338: The Sentinel

Welcome to the Cult Classic Horror Show. conversations you've always wanted to have about the films you love shut up we're gonna get you we're gonna get you 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. Scotty Bonin with you guys. We are the Blood Brothers and Carmelo Chimera.

The one and only in the poolside of the flamingo shirt! Yes! Here we are! If you're watching that video, yes. If not, don't worry about it. Here we are on a mellow recommendation that I didn't even know existed. Sorry, I got ahead of myself. Rob's not here. We're just waiting. Maybe he'll still come. I don't know. End the Rob.

I don't know. Rob's not in here. I don't know what's happening. Rob's like a vowel. He's like the letter Y. Sometimes he's a vowel. Sometimes. Sometimes. I can just be his alter ego. I could try to be Rob and Scotty. Here we are. Just so you guys, we tried. We're recording on his requested night on this day, and he's still not here. At a time, he confirmed. Yes. Yes. Rob, where are you?

Where are you, man? All right. Anyways, the Sentinel. The Sentinel. I'd say this was a hidden gem, but it is on Netflix right now. I cannot believe it. Yeah. How have I not seen this? I felt the same way because the cast of this movie is like, it's got a crazy good cast. And I know we'll get into it, but I guess it's like for some of these guys, it was their last movie or close to their last movie. And for some of them.

it was like their first movie their first yeah yeah so you know crossroads here between old talent and new talent yeah yeah exactly so that given that that crossroads i was surprised i hadn't heard of it sooner A shout out to my friend, Kristen, whose father wrote the movie and recommended it to us. And I was really like, you know, I went into it. I love the 70s.

like satanic panic movies i love baby i love the exorcist and omen and uh you know so when i heard the description i was like okay cool it's like my genre And then I watched it. I'm like, this was surprisingly good. I was surprised I hadn't heard of it. Yeah. No, it was. And it's once I pulled it up on Netflix, I recognized.

some of the the shots from it and everything so i must have seen it scrolling past but it's not the title doesn't stick in my head and yeah very surprising you start to see who's in it and you're like holy shit this is yeah packed with just people

It's a cool classic. I mean, I, yeah, I think I heard of it. I mean, obviously there's another movie with like Michael Douglas called the Sentinel, but there's, this is like more of the supernatural horror that was first. And I think you're right. When I was scrolling through like Halloween movies and Netflix, This must have been here for the last month. I think I saw the picture of the...

It's the priest. I think the priest picture is what I recognized. And not even from the last month. I'm talking maybe years ago. I'm scrolling. I think I have seen the pictures of that priest. The priest that's the... The Sentinel. I just can't believe it was on Netflix, too. That was a plus. So, yeah.

Here we are with it. I guess those are sort of our opening thoughts. I thought it was good. I enjoyed it. I would say that this is one of my favorite... I think you can call it a subgenre. I think you can call 70s satanic panic, supernatural horror, sort of a subgenre. And we'll get into it, but really it started with The Exorcist.

Actually, it started with Rosemary's Baby in 68. Then you had The Exorcist in 73. You had The Omen in 76. They all sort of, I think within there was probably Amityville, which I would sort of put in this. too, you know. Changeling, I think. Changeling in it. Yeah, where they all have the same feel and vibe. Side note, I think the newer Omen, if you guys watched it, did a brilliant job of replicating some of the cinematography used in these films, specifically the zoom-in shot.

I don't know if that's very characteristic to me of 70s horror, where it's very raw. When you see it today, it feels very raw and almost unprofessional. But it's like a zoom in.

on something i know i know exactly what you're talking about i actually i actually love it when it's like someone's holding an important item and the camera like zooms in on it yeah that's really cool Yeah, I mean, it's not as drastic as, God forbid, we could not communicate to anyone living on the set of Sin Eater to replicate from Exorcist 3.

The zoom in. It's not quite that drastic, but it is like a little more drastic because today I think we're used to seeing a very slow zoom in over time. Yeah. Very artsy. This was more of like a medium. You get there within 10 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. Like you hear the noise and it zooms in where the noise was at. And if you rewatch it, they actually did a lot of... the cinematography style stuff in the newer Omen, the remake.

I think as an homage to the original. I need to watch that still. You're talking about the 2006 remake or the 2024 first? The 24, not 6. Yeah, I'm sorry. 6 is the one with Liev Schreiber and stuff, right? Liev Schreiber, right. Yeah, that is the newest one. Yeah, that 2004 omen was fucking awesome. That's 2024. You're talking about, right? Yeah, the 2024 omen was just awesome.

It was good. It was really good. Maybe it's coming back. Maybe that Zoom shot's coming back. We're going to bring it back. We're using it in our next one. We got to. We got to. Someone's got to get it right. That first omen was what I... hoped exorcist believer was gonna be like and i didn't even first omen wasn't even on my radar till i hit the theater and then i was like oh shit this is what we needed

Because I love these kinds of movies like The Sentinel. I love this. Because there's part of me that's still Catholic in my DNA. Yeah. And so this shit scares me on some kind of primal level. Yeah. And me too. Lutheran, we grew up, which is, you know, diet Catholic. Right, right. Sugar-free Catholicism. Yeah, yeah. That's what we grew up on. Scotty and I got confirmed. At the very end, had like the Lutheran, the IHS. I had the IHS. Yeah, I mean. Like, whoa.

We'll post pictures of Scotty and I getting confirmed in high school. Him with his metal braid.

uh copying coal chamber like blue hair with the front i'm wearing like a hymnal robe and you know getting you know we were acolytes and somehow skirted getting raped in the ass acolytes congratulations we've made it six minutes and 56 seconds on this episode without a mention of sexual assault yes yes here's my first thoughts too i i i relate to you um how i like it kind of reminds me like the changeling and

the way the music kind of started off with like the 80s had a good score you know 70s late 70s feels like a extravagant music and they're you know

There's people going crazy in the city. But it kind of had me feel like it was like a psycho feel, too, with the priest up in... looking out the window the whole time and i don't know like martin balsam was dead he was dead the whole time i also thought of psycho i thought this is a little bit of a hitchcockian homage i think the back of the priest's head was very resemblant of the, the mother in psycho. Yeah. That's from the side. Yeah. For, for sure. Like something I would want to know about.

And we talked briefly about having the writer on the show with us. But something I would want to know about is how much was in his mind when he wrote the book. because we look at that shot and we're like, that's very much like a psycho shot. Was that something that like, did he write the book knowing it would become a movie and they had those ideas in mind? Or is that something that was added later from like the director saying, okay, this is how I'm going to.

I'm going to do it. I guess I'm just wondering how much those things actually influenced. I'd like to read. Yeah. Yeah. From, from the book to the screen, if it, if it translated. Yeah, I'd be curious about that. Was there an omen? There wasn't an omen book. No, there is. Yeah. Is there? Was it before the movie too? Yeah, I believe so. Okay. I want to read some. Cause you know, long ago I read the exorcist book and enjoyed it a lot. Yeah. And I need to.

get back on that trend of reading books the movies were made after this did have a little open feel though too with like the catholic and the priests definitely yeah for sure in the case of the exorcist i think that's why i asked because in the case of the exorcist the movie was more or less greenlit, you know, before the book even came out. If I understand it right, he wrote the book, but he wrote it like already having a literary agent, a film agent.

And I think sold the script rights, you know, based on the strength of the book. Wow. Yeah. Cause the book was, I think I'd have to check, but I think it came out more or less contemporaneously. Okay. And the movie, that movie tracks that book. real close. I read the book years ago, and it's sort of gone out of my head already, so I need to do that again at some point. I have these memories of reading it. I used to, for a few years, I was a...

I was a firefighter, and I have memories of reading it at the fire station at night. Really? You read The Exorcist? Yeah, I was just sitting in the refiner reading it, like, before bedtime, you know? Nice. Yeah. And I was going to mention, I've got an audio book and get it on an audible or whatever. William Peter Blatty actually reads the audio book. And so that's really cool because you get to hear the inflections that.

the author imagined when he wrote it. So it was sort of another way to experience The Exorcist. Just like Friedkin narrates the film on the commentary. I bet Blatty does a better job. doing the book rather than freaking on the freaking commentary yeah worse worse commentary i like to hear gladi because i want to hear like the sinister mind behind that right not even sinister just like his yeah the the real life mind i mean it's crazy The novel for the author for this.

Yeah. We get that so rarely. So I think we, I think we should, we should, we should dig into his mind. I have some clarifying questions I would want to ask him too. Cause there's some, uh, differing research I've done on what the director said in the commentary versus what's out there on how much of a part of this film Jeffrey Convitz was. Yeah, that's a good question. We should find out.

Maybe we should do a little synopsis first, though. Yeah, so let's hear what's... For those of you that haven't seen this movie or haven't seen it in a while, you have no excuse it's on Netflix. That's just me assuming the world has Netflix, but... I'm still surprised some people don't. Carmelo gave us his first thoughts, too. Yes, please, Carmelo. Give us a synopsis for.

sure sure so the the sentinel is about a young model allison parker and uh she despite still loving and wanting to be with her boyfriend attorney michael learman um she wants to get her own place she wants to get her own apartment. And she finds one. She finds a really sweet deal at an absurd price.

that I took note of that was, you know, fully furnished. It's gorgeous. It's wonderful view of the park. And then she starts to meet all these weird neighbors and they're all kind of like kind of intrusive and they're not like outright hostile, but they're just kind of weird.

And then it gets weirder, you know, weirder and stranger, and she gets less and less comfortable. And then she finds out that the whole building is empty. There's no one living in the building at all. And she's seeing the ghost of her dead father, with whom she had a...

let's just call it a strained relationship. And even going so far as to like stab his ghost, not realizing she's accidentally murdered like a real person. Yeah. Cause it turns out after some investigation by her, her boyfriend who. also may be murderer, right? That this apartment is the gateway to hell, but there is a soul priest sitting atop this place who is the sentinel and guards the gate of hell and stops it from opening up into the world. And she actually turns out to be the next sentinel.

and so as this sort of this changing of the guard is happening these demons are leaking out to try to get her to kill herself drive her crazy and get her to commit suicide is the only way to stop her uh and then in the end uh she takes up the post of the Sentinel and she becomes this like eternally catatonic guardian of, of the gate to hell. She does. She must've had to move while construction happened and then move back.

Yeah, exactly. She becomes the Sentinel, and then you find out that the building was destroyed and demolished, and you think that's the end of the movie. But in the new, much more modernized building in its place... she's there and she's they must have posted her on the sidewalk for her

Right. Four months. She sat over the construction site. Because they built the same building in the same spot or just a new building in the same spot. Although that we'll get into it. That's just a mat and the actual buildings. I was kind of rooting for Michael Lehrman, Chris Sarandon at the end there, but I didn't realize it was a twist there. He was actually...

Yeah, you don't know he's a murderer until then. They hint at it. The police certainly think he is. It was a good twist. It was good. It was good. And him becoming one of the demons. So that's the thing that the movie, we'll get into this, I'm sure, is somewhat controversial. for is then you start to see a bunch of like like damned souls coming out of the woodwork and they used people who were deformed people who were maybe circus acts things like that that um you know

are strange and unusual looking. And, and today people might call this sort of thing exploitative. We'll get into that. That's sort of what I thought when I first saw it. I was like, apparently everyone in hell is deformed. Right. Exactly. So, you know, but you know your favorite podcast. We're going to give you our hot takes. We're not going to show you. We will.

We're going to hit this topic on the head. Everyone gave away the last part of the movie there if you guys haven't seen the movie yet. You can't come to the podcast without seeing the movie. Or if you do, you have to expect spoilers. You're damn right. We are wrong. The bigots have been wrong all along. It's not God hates fags. It's God hates deformed people.

Yeah, apparently. According to the end of this, yeah, I mean, there was some normal people in there. There was some normal looking people that were murdered. For instance. Yeah, he was the leader. He just had bad teeth. So he was leading them. he's he's rocky's guy in the corner in that's true come on i mean he's he's a he's also he was also the penguin in batman 66. oh what i didn't know that okay wow all right well you said you have some numbers yeah

I got some numbers here. So the Sentinel was released theatrically by Universal Pictures on February 11th, 1977, and was a mild box office success. It grossed a total of $4 million on a $3.5 million budget. And that's just United States. So I'm not sure what it did internationally. But it was the 57th highest grossing film of the year in 1977. So there you go. Okay. Yeah, so, I mean, they made five, half a mil. All right. And it did go and...

it did good in VHS rentals and now it's become a classic, um, and DVD rentals as well. Yeah. Like most of these do. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it all get into some of that too at the end. Um,

Well, yeah, let's jump into it. This is going to be a weird one because I have the Blu-ray and I watched... There's three commentaries. I don't love you guys enough to watch all three. I watched the one that I thought would be most valuable, which is with Michael Winner, director, script writer. Producer on the film. Controversial person, sort of. He's a winner. Yeah. British director. But anyway, so what I've found... And I will go through some of the research and then point out.

what contradicted it in his commentary. Now, normally when I listen to a commentary and it contradicts any research done, I just sort of take the commentary and run with it. But I also think... He did this commentary in 2008, and then he died in 2013. I think he was born in, like, 35, so he was pretty old when he did the commentary. Anyways, after taking it all in, I'm not sure whether...

The research would be wrong or he's remembering wrong on the commentary. Because he might be a little senile. We're going to give it both. We're going to talk about both sides of the story. Conflicting information I'm hearing here. It's also very apparent. the commentary that although probably a great guy to hang out with he's very old-fashioned and very I mean he used to form people for people from hell and he

And again, in the end, I think it worked out fine because I think a lot of them were happy to be working on a film. Yeah. Yeah. So if you ask those people themselves, they were sort of happy to be there and doing what they wanted to do.

Maybe anyone from the outside would have been like, this is exploitative, like you talked about. Yeah, so that's interesting because I... I think about this a lot, and this happened recently when Disney did Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Peter Dinklage was like, this is offensive and ridiculous, and I can't believe that they're doing this. But then there were other little people, actors who came out and said, hey, shut up. We would be happy to have these jobs. And so.

You know, I mean, it's not like the entire group of people doesn't all have the same mind of it is important. acting jobs for some of these folks are probably few and farther between. They're probably very grateful to have him. And frankly, I think Peter Dinklage is really lucky in a certain sense because he's... been so successful and he's so very talented that he's taking roles that

Whether or not they were written for a little person character, he does it anyway. And, you know, if you watch him in X-Men, for instance, there's no bearing on the plot whatsoever that he's a little person, right? None at all. Yeah. and that's great for him. And he is a very talented actor, but that means he doesn't have to take parts that are only for little people. And there's some people out there that that's the only job they can get. Yeah.

So I don't know. I feel like it's I don't know that I call it exploitative. Right. It's like it is what I'm trying to say. Or certainly you can't speak for all of them and say that. No, you can't. And by all accounts and from what I've heard.

They were mostly treated very well on set, able to share their stories, had a good time. There was a couple rumors of, and it was confirmed in the commentary that... certain higher ups in production didn't want to dine with them or something which is dumb and i totally believe that happened yeah i mean i believe it and i do too but unfortunate but i believe it well and the funny thing was not funny thing

But like sort of a look into that is that Michael Winder, the director on the commentary straight up said, oh, these people didn't want to dine with him. So I made it a point to like go out.

And dine with them. And then he immediately didn't because it was extremely hot and humid in the tent where they were dining. So maybe that was why, you know what I mean? So. yeah exactly so i think maybe that's like my takeaway is is we've become so sensitive and maybe overly so in some cases that um nowadays this might have been

shut down or not allowed or whatever and and yet it's also possible sometimes that there are other factors like a really hot tent and if we're if we're too sensitive sometimes maybe we miss uh the reality you know While we're out there looking for causes to fight, sometimes we miss. Yeah.

Maybe this is a dream come true for some of them. Yeah, I mean, what would you prefer, right? That they never get this chance if there's something they want to do? Well, they pulled them from other towns, from other states, and they were able to come in. of them were quoted as saying this was a great experience for me because i didn't feel so alone anymore

Yeah, I was around all these other people that are like me. And back home, I'm the only me, you know. Yeah, that's an excellent, excellent point. And I would ask. You know, Hollywood uses amputees all the time for special effects and for stunts and things like that. And I would ask, is that exploitative? You know, and if you gave those amputees the option.

hey you you don't we're not going to let you don't have to work you know we're not going to take advantage of you only having one arm i i'm pretty sure they'd say i want my job please no pay me please yeah no i i will take this yeah you know i mean It almost turns these things into like, how do I put this? It takes what society might sometimes call a handicap and turns it into a strength, right? Yeah.

You know, parts call for someone who's unusually tall or unusually thin or has one leg. And all of a sudden, this thing that's a part of you is as valuable as it should be and becomes a good thing. I don't know. I'm for it is what I'm trying to say. Me too. And you might be used again. Then you can tell your family and your grandkids. Hey, look, I was in a movie. Check it.

check it out. Right. Right. And if any one person said, no, I don't want to do the Peter Dinklage is out there. I respect that. Right. Like, yeah, I respect that too. He feels about, I do respect it, but everyone has their own mind. Yeah. Not, not every person.

with a birth defect or deformity or little person they don't all think the same thing no exactly exactly well before we jump into what will be some differing information um I think we can build a little bit of the character of Michael Winter. I already said that he's a little old-fashioned again. Died in 2013, born in 35. Did the commentary in 2008. I just...

I think it's better to just say some of the things he said to get you in the headspace because he was saying that he wouldn't name names at least. He did have one or two affairs with, I don't know, he called them affairs. I don't even know if he was married. Maybe they weren't. It fares in the traditional sense that we would use that term. But yeah, so he did sleep with one or two girls during the film, and I think fully on used his director status to do so.

He just played out freely, freely claimed that he likes to do films where there's like he said this is a great film for it because there's party scenes with lots of cute women and it gives him more chances to get with these women. Jeez. that was a wild time back in the 70s I think and he talks so freely about it and again about other things on set like

just the way he would refer to things reminded me of how my grandma would refer to things. You know what I mean? It's a generational thing where they don't know that they're being extremely racist or they don't know that they're being, you know what I mean? It's like,

kind of like i don't want to say harmless it's not harmless but that kind of like this there's no maliciousness it's just how they all talk it's just how it was yeah it's like my dad telling me the race of everyone who he dealt with at the oil change place like it Right, right. Don't say it that way. He doesn't know he's doing it. Or his first question. I think I got charged too much on a repair or something. Was it a Mexican? Like, you know. Yeah, it's like...

But then if you immediately follow that up with, all right, why? Are you racist? He'd be like, no, no, no. No, of course not. No, I didn't. I was asking for totally unrelated reasons. Yeah. Oh, my God. So it's okay. So that's kind of his character. That's sort of who... michael winner is okay he's like he's like my grandma who you know told me once in the walgreens parking lot in the middle of winter that the mexican and the wife beater uh doesn't get cold because he eats spicy food

Oh, my God. I remember. Or her telling my cousin. asking him if his new girlfriend was white because they don't want any holsteins mixing and matching oh my god so yeah yeah she's that was she's dead now rest her soul she was born in the 20s yeah my goodness I won't name any names, but I had a family member who has an interracial marriage and an uncle of mine says something like, oh, man.

I don't know what I would do if that happened to me. Happened to you? What do you mean happened to you? It just happened. He woke up one day. I think he meant one of his own sons. And I was like... How would that affect your life at all? It's so weird to me. It's so alien when I hear it. I'm like, what? We talk about cousin Kathleen a lot. She had a lot of run-ins with old grandma. She'll tell you about that. With her different colored boyfriends. Grandma was always...

I have a different colored wife. It's a little interracial. I wonder if she's about her. Anyways, Michael Winter, that's sort of... the type of generation he was from. I have a little bit of information on these affairs if you want to hear it. Yeah, actually. That would be great. So after he dies, right, it comes out that he'd been financially supporting two of his former... lovers oh god paying for living expenses and their accommodations and all that shit and uh um he had left his um

He claimed he was worth like 75 million pounds. But in reality, by the time he died, he only had like 17 left. And he only left his wife five of it. but but he didn't even have that much because he had so many debts oh so so they all the wife And the former lovers all got attorneys to fight his will in court. More of his assets. Oh, no. Yeah. And then it turned out that he might have had.

um more but offshore and they didn't know that they were he had like hidden money everywhere oh more money i think more girls yeah and and so they when they looked in into other countries they found 50 million pounds more. 50 million? Just hidden away? That's awesome. Different bank accounts or something? Yeah, and that...

Shut everybody up. Wives and mistresses alike all joined hands together and sung in a spirit. Let's split this. So they got their money and it was all, okay. Hey, he provided. In the end, he provided. He do more stuff. Let's not forget more films. Yeah, well, I'm about to talk about it.

Let's start. All right. Mid-1970s is the setting. Hollywood was riding a wave of occult horror hits. We already talked about it. Rosemary's Babies, 1968. Exorcist is 1973, which I don't want to go off on a tangent, but good God. How is this still to this day the scariest movie ever made? Made in 1973. One of the best made movies of all time. Best looking effects still. It's fucking insane.

Anyways, the Omen. We should recover it. Yeah, I know. We have to. Omen 76. So author Jeffrey Convitz, who we already referred to, tapped into this trend with his 1974, there's the year novel, The Sentinel. Omen was so good. Carmelo already sort of gave you a rundown, but it's a tale of a New York brownstone that hides a gateway to hell. The book was quickly optioned for a film, and Convicts... Now here's our first bit of...

info that's not aligning. So Convitz himself co-wrote the screenplay with director Michael Winter. Now... Convitz also took on a producer role to shepherd his story to the screen. But if you listen to the commentary with Michael Winner, there was some bad blood between him and Convitz. Winner claims that Convitz attempted to write a script. for this movie and it was rejected immediately and that it was this film this book was brought up to winner at a party at a executive with united artists

And I think maybe Universal was there. It was like a big wig party in Hollywood. Michael Winter was there. He's originally from the UK. I don't know what he was doing out in Hollywood, but he was there. And it was sort of pitched to him that, hey, we have this book. that we optioned that we tried to get a script from Michael Convitz. We didn't like it. If you want to take a go at it, you could direct it if you do a rewrite.

Again, this is all according to Michael Winter. Right, right. He claims that he was at that party. He said yes. They signed some contracts over the next couple days. He flew home. He said, funnily enough, they contacted him and said, now wait, you can write, right? After already signing the paperwork, and he did say, oh, yeah, I've written seven scripts before this.

He said he finished the rewrite in two weeks, but waited four weeks to send it back, so they took him seriously. And he's claiming that is the script we ended up with, and that Convitz was sort of... not happy and trying to get more into the film than Winner's script had.

And that's sort of how it went down. And Winter had a lot to say about, well, of course, he's unhappy they rejected his script and took mine. And, you know, if when the book writer writes the script, they want the book... word for word and that's a seven hour movie and and i had to make an hour and 40 minute movie you know he like took jeffrey convict's book and kind of just dumbed it down yeah so

So that's our first bit of conflicting information. There's some sources that say that they co-wrote it together, and it was great. So that's the first bit of it. I see his name all over the credits here, Jeffrey Collins, with right ear and screenplay. So maybe there's a little more... to the research side of things. Yeah. Yeah. Again, be interesting to talk to Jeffrey Convitz and see. Yeah. We got to get him on the show, man. Yeah. We got to unravel this mystery. We will. We will. Yeah.

We hear the commentary from Michael Winter, and he said this. Is this true? So Scotty was already asking about his other films. So Michael Winter is a British filmmaker known more so for his gritty action. than horror films. He had recently made waves with Death Wish, 1974, Charles Bronson. That's his most famous and controversial hit. We've never covered that.

It's not really a horror movie. It's an action. We could bring back the cult classic action. Side note, Charles Bronson is very much a... Now I feel like coming back as a memorable Hollywood icon and his fitness routines and his stuff, you know, you read about online. Sure. Oh yeah. Bronson or something else. Yeah. Yeah.

And they also did the mechanic together before Death Wish. And Winter directed the first three Death Wishes, I think. Yeah. He was in on it. Boy, I don't know how the same guy made Death Wish 3 that made Death Wish 1. I've never watched them all. I've seen the first one. I've seen the first three. And by the time you get to three, it is so off the rails.

cheesy it's like the first one is is fucking great the first one is the first one is awesome and even the second one i really like a lot but the third the third one's just fun the third one is literally he's literally just cheesy running around the streets of detroit with a giant you know m60 Just mowing gangbangers down as a score.

It's like that scene in Hot Shots Part 2 when Charlie Sheen is shooting everybody and there's a counter at the bottom. That's Death Wish. Oh, man. Well, the Sentinel is winners first and only. real foray into the horror genre. You know, his reputation preceded him. He was seen as offensive and brash by some colleagues. Again, sort of lining up with how he acted on the commentary. Not to, you know, again, again.

a different generation. I'm not saying he's a horrible guy and whatever, but his involvement gave the project a confident leader in this film. So the security finance...

Yeah, they secured financing. Universal Pictures would later distribute the film. What I was hearing on the commentary is a lot of the financing was already in place from... He mentioned United Artists, but then Universal did end up with the film, so... yeah they had it in place uh maybe united artists like had it first and then and then universal took it later so

Yeah, so now we're diving into a little bit more of contradictory stuff. So from the start, the producers pursued like an unusually star-studded cast for this horror film. The research is saying that... convents in the studio felt that packing the movie with well-known names would elevate its prestige and marketability. So they wanted to go for all these names.

They nicknamed this the airport casting after the all-star disaster movies of the era. It just means all the minor roles were filled by recognizable actors. Winter said on the commentary that the studio was saying, oh, we're not doing big names. It's a horror movie. We don't need big names. But now the research is saying...

They wanted to have big names, so there was a recognizable cast on the posters and everything. So yet again, another contradictory information. Winner talks about, now this wasn't in the research at all, that he had wanted... Martin Sheen for the lead and wanted a name. And that's sort of where the debate became, oh, we don't need to pay all this money. We don't need names. He actually had Martin Sheen over to his place for lunch, he claimed.

saying that, oh, it's pretty much a done deal. I just got to get approval. You're going to be great in the role. And then the studio ultimately was like, no, I forgot he mentioned the producer's name. It was like... I should pull up the producer's names, but it was one of the, the guy that was in charge of the whole productions basically said, no, we don't want Martin Sheen. Like he's, he's doing television for us right now for universal.

And back then, I guess it was a bigger deal. If you're doing television, you don't do movies. It's like, I think the movie still had more prestige than the television back then. Sure. For universal. I mean, that was the case really until the early 2000s when you started to see like the Sopranos or 24 where they're...

24 has Kiefer Sutherland and then making the jump from movie to TV, which normally was seen as a backward movement. Then that became this tremendous hit. Then you start seeing James Spader leading shows and things like that. The work on the surprise. Sopranos made the, that's where the, what do they call it now? The epic shows or the, you know, the prestige shows. And now it seems like.

Everyone wants to do television. I mean, that's where they all say the money is now. Yeah, because for an actor, it's steady work. Well, for a crew, too. And also, you can tell a much bigger story. Yeah. It's funny. We, we ran into this. If you guys remember when we covered from dust till dawn, because Clooney had on that film made the jump from TV to film and was then considered more legit.

after that uh because he was only like er before he was only television they were like ah fuck this guy he's only television right and then they then when tarantino was like no we got to use him in in dust till dawn and other people attached to the project were like no like he's tv like what are you doing yeah yeah yeah now it's not as frowned upon and he

anymore as it was now it's like again like carmelo's saying i don't know if it's the opposite but it's certainly they're naked they're like right there together yeah i i think that's well well said i mean we we've talked to you know and we know a number of actors who are developed

their own television shows. It's funny though, you haven't seen Clooney go back to television ever really since he went to the movies. Yeah, it's true. No, I think that, who knows, it's probably an actor's preference, right? I mean, Tom Cruise just does movies over and over, and he makes tons of money. But it's funny for this one, I mean, you have all the names, but the main character is...

Were they more the names in the 70s? No, so let's get back to the casting. So Martin Sheen is who Michael Winter wanted, just assumed, had lined up. And the producer was like, no. We don't want that. We want a less known cast. Again, Michael Winters information because the research is saying they wanted a recognizable cast. Yeah. So then Michael Winters saying that the studio.

suggested Chris Sarandon. He had just been up for an Oscar for Dog Day Afternoon playing Al Pacino's gay lover. Oh, yeah. And he's only in it for like 10 minutes or something. Dog Day Afternoon. Now. So they got Chris Sarandon on set, started filming. Michael Winters said that he didn't start sending dailies. He called them something different. I don't know if they were called something different back then. Rushes. He called them rushes. We didn't send the British term.

Yeah, I think maybe it was. A lot of difference, according to him, between American and British cinema, because they did film this in New York, and he was used to working in the UK. In the UK, he was used to... working six-day weeks very lackadaisically. Yeah, whatever. Coming in at 9.30, four hours of tea, starting to shoot after that.

Not even a call time to show up when you want to show up. Yeah, it's like an hour and a half for lunch, like go to a place. You know, and then he gets to... Grab some cocaine. He gets to New York where the... the uh only a maybe like difference in the more not lazy way but is they would shoot five day weeks in new york not six day weeks but the production office was there at 6 30 a.m

there was no lunch break they would get sandwiches there's it was just it's just go go go go go you know that's what we're more used to yeah and he did say that new york cast and crew are the the best in the world that he thought But they do talk way too much. I had to just tell them to shut the hell up so many times while we're on set. The crew is just jabbering with each other.

I believe that. So I think nowadays, this was in the 70s. Nowadays, you can't get away with like sandwiches for lunch on the go. Yeah, you got to take at least a full stop. Yeah, I mean, he did say. though that the teamsters ran things and the union was a big deal and that it was definitely cost a lot more money because of that you know and that

they might have shot themselves in the foot after a while with driving production away from New York because the Teamsters got so... Oh, really? You know, demanding. Sure. So I don't know how it is these days anymore in New York. And the production did... eventually drive did it they finish in New York or they wrap yeah no they were in New York they did a couple shots uh in Europe but most of it was all in New York I'll get to some more contradicting information there in a little bit but

for casting anyways back to that uh he said that production the producer was like hey we want chris sarandon put him in there he had he was up for this oscar i don't know that he ended up winning it but um we want him and Michael Winter said that he got on set, started filming and that he didn't really like him at all. He was like, he's doing sort of a horrible job. Yeah.

and then it was a little subpar he claimed that he then sent finally three weeks into filming he sent the rushes the dailies back to the studio and the producer that had wanted sarandon said who's this Of course, he, I don't want to say it, like, not so kindly said, who's this Greek waiter who's playing the lead and not doing a great job?

And Michael Winter's like, that's Chris Sarandon. You wanted him. And he's like, why didn't you fire him day one? And he's like, because I didn't have enough balls to do so. You said you wanted him. Yeah. Oh, my God. So in the commentary, Michael Winter basically settled on saying, well, he did okay. He did all right. The movie's fine. There's enough going on around him. They did all right.

I thought he did fine. I did too, but he was good. So I was like, oh, look at him go. He got better towards the second half of the movie. Ultimately, Michael Winard. wasn't his first choice and he didn't particularly love he had nothing he was like praising all the old school veteran actors in this saying that they were these true actors that are just amazing and that Chris Sarandon and Reigns, the main girl, was like...

Not so great. Christina Raines. She's pretty nice to look at, though. She looks exactly like a modern day actress who I can't think of her name. She's pretty.

I don't know. You guys have to know what I'm talking about. She looks exactly like... christina rains does yeah she looks exactly like an actress from today um he was probably like commenting on like burgess meredith and oh yeah and i'll talk about it but yeah so he he basically yeah was putting down saran a little bit and and reigns uh even one second guys i'll be right back please yeah yeah yeah and so yeah he just uh when i you know what

Chris Sarandon is... I thought he did pretty good, but he is... I think he lends himself to a villain. I think he's... Yeah, totally. He's very good at being a villain. Which he kind of was in this. A little bit. I mean, at the end, he's great in Fright Night. He's great in Princess Bride. Yeah, in both of them, he's sort of like an ass. He's sort of this unsympathetic villain. Yeah.

And I think early in this film, he still comes across a little bit that way where he could have been a little more relatable or likable. Kind of the same character that he has. He's a little bit nicer, but, like, same character he has as Humperdinck and Princess Brad and Fright Night. Yeah. Could have became maybe a little more of the nice guy and, like, the more boyfriend, like, relatable type. Yeah.

yeah um so yeah i mean we can move right on through but he um so yeah it does boast one of the most distinguished castes Yeah, like how'd they get... You have Ava Gardner, who plays the lady that shows them around. So yeah, we have Ava Gardner.

He was like, you know, Michael Winter couldn't say enough good things about Ava Gardner. He actually talked about how there were personal good friends. She had died by the time he was doing this commentary. He was saying that she liked to drink a lot and would call him. At all hours of the night, drunk to help her out with crossword puzzles and such. What? Crossword puzzles? Yeah. Ava Gardner being huge star from the 40s to 50s. Beautiful.

actress. She's in Showboat, The Barefoot Contessa. I mean, just tons of movies. She was Frank Sinatra's wife for a period of time. Wow. Michael Winter talked about how He would make his scrambled eggs. He would make them with a lot of milk and cream and wisp them around and make them very fluffy. Like you do. He took some pride in that Ava Gardner said, that's the way Frank made them. Oh, yes. Yeah. And he mentioned that she never thought she was a good actress, but he just would call out.

During the commentary, like, look, like, look at there in the restaurant scene, for example, Ava Gardner, who, again, is the real estate lady showing her the apartment. Yeah. she meets with her the main girl meets with her later on in a restaurant to be like hey what the fuck like shit's fucked over here and during this restaurant scene while watching it

Michael Winter's like, look, she's a young actress. She's doing way too much. Look at Ava Gardner. She's barely moving. She's barely doing anything. And she's so much more interesting. Yeah. Wow. And she's just talking about how. he's talking about how less is more with all these veteran actors and you have the less experienced people just trying to do too much, you know? So even though they were the main characters, yeah. He even made the comment like, um,

Let me pull up the... What's the actress's name? It's from the main girl. It's... oh yeah i i just had it um it's uh kath christina reigns no christina reigns yeah christina reigns christina reigns so he was saying he even said oh he made a comment that this is beverly d'angelo's first film

who is the lesbian masturbating, who becomes the mom in vacation. Christmas vacation. And Al Pacino's wife, if I'm not mistaken. Al Pacino's, yeah, for a while. And I think they might have had a... child together i'm not sure dude that scene when when she's comes in allison parker and she's obviously seeing it and she just starts going to town masturbating through her through her clothes and i was like whoa this is but okay

Michael Winter offhand was like, oh yeah, she would have been a much better lead role than Reigns, but oh well. Beverly D'Angelo. Beverly D'Angelo, yeah. So I was like, oh, okay. She was sexy. But anyways, going back to him just praising these old actors, like Ava Gardner, who again, married to Frank Sinatra for a while, which, side note, I read a whole thing on Sinatra more recently, and he would have like...

25, 30 drinks a day? Oh, yeah. It's crazy. At the age of... 40s 50s 60s the hours he kept were like noon to 6 a.m And he would start drinking. If he woke up at noon, he'd sort of start having cocktails by two. He would be 25 to 30 drinks in a day. He would be... having breakfast to end the night at 6 a.m. in a cafe with the party crew oh my god i don't stay up all night and did he like was he particularly

No, he lived a long life. Sort of, yeah. 87 or 82. And I think he did that schedule until he was like 70 or something. Dude, that's how those singers do. They do late shows, and then their night would start. I got it. So what I got is a gift from, I think, Big Scott or something got me Time magazine or some old issue that had a whole spread on Frank Sinatra.

And a whole story on him. And I got a peek at his show rider. Now, a rider is something that, like, your requests as the big artist performing that night, you know.

And it was like a whole large page dealio. I'm sure he had a big crew with him, you know? And so it was things like, oh, eight tuna sandwiches and four ham sandwiches and, and, uh, 10 diet cokes and four bottles of jack and two bottles of makers and you know it just went on and on and yeah and like these this pack of cigarettes like four different packs of cigarettes

He had a very specific lineup of things that he needed. At least you know he wasn't going to let it go to waste. No, no, no. But anyways, so yeah. That all stemmed from Ava Gardner being this film. She actually, her career had slowed by the late 70s. She was nearing 55. She hadn't really found substantial roles. So she was happy to come out and do this appearance.

shortly well not shortly but before her death in 1990 you know she didn't have a whole lot going on great see yeah uh you have burgess meredith he plays charles chasen the neighbor yep veteran character actor of course he was at this time

uh big because he had just earned an oscar nomination for rocky in 76 uh was appearing in hits like burnt offerings in 1976 so uh again winner had nothing but great things to say about him

Jose Ferreira is a shadowy Catholic bishop in the beginning. He's the one in the very beginning, red robe, balding. He's an old character actor, too. He was... uh in a lot of stuff but he was very upfront about saying this job was just for the paycheck oh well yeah some of them have to be very upfront about that especially at that age you know so yeah

Martin Balsam is an old character actor. He played the professor that Chris Randon goes to to get the Latin translated. Oh, yeah. I recognize that guy. Yeah, he's an Academy Award winner for 1,000 Clowns in 1965, but he was in Psycho. He was in 12 Angry Men. I think I remember him from Psycho. Yeah.

He plays the lieutenant in Psycho, I think. Yeah, and he kills it. 12 Angry Men is one of my favorites. He's juror number one. He's very important. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. You have Eli Wallach as the detective. who is assisted by only a few lines in Christopher Walken. Yeah, wild, right? Yeah, Christopher Walken, yeah. It says, introducing Christopher Walken when you see the credits go.

And this, I think, was his first film. And so he obviously blew up. Really? Okay. Again, a changing of the guard. Christopher Walken's first film. Tom Barringer, one of his first films. At the very end, he's touring the new- Yep.

The place. He's the next one. Tom Beringetian. Jeff Goldblum as well. He's the photographer. Another bit of possibly contradicting information. I have notes that say that they didn't use Goldboom's real voice and they dubbed in his lines from a different actor later on, but...

I sure as hell thought that was Goldblum's voice in the movie. There's no mistaking that. It was for sure his voice. Yeah, his voice is very unique. The only thing that was different about it is he's not doing his normal Goldblum-isms. Yeah. There wasn't any, you know... uh pauses well and um can you move over here and get over there now exactly yeah he was so it was his voice though it was for sure it was i had to i mean there's no doubt about it there's no doubt about it so

Yet another bit of contradicting information. Michael Winner in the commentary said that he never uses soundstages. Everything's on location. He likes to go location scouting. He likes to go around to these locations and eat at the restaurants in these neighborhoods and get to know the towns. And I have in the notes that in some of the research that it was a mix between a soundstage and locations, you know. I don't, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

What the hell was that? Did you hear that? My ears are just bleeding. God, for some reason, that took a really long time. What the hell? I promise this never happens. Normally it happens. Speaking of Psycho, wouldn't it? Yeah, the horror happens. That means it's time for the...

horror halftime I will say that we are well past the halfway mark so yeah we're probably closing in on the end to be honest we almost forgot about it this is the horror halftime we haven't had it for the longest time it's back we're getting used to it yes we're on a roll here talking about yeah character and i am going to wrap it up uh pretty quickly after this but i do want to say for those of you watching on video here

I can't wait to get rid of this. The best Blu-ray of all time. This is Poultry Geist on Blu-ray, Night of the Chicken Dead. I will say on the cover, it says, as savage as Dawn of the Dead, as slapstick nutzoid as Evil Dead 2, an exploitation movie with soul. This is the prize for this week's horror halftime winner. Before I announce it, I just want to say that some of the special features are sexy rooftop reshoot, Ron Jeremy's, quote, alternate happy ending, unquote.

I got to see that. No, I don't. No. Commentaries, of course, by people in it. Chroma's first egg-amorphic widescreen presentation. Music videos, deleted scenes trailers, thighs the limit. Oh, my God. I cannot wait to get rid of this. Here it is in all its glory. I spent money on this. It's something to pass on to your kids. So this Poltergeist Blu-ray special edition is going to our Horror Freak of the Week winner for his...

Judd related meme about Rumpelstiltskin. Yes. Luke Morgan. Luke Morgan. Yes, Luke. Congratulations. Luke. Yes. Shoot me. a message on cold classic or instagram or facebook page either one with your address and i will send you this poultry guys special edition blu-ray in the mail and you can show it to your kids oh my Wait until they're at least 18. So those of you that want to win better Blu-rays, because I think this is the worst one in my entire collection.

Please submit your memes for the horror halftime. It can be memes having to do with this episode, having to do with the last episode or any, I don't know, the last five episodes or so many episodes. Submit your memes in the Facebook group, the cult classic horror show using the hashtag horror halftime or on Instagram. Uh, just to make sure I see it, tag us at cult classic horror and use the hashtag horror halftime.

And we will consider your entry. If we like your meme the best, you will win a Blu-ray of one of the past movies that we have covered. Woo! Yes. So I'll ship it right to you. And if we don't do a Blu-ray that week, I'll send you a t-shirt or a hoodie or something that has the Cold Classic Horror logo on it. Or one of our inside jokes that we have on the store there. The Pizza Hut logo is awesome.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. That concludes the Horde Halftime. You got William Hickey, too. That's in it from the freaking... christmas vacation with beverly d'angelo ah that's right that's right up to of course that's right well yeah so a lot of people a lot of people um all right I'm going to start wrapping some of this up. I know. We're trying to keep it to an hour. It's okay. We got on a roll here. Last few episodes. I think our last one was like two hours. We did two movies.

And we went up on a little rant there. It was a twofer. We were double stuffed. That was a twofer, but we did barely mention 2025 at the end. But it was surprisingly decent if you go into it thinking it's going to be shitty as fuck. Yeah, I was surprised. I was surprised with both. You have to go in expecting to be shitty. Then you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you go in like off of our recommendations, that was a pretty good movie. You might be disappointed. Yeah. Yeah. So.

So yeah, principles of photography took place in 1976. Again, a little bit of a contradictory. All practical locations, according to Michael Winner. Some soundstage stuff, according to some of the research. But they did film most of it in Brooklyn Heights. There was a New York brownstone there that they used 10 Montague Terrace. Supposedly it is still there. It is now luxury loft apartments.

expensive. But it was a cool building. Great view of the city. There's a view of the city from her apartment, from Allison's apartment, and then from Michael's apartment, you saw Central Park. Yeah, that one was a penthouse. Info from Michael Winter is that they were in town and Barbara Streisand had a penthouse nearby.

Central Park South where that one was and she had said y'all use my place use my place I don't know who were like tight friends with her or something Michael was friends with a lot of people it seemed like he brought up Marlon Brando a lot uh side story he rented out a huge yacht to have marlon brando on board and have some guests and have a big celebration and upon boarding that yacht

Press took a picture of Brando, which greatly angered him, and shut him into a hole into a room the rest of the night, and he didn't converse with any of the guests. Brando? Yeah. And then was super apologetic later on and sent Michael Winner's girlfriend gifts. I wish I was on this set, man. They were like partying it up. Another comment winner said that Brando had expressed to him was that he fucking hates acting and he became an actor because he signed up for drama school to get laid.

What? That's what Michael said? I don't know how credible that is. Okay. He's a fucking good actor, though, man. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, brilliant. If you ever listen to interviews with... Brando. He's like a philosopher. It's incredible. So good. Effortlessly.

Well, so they did production did travel overseas for some key scenes Michael winner took advantage of European locations to amplify the stories religious dimension Here's I don't know if this contradictory or not they talk about Well, certainly the group of clergymen in the beginning, that was filmed on location in Florence, Italy, inside a historic church. So that was for sure.

But then they talk about the filmmakers also shot at St. Catherine's Church in Hereford, England, which stands in for the convent where Alison is taken in the final moments. I don't remember her being taken to a convent.

Was she taken to a combat? Like at the very end? I mean, that's what it says. I don't know that she ever ended up being... take do you remember that carmelo was she wasn't taken she went to a church to talk to a priest twice but i don't remember her taking priests no i mean she she must go to one at some point between

between becoming the sentinel because she's in the full uh habit yeah yeah so i i guess i just thought she kind of got battlefield promoted to none yeah so yeah that's what i was so I was thinking it might be contradictory because the only other church I can think of besides the cardinals in the beginning is her dealing with the priests. And during the commentary, Winner said that was a...

church he thought he remembered in Little Italy in New York. But now this is mentioning a church in Hereford, England. So I don't know. It could be either of the two. Yeah. I do know that they did have Catherine Raines in Europe for some of those pictures that she's in.

in the hanging artwork in the apartment where it says like Great Britain something. It says like Britain something and she's in the pictures. Christina Rains. Yeah, Christina Rains. Catherine, Christina. Did I say Catherine? Yeah. You said Catherine.

Yeah, I think Winter might have broke her spirit on this because he didn't say this, but in the notes it says that he was very harsh to her on set. i read that too did you yeah i heard that she specifically i heard she cried on her way to work every day really yeah and and she much preferred convicts uh to to winner

And he went so far as to say he wished he cast Beverly D'Angelo in the lead. Really? Oh, to her, then. I don't know if he said it to her. Yeah, well, I mean, he did say that in the commentary. He said Beverly D'Angelo would have been better. Yep. i mean if any of these if sarandon or her listen to the commentary they'd be like what the yeah exactly because he was like sarandon sucked ass but like he was okay but i wish we would have martin machine right right uh and and you

We're sort of getting his perspective of things, but I'm kind of thinking like, man, if you hated Sarandon and you hated Christina and they all hated you, I kind of wonder who the common denominator is. You know what's worth it? You know what I should do? On the Blu-ray I have, I didn't do it in time for this podcast. I apologize so much. Maybe on the follow-up, if we interview convicts, there is a commentary solely with Christina Raines.

Oh, yeah. I should listen to the Christina Raines commentary and see what she has to fucking say about all this. You should listen to that one. And there is one more commentary with the producer. uh the main producer you think the director would have the most information but that's why i went with the director writer producer i was like oh he's gonna have the most information you know but then you can tell by this by his demeanor like oh but he might be a one-sided

crotchety old man so right right exactly yeah he probably he probably you know he he put her through that first scene where christina reigns walks into her father having an orgy with the cake eating girls and like i don't want to do this that That was a little awkward. I know. Who eats pork at an orgy? Yeah. What the fuck? You're already sinning. You might as well just go all out.

I suppose, yeah, if you're going to indulge one vice, mine is. I also thought, aside from all these notes, I also thought there was a couple... quick unnecessary scenes first of all when they see her dad die in the hospital it's literally a four second scene him like shaking yeah i'm like why why is that in here they went to all that trouble to set up this room it's four seconds long yeah yeah and then also

her quick dinner at the table with her mom. It was like four second scene. She's like, are you going to be okay? She's like, well, it's not going to be any worse than it used to be. And then cut. Yeah. I don't, that's the only time we ever saw her mom. Oh shit. That was it. Yeah.

Yeah. So the reason I was saying that he treated her badly on set is because I think this shut down her acting career. I think after this, Christina Raines really didn't do anything else. And I think I read somewhere it became... I mentioned her profession. I can't quite remember. It might have been in the medical field. But yeah, pretty much didn't come back. Really? I got to pull up. She looks exactly. I can't believe you guys aren't like on the same wavelength as me. She looks.

Just fucking spitting image of another actress. I can't. I don't got it, man. I've tried. Yeah, she's in Nightmares. Nightmares. Didn't go Road. Fuck, man. I can't. She's really very pretty, though. She looks exactly like this actress. I can't think of her name, and I can't pinpoint what movies she's in, but I know I've seen her in movies. Yeah, she didn't do much after that. She was in a couple of miniseries, a TV show.

The Sentinel. The Sentinel. Centennial TV series. Centennial. 10 episodes after this. The Duelists. Nashville. A couple other interesting things. We did talk about the masturbation scene already, but Beverly D'Angelo, she feared that that was going to ruin her. Really?

She very quickly after that played a wholesome role in another film right after it. It sort of brought her back. I would have been hesitant to do that if I was her, like one of her first films. And she appeared nude then in these dream sequences. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it was. So that was the shock of the film. And so was this undead father attack, this attack, which just side note, what do you guys think was going on? So Sarandon obviously. hired this guy to freak her out, right?

No, I think he hired her to look into it because she was complaining about the weird neighbors and stuff. Yeah. Hired the guy to come over and look into it. To look into it. Yeah. I think Sarandon really liked her. Okay. I think so too. wife is because he really liked the mom yeah okay so you think he had the guy go over to check on her and then she killed him and sliced his nose off and then sarandon like

tried to help cover it up and put the car in the junkyard. Do you think that's what happened? Did Sarandon, was he the one that like got the body, put the car in the junkyard, disposed of it? Oh, I didn't think about that. I just assumed like the devils had done it.

and yeah i wasn't doing that too but like they got they disposed the body and that's because sarandon had to he was being questioned by the cops and obviously he didn't say anything about like oh i sent this guy over to check on her yeah so maybe he did help cover it up maybe maybe he went there first it was like oh i thought for a moment maybe he was trying to scare her like into staying with him and and oh she killed his friend on accident you know i didn't push yeah

I didn't put together that she killed the guy until after it happened. But I think you're right, Carmelo. I think that he probably sent the guy over just to check on her. Yeah. She killed him. Yeah. I didn't think about the...

scaring her into staying with him angle that's interesting but i definitely don't think he wanted to hurt her i think yeah i think that's why he i don't know if they were clear on the timeline but my sense was he started fucking around with this model and so he had his wife killed so he could be with yeah yeah

He was looking at that upstairs too. He was headed upstairs to the priest floor, to the fifth floor. They're like, I'm going to check this out. Yeah. Another random fact about that actor. I don't know his name, but the detective, the guy, or the guy that went to check and got killed. Michael Winter was like, oh, yeah, that guy. I used him on something else, and he sent me an unexpected bill for stunt work for this tiny little fight I had him do, and so I never hired him again. Fucker.

you do not sound like a real special guy he's starting to sound worse and worse the more i talk about him out loud yeah i kind of i wish i would have met him damn it You should look at a picture of him. He looks exactly like he sounds. You know what he looks like? He kind of looks like Bert Dennings from The Exorcist. He sort of does, actually. And he sounds like him, too. A little bit.

Yeah. Oh, man. The other notes I have, I mean, we've already talked at length about the deformities and the people. I mean, it's everything we already talked about, like them sort of wanting to work, but also being called. out for being exploitative but but them wanting to be there so you know it was sort of a two-sided thing there yeah oh yeah i see him yeah totally does he does huh looks like he's been so familiar look god he's just a huge weird nose man he does the heck uh um

Yeah, we can zip... I mean, the only other... We can talk a little about the release. It, uh... Well, first I want to talk about the book because you did mention, Carmelo, that you had heard it was a successful book. And I think it was, but they did mention, at least Winner mentioned that...

It didn't do well in hardcover, like it sold measly in hardcover. But then the paperback came out and it did sell really well in paperback. It's interesting. I don't know a whole lot about the economics of book releases, but, you know, the paperback. that sort of mass market paperback is when they kind of make the book, frankly, much cheaper and it becomes a sort of beach read. And so it's interesting. It sounds like the book had longevity to it.

But I don't know. Well, yeah, and the notes I have about the film are that it was wishy-washy upon release. The critics sort of panned it. Some were okay with it. A lot of people hated using the quote-unquote real freaks to quote them. They talked about how freaks, the movie, 1932. Right. It did it right and paid homage and had empathy, but this one didn't really... Didn't we cover a more modern movie called Freaks? That was...

I thought at one point that... We covered the classic one, I think. I don't think it was 32. I think it was... Anyways, so... Freaks 2018? No, this one's called 1932. Yeah. They're referencing to. Yeah. We might've done. I thought we did one that was like pretty new because we interviewed someone who was involved with it or something like that. Yeah. I think it was the lady who's like,

was touted as the new Elvira. I forgot her name. We interviewed her. Oh, there's a... Oh, yeah, that's... Yeah, we did. Freaked, I think, we covered. Freaked me with the dude from Bill and Ted. Yeah, Alex Winter. Alex Winter. That's right.

yeah deep roy was in it randy quaid yeah freaked yeah freaked okay yeah that's what we covered then we i think we covered it along with the girl who at the time i don't know if it disappeared was being touted as like oh she's the next elvira and we had her as a guest and let her pick the movie to cover and she picked freaked yeah mr t was in it and stuff yeah yeah

So anyways, what did I say? Oh, yeah. So like the book, I don't like the book, but the film, again, came out wishy-washy. Some critics panned it. um it was very toned down for tv release yeah like almost to the point where you couldn't understand what the movie was anymore yeah they got rid of the masturbation they got rid of

The close-ups on the freaks. I'm saying freaks because that's in quotes. The words they were using. Yeah. They toned down a lot of things. The dead dad scene sequence for the chop him up. That was a pretty cool scene.

yeah it was it was cool uh dick warlock did the special effects who did the exorcist too and a couple yeah no that i mean that's fantastic and that that um that scene where she stabs her her father's ghost and cuts him up yeah i mean that's like first of all i thought it was genuinely scary and second of all it's on a lot of those like top 100 scary movie moment lists you know like that actually stands out in history

Totally. It kind of reminds me of like a Dawn of the Dead feel with like the, I don't know, like the kind of the clammy chocolate. Yeah. The rawness of it. Yeah, exactly. The bright. colored blood and stuff yeah i know you're talking giallo right yeah yeah yeah what's the uh george george romero but yeah giallo you know uh joe castro uh strives to do some of these things yeah right that's right good buddy joe who does did special effects for the last couple films so um but yeah so

The film, really, because it was shown theatrically, the way it was meant to be shown, then greatly dumbed down for the masses for TV release, it didn't really get its feet until it was VHS released. director's cut uh our original cut and that's when it started gaining a cult classic following because people could see it the way it was meant to be seen with all the way we watched it on netflix right um so then it started doing really well

after that and now it's become a cult classic yeah it's great i thought it was good And I do say that some critics have come around now saying, of course. I mean, I rant on this all the time. The older a movie is, the higher the IMDb rating, no matter how fucking shitty the movie was. You're absolutely right. There is a nostalgia.

factor for sure that multiplies movies but also i think sometimes people just hate new stuff because they're like it's not what i grew up with yeah but then when it becomes old then they take that away and now they're just like oh this is a good movie yeah totally i know i know fucking people yeah all the old ones are yeah all the old ones are great all these new ones suck yeah yeah man i mean and i'm i marvel at how you know when we were in the 90s and we were growing up

the 70s that was the classic stuff or the universal stuff was the classic stuff and now to us all these 80s movies and 90s movies now it's like nightmare on elm street and scream these are the classics i love them yeah you know these things that were new

are quite old they still seem new in my mind i'm like i'm old i watched this i'm like god this is an old movie it's actually weird carmelo because sometimes when we talk amongst each other Because you're only, what, a few years younger than, how old are you? 36. Yeah, you're only like four years younger than us. But I don't think it's just with age. I think because you sort of started a little bit later.

it's almost apparent there sometimes i'm like oh you've seen this movie right like you grew up with smooth this movie and you're like no no no i didn't like i grew up with this movie right right fuck like those that's different you know it's true just a couple years sometimes makes it makes it difference and actually the reason i've seen so many things that you guys grew up on is because i had older cousins who are like my older brothers yeah and there may be

you know five six years maybe up to seven years older than me right so like i grew up idolizing them and they wanted me to watch predator and alien and so forth oh yeah well and as we

As we get older, I don't know if this happens to you, but I'll talk to somebody in passing and of a younger generation, right? And I just think it's a given that people have... seen The Shining people have seen the Evil Dead franchise Nightmare on Elm Street and these younger folks these days haven't seen any of it no it's like what it's wild at all and i wonder if given the rise of short form content i wonder if our this generation could ever appreciate like the shining

long and i know we got to wrap it up but one last story about that is because it's kind of a sweet story i wore an ash costume to the renaissance fair and these yeah these kids came up to me and they were like hey we were just wondering, like, who are you? And I was like, you know, because the jeans are hanging out. So I was just like, I'm like,

I was actually overjoyed that they cared to ask. I was like, Army of Darkness. It's about an asshole who goes back in time and fights an army of the undead. Get yourself your favorite diet manor and orange slice. Get yourself some popcorn. Go home.

watch evil dead evil dead to an army of darkness and i think you know i like to think maybe we made some fans yeah i hope so i hope so it's just nuts man we were on the and again i know we're wrapping up we're on the road a couple weeks ago with the band And that also is another area where we are, I hope still relevant, but playing with all these bands that are like these kids that are 18, 20 years old.

or younger and one of them was like a horror fan and he was probably like 20 years old or 21 or maybe even 18 and and uh very surprising because he was like oh the shining and like Kubrick and blah blah and I was like holy fuck like I never see this in the younger yeah you know dude we there was this lady sorry I know we're we have a poolside shirt that uh has like a you know all the shiny classic shining um like the the great twin yeah we use designs from a lot of horror films yeah like we have

like the phantasm, the tall, uh, tall man and phantasm and stuff. And, but, uh, she looked at the shirt and we have the twins and then the maze and then the carpet. And she saw the carpet. Oh my God, the shining carpet. i i have a blanket a queen-size blanket that took me two years to crochet oh you guys got to see this i'm a huge shining fan i'm like oh my god see so it's like and she was probably 35 36 or what what surprises me

Even people our age, this specifically when our band plays and we're on the road or we're playing shows, we do have a shirt that has the tall man from Phantasm on it. He's very clearly the tall man. He's surrounded by spheres with blades coming out of them. And then below him, you have the two... Well, there's only one in the movie, but there's two cross five-barrel shotguns that...

You know, Reggie uses a five-barrel shotgun in the movie in the third one. And iconic. I mean, I grew up Phantasm III specifically. It's the five-barrel shotgun. It's the tall man in the mortuary.

it's like phantasm three is the one that sticks in my head it's great it's great but i would say 90 percent of people even people our age just come by they have no fucking idea that that's from phantasm it's like it's like one person a hundred is like oh phantasm and that blows me away i'm like does not everyone know what phantasm is That's great. See, that's why I appreciate these, like, 70s movies. Like, this seemed, like, old to me. Like, oh, yeah, this is...

Old, but that's all we watch. I watch a newer one. I'm more 80s myself, but I watch a newer one. I'm like, oh man, she doesn't have the nostalgic feel. Even Liz now, my wife, she's like, I like the new ones, but I just like the... charm of the old one. So, you know, like she likes to watch Nightmare on Elm Street compared to like the new Nightmare, you know, or something. Yeah, I mean, this just...

They do have charm to them, for sure. All right, well, I think we can get... We're at 120. I think we can get it in 130 if we do. What did you watch? That was the Sentinel, guys, but go watch the Sentinel. It's on Netflix currently.

probably still will be when you listen to this we record a few days early it's probably there for a while go watch it on Netflix bro did you watch anything good lately i did man frankenstein i did too i need to watch it yeah don't tell me was it great it was great i won't spoil it for you um i really need to see it

It's one of the truest adaptions to the book. Really? Because I've never read the book. I love the book. There are some pretty major changes, but you can tell that this movie was made by someone who loves that book. The stuff that it got right was so specific and nuanced. And there are parts of the movie that are like looking at a painting. I mean, Guillermo del Toro's cinematography is just... It is taken back in like...

the ancient times of Frankenstein. It's a period piece. It's a period piece. It's extraordinary. I won't say more. Just go see it. Oh, yeah. So it was supposed to be Andrew Garfield was going to play the creature. Oh, was it? Yeah. And then the Hollywood strikes interfered with scheduling or something like that. That's too bad. But the guy who did it was fantastic. And they do a lot of it more like kind of generous.

generational trauma of like victor frankenstein's issues with his own shitty father and then how he kind of passes that along to his son you know the creature yeah it's kind of neat um so they you know they they do a couple things a little differently and they really make victor frankenstein a bastard he just sucks in this movie but it's fantastic you gotta you gotta see and the ending made me cry i cried at the end Is it from the book that...

All the Arctic stuff going on in the beginning? Yeah, and no Frankenstein has ever done that. But Frankenstein is a framed narrative where it's actually the guy in the beginning writing a letter to his sister. telling her about this guy he found in the Arctic. And then it gets like, it's a frame inside of a frame because then he tells Frankenstein's story and then Frankenstein meets the creature and the creature tells Frankenstein his story.

So it's like this like fourth hand account of the creature's narrative. Thank you for telling me that before I watch it. So now I'll know kind of. No, I thought it was. I thought the Arctic stuff was made it a lot more interesting. That was awesome. It was really cool, the Arctic stuff. The point that the movie makes it explicit, the point in the book is that the ship Captain Walden is like...

trudging forth to the north looking for knowledge of, you know, I don't know, electromagnetism or something. And then that mirrors Frankenstein's own search for knowledge at all costs. It was very cool inclusion. We've never seen that before in a movie.

I love it when they add those little things that make the movie so much better in fact you know what given that that movie is so trending right now maybe the next episode we should do classic Frankenstein oh dude we've done the classic frankenstein though haven't we i think we did the first one maybe we did i don't know we i think we did i think we did first one and bride we did that okay yeah we can still revisit it but i mean

There's still some classics we haven't done. We haven't done Dracula yet. Also, it would be fun commentaries because they're much shorter. If we did a live comment. Yeah, like an hour long. Yeah, they're nearly an hour. Yeah, they're short movies for sure. I did... It must... I don't, again, I haven't read the book, but I've seen Young Frankenstein. I watched Young Frankenstein with Liz again. She watched it every year. And I've seen classic Frankenstein. Yeah.

And obviously it's a very large part of the book that he visits a blind person. Yeah, it's funny because young Frankenstein is actually like super true to... it's it's super true yeah so he visits the blind guy in this one and and you know it's obviously a lot more serious but uh that was interesting does he light his cigarette for him

There's not that. Yeah, it's a bit more gruesome than that. I know. I got to see it now. But it was good. Yeah, and he keeps getting a bad rap. Things blamed on him the whole time. But I thought I watched, again, I watched it too. I thought it was awesome. I'd never read the book, but...

Yeah, it was great. You guys watch anything else? Some good people in it, too. Yeah, do you watch anything else, Carmelo? I've been watching Alien Earth on Hulu. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I watched that. There's only one season out right now, right? Only one season. It is coming back. I'm one episode away from the end. I think it's fantastic. I loved it. Yeah. I really need to see that. I love it. I'm so glad to hear you say that because a lot of people were hard on it. I think it's fucking great.

I think it is the... Curtis is watching it through right now. I think it's the goriest alien we've ever seen. Oh, yeah. There's stuff in there that's just... just bonkers i mean uh the the newest alien was actually pretty gory romulus yeah but it's it's very graphic it's very in the vein of what i think alien should be

And I thought it was fucking awesome. I gotta watch that. What about you guys? You watch anything else? I watched the second season of Wednesday. The first season was better, but I thought it was good. There's actually some... uh graphic stuff and that too some disturbing stuff but it's it's on netflix and it's obviously there's there's like

Jenna Ortega and kids and stuff. Steve Buscemi's in there. He makes an appearance in this. There's some good stuff in there for sure. There's some good creature effects in it. Then I saw Nightmare on Elm Street with Liz and then young Frankenstein again. She had never seen Nightmare on Elm Street.

See, that's what we're just talking about. We were just talking about that, about that might be the best original film out of the 80s slasher. I've drunk Sharon through a lot of these films early on when... in the courting stage, and then once we tied the knot, she was like, I don't like horror, and I'm never watching one again. What the fuck? Liz will watch them, and she'll watch them. She walks into violent nature.

with me. That's good. Anyways, I talked about that last time. I saw 28 years later. I saw that too. I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was magnificent until the last... minute and then i was like what the fuck happened and then of course i found out it was to set up a sequel that's coming out next month i think so is it already

dude yeah like really soon like january i think it's coming they must have shot them like back to back i think they did and supposedly it's going to be a trilogy um So all that weird shit at the end is what the second one's all about. And it actually looks like the trailer looks bonkers. Okay. Because I went and saw Predator Badlands and they played the trailer. Oh, yeah. How was that?

i like predator it was great yeah it's uh i'm that's new live action predator a new live action badlands with um what's her name in it i saw a preview of it really good Gosh, what's that girl's name? Is it Mid-Thunder again? No, it's not a sequel to Prey. I heard they are making a Prey 2. This one has...

I think I saw this. Her name is Elle Fanning. Elle Fanning, yeah. Dakota Fanning's sister. Right. And she's awesome in it. But this is finally, finally a movie that's... about the predator dude i saw the pre-print it looked good is it in theaters it's in theaters and it's great and and some people were like oh they disneyfied it because they gave him a story and he still has he learns to make friends i'm like

What did you expect if they were going to make the movie about the Predator? He's going to have an arc. He's got to have a motive. He's got to grow. But finally, you don't have to watch a movie about 10 stupid humans running around getting killed. It's just about him.

And he's awesome. That's cool. I just saw a preview of him just screaming with both of his mouths open, and he's just like beastly. I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I think I did see some teasers for it. I got to watch that. Better than Bray? I like it.

uh no pray i think i think i liked a little bit better but this this was awesome i mean this was different than any other predator movie because it wasn't just here's the predator hunting different people this which i love i love prey and i love but this one was finally something that adds to the mythos of the predators and adds to the mythology this is really terrific uh i um since i mean it's been a while so

I watched a movie called Haunter that was all right. It's on Amazon. Check it out. I don't know. Or Shudder. What's this girl's name? I should just click on it. You recognize her. Haunter. What the fuck? Details. What's this actress's name? Anyways, it's pretty good. It's like this girl stuck in a time loop. I know that sounds sort of like overused, but... It's not too bad. She's like stuck in that time loop. Nice. And there's some supernatural shit going on. I watched...

A couple more episodes of Creepshow. I'm slowly, ever so slowly working my way through that. I gotta watch that, too. Damn. And then I watched Barely. God, I can't even finish it. The newest Hell House LLC lineage, which they completely did a right turn and it's a normal narrative film and they got so much fucking flack for it.

why would they do that they kind of deserve it dude like i like dude this is it was not great i literally watched it i'm looking at my watch history november 15th so six days ago

I can't even fucking remember like one minute. You watched the whole thing. Are you falling asleep? I don't even know what happened. I was having so bad. Long night. Did you doze off? I don't... think i i don't think i even do it i had to finish this it says watch again i can't even fucking tell you what it was about see i hate that it was just i guess that's an endorsement dude it was so bad

It was like this. Okay. You know what it was? It's coming back to me now a little bit. It was the girl from the third one. The third one is when... The guy brings his reality show to Hell House. He's like, oh, Mind Warp or whatever it's called. And he's like, we're going to spend the night in Hell House. And she's like a producer on the show or something. Oh, I remember that.

They like bring her back in this hell house LLC lineage and they have her people tied to hell house are starting to like realize they have something. common and like you start to figure out more history about the family because the last one was the Carmichael Manor where you found out a little bit about uh the creators of hell house and the clowns and the circus shit i don't know man it was fucking carmel commander is actually pretty good if you haven't watched it

the i've not seen that one yeah yeah the fourth hell house is actually pretty good it's way better than the third one uh the third one i think is the weakest one um the fourth one's actually really good it's creepy as um and it's a whole different movie like the first three are in hell house llc like the abaddon hotel the blah blah blah the same location and the third one goes to like the family that is

the backstory and it goes to their their manor it's like their mansion in the middle of nowhere is where it takes place so that one's good this one is uh dude so yeah they got a bunch of flack from The fan base, like if you look in the found footage movie groups, there's people that are just like, oh, I just watched the new found footage or the new hell house. and it's a straight up like real movie what is this yeah i mean we like what we like

How do you make four found footage movies in a franchise? And then the finale, the last one that's supposed to explain all this shit, which still sort of leaves it like there's going to be a sequel, a normal fucking narrative, you know? Maybe you'll get people who aren't in the Phantom Fitness group that are like, oh, it was great. Yes. I don't know, man. No, you got to keep it.

I mean, I guess Blair, which moved from found footage to narrative and no one liked it when they did it. Yeah. Yeah. And then they went back and then they went back. Yeah, exactly. Uh, paranormal's never done narrative. no you gotta keep it they know they already they know oh shit i gotta tell you this i saw paranormal activity live there's there's like a like a production a play you can go see now oh really and if it comes to your home

Yes. And if it comes to your hometown, fucking see it. Really? I was...

shaking in my seat. Are you kidding me? You're in the theater? It was awesome. The set is... Plot-wise, it has nothing to do with any of the movies. It's just a haunting. But the set is... like a two-story house so the characters are like they'll be down here in the kitchen but upstairs like the bathroom door is opening or like there's a figure the audience you you see the whole you see the whole house they're only in like one room of it wow and

I'm getting chills just thinking about it. I thought it was going to be a slow burn, and about 10 minutes in, there's this crazy jump scare. Wow. I was like, oh, fuck. We're off to the races. What? a theater production it was so good i can't like dialogue and lines in it yeah i cannot overstate how good it was oh my god i gotta see it was just called paranormal it's called paranormal activity live and

There's maybe like four actors in it. What? Wow. But they do some shit that you're like, you know, man, that's one thing when you see it in a movie. When it happens in front of your eyes, you're like, what the fuck is going on? I got to check that out. They obviously had to... do a lot of tom flurry and uh effects work back yeah i mean it's partially like watching a magic show in a play because some of the the effects are just like how did they

things appear and disappear and how they do it, you know, and yeah, I mean, exactly. So that's the only thing I can compare it to really is kind of like watching the magic show. But check it out, man. Right now, I think it's done in Chicago, but then I think it's in Los Angeles, but it's going to go around the country. Well, I think we've gone a little over.

136. That's all right. Yeah, but all right, guys. Well, thanks for joining us. Get those memes in. Hashtag horror halftime. We're sending out poultry, guys.

to uh luke morgan i swear the prizes will get better i just had to get rid of this thing uh you might enjoy it rob would love getting poultry guys i mean if you've never seen it you gotta see it yeah uh give rob some shit tell him to start showing up to the episodes so that we can all have a good time yes um and yeah i think that's we don't have anything else to push at the moment right carmel i mean we're we're

We're getting out this Name the Demon stuff. We've just been told by a distributor that we don't do bulk Blu-rays anymore, so do your own. So we're like, oh, then I wouldn't have bothered with you in the first bucket. Yeah. So we're like, okay. So now we're doing that. But I guess the good news is I think I can just get it done pretty much right away. Yeah. It's like people should be able to do it. So that'll be coming out if you guys further.

Those of you waiting on those, I just got to put the order in, I guess, and we'll get those. But yeah, keep an ear out for... More projects. Carmel finished, I think, Unarmed, still in the works, and then we might be shooting something next year. Yeah, we're going to shoot our next found footage movie in the spring. Yeah. Some more horror to you guys coming your way. We're also producing five other movies this month, it turns out. So we're going to have a lot of movies coming your way. Yeah.

Make sure you rate and review. I never asked for that anymore. You need to start doing that. Rate and review is on Apple Podcasts. Rate and review, yes. And we appreciate it. All right, guys. Thanks so much.

I don't know what we're going to cover next, but we're taking a break for Thanksgiving. I don't think it, I think it'll coincide with our normal schedule anyway. So a couple more weeks. Yeah. December 5th. We'll have a Christmas episode for you guys or bring it back. We'll see what we want to cover. So. all right guys thanks so much we'll catch you next time later don't you blame the movies movies don't create psychos movies make psychos more creative There will be blood.