weller has to lay down the law and get these miners in shape for their last three days. Meanwhile, unnamed hurricane is bearing down upon them, which.
Even though they're 16,000 feet underwater, Ernie Hudson is really worried about waves. He's like a hypochondriac over waves. He does not like waves. Well, while Daniel Stern... Was down in the water playing grab ass with a woman who is going to astronaut training. We don't know with what country. She doesn't say NASA. She's a British accent.
astronaut training they uncover a sunken russian ship scuttled russian ship called leviathan where After some back and forth, Daniel Stern drinks some tainted vodka, becomes infected with something that we are unaware of, and then mutates. genetically as the doctor would say sorry the genetic alteration happens to daniel stern and havoc ensues and lots why don't you say lots of blood
Lots of cut scenes. There's some body horror in there. And then poof, they blow everything up, get up to the Gulf of Malta and are rescued. in a climactic ending where i believe ernie hudson's killed but i'm not sure he is killed yeah for no reason yeah i mean it wasn't even like no good reason it kind of like swats at him he was a little upset about that and then he sinks but like Okay. So he was like, go, I got it. Go. Yeah. But then he doesn't go. And then even, even.
He doesn't go. He swims back after. And somehow Peter Weller's got a grenade on his life vest or something. But pretty much, you know, we've seen it before. But I'm still going to give it three out of four stars. It's good. And if you like The Thing and you like Alien and you like water, you will probably like this movie. It's Alien in a wetsuit with a side of The Thing.
Yeah, I mean, it's almost split 50-50, though, with the thing in Alien. Yeah, underwater. Underwater. I mean, it's underwater. But I mean, they're minors like in Alien. They're arguing about... maintenance like an alien and then the actual they'll never tell you what it is if it's an alien or not but the genetic alteration is basically the thing it absorbs people it's a monster made of your co-workers pretty much
Yeah, I do have some numbers that is not hard and fast, but reported between the budget was between 22 to 25 million. Some sources listing as low as 21, though. Opening weekend in U.S. and Canada, it only did about $5 million. Domestic gross for U.S. and Canada only did about close to $16 million. Italy gross was $3.2 million for a combined U.S.-Italy total of $19 million. So if you did your math right, it didn't make its budget back in theaters. No. A little bit of a flop.
We'll talk about how the financing came together in a minute here, but yeah, it came right in with two other films, The Abyss, which obviously won the motherlode of... underwater sci-fi and and that's what that that's like the king of kings uh and this is the budget level in between that and deep star six which was lower budget than this that was the other one i was looking for
It was Deep Star 6. And I haven't seen that yet. We've been asked to cover it. We probably should still do that. I've seen it before. I remember it being okay or good. There's another one called The Rift. Yep, the Rift is another. I think that's the old. The Rift's like 81. It's older. I think it's old. But no, if you've listened to this show before, you know me and Danny are big.
fans of The Abyss. Love The Abyss. I do. I think they're too... The Abyss is incredible. This had the potential to... I don't know where the 20-something million dollars went because there's cuts in this movie to where it's like they ran out of budget.
Like on certain effects, like they're just like, they're going to cut the alien or they're going to do something. And then it just, boom, I think it's the creature didn't turn out on camera as good as they wanted. And then the creature probably turned out like ass and they, For instance, it busts through that big door, but we just see the hole in the door. We never see any creature that busted through it. You see a side angle of it at one point. There's a shadow too, right? Where it gets Cobb.
and the good doctor cuts the tentacle and you see the shadow and you can see like the like the alien style head with the like exoskeleton like you can see through the jaw yeah like you really don't see much of this thing at all No, no, you really don't. And I think it's because they just ended up cutting some stuff. So yeah, going back to what you said, Rob, the abyss, I grew up on it. It was one of those we had on VHS taped off of TV from the VCR.
that i would just watch over and over again we all loved to root for ed harris and we all hated coffee played by good old uh michael bean PN. We all know it's PN. I know. That's what you think. That's what he says. I had an hour-long conversation with the man on the phone once. Actually, it was like an hour and a half. Everybody say hi to Savannah on the podcast. You just walked through the office. Hi, Savannah. So yeah, I feel like these movies are pretty different.
but also pretty similar. They're both quote unquote sci-fi that take place deep underwater and released at around the same time. And we're filmed around the same time, but this is much more of a monster of a creature feature. Whereas The Abyss is basically just straight sci-fi without really any creature effects in The Abyss. I mean, you have a couple... I guess underwater aliens in the abyss, you would call them, but nothing that's...
I struggle to call the Abyss horror at all in any fashion. And when people have said, oh, you guys should cover the Abyss, I'm like, they can't see you. You could just walk by. Savannah's literally fucking crouching tiger, hidden dragon.
through the office here i have the camera to be hidden from the camera faced against the wall if you guys watch on youtube you know you can see us in our camera in our video here no i've got it framed perfectly on the awesome the awesome eclectic picture that you have there you know like like you're saying like james cameron is really good at hovering between horror i can't see you she's distracting me on the podcast
I've already chugged that whole beard. I've already got the tickles. I know. Once again, as last week, I also have the Stanley Hotel Edition of the Woodford Reserve. That's just because Danny has this... overt hatred toward beer. I don't drink beer whatsoever. And I have an overt love for the Stanley Hotel. I love the Stanley Hotel. I am up there all the time.
They don't have the fish dip anymore. What do you mean they don't have the fish dip anymore? They haven't had it since me and you went. That's bullshit. They don't have it. They don't have the fish dip as the appetizer anymore. Okay, this is the cult classic travel channel right now. Win. You make your pilgrimage as horror fans at the Stanley hotel. And if you have a best friend and I say best friend, not in quotes, Danny's my best friend.
Who we see each other twice a year. It doesn't matter. We're always connected. Once a year, maybe. Shannon brought me to tears when she said, Danny is your person. And I said, I know Shannon. Did she say that? Yeah, she did. We got pictures of me and Danny underneath a wedding altar.
Outside the sandbar on Anna Maria Island. There's a sunset happening. It was true. Everybody was looking at us and they were like, oh my God, how'd that fat bitch pull such a handsome guy? I don't know, man. They most all thought I was rich. I was slumming it. But no, when you get to the Stanley, which you should go, it is incredible. Every time we go up to Colorado, me and Danny, doesn't matter. We're going to the Stanley. The fish spread at the Stanley. It's not there. Smoked fish dip.
if it is there is i live on the beach like it's the best it is it is it's the best you it's the best thing you'll ever have it's good in the whole everything else there is very good too but that trout fish dip is incredible. It is. What dogs do you have now? Now I hear a dog. Indy doesn't bark like that. No, that's little bits.
uh i've never met have i met little bits no you haven't met little bit she's a bitch more more dogs okay all right well i swear to god we'll get back to the podcast here let's just jump let's just Let's just dive right in, dare I say. Yes. All right, so Leviathan's origins lie in the 1980s. The 1980s rushed to cash in on an underwater... sci-fi horror after ridley scott's alien of course 1979 popularized blue collar crews versus slimy creatures in isolated settings so you do have that sort of
antidote here of a blue-collar working crew in isolation experiencing this. And the film historians also talked about Alien did a good job of making it futuristic but they called it used future so everything was worn out it was you know not shiny and looked like the set was built two days ago and i think they did it
decent job with this too and Leviathan with Cobb and the art design. The guy's name was something Cobb. I'll have to pull it up, but they did a decent job of the art design, I thought. So this just, you know, Alien, it sparked a sleuth of copycats. So by 1989, studios thought the next big thing was going to be Aliens Under the Sea.
So that year gave us three Deep Sea creature features. James Cameron's highbrow epic, The Abyss, which we already talked about. The low-budget Schlocker Deep Star 6. And right in the middle was Leviathan. So Leviathan was intended to be like the big fish of a bunch of of a major studio backed horror thriller set 16,000 feet under the Atlantic. And then to make it happen, a team of heavyweight filmmakers.
was assembled so let's talk about him director george p cosmatos greek italian director known for uh well he did he did rambo first blood part two He did Cobra then 1986. Cause I think Rambo first blood part two did so well that he's like, I gotta have Sylvester Stallone again. Cobra.
But he had a reputation for being the cure. Did we cover that on our little side show? If you go to Patreon, we have a handful of episodes of the cult classic action show. You can... we haven't done that in a few years but you can listen no no i mean you can um we should put them behind a paywall though they are it's like five bucks yeah they are well we need to quadruple that because this is
There's only like five of those episodes. Yeah, there are five or six, something like that. Yeah, Cobra, I think, was probably the first one we did, but I saw Cosmo. Again... Like you said, like when you were looking through the credits when it first turned on, I'm like, holy shit, holy shit. Like, oh, and it's not a bad movie. I don't want to actually crap on this movie too much because I usually crap on it. No, it's good. But it is good, but it is kind of like...
Like we're saying, if it would have hit harder, maybe there was awful issues with the monster. But you're already spending 20-something million dollars. This movie could have been up there with the thing. The premise is that good.
the actors are that good oh they are i think it just came down to the the production of it i mean yeah i mean so he was he was known as being a hard-ass perfectionist on set at least a perfectionist in what he wanted and what his vision was I mean, a fun fact is he had directed a smaller horror film in 83 called Of Unknown Origin, where a guy fights a giant rat in his house and actually starred Peter Weller as the main character.
Right, and that went down too. Yeah, I never seen that. Of Unknown Origin. Check that out. We watched Deep Star 6. Cosmatos even claimed that he was the first director offered RoboCop, but had to turn it down. We don't really know if that's true, though.
Well, the director that did Robocop is a genius because he turned it into like a comedy satire. Yeah, I haven't watched it in forever. Oh, well, I can watch it, but it's in Portuguese. Ah, that's on your piloted service. If I did... allegedly do alleged things with 19 and i'm sure there's going to be like aaron garcia i got it on blu-rays while you need physical media no yeah
I'm just too shitty of a person to pay $1.99 to rent it or to do a seven-day free subscription that I will forget is a free subscription. And then when I go to get my fourth or fifth Celsius of the day. I'm going to overdraft my debit card. Well, speaking of physical media, stay tuned to the end. We're going to talk about how we're going to give away a lot of it. Yes.
Yeah, so anyways, Cosmatos, he had signed a production deal with Dino De Laurentiis, actually, his company, and Leviathan was pitched to him as a new project after another film fell through, so he took it. So he's director. You have David Webb Peoples and Jeb Stewart are the credited writers on Leviathan. So the original script was written by David Webb Peoples. He also co-wrote Blade Runner.
His big thing later was he wrote Unforgiven, which is amazing, obviously. Unforgiven is awesome. Jeb Stewart co-wrote Die Hard and The Fugitive. which are which are cool that's fugitive fugitive is fantastic die hard i'm becoming more well you can't talk about die hard i'm not i'm just saying i think lethal weapon's better that's all i'm saying
I am a fan of Die Hard 3 because that's the one that I watched. Oh, yeah, Die Hard with a Vengeance. Yeah, that's one I came with a kid watching too. Yeah, yeah. Because I guess, I don't know, they must sign a contract with TBS.
for diehard it was always on it was always like with the vengeance it was like the biggest one yeah it didn't matter what time of the day tuesday night sunday friday late night movie diehard with a vengeance tbs most of them movies for guys who like movies yeah and then what was the other one dinner and a date or movie in a dinner something like that movie where they did like a dinner movie yeah they showed you like five cheese mac and cheese they would they would have die hard
they would i mean joe bob is the like antithesis of all those uh monster monster hosted shows right like hosted shows but i'd miss that they were doing it for action on tnt they were doing it They don't really do that anymore. I actually loved it. Movies for guys who like movies. It felt like you were there. It felt like you were all hanging out watching a movie. Yeah, and dinner and a movie. Monster Vision, of course, is probably my favorite.
There was, like you said, there's probably like eight or nine other iterations of a hosted movie thing. And I actually really enjoyed it because you didn't even mind the commercials or anything. I actually, like you said, I kind of miss it. Yeah. I need to watch movies. I probably watched Leviathan on Monster Vision. You probably did. I know your diehard Joe, Bob Briggs.
When he comes back down to Tampa, I may actually go to one of those Comic-Con things just to meet him. Is he going right now or are they in between? They're done. The summer just ended. So the season seven's out. You can watch it all on shutter. I highly recommend it. Um, and, uh, of course they're going to do Halloween. There'll be some Halloween special or something. Yeah.
So anyways, Peoples, again, David Webb Peoples, he actually originated the story of Leviathan, but his early draft was very dark, claustrophobic tale about a tiny, not a big creature, but tiny insect-like creatures. from a bottle terrorizing an undersea crew. He sort of envisioned like a psychological nightmare film. But then when Kazumatos came on board with his bigger is better action mentality...
It's sort of morphed the whole project into a more tangible giant monster movie. Basically an underwater alien clone. Well, like in 89, it would have been real difficult to do, I think, thousands of tiny insects. I think so, too. Just the one little spider, little sea spider they have in this is tragically terrible. Oh, it is. Yeah, it looks like a rubber prop from Spirit Halloween.
Which is up right now, and I took the kids to the other day and scared the bejesus out of them. Spirit Halloween's great. Yeah. I had to get some bunny ears, some Playboy bunny ears for Shannon, because she's... in legally blonde at the theater right now and needed a playboy bunny costume well it's a business purchase so it was that's fine uh so yeah my kids were terrified of that's what we were they were all excited oh spirit let's go
And they loved it, and they were stepping on every little thing to make every little thing go off. And the spider jumps out at them. Well, there was some clown thing. So then later that night, and the next night, and maybe even the next night, Elliot was having trouble getting to sleep because of the fucking clown animatronic at Spirit Hall.
Yeah. It wasn't even one I recognized. It was just a random demon clown. It's weird how the little stuff hooks into your tiny psyche as a child because like... I was absolutely petrified of clowns because I remember walking like down the hallway, going past the living room where my mom and my dad were watching it. The 1992 it. I thought you were going to say they were like doing a doggy style. No, me and my buddy Mike Long walked in on that one.
uh like sophomore year of high school that was terrible mary yeah yeah the only silver lining to that was we were so hammered ass trashed that we would have been in so much trouble except for we walked and they were in the living room like a bunch of fucking animals walked right in the front door I never had the pleasure of that experience as a child. Well, it burned into your brain. I'll tell you that much. What part did you see on it that scared you so bad? It was the shower scene.
Where he came up through the drain and was like, you know, hiya, Eddie. And just that little bit. I don't know what it did. It just burned. I've said it 1,200 times on this podcast. Exorcist ruined me when I peaked it barely when I was like four or five. When my stepdad had it on, not even watching it. He was reading the paper and it was on TNT in the background.
yeah it's it's just those little things it's weird yeah you know especially nowadays you know like with some of the like i don't know if i would be terrified of evil dead 2013 yeah as much as i was actually really spooked and creeped out by like it or the exorcist or even you know watching the first evil dead as a teenager it's still there's something about i think the grittiness and the graininess and the claymation and the
it's so off-putting and unpolished i think that you think you wouldn't be scared but but maybe you would maybe you would kids Dude, I always think they can handle more than they can because then we'll watch something like we just watched all the Indiana Joneses. And a part will happen that's not even scary at all. And they're terrified. And I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, a good thing I'm not showing them this movie or that. I think the real experiment is going to be, you know, we'll get Elliot.
and see how he can handle evil dead 2013 oh my god dude you cannot watch that till he's like 13. i can't wait though I remember introducing my kids to it slowly, but my kids, I think, have been a little bit trying to... I think there was a couple, but there wasn't a lot. I mean, as much as I talk about it, we held off for a long time. I think that Tooth Fairy movie...
Darkness Falls probably fucked them up. But yeah, Evil Dead 2013 didn't happen until they were much older because it's so gruesome. And I'm trying not to have... them have that that memory like the exorcist was for me where i literally those were my nightmares for the next 10 years after couldn't couldn't go into a dark room no no i don't want to you ran out of a dark room like you can feel something grab in the back
your neck oh dude are you run up the stairs i had a you know my my parents house where i grew up had a dingy downstairs and then a landing then you get upstairs you just run up those fucking stairs yep oh yeah Anyway, so I was talking about how David Webb Peoples had the original script for the tiny monsters, but then they changed it to the big monster. He didn't like that. He left the project.
And that's when Jeb Stewart was brought in, the second writer, to rework the script to what we know as Leviathan right now. So, yeah, it had sort of a changeover, but I'm sure George P. Cosmatos... Being the director that he is was very much in charge of that rewrite and just had Jeb Stewart sort of do whatever.
So yeah, Stuart, he delivered on what George wanted, gnarly mutations and jump scares. Although I wouldn't say there's a lot of jump scares. No. There's like the cheesy... scuba suit where she opens it and the thing kind of pops out and then there's like a most part it's pretty fish jump scare one yeah but it's pretty slow i mean like i actually kind of like that like you know because they're
you know they're changing and there's some body horror in it but you know it wasn't really like like you said like there wasn't anything really jumping out at you it was lots of tracking shots point of view of the monster you kind of knew where the monster was Yeah. You know, the makeup was kind of, I liked it. They were giving away who was changing, like when Cobb is getting sick. I mean, they're really, it was, you know, you're locked in.
I think most of the horror in this is still very much like Alien, but you're locked in. There's no escaping this, so there's no real reason to have a bunch of pop-outs. No, no. You may have noticed... De Laurentiis were listed as producers, but it was Luigi and Aurelio, not Dino De Laurentiis.
So Dino De Laurentiis, as most of everyone listening is probably familiar with, he's the Italian producer behind King Kong in 1976. Army of Darkness he produced. I think he... was had something to do with evil dead 2 as well but then uh there was a big difference between one of them yeah because when they did the evil dead tv show there was certain properties were owned I think number one is the one they can never fucking get a hold of. I think it's number one that...
Yeah, because they don't know. Or am I wrong? Or is it Army of Darkness? No, it's Army of Darkness. It's Army of Darkness. I think it's because of Dino De Laurentiis. They couldn't figure out how to make... because they couldn't figure out who how to get the rights and who they had to pay and i think you're right i think it's evil dead one and two are usually in the clear and no one ever fucking touches army darkness because
that's exactly right evil dead 2 there's a board game that i have and there's comics uh we actually army of darkness is never even talked about yeah and then you have ash versus evil dead which builds and mentions and even shows clips from the first two evil deads and nothing is ever mentioned of army darkness no nothing because it's all tied up it's all tied up so um so yeah well in 1987.
Dino's company, DEG, was in financial trouble and couldn't bankroll Leviathan like it needed. So his son, Luigi, and nephew, Aurelio... loved the idea enough to actually acquire the rights and finance it themselves. I have no idea how they had all this money, but they did it. Embezzling from their father. Exactly.
So it became this Italian-American co-production self-financed by the De Laurentiis family in a bid to keep the project afloat after Dino had to step back. So Dino wasn't hands-on in production, but his company did handle foreign sales. But they weren't shy about spending money. We talked about the budget ended up being about $20 to $25 million, which is pretty hefty in 1988 for a freaking horror film.
MGM slash UA United Artists came on board to distribute in the U.S., and they had hopes that it would be this blockbuster. but it didn't really end up that way. No. I mean, I can see why. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It just, I mean, overall, these are some, could be some final thoughts that we're not to yet, but it just. They probably spent, I mean, what? What was the budget on The Abyss? The Abyss. I mean, I can't imagine The Abyss is too much. Okay, 43 million. Double, I guess. Yeah, almost double.
it just for the amount of money they spent and for the caliber of actors that are in it and for the movie they were going for it still to me just felt like they were stuck in b movie territory still Yeah, I mean, the sets look, I mean, everything there looked okay at first, but then it kind of, you know, there was a lot of, like, it wasn't fine-tuned enough. And then to have a movie that is like a creature feature to not have.
I mean, like there's a scene where the lock hits and the arm of the creature gets snapped off and it literally just kind of floats and like bobs down this little like lazy river. And it's like... Those are, you know, I mean, that just seems to be how the movie went. Like, they just weren't showing a lot because there must have been massive issues with the effects. And this is an effects movie.
It is. It is. And I'm going to get into that because I watched some interviews with the effects guys. And speaking of, so you have Stan Winston on this, who's just renowned. And his guys have gone on to do their own things. Tom Woodruff Jr. alec guinness uh alec gillis and uh a couple others i mean just legendary so you know he did see you have stan winston fresh off of creature creature stuff in aliens in 86
He did Predator in 87. He's the one that came in and fucking saved Predator in six weeks because if you've seen the pictures floating around, they had Van Damme cast in the beginning in this alien-looking suit that was not cool at all. No. and stan winston came in with his team and in six weeks output what you see today with what the predator is you know um and yeah did the creature effects for aliens that's i mean that's a huge job you know so i had worked with james cameron already
I mean, he'd later do Terminator 2, Jurassic Park after that. I mean, he's done Avatar. The list goes on. So he had actually had offers to work in all three of these of 1989's underwater movies. Cameron wanted him for The Abyss. Others approached him for Deep Star 6. So he actually... Now, if you... Talk to his guys. I think Stan Winston has passed away now. That's probably why he wasn't on the interviews. Probably. Stan Winston. Death? Is he? Maybe he's not.
Oh, no. He died in 2008. Yep. June 15, 2008. So 62 years old. Yeah. All right. How old was he? 62 only. Pretty young. Yeah. So. So yeah, if you talk to these guys, it almost sounded like they had started some pre-production or something on Leviathan. They were maybe brainstorming some ideas. Oh, no, you know what it was? This is what it was. Stan Winston wanted to direct the next movie he was a part of. And I think he was focusing on that.
And when James Cameron offered the abyss, he didn't want to give James Cameron half his attention because it's James Cameron, you know? Yeah. But then thought he could do Leviathan. Maybe at the same time as he was looking into directing his own feature, which I think he did. Winston director. So he did. Well, Pumpkinhead.
in 88 so that was right before this uh not sure what he would have been setting up to direct it could have been pumpkin head i mean because he may have held on to it for a while Yeah. So just to give you an idea, Woodruff Jr. or Woodruff, Tom Woodruff, who worked for Stan Winston, branched off and his first feature was then Tremors.
He did a lot of good work, yeah. But he worked with Stan on this movie. This was sort of like the parting, the last time Stan had his whole full crew before some of them split off. And not in a bad way. Stan would throw them movies all the time. Woodruff did Alien 3. So Stan Winston sort of like passed it on to him. But yeah, so... So yeah, he actually had sort of turned down James Cameron to do Leviathan in such a way. So James Cameron sabotaged this movie. Yeah.
But I don't know. I feel like Stan Winston's efforts or talent rather would have been wasted in the abyss because again, there's not really. It's very digital. Yeah, it was a digital effects movie. I'm sure that was part of again, like James Cameron's always wanting and he's a genius. And he is a genius, whether you like the Avatar movies or not. But, I mean, he is just a genius. And I think that was one of the claims of fame to Abyss. Was this the first time CGI was used at least that well?
for 1988-89 with the the moving water yeah um because he's always thinking how to do you know i think he almost comes up with with like a shot yeah i wouldn't be cool to have something made out of water, and then he makes a movie around trying to figure out that one shot. What it is. Well, The Abyss was famously completely shot underwater. It's basically a documentary. And Harris won't even talk about it. I get Harris's ass in interviews and he's like, I'm not like, I like James Cameron.
We're fine. We're cool. He almost drowned, apparently, multiple times making that movie. We're going to get to it, but this film, Leviathan, was not shot underwater. What? No. I thought this whole thing was shot underwater. They had the balloons floating around. How did they make them float, Danny? The Abyss was legit shot underwater. Part of the reason Stan turned it down was he didn't want to be...
He didn't want to spend a year in a water tank with Cameron, and it was going to be a long time. Freezing your fucking ass off, I'm sure. He thought Leviathan would be sort of a quick side gig, but it didn't. Turn out to be as quick as he thought. But he also is like Malta, Italy. Yeah. Let's go do it. I'm on the Mediterranean. Yeah. Yeah. Heck yeah.
Well, so Leviathan was greenlit in 1987 with a tight timeline. Producers actually wanted to beat The Abyss to theaters, aiming for a spring 1989 release. I wonder if that's how some of these things get made. Like Stir of Echoes with Kevin Bacon and then The Sixth Sense and then with Bruce Willis and then there was the other Kevin Bacon movie that me and you and Scotty all watched in Tallahassee, Death Sentence.
That came out right next to Jodie Foster's The Brave One. It's the exact same thing. It's wild how it must be a rumor mill. I think we're missing that now. In Hollywood. Everything is superhero garbage. Yeah. But there was always two or three, in this case three, where somebody's like, hey, that fucking Jimmy Cameron dick, he's a...
He's making some kind of underwater alien movie with Ed Harris. And they're like, okay, has anybody got an underwater alien script? And then somebody's like, I got deep stage six. And this other dude's like... got Leviathan. Let's do it. And then like Dino Laurentiis is like getting Coke money. from his kids and being like, we got, no, I need another 10 million because I got to beat that asshole. Jimmy Cameron. He made those robot laser movies. And remember,
We made robot lasers. Now, it didn't do as well because it was Italian dubbed over in English by people that were actually Dutch. But that's like, I kind of miss that. Because there's always like... When me and you were coming up, it was the reboots. House on Haunted Hill, House of Wax, Haunting of Hill House.
But you always, there's always like three. It's still the reboots, man. Now it's the remakes, you know? I mean. Yeah, but I almost wish they were like, okay, so we're going to like remake. But they come like in sequence, like Sony. gets universal monsters so we get like a new universal monster movie like the mummy or the wolfman like every two or three years i want these italian companies and like canon and stuff in the 80s where like paramount okay
Werewolves are hot. Everybody hear me? Werewolves are in. They are sort of in. Well, Eggers is coming out with a bear move. Yeah, that's going to be cool. I actually am excited for that. I am too. But I want somebody to be like, yeah, that Bobby Eggers, he's making some fucking dog movie, okay? So look, we're going to make like six of them. Well, you know. I want to have, like, Robert Eggers will be Bear Wolf, and that's going to be the Jimmy Cameron. Okay, we'll go see that in theater.
But I want a bunch of directed DVD shit. I want like the, you know, like what we had in the 80s and 90s where there was like, you know, Jean-Claude Van Damme did Cyborg, which was a rip off of. five other movies so if you if you had a hard-on for cyborg action in like 1991 there's like 12 well this is the whole business model self-admittedly, of Corman, of Corman's whole studio. Yeah, I love Roger Corman. It's brilliant. And it itches a scratch you didn't know you had kind of thing.
I think you meant scratches and itch. That's the one, too. Look, I'm a real lightweight, okay, and I've had, like, two beers. Well, this is Corman. Corman talks about this is what they do. This came out, so we made this. And then this came out, so we made this. Yeah, and Roger Corman knew his avenue too. He's like, look. Three sets of breasts minimum. Yes, three. Please. The men get killed brutally and the women get assaulted. That's it. That's Holly D.
these film historians talked about galaxy of terror and how it relates to these films. And James Cameron came up working for Roger. Yeah. Well, he worked on galaxy of terror. That was a movie he actually worked on. So we're getting off course, but that's fine because we don't have the other two. to put us back on course. And we're the reason. I'm the one that has to put us back usually. Yeah, but see, you don't have backup. I'm just going to run rogue. But that's why I do like Leviathan.
Yeah, I do like it. And it's like, I still got a lot of notes by the way. So yeah, spit it out. But what I was going to say is like on any of the notes or anything's like, was there admittedly like. massive failings in the budget or like massive issues. with animatronics or the special effects, or did they just not have... No, there was a tight timeline, and some things might have been rushed, but nothing where someone's like, oh, we totally missed the mark on this or that.
But doesn't it feel to you like there's actual scenes missing? It feels like the monster was cut down a little bit. Like, oh, maybe they filmed more, but then they watched it and were like, this is garbage and we can't use it. That's what it feels like to me. Like there were tail ends of scenes. That were missing. Now, I watched it on Tubi. And you had commercials and tons of them.
Well, I got commercials on Netflix now, too, because I'm not paying those fucking thieves. What is it like? Five more dollars to not have commercials? Dude, I've got everybody in my family writing my Netflix right now. My Netflix bill is like $50 a month. What, did they charge you more for more people right now? Oh, they figured it out, dude. It's ridiculous. But I watched it on Tubi, but I don't think there was anything really cut out. But you don't see... Okay, so you don't see...
Oh, my God. You don't see the Ghostbusters guy. Ernie Hudson? You don't see Ernie get killed. You just assume he dies in the finale of the movie. Sort of, yeah. You're right. You're right. You see him get squatted and go under the water, but he doesn't even get a death scene. And then the doctor, like he shows up in the monster, but he leaves a suicide note.
Like, it's just weird. It's like they cut stuff out of the room. Well, you see him getting sick. He has like a tear. But then that's the last you see of him. yeah yeah but it's just it's just kind of happens you don't see a transformation i don't know it's just there just seems to be like well so i mean here's so winston's crew they cranked out like 50 or 60 creature concept sketches they had this whole thing you had uh you had
Cosmato's sitting there demanding different versions of tons of shit. Like they had to do different versions of the suits and he was trying to decide between all this stuff. So they, they later called the final monster a monster stew of like too many concepts. You had creature designer Alec Gillis, one of Stan's protégés who I talked about, sort of moved on to do other things. He described the Beast as a freak show with no coherent anatomy.
Ernie Hudson actually joked that he always thought the monster looked like a giant chicken once it was on screen. Yeah, so Kismatos and Winston, they went back and forth in the creature design throughout pre-productions. Dozens of iterations. And, you know, Stan Winston, he wanted it just right because he's a perfectionist as well. And Cosmatos, being the bossy director, had his own opinions. They had this sort of tug of war going on. There was some tension.
But yeah, I think there's a lot of tension, we'll find out, as filming begins. But they weren't designing just one monster. They had to plan all these gore effects. And then even they ended up doing the dive suits. So they didn't start that way. But they initially thought, you know, we have enough on our plate. We're building the gigantic creature. And then...
Because models went to him and said, hey, we don't really trust this other department. They're not really getting it right for what we want in these dive suits. Can you guys also now do the dive suits? They're like, oh, fuck.
And when I watched some interviews with Winston's guys, they were talking about how they were already way behind schedule and almost over budget on the creature effects. But Stan Winston just was like, yeah, we'll do it. He sort of... like to save the day i guess he liked to come in and say yeah like he did on predator you know and so he'd be like oh no we got it and then he would try to explain it to the guys like hey well
Now that we're doing these, we have a little more time so we can finish the creature effects and we have a little more budget. But it made no sense because it was not even enough more time to make any difference or enough budget to really make.
any difference uh but apparently these suits they were you know custom molded from fiberglass and rubber and it cost about thirty thousand dollars a piece for these pieces so there's some of your budget right there yeah they weren't even featured that much no no not really and they talked about how they had to make them
sort of universal so you they had to fit five foot four amanda pays and then six foot five uh daniel stern you know yeah and they had to so they were in there making all these alterations for whoever was in it It just sounded like a nightmare. One of Winston's guys was talking about how it was like they had all these leg braces, like orthopedic leg braces, like Forrest Gump probably wears that you would see in there. and that's but then they had to like get rid of the metal
joints in them and use bungee cords so that they wouldn't break and they were stretchy and there had to be hand redone in Malta. Once they got there, it just sounded like a total fricking nightmare. So yeah, it just, it was, it was hard to put together. They could have just used extras in the suits and then just used the close-up shots of their faces in the helmet. And they shot them all, so I think we're getting to that part. I wanted to just touch real briefly on...
We did talk about the cast pretty much already. You got Peter Weller as Stephen Beck, who's the lead, basically. He was hot off of the success of Robocop. And he had worked with Cosmatos before, as we mentioned, on that killer rat movie called Of Unknown Origin. You guys want to look that up if you haven't watched it yet. So, yeah, we had Peter Weller.
You have Richard Crenna as Dr. Thompson, Doc. So Crenna was the colonel in Rambo, like you talked about, Rob, Colonel Troutman, Rambo's mentor. But he's been in a ton of shit. He was like known into the older crowd. Lots of old stuff. Ernie Hudson, of course, Ghostbusters, also in a lot of things. And very easy to get along with.
Daniel Stern, a six pack. And we all know Daniel Stern. Well, I mean, most of us listening from home alone, but you know, he was in what Chud and a few other movies too. So. We haven't covered that. We covered that one long ago. Cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers. Yeah, Chud is amazing. But I'm not even sure when the first Home Alone came out. I think that was...
Maybe that was right around the exact same time as this, like 88, 89. I think it must have been... Because Home Alone Part 2, I think it's 91 or 92. Home Alone... He may not have demanded as much money, but...
Ernie Hudson, I assume, got paid. 1990. Home Lows 1990. So he wasn't big from that yet. Okay. No. No, not at all. I know he was on Broadway. I know he did a lot of Broadway acting, but... I mean, most of these actors in here, I mean, you know, like I said, I'm not sure if because we are remembering back.
as childhood saying oh my god it was ernie hudson oh my god it was yeah robocop but i mean i don't know how much money peter weller was worth i don't you know i mean i don't know but looking back he was the hottest one i think at the time
He had to have been, but his whole career was in a RoboCop suit. Yeah, but they still weren't... ed harris at the time they weren't these no it wasn't ed harris it wasn't michael bean it wasn't and i don't know that michael bean was anyone at the time yet really but but james but he was a good friend of james exactly and i think james fought I remember when we did Abyss or we discussed it.
They didn't want Michael Biehn and James Cameron fought his ass off. James Cameron's known for Michael Biehn. He's fought for a few times and he fought for Sam Worthington in Avatar. uh he just he likes the guys that he likes yeah he does he likes and then of course um in a in abyss the ed harris's lady whatever magistrone yeah whatever her last name is yeah She was worth a ton of money back then, too. But still 20-something million for this. It's still...
It seems like a lot, but then it doesn't seem like a lot when you see the Abyss Cup 40. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's true. Well, we talked about they filmed this in Rome Italy at... Cinecita. Cinecita? I don't know how you say it. Cinecita Studios. They had a big water tank there, so it was real convenient.
But then they did the crew travel to Malta in the Mediterranean to do some of the outdoor stuff at the end. But the majority of underwater scenes in the Leviathan were actually done, quote unquote, dry for wet. on a soundstage so we'll talk about that in a second here uh but initially they scheduled a six-day work week to just sort of hustle through and after just a couple weeks three different italian film unions said
No go and went on strike protesting the six day schedule. So the crew demanded a normal five day week and the producers had to give in. I think they were only on strike for one day. But some of the interviews I listened to talked about how the Italian crew really liked to drink copious amounts of wine at lunch breaks every day. Oh, I'm sure.
would offer it to stan winston's guys and they'd be like oh we're not supposed to drink while we're working so uh but they might take you know i think they took a couple here and there yeah i mean you know they're european I think I remember James Cameron said he had issues with aliens when he was in the UK that the crews and stuff didn't like him.
they didn't want they didn't like the go go go let's just get this done and they don't they don't they don't like this american quote-unquote american film pacing schedule where and maybe it's true like that we work ourselves to death and they like The British take their tea in the middle. Italians drink wine at lunch. But you have Cosmatos here, who's Greek, and he's very demanding. He was like a tyrant on set, trying to get the perfect shot.
And he would just do take after take. And I guess there was a few times where him and Daniel Stern just almost got into fighting physically. They're just screaming back and forth at each other. These shouting matches and then got superheated. And again, I think there were some tensions between Stan and Kazmatos. But then they all talk about him fondly, though. Like, oh, he's very volatile, but...
He wears his heart on his sleeve and he is just back and forth, admits when he's wrong, shouts to get his way. And so I don't know that they didn't like him because of it. It's just. It probably was stressful. I think there was also one episode we did on... I can't remember what it was. Maybe it was Robocop or something, or maybe it was a documentary of Robocop. It could have been Robocop.
But the director of RoboCop, I remember, I'm pretty sure it was that, I mean, English was not his first language. Okay. And, you know, he was yelling and screaming and the actors couldn't understand what he wanted, really. But he was, you know, he was a perfectionist as well. So I just think that there's just, you know, tensions get. Yeah, yeah. Tensions are running high and, you know.
And an actor like Daniel Stern, I think he's probably a really cool guy. But, you know, he may not, you know, everybody's different. And to an actor, it's still a job. it's not as much fun maybe as we look at it and yeah i think if somebody's yelling at you and you're like you know well why why are we doing this 20 times why are we doing this 30 times why are we you know what what the hell does it matter like i'm closing a medicine cabinet
But some directors are like, nah. I'm sure it happens a lot. It's true. I think there's some appreciation for it because Shannon, I forgot his last name, one of Stan Winston's guys in an interview was saying, that really this was his memory of the last time he's worked with a – what was the term he used? Megalomaniac director. And in an endearing way, though, he wasn't –
He's like, they just don't do that anymore. There'll be directors with a bunch of producers over their shoulders, whispering and talking. And this was truly the last time he had experienced a King of Kings director that's just...
It's his way or no way. He didn't give a shit. And he sort of liked it. He said he was sort of okay with it, even though it created some tensions and some yelling. Well, I think even as fun and wild and... you know laid back as roger corman seems when we did humanoids from the deep yeah if he didn't like the dailies he gives you some instructions and then he just fired that one
director and went down there and did it himself. He was like, I'll show you how to make it. Well, here's how they did dry for wet. So the crew filled the set with smoke or like a fine mist to create a hazy look that gave it a little bit of an underwater look They use some special blue lighting filters to mimic the bluish color of the deep water. And director of photography, Alex Thompson. So who is actually an award-winning DP? He did Excalibur.
Alien 3, he's an Academy Award winning DP, Alex Thompson. So he did extensive tests with the effects team to get the look right. They also slowed down the camera frame rate so that the movements would appear sluggish, sort of slow-mo. And they actually had to do with the slow-mo. They couldn't see their mouths talking because it's in slow-mo.
So Winston's guys in the suits made these huge mics that cover their mouths and you just can't see their lips when they're talking. So the jaw moves a little, but you just can't see the lips. Another thing they did. Here's the term. So the hardest part was simulating these little particles floating in the water, which was supposed to be plankton, debris, whatever. Initially, they tried this unorthodox solution where they had two...
Well, they had two production assistants spend three days cutting up tiny pieces of chicken feathers. They would drop the feathers like confetti in front of the fans, hoping it would drift around looking like sediment. But it didn't. The feathers kept falling straight down like a straight line. Hi, Danny. Hey. I love to say hi to Rob's family on the podcast.
i'm sorry i was trying to be trying to be a professional it's all right we got dogs we got kids no worries um so they didn't oh instead of feathers so instead of falling apart it's just falling apart I'm coming apart. Yeah, that's what it is. So back to the chicken. Yes. Back to the chicken feathers. They didn't use the feathers. So they, they use this stuff called a candelati.
So I guess it's a small, solid chunk of slow-burning camping stove fuel. It's like alcohol-based. You light it, then you blow it out, and it smolders into fine white flakes. And Italian filmmakers, they would use this for artificial snow in movies. So the flakes are super light. They would float and swirl in the air for minutes before they would completely dissolve. And this looked like the look they wanted. Plankton. So that's what it was like a long way to go to get plankton.
So none of them walking outside in suits, none of anything underwater almost is underwater, except when they're about to surface. So the suit's floating upward. That was done in the tank. But everything down around the ship and everything, none of it's underwater. It's just all this hazing and candelati ash. and all this crazy stuff to make it look like, and slow motion to make it look like they're underwater. So, and I think, I don't know. I think maybe you could.
Tell a little bit. If you were to watch The Abyss side by side with Leviathan, you're like, oh, they filmed The Abyss underwater. And Harris is over there. All he had to do was grind up some chicken feathers. He almost drowned five times.
I guess it saved money not having to film underwater and prevented having the actors being uncomfortable. But I guess the dive suit, speaking of actors being uncomfortable, we're just... hell to wear they were like hundreds of well i don't know if it's literally hundreds of pounds but super heavy minimal mobility uh no ventilation they did have a tiny built-in fan that basically just blew hot air around
Yeah, I mean, they're just sweating their butts off. So the actors would get exhausted quickly and they would need frequent breaks to avoid passing out. And yeah, if an actor in a suit fell over, they were sort of like a turtle on his back. They took a small team of crew to hoist them upright again. So that was... Again, I just don't see why we needed the actors actually in them.
that's where that's where my mind goes to uh so yeah those those were not comfortable at all um so then yeah there were some i mean just to speak a little more about there were some clashes between Cosmatos and Stan just from day one. They had a huge argument on day one, allegedly over the dive suits.
Cosmatos, I don't think he complained about their look or the weight, and Stan was defending his work, and the voices were raised, doors slammed, and they just had this huge scene on day one to set the tone. But Stan Winston was allowed to direct the second unit photography for the creature sequences, at least. That's what they compromised on.
And so whenever there's a scene focused on just the monster effects, close-ups, tentacles, whatever, Stan and his team would handle basically shooting those in their entirety without Kazumatos being there looking over their shoulder. And it was smart because they knew how to do it, and they knew what angles they wanted. I remember actually when we did She Walks the Woods, and I don't know if it was a good idea because now after doing it, I think maybe we would have had...
Just as much sense. But the effects people were like, can we direct a couple of these shots? Because we want to make sure that the camera catches exactly what we need. But maybe that does end up working out sometimes. But yeah, it was... Again, they weren't thrilled with how the monster showed up in the final cut. It was never truly a good-looking monster. And honestly...
Like when I watched it the first time, but then I went back and watched it with commentary. It's not a memorable monster. I was trying to think in my head. I can't even think of it. What does it look like? I just watched it today. yeah you're probably already like what yeah i can't really place dude that's because it had kind of an alien head well the kind of like slow but like i can't i think there was a tail
I'm not sure if there was a tail. It was multicolored. It was like orange and green. But yeah, I couldn't tell you anything about it. Well, what is confusing is that it... takes forms which is fine it builds itself up right so first it's like the a little eel or something yeah and then it's a bigger eel that's on uh day jesus's body jumps out of the cabinet on him and
Then it keeps morphing to what do you see next? You see like tentacles. Then you see this mesh up of this is like where the thing creature comes from. You see a couple of faces in it. You see this mesh of just. flesh and then like some of the faces even talk yeah there's like yeah but like the actual creature itself i couldn't tell you you don't really see it until there's like two times when they're
When he's when Peter Weller is descending the hydraulic lift into the ocean, it's I don't know. You think it's face or something gets cut off because there's a lot of blood and it's squirts on Peter Weller's suit. And you just see this big jaw with teeth and everything. And then you finally see it probably the best when it pops out of the water at the end. And it's, yeah, it's just this.
creature with arms and tentacles and like a large toothed mouth jaw type thing it's it's yeah like again like there's Even at the end, I kind of remember the head. Yeah. But you don't really get a true reveal of it. You really don't. But yeah, it's not memorable.
I mean, like there's scenes that are memorable, like the, like the actors and some of the transformations that they had and things like that. But again, like so much of it kind of is cut and bounced around and, you know, goes from scene to scene to scene. that you don't really get even a big aha. Even when you get to see it for the first time, it's still so quick.
erratic that you still don't really know what you're looking at i think i honestly man think it's because and then no one said this out loud but I'd do a film more, and they had to have been like, nah, that looks like shit. They had to have. They played with the shadows and stuff, but I think certain scenes were shot, and they couldn't get around it. And then, like you said... That's my microphone. Stop that. What dog is this? This is Little Bits. How many dogs do you have now? Two.
She's the new one. She's a pain. Here. There. Aww. She's cute. She is. She's a pain in the ass. But... But no, I think it's what you're saying. I think it was like, they're like, this is just dog shit. I mean, like you said, there was a decent budget, but maybe the time constraints were too much. They weren't going to do any reshoots. It just felt like, to me, it felt like this really weird hybrid of almost an A movie, not quite.
because you had the cast, you had the effects team in place. Yeah. You had pretty much the budget, and it just seemed to have fallen short. Now, I say fallen short of the abyss. It's still a great movie. I actually was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. Yeah. Because I was going into expecting something... worse something like night of the demons it's a little bit more campy and and oh i mean this compared now if we're comparing this to movies like night of the demons and i mean
Some of my recommendations. Body melt and stuff. No, this is a great movie. It really is. I am not coming down on this movie. I guess I'm coming down on it because I just... If they had six more weeks, like if there was just something else to it. And I think it's almost like.
it's like what netflix does you'll get a netflix movies like man it's a loaded cast all these things but it obviously was a movie produced outside of netflix and they came in to clean it up and and launch it and there's literal you could feel like oh here's the time crunch the movie goes a slow burn and then boom when you get to the end and you're like what did i just watch like if this leaves you like that it's like
There's a monster, but I can't really remember what it looks like. There's this scene. Did that happen in that scene? The climax isn't super memorable. No, they shoot a flare. The helicopter doesn't see the first one and they're all safe. And again, like, yeah, like the whole ending climax is very much like from the ship to the surface is very much like.
You almost got to rewind it. You're like, what? That happened so fast. How did they get to the suits and then up to the show? Honestly, when I rewatched it with commentary, literally, I watched it today with commentary. I watched it. two nights ago just watching it and as i was getting towards the end of the movie today i'm like i don't even fucking like remember what happened like what
Okay, so she is also found. Oh, he's there. It's got him. He uses the saw to get away the doors. What the heck? I don't barely remember any of this. And then they pop up and there's no hurricane. Yeah. There's no storm. It's just really weird. I mean, they've been lied to. It's obviously they want to contain what they're doing down there. I'd say like the plot is alien.
100 percent although the big bad company and now they want to keep it they want to contain it for scientific experiments now the i would say the paranoia and the the motivating plot motivator if you will is more like the thing something's out there it's biological it's morphing so and i'm not even hating on it for taking those ideas because they're great ideas to steal they're fantastic i just like the last third of the movie which should be the most memorable you really don't
have any clue what's happening it just happened so fast yeah the doctor goes missing Cobb gets murked we don't see any of it yeah And really, if they're leaning into the company, wants to leave them down there for dead and cover it up, which they did because they put out this report saying, oh, we've lost all these miners. You would think when they popped out of the water and went to the ship, they'd be...
killing them you know what i mean oh they just wouldn't be looking for them yeah they're just like oh cool we're good yeah we're not sending a helicopter out there yeah but i mean in those little potholes i'm okay with i'm most disappointed with the fact that we didn't get we i'm almost certain even though they won't admit it or they don't remember or they don't know but there had to have been hours of cut footage that like you said they looked at yeah and they're like oh my god
Out of all these hours of footage, we thought we'd have, you know, back in the day, especially with film, but okay, so we shot six hours to maybe get 20 minutes editable. usable and they looked at and they're like dude we don't have five minutes like like like it's not working man like this is awful you know and i think from there that's when they're like okay we just need more chaos we're gonna run from this part of the ship this part of the ship and then
They keep threatening the implosion, but obviously it wasn't in the budget to do too much massive structural effects of like things. So the last third is just chaos. And then all of a sudden, like you said, you're like... What? They're at the surface? Stan's guy that was actually in the creature suit. Well, actually, Tom Woodruff. He was the one in the suit. He talked about how it was the worst...
the most uncomfortable suit he's ever been in. It sort of made him hunch over. It was tall, had this thing on his back. He sort of had a backpack that strapped him in. But he said he was so immobile in that that they realized that he couldn't... be the creature at all he couldn't move he couldn't just flail his arms around and that was it yeah and so yeah the creature
as a whole was very immobile it was like oh we have to shoot it and it's standing still over here and then all of a sudden we have to cut over to this angle and he's moved now you know so there wasn't a whole lot i think they thought maybe they would be moving around more than they actually were. But I still say it is a cult classic. No, it's good. I'm glad we covered it. I'm glad I watched it. It was good.
But yeah, that's all my notes on it. I give it a... What'd you give it? Four out of five? I'm gonna give it a... I said four out of five, but yeah, I give it that. I mean, it's a three out of four, four out of five. I give it that. It is a good time movie. I give it that. If it was...
I mean, I really, I mean, there's things that I would change about it, obviously. But, yeah, I mean, watch it. It's fun. It is a 80s sci-fi horror movie at the... absolute peak and pinnacle of 80s sci-fi horror yeah so it's it's great Cast is great. There's not much you take really away from a lot of their choices. Casting was great. Peter Weller was great in this. He's just weird enough. He's just kind of nerdy enough. All the other supporting actors were great.
The set was good. The premise was good. It's just they obviously had issues with the monster. And instead of, I guess you kind of have to applaud them a little bit because instead of just saying, let's scrap it. And let's just play with the idea of there's just something in the shadows. They at least showed you as much of it as I think they were comfortable showing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I liked it too. Four out of five.
pleasantly surprised with my expectations going in. It's actually kind of like it'll get you in the mood. to watch other ones like Deep Star 6. Yeah, I'd like to go watch that now. Yeah, and I want to watch The Rift. I want to watch Deep Star 6. I'll definitely watch The Abyss again. So, again, it's kind of what we were talking about earlier, but I miss having these.
chunks of of like uh themed similar movies you know movies like that i think i mean that's how we got you know michael myers inspired jason which inspired freddy krueger which inspired you know, all these other ones. So we've kind of gone away from that. So it's kind of, this movie will get you in like the, where like trick or treat or Halloween gets you in the.
you know the the fall vibes like this movie gets you in like the sci-fi fun action horror vibes makes you want to just go on and look at the recommendations and say yeah i want to watch the rift yep i want to watch a galaxy of terror And it's just fun. It's fun. Absolutely. It's a good time. Yeah. Well, cool. That wraps us up for... leviathan um before we move on uh to what did you watch i did we rob and i were talking before the show
Because me and Danny have taken over. Yeah, we're taking over. We're making executive decisions. Yes. Starting next episode, as long as the next one isn't a live stream, I don't think it will be. We're going to bring back the horror halftime. If you have listened to older episodes, because I don't think we've done it for probably two years. A long time. Maybe three years.
We used to do the horror halftime where halfway about through the episode, we would give away free shit to whoever had the best meme pertaining to one of our episodes. And we're going to bring that back. next week. So you guys get together your memes. And what was it before? It had to be a meme from the movie we covered that week? I think it was pretty much like we wanted to see. I mean, you can make a meme about anything, but it needs to be a meme that pertains.
like a combo meme that pertains to the podcast and the movie like some of the best memes out there would be you know i mean most of the ones i do are incredible um but but i think the main goal would be like tying in the movie with letting you we're letting you know now so we want to see memes about this episode and leviathan those are the memes we want to see for the horror halftime and then so on and so forth because we want you to listen to the podcast
in actual time and we've already seen all the Freddy Krueger and Jason and Friday the 13th and Exorcist and everything else so try to keep it topical yeah so the goal would be so we next episode that we do we will so between now and then your task if you so should you choose to accept it if you want some free shit
If he wants free shit is to make a meme about preferably Leviathan or it could be night of the demons. Cause we just covered that a recent episode and post it. You have, this is what you have to do. You have to go to the Facebook group. And you have to post it inside the cult classic horror show Facebook group with the hashtag hoarder halftime. Yes. Hashtag horror halftime in the Facebook group.
Okay. I don't care. You might not ever go on Facebook, but you're going to have to go on there at least once. It is so hard for us to keep track of Instagram. and everything else like that. Just put it in the Facebook group. Put it in the Facebook group. Use the hashtag HorrorHalftime where we're trying to spark up the community in that group again. There's been some spam in there and a lot of irrelevant chatter. We're trying to spark it back up again.
So do that. We pick our favorite meme every week, and then we announce the winner during the horror halftime. And then we tell that winner what they're going to win. And then we instruct them to shoot us a message so they can collect their winnings. Now, what we've historically given away is apparel, T-shirts, stickers.
things that have the podcast low. If you go to coldclassichorror.com, you can see that we have a lot of... recurring joke designs and then just also our normal podcast logo the pizza hut shirt yeah so we'll we'll be sending those out but we'll also now an added addition is i'm not really a physical media collector Yet you have a giant collection. Yes, but because of this podcast, I now pretty much own every movie we cover on some kind of special edition UHD.
blu-ray 4k because i always get one that has the most special features on it as possible yep i got my eye on that street trash so i am going to start giving those away as well uh as part of the prizes Okay, I don't know. You don't really get to choose which one you get, but maybe, depending on if you message us, I might ask you, hey, do you already have this one? If you already have this one, maybe I won't send it to you, or maybe I'll send you a t-shirt.
You know, I don't really want... I got the New York Ripper on 4K fucking Blu-ray. I got Street Trash on Blu-ray. I don't really need these things. So if you guys... or win, you could get the, I might keep Leviathan, but you could get the 4K, you know, of body melt, and I'll send it to you.
in the mail for being the winner and i'll send a cold classic horse sticker along with it there you go you really get low i've got like a bunch of old pairs of sperry's i'll autograph them send them to you but t-shirts um you know other apparel Blu-rays. We're going to be giving it all away. So all you have to do between now and next episode, post a meme in the group. Hashtag Horror Halftime. Make it have to do with our...
latest episodes that we've been covering. And if you can tie it into the podcast and any jokes we have going on, then even more points. And I'm just going to put it out there. You know, if y'all fan my ego, you're probably going to win.
you know, superimposing my face over Peter Weller, something like that. Yeah. It's always good. It's there's no excuse. It's so easy these days with technology. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got chat GPT out there. Yeah. So that's starting next week. I don't know what we're covering.
and yet next time but we have talked about and i bet this is what we'll do next episode uh there's a lot of episodes early on where it was just scotty and i when this podcast was in its infancy where we just straight up covered like all the high profile classics right out the gate And so we've never really covered them as a complete podcast. Yeah, we need to go back. Like the first 30 episodes. Or more. The first 100 episodes we could probably revisit with our setup.
I came on for Friday the 13th as just a guest and then would come on very seldomly. But yeah, it would be nice to do... Some revisits. Yeah, so we might start revisiting some of the classics that deserve another, you know, just your run of the mill, like the whole Friday the 13th.
series and the whole Freddy all the Freddy movies again and not to say we're going to do them all in series again but we'll just hit one every now and then and revisit it as with the podcast that we are now as opposed to scotty and i fucking jerking off 10 years ago halloween 3 um i could go back and re-watch hellraiser hell world
I have your keys. Yeah, we could get long sleeves. I could rewatch some crop top. Halloween H2O. Yeah, long sleeves under short sleeves under long sleeves. But no, it would be nice to do some revisits. And also because, I mean, there's only just... so much yeah i mean there's still plenty more we haven't covered but we want to sneak in an old one every now and then it would be nice to sneak in like a big one
It'd be nice to cover Halloween again. It would be nice to cover certain other ones again that it's always worth. We all still revisit them every year anyway for the season. But it would be nice to mix those in with some more of the random, insane, weird shit. I wouldn't mind doing some of the old Bava films.
bloody sabbath and but we'll do one rod it'll be nice to do some big big ones well i've kind of covered the worst of them because i want to get my normal ones in too we gotta do like the descent and some of these
a little bit newer, but turning into classics. It would be good. I wouldn't mind doing the descent. They're showing that. And, um, I just, saw an article somewhere where they're showing that in theaters for its 20th anniversary or something i think they're doing it i think it's like it's 20th or 15th anniversary something like that and see like the descent is part of it too like the sense part of like back in the day when they would drop
Because you had the ruins and the descents. Yeah, the ruin, the descent, and the cave. Yeah, the cave. And the cavern. You had the cavern, the cave, and the descent. The ruins all came out within a year. so i wouldn't mind doing those and that that's like an absolute like oh that's such a phobia oh it is claustrophobic you always send me the fucking yeah i do because because my algorithm's screwed my algorithm is designed to
My algorithm is designed to give me anxiety. Well, speaking of what we've been watching, what did you watch now? We just recorded the last episode one week ago. Now they're releasing a couple of weeks apart, but. So I don't know how much you got to watch in the last week, Rob. I was telling you that I watched the first two episodes of Alien Earth, which I am pleasantly surprised with. I do like it so far. So I recommend that you watch it and you check it out.
yep i want to binge it so i'm dead i can't not watch anything alien so that'll happen i watched oh i watched that netflix documentary um wrong number about that girl that got those insane text messages for like two years the fbi got involved you and shannon should watch that it is a it's not a my typical it's not murder but it's about this girl i think in
utah or montana and um one day she just got this text message from an unknown it's most vile disgusting like high school girl drama stuff like but They went on for two years, and the FBI ends up getting involved to track down who's sending these stalker texts. It's funny and cringy and wild, but it's on Netflix. I highly recommend watching it.
you and Shannon need to watch it because it's safe. I know Shannon doesn't like horror-y stuff, but the twist is insane. Okay, I'll check it out. And then I re-watched The Witch. Yeah, you were just saying that. It's growing on you. That movie hits the spot. When I first saw it, I was really upset. That's what everyone says. That's how I felt too, but then it grew on me after that. I love it.
I love the time piece. I love how I don't like everything that Edgar's does, but I really, really like... how he puts you in the world yeah whether you like it or don't you're like in 1600s you're in wherever i really really like it so um other than that though it's just been
I watched that in a couple of documentaries, but nothing. I'm going to watch weapons this weekend. Yeah, you got to. Everybody loves it. I said I watch sinners. I don't understand the hype on sinners. Yeah, we talked about that. It was okay. It was good. It was good. Everybody seems to be saying that weapons is like insanely good. It was good. Now, don't let it make you think it's shitty now when you go watch it. Don't get your expectations too high, but it's good.
And I think Sinners was good. I just didn't understand the Sinners was from Dusk Till Dawn in the 1920s. Yeah. Still awesome because Dusk Till Dawn is awesome. But I'm excited to see weapons whenever I get there. I did watch one half episode when I was killing time of Creepshow because I still haven't watched all the Creepshows yet. You need to watch them all because R.I.P.
I know. Now it's not due anymore. And I'm not even that far. I'm like in season two or three. It was the one with Ethan Embry playing a... a you know uh anarchist dad who buries the mom in the garden yeah that's a good one then the kid keeps feeding the dead mom garden plants the dad and the accomplice and it's it's and i miss i love i truly loved because it again it's like tales from the crypt and i love tales from the crypt but um
You know, I understand why Nicotero, he ended up putting a ton of his own money into it because for some reason, Shudder and AMC just pretend like they're broke. And yet they continue to make... walking dead spinoffs that nobody's interested in watching yeah yeah but um no it had a great run um i you could probably re-watch it multiple times but yeah anybody
out there if you haven't seen creep show just get your seven i mean even if you don't keep shutter just get it watch creep show it's it's insanely good it's nicotero is a genius yeah and most of these are directed by him He's over the whole show. He took it over. It's awesome. Yeah, and they got all these cameos, too. It's cool. Oh, the actors in the cameos are fantastic. Like, oh, my God, there's like David Arquette is in some. I mean, the stories are all very.
You know, Creepshow, he stuck to what it's supposed to be. They always have like a little lesson to be learned at the end. There's always like a wink wink at the end. Always. I like it so much. Well, cool. I think that covers it. Yeah, here we are. Another hour and a half episode like last time. Jeez. So hopefully you guys enjoy the longer ones because that's been the last two years.
Horror Halftime coming back. Get your memes in. Hashtag Horror Halftime. Post on the Facebook group, the Cult Classic Horror Show. Ask to join if you haven't yet. It's private. Trying to get the spams out of there.
um yeah other than that shameless self-promotion as of the day of recording this poolside at the flamingo dropped a new track today my me and scotty's band so check it out poolside at the flamingo uh throne crusher the name of the track we're gonna be doing a little tour in november up uh pacific northwest so if you're up there come say hi we'll chill with you just come to florida yeah we we will we're talking about next year about possibly touring with a
doing a little run with a band who's actually from Florida. That's where the real metal scene is. Florida. You just don't want to play in our heat and humidity. That's all it is. Danny's always worried about fucking bugs. Dude, the bugs get me down there. Without prejudice, they just get me. It's just me. I come to Florida. They all know I'm there.
he's sending me pictures from the airport like look at my legs they don't i went to hawaii i didn't get bit shannon got bit in hawaii i didn't get bit in hawaii i go to florida i just get fucking attacked we went out charter fishing and danny i swear shoot Shoes, socks, long pants, long sleeve shirt. Long socks, yeah. Long socks, bug spray, hat, sunglasses, everything. You had the buff that you gave me I was wearing. Yeah, the buff. I still got like 20 bites.
Back to the truck, he's like, they got me. I mean, now I only got 15 or 20 bytes instead of 320 bytes. You were covered. The first time when I had sandals. I think Mellow got eaten alive too. Yeah, we both did. I mean, we had sandals on and shorts. Me and Scotty were like, what?
What are you talking about? Yeah, you wear the sandals and shorts and don't get bitten at all, so I don't know what that is going on. I got to work in sandals and shorts. I don't know what's going on down there. All right, guys. Well, thanks for listening. Rate and review us. If you wouldn't mind on Apple podcasts, wherever else. And yeah, we'll catch you again in a couple of weeks. Later. Laters. Don't you blame the movies! Movies don't create psychos! Movies make psychos more creative!
There will be blood.