2 Guys And A Chainsaw – A Horror Movie Review Podcast
- Episódios
- 88
- Publicação
- semanal
- Último episódio
- 5 nov 2026
Sobre o podcast
Reviewing horror movies every week, both classic and modern films!
Licença: cc-by-nc-sa-4.0
Episódios 88
Bad Moon
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We talk about its under-the-radar release, recognizable-but-not-huge cast (including Mariel Hemingway and Michael Paré), and how the movie feels like a bright, slick ’90s horror with occasional ’80s vibes.
We praise the gore, the bold amount of on-screen werewolf action, and Steve Johnson’s practical creature effects, while criticizing the flat cinematography, weak characterization, and pacing that delays the central conflict until the final stretch.
We compare it to the novel it’s based on – Thor by Wayne Smith (told from the dog’s perspective) – and discuss how the film strips away that richer concept, leaving muddled motivations, odd plotting, and a rushed finale, though we still think it’s worth one watch for the effects and the dog.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Bad Moon (1996)Episode 513, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast.
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week, we’re jumping into some werewolf action with 1996’s Bad Moon Which is a movie that you picked this week. I was kinda surprised ’cause I had never heard of it before, and we did a whole werewolf month where- I know … we were doing some werewolf research. Did- how did this one slip by us?
Craig: I don’t know. And I feel like maybe I came across it sometime, you know, around that time. I, I really think I was just, uh, searching through things and happened upon it on some streamer. I, I think right now it’s streaming on Amazon Prime. I had never heard of it either before seeing it, but from the time that I saw it, I th- I had it on a list somewhere and-
Todd: Hmm
Craig: thought, “Why not?”
Todd: Yeah, why not, huh? So yeah, I just… It’s weird because it’s a Morgan Creek production. I laughed about it because as the credits came up in the very beginning and they play the intros with all the studios and things involved in here, there was Morgan Creek that came up. They used to have, I don’t know if they still do, but I don’t even know if Morgan Creek is still producing movies, but, uh, back in the day of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, right?
That was their huge hit, and ever since then, when their logo came up, they would play that theme song. << Da, da, da-da, da, da, do, do, do, do, do, do >> You know what I mean? And-
No.
Yeah, okay. Well, you weren’t- … paying attention. But it was- No … it was very nostalgic for me. It brought me back to high school. In 1996, I was, my last year of high school.
I was thinking if this had come out maybe a year or two earlier, this is probably a movie I would’ve rented with my friends.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: You know? And so I was, I was very surprised I hadn’t seen it before. But, but had you?
Craig: No, not before I ran across it, which was probably sometime in the last year or so, and I’m kinda surprised too, except for that I read that it just, they, they didn’t-
Todd: Bombed.
Craig: Well, it bombed, and because there was no advertising really. Like, they didn’t do much advertising for it at all. So I think people just didn’t really know about it. Plus, uh, the main people in it, you would recognize them and you’d recognize their names for sure, but they weren’t, like, big blockbuster stars or anything.
Right. The, the late ’90s was an interesting time for horror. I liked it. I still go back and watch those ’90s movies. This one, honestly, though it definitely has a ’90s flavor, I would say particularly in the cinematography, it also gave me ’80s vibes too. Hmm. A little
Todd: bit
Craig: maybe. And maybe that was kind of because of the somewhat kind of family nature of it.
It’s, it’s a little maybe… Because there’s a cute dog and there’s a cute kid in it, it’s, I don’t know. It’s, it’s got more of that f- a little bit of that flavor as opposed to, like, the angsty teen other stuff from the ’90s. But, but no, I, again, I, I really had never heard of it. Don’t recall- Having seen a trailer or anything, and regardless of whether or not it was publicized well when it came out, I’m still surprised I never came across it, like you said, on the video shelves or like Werewolves aren’t at the top of my list for things that, you know, like of my favorites, but I will watch about anything and-
Todd: You will.
Craig: It never crossed my path. It- a- and again, I’m just surprised because I’m not gonna, you know, start the podcast out by saying it’s a great movie. It’s not. But there’s good stuff about it, and stuff that’s worth seeing and that I’m surprised doesn’t get talked about more.
Todd: Yeah, although, I don’t know, man. I can kinda see why it doesn’t get talked about more.
Number one, you said lack of star power is big. Although, Mariel Hemingway, she was in a fair number of things around this time. She was in some television. She was in a Tales from the Crypt episode I remember particularly well. I m- she’s not an unrecognizable face. Matthew Perry, who stars as her brother, he’s still working hard.
Craig: Oh my God, I looked… I know. He- He does like 15 movies a year.
Todd: He’s, like, got the career I would want, you know? Like, just nonstop work, but not a household name. Wouldn’t know him if I walked down the street, but jeez. And we’ve done some movies with him in them. We did, uh-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: Village of the Damned.
Craig: Bone Tomahawk.
Todd: Yeah. He’s been in a lot of stuff. So much stuff. And he’s fine in this. He’s great in this. But I don’t know. I feel like there’s a lot to criticize here, and that might be the problem. At its core, it’s not a bad movie. It’s well-filmed, I think, if only just a little pedestrian in that way.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Todd: Like, there’s nothing very stylish about the filming. It’s lit in that brightly lit way that a lot of ’90s movies were lit, so e- even in the dark, there’s very little shadow. You know? There’s very little mystery about the sur-
Craig: Yeah, that’s true …
Todd: surroundings of what’s going on, and that keeps it from being too sinister and dark and scary.
There’s a lot of gore in here, and I was actually surprised because tonally it doesn’t feel like the kind of movie that would have a ton of gore. But it does, and so I guess that’s a good thing. But it is a little strange because tonally it doesn’t feel like that kind of movie. And I guess my biggest problem with it, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it later, is just the plot.
And it’s a simple plot, and simple plots aren’t necessarily bad, but I just think the pacing is off. I feel like the movie takes too long to get around to the central conflict, and by the time we get to the central conflict, there are 20 minutes left and it’s gotta wrap it up. And so I feel like a lot of potential was lost because I learned that this was based on a novel, and when you read about the changes they made from the novel you go, “Oh, okay.”
So this was a s- a werewolf story told from the perspective of the family dog, and that’s a great concept and I wanna read that novel. Actually, I really do. It’s called Thor by Wayne Smith. And I wanna read that novel
Craig: Downloaded it this morning.
Todd: Oh, did you? Okay, nice.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: You wanna read it too.
Craig: I do.
Todd: You know, there was a bigger family involved.
Obviously, with a novel you can do things from the dog’s point of view that would be quite interesting. It sounds like there was a lot more conflict. It sounds like there were some more thematic interesting things going on there. And like I said, what a great idea. There’s a lot to explore with that. You know, the tension between this dog knowing whether or not this…
You know, is this a threat to the family or is this one of my own? How does the dog deal with that? God, this movie just, just kinda stripped out what sounds like all the most interesting parts of the novel and made it into this story that’s so basic that I could never really connect with it very much.
Craig: That’s fair.
Todd: I had to come to the conclusion that your main reason for choosing this is you just wanted to see a dog on the screen for a while, like, like our last movie we did.
Craig: Pretty much. I mean, the last movie that we watched, the last movie that we watched, Good Boy, reminded me of this movie because that movie is told from the dog’s perspective, and I remembered that the, the novel that this movie is based on also was.
So that’s what sparked the memory. But yeah, that’s what I was gonna say, like, yeah, if you’re coming at it for a story, you’re gonna be disappointed.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: I don’t think I was really coming at it for a story. I, like, I knew it was a werewolf movie. I was looking forward to the effects because even based on any images you see anywhere about it, you can tell there are gonna be some cool practical effects, and there are.
And yeah, the, the whole dog thing. And it, and those things-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: I really like. And it’s only an hour and 20 minutes long. Like, I, again, that was a big selling point, too. I’m like, “Oh, an hour and 20 minutes? I got an hour and 20
Todd: minutes.” Yeah. But
Craig: you’re right. Like, not a lot happens, and I can see why the book would be more interesting, which is why I too wanna read it.
Because I think that the movie is trying maybe kind of to say something about the power and/or nature of family and, and… You know, in, in the book I read, again, I haven’t read it yet, but I read that the dog, the family dog, whose name is Thor- is conflicted because it’s conflicted between protecting its, its pack, which it views its whole family as its pack, but it’s confused because I guess the uncle kind of should be family or should be part of the pack, so it’s confused.
And it’s, I, I feel like it’s difficult to portray that on screen. Mm-hmm. I, I guess they did the best they could. I, I wanna say that I thought that the, everything with the dogs, there’s one primary dog that they used. Like, I guess the director f- searched and searched and searched and finally found this dog that he really liked, and that’s the one that’s used for most of the close-up stuff.
Like, all of the real like face acting, that dog did. But there were others that did other- Dunts and stuff, yeah … like fighting things and stuff. Right. So the dog is great, but I will say that I was kind of looking at my watch on a couple of those scenes where it was just like a stare down between the dog and the uncle.
Yeah. Like, okay, I get it. Like-
Todd: Right.
Craig: I, I, I get it. They, they are, you know, standing off, but we don’t, we don’t need, we don’t need, yeah, we don’t need to see them glaring into one another’s eyes for five minutes, like-
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: So yeah, I, I, I do think that, I don’t know if you’re right that it squandered opportunity or if that was just too difficult to translate to the screen.
That may be part of it, and I do think that you’re also right that the acting is a problem. Now, the director of the movie apparently was really enamored with Michael
Todd: Pare.
Craig: Like, he just thought he was the greatest. There were, there were a couple of other I think kind of bigger name… I don’t know, maybe not at the time.
I think Michael Biehn or Ben or however you say his name. I, I think the guy from Terminator, the good guy from Terminator was up for it, and somebody else I don’t remember. But the director was super… He, he just thought that Michael Pare was just such this great actor. And then Mariel Hemingway- … he did not think was good at all.
Todd: Uh-huh.
Craig: I don’t know. Yeah. Like, I thought they were… It, it, I don’t know if it felt like they were in two different movies. Um, because it seemed like Michael Pare was really going for it to the extent that it almost seemed, like, silly, like he’s trying too hard. Uh-huh. Or, or, or it could just be that he was acting against- I, I don’t know.
I don’t know what she was doing.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I don’t-
Todd: I know, right?
Craig: I, I don’t know if she’s a good actress or not. It really just kinda seemed like she was going through the motions here and-
Todd: It felt a bit sitcom-y from her side, just very plain and blah. I don’t know. It just didn’t really feel like much of a character that had a lot of depth to it or anything.
And to, to be fair, I don’t really, didn’t really feel a lot of that from him either, but I don’t think that’s his fault. I don’t necessarily think it’s the fault of the acting. I think it’s almost a fault of nothing significant happening between them. You’ve basically got this brother and sister who reconnect, and he invites her to visit her- him Out, and then they have a nice little time, but whatever.
Like, they don’t have any deep conversation or anything. And then she invites him to come live in their ba- in his Airstream in their backyard for a while. And again, just like, “Okay, broth
The Witching Season
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Notas do episódio
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We talk about how the segments share a cohesive look, consistent cinematography, and clever little callbacks (radio/TV clips and visual nods) that tie everything together.
We break down each short, from the slasher to the killer stuffed animal tale, the alien abduction, the longer “writer in a haunted house” meta-story that later became a feature, and an urban-legend-style closer. We end by discussing uneven payoffs, overall ambition, and the news of a funded Part II.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript The Witching Season (2015)Ep 512, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Happy Halloween, Craig.
Craig: Hey, man. Happy Halloween.
Todd: We made it.
Craig: How’s it treating you?
Todd: Oh, so far so good. I, I bought a couple Halloween decorations at the store, a little ghost and a little pumpkin. They’re sitting on my table, and I’m about to head out to the Philippines, and we’re gonna see how much Halloween they do there.
I- in Beijing, there’s Halloween horror nights. I’m going there with some buddies, and that’s always fun. They’ve, uh, boosted that this year. There are now seven walk-through haunts, so-
Craig: Nice …
Todd: that’s pretty huge for, you know, few years ago, this place was just kinda getting going on this thing, and now seven haunts, and they’re starting to look pretty professional considering what I saw last year.
I’m, I’m very excited. Nice. I even know someone who’s working in one of them. So, uh, yeah, should be a good time. A little bit of Halloween, uh, in Beijing. A little bit more than I experienced in Thailand, that’s for sure. I kind of assumed the opposite but, you know. As much as Thailand’s into horror, you’d think there’d be a lot more Halloween going on.
Yeah. But maybe we’re a few years out from that yet. How about you?
Craig: Oh, man, I’ve been enjoying it for a while. I, uh, I, I had to go to a dollar store for something in real early October for, for something for school, and they had just put out all of their Halloween decorations, and I went nuts, and I bought so much cheap crap.
Todd: You can do that on Halloween, right? The cheap crap’s the best. Yeah.
Craig: Oh, yeah. Like dollar, $1.50 skeleton skulls, so many skulls, spiders. Wow. Like every- I bought so much. I spent like, I don’t know, like $75 at the dollar store on cheap crap, and I decorated my classroom with it. And I love it because that’s Halloween to me.
Halloween isn’t fancy. No. Halloween is tacky. It’s supposed to be. And I, I like cheap, tacky Halloween decorations. I think they’re fun. They make me happy.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And so my classroom is covered in them. There’s, you know, like three-foot tall plastic, uh, s- skeletons in orange and green hanging in my big windows, and ghosts hanging around and, uh, it’s, it’s great.
That’s awesome. I’ll, I’ll send you some pictures. But yeah, I’m, I’m, uh, you know, I’ve got this new classroom that I love, and, uh, this is really the first time in my almost 25-year career that I’ve, like, decorated for the holidays ’cause I ac- you know, my, my space feels new and, and good, and it’s fun to decorate, so.
Todd: Yeah. That-
Craig: I’ve really been enjoying it. Yeah. And, and the weather is finally getting cold. Where I am, it’s really weird because it’ll be like in the low 40s overnight, but then by mid-afternoon it’s the 80s. So- Wow. I’m wearing a sweatshirt out in the morning, and then by the time I’m coming home from school I’m sweating, but it’s, it’s nice.
Oh my gosh. The leaves are finally starting to change. It’s, it’s really nice. I’m really, uh, I’m, I’m really settling into the season. I, I’m already through my annual reading of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Like, I’m
Todd: in
Craig: it. Oh.
Todd: That’s fantastic. Oh, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Oh, yeah, it’s funny. You know, I do an annual reading of Dandelion Wine.
Craig: Nice.
Todd: Two Ray Bradbury books. And, uh, book club’s going well. Having fun there, aren’t we?
Craig: Yeah, and we’re reading an interesting Halloween book. I don’t know. I ha- I, I’m reserving my judgment.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: But yeah, it’s a 31-chapter book, one day for each day of Halloween. Told from the perspective of, I think, Jack Th- Jack the Ripper’s dog.
Uh And but then also there’s, like, all kinds of, like, Lovecraftian stuff going on. It’s, it’s interesting. I’m a little more than halfway through. That’s fun. But yeah, book club’s going great. Having a lot of fun with those guys, talking about books and movies and all kinds of stuff. It’s a good time.
Todd: Yeah, it’s very cool.
Well, we’re here on our fifth and final Halloween episode of the season. We picked these movies out pretty far in advance and realized we could do five this month instead of just four if we timed it all right. So, uh, here we are with the fifth one. This is The Witching Season. It’s a horror anthology.
Thought it might be kind of fun to do a wh- to end things on a horror anthology.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: You know, we’ve got quite a few horror anthologies out there that we haven’t hit yet that have… We’ve got a long list, actually, but this one is very Halloween themed. I was a little nervous about it, only because I noticed, yeah, it’s one of these, like, lower budget movies.
It doesn’t seem like it’s… It’s definitely hasn’t hit the theaters. Right. Not that I’m aware of, anyway. But it’s up on streaming and stuff, so thought we’d give it a go. So this is the first time I had seen it. How about you, Craig?
Craig: I thought that I had seen it before, but I don’t think that I have. And I think probably the reason that I hadn’t seen it before is because I was under the impression that it was a feature film that was an anthology, but it’s not exactly, at least not depending on where you get it.
Todd: Supposedly, yeah.
Craig: It started out as a web series, independently, uh, produced. The, this guy Michael Ballif, Baylif, and, and a guy that he works with, you know, I guess, I don’t know if they’d been working together or they just k- kept working together after this, but a guy named James Morris- And it was a, uh, a, a web series.
And then I think that it did well enough or, or got enough attention that they did like a Kick- u- uh, a Kickstarter or like an Indiegogo or, or something, and they raised enough money for a physical release. And I think that when they did the physical release, they just stitched them all together. And so again, depending on where you get it, I found it on Tubi, where it’s listed as one season of an anthology with five separate episodes, and the episodes are separated out with, with opening and, and closing credits.
But nonetheless, an anthology that feels very much like… You know, there are some anthologies, V/H/S comes to mind, those where you get such diversity in the different directors that even the V/H/S movies are th- you know, each one has kind of a theme, but they can vary wildly in style from segment to segment.
Todd: Right.
Craig: These feel like parts of a whole.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Th- this feels more like Trick r Treat, right?
Todd: Yeah. It, it does in a way, ’cause the, because of what
Craig: ties it together. The one that we really liked.
Todd: Yeah, yeah.
Craig: Right. And, and the stories don’t overlap as much here as they do in that movie, but there is some overlap and the style and, and, uh, many visuals and, and things of that nature are, are consistent throughout.
So it, it feels like it was made as a cohesive whole and, and works that way even though there is no wraparound at all.
Todd: Yeah. It, it… Because, um, in each story there’s a little hint at the previous story.
Craig: A little callback.
Todd: Usually it’s like a little visual thing or-
Craig: Something you hear on the radio or on TV.
Todd: Yeah, exactly. And the last story in the group has a woman at one point flipping through TV, her TV, and she’s hitting a clip from each of the television clips that we’ve seen in all the previous stories. Oh,
Craig: really? Right. That’s funny.
Todd: Yeah. Did you notice that? No. Yeah, that was kinda interesting. So I mean, there was some effort to tie this together, which is cute.
And I guess supposedly, I have no reason to doubt it, I guess this was filmed over the course of several years. According to IMDb, 2015, then 2016, then 2017, so like three years went by. It, it feels like all this was filmed in the same night, honestly. You know, there’s quite a bit of consistency with the neighborhood involved and the cinematography.
Actually, I was very impressed with the cinematography. It’s all very consistent amongst the episodes, the lighting, everything like that, which, you know, I wouldn’t expect from a very independent micro-budget indie type movie that was obviously shot on video, you know? It looks good, honestly, for what it is.
Was pretty shocked by that.
Craig: Yeah. It looks like m- m- it’s made… You know, it looks like it’s, it’s shot on a budget.
Todd: It’s cheap. Yeah. It looks cheap.
Craig: But it’s, it’s skillfully shot, so it’s… You know, it looks like whoever’s behind the camera is doing a good job and they’re considering framing and lighting and, and, and all of these things.
It’s not shoddy. It’s not just thrown together. Right. But you can tell they didn’t have a lot of money.
Todd: Yeah, exactly.
Craig: It, it’s, it’s not shiny.
Todd: No, it’s not. It’s very limited on locations. It kinda looks like it was shot and some homes were borrowed, you know? For sure, yeah. Very mu- on location. The actors are-
Craig: They’re fine
Todd: fine in them. The one actor, James Morris, is in almost all of- at least he’s in, like, the last three, and he’s very much featured in one of them He apparently was the director of three of the episodes as well. So, uh-
Craig: Right …
Todd: yeah, I’m sure we’ll talk about him and everybody else as we get through them. I feel like maybe just one at a time, yeah?
Craig: Yeah, yeah.
Todd: But overall, kind of nice Halloween feel for the whole thing. The whole thing takes place on, obviously on Halloween. That’s, that’s the point, I think, of all of the stories. So that much, uh, you know, it kinda fits our bill for-
Craig: Oh, yeah …
Todd: a horror anthology that’s Halloween-y .
Craig: It’s very Halloween-centric, like just dripping in jack-o’-lanterns and witches and, you know, everything Halloween.
It’s, it’s just absolutely dripping in it. M- I, I think they all… A- And, and the fall also, you know, the, the fallen leaves and, and all that stuff. It’s seasonally perfect . Um, I, I have to say overall too that I was pleasantly surprised. You know, as, as soon as it began and I kind of saw, I’m like, “Okay, this is low budget,” I think that had I gone to put it on before, I might not have, just because I saw that it was a series and, and maybe a little bit lower budget.
Right. But by the time the first segment was over, I was like, “Okay.” I was like, “All right, this might be better than I was expecting.” And overall, I think it was.
Todd: Yeah. You know, I’ll tell you, I was getting shades of another anthology that we did, the one that had the segment of the Terrifier character in the last one.
Craig: Wasn’t it All Hallows Eve, I think?
Todd: Yeah, I was getting shades of All Hallows Eve here, in that I felt it was similarly shot-
Craig: A little bit,
Todd: yeah … in a very low-budget style. And we did that years ago, and I’m pretty sure we came to the conclusion that it was super uneven. Some of the stories we didn’t really care for at all, and we agree that the strongest one by far was the Alt- Art the Clown segment at the end, which of course led to the Terrifier series with- Right
Art the Clown now being this huge sensation. But e- every, every segment except for that, it started to make me think of that. And honestly- As I got to the end, I felt like this was almost superior in terms of, uh, consistency and story quality and the way that everything was presented.
Craig: It’s a… I- it’s been so long since I’ve seen that movie, honestly, I don’t even remember what the other stories were.
So it’s, it’s, it’s… I rem- I mean, I remember there was something satanic going on, like, in the tunnels under the subway or something. That’s, that’s about a
Night of the Demons (2009)
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We continue our October Halloween lineup with 2009’s remake/reimagining of Night of the Demons, comparing it to the campy 1988 original we still have a soft spot for.We talk about what made the first film iconic—Angela’s weird energy, the dance, the poster art, and practical effects—and why this version feels like a bigger-budget copy-and-paste with less charm. We break down the New Orleans setting, the party vibe, the confusing character/space staging, and the juvenile “push the envelope” moments, plus the underused cast (including Shannon Elizabeth and Edward Furlong).
From the basement skeleton reveal to the safe-room exposition dump and chaotic finale, we cover why it’s not terrible—just a bit forgettable and disappointing compared to the original.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Night of the Demons (2009)Ep 511, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: All right, we are week four, approaching Halloween here with our, uh, October fest of Halloween-themed movies, and I’m really liking our selection this year so far. It’s hard to believe 2009 was, uh, 15 years ago.
Craig: I know.
Todd: Oh, my God. But, uh, here we are. 17 years ago, actually, wasn’t it?
Yeah.
But it’s a remake. This is Night of the Demons, not to be confused with the ’80s version of Night of the Demons that, uh, you and I did many moons ago. Mm. This is the 2009- Reimagining, remake, whatever you wanna call it, directed by Adam Gierasch. It was remake of the ’88 film by Richard Tenney, which we’ve done, and, uh, I held a special place in my heart.
I remember the original movie, and we- I think we talked about this when we did it, had a really, really freaky poster of, uh, Angela transformed into a demon that-
Craig: Oh, yeah …
Todd: that was up in, like, every video store. I- it feels like they must have just given those away by the scores. And, and then I remember watching the film as a kid, really enjoying it.
And then when we went back to see it as adults, we’re like, “Oh, man, this is, this is cringey, bad material,” but it was so bad it was fun.
Craig: I was gonna say, I don’t remember. I vague- like, I, I vaguely remember liking it or, or at least finding it charming in some way.
Todd: Oh, yeah. Very, very charming in the way that a so-bad-it’s-good movie is really charming.
But yeah, no, dude, it was like the acting is horrible, the writing is, is hilarious with just absolute corniness. If I remember correctly, that was the one where Linnea Quigley bends over.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Uh, she’s in, like, a tutu, and she’s shopping, and you get that long shot of her, of her crotch.
Craig: Yeah, and that’s super early.
It’s like, it’s just a couple of minutes into the movie. So you know what you’re getting into right away. Yeah, I do. I remember that.
Todd: It’s silly. It’s a silly movie, but it’s fun.
Craig: I don’t know. M- maybe it’s just in light of having watched this movie. I, I think maybe I’m looking back at the original with rose-colored glasses a little bit.
I guess I should have either re-watched it or listened to that. God, I, I have no idea how long it’s been since I’ve heard that, that episode that we did on it. I, I just remembered feeling… You know, I, I, I remember specific things that I rem- that I liked about it. I, I really liked Angela’s dance. I thought, you know, that’s kind of iconic, and you see it all over the place.
Todd: Right.
Craig: I did like, like, the demon design. Like you said, like, Angela’s face is really scary. It looks great on the poster. It’s, I don’t know, uh, it’s got, uh, kind of a playfulness about it, almost like a- It does … like a- Big time … like a, a Deadite kind of vibe to it, and that like-
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: And, and I like that in demons.
I like that when demons kind of revel and have fun and they’re evil. Like
Todd: Right.
Craig: I think, I think that’s cute. So I like that about it. I, I remember I, I loved the super, super cheap-looking opening sequence, like the credit- Yes … sequence, like the really cheap- The cartoon … animation.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Yeah. And it was very Halloween-y and ghosts and black cats and-
Todd: Great song.
Craig: Yeah, so all these, you know, little things that I remember about it. I, I imagine that if I were to rewatch it again in its entirety, I could pick it apart a lot more. But I had those fond vibes of it. The reason I picked this one, we’ve kinda been going back and forth. We, we laid out a, a, a Halloween lineup pretty early this year, but we each picked our own choices, and this was one of mine And I think that I picked it because lately to go to sleep I’ve just been putting on pretty much any horror movie on Tubi, and then one of the things that I like about Tubi is that they just, you know, I, I, I’m sure you can change the settings, but my settings are when one movie gets over, it just rolls right on over to the next one.
Todd: Ah, yeah.
Craig: And it’s like, “If you liked this one, you’ll probably like this.” And one night I woke up in the middle of the night and this movie was on. And I don’t remember what part of it was, but I- it was v- I, I think it was early on in the, the party scenes, which obviously we’ll talk about in a second. But at 3:00 in the morning, right out of sleep, I remember thinking, “Oh, this is fun.
It’s got a great Halloween vibe.” You know, it’s a, a remake of a, a movie that we look at fondly. It’s got, you know, it’s a really interesting time in horror where they’re doing a lot of remakes, and you have the sexy, squeaky teen focus. And like, you know, Shannon Elizabeth is in here right out of the American Pie series, and she was in Scary Movie also, and I like her and she’s hot, and it looks like it’s got a bunch of other hot chicks in it and-
Todd: Right.
Craig: I thought, “This, this, this will be great. It’ll be fun.” And, and I had seen it before. The, what I remembered about it was that it was bad but fun.
Todd: Uh-huh.
Craig: And now I think that I was right on one of those counts.
Todd: I,
Craig: I
Todd: think,
Craig: um- So my, my, my memory was half right.
Todd: Yeah. Not, not nearly as fun as the original.
Craig: It’s not great, but it’s interesting. Like, if you’re a fan of the original, I think it can almost be fun to watch to be like, “How did you mess this up?”
Todd: Right. Like, you had, you had so much to play with here. Like, you, you know- Yeah … the or- like I said, the original was pretty much anything Richard Tenney did.
God bless him. We love, like, Witchboard and all those. Th- they’re fun. W- g- Witchboard and Witchtrap especially, they’re fun, but the acting is horrendous.
Yeah.
But in that fun way that, you know, we like to see bad acting in our low-budget, low-rent horror movies. The dialogue is ridiculous. You remember there was that, the bigger guy in there who was the jerk who just called every woman a bitch every time he turned around?
And then that weird-ass scene with Linnea Quigley and her lipstick in the nipple that-
Craig: Yeah, I liked that.
Todd: Just comes out of left field. I know, right? Just comes out of left field like, why? Where did this co- okay, I guess this is what’s happening now. Just a lot of stuff thrown at the wall, and pretty simple premise, pretty simple plot.
There’s a lot of directions you could’ve taken this, and this is what we got, is a little disappointing.
Craig: Yeah, it’s… And that’s the, the best way I think to describe it. It’s a little disappointing. Like, it’s not terrible. There’s just nothing inspired about it. Like, it, it’s not inspired at all. Yeah. It, it just kind of feels like…
Ironically, it feels like a cheap copy and paste, which I, I say it’s ironic because this movie had 10 times the budget as the original. Mm-hmm. Somehow the original with a million dollar budget managed to be far more-
Todd: Successful? …
Craig: interesting to look at. And yeah- Oh, yeah. That too. And, and, and successful in its, in its efforts than this movie which had more like a, a $10 million budget.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Um, and, and, you know, some of that has to do, you know, with the time period and, you know, I, I think the technology in 2009, y- you know, they, they had access to some CGI, which, you know, looks fine. I- it’s, it’s relatively limited, and for 2009 it looks fine. I mean, it looks like cheap CGI basically, but it looks okay.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But the practical effects in the original somehow look better than these. Yeah. That’s
Todd: weird.
Craig: I don’t get it. And, and the actors in this. I, I mentioned Shannon Elizabeth. I’m a fan of hers. I, I, I don’t think that there’s any universe in which anybody would go on and on about Shannon Elizabeth’s acting skills.
That’s, that’s not why we love her. She’s, she’s gorgeous first and foremost, which is I think why she got her break into filming. And, you know, in the American Pie movie, the original, you know, she was eye candy. That’s it. That was the joke. You know? Like- Oh yeah, yeah … the joke was that just she was just this super hot unattainable male fantasy.
That was the whole thing. And, and then she kinda built a career on that, and good for her. I’ve, I’ve seen her in stuff. I’ve seen her in interviews. She’s a smart girl. She’s not a stupid girl, and she’s a cool, interesting person. I, I think that she… I don’t think that she lives in the States anymore. She lives, I wanna say Australia, but I, I, I could be wrong.
I don’t know. But I wanna say she’s, like, vegan or, or… And really passionate about that. If it’s not vegan, it’s something like that. It’s something hippy-dippy. Hmm. But at the same time she’s really super passionate about it and serious about it, and, like, she’s a serious person. But she can have fun with herself too.
So I was excited to see her in this, and it’s not great. Like, I don’t know if it’s- Because there’s just, the movie doesn’t do much with her. Like, she’s Angela. Like, Angela is the- That should be- I… No, she’s the icon from the original. She should be the centerpiece of this movie, and she’s not.
Todd: No. She’s not.
Craig: The other people in the movie are, you know, most of them are fine to look at. The girl that plays Maddie, I don’t remember her name. Hold on, I can look it up. I got it in front of me. Monica Keena. I’m pretty sure she was the lead in Freddy vs. Jason, and we liked her in that.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: You know, there’s basically three girls and three guys, and the three girls are all beautiful.
I could not, for the life of me, nail down what age they were supposed to be.
Todd: Right.
Craig: They’re clearly out of high school, but they could be anywhere from, like, 24 to 35. I have no idea.
Todd: Right. But,
Craig: but the other two girls, so there’s Maddie, who I mentioned, and then there’s Suzanne and Lily, and then there’s, there’s Angela also.
And then there’s three guys. Two of the guys, Dex and Jason, are very, very typical, you know, same age group as the girls, good-looking guys. And then you’ve got Edward Furlong-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: who they try… Now, okay, now I get why they cast Edward Furlong. He’s famous, he’s genre famous. This is the ’90s, so it’s not that long after the huge success of Terminator 2 and, and, you know, he did Pet Sematary 2.
Like, this is a guy who had a huge career ahead of him, and it just didn’t work out.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I think that he struggled with substance abuse and alcoholism and, you know, God bless him, I think he cleaned up, but he put his body through a lot. And it’s just weird to have him in this- I don’t like commenting you know, negatively about people’s looks because I’m no stunner.
But neither is Edward Furlong. And in this movie, they treat him like he’s just one of the other hot people, and he’s not. Like-
Todd: Uh-huh.
Craig: Like, Monica, who is arguably the coolest of the girls… Now, it kinda depends on what you’re into. If you’re into boobs, you’re gonna be into Suzanne, ’cause she’s got them for days.
Right. Got some of the biggest tits I’ve ever seen. So if you’re into that, you’re gonna go for Suzanne. But Maddie is more my type. She’s like the cool girl. And the whole movie, or at least from halfway, the halfway point on, she’s like pining over Edward Furlong. I’m like, “I do not buy this for a second.”
This girl would not give this guy. Not only does he look like Edward Furlong, but he’s a loser. Like he’s a huge- Yeah … drug dealer loser, and this girl is chasing him around like a puppy dog. I’m like, “This is stupid.”
Todd: Yeah. And also, this whole thing, his whole setup is so weird because you think
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WNUF Halloween Special
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In week three of our Halloween series, we finally tackle the long-requested 2013 analog horror/comedy WNUF Halloween Special, framed as a found VHS tape recording of a 1987 local newscast and a live call-in seance.We dig into how convincingly it recreates the era—VHS degradation, nonstop regional commercials, and corny local-news Halloween coverage—and why it works best as nostalgic “party atmosphere” rather than a sit-down scare.
We break down the funniest bits in the opening news segments, the repetitive ad structure that undercuts tension, and the ultimately chaotic haunted-house special involving a rude host, paranormal investigators (and their psychic cat), an exorcist, and a cult-driven finale.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript WNUF Halloween Special (2013)Episode 510, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Week three of Halloween. Spooky season here on Two Guys and a Chainsaw with our specific Halloween episodes. Just when we think we’ve found about all the Halloweeny themed episodes that we can, we’ve been doing this for what?
Six, e- t- 11 years? Is this our 11th year? Yeah, I
Craig: I don’t know.
Todd: It is. It’s our, it’s our 11th year, man. We, we try to do this every year, and we always find something. This one is the WNUF Halloween special from 2013. This one has been on our list for quite a while. I think every year somebody recommends it for us to do, and we came really close to doing it last year, but we swapped it out last minute, and this year we’re able to, to get to it.
Y- you know, I hadn’t really heard about this before. Honestly, this was something that our listeners had clued me into And aside from that, this isn’t like a thing that ever popped up for me on Netflix or anything like that. It’s not something that was coming through on lists for me. It’s listed in Wikipedia anyway as a comedy horror, analog horror film produced basically by one guy.
One guy directed it and enlisted a bunch of people to also direct little bits and pieces. And when I first saw this, I thought, “Oh, this will be fun to do,” because it looks surprisingly like, uh, the concept maybe anyway. It’s like found footage mixed with, um, maybe Ghost Watch. So we sat down to watch it.
It’s my first time seeing it. Craig, had you seen this before?
Craig: No. I remember you bringing it up several times, and like you said, we just, it, it didn’t make the cut for whatever reason. But this was really kind of the first time that I looked into it. And you said found footage. It, it’s… I mean, I think it’s kind of meant to literally be like a found VHS tape.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: We talk about this all the time, I mean, not all the time, but regularly, about how in our homes growing up, VHS was our media, and you would have tapes that would have multiple movies on them or tapes that you had taped off TV or whatever. And this appears to be that, like something that would be from somebody’s home media library.
A- and, and it happens to be a recording of the nightly news followed by a s- a special both on Halloween night.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And I thought that that concept was really clever. And so even going into it, I was kind of excited about that concept, and still am to some extent. I, I don’t know. I, I don’t, I… I’m not sure what I expected and, and I like, ultimately my verdict on the movie, I’m not really sure, ’cause it depends on what you’re looking for, and I, it almost, it depends on like how you approach it, like…
Right.
So I’m interested to hear what your thoughts were.
Todd: I’m gonna go off of what you just said earlier about this being an actual tape that was found more or less. Uh, the… Did you ever go to garage sales and just buy random, like, VHS tapes that people had- No … just to take them home and see what was on them?
Clip: No.
Todd: No? I, I did that every now and then. I was, I think, you know, if it was like a quarter or something like that. And, you know, people would just sell stuff in garage sales, and you’d just kind of secretly hope that you could take it home and maybe there’d be some porn on there or something. Never was, but it was always stuff like this, which you’re right, was s- this is e- exactly like something my sisters and I would have popped in because it’s got commercials and everything.
It’s something taped off a TV. In fact, the producers, I say his name, Chris LaMartina, they actually went to a VHS, like, they have these little conventions or something. And they dropped tapes of this just unceremoniously, just l- left them on tables and tossed them out of windows onto the street and stuff, trying to create a little whisper campaign about it, hoping that people would find it and check it out and w- and wonder about it and talk about it online or something.
Craig: And I like that.
Todd: It’s such a great idea.
Craig: I know. I think it’s a great idea, and if I found something like that, I, I would think it was really cool. I, so yeah, I like that whole concept of it. And honestly One of the things that I’m gonna give this movie a lot of credit for is if I did find a VH tape, VHS tape like that, and I popped it in, I, for the most part, like for most of the duration of this movie, I don’t think that I would question its authenticity-
Todd: Right
Craig: at all. That is why the movie appeals to me on a certain level because it is so familiar. Now, I don’t know how familiar-
Todd: Mm …
Craig: this is gonna be to a wider audience or, you know, not, you know anybody outside of the United States. I have no idea. I live in rural America. The commercials and stuff are so authentic.
Like- Yeah.
Todd: They really are.
Craig: I, I, I never would’ve questioned… It, it, towards the end things start to get a little crazy, but up to a certain point it just feels very real. So that’s what I’m saying. Like, if you’re approaching it as, you know, like, “Ooh, I’m excited for a fun Halloween movie,” well- Mm … bad news.
Todd: It’s gonna be a lot of, uh, Bill’s Carpet Barn- Yeah. … or Token’s Arcade and Chesterfield Shopping Mall ads that you’re gonna be watching instead.
Craig: A lot. A lot.
Todd: Tons. Tons.
Craig: But if you’re looking at it like they approached a project and they wanted to do it really well, they did. Like- They did … they did a really, really good job of doing, I think, what they were trying to do.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And I may as well just get it out of the way now. I actually think that this is excellent as atmosphere. Like, again, at your Halloween party- I
Todd: was just gonna say that … put it on. I was gonna preempt you and you fricking did it anyway. Yeah. I was literally, like one comment before your comment I was gonna say, “Craig, I’m gonna preempt you and I’m just gonna be like, if you wanna have this on during your Halloween party, it’s the perfect thing.”
Yeah. God. It is. It’s atmosphere. The whole movie’s just atmosphere, and that’s the atmosphere it is. It’s a tape that you just popped in that had been recorded off the TV in 1987. It’s not really spooky Halloween atmosphere.
Craig: I mean, it gets a little spooky sometimes. Yeah. But honestly, like, like what the whole movie, I don’t even know how long it is, an hour and 23 minutes, so it’s short anyway, but like the actual footage of the special.
Like, I actually think that the newscast in the first 10 or 15 minutes or whatever is kind of the funniest part of the movie. Yeah. We can come back to it. But like the, like after that is this special, like this live special that they’re doing, and if you were to cut the movie so that it was really just the footage from the special without commercials or anything else, I think it would be like- 15, 20 minutes maybe If even
Todd: that.
If even that.
Craig: So the vast majority of the movie is other stuff. Yeah. Mostly commercials.
Todd: I will give them a lot of cred- Now, I, some of the commercials are quite obviously pretty silly. L- you know, you talk about authenticity, you would have probably believed that it was a real thing. I think there probably would’ve been a point fairly early on where you would’ve been like, “Some of these commercials are just too on the nose and too silly to actually be real.”
I mean- I
Craig: know, but some of the real ones were like that.
Todd: Oh, yeah. I mean, your local TV commercials of, like, the local car dealership and stuff like that usually did some pretty wacky things. No, no, I get you. They used a lot of stock footage, you know, to put these together, and they shot the whole thing on actual VHS, and then apparently, like, copied it over two or three times to really degrade it.
Craig: Right, which gives it that authentic feel. Like, we would w- we watched things like this. Like- Oh, yeah … I, I look at it now and I’m like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that this was just the standard of the quality of what we were watching- Right … all the time.”
Todd: It was, though
Craig: I know. Especially those tapes that you watched over and over again.
I do remember, like, certain tapes that we would watch over and over again. Eventually, like, the very top or the very bottom of the streen- screen would, like, start to stretch, like, far left or something. Mm-hmm. So, like, everybody would have, like, weird pointy side heads.
Todd: Yeah. That’s true.
Craig: Or, or like, eventually, like, the tracking would start to roll, and you would have to, like, try to, like, manual adjust the tracking to keep it from rolling.
Uh-huh. Oh man, we’re old.
Todd: I know.
Craig: But the… I like that about that. It’s nostalgic for me- Yeah … but I feel like it’s nostalgic for a very specific- Yeah … generation. Like a, a 10-year period. Those of us who specifically grew up in the 1980s, this is going to be really familiar, and just that familiarity is appealing to me.
It w- and, and I was really impressed. Like, the things- Yeah … you’ve already said, the authentes- authenticity of the content, but also the way that it’s presented, it really… Like, it feels like, uh, again, uh, let’s keep a cliche count. It, it feels like a time capsule kind of. Like, it, it- Right … it feels legit. It feels like you popped this tape into a VCR-
Todd: Yeah
Craig: and that’s what you’re seeing.
Todd: Yeah. Uh,
Craig: throughout, throughout all of it. And, and the quality of the, the commercials, like, some of them look like they were made with, I don’t know, whatever they were making cheap commercials with back then. But it looks like the filmmakers took the time to authenticate it.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Yes, it looks cheap, because it looked cheap back then.
Todd: Yeah, yeah. It is
Craig: 100%. But it looks authentic to the time, which I liked.
Todd: That said, I was really hoping for something more. I was really hoping that as the commercials went on, maybe I would see some, some themes or, surfacing- Yes … or maybe something happening in the background of some of them, something that would s- Right
tie them together to a larger narrative, or maybe some little Easter eggs or something like that And, uh, and there isn’t any- No … as far as I can tell.
Craig: Not that I… Me either. Right, and I was looking for that too, and I thought that that was, I mean, I guess maybe that wasn’t what they were going for, but I did think it was a missed opportunity.
Like especially- Hmm … since some of the commercials you see multiple times. Yes. The same one.
Todd: Yes. And to be fair, and, and thankfully, some of them when they come on for the second time, there’s a fast forwarding.
Craig: Uh-huh. Like
Todd: somebody is fast forwarding through the tape.
Craig: But you certainly see parts of it several times.
Yeah. And I kept thinking that too, I’m like, “Something’s gonna be different.” Mm-hmm. Like, there, or, or there’s gonna be some hint or… I, I, I expected maybe them to get darker as the movie went on- Right … like to suggest something strange was happening, but they don’t.
Todd: Yeah. They don’t at all. Ugh, and, and there are a, a lot of them, and that was the other thing this reminded me of, just how chock-full of commercials television used to be.
Uh-huh. I mean, we bitch about, and I bitch about YouTube and Tubi and all the time, but honestly, it was, it was even worse when we were- Oh my gosh … watching TV. You know, 10 minutes would go by, you’re cut to like five minutes of commercials. Another s- didn’t even seem like another 10 minutes would go by, and you’re cut to a lot more commercials, and this, this was authentic in that way too.
Craig: Yeah. Yes, yeah. Oh. It, it really was. It, oh, it was crazy. And, and the commercials, even though some of them repeat, they’re, they’re fun because they are-
Todd: They’re fun ’cause they’ll, they’re nostalgic …
Craig: they’re nostalgic, and they’re like local and regional commercials. So super low budget, but, a- and so because they’re local or regional, you can believe that they’re real, they’re just not things that are in your area,
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Halloween H20
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Notas do episódio
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We talk about why the movie feels so different from Carpenter’s first two films—more jump scares, more comedy, and a less-mystical Michael Myers—while still appreciating Jamie Lee Curtis’s return as a traumatized, alcoholic Laurie Strode living under an assumed name.
We break down the opening with Loomis’s nurse, the tense rest-stop sequence, the teen cast (Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams), the Janet Leigh cameos and Psycho nods, and the finale Laurie vs. Michael, including the controversial “definitive” ending and how the next sequel undermines it.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Halloween H20 (1998)Episode 509, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Halloween week two, baby.
Craig: I know. I’m excited.
Todd: Yeah, me too, man. You chose this week, and we chose Halloween H2O. Or as I learned when I was looking it up online, it’s H2 zero. Get it? ‘Cause it’s 20 years later. This came out in 1998.
You know, when the original Halloween came out in 1978. This one was, like, a pretty big revival of the franchise, which I think, uh, had ended with, what, the fifth one? Was it The Return of Michael Myers? I think- Sixth one. Oh my God.
Craig: I think it was The Curse of Michael Myers, I think. Yeah.
Todd: Was that even in the ’90s?
Maybe very early ’90s, wasn’t it?
Craig: I don’t remember.
Todd: But this one without… N- none of the rest of them except for, I think, the first two, right, involved John Carpenter?
Craig: Right.
Todd: Obviously, the third one involved him. He produced it and, uh, did he direct that, too? I don’t think he did. No,
Craig: he didn’t
Todd: direct
Craig: it. No. Mm-mm.
Todd: He produced it, but they were planning on going on, like, a, you know, Halloween is the theme of the series, but they were gonna have more of an anthology bit. And then it turned into, like, the people just wanted to see Michael Myers again, so then they just made, like, what, three more, I guess. And then they laid it to rest, ’cause it was kinda getting stale, I think, and a little weird.
Craig: And it wasn’t doing well. The last ones hadn’t done well.
Todd: Yeah. You know, Michael Myers, he’s a guy who, for me, I was never that into. I’m more into him now as an adult than I was as a kid. As a kid, I didn’t see the hook. You know what I mean? Jason had his hockey mask. His hockey mask and his machete. I mean, technically he didn’t always, but you know, when I was a kid.
Jason had his hockey mask and his machete, and he’s this brutal, hulking guy who just appe- I mean, you know, there’s a whole language to that film that ended up developing, and it went in some fun directions and played with it a little bit, but it was mostly the same thing over and over and over again, which is why I’ve said before I was never really that into Jason, either.
Michael Myers was even less because for me, it’s just a guy in a white mask. Even less of a hook. I don’t know. It just didn’t have the pull that Jason did. I didn’t really get the fascination with him. I saw the first one. I thought it was scary. Had no interest in seeing all the rest of them. Now as an adult, I see it psychologically different, and I have a strong appreciation for the first movie.
First movie’s just a work of art. John Carpenter’s so skilled at creating and maintaining tension there, and there is a language in that film, and I think the one after it- That he developed that I think just kinda got lost through the rest of the series. And you know what, God, now s- then, uh, H2O came in 1998, and we were all like, “Oh, the return of Michael Myers.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Michael Myers movie.” I know I saw this. I don’t think I went to this theater to see it. I think I saw it when my friends rented it. I was in college. And, eh, I thought it was interesting. It was very much in the flavor of all of the slasher movies that were becoming revived at this time, right?
Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. It was just the late ’90s became horror revival slasher time. And so at the time I was excited to see this, but I remember watching it and I remember just being eh about it. And all these years later, I hadn’t seen it again, I didn’t really remember why I was so eh about it.
So, uh, it was fun to watch it again and be able to discuss it this time around. What’s your history with it, Craig?
Craig: Yeah, I was excited about it, too. It was, it- I think that it was really smart to jump on that Scream bandwagon because the plot or, you know, or, or the characters fit so easily into that mold.
I mean, Scream really is, is, uh, very much like Halloween, where you’ve got a quiet masked figure stalking teenagers.
Todd: True.
Craig: And those… And, and it was wildly popular and made tons and tons of money, and they were making sequels, and they were doing well, and I think it was really smart Jamie Lee Curtis, you know, she’s spoken about it differently.
Of course, when it came out she was very positive about it. Well, she was promoting it. But in later interviews she’s less kind in talking about it, and says it would’ve been better if she would’ve produced it. And it really sounds like she, uh, she’s said that she wanted to come back and do it at the 20-year mark as a gift to her fans.
She’s also said outright that she did it for the money, so whatever. I’m sure it was some combo. Both, I guess. Right, exactly, right? Like-
Todd: A gift to my fans with a big fat paycheck.
Craig: Yeah, sure. Why not? Who cares? But, but she was willing to come back. The last ones hadn’t done very well. I saw them and I didn’t…
They were fine, but they were… I, I felt like they were trying too hard with the world building. Like-
Clip: Oh …
Craig: it, it, it became that Michael Myers was the conduit for some cult, like some ancient Celtic cult or something. And-
Todd: I didn’t even get that far …
Craig: it was this centuries-long thing, and it had all been building up to him, and they were all very invested in him, and, ugh, it was a whole big, it was a whole big cult thing.
Todd: Sounds, sounds like some serious retconning going on there.
Craig: Yeah. Well, and they killed Laurie off offscreen, and like gave her a daughter, and then they killed off the daughter, and then there was a granddaughter. And like there were things that I l- there were things that I liked about it, like Danielle Harris wa- starred in two of them, I think.
I don’t remember if she was Laurie’s daughter or granddaughter, I don’t remember. But I like her, and they were decent, fine slasher movies, but they were getting a little silly. So when Jamie Lee wanted to come back, that’s what I was excited about For whatever reason, I don’t agree with you that Michael Myers is just a guy in a white mask and doesn’t have his thing.
I think there’s a l- a lot going on with him.
Todd: Oh, no, no, no. L- let me correct that. I, I said wh- when I was a kid- You felt that way … that was what I thought. Yeah. Nowadays as an adult, I have a stronger appreciation for him. I see what makes him special now.
Craig: Well, I, to be fair, w- much like you, I was not as into him as I was the others.
I still watched the movies, but I wasn’t as excited about them as I was, you know, when sequels to those other franchises would come out. But this one I was excited because Jamie Lee Curtis was coming back, and at that point in time she was doing pretty well. You know, her- Yeah … she was doing very well and, and she had successfully branched out into things beyond horror and was doing action movies and dramas and thrillers and-
Todd: True Lies I think was just a couple years before this.
That was huge.
Craig: I loved that movie. Um- Me too … and-
Todd: It hasn’t aged well, but let me tell you, it was a fun movie .
Craig: Yeah, I loved it. A- and I think that she really had kind of established herself as a, not serious, but you know, a, a serious actress with some range, and I thought it was cool that she was coming back.
I didn’t think that she ever would And I remember liking it. I mean, it’s, it may as well be a Scream sequel really. I mean, even if you just look at, if you look at the, the poster, there for, like, from the time Scream did it, for the next 10 years, every single one of these movie posters looked exactly the same.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: Um, it was, it was just your, your principal characters’ faces-
Todd: Mm …
Craig: you know, in, in some sort of, on some sort of dark background, in some- All looking like cool- In, in some configuration. Right. Right. And it looks exactly like that, and, and it’s got a major Scream influence. But I thought it worked well, and it’s got…
There’s a lot of cool stuff about it. This is what… I was trying to think about it, and I didn’t take the time to do any kind of investigation, but would you… Do you think this is kind of the first legacy sequel, where-
Todd: Ever?
Craig: Yeah. Well, I don’t know. Where, I mean, where you take a property that was successful that had been gone for a long time, in this case 20 years, and then you bring back the main actress.
I just couldn’t think of any time that it had happened. It happens all the time now.
Todd: Well, you kind of have New Nightmare. I mean, it’s not like this movie-
Craig: Yeah, New Nightmare was before this, I guess. Right before.
Todd: Y- Little- Yeah, right before. And it kind of falls in the same vein. And I guess when you call it a legacy sequel, it’s one that kind of goes back to the source, right?
Craig: Mm-hmm. ‘
Todd: Cause, ’cause New Nightmare kind of went back to the source, kind of forgot. It didn’t disallow all the movies that came in between, but it more or less just referenced the first couple or first one. And this one in the same vein, it seems like it’s referencing the second one. Like, it’s looked like more or less a sequel to the second one.
Craig: Yes.
Todd: While maybe leaving a little room for the others as well.
Craig: Yeah, it basically ignores all the others. She still says, Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, but she’s living and working under an assumed name. And the only person I think who knows the truth is her teenage son. She says in this movie that she staged her death.
So the fact that she had died in the earlier, that, that could be explained by the fact that she staged her death, but- Right … you know, they were planning a sequel anyway, but it was gonna be direct to video, and it didn’t have anything to do with Laurie Strode. But then Jamie Lee wanted to come back, and of course they jumped at that opportunity and wrote scripts with her in them and s- and took bits and pieces from the previous scripts.
So it went through all kinds of incarnations, but In one of those incarnations, they did have a scene where a student in Jamie Lee Curtis’s class would do a report on the Halloween murders, like a, ugh, a book report or something.
Todd: Wow.
Craig: And it would tell the whole story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, and up to…
And it would say, “You know, but Laurie Strode faked her death and is presumably living under an assumed name somewhere else, but her daughter died.” And that would be when Laurie, Jamie Lee Curtis, would find that out and would run to the bathroom and have an emotional breakdown, ’cause she just found out that her daughter died.
They decided to cut all that, and I think that that was probably the wisest choice. Like- It’s
Todd: probably going a little too far, you know, into
Craig: the- Right. Just let it go … like trying to make it fit.
Todd: Let’s just… Yeah. Yeah. They, they already did more than they needed to, honestly.
Craig: It’s interesting because that kind of sets into motion what will become one of the most interesting franchise timelines.
Th- because this, this franchise is like a multiverse. Like-
Todd: Yeah. It is …
Craig: there are so many, you know, Michael Myers, I guess, except for Part III, which doesn’t really have anything to do with him, but he’s in it because in that movie, Halloween and Halloween II are movies that exist in the world.
Todd: Oh, that’s true.
Craig: But they’re just movies. So anyway, Michael Myers is the through line. But you’ve got like the f- the continuity of one through VI, excluding III. But then this one, which is VII: H2O, ignores that. So then you’ve got a new timeline that’s just I, II, VII, VIII. And then you’ve got the whole, what’s the tril- the Rob Zombie timeline, which is total remake.
That’s
Todd: II, right?
Craig: There’s two of those, and then you’ve got the Da- uh, God, what’s the guy’s name? David Allen… I can’t remember. Re- the new ones. The guy that did… Yeah, the new ones. The, the ones that started in 2018, and those are just Carpenter’s original and then boom, boom, boom, those three. So there’s like three or f
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Hack-O-Lantern
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We kick off Halloween season by diving into 1988’s direct-to-video oddity Hack-O-Lantern, a surprisingly decent-looking but truly terrible, wildly entertaining Satanic cult slasher loaded with Halloween atmosphere, costumes, parties, and plenty of gratuitous nudity.We talk about how the movie’s “so bad it’s good” charm comes from its community-theater-level acting, baffling plot turns, random musical dream sequence, and over-the-top grandpa cult leader performance, while still delivering serviceable gore and nonstop seasonal vibes perfect for background viewing at a Halloween party.
We break down the major story beats—Tommy’s cult grooming, inexplicable killings, a chaotic party climax, and a twist ending—then share why this scrappy DIY mess feels like classic late-night cable Halloween viewing and a fun way to start our month of Halloween picks, plus details on upcoming episodes and Patreon extras.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Hack-O-Lantern (1988)Episode 508, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Oh, buddy, it’s Halloween season.
Craig: Oh, it’s exciting. It always is exciting. I mean, we’ve been looking forward to it, talking about it forever. I’m glad it’s finally here.
Todd: Me too. I love it every time of year, no matter where I am in the world.
It’s a little bit of America I can bring with me to wherever I am. Out in Asia, they don’t do a lot of Halloween. Japan’s where you gotta go for the Halloween celebrations. I think I mentioned that once before that I single-handedly brought Halloween to Japan 25 years ago.
Craig: Yep, yep. I
Todd: remember. Yeah. You’re welcome, Japan.
So here we are, and, uh, we have a nice selection of Halloween goodies this year. I’m really excited about what we’ve chosen, especially this first one, which has been on my list, our list, for a very long time. And knowing that it was just, like, a straight to video deal, I, I really kind of dismissed it as some piece of crap that we would get to at some point, maybe if we didn’t have anything better to do.
I envisioned it as this shot on video, kind of like that turkey movie we did once.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: For, uh, Thanksgiving. You remember that?
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: So I don’t know why I had this in my head that 1988’s Hack-O-Lantern would be more or less like that. But actually, it’s shot on film but was put direct to video. And oh boy, is it a trip.
Craig: Yeah, it’s something.
Todd: I guess, I didn’t realize this, but I guess it got some play- Recently from, uh, those guys, Red Letter Media, who do the funny commentaries on movies and things. So that whole Star Wars breakdown about why the new Star Wars movies were lousy. Yeah, I, I like those guys. I really like their breakdown of the first, the, the prequel Star Wars movies.
They really make a lot of points, and they’re really funny. Uh, they have a big following. Uh, you got- Have you never, uh, listened to them or-
Craig: It’s not- … seen
Todd: their stuff?
Craig: The RiffTrax guys?
Todd: Red Letter Media, not the RiffTrax guys.
Craig: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think so.
Todd: You’re right. They did a RiffTrack on this as well, and it is ripe for it.
This movie’s its own RiffTrack. I cannot believe that I- This is the first time I’ve seen it. I’m so excited. Had you seen this before?
Craig: I don’t think… No, I’ve definitely never seen it before, and I don’t think I’ve even ever heard of it. And I’m surprised just ’cause, like, Hack-O-Lantern’s a great title. Yeah.
That’s fantastic. And 1988, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s prime, you know, prime time for us. But no, I’d never heard of it. And I expected it to be bad, but I, but m- but more so than bad, I expected it to be really low budget. Like, I, I, I think you suggested too. But I, I think that what we saw… I’m not positive ’cause you just sent me a link and I didn’t question it and I watched it, but I think what we saw had to have been, like, a restoration.
Like, I know that there has been a 4K restoration, and I feel like that must be what we saw ’cause it looked really good. Like, I was surprised by how good it looked, and I was surprised by the… I mean, the cinematography is certainly serviceable. Yeah. I mean, i- if not, if not, downright okay. I was surprised by how good it is.
Now, the acting and, and the writing is an entirely different story, but it, it looks… I was surprised by how good it looked. And because I was impressed… Ah, impressed might be exa- an exaggeration. But- But because of my reaction to the, the quality, the technical quality, I was surprised that I hadn’t seen it, you know?
A- and you said that it’s streaming, I think, on Tubi. Like, it’s never popped up for me, or at least I don’t think it has. I mean, maybe I’ve overlooked it. I don’t know
Todd: It’s directed by an Indian guy named, uh, Jag Mund- Uh, I always butcher these Indian names, I’m sure. Uh, Jag Mundhra or Jag Mundhra, uh, who, uh, just has ba- basically done low budget movies.
He’s done quite a few of them, like 31. Mostly, I think, direct to video. Either horror movies or kind of sexual thrillers, things like that. He only died about, uh, 15 years ago, so, uh, this was his fourth movie direct to video. He did a number of other films after this. It all seem like direct to video films.
And the writers, one of them was a ghostwriter who did scripts on spec, like 65 of them. 13 of them were actually produced, so he’s usually credited under an assumed name in, uh, in his movies. But uh, he also wrote, uh… The story guy, not, not necessarily the screenplay- Yeah … person. The story guy is, uh, Dave Eisenstark, who would, uh, called himself Buford Houser for his films.
But Creepozoids was what he wrote under that pen name before this. We’ve done Creepozoids. That was the one we interviewed Linnea Quigley on.
Craig: That’s right. That’s what I was thinking. Yeah, and it also was not very good.
Todd: No. Oh, man. Consistency is the name of the game here. Yeah, uh, the, the screenwriter hasn’t done anything else at all besides this movie, so I mean, that, that tracks.
Craig: Well, good.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I think whoever that was learned from this experience that they probably had other talents- … that they should work on. Not this.
Todd: Career choice, right. It’s funny you mention the cinematographer. Pretty good. The cinematographer was the cinematographer on Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.
Craig: Well, I really enjoyed that one as well, so.
Todd: Yeah, we really did, and at least one or two of the other, uh, gals in this were in that movie as well.
Craig: Oh, really?
Todd: I think Vera in here was on, uh, S- Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.
Craig: Ugh.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I need to watch that again. I’ve only seen it that one time that we watched it together 100 years ago.
I need to-
Todd: Ugh …
Craig: That’d be a good one to pull out this time of year if you haven’t seen it. Yeah.
Todd: That’s a good Halloween style movie, uh, one of my favorites.
And so yeah, there’s some connections here to a bunch of other low budget shot to video stuff, uh, mostly by the women and by the people I’ve mentioned here.
Otherwise, the guys in this, uh, only a couple of them went on to much more. This movie, A Polish Vampire in Burbank, which a few of these gals were also in before this. Have you seen that one?
Craig: No
Todd: I saw that a long time ago, like when I was in, I think when I was in college. Because at the time, and we’re talking 1983, that movie was the most successful independent film ever, ever.
It was like shot for $2,500 and went on to make like a couple million.
Craig: That’s wild. I’ve never heard of it.
Todd: It was one of these cases of a guy who just, you know, shoestring budget, independent film, very niche and very genre, just made it big. Not with the general audience, but just made tons of money, I think, in the, the, the straight to video market, some of the midnight stuff, cable, things like that.
So for an aspiring filmmaker, as I was back then, I’ve always remembered that movie as kind of a, a tale of what you could possibly do. So yeah, so I mean, there’s little connections to other movies here. This movie isn’t out on its own in a vacuum. Because while I was watching this, I was also thinking of Scary Movie, one of those movies we did for Halloween as well.
Do you remember that one, about the kid who was super scared and went through the haunted house and-
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Yeah, that movie had this flavor. Very independent, very low budget, very w- competently filmed, but as far as story, as far as acting and everything else, it just looked like a production that just a town came together for.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: A bunch of amateur actors, you know? I was getting that flavor from this, and that’s part of what I liked about it.
Craig: Yeah, the, the rural setting of it also was kind of reminding me of one of the Halloween movies we did. Uh, Night of the Scarecrow, I think.
Todd: Oh, yeah. Mm.
Craig: It was kind of giving me those vibes, just because of like the local color and it being so small and such a small cast.
I mean, there are lots of… I guess there are extras, ’cause it all kind of culminates in a big Halloween party, which is a little disappointing after all of the build-up.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But yeah, I mean, it, it… Aside from the fact that there’s tons of boobs in it-
Todd: Uh-huh. Tons …
Craig: it, it feels like something that would’ve been on network television around Halloween time.
Like-
Todd: Oh, yeah …
Craig: it, it kind, it kinda has a movie of the week kind of vibe to it. And it’s bad. Like- It’s
Todd: terrible.
Craig: We should just, we should just say outright, it is a really bad movie. And I kind of, I, I try not to read too much about these things, ’cause I, I, I don’t want my opinions to be swayed one way or another, especially if I don’t know anything about them anyway.
But I had kind of seen something that suggested that maybe it was kind of a so bad it’s good kind of movie, and I think if you’re going to appreciate it, that’s what you’re going to appreciate it for.
Todd: Oh, yeah.
Craig: How successful it is in that way, ah, I mean, like I’ve, I’ve definitely seen better, but it’s funny and there are elements of it that are funny to watch or, or at least worth it talking about.
But I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve said it. I used to say it all the time. This for sure is one of those movies that you could just put on in the background. Like if you- Mm … are cultivating a, a playlist to have on your television at your Halloween party where people are gonna be milling about and talking and you just want atmosphere in the background, this is great.
Todd: Oh, yeah.
Craig: Put it on the list.
Todd: This checks all the boxes.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: It is just dripping with Halloween atmosphere from start to finish. Takes place during Halloween. There’s a satanic cult-
Craig: Uh-huh …
Todd: involved. There is, like you said, a Halloween party. There’s tons of costumes. Just-
Craig: Pumpkins galore …
Todd: ah,
Craig: yeah. Boobs.
Todd: So many boobs.
Craig: There’s a music video.
Todd: Oh, yeah.
Craig: Like this thing’s- Yeah … got it all.
Todd: Satanic cult, right? I would say it’s the kind of movie that y- like you said, for sure, I think this movie would’ve been a blast with you sitting next to me. Sure. It would’ve been a blast with a room full of friends where you can just collectively laugh at it.
I’ll bet that Rifftrax is out of sight.
Clip: Oh, I’m
Todd: sure it’s great. And, uh, I, I might actually get that one. I, I love Rifftrax. I, I listen to them all the time. But you’re right, there’s something about it that’s also kinda slow and boring, a little plodding at times. But then you’ll have a moment, kinda like in Pieces.
You remember in Pieces where there’s that moment where for no good reason at all just Kung Fu guy-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: Bruce Lee impersonator just leaps into the screen and does a whole shtick and then leaves.
Craig: I think vaguely.
Todd: This has a moment or two like that too where there’s just some weird shtick that just happens for n- no good reason except you have to think it was really important to this guy to put it in his movie.
Or his friend who’s acting in this movie. Ah, and we’
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Phantasm II
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Notas do episódio
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We return with a tribute episode honoring the late Reggie Bannister, the longtime anchor of the Phantasm series, by diving back into 1988’s Phantasm II.We talk about Bannister’s unique career and background and how Reggie evolves here into a more action-hero figure. We break down how Universal’s higher budget and studio demands changed the sequel’s tone—more linear, more action-driven, recasting Mike, and adding love interests—while losing some of the original’s dreamlike surreal horror.
We discuss the road-trip structure, psychic subplot, mixed lore elements, standout practical effects, memorable set pieces, and the ending’s reset, plus where the series goes next and why we might revisit later entries like Ravager.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Phantasm II (1988)Episode 507, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, we come to you with another tribute episode. It’s been a little while since we’ve done one, ha- no, we did a tribute episode a couple episodes ago, didn’t we?
Craig: Yeah, but I bet our listeners won’t find this one much of a surprise if they keep up on the news at all.
Todd: Yeah. Today, we are mourning the death of Reggie Bannister, very prolific actor in horror, who is best known for his breakout role in Phantasm, one of my all-time favorite horror movies. So we decided that since we hadn’t really done much else in the Phantasm series in all these years, that we would dive back in there as tribute to him with 1988’s Phantasm II.
I had seen Phantasm II in high school, and I remember at the time thinking, “Whoa, this is quite different from the original in tone.” And so, uh, I was curious to see if my impressions of it this time around matched what I remembered, and I think, yeah, it kinda did. It really did match how I, I remember, and I can’t wait to talk about that.
What’s your history with this movie, Craig?
Craig: Uh, I really didn’t grow up watching this. I, I wish that I had given myself time to go back and listen to our original discussion on the first one because it’s been so long. And, and I feel like it was, you know, not long before that that I had watched the whole series from start to finish pretty much all at once.
So when I was introduced to Phantasm, I, I mean, I knew f- like, the orb and the Tall Man, the imagery was stuff that was familiar to me. I just hadn’t actually seen the movies. Mm. And once I finally got around to seeing them, I watched all of them. At that point, I think the first three, maybe the first four were out.
I know that Ravager wasn’t out yet. I remember that Ravager came out later, and I saw it later. But I kind of, I kind of knocked them all out at once, which is a different experience, I think. It’s, it’s an interesting series. I’m, I’m a little surprised that we haven’t come back to it. In hindsight, I don’t know.
I think this was the right choice. It might have been interesting to do something like Ravager, which, you know, Reggie Bannister, he was the, pretty much the anchor of this series along with Angus Scrimm, but I think Ravager came out even after Angus Scrimm had passed away. Reggie Bannister really was kind of the anchor of, of the whole series, and, and it spans almost four decades, so- Yeah
it might have been kind of interesting to look at the last one. But this one has some interesting backstory, and fan opinions are mixed, and so I think we’ll have plenty to talk about.
Todd: Yeah, we cer- we certainly will. I think Ravager came out in 2016. That was the only one except for the first two… Well, I guess the first two and that one got a theatrical release, and the rest went straight to video.
So I guess we’re talking the third one and the fourth one went straight to video. I think that same year is when Reggie Bannister was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: He acted quite a bit- Up to that point, and then he had a couple movies after that, and then I think just, uh, retired from acting to take care of his health.
And, uh, I think we knew last year that his health was deteriorating.
Craig: He’s been unwell for a while. I, I think that his, his family or, or whoever is in control of his estate was, uh, was even reaching out to fans, I think, to help finance his living situation and his healthcare needs. I mean, he’s, he’s been in bad shape for a while.
So this didn’t really come as a big surprise and, and that’s sad that he was unwell and that he’s passed, but he had a really unique but cool career. Like, he’s one of those… Phantasm, I feel like isn’t as well-known as, let’s just say, the Evil Dead franchise, ’cause I feel like that’s kind of the best comparison with Bruce Campbell as Ash.
I mean, he’s kind of the Bruce Campbell- Yeah … Reggie Bannister is the Bruce Campbell of this series. And this is another one of those unique series that follows a direct continuity start to finish. There really aren’t lots of contradictions. There’s evolution and some things change along the way, but it’s a, it’s a direct continuity following Reggie Bannister’s character, Reggie, and, and the other central characters with the central antagonists throughout all of them.
So he may not have been an A-list guy, but he certainly had like, you know, a storied career, uh- Yeah … and, and r- really cool connections with, with Don Coscarelli. And so it’s, it’s cool to be able to kind of talk about him and celebrate. This was such, so special and meaningful to him and, and he was always, uh, really appreciative of the support that he got from fans.
This is something that he really embraced, so to get to kind of celebrate him after his passing feels good.
Todd: Yeah. It’s kinda sad. He was, um… Well, it’s, it’s good. It’s great, actually, because he got into acting after a pretty rough time in the military. He was in the Vietnam War. He was drafted. He, he was against it, but he got drafted, so he became a, kind of more of a frontline soldier.
I think he was a radio operator for an automatic weapons specialty group. And because he was around these weapons so often, big weapons, like, he ultimately got some hearing loss- And, uh, he was exposed to Agent Orange. So I think he, when he retired, he got some disability and, uh, also took his GI Bill from the military and decided that the next thing he was gonna do was use that money to study acting.
So, uh, it’s really cool that he could transition into this, and very lucky that very early in his screen acting career, you know, basically within two years he got that role in Phantasm.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: He didn’t really get another role until nine years later with this movie.
Craig: Yeah, he had kinda quit. Like, I think he had intentionally kinda quit.
Todd: Um- W- yeah. Didn’t he even spend some time embalming bodies in a funeral home in the meantime? Yeah. This is crazy.
Craig: Yeah. A- and, and he was a musician, too, and he was in other stuff. I mean, this is what he’s known for, and a lot of the other stuff that he was in, he appears in, like, horror or indie cameos.
Todd: Small roles usually.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I, I remember seeing him in Wishmaster or one of the Wishmasters and-
Todd: Yeah, the first Wishmaster. He was a pharmacist in that. We did that one here. We did Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: The Initiation, one of my all-time favorites. Yeah,
Craig: yeah.
Todd: He was in that.
Craig: And he’s really recognizable because he’s n- got a unique look, and he’s not a glamorous Hollywood leading man type.
He’s much more of an everyman kinda guy. But over the course of this franchise, he got to… His character got to evolve from kind of a dopey sidekick to, you know, a badass chainsaw, sawed-off shotgun-wielding, leather-wearing action hero kinda- I mean- And, and, and that starts here, but by, by the last one, he’s, like, a post-apocalyptic, like, Mad Max-type character.
Like how much- Wow … you know, how fun. H- you know, no wonder he embraced it. How fun to get to see a character in a story through that kind of evolution. It’d be awesome.
Todd: Very Bruce Campbell in that way, huh, like you said earlier.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Just, like, almost a very similar type character, but his own unique spin on it.
You know, Bruce Campbell’s got that smarmy, good-looking, badass kind of look, and this is the everyman kinda forced into doing what he can but taking it up with enthusiasm. I, you know, uh, there’s such a stark contrast between the first movie and this movie. And unlike you, I haven’t seen the others in the series, so I remembered when I was a kid seeing this movie and thinking, “Ugh-” It’s kind of disappointing because it doesn’t have that dreamlike, ethereal, surreal quality of the original.
One thing I just love about the original movie is just how weird it is.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And that weirdness translates into, for me anyway, into a very unsettling terror, and I think this is why it’s just one of my all-time favorite movies is because it’s a rare movie that I just feel the way I feel when I’m watching Phantasm.
Craig: I feel like this is an excellent example of the price you pay for studio. Y- you know, w- when- Right … when you get a studio involved, when a studio is in charge, yeah, they’re gonna give you a lot more money than you’re going to get otherwise. But they have a lot of control and expectations, and this movie comes almost 10 years after the original.
I guess sequels were doing well, making money, and Don Coscarelli’s former lawyer or something worked at Universal, I think, and was a big fan of horror and, and just kind of pushed this through, and they gave it a, a much higher budget. W- what was it, like $3 million, I think?
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: For this, which I don’t remember how, b- but the, the first movie was very, very low budget.
But it came with demands and a more linear storyline and moving away from that more ethereal, dreamlike… And, and what I, I remembered in the first one was an uncertainty about what was happening and what was real and what wasn’t real because you were kind of jumping in and out of dreams and reality.
And to be fair, it was a little confusing, and I think that there was an attempt in this movie to make it more linear and a little bit less confusing, which is fine, but you’re right, I think it takes away from some of the charm. The other big change was that the studio, for sure I know, wanted to recast both of the leads.
Now, I didn’t read anything about Angus Scrimm. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to recast him, but they wanted to recast both of the principal leads, and Coscarelli had to fight. I mean, both of the original actors had to audition, and Coscarelli was basically given the Hobson’s choice, like, you know, you can…
It’s one or the other. Either way you’re gonna lose somebody, but he picked Reggie Bannister, and so the other lead, Mike, is played by a different guy in this one, which I can understand why fans of the original didn’t like that But the studio wanted somebody more recognizable, and so they passed on Brad Pitt and picked this guy, and-
Todd: Yep, and then they went right back to, uh, the guy from the original for the, the, the f- the subsequent sequels, right?
Craig: They did. I, and I, I don’t know why. I, I imagine probably based on fan response. But yeah, he played… The original guy came back. And I remember reading the IMDb trivia about the first one when we did this, the first one, like 10 years ago.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: And I remember reading that he was still kind of salty about it.
Well, that was 10 years ago. Who knows if he’s still- … salty about it. But I, I mean, I get it. It would be… I would be mad, too, if I was the one guy who got recast. Um, but the, the, the guy that they recast does fine. I, I think it’s just, especially since, you know, Angus Scrimm and Reggie Bannister both came back, this new guy, I think, just, I don’t know, didn’t have much of a chance.
His name’s James LeGros. And I knew I recognized him, but I couldn’t figure out what it was from. He has been in a movie that I’ve seen. He’s in a, uh, adaptation of Macbeth called Scotland, Pennsylvania. It’s a modern-day retelling set in the ’70s, the 1970s. And I haven’t seen it in its entirety since the ’90s, but I remember really liking it.
I show some clips of it in my class when I do Macbeth. But the one thing that I r- I, I recognized him for sure from was he was in one episode of Friends-
Todd: Oh …
Craig: where he was a guy who went on a date with Phoebe. And he was super obnoxious, and she a- she’s like, “So what do you do?” And he’s like, “I write erotic novels for children.”
“They’re wildly unpopular.” And then his, his other good line was, “I also have a PhD.” And she’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” “Yep, a pretty huge…” And then she cuts him off. I always- Oh … thought that was a funny line. Funny.
Todd: He got the good lines at least.
Craig: Yeah. So if you are a Friends fan, he’s, uh, that guy. And he’s fine, and he did beat out Brad Pitt.
And they threw in a couple girls for no good reason. Yeah. Okay, there’s girls in it now too. And those were the studio’s demands. And they did it, and it’s fine, but it certainly is a move away from, I think, some of what made the original interesting and, you know-
Todd: Scary. I would say scary too, because I don’t find this movie quite as scary.
Honestly, because the, the first movie is really all about these people, and stuff is happening to them. Now, the kid gets very investigative because he’s freaking out about what’s happening in the cemetery and what’
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Good Boy
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Notas do episódio
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With that out of the way, we dig into 2025’s Good Boy, a low-budget haunted-house horror told largely from a dog’s perspective, and talk about why it’s basically 75 minutes of being up close with Indie (and why that’s either a feature or a bug).
We cover the film’s SXSW buzz, long shoot with an untrained dog, and surprising box office success, then unpack what worked for us: the eerie atmosphere, subtle shadowy scares, dream/vision sequences, and the ambiguity around whether the cabin is haunted, the family is cursed, or we’re just watching death creep in as the owner grows sicker and more unstable.
We also discuss pacing, the fox trap subplot, the muddy “reaper” finale, and why the dog-centered viewpoint makes the story uniquely unsettling—plus, yes, the dog doesn’t die.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Good Boy (2025)Episode 506, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, this week we have decided to go with a pretty new movie, Craig’s choice. This is a dog of a film. Good Boy. Oh, was that bad? That was pretty bad. Sorry. This is Good Boy from 2025, last year, starring a dog. And I knew why you picked this from the very beginning.
You just wanted to see a dog for an hour and 15 minutes.
Craig: Yep.
Todd: And that’s basically what it is. We are looking up very, very up close and personal with a beautiful little dog named Indie. I believe this film premiered at South by Southwest, got a very good reception, went to theaters and stuff all over the world.
Eventually, I think it’s in streaming now. It was shot over the course of three years, I think about 400 days over the course of three years, just because the main actor, who’s a dog, wasn’t a trained dog. It was just the writer-director’s dog, but he insisted on using it because he liked its expressiveness.
It took a long time to shoot, but only cost about $70,000, and grossed to date, I think, over 8.7 million at the box office worldwide. Nice. So that’s pretty doggone good. Had you seen this before we watched it for this, uh, this, this episode?
Craig: Yeah. I remember reading about this at some point before it came out, and I was…
You know, you’re right. I’m just, uh, I’m a dog person. I like dogs, and so I was just… The fact that it was, you know, about a dog was interesting to me. But what was more interesting was that it’s shot kind of… I don’t know. It’s not shot from the dog’s perspective. It’s not like POV most of the time. Right.
But the narrative is from the dog’s perspective, basically. I mean- Yeah … we’re riding along with the dog, and so I was, uh, intrigued by that. And so, yes, as soon as it became available to stream, I watched it, and I really liked it. And I talked to our friend Heather about it, and she saw it, and she liked it.
And I’ve had it on my list of movies for the podcast for a long time, but we’ve just never gotten around to it. And I, I just kind of picked it at random this week, and I’m interested to hear what you think of it. ‘Cause watching it again, the first time, all I really remember about it, you know, is, is kind of the basics of the plot and that it’s from the dog’s perspective, and that I liked it.
I remembered that. I didn’t remember a whole lot of the details, and watching it again, I kept wondering what your reaction to it would be- … ’cause though I know you are an animal lover in general, you’re not exactly a dog person. Like, and I wonder if you kind of have to be a… A- again, that’s why I prefaced it with I know you’re an animal lover in general.
You just tend to be more of, if, of a cat person, I guess if you, uh- Yeah.
Todd: Yeah, if I have my choice, I’m more of a cat person. Right. And that’s purely selfish reasons. Like, uh, if I’m gonna have an animal, and I, I grew up with cats, so I’m a little biased that way too. Gosh, until we moved to China, I’ve always had a cat in the house or two from when I was a kid.
We had a cat named Taco who was a You know, lovely member of the family and had her own quirks, and then, you know, when I went off to college she passed away ’cause she was getting old and had a bacterial infection and that took her. And then, uh, yeah, later, you know, my parents got two other cats, and then when I got married, Vic and I had cats, and we had to give them away before we came to China.
I gave them away to my aunt. But I understand. You know, I’m an animal lover. I love animals, I love pets. But for me, selfishly, cats I can manage because cats don’t require a lot of attention.
Craig: That’s right.
Todd: And dogs require so much attention, they might as well be another child in the house. In fact, sometimes cats don’t want you to give them too much attention, and I kind of like that about them.
I like that they’re independent and-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: you know, they’re, they’re quirky.
Craig: They are independent and they’re… Yeah, and they’re far- They’re, like, they’re way more low-maintenance than dogs. Yeah. They’re just a lot… Uh, y- you know, I remember back in, you know, the days when I left the house, if you would need to leave for, like, a weekend or whatever, you could just leave a big huge bowl of food and a big huge bowl of water or, like, leave water in the bathtub or whatever, and cats are fine by themselves for a few days.
Dogs certainly not, which is one of, one of the only issues that I have with this movie. It’s about a dog, and he locks that dog up in the house and never takes it to the bathroom.
Todd: That’s a very good point, right? We never see that. We never see him really taking him for a walk, to the bathroom, anything like that.
And
Craig: that’s a, that’s a big, that’s a big part of your life if you have a dog in the house. Yeah. Like gotta be taking him to the bathroom on the regular.
Todd: Managing some oth- some- something else or someone else’s pooping and peeing schedule all day long, that’s just a bridge too far for me. I had a kid. I have a kid, and thank God we’re past that phase where we have to do that.
He can go on his own now. It’s fantastic.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah.
Todd: And I figure… And I felt like as soon as, as soon as Kenji was potty trained, I’d almost felt like my, my work as a parent was half over. I don’t want to sound like a, a- You’ve
Craig: given him the essentials.
Todd: Yeah, that’s right. It’s, it’s important. The stuff that’s not gonna embarrass him on a first date.
Everything else, whatever. You know, I don’t want to sound like an i- like an, an asshole, but there’s little that is more off-putting… I shouldn’t say off-putting. Frustrating, not the right word either. Just kind of a bummer Whenever you’re hanging out with friends with dogs, at any given time they’re gonna chime in with, “Oh, you know what?
I gotta go ’cause I gotta take the dog out.” “Oh, this, this spontaneous thing that we came up s- with sounds like a lot of fun, but unfortunately we can’t do it because I gotta get home to the dog.” You know? You- y- that, that kind of thing is just such a part of a dog owner’s life that I just, I don’t… I can tell I couldn’t tolerate it.
It doesn’t, it doesn’t fit with my life, just like, uh, a lot of things don’t. Smoking-
Craig: That’s one of the main reasons for having a dog is so that you can do that.
Todd: Well, I, I can see where getting out of the situations is pretty, yeah, it’s pretty handy for that. Don’t, don’t get me wrong, having a kid works the same way.
Craig: Right.
Todd: I’ve used that excuse many a time. But, uh, but it’s a real thing, you know? You’re, like you said, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta do these things on a regular basis with the dog, which makes him more maintenance. But
Craig: yeah. I get it, ’cause I was just gonna say you and I have, like, very different lifestyles.
Like, you’re always on the go. It would make a- a- and you live in the city, and it would make no sense really for you to have a dog. You’re not home enough. I’m home all the time, and so, like, I really appreciate the companionship, and it’s really nice to have a little creature that, like, loves you more than anything and just wants to be, like, super loyal to you.
Right. It’s, it’s, like, all the good parts of having a kid without all the bad parts. Like, I don’t know. I do still… My- I have to wipe my dog’s butt so- Yeah … I go even a step further than most dog owners.
Todd: I
Craig: see. So I, I, I get it, but I… That’s what I was saying. Like, I’m just curious if the movie hits the same way whether you’re, like, a dog lover or ambivalent about dogs.
Todd: I thought the concept was strong enough that I was entertained, and I was kind of glued to the screen to see how they were gonna pull it off. And I was also curious to see if the story would be a little different because it was from the dog’s perspective. I kind of wondered to a c- certain degree… I mean, to a certain degree we’re in this dog’s world, right?
Because we’re, we’re down to his level for most of it.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: This movie makes you highly aware that a dog’s life is really a lot of just standing around, nothingness, staring at nothing, being interested in tiny little things that happen because they’re not going to work, they’re not talking, they’re not watching TV, you know?
They’re, they’re just there in a place where there’s just not a lot going on for so much of the time. And so I wondered if it was gonna insert other things like, well, maybe the dog’s senses. Maybe it can hear better and, you know, we all know dogs can… Can’t they see, like, a different spectrum or is that not true?
I think
Craig: so.
Todd: So, you know, is, is that gonna be a part of it? Is this gonna truly be from the dog’s perspective? And in a way it was, and in a way it wasn’t. You know, it didn’t really go that far, which is fine. Honestly, when we did Wolf, they did that to a certain extent, and I thought that was fascinating. And we’ve seen other horror movies where you’ll get a, an animal’s perspective from time to time, and you’ll see through their eyes, and the different colors of the ultraviolet spectrum, or the heat sensing or something like that that they have, which adds flavor to the plot.
This plot didn’t need it, but also it made the movie a little boring, I thought. Pacing wise, I… A- And it was only an hour and 13 minutes, which thank you, by the way. We love short movies.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: But it was a long hour and 13 minutes.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And that’s really because it is a lot of creepy atmosphere and not too much else for most of the running time.
Long, long shots of the dog staring at something, and so I don’t know if I would watch this a second time.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: But I actually did enjoy it the first time through, and by the end of it, I felt like the story was rather simple.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: And that’s, that’s okay. It’s fine that it’s that simple, but it felt a little long and slow for me.
I don’t always need an action-packed thing. I’m not, I’m not that guy, right? And I was in the mood enough to have the patience for it tonight, so I enjoyed watching the movie. I think Todd, in an- on another day, might have been checking his watch an awful lot during this.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: So depends on what mood you’re in, I guess, is what I’m saying.
Craig: Yeah. I, I, I totally get that, and you’re right. I mean, it, it feels like a solid hour and a half. It, it feels like a feature length. It, it doesn’t fly by. Um, and, and all the things that you said are correct. You know, because we’re, we’re really just with this dog and his owner for the vast majority of the movie.
Like, there’s a few other people, actors that pop in occasionally, but it’s mostly just the dog and his owner, whose face we almost never see-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: throughout the whole film. I mean, it, it’s, it’s very… A- And the other adult people, we… I don’t recall if we ever see any of their faces, at least not before the end.
They’re either voices on telephones, or they’re… There’s the guy in the woods who’s, like, wearing a camouflage mask thing. Like, it’s very focused on the dog, and you’re right. Like, dogs don’t talk, so they can’t tell us what they’re thinking or feeling, and they’re also limited in what they can do. Like, you said that it just shows that dogs sit around and stare at nothing a lot.
Well, I think that that’s true. But I also think that it shows that they are observant and curious because –
Todd: They have no choice?
Craig: I mean, maybe it’s… It- Well, I was gonna say, maybe it’s by nature, but what else is there to do?
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But, but I, I, I also j- I, I thought that that was- An interesting perspective, ’cause there were times when, like, the dog would see something sus, and I’d be like, “Don’t go in there.
Don’t go in there.” But I’m like, he’s a dog. He’s just curious. Um- Yeah, he’s gonna go i
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Lake Mungo
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We dive into 2008’s Lake Mungo, an Australian found-footage/mockumentary that surprised us with how authentic and well-acted it feels, more like a traditional documentary than a jump-scare horror film.We walk through the central tragedy of 16-year-old Alice’s drowning, the family’s grief, and the subtle escalation of eerie evidence—dreams, noises, strange photos, and hallway camera footage—before unpacking the film’s major twists.
We talk about how the movie plays more as a drama about mourning and uncertainty than a straight ghost story, why some turns feel contrived, and why the final montage retroactively makes the whole experience linger.
We also touch on the ongoing appeal of true-crime and mock-doc horror and what makes this one worth watching.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Lake Mungo (1996)Episode 505, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week was my turn to choose, and I went into just my list of things that I was curious about that is, uh, post-2000, ’cause I thought you’d might appreciate a more recent film. And this is 2008’s Lake Mungo, which I had heard about, never seen before, but it comes up every now and then.
People talk about it when they talk about creepy, unsettling movies that really bothered them or, or hit them hard. And they talked about twists in it and maybe an ending that was a little unsettling or ups- upsetting. So it had always been on my list for that reason. I believe this has been requested at least once over the years.
Craig: I think so too.
Todd: Yeah, I didn’t go back to check our request list. I mean, it would be, it would’ve been years ago. Our, our request list, some of the things on there- It’s long … have been on there for a while. Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty long. So whoever requested it’s gonna be very happy that we’re doing Lake Mungo today.
This is the first time I had ever seen it. How about you, Craig? You said you’d seen it before.
Craig: Yeah, I had seen it, like, gosh, you know, 2008, right? That’s when it came out, I think. Seems like a long time ago, but I remember reading about it. I don’t know. I feel like people were talking about it for a little while.
I didn’t see it until later than that, and I just happened to come across it on some streamer. I recognized the title, and it sounded intriguing based on the description. It’s a found footage kind of mockumentary, I guess-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: you would say. And it sounded intriguing. So yeah, I had already seen it, and I was surprised that you picked it.
It’s not your typical choice, but I think it’s a good one.
Todd: Yeah. You’re right. This is… Usually I’m going for older stuff. We’ve got such a… I feel like we have an obligation to hit just these o- old ancient movies that there are just so many, but every now and then I surprise you.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: This one, uh, I was surprised by this movie because I didn’t know anything else about it, and I went in to look it up and found out that the writer-director, this was basically his first feature film And he really hasn’t done much since or before this.
He did some shorts and, uh, he was in the script and continuity department for Late Night With the Devil. That’s about it. So I was actually kinda shocked. This is an Australian movie, and the first thing that struck me, I don’t know, about 10 minutes into this is just how incredibly well-acted it is. It is really well-acted.
We’ve done other movies like this before. Well, we’ve done other found footage movies, and we’ve done some documentary, mockumentary-type films. The one I was thinking of the most was that UFO one.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Remember what it’s called? What was that called? There were two versions of it.
Craig: I don’t know. I feel like maybe it was Lake something or-
Todd: It was, um…
It was one where it had been done, like, in the ’80s, and it had been shot just on a shoestring by a bunch of… By a theater troupe, basically, and they didn’t really get much play or distribution for it. And it, it would’ve just sort of been lost to history except somehow the pre-release copies, I think the VHS copies that were sent to rental stores to try to get people to rent them, somehow they got copied over and copied over and got into the hands of some UFO people and distributed as though it was real.
And, uh, that became such a mythological thing that the original producer came out and said, “No, and you know, this isn’t real. I made it.” And because of the popularity of it, they were encouraged to remake it-
Craig: Mm-hmm …
Todd: in the early ’90s. And we watched that remake, and we ended up going ahead and watching… I think we independently were just so intrigued by it, we ended up going and watching the original, and we found the original so much better just because it had that air of authenticity that the remake didn’t.
It was because of the acting ability of the people in the… Well, I, I, I shouldn’t say acting ability. A- acting experience. It seemed like the acting experience of the people in the remake went against the authenticity of the film. It just felt more like people acting.
Craig: Yeah, I remember.
Todd: And especially for the new one, they had inserted little bits of interview, like they were interviewing people about the footage, and especially the interviews came across as really, really fake.
And it, you know, as an actor and a guy who’s… You know, for me, like, I do these, like, dumb mobile game ads, and they take a lot of different forms, and one of the forms that they’ve had me do a lot is that I’m the boss of some game company, and they’re interviewing me. Like, it’s like a clip from an interview showing me talking about our philosophy behind the game design.
And I often find that the hardest, to act like I’m just sitting there genuinely answering questions off the cuff from somebody even though I’m actually reading a script. Hmm. It’s so hard to come across as natural in that way. So I sympathized with and wasn’t even surprised that even the more seasoned actors when they came in and they were doing this interview style stuff, they just came across as fake.
It’s, it’s, it’s trickier than you’d think to act natural in that scenario. And this is all interviews.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Everybody here is interviewed, and the actors are really, like, they didn’t do much after this. They didn’t do much before this. The director deliberately chose people who are very low-key and, and low-profile.
And God, they’re convincing. Don’t you th- Did you not think so?
Craig: No, I did. I just didn’t really think about it very much because I, I feel like I’ve seen this type of mockumentary before. I, I, I think I saw something recently. I couldn’t remember it, so I was trying to look it up while you were talking, but I think it was called Strange Harvest: Soul Murder in the In- Inland Empire- Whoa.
which is a whole mockumentary. Uh, it’s from 2024.
Todd: That’s a mouthful. Yeah. But I’ve heard of Strange Harvest. Yeah, uh-huh.
Craig: Yeah. I didn’t know that I realized that it had a subtitle. I think I just found it under Strange Harvest. But it was much like this. Aside from fantastic things happening that seem out of the realm of possibility, it, it seemed, like, real.
Like, you could accidentally stumble upon it on television or whatever and, you know, think that it was real, and that’s kind of how I felt about this one too. So I guess that speaks to their authenticity, like, it feels real.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: I, I think that I’m also just currently… I’ve been watching a lot of documentary, well, I guess documentaries and also, like, documentary series lately, like spooky creepy ones.
Mm-hmm. And so I’m just kind of immersed in that format-
Todd: Wow …
Craig: right now. So I think it was- … it felt immersive and like that. This is the type of movie that I can watch with Alan except for I- it’s risky. Like, either I don’t tell him it’s not real- … and then risk him getting mad at me when he finds out that it’s not.
Or I tell him it’s not real, and then he’s not really all that invested in it.
Todd: Right.
Craig: But, you know, he can sit through this ’cause it’s the type of format of some stuff that we watch anyway, so… And I think that those types of shows, like- Gosh, Netflix I’ve been watching. I watched… These are recommendations, by the way, if you’re into dark stuff.
I just watched one called Toxic Love Story that was one of the twistiest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Wow. I kept being like, “What? What?” But then after that we started watching this show. There’s a whole series of them. I think we watched Worst Neighbor Ever, and then there’s also like- Oh,
Todd: yeah
Craig: Worst Ex Ever and Worst Roommate Ever and, like, all these. And they’re all these horrifying tales of-
Todd: Right …
Craig: things that have happened- True … in real life.
Todd: True things, right?
Craig: Yes. But it, but it is. You know, these are the actual people that experienced it in most cases.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Uh, of course here you’ve got actors, but I guess all that to say, I suppose I agree with your assessment that they were that good because it felt very-
Todd: Yeah, I was really surprised.
And, I mean, consistently real across the board, like every single actor I, I believed. And just like you said, if I’d come across this on television, I would 100% think it was the real thing. Now maybe I just haven’t seen enough of these to know that just people can be really good at this, but I’ve seen some bad ones, you know?
I’ve seen some ones that just didn’t seem very real at all or that just didn’t have so much interview footage in them. This is very, very traditional documentary. This feels almost, you know, like a Ken Burns type documentary. It’s got lots of footage overlaying interview with… You know, so there’s a lot of voiceover.
There’s no, like, omniscient narrator or anything. It’s just all the voiceover of the people who are being interviewed and their answers to the questions, and they’re narrating the story as it happened to them. I also found the footage really convincing. I thought that it, it, it really follows the disappearance…
Well, it follows the death of a girl named Alice in, uh, Ararat, Australia, which is a real place, and it was actually filmed there. She’s a 16-year-old who goes swimming with her family at some dam. And as they’re getting out of the water she’s not there, and they immediately conclude that she might have drowned, and they send to call the police.
And the divers come and, and go in the water, and eventually by that evening they, I think… or the next day, I can’t remember, they do end up pulling up her body. And it’s pretty heartbreaking for them. And it moves pretty slowly. You’re just kinda wrapped up in this tale, this family that had this terrible tragedy happen to them.
That’s like the first 10, 15 minutes. There’s nothing spooky- Mm-hmm … there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. And so I did find myself wondering, where is this gonna lead, and when is this gonna get spooky? Ultimately, I feel like the movie did not meet my expectations, but I think that was in a very good way.
Because it’s a little bit unlike a lot of these things we’ve seen before b- because it’s not trying to be sensational, in your face, jump scary- Mm-hmm … type stuff. It’s really trying to come across as something authentic, and in that I believe it really succeeds. I was thinking also of Ghostwatch.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Again, not exactly the same, but that movie, you know, has moments where there’s the footage or there’s the interviewer or something happening, and then suddenly, boom, there’s something happening-
Craig: Right …
Todd: to them right then and there. Or you see something in the background and, you know, that jolts you- Right
or whatever, and this really doesn’t have that And I think that’s a strength of it. But, you know, it wasn’t what I was expecting, I’ll tell you that, when, when I just, you know, when I heard the hype around it.
Craig: Yeah. Gosh, I was just thinking, I mean, you don’t have moments in the movie where a ghost jumps out at you or anything, but there are…
I think it was Ghost Watch or… But, I mean, it’s typical of these types of movies where they’ll show you something, and then later they’ll show it to you again and point out something that you missed the first time. Right. And I feel like that’s kind of typical of these haunting movies, but this one does it pretty well.
I, I think what makes this different than some of the other mockumentaries that I’ve seen like this is that often they seem very real up until a very specific point where something really crazy happens, and- Right, right … you know, the ghosts do appear or the monsters or the aliens or whatever and, and they’re captured on, on camera.
This is far more subtle. Like, this almost could… I- it is in the same category, I would say, as something like Blair Witch, where if somebody didn’t know this was real start to finish, they might think it was. Just didn’t know it was real- Yes … excuse me.
Todd: Yeah, yeah. If this were presented as real, there’s nothing so fantastic about this that would make you go, “Oh, come on, we know it’s not real.R
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Legend
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This week we pay tribute to an actor that means so much to both of us, Tim Curry, and his performance as Darkeness in Ridley Scott’s “Legend”.We reflect on how much he meant to us across roles like Rocky Horror, Clue, Pennywise, and extensive voice work, including how his stroke affected his career and why his memoir is worth reading (even if it’s brief and private).
In celebrating his legacy, we discuss Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985), including its troubled production, stunning practical sets, and Curry’s iconic, physically demanding Darkness makeup.
We compare the director’s cut and theatrical cut, focusing on how Jerry Goldsmith’s score versus Tangerine Dream radically changes tone, pacing, and character complexity, and we break down key scenes like Meg Mucklebones, Lily’s seduction/dance sequence, and the differing endings.
Check out BOTH cuts, as well as more of Curry’s work over his many decades in the business!work.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Legend (1985)Episode 504, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, we’re doing another tribute episode and I have to admit this one’s a bit of a difficult one for me. Um-
Craig: It has been a rough week.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Like it’s been an emotional week for me. I don’t know about you but man, it was a rough week for me.
Todd: You know, I don’t usually get so emotional as to cry when a celebrity dies, but this week for only the second and third time in my life, I, uh, I did shed some tears.
First of all was Dolly Parton And that was horrible. Yeah. But-
Craig: Wept like a baby.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: We’ll talk more about that later.
Todd: We’ll probably record a little something for our, um, patrons.
Craig: For our patrons,
Todd: yeah. Yeah, to talk about Dolly Parton. Not really horror related, but darn it, that’s what our patrons get.
Sometimes they get life stuff.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah, and I’ve got a lot to say.
Todd: Just turn the mic over to you for that one. This one is a man who I’ve been telling everyone for years since I was a kid is my favorite actor of all time. Tim Curry died at the age of 80?
Craig: Yep.
Todd: Uh, what can I say? I… Uh, he’s been with me since my childhood.
The roles that he has performed on screen have just captivated me throughout every decade of my life. I just saw a little bit of myself in this man. The more I got to know him, the more I thought, “Wow,” uh, he f-… He sounds a little bit like me in terms of how he approaches life, skittered through his career, and just really just done interesting things, just goes around and does the stuff that interests him and is quite good at what he does, and, uh, was pretty generally beloved all around.
I-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: much like Dolly Parton, I can’t think of a person who had any complaints about Tim Curry.
Craig: No.
Todd: And, uh, obviously, one of the most iconic movies, uh, in, in America of the last 50 years, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. God, so many, so many movies. A- Rooster in Annie, huh, Wadsworth in Clue, the concierge in Home Alone 2.
God, he was in Muppet Treasure Island and the Three Musketeers. Right. The Hunt for Red October. He played Pennywise. Huh, talking about horror, probably my favorite Pennywise is still him. And- Yeah … he scared a whole generation of people, and I really think turned the world against clowns single-handedly with that role.
I know. You said that. We’ve said that a lot. We did that on this show. We also did The Worst Witch on this show one Halloween.
Clip: Oh, right.
Todd: And he had a turn in there that I was surprised by, but you grew up with, that was just goofy and silly and fun and very Tim Curry. Yet he went on also to do hundreds of roles almost in, in-
Craig: S- prolific
Todd: yeah, in voice work, th- things that I didn’t even realize. And that was where he– I feel like when you, when you read his autobiography Which I did. You sort of feel like that was a thing that he discovered a, a passion for and really settled into that through life, and then sadly had his voice taken away from him for a while and with his stroke.
Was still able to do some acting in some movies- Yeah … and was still able to do some audiobooks and things like that, but certainly not to the degree that he had before, and that had to be frustrating for the guy. But man, he kept a good spirit about it all, kept a sense of humor, bright mind. I’ve seen so many interviews with him even over the last several years, not just because he died this last week.
And it just so happened that I had been doing a lot of traveling this summer, and one of the three or four books that I had going while I was on the plane and resting in the various places I was, was his autobiography Vagabond, his memoir. Mm-hmm. Which you had recommended to me, and I’m glad you did. You had recommended I listen to the audiobook, but as much as I wanted to hear his voice, I don’t– I just prefer to read things.
I don’t… As a guy weirdly a guy who records audiobooks, uh, doesn’t really like audiobooks too much. That’s me. So it was so strange that two days later after I finished it finally got the news of his passing.
Oh, wow!
It was very weird. It made me not want to start the auto-autobiography, which is next on my list.
Oh my God, I know. I know. I don’t want her to be that third person yet. Ugh. So anyway, there’s so much to say about Tim Curry, but I’ve done enough talking. Uh, Craig, I know he means at least as much to you as he does to me.
Craig: Yeah. Like, you know, our– I think our s- stories are similar. I, I grew up watching him.
Clue was one that my friends, when I got into college, all my friends had grown up with and I, I hadn’t really seen it. I, I had seen bits and pieces of it here and there. I didn’t really see that one until college, but it was, it was Stephen King’s It. Stephen King’s It was my sick day movie always. If I had a sick day at home, i- you know, that was one of them.
That, and The Goonies and Troll, that was kind of my, my go-to marathon. But also from the movie that we’re talking about today, Legend. I loved this movie growing up as a kid, and it was one of those that I don’t think that we ever had for whatever reason. You know, my dad would tape things off HBO or, or illegally copy things from the video store occasionally but we never had Legend and so when it would pop up on HBO or wherever it would pop up it was so exciting and Alan and I were watching it together last night and he said the same thing.
He said when he was a kid and he would stumble across this movie w- at whatever point in the movie he would stumble across it, th-that was it. Whatever else was going on ended and you sat and you watched Legend. And of course we’re gonna have a lot to say about the movie but you know I, I, I think he’s the best part of it but like Dolly Parton, like Paul Reubens, like God protector Cassandra Peterson, I, I mean these really honest to God are my childhood legends and my heroes.
You know? These are the kind of people that I… Uh, uh, I, I recognized it then but I don’t think that I coulda– have articulated what it was then. I recognize now that it’s these people Are all, were all unapologetically themselves. They absolutely refused to apologize for who they were and, and they just, you know, lived out loud and, and I…
Yeah, I, I, I listened to his audiobook which listeners, I recommend if, if you like audiobooks at all because he, he, he narrates it himself and he’s so charming, and that’s, I think, part of his appeal. He’s charming, he’s mysterious, he’s sexy, he’s a little bit sinister. I mean, he’s just s- got so much charisma.
He’s enchanting. Of course, in the wake of his death I’ve seen a lot of clips from him. I’ve seen a lot of tributes and, and whatnot, but I saw him in an interview probably midway through his career. He was still young, but not Rocky Horror young. And, and some, you know, very stiff-necked looking anchor woman, “You’re just so charming.
When you, when you play the devil, it makes a girl wanna go straight to hell.”
Todd: Oh. And I
Craig: get it. You know, he often did play dark, sinister characters, but s- And he just had a seductive nature about him. And beyond that, if you … As you know, if you read his memoir, he was humble. So incredibly humble and grateful for all of the experiences that he had had. It… And, and he cautions early on in his memoir that he’s probably not going to spill the kind of salacious material you might be hoping for in a memoir.
You know, he doesn’t talk, I think at all, about his love life.
Todd: No.
Craig: And if ever there were scandalous things going on behind the scenes, like feuds or anything, he doesn’t really address that. I mean, he just seems really grateful for the experiences that he had, and to hear him talk about them from his own perspective is just, it’s fascinating, it’s entertaining and, and it’s just comforting hearing his voice because Career reflects, you know, his voice is one of his greatest tools.
One of many- Yeah … because I just think that he was an astounding, astounding actor. But Beyond that, just seemed like a really good guy. Was always generous with his fans. You know, we, we’ve dreaded this day. We’ve talked about it. We knew it was coming eventually and we had hoped that it would be a long time from now but we knew it was coming because he hasn’t been well for a long time.
I don’t remember when he had that stroke, but it’s been a long time ago. But even within the last year, even though he wasn’t well, he was still going to cons and, and festivals and, and holding panels and he spoke slowly and not as clearly as he once did, but he was all there mentally. You know? It, it had an effect– a physical effect on his body and slowed him down, but his mind was still sharp as a whip.
And I remember recently… The most recent one that I heard, he did a panel with Leslie Ann Warren, one of his co-stars from Clue, and you know, they were both there and I think that she anticipated having to do most of the heavy lifting, but ultimately she said that she could barely get a word in Because he talked so much and had, and so many stories and so many people had questions for him.
And he talks in his memoir about how he loved his fans because they were people who looked to characters like Frank N Furter and thought, you know, “If that person,” alien whatever it is, can be loudly who they are then I have permission to be loudly who I am.” And he really admired that in those people and wanted to give back to them too.
So I could go on and on and on. If you haven’t read the memoir and you’re a fan of Tim Curry’s, do yourself a favor. It, it’s certainly worth your time. Yeah. I mean y- I’m gonna … Uh, yeah, I, I shed a tear too. Hmm. It, it, it feels like a big loss. It real- And you know maybe this comes with being the age we are, but it really feels like we’re losing our heroes.
But Tim curry also felt, you know, multi generational and he kinda felt like he belonged to all of us. It, it feels like kind of a communal mourning. All of my friends were talking about it and were sad and, you know watching his movies with their kids in these last few days and – Yeah So obviously, his legacy will stand and You know, he was living comfortably.
He, he was sad that he couldn’t do the things that he could when he was physically able and he really enjoyed gardening but you know, he also was in a position where he could afford help and he had people who he… Had garden for him and he would sit in his chair- …and give them directions . Give some
Todd: directions
Hmm
Craig: He was– That was another thing that was so inspiring was, you know somebody who could have wallowed in their own, you know loss. He didn’t. He still felt like he had a lot of life to live and it was different now but he wasn’t gonna let that bring him down or at least that’s the way that he spoke about it and that was inspiring as well So just a great, great guy.
I’m sad that ,you know I, I, I’ve been saying for a while especially once I found out that you had never seen this movie, I’ve been saying for a while we’re gonna do this movie even if it’s when he passes We’re going to do it eventually. So I’m — I really am very excited to talk to you about it And I’m kinda glad that we got the sad stuff outta the way and now we can just celebrate At, at, at least You know?
I haven’t talked to you about how you feel about the movie yet. But at least I think we can agree in celebrating Tim Curry and his performance in it
Todd: Yeah. I agree. You know talking about memoir real quick I, I was a little disappointed. I, I was very grateful for having something from him talking about his life but I did feel that is pretty surface and it was over awfully quick
I wanted a little more detail into him and his character but I just think that he’s more of private guy and he gave about as much as he willing to give and Like said for that I’m grateful If you’re on the fence about reading it and long books scare you Ill tell you that y- you wouldn’t have that problem so that’s, that’s good part of it i think
Craig: Well and and not surprised to hear that because doesn’t speak much A- aside from his childhood and his relationship with parents.
He’s pretty open about that
Todd: Hmm
Craig: But yeah later on he talks friendships dear friendship s and and some acquaintances and it’s … You know? I’m always amazed by the six degrees of separation when it comes celebrity culture and how,- Mm ….
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Stree
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Notas do episódio
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This week, we dive into 2018’s Stree, a hugely popular Indian horror-comedy inspired by the “Nalay Ba / Come Tomorrow” urban legend, and one of the first mainstream Bollywood hits to lean into folklore rather than cheesy haunted-house or revenge-ghost formula.We talk about the film’s charm, likable buddy dynamic, romantic-comedy “meet cute,” and its role-reversal premise where men are the ones being hunted by a vengeful spirit during a village festival.
We break down the lore, the standout musical number, and the cast—Rajkummar Rao’s committed tailor performance, Shraddha Kapoor’s perfectly mysterious presence, and Pankaj Tripathi’s scene-stealing exposition.
We also unpack the ending twist, sequel setup, and why this feels more spooky campfire tale than graphic horror.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Stree (2018)Episode 503, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, this week was my turn to pick the movie, and I may have surprised Craig a little bit with this one. Maybe a little bit, maybe not. He knows I, I like to do things kind of outside of our, uh, normal purview or just really old stuff.
This is a newer movie, so I thought you’d like that. It’s from 2018, but it’s definitely outside of our purview. It is more in the Bollywood area, and I don’t know, have we ever done… Except for one. We did one Indian horror movie before this, I think, right?
Craig: I don’t know.
Todd: Yeah, we did one in a shopping mall for Christmas.
It was, um- Yeah.
Craig: Uh-huh. I remember that.
Todd: It’s funny, I, um, I recently was dating an Indian woman for a brief time, and, uh, when she learned I was doing a horror podcast, she said, “You have to see this movie, Stree. It is wonderful, and it’s had sequels, and it was really, really popular when it came out, and you’re gonna love it.”
So she sat me down and had me watch this, and that is why I knew about it. So, uh, this is 2018’s Stree, and it was very famous and big when it came out, ’cause it was a bit against the grain of a lot of the other Bollywood films that had come across thus far. There had been horror movies in, in Bollywood, but, uh, they, they tended to kinda fall under two camps, you know?
They’re mostly just, like, cheesy haunted house-type stories or revenge-type ghost stories, and this was the first thing to really kinda break out of that mold and be a movie that’s actually based on an urban legend. And so, uh, it was a huge hit. It had some very big stars in it and, uh, spawned, uh, two or three sequels.
So, uh, here we are doing it. And yeah, so this is my second time watching this. And Craig, had you even heard of this before?
Craig: You told me about it when you saw it. Okay. I, I just remember you tell- well, I just remember you saying it was interesting and you thought I’d like it and we should do it at some point, but that’s been a while ago.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Um- Yeah … so when you recommended it, I, I remember that, that you had mentioned it before, but that’s it. That’s all I knew. I didn’t know anything about it. You said that it was Bollywood, and I have some expectations there. Mostly I kind of expect a musical number, and there is one. Right. And w- actually, there’s two really if you count-
the credit sequence, which you should, ’cause it’s great.
Todd: Right.
Craig: And, and that’s different. I mean, we’ll talk about it when we get there obviously, but you know, that’s something that I’ve come to expect from the Bollywood that I’ve been introduced to, so that was nice. But yeah, I didn’t really… I didn’t know anything else about it.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I didn’t know that it was based on a legend. I, I had no idea even what type of movie it was going to be. You also, I think, mentioned that it was a horror comedy, so I was going in with that in mind, but that’s about it.
Todd: Well, it’s worth mentioning that because we don’t do many of these movies, I’ve learned a lot about Indian movies fairly recently, and we often say Bollywood when we’re referring to Indian movies, but India’s a huge country, and it has many different regions, and a lot of people are producing movies in different areas.
Uh, I think that the Indian film industry might even be bigger than the Hollywood film industry, if you can believe that. Worldwide, they have a pretty big reach. Of course, they’re huge in India, and India’s a very populous place, and so there are film traditions in India that many of us in the West are, u- unless we’ve really sought this out and become fans of, of Indian cinema, we really don’t know a lot of this stuff.
Right. And so there are famous directors in India who are at least as famous as Steven Spielberg. This woman I date is 38 years old, and I mentioned Steven Spielberg to m- her, and she said, “Who’s that?” Mm. If that gives you any indication of just how separate those two worlds can be for us, you know?
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: So but when we say Bollywood, we often mean Indian movies, but actually India produces films in lots of different languages. Hindi movies are tend, are Bollywood. There’s Telugu, which they call Tollywood. There are Tamil films, which is Kollywood. There’s a Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali
And many of India’s biggest, most recent blockbusters were not Bollywood films at all. Oh. They weren’t Hindi films. Yeah, they were from some of these other areas. So it’s really complex and really complicated. I, I couldn’t explain any of it to you ’cause I really don’t know much. But, uh, if you’re interested in Indian cinema, there is a ton to dive into, and, uh, I, I think it’s worth your while.
The stuff I’ve seen I’ve really enjoyed. They’re really good filmmakers. They’ve got tremendous actors, beautiful cinematography, and like you said, often music, and that’s what they’re most r- well known for.
Craig: Yeah, and I don’t… Y- yeah, I didn’t know, uh, all of those different regions had their own version.
When, when I think Bollywood I g- like, I equate it with Hollywood. I, I mean, like- Right … big budget, like, you know, really well made, a- as I think that this movie is, or at least it appears that way.
Todd: Oh, yeah.
Craig: Uh, you know, it’s, it’s beautifully shot. It’s, it stars beautiful people. It, it seems really well made overall, so that…
I, I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t even really look into it. I assume that it, it’s… It seems like a big budget movie. Is it?
Todd: Yeah. It’s, it’s a big budget movie, and, uh, and it has some big stars in it. The, the main star who plays Vicky in here is Rajkumar Rao, and he right now is one of Bollywood’s… considered one of its, their best actors.
And, uh, one thing that she explained to me is that unlike most Bollywood superstars, like Bollywood is a- actually a little like Hollywood in a way that, like, there’s dynasties there, and a lot of people become actors because their parents or their grandparents- Hmm … were in the industry, you know?
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: And most Bollywood superstars are like this way, and this is one of the very few guys who was able to build his reputation almost entirely on acting ability.
Craig: Oh, nice.
Todd: Uh, he didn’t have family connections or even what you’d consider conventional, like, leading man looks, although I think he looks pretty nice.
Craig: Yeah, he’s handsome.
Todd: And he’s known for really, like, not always playing the same role, you know what I mean? A, a lot of, uh, actors get typecast into playing a certain kind of role, and he’s known for really just disappearing into the role that he’s in. He’s played a lot of different characters. So, uh, he’s kinda known to be, like, an actor first and a movie star second.
And, and he actually learned sewing for the movie. He spent, like, 20 days with a tailor to learn how to sew just to play this role as a, of a tailor in this film, so pretty committed dude. And then contrasting that, there’s a mysterious woman in here, and, uh, she is Bollywood royalty. Her name is Shraddha Kapoor.
And she’s the daughter of a veteran actor, Shakti Kapoor, and he’s famous for comic villains, over-the-top performances. He’s been in hundreds of films. But she, uh, has developed a reputation that’s almost the opposite: quiet and more girl-next-door roles. Her characters are more approachable, maybe a little more mysterious, not these over-the-type things that her dad is, is, is known for doing.
And so… And that’s makes her casting really perfect for this, actually, because that’s kinda who she is in the movie. You’re never quite sure who or, or what she is. So those are two of, you know, two of the main actors that I’ll just kinda point out right now, and there are a few others in here that I’ll point out as well that, that my friend, Dee, uh, had explained to me when, uh, when we were watching it, so.
Craig: Uh, yeah, you know, I, obviously I am not familiar with any of these actors, but both of those, the two, I guess, romantic leads, and there is kind of a little romantic comedy going on in this otherwise- Mm-hmm. Ki- I mean, it’s, it’s not an incredibly unique… I, I mean, it’s basically a full-core movie, you know, based on this legend of this vengeful female spirit called Stree that they have these traditions around yearly at, at this festival in their village.
I, I don’t remember if it’s a traditional religious festival, but Stree apparently comes every year at the same time during this festival, and so traditionally they paint some words all around town, or I guess on their doors or right outside their homes, that says, “Come back tomorrow,” or something like that.
Todd: Yeah. “Ostri.” Ostri, it may, basically means woman. Ostri, come tomorrow.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And the legend is, yeah, the legend I guess is that if, if you don’t do that, she, like, steals men, I, I guess from their homes. She’s, she, like, lures them out. I mean, there’s a whole lore about her that we learn about it slowly over time.
I don’t know how slowly we want to reveal it on the podcast. Right. Right. We can- Um, but, like, I, I guess the whole thing is she will call a guy’s name three times, and she’s so alluring that by the third time they almost always turn around or always turn around or something, and then she takes them away, leaving behind only their clothes.
So- Yeah … you know, it, it’s a legend, and it’s a superstition, but people in the village adhere to the rules of the superstition.
Todd: Yeah. And the cool thing is this is based on an actual urban legend that went viral in the ’90s in India, and it’s famous there. The, everybody knows it. It’s called Nalay Ba, and Nalay Ba literally means come tomorrow.
And w- in the ’90s, people genuinely painted Nalay Ba on the outside of their houses in some of these villages in certain regions in India where they were taking this seriously. Like, it went viral. I guess especially in Bangalore, they believe that the, a witch would be wandering through the neighborhood at night knocking on doors, and if you answered or you acknowledged her, she’d lure you outside and kill you.
And so the answer to this is almost bureaucratic, right? Y- y- you put “come tomorrow” on the door, so the witch would come, and, “Oh, okay, I’ll come tomorrow.” And then tomorrow the witch would come, and, “Oh, okay, I’ll come tomorrow.” Kind of like a, a cool looping joke. It’s funny And so the film changes it to Hindi, which is Ostri Kal Ana, which is O Woman, Come Tomorrow.
And that phrase apparently became like a pop culture phenomenon after this movie. Oh,
Craig: that’s funny.
Todd: But I guess the director said it, he’s not just adapting this particular le- Nale Ba legend. There are many regions in India that have a similar folklore of ghosts that call your name or spirits that- Yeah
imitate loved ones, women who lure men. You know, we even have, like, the vampire. Like, it’s the same thing, a ghost that can only enter when invited. You paint a protective symbol on your house. There’s lots of different regional traditions into one mythology here, and a lot of it crosses over, right, with stuff that we believe in the West as well with some of the, some of our Dracula legends- For sure
and myths and things. Yeah. But apparently, like I said, one of the very first Indian movies to do this, as opposed to corny, over-the-top haunted house movie or, or some kind of just ghostly revenge story.
Craig: Well, I, I mean, there, there is. There is that ghostly revenge story, and that’s what I’m saying. Like, we’ve seen it before.
I, but I don’t want to make it sound like it’s y- just cut and paste something that we’ve seen before. It’s just- Right … we’ve seen this type of movie before. It’s not terribly unique in that regard. Then there’s also this little, you know, romantic interest between those two actors that you mentioned, both of them adorable.
I mean, you said that she kind of comes from a dynasty or whatever. I mean, even if she didn’t, I can only imagine that she could make it on her own ’cause she’s stunning. Like, she’s- Yeah. … stunningly- She really is … gorgeous. And, and, you know, a, a good actress, at least based on what she does here. And he’s, I think, very good-looking too.
There’s one part in the movie out of nowhere where she rips his shirt off literally for, like, one second. Like, she rips his shirt down- … and he pulls it back up so fast, like… I, I, I was like, “Why, why are you so quick to cover up?” Like, “Why are you- … why so modest?” But good-loo
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In The Mouth Of Madness
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We return with a tribute episode honoring Sam Neill, reflecting on his legacy from Jurassic Park to Possession and Dead Calm, and how his passing at 78 hit us.For this tribute, we dive into John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994), the final entry in Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy,” and a Lovecraft-inspired, reality-bending horror film built around books, belief, and cosmic dread.
We break down Sam Neill’s performance as skeptic insurance investigator John Trent, the film’s surreal structure, meta ending, and plot-heavy descent into Hobbs End, where fiction bleeds into real life.
We also highlight Carpenter’s signature direction and score, the stacked supporting cast (including Charlton Heston and David Warner), and the standout practical creature effects that make this one a pretty good.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript In The Mouth Of Madness (1994)Episode 502, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, it is time for another tribute episode. We haven’t done one of these in a little while. Seemed like there for a bit we were doing one every other week. This July, last month, Sam Neill died at the ripe old age of 78 years old. New Zealand actor that probably most people recognize immediately from his big role in Jurassic Park.
Although he was in quite a bit of stuff. Hunt for Red October before that, Event Horizon we will see one of these days. I mean, we’ve seen it, but we’ve gotta do it- Yeah … here on this show at some point. And he got his start in horror, actually. Well, I mean, he got his start on the stage doing other stuff, of course, but as far as international breakthrough roles, he was in the third Omen movie-
Craig: Right
Todd: playing Damien. And then, uh, in 1981 was in Possession, which we did on this show, which was a very intense film that I still think about an awful lot, and I think his performance in that was absolutely fantastic. So yeah, so, uh, fast-forward several roles later, here we are in the Mouth of Madness, 1994, a movie I’ve seen a few times before this.
When I was a teenager, this had recently been released on video, and I think we probably rented it two or three times, and I know I saw it at least once or twice from a sleepover with some friends. And the thing that I remembered the most about it from that time was that I pretty much nodded off about halfway through each time I watched it.
I don’t think as a kid I really appreciated it as much as I do now. It’s definitely not that kind of fast action, spooky, jump scare horror movie that I was expecting, you know, when we were renting movies for these sleepovers. A little slower, a little long, a little bit of a, I don’t know, you could say cerebral in a way.
It just takes its time. I call it maybe a little more adult horror movie, I would say, based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, which has his own mythos and his own style, too, and I feel like more or less this movie stuck to it pretty well. How about you, Craig? Uh, I’m sure you’ve seen this one before.
Craig: Yeah, a bunch of times.
But I think you’re getting jaded in your old age. An hour and 34 minutes is not long .
Todd: It feels long, man. The movie-
Craig: I didn’t think the movie felt long at all. Really? Like, I… Yeah. Ugh. Not at all. I still think it
Todd: felt long . I guess that’s just me.
Craig: Oh, gosh. I mean- I mean, it’s, it’s fairly action-heavy and, like-
vision-heavy. You think so? Uh, yeah. The, the… In fact, as I was watching it last night, because I, I told you this, but I, I… I’ll say it now for everybody else’s benefit. I, out of nowhere one night, decided I was gonna watch In the Mouth of Madness. I, you know, I was just scrolling, trying to find something to put on so I…
to, to go to sleep at night. And I came across it. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, so I put it on and I watched most of it. I did fall asleep before the end, but that was my goal. And then I woke up the next morning to a text from you that Sam Neill had died, and, and that was so weird. It was so weird to me ’cause I hadn’t r- I mean, we’ve talked about doing the movie before.
Yeah. But I, I hadn’t really given it much thought. I, I hadn’t really given Sam Neill much thought. I mean, I’m, I’m a fan. I’ve always been a fan of him, but I hadn’t given him a lot of thought in a long time. I knew that in fairly recent past years that he had had cancer and that it was bad, and they didn’t know if he was gonna make it through that, but he did, and I think that he’s been cancer-free for a little while.
So I was surprised. I was kind of shocked to learn of his death, though, uh, y- I think you said he was 78. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s a, a pretty good run.
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: it is. Um, I’ll, I’ll feel fortunate if I make it that far, but he seemed, you know… Cancer can get anybody, but y- despite that, he seemed vital and, and healthy and, and he was a cool guy, so sad to see him go.
Most people know him from Jurassic Park and of course I do, too. Dr. Alan Grant, I mean, it’s an iconic… Those are iconic movies. It’s an iconic character. I think he kind of cemented a legacy there. I, I, I think, you know, probably generations of people, our generation and our kids are gonna know who he is from those movies.
I knew him before that because inappropriately I grew up watching a movie called Dead Calm-
Clip: Hmm …
Craig: with him and Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane, and they’re basically the only three people in that movie and it’s more of like a psychological sexual thriller. Again, completely inappropriate for kids. But I grew up watching it.
And it’s a great movie, and he’s great in it. But I think that he’s been good in everything that I’ve seen him in.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Um, and beyond that, he just seems like… Well, I mean, he’s handsome and talented. He’s got those things going for him. But he just seemed like a really affable, kind, thoughtful person. And what I’ve seen, you know, people say about him, you know, people who’ve worked with him, it just seems like he was a very down-to-earth-
Todd: Scandal-free.
Craig: Scandal-free, you know, kind of a family guy. I mean, there’s cool stories about his family. I guess when he was a, a teenager or, or in his very early 20s, I don’t remember, he was very young, he and a, a young lady got pregnant and the, the baby was put up for adoption. But he looked for his son and, and found that his son was looking for him.
And as when his son was, like, 25 or something like that, they reunited and, and developed a, a, a solid relationship that was ongoing. And he, you know, he was just a cool guy. He owned a couple wineries. I think he was really chill.
Clip: Yeah.
Craig: But I think that he was just a good guy and a cool person to work with.
Laura Dern played opposite him, played his romantic counterpart in the Jurassic Park films, specifically the first one. And I don’t think at the time, I think looking at it in hindsight, some people have kind of questioned the age difference. I think she was only in her very early 20s, and he was already, I think, in his 50s.
So pairing them as a romantic duo was potentially questionable. However, she said that she just had the most wonderful time with him. She released a statement after he died, a very heartfelt and sentimental statement You know, commenting on their bond and, and how that would not change and stuff. So I, I, I think he was just…
I’ve just been a, a fan. It’s, it’s nice. You, you said scandal-free. And who knows? You never know what’s going on in people’s personal lives behind the scenes. But by all appearances, he really seemed to be a good guy, and it’s nice to have people that you can kind of look up to. And he, he was always that kind of guy for me.
You know, that’s, that, that’s what I aspire to. W- when I die, I just want people to say, “You know, he seemed like a pretty chill, good guy.”
Todd: Yeah, exactly
Craig: right. Some- somebody, somebody good to be around, no major scandals, not an asshole. That’s what I aspire to, and I think he accomplished it.
Todd: I- it seems like it.
You gotta die before that stuff comes out, you know?
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Before people look too carefully into you. I– You had mentioned him and Laura Dern’s Bond earlier, and I– just reminded me that he was shortlisted for, uh, James Bond-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: following Roger Moore. Timothy Dalton ended up winning out. But man, he would’ve made a good Bond, I think.
Craig: He really would have.
Todd: Really. He would. Uh, I would’ve liked to have seen him in that. But yeah, I mean, the dude’s got a hundred and s- um, almost 160 IMDb credits to his name. He was working right up until the end. He was filming something in Hawaii, I think, around the time that he passed. So yeah, he, he had a good run.
We’re gonna miss him. We’re, uh, anxious to talk about this movie because one of the reasons we chose this one, we could have chosen Dead Calm, but we decided that this one really focuses heavily on him as a big central character. And I have to go back and say that, you know, you said this is action, fairly action-heavy.
Craig: Oh, yeah.
Todd: When I said it was a bit yawning. And I just wanna say, I think there are different kinds of action, right? Mm. Like, there’s action that moves the plot forward. And in this case, there’s action– There’s a lot of action in this movie, but it really just takes, most of it takes place in the characters’ minds.
It’s a lot of visions and scenarios where you’re not quite sure if what you’re seeing is real or not. And so I think for me as a kid, and especially even just going back and watching it now, that’s the thing that kept this movie a little less scary than I would like it to be, I suppose. A little less, um, what I consider action-heavy because at the end of the day, it– Well, it’s, it’s not just about a guy going crazy and seeing visions.
And the– There are other people also going crazy and seeing visions. In fact, it’s like, sort of like the whole world is gonna end up this way ultimately. I- in many ways it, it’s reminiscent of, I think, even some Dario Argento movies that we’ve seen, and stuff from Italian cinema in many ways. I can see a lot of parallels between just the plot structure and the visual language, the cinematography, the usage of color, and I applaud John Carpenter for doing this because when you’re dealing with Lovecraft, this is the kind of stuff you have to delve into.
And this is, uh, based on not any particular Lovecraft story, I think, but, uh, it was written by, uh, Michael De Luca, directed by one of our absolute favorite directors, John Carpenter. John Carpenter was originally selected to direct it, and then a couple other people turned it down, and then it kind of came back around to him, and he agreed to do it eventually.
And he directed it and scored it, and I think it’s pretty recognizable as a Carpenter-type movie. You know, it’s got a lot of his, uh, fingerprints on it, his signature look, his signature style. I th- I’ve always enjoyed John Carpenter. I feel like he has a kind of no-nonsense way of doing filmmaking that is still very interesting and very fun.
He tells really fun, bold stories. I like that he unapologetically just goes out there with his ideas, and most of the time I think they hit their mark, and some of the times they don’t, and that’s pretty typical of every artist. So, uh, I just really like the guy. I really like everything he does.
Ultimately, I did enjoy this movie a lot more as a adult than I did as a kid. I think I just appreciated it more. I understood a little bit more what was going on, and the stakes felt a little bigger to me as an adult than they did as a kid Because as a kid, I came away from this movie thinking, oh, it’s really just about a guy kinda going crazy and ending up in the nuthouse.
But as an adult, I realize a lot of what the movie was about passed me by maybe while I was half asleep at a friend’s house at 2:00 in the morning after chowing down on cocktail weenies and, and sodas. We didn’t, uh, we didn’t have alcohol at our parties in high school.
Craig: Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s not based on any one particular H.P.
Lovecraft story, but it, it definitely is inspired by that universe and, and directly references it multiple times. There’s an author who’s central to the plot. His name is Sutter Cane, which is a very thinly veiled reference to Stephen King. He’s like… He, he’s, he’s Stephen King. Right. Uh, e- except, except he writes almost exclusively, like, Cthulhu universe-type stories, and all of his books, the, the titles of the books that we see are all references to other Lovecla- Lovecraft stories.
And there are two or three instra- instances in the movie where somebody reads directly from one of his books, and I think every time it’s almost verbatim something from Lovecraft, tailored slightly to, to fit the needs of, of the plot, but almost directly from Lovecraft. And ultimately, there are Lovecraftian, like, creatures in it and stuff.
This was, I guess, Carpenter’s… He, he considered it the final film in his Apocalypse Trilogy, he called it.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: The Thing being the first one, Prince of Darkness being the second one. I haven’t seen Prince of Darkness in a really long time. I remember finding that movie
Todd: boring. Hmm. Me too.
Craig: But I haven’t seen it in a really long time.
But I didn’t find this movie boring at all. In fact, when I was watching it, I was thinking, “Wow, it’s gonna be hard to talk about this plot if we wanna go through it point by poin
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They Will Kill You
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We dive into the brand-new 2026 Amazon release ‘They Will Kill You,’ filmed in Cape Town, and talk about why the trailer (and Patricia Arquette) pulled us in.We break down the movie’s hyper-stylized, Tarantino/Raimi/Rodriguez vibe, martial-arts-heavy set pieces, and throwback gore—plus how much we admired the practical effects and cinematography. We discuss Zazie Beetz carrying the film, the thin sister-family drama setup, and the central premise: a satanic, ultra-wealthy cult in The Virgil building whose members can regenerate after being “killed.”
From the samurai-sword bloodbath to the sentient eyeball gag, the fire-axe cafeteria fight, and the pig-headed devil ritual, we debate whether it’s fun homage or too derivative, and who we’d recommend it to for a movie night.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript They Will Kill You (2026)Episode 501, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week we are doing a brand new movie, 2026, They Will Kill You. Was this a Netflix one or was this a Shudder one? Yep, it’s an Amazon one. So yeah, this one, uh, was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa. I thought that was interesting. And just came out in March of this year, so it’s pretty fresh.
You, uh, picked this one. I had never even heard of it, ’cause I’m really not up on the new stuff. So, uh, let me know what, what, what were your thoughts, uh, going in? Had you seen this before?
Craig: No, but I had seen the trailer for it in the theater. I see so few movies in the theater anymore, but honestly, I don’t even remember what movie I was seeing.
But I remember seeing this trailer and I thought that it looked cool for a big horror movie. But the big draw for me was Patricia Arquette.
Yeah.
Craig: I’m just a big fan of hers. I, I always have been. She’s always been cool. I don’t know how old she is, but I feel like we kind of grew up with her. I think she’s probably a little bit older than we are, but-
Todd: Yeah
Craig: but she was always just kind of that cool chick in movies, but also in life. Like- She’s kind of the epitome of like I don’t give a fuck. Like she just does whatever she wants to do and she just is who she is and she’s a cool person and I like her. So I was drawn to that and then it’s been kind of a low-key summer for me ’cause I’ve been recuperating from a relatively minor surgery but I’ve been spending a lot of time at home and watching a lot of movies and this popped up on Amazon and I remembered having seen the trailer and so I watched it.
And when I was watching it, there were just moments where something would happen and it’s, it’s more than something would happen. It’s like the dynamic would change. I would just get a huge smile on my face- Uh-huh … either out of amusement or, “Oh, Todd’s gonna like this.”
Like
Craig: And, and thinking about you specifically but anybody who’s kind of into horror and the kind of things
I, I don’t know. I thought that this would appeal specifically to your sensibilities but I, I think that it, it could be broadly appreciated as well.
Todd: It very much does and honestly not really as a horror movie. I just kept thinking of Quentin Tarantino through the whole thing.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: It just smells like something he would do.
It’s wild, it’s over the top. It’s very much a throwback to ’70s era Asian cinema in many ways. There’s lots of martial arts style action in here. There’s over the top violence but it’s very stylized in the way that he tends to stylize it. I would say him, a bit of Sam Raimi sometimes.
Yeah.
Todd: A little bit of Robert Rodriguez, you know, as well.
All three of those guys clearly inspired this director, Kirill Sokolov, a Russian director who did a couple things before this. Nothing I’ve seen but some things I’d kinda like to see after seeing this. He did a m- a movie called Why Don’t You Just Die, which looks again like a very Tarantino-esque type film.
It’s billed on, uh, IMDb as a dark comedy farce slapstick drama thriller. Which this kinda is too I would say.
Yeah.
Todd: Yeah, d- I mean this is definitely a horror movie because there’s elements of the supernatural in here and of course there’s a lot of killing and, and things like that but- I mean, it’s also heavy on action, and it moves, and moves, and moves, and it’s snarky, and it’s jokey, and like I said earlier, very stylized in its presentation, in its cinematography, in the colors, and the, the vibe of the ca- you know, the vibe is just generally so easy to pinpoint that, I mean, I think a lot of people might consider this to be maybe even almost a little too derivative.
I have to admit, I did get a little bored about halfway through, because once you kinda know what’s happening and what’s going on, there aren’t too many surprises left for you, and it’s just becomes one of those action-y things where this one person’s gotta battle her way out of a bad situation against people who are very hard to kill.
And for me, that gets a little old after a while. I do kind of… I was hoping for more twists and turn- and there are a couple, but yeah, I was just kinda hoping for a little more story, I would say, than I ended up getting out of it. But it was, uh, really fun to watch, and so, uh, I’m really excited to talk about it today.
Craig: Yeah, on all of those points that you mentioned, the cinematography, and the vibe, and the colors, and, and all of that stuff, I felt like it was executed so well. I mean, I- I’m probably gonna really hype this movie up, and, and I mean to, ’cause I really enjoyed it. I thought it was super fun to watch. I think it would be super fun to watch with other people, especially the action sequences.
There’s a lot of like, oh, moments. Like- Yeah … like, it’s, it’s a fun movie. I think it would be a fun movie to react to with other people and to see other people’s reactions to it. ‘Cause all the things you’ve said, it… I immediately thought of Tarantino as well, but I also thought, well, the reason I think of Tarantino is because I’m not really well-versed in the cinema that he was inspired by.
Mm. I’m sure that this filmmaker was inspired by Tarantino, but potentially, you know, a lot of the conventions, especially the martial arts and stuff, are stuff that Tarantino was inspired by, by like you said, those films in the ’70s and whatnot.
Right.
Craig: Um, but I just thought on, despite it potentially not being perfect, I thought it kinda nailed it.
The, the, the place where I will disagree with you is I didn’t get bored, and I was with you right up to… Okay, so you were saying, you know, once it becomes somebody just kind of walking through these action pieces, a- and you didn’t say it exactly like that.
Todd: That’s it. Yeah, that’s what I meant more or less.
Craig: It, it gets a little repetitive or boring. And then you said- Something like unless it’s really good or something. And, and I thought that these were. I, I, I concur with you and I feel like we’ve watched movies where eventually if it’s just the same action over and over again, it can… You start looking at your watch.
But I was genuinely engaged in these because of the combination of all of those things. Like, I’m thinking, I don’t know, there’s a bunch of big ones. One in particular, which probably would be around the point in the movie where I would imagine you would’ve started getting bored because we’ve already seen some big action pieces at this point.
But there’s a scene in a dark, like, cafeteria that ultimately-
Todd: Oh, yeah …
Craig: ends up being like a fight scene that we’ve seen except for the, it’s shot entirely differently because it’s almost exclusively in the dark, and the director and the cinematographer and the designers do so much with the way that the space is lit.
Todd: Yeah. With the fire.
Craig: Yeah. And that engages me Enough that I’m not… I don’t know. I mean, fighting is fighting ultimately, but I, I felt like it made it, i- each scene was different enough that I was still engaged.
Todd: You know me so well because that was indeed the moment when I started to get bored, and the fire bit did make me double-take a bit.
I was like, “Okay, there’s fire.” And then, and then I was like, “Oh, oh, it’s, it, there’s nothing but fi- Oh, it’s…” Yeah, she lights her ax on f- She’s got a weapon. It’s an ax, I think. She lights it on fire and, and I was like, “Okay, yeah. All right, whatever.” And then it happens in, like you said, a dark cafeteria, and after it started going on for a little bit, I was like, “Oh, this is really interesting,” and that brought me back into it for a spell.
But you’re right. That was about, I don’t know if it was halfway through or what, but that was about the time when I started to kinda drift off into other thoughts and things, but, but that, that scene was interesting enough that it brought me back, and apparently quite difficult to shoot because they were…
Most of this movie is practical effects, and I really admire that too. That’s something I really liked about it. There are obviously some things that could only be done with CGI, but there’s so much that’s just obviously practical effects, and practical effects done well, that I really had to give a tip of my hat to the good old Kirill, the director, because, um, he clearly has a soft spot in his heart for that kind of thing, and it showed, and I really appreciate that always when I see it on screen in a modern movie.
Mm-hmm.
Todd: So, and, and what do you know about these actors? ‘Cause, um, I, I assumed as I’m watching this, ’cause again, I’m so I’m so behind on life. I assumed as I’m watching this that I should probably know this Zazie Beetz, this woman who was a top build in this, who, who’s our main character.
Craig: Yeah, I don’t know anything about her, and I, I didn’t really look her up because she wasn’t familiar to me, but she carries this whole movie and is great.
Yeah.
Craig: She’s absolutely fantastic, and, uh, j- reading stuff, uh, she just gets the highest praise from the director and, you know, her co-stars. Everybody was just blown away by her stamina. I mean, I guess that this was You know, really, a- a- and I can imagine, you can see it on screen, it looks like a really intense shoot.
Todd: Oh, yeah.
Craig: And she’s in every scene, I think. She, I mean, she carries the whole movie on her back. Without… I- if her performance had sucked-
Todd: Oh, yeah …
Craig: the, the, the, the movie would be terrible. But she’s, she’s good and she’s endearing and, and she’s a good hero. She’s tough. I mean, you look at the poster or the box art or whatever, and she’s like this badass chick who she’s got blood on her face, she’s holding up a sword in front of her face.
So you kinda get an idea.
Uh-huh.
Craig: Kind of, I guess. And, you know, all of the presumably bad guys are reflected in the machete or sword or whatever that she’s got. So you kinda get an idea of what kind of movie you’re getting, and she’s great at all of that. And there’s huge fight pieces, which we’ll get more specific about in a second, but she’s good at all of that.
But then also there’s, there’s a family drama, which I kind of don’t care about. Yeah. Me
Todd: neither.
Craig: Not because it’s not well done. She’s good at it. Like, I buy her as an actual character. She’s not just a video game protagonist. She’s got a little bit more to her. But, yeah, the whole family drama, uh, which is a good place to set it up.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Right?
Todd: Yeah, yeah, let’s… Because that’s where it starts off, was this, uh, these two sisters, right?
Craig: Right, these two sisters. We meet them when they’re younger, I guess the older one, and I- I… Is her name Asia?
Todd: Yeah, Asia.
Craig: Okay.
Todd: What a great name for a girl. I love that name.
Craig: Yeah, it is a beautiful name. And she’s got a younger sister, Maria.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: We don’t know who they are yet. We’re just following them, and they’re walking through the rain, and they go into this convenience store, and they kinda seem to be on their own, like they’re picking up some food or whatever. But then this big tattooed, hairy, scary man comes in and is looking for them, and it turns out it’s their dad.
Is it their dad or their stepdad? I don’t remember.
Todd: I’m pretty sure it’s their father, yeah.
Craig: But he’s looking for them, and they try to run away, and they run outside. And again, it’s all in the rain. It’s shot beautifully. But they kind of get caught, and it culminates, and she… Did she have a gun?
Todd: I can’t remember how she got the gun.
Feel like she got it off of somebody, but God knows if I n- if I, if I remember how. I
Craig: don’t remember, but she has one, and she points it at him, and it’s kind of a standoff, and he’s basically taunting her like, “You won’t do it.”
Clip: You stupid little bitch What you gonna do, shoot your own father?
Todd: You’ll never touch her again.
Craig: But she does do it. She shoots him, but then the police arrive and presu
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A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
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Notas do episódio
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We celebrate our 500th episode by diving into 1988’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and why it feels like the “MTV Nightmare”—fast, colorful, wildly visual, and packed with some of the series’ most inventive kills.We talk Renny Harlin, writer’s-strike, collaborative production, how the film cemented Freddy’s mainstream, quippier icon status, and why it became a massive independent hit despite critics like Roger Ebert.
We break down the thin-but-fun vignette structure, the recasting of Kristen (and our near-miss getting Harlin on the show), Alice’s “power” progression, and standout sequences like Joey’s waterbed “wet dream,” Sheila’s classroom death, Rick’s dojo showdown, the surreal movie-theater nightmare, and Debbie’s unforgettable roach-motel kill. We also reflect on franchise highs/lows, Freddy’s future.
Thanks for sticking with us all these years!
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)Episode 500, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to the 500th episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Holy crap, bro. 500. Can you believe it?
Craig: No. It, it, it doesn’t seem possible. There’s, there’s not 500 episodes of anything.
Todd: Really. Honestly, I’ve looked out there. I’ve tried to figure this out, and to the best of my knowledge, to the best of my knowledge, we are the longest-running horror podcast out there.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: I would challenge our listeners to prove me wrong, and I hope you do. You know, prove me wrong. If, if I’m not right, I’m not right. But even those podcasts out there that have m- maybe more than 500 episodes, they just, you know, record a little more frequently than we do. And I have yet to find one that goes back to 2015, I believe.
Craig: That’s crazy.
Todd: Yeah, I believe it was September or August of 2015 when we started this whole mess, and, uh, we have been doing it nonstop almost every week. We’ve missed a few weeks here and there over the five year, you know, 10 years. Cut us some slack. But, uh, o- overall, mathematically, we have made it to 500 in, uh, over 10 years, and I feel like, uh, that’s an accomplishment.
We’ve been podcasting longer than podcasting was cool.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And that’s probably the only thing I’ve been doing, you know, ahead of the curve.
Everything else is far behind. Yeah.
Craig: That’s funny. Yeah, I don’t know. 500 feels impossible. I bet I couldn’t name 50 movies that we’ve done. I know. I’m not sure I could name 50 movies, period, off the top of my head.
Todd: You’re starting to sound like your mom.
Craig: I know. Well, and people, people ask me about movies we’ve done, and I’m like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Todd: I know. Now it’s getting to the point where we’ll, like, suggest movies to each other and we’ll be like, “Have we done that one? Let’s go back and check.” I have to actually go to the website and do a search to see if we’ve talked about a particular movie. Yeah. That’s how crazy… But also, maybe we’re just getting old and our brains are fried.
Craig: Well, I think it’s both, but it’s, it’s been fun and it’s exciting. I mean, 500 does feel like a pretty big milestone. I have a feeling…
Todd: Have you ever done 500 of anything, Craig?
Craig: No. I don’t think I have. This may be, uh… This, this may be our biggest milestone. I, I don’t know. Uh, I don’t know if I’ve got another 12 years in me.
Or 10 years or however long it’s been.
Todd: I hope you do. I really do. I, you know-
Craig: Well, I hope so in general, but I don’t know about, I don’t know about the… I hope I’ve got at least 10 years in me in, in general. Just podcast, I don’t know. We’ll, we’ll see. We’ll see. You never know.
Todd: Yeah, you’re wearing a little thin on me, you know.
Plus- Yeah … I mean, there, uh, there aren’t that many horror movies, are there? Are there that many horror movies? We do scrape the bottom of the barrel occasionally.
Craig: Well, it feels like we are sometimes, but, but the good news is, you know, I don’t wanna exaggerate, but it feels like horror is really kinda back in a big way.
Like, it’s- Hmm … really popular, and there’s really good stuff- Yeah … coming out. Not… You know, all over the place. We talk about it all the time how just because we’re- We do … so saturated, yeah, with, you know, streaming and everything, there are so many outlets, which is, is good. It gives outlets for creative people who may not have as much money as big studio projects or whatever.
But also we’re seeing, you know, some of those smaller filmmakers becoming recognized and then making their way into the theaters Yeah So I think, I think even though sometimes it feels like we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel a little bit, I think there’s a lot of really good stuff coming out.
You’re just gonna have a harder time finding obscure ’70s and ’80s stuff, ’cause they’re not making more of those.
Todd: I don’t know. I, I, I feel like there are not enough weeks in the year for all the obscure things that are in my list. You have no idea. You have no idea what I have waiting to throw at you.
Clip: Yeah.
Todd: So I have to hold back, ’cause I don’t wanna, you know, make you mad at me for so lo- You know, we wanna keep this going a little while longer. I don’t wanna piss you off too much. So I try to temper my… You know, I try to throw a newer one in there, something a little more mainstream, something a little less weird.
But I’ve got a long-ass list of weird shit that we may never, ever get to. I think about this a lot, and actually, you know, when you said horror’s coming back into fashion, I think we’ve both talked about this, how horror never really leaves-
Craig: No …
Todd: fashion, does it? It’s, it seems to be the one, one of the few evergreen genres out there.
Pro- Romance is probably another one. But, like, especially horror, it comes and goes from the m- what you might quote, unquote call “the mainstream,” but I feel like that’s more a function of the media than anything else. I think s- the audience for horror is pretty solid, and it has remained pretty solid. But it’s only every, I don’t know, 5, 10 years that the mainstream media latches onto a particular movie that does particularly well, and then, you know, there are 20 other movies just like it that come out, ’cause that’s…
Well, that’s not just how horror goes, that’s how movies go in general.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And so then it feels like they’re, “Oh, there’s a resurgence in horror. There’s a new trend.” And all of us horror fans are just sitting here smugly nodding our heads going, “Yeah, I mean, this is, this is our lives.” “This is our day-to-day.”
And, and it is for so many people. You know, it’s been known for quite some time that if you wanna make money, if you’re gonna bet on a genre, go for horror, and you’re probably gonna make some money even if your movie is, is subpar or, or minimal or whatever. You got a good story to tell, horror fans are very forgiving.
Yeah. And that’s what I like about it. And I’ll tell you right now, on our 500th episode, I’m making a prediction. I don’t think it’s particularly groundbreaking, but something came to me as we’re watching some of these older movies that we just love, sometimes just by the pure scrappiness of them, right?
Clip: Uh-huh.
Todd: Like, we’ve seen so many movies on this podcast where we’re like, “The movie objectively is dumb.”
Clip: Right.
Todd: Or, “It’s objectively kinda bad, and we shouldn’t objectively enjoy watching it.” Except you can see that some people got together and they made a thing using the resources that they had- Their heart was in it.
A- a- and, and there’s something charming and fun about watching that.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: And I, I feel like the horror audience seems to be more accepting of that than most. We take a lot of pleasure in practical effects.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Things that aren’t so polished, stories that are nonexistent, but as long as there’s something in there that grabs us, we’re generally entertained and we’re encouraging.
And I feel like in this era that we’re moving into with AI-
Clip: Mm …
Todd: where a lot of what we see is being generated by computers and not humans, that maybe, just maybe, overall we’re gonna trend towards this even more I have a feeling that overall, the film-going public and the book-reading public and whatever-going public is going to suddenly become far less critical and far more forgiving of imperfection because it’s human.
There’s more that we enjoy about a movie than how polished and slick it is. We like a particular actor. We like a particular vibe. We like the story. I mean, the story’s key. We like the visuals and all these things. If one or two of those elements really clicks, it’s enough, and you can get wrapped up in the idea that here is this piece of art that some people got together and put tremendous resources into making, and that’s something to celebrate.
I think that when we see a lot of this machine-made stuff flood the market, no matter how polished it feels, it lacks some of what ultimately I think is a big part of what brings us joy about watching a movie. And I feel like the pendulum’s gonna swing pretty hard in that direction, where people are gonna really seek out some of the stuff that was scrappier, more low budget, more put together, feels more human because it’s going to be rarer in the coming years.
That’s my prediction.
Craig: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you’re wrong. I think that it, it’s a huge discussion that g- we would have to record a whole different podcast on about, you know, like can machines make art? Isn’t art an inherently human thing? I mean, all, all a machine can do is imitate really, uh- Right,
Todd: what humans have already produced.
Craig: Right. And so I just think, yeah, I mean, it, it will lack the human element. It will… And y- that’s a, a big thing to apply to some of the horror stuff that we’ve talked about that certainly is not high art, but still you see the creative drive behind it. You see the passion behind it, and I’ve yet to see something created ba- by AI that inspired that kind of feeling or reaction in me.
Now, who’s to say? Maybe AI will come up with something brilliant and I’ll have to eat my words. I don’t know. But I, yeah, I think you’re right that we’re gonna con- that we may be more forgiving because ultimately we see the, the passion and the, the effort behind it, and it’s, it’s… It will become more refreshing as we’re inundated with all of this AI-generated stuff.
Todd: I mean, you say more forgiving. I feel like there’s gonna be a craving for it. I really do. I feel like the people are going to want stuff that’s homemade, you know, like handmade I s- I suppose.
Craig: Well, we already do. I, you know, I don’t… I, I think there are very few people out there that are, like, clamoring for the advent of AI-controlled filmmaking or…
You know what I mean? Like-
Todd: For sure. It dazzles us for a little bit, and the novelty of it.
Craig: Right. But I don’t think anybody’s like, “Oh, thank God, AI’s finally gonna replace real filmmaking.” I think w- we are drawn to films or any artwork because it moves us in some way, and I don’t think… I don’t know.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Getting too philosophical. Well,
Todd: I think it dovetails nicely into the movie that we’re talking about today. We’re not that clever. We didn’t intend to dovetail it like this. But it was put together during a writer’s strike.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And in that regard, there was no real script behind it, and so it was a real collaborative effort between a fairly new director who was really trying to prove himself-
Craig: Uh-huh
Todd: a handful of seasoned special effects artists that we’ve talked about ad nauseam, who have done other projects, who came together, and actors, some new, some, uh… It just, it, it feels like a turning point in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise on its face. Like, you don’t need to be told this, you know? You watch it, and you feel like this movie is different.
It definitely comes from that process. There’s definite improvisation going on from a, on a day-to-day basis. Uh, you know, when you read about the behind-the-scenes of Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, which is what we’re doing, directed by Renny Harlin, who hung out in the studios of New Line Cinema until they couldn’t send him away.
And basically, Robert Shaye was desperate for a director for the new one, ’cause they had to put a new one out because the third one did so well-
Craig: Uh-huh …
Todd: unexpectedly, and, uh, was finally like, “All right. We&#
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Hell High
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We talk about its odd production history (including star Christopher Stryker’s tragic death before release), the bizarrely charming opening trauma, and how the film mashes together slasher tropes with “teens cause a death” and light Last House/I Spit On Your Grave vibes.
From Dickens and his outcast crew to the incoherent football-game detours, swamp “slime” gathering, and a prank that turns into an unsettling assault, we break down the movie’s tonal whiplash and why the inciting incident arrives way too late.
We also cover the rushed revenge ending, the goofy cover-up plan, and the final twist, plus call out Christopher Cousins (Breaking Bad) and Daniel Beer (Creepshow 2).
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Hell High (1989)Episode 499, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Today was my turn to pick, and, uh, this week I found something that kind of dug out from the l- long list I have of ’80s movies that I’ve touched on or heard about somewhere. Somebody might have recommended along the way.
I don’t believe anybody I know has ever recommended this movie to me. Looking at it, I was kind of surprised that I hadn’t really heard of it or seen it, but it’s a 1987… Well, 1989 was when it was finally released, but it was filmed years before that. If you look in Wikipedia, it says 1989. If you look on IMDb, it says 1987.
But actually, it was shot in 1985. So I don’t know, I guess they were splitting the difference somewhere in there because the, one of the stars had died shortly after the movie was completed, I suppose. Anyway, this is Hell High, and, uh, yeah, I had never seen this before. I don’t even think I’d ever seen it on the video store shelves.
How about you, Craig? Did, did this ever cross your path?
Craig: No, I don’t think I’d ever even heard of it before. And, and I don’t know what else to say about it beyond that. It, it was entirely n- I knew nothing about it going in. I mean, it was unfamiliar. I didn’t really recognize any of the people in it or anything.
So I’m always surprised when we come across these ’cause I- Yeah … I always kinda feel like we’ve seen everything at this point.
Todd: We sure do, and yet
Craig: And it’s, right, and yet, and especially something, you know, this is kinda right up our alley. And I’m less surprised when the movies are really, really bad. Like, that doesn’t surprise me so much.
Like, yeah, people don’t really talk about it ’cause it’s so bad, but this movie’s not bad.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I would say it’s, uh, competent and fairly par for the course for the time period. In terms of, like, how well-made it is, I think it’s pretty well-made.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: By comparison, pretty darn good for the time. So I’m, yeah, I was surprised that I had never heard of it before.
Todd: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if I would ultimately call this movie good, but I think I know what you mean in the sense that, like, we see a lot of trash.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: We see a lot of cheaply shot, amateur kinda stuff, and this movie is… It actually is well-filmed and well-lit and has a story of s- interesting story. You can tell that they’re going for something, uh, pretty typical for the time.
To me, it was almost a combination. I wasn’t sure if they were going for I Spit On Your Grave light. Oh, I wouldn’t say rape revenge, right? Because that’s really not exactly what happens here, but-
Craig: Yeah, but sexual violence type stuff, yeah.
Todd: Exactly.
Craig: Last House on the Left light, huh? Right. Kind of.
Todd: But very light.
But also you kinda cross that with, like, Teaching Mrs. Tingle or, oh, I think of the House on Sorority Row where-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: you know, or even I Know What You Did Last Summer, where some teens are responsible for a death and then end up paying for it in some way. So it’s kinda got both of those elements in it. I just kept getting flashes to those things as we went.
I think the thing that surprised me the most is that this is the director’s… Well, so the, it’s written and directed by the same guy, David Grossman. There’s another writer credited, but he didn’t really do anything else, and David Grossman really didn’t do anything else either, like wrote one other movie, and that was it.
So, like, it’s a one and done for this guy’s directing career as far as we know, and more or less writing career as well. And most of the people in here, acting wise, this is either the only movie they did or the only thing of note that they really did, with a couple exceptions There are a couple people in this cast who went on to very successful careers, and, and one of the stars who’s a little bit older was a, a television actress.
So we’ll talk about them as we come across. It’s just weird because usually with these older movies, a- and we’ve been doing a lot of them lately, it’s like, oh, w- look, you’re seeing this guy before he went on to do all these things, and oh, this director was kinda like their first shot at it, and then they went on to do a few more things.
And this movie isn’t really like that at all, even though it’s a pretty good movie all things considered.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: You know, there’s no reason why probably they couldn’t have used some of this movie to, uh, you know, as part of their resume. I was kind of surprised, but not really, ’cause it’s kinda typical for these movies too.
The shooting was all completed in 18- 1985. I think it took 18 days. The whole movie was edited and everything i- by ’86, but it wasn’t even released until 1989.
Craig: Do we know why? I don’t remember reading why it was delayed so long.
Todd: I wish I could have figured it out, but I couldn’t find any information on that at all.
Craig: I mean, I, I… These things happen. I mean, it, you know, it, it still happens today. Of course. Sometimes movies just get shelved for whatever reason. But like as you mentioned, you know, one of the main guys, I don’t know his name ’cause I didn’t recognize any of these people, uh, the guy who plays Dickens in this movie, a guy named Christopher Stryker.
Todd: Christopher Stryker. What a badass name, by the way. Stryker. Christopher Stryker. What if Curtains… Didn’t Curtains have like a main character’s name was Stryker? I don’t remember. Oh, God. Uh, but this movie remi- no, I, I g-
Craig: I get this movie mixed up with, not mixed up with, but it reminds me of several things. I feel like Curtains may be one of them, Pieces because-
Todd: Oh, yeah …
Craig: it’s one of those, it’s one of those typical movies where some traumatic childhood thing is going to lead to trouble later on. But- Yeah … anyway, this young actor, Christopher Stryker, who plays a despicable character, uh, in the movie- Oh,
Todd: yeah
Craig: but, uh, it was kinda tragic because he filmed this and then before its release, uh, so he never even saw it, but before its release he passed away of AIDS. And I, I guess that he was a, a stage actor, and he had, I don’t know if it was on Broadway or, or where, but he had been in a production of Torch Song Trilogy, which is a great gay play.
But yeah, it’s, he, he passed away before it came out, which is too bad.
Todd: That’s awful. 27 years old, right? Like-
Craig: 27, I know …
Todd: Jesus.
Craig: Yeah, it’s sad.
Todd: That was a time.
Craig: I actually found this open- this opening to be really charming.
Todd: It is-
Craig: I thought it w- … in its own way … well, first of all there, you know, the, the title that came up on the version that I watched was Real Trouble.
I guess it was filmed on a, under a couple of different titles. Real Trouble was one of them, and then I guess at the last minute they changed it to Hell High to try to make it kind of a more typical horror title to entice audiences or whatever.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: But then you see this little blonde girl in like a pink baby doll dress.
Todd: Oh my God. That’s so typical.
Craig: And she’s, I don’t know, she’s got like gold ringlet hair, and she’s like skipping down this, uh, dirt road.
Todd: With these white shoes and-
Craig: Yeah, like- Tights … like white patent leather shoes. Right. Like, she looks like a baby doll. And you hear a, a woman’s voice recorded over, “Brooke, don’t you dare go off to the swamp or you’ll get a spanking.”
And then she’s skipping off down the road. It’s so quaint and funny, and it’s all shot like through kind of a dreamy filter I feel like. And then she gets to this old shed that apparently she uses as like a playhouse. It- And she’s got a bunch of dolls in there and stuff.
Todd: This is presumably in a swamp, but it’s really just a field-
with a puddle in
Craig: it. There’s, there’s just something along a dirt road.
Clip: Yeah.
Craig: Yeah. Oh, and there is a puddle.
I forgot this was supposed to be a swamp. Gosh, yeah. That comes in later, too. It’s hilarious. But she hears something, like a motor or something, so she sneaks out the back.
Todd: It’s just like a cartoon, right? There are like two boards that just swing-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: swing open. And just- Yeah … and she just crawls through it, and then peeks through with her big blue, as blue can be, eyes looking right through these, this gap in these boards at what’s gonna happen inside.
Craig: Yeah. And what happens inside is this guy pulls up on a motorcycle with a girl on the back, and they come into the shed, and he throws her violently to the ground and starts-
Todd: Fondling her …
Craig: accosting her. Yeah. Yeah, like he pulls up her shirt and starts fondling her boobs. And she… Like, I, I thought that he had brought her here to like assault her, but apparently this is just how he rolls, I guess?
I know, right? And, and she’s, and she’s like, she’s like, “Knock it off. Not here. This place creeps me out.” And he’s not even nice. It’s so weird
Clip: How can you not feel safe? Come on, we haven’t got all day. I don’t like this place. What’s there not to like? Come on, let’s go. I-
Craig: Oh my gosh. But eventually, I don’t know, she pushes him off, and they, they almost have sex, and the girl’s watching all of this through an enormous crack in the wall, like- Mm-hmm
how they don’t see her, I don’t know. I know. But they leave, and they drive off on the motorcycle, and then they turn around. Like, they had to go up the road to make a U-ey or something. And meanwhile, while they’re doing that, she’s behind the shed with this one little puddle where she, like, scoops up some slime, and when they come driving back down the road, she throws the mud on them-
Clip: Mm-hmm
Craig: and they and they crash. And they crash and somehow both get impaled on different huge spikes that just happened to be sticking out of the ground. I don’t have- I don’t know … any idea what this is. But- But it’s hilarious. It, it’s so funny because, like, they are both just impaled on these huge poles. Oh, and it’s so bloody and gross and she’s just- Oh my God
and she just runs home.
Todd: It’s hilarious because it- you would almost think you’re watching an intentional comedy-
Craig: Uh-huh …
Todd: because of how random this is. By the way, I gotta mention these two, this, this couple here. This guy is a longtime stunt guy. He got started in 1981 on Friday the 13th Part II doing stunts.
Went on to do stunts or be a stunt coordinator on so many popular movies. Sleepaway Camp, Alone in the Dark, The Flamingo Kid, The Money Pit, Angel Heart, Innerspace, Teen Wolf Too, Bull Durham. G- dude, you just read through his entire… JFK. I didn’t know there were stunts in JFK. I guess there were.
Craig: Huh.
Todd: But, like, you read through his entire resume, and it’s insane.
Almost every movie since 1981 that’s had stunts in it, including all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies-
Craig: Wow …
Todd: yeah, this guy has been a stunt, either a stunt performer or a stunt coordinator on. I- incredible. I guess this was one of his first stunts. Getting impaled on this thing. Maybe this is what inspired him.
Craig: That’s funny.
Todd: It’s so charming, though. Like you said, like, everything about this is just uber cute, from the way the girl is dressed to, like you said, this is such a typical start for all these horror movies right now is there’s some traumatic childhood incident that happens. It’s usually sexual in nature, like this one is.
And then the way that they’re just&
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Heretic
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We praise the film’s claustrophobic, dimly lit first half as Hugh Grant’s Reed lures Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) into a polite but escalating philosophical trap, using arguments against religion while the women prove smart and resourceful.
We debate plot contrivances, Reed’s improvised psychopathy, and the intentionally ambiguous ending that raises existential questions without taking a firm stance.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Heretic (2024)Episode 498, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, this week, Craig, was your choice, and you chose a pretty modern film, 2024’s Heretic, which was actually pretty well-reviewed when it came out. I think it’s got a seven on IMDb. It’s got at least 80 or 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. And, uh, it was done by the same guys who did another movie or two that people were pretty impressed with, which was A Quiet Place- Mm-hmm
I believe. And we also did Haunt in 2019, and I think we enjoyed that one quite a bit, if I remember correctly.
Craig: I think so, yeah.
Todd: But he- they’ve done quite a few other things. The Boogeyman. I don’t know. The Quiet Place really took off, right? But I think they only did the screenplay and story for the original.
Craig: Yeah. They were writers on it, I think.
Todd: So, uh, Heretic, I had actually seen this twice before . I don’t remember why. When we org- when you originally brought this up, I thought we had done it on the podcast ’cause normally I just don’t watch horror movies until… unless we’re gonna do them for the podcasts these days.
And, uh, it must have been somebody who really wanted to see this with me. So we, uh, took a look at it, and I saw it and, and, I don’t know, maybe went back to see it again with somebody else. I, I enjoyed the movie, and I was really happy to watch it the second time around. Even though it has twists and turns in it, I think it was the kind of film that w- works even better on a second viewing once you kinda know where it’s going because it gets a little heady at times.
And so it’s good to have the second opportunity to go through it again with a more critical eye and kinda decode the messages that it’s trying to say because the, the writers of this movie really took, took their time with it. I think they said that they worked for about 10 years on the screenplay just because they were doing, uh, research on theology and stuff like that and really wanted to make it deep, so.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Here we are, Heretic, starring Hugh Grant as well. How about you? Why did you recommend this? I assume you’d seen it before?
Craig: I had seen it before, and I don’t remember when, but it’s been a while. I would say at least a year, if not more. And I don’t remember when I saw it the first time if I knew anything about it.
I maybe had seen a trailer, but I, I just remember that when I watched it, I thought, “Oh, this would be a really good one to talk about on the podcast.” And I may have mentioned it at some point, but we never got around to it, and I kinda forgot about it, and that happens all the time.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: But, uh, I was looking for something to watch, and I stumbled across it again, and we needed something to watch, and, and I thought it would be interesting to talk about- Yeah
for a variety of reasons. But it’s funny because you… When, when I brought it up, you’re like, “Haven’t we already done that?” And the more I thought about it, I was like maybe we did, but we didn’t, I don’t think.
Todd: It’s not coming up on my search.
Craig: No. I, I th- I think maybe part of the reason that I thought that we had is because after this movie was over, I feel like I thought about it a lot.
Mm. And so maybe that translates into memory of talking about it. But that’s one of the things that I like about this movie, and it’s an A24 movie, right?
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And, you know, A24 is getting really big, and, and they’re kinda branching out and doing different things, but my experience with them has been really positive.
I tend to really like the stuff that they put out because it’s unique and interesting and often unexpected. The stories themselves or, or twists in the stories often take me by surprise, which is refreshing. They’re entertaining, and they’re well made, which is the most important. You know, those are the most important parts, but they also tend to make me think more than your typical fare.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And I don’t need tha- And I don’t need that all the time. I don’t need horror movies or movies in general to really make me think. In fact, sometimes I don’t want that. No, right. Sometimes I’m going, sometimes I’m going to movies specifically so that I don’t have to think, especially about serious things.
But occasionally, and when it’s done well, I like it, and this is one of those cases.
Todd: Yeah. A24 reminds me of what the film industry kinda used to be like. particularly in the ’70s, right, when it was really exploding with a lot of experimental movies and a lot of independent cinema that made it to the big screen.
Like, the, the movie-going audience had a lot to choose from, and this was sort of before the age of the blockbuster, right? So nowadays, the studio model seems to be let’s invest a lot of marketing and money into these huge tentpole films that are almost guaranteed successes- Mm-hmm … so that we can stay afloat and y- and then fund, you know, the smaller movies as well.
But, but they seem to do less and less of funding smaller movies, and they just wanna go from tentpole to tentpole. It’s like the book industry. I read that at one point, and I think it’s still true today, that it’s really the blockbuster authors that float Every major publishing house. But publishers, editors then, you know, take that money and they turn around and, and invest it in taking chances on newer authors.
Sure. That’s what editors pride themselves in doing. Whereas the movie industry s- I- seems to be veering away from that model. Anyway, it’s a lot more expensive nowadays to make movies, and it’s harder to get them distributed if you’re not a big, giant studio, and movie theaters basically just show the big studio films and are not gonna take a chance on some indie production.
The days of sh- you know, shooting your movie with your friends and shopping around to movie theaters and drive-ins and stuff are over. So, you know, that’s kinda changed the kind of films that we get, and so it’s really neat to see a studio like A24 get well-known for doing these kind of movies that are just off the beaten path.
They’re unique, like you said. It seems like they take a lot of chances on really odd, interesting, bizarre, fun material. You kinda know you’re guaranteed to get a film like this. You may not like it, it may not be successful, but God, they’ve had a lot of hits.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And this is just exactly the kind of film that they make.
I mean, when you’re open up an A24 movie, this is exactly the kind of movie you’re hoping to get, I think.
Craig: You … Well, I, I think part of the fun of it is that you never really know what you’re gonna get. This movie surprised me in several ways. I, i- in fact, in at least one way, to me, it kind of feels like two different movies.
The first half and the second half feel like very different kinds of movies, and I like them both, and, and the transition is interesting, but I think that’s … Whether or not the balance works, I, I think is a good point for debate. But you mentioned the directors. I don’t remember who. I- it’s a team, a writing and directing team, and I don’t remember which one of them it was, but one of them was inspired to think about this story by the death of his own father.
And when his father passed away, uh, you know, and, and he was an adult, it, of course, made him start having, like, existential thoughts about life and death and, and belief and faith and, and what happens to us after we die and, and all that stuff, and he wanted to take kind of a serious approach. He wanted to approach the idea of religion and faith and death and the afterlife, he wanted to approach it in a serious way, but in a horror movie.
I don’t know. You know, i- in terms of … You, you mentioned before, like, I don’t remember even exactly the context of what you were talking about, but you s- you said something about, like, what the movie has to say or what these types of movies have to say. I don’t know if I walk away from this movie feeling like it really has a strong message one way or the other It almost presents itself like an existential puzzle.
Yeah. It, it’s more … I, it, it … To me, it feels more about presenting questions- Than providing answers … than about positing a lot of answers. Right.
Todd: Yeah. I think it’s deliberately vague in the end, and I feel like that’s just as well. Some people might call it cop-out, I suppose. But I don’t know, these movies about kind of a crazy person or crazy religious person, they don’t tend to do themselves many favors if they try to land one way or the other on some religious debate.
Like, what is the meaning of life? Does God exist? You know, that kind of thing. So much easier to just be like, “Well, this is this one unhinged person’s perspective,” and you can just leave it at that because it’s a horror movie. We’re, we’re, we’re looking at what he does with who he is in- instead of necessarily solve those questions.
It’s not really the forum for that I think.
Craig: Yeah. A- and, and to, you know, talk about crazy people or, or, or zealots or crazy religious people or people who are trying to answer these big questions about God and faith and, and life and death and all of those things, that is kind of a stock-type character, but that’s one of the many ways that this movie subverts things for me.
Because Hugh Grant, they wrote this movie at least in part with Hugh Grant in mind because they had seen, he had said somewhere in an interview that he feared falling into a particular niche or, or category and, and being typecast. And, and there was a period in his career where he was doing very, very well, uh, you know, professionally and financially, but I, I don’t think that he really was thrilled doing all of those rom-coms in the ’90s.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: So they wrote this with him in mind and, and he was a little … I wouldn’t say that he was reluctant to take it based on what I read, but he was … There was a lot of conversation that was had, and he had a lot of input before he finally decided to take it, and he did. But Hugh Grant is really charming and really charismatic and handsome, and his character is also Clearly really smart and well, I don’t know if well-educated is the right word, but well-read.
You know? Like, he kinda knows what he’s talking about. And, and we’re, we’re jumping the gun, but as an antagonist, which he seems to be, you- I found myself not necessarily agreeing with him, but z- like seeing his point of view. He, he, he wasn’t just a bad guy. He is a bad guy n- no question, but, uh, a- an interesting one.
And another way, I don’t know. I don’t think that this subverted any expectations for me, but it would’ve been easy. The, the movie focuses on these two young women. Everybody, the three main characters, none of them are given first names. Hugh Grant’s name is Reed, Mr. Reed, and the girls’ names are Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, who are Mormon missionaries, and they’re, they’re going door to door to spread the word or whatever.
Sister Barnes is played by Sophie Thatcher, who I’m a huge fan of. I mean, she’s really establishing herself as a scream queen in the genre right now. She’s done a lot of big budget movies. She is in the, the Showtime series Yellowjackets, which is a really good show, and she’s… It’s a great show and a great ensemble cast, but she’s a highlight.
And then Sister Paxton is played by a girl named Chloe East, who I don’t really know a whole lot about But she’s great in this movie too. It focuses primarily on these three core characters, and they’re just all really good. They’re all played really well. It’s shot really well. It’s directed really well.
But it would’ve been easy and stupid for them to make these girls, uh, stereotypical.
Todd: Uh-huh.
Craig: I- either as Mormons. They even talk about… They, they mention the, the South Park guys’ musical Book of Mormon and- Mm-hmm … you know, are kind of concerned that that might be people’s perception of them. I don’t think that the, the filmmakers had any interest in belittling or making fun of Mormons, and I think that that’s kind of l- for whatever reason, maybe it has to do with the South Park guys’ musical, but it seems like that’s kind of low-hanging fruit.
And the approach to these young women, not only do they seem kind and, and respectful and, and courteous and, and all of those things, but they’re smart and, and resourceful. Though Mr. Reed ultimately challenges their faith, it doesn’t seem to be an attack on any particular faith or denomination, and I appreciated that too.
Todd: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of space in this movie for us to really dive too deep into their characters. A lot of it is dialogue between them and him, and not much of it gets terribly personal. It’s mostly philosophical, and then by the end of the movie, it’s just them trying to survive. I wouldn’t say that I feel like these are two…
Maybe the diversity here comes from the fact you have two different girls. You know, they’re not alike. They’re alike in the fact that they’re Mormon and they’re missionaries and they’
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Pandemonium
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Notas do episódio
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We head into horror-comedy with Pandemonium (1982), a PG-rated slasher parody Todd discovered while looking into Paul Reubens’ filmography.Despite an “insane” cast packed with recognizable comedians and performers, we talk about why the movie tanked, why it feels plotless, and how its nonstop juvenile gags, dated stereotypes, and heavy improvisation don’t land for us.
We dig into behind-the-scenes factors—director Alfred Sole admitting he didn’t know how to direct comedy, mismatched performance styles, and the title change from Thursday the 12th to Pandemonium—and we walk through key bits like the opening javelin kill, the cheer-camp setup, and the final reveal.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Pandemonium (1982)Episode 497, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week I thought we would go into the horror comedy section with something that I’ll bet nobody, maybe none of our listeners have ever heard of. I would be surprised because I thought that I would have heard of this movie.
As soon as I heard about it, I thought, “
Craig: Oh my God, Craig,
Todd: we have to do this.” And I think I discovered it around the time that Paul Reubens died.
Yeah, I think I… Yeah.
Todd: Yeah, I was looking up… So it was a couple years ago maybe. I was looking up stuff that he had been in and this came across and I looked over it. Oh, it’s, it’s a comedy. But then I realized it was a parody of slasher movies.
And then I looked at the cast and I’m like, “There is no way.” This movie just didn’t seem like it could exist without me knowing about it. It’s called Pandemonium from 1982. It’s rated PG. It’s not bloody or anything. It is more comedy, I would say, than horror parody, but that’s the through line. God, the cast list is insane.
If you grew up watching movies and television in the ’70s, ’80s, this is an all-star cast of comedians all together in one film. A lot of the Groundlings in here.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: So I, I thought we would watch it finally because I had it. You know, you couldn’t find this for a while. Part of the reason why we waited so long is that I had a hard time getting a hold of it.
It wasn’t streaming on anything. It wasn’t available on Amazon. I don’t remember if you could even buy a DVD. And I managed to s- track down some really, really crappy copy of it, and I was like, “Ah, this copy’s too crappy.” And at some point in time it became available on Tubi. Mm-hmm. Because I was looking for it again for the 10th time, and suddenly it popped up on Tubi and I’m like, “Well, great.”
And it’s a beautiful pristine copy of it, too.
Mm-hmm.
Todd: It looks like, yeah, like you would’ve seen it in the theater. So here we are, Pandemonium, 1982. I’m curious if you heard about this before, ’cause I never mentioned it to you.
Craig: I think maybe you did. Just… I think you’re right. I think it was when Paul Reubens passed away, we were talking about him and, and potentially what we could talk about to pay tribute to him, and I think that this came up.
But I had never heard of it before, and I didn’t really look into it then. So no, I, I had no familiarity with this movie at all, which I guess kind of surprised me only because I’m so familiar with so many of the people, not only familiar with the cast, but also at the time that the movie… Well, not at the time that it came out.
The time that it came out I would’ve been three, but- In the ’80s, some of these people were people I was really familiar with and fond of.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And, and it also seems like, I think that it was kind of obscure. It didn’t do well at all. It, it tanked for, I don’t know, people argue different reasons that I’m sure that we’ll talk about.
I think the most obvious reason is because it’s not good.
Todd: No.
Craig: But
Todd: That’s the best reason.
Craig: But I, I, I guess because it didn’t, you know, it, it, it didn’t do well, the producers or distributors or whoever just kind of dumped it into late night cable territory where I guess apparently it played fairly often.
This is the kind of movie that I would’ve expected to see on Up All Night with Rhonda Shear.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And I o- I think that that’s the only context in which this movie could be enjoyed. Yeah. You have to appoint to… You, you have to approach it from that mindset. Like-
Todd: Right …
Craig: you, you have to go into it knowing that this is going to not only be stupid, which it is, but really pretty bad.
Yeah. And it’s, it’s really not the kind of thing, I think, that you can sit down and pay close attention to and enjoy.
Todd: Yeah. It, it might be so stupid that it drives you crazy.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: Now, we’ve done some things like this. Obviously Student Bodies I think was one of the earliest horror comedies, and that predates this.
Craig: Yes.
Todd: And that one’s actually pretty good.
Craig: It was funnier than this one was.
Todd: It was funnier. I mean, it’s dated in its references of course, because it’s just referencing movies from the ’70s, and horror’s gone through a lot since then. But and it’s dated in some of its, you know, I don’t know, I think there’s like references to weed and things like that, you know, stuff that was just a little more pop culture-y at the time.
But I feel like that one- At least followed the assignment to a T. They were making a straight out slasher parody and they did it. And I find it chuckle-worthy.
Mm-hmm.
Todd: I still like it. And there, and there’s a weird… You know, there’s some interesting actors in there. There’s that guy who was really lanky who they called the Human Stick.
Remember him?
Craig: Vaguely.
Todd: I still sometimes go back and watch Student Bodies if it happens to be around and I’m bored.
Craig: Sure.
Todd: Then we did, um, as a tribute to another comedian who passed away, we did Frankenstein’s General Hospital. Remember that?
Craig: Yeah. Yeah.
Todd: God.
Craig: It was bad, too.
Todd: That was maybe worse than this one, I kinda think.
Craig: I don’t know because it, I felt like at least that one, as stupid as it was, had a plot. This movie doesn’t really have a plot.
Todd: Although you can argue that most slasher movies don’t really.
Craig: I guess. I mean, there, right, there’s that setup. Cheer camp, slasher. That’s it. Like-
Todd: Mm-hmm …
Craig: I mean, you, you’ve kind of got other bits and pieces, like jokey bits of exposition.
But ultimately none of it matters. The, the plot is entirely insignificant. It’s just A series of really juvenile, really silly gags over and over and over, and like, it, it just never stops. Like, everything is a gag. Yeah. The closest thing, I mean, like you said, Student Bodies. Student Bodies was a lot like this.
I think they did it better. I, I think that when it’s done really well, like when we’re talking like Mel Brooks or Leslie Nielsen, like Naked Gun, Airplane type stuff- Mm-hmm … those movies are stupid too, but they’re funny.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: The jokes may be dumb and juvenile and crass, but they’re funny. Yeah. This movie isn’t funny.
Todd: It’s not.
Craig: It’s not funny. No. The jokes aren’t funny. The gags aren’t funny. They’re just, they’re groaners. They’re roll your eyes, like, “Oh my God.” Like, it’s, it’s bad.
Todd: I liken it to Transylvania 6-5000.
Craig: Ugh, I liked that better than this.
Todd: Yeah. That was years after this, and that one I think benefits from maybe just the humor’s a little bit better.
Again, they’re trying… And that, you know, I think we talked about this when we talked about Transylvania 6-5000, about how some of it was so stupid. I, I think Carol Kane was in that too, wasn’t she?
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And some of it was so dumb, but you could tell they were going for this Mel Brooks style comedy.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And on paper it looked to be fine, I think, and it turned out that so much of the movie was ad-libbed.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Was, uh, was, was, you know, just these guys who were really good comedians riffing, but the, you know, it just didn’t really work because it couldn’t… Y- you just can’t have a movie like that. It just wasn’t clever enough.
And I think at that time, I’d have to go back and listen to that episode, we kinda talked about what makes a movie work and what makes it d- what makes comedy work and what makes it doesn’t. You know, like Mel Brooks’ comedies are pretty consistently funny.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And they’re really in this same vein. And the Airplane movies, what were those, Abrams?
J- Abrams and Bruckheimer movies?
Craig: I don’t remember.
Todd: They’re groaners too, but I don’t know, they’re just more fun, aren’t they?
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: And they have ensemble casts just like this one- Uh-huh … just full of stars that you’ll recognize, and people work together all the time. They work. This absolutely doesn’t.
Craig: Great.
Todd: And it’s a shame Because they’re trying. Again, I, I don’t, I don’t get it. What is the, what is the secret sauce, you know? What, what’s different?
Craig: I, I, I’m not sure. H- honestly, I, I think, and this is a huge discussion, but basically I think that to do really stupid comedy well, you have to be smart and, and you have to have a really good sense of timing.
But it’s not even just about the timing, it’s the writing. I mean, Mel Brooks’ stuff, yes, his jokes are low. Like, it, it, a lot of it is low humor, but there’s something smart underneath it. It’s not always satire or com- or, or commentary. It is sometimes, but not always. It’s just really well done. This, I read a whole lot of theories for why this is as bad as it is Because I felt kind of bad, like-
Todd: Yeah
Craig: I, I was trying to find, you know, like is there a cult audience? Like, what does this cult audience… A- and apparently there is a small one. I, I don’t know if it’s, again, just based on nostalgia, like kids who grew up catching this late at night on HBO or… But a variety of things, I think, didn’t work. First of all, the director was Alfred Sole?
Yeah. Sole? I don’t know. Whose only other, if I remember correctly, really big thing was Alice Sweet Alice, which we haven’t done, have we?
Todd: No, and why not?
Craig: I, I don’t know. I feel like I’ve started watching that movie before and, and haven’t been able to finish it. But it is kind of a notorious, and, and well-known and, you know, I think respected film in, in the horror genre.
And so he went from that to this, and a- as I understand, again, I don’t think I’ve seen it in its entirety, but as I understand, it’s kind of a stylized, you know, straight horror film, whereas this is just a goofy, off-the-wall comedy, and he has said since, “I was not a comedy director. I didn’t know how to direct comedy.”
Yeah. A- and I think that that shows. And though there are so many amazing performers in here, and again, like people that you are definitely going to recognize, it was kind of a mix-match of different styles that didn’t know how to work together.
Todd: Oh.
Craig: I didn’t think about that un- till I read it somewhere, but then h- having read it, I, I see it.
Because I read that, like you said, several of them came from the Groundlings, like Paul Reubens, who ag- is fantastic. I’m such a, a huge, huge fan. Phil Hartman, who was a genius. Tragic that he was taken in his prime. Edie McClurg, who was everywhere- Yeah. … in the ’80s, but people would know her best, I think, from she was the secretary in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and then any other number of movies where she basically played that same character.
Todd: Yeah. I-
Craig: But you’re definitely gonna recognize her. These are all Groundlings, and so they come from a really, you know, strenuous improv background. And then you’ve got these more, like, old school Hollywood actors, like Eve Arden, who… Wasn’t she the principal in Grease? Yeah. That’s who I know her from. She
Todd: was.
Craig: And, and this guy, Tom Smothers, who I don’t really know much about him, but he was kind of an older Hollywood leading man. Oh,
Todd: dude, it’s so funny you don’t know much about Tom Smothers. You never saw The Smothers Brothers on TV, did you?
Craig: No, I didn’t. I, I think that was, like… I remember my dad talking about The Smothers Brothers-
Todd: Yeah
but I don’t
Craig: think I ever saw it.
Todd: I used to watch the reruns of them all the time, and so, you know, I mean, obviously, becaus
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Motel Hell
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We talk about the film’s odd tone, slow pacing, and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre-style setup of Farmer Vincent’s famous smoked meats, plus the bizarre “garden” reveal where victims are buried up to their necks.
Along the way we dig into the performances, the dated humor, the strange character turns, and that iconic pig-head-and-chainsaw finale, including the movie’s straight-faced closing joke about “artificial preservatives.”
We also debate whether this is a charming product of its time or just too dumb to fully work today, and where it lands as a cult curiosity.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Motel Hell (1980)Episode 496 – 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig
Todd: This week, uh, thought I’d take us back to the ’80s, 1980 to be exact, to the point in which horror movies were coming big on the scene, slasher movies, things like that. Uh, we’ve done several slasher films from 1981, 1979, whatever, just around this era, oh, a few weeks ago and, and we had been- I’d been on a bit of a kick doing these, uh, old early ’80s slashers, and I promised Craig this week that I would not choose another early ’80s slasher.
We were both just ready for something fresh. So, um, I pulled up this movie that I know I had seen at some point, or at least run across on cable, maybe not seen the whole way through, but it certainly haunted the video store shelves of my childhood. And I knew it was a horror comedy, and it comes up every now and then and people talk about it as a quirky satire, comedy horror movie, blah blah blah.
And so I said, “Let’s do it, Craig. Let’s do Motel Hell.” Had you heard of this one before?
Craig: Yeah. Like you, I know I’ve seen it. I think I’ve probably seen it more than once. And I remembered a lot of things about it, but it had been a long time since I’d seen it, so I didn’t remember a whole lot. And I mean, I guess I was gonna say you could technically call this a slasher, but it’s not really.
No. It’s got a similar vibe, but it’s different in that it’s… I mean, y- you already said it’s a comedy, and it is, but it’s, it’s more of a black comedy, not a scary movie parody, slapstick, goofy comedy. It’s… I mean, it’s still silly, but it’s a little bit darker and it’s not as in your face with gags and stuff- Right
um, as, as some things.
Todd: It’s a shame too.
Craig: Well, I don’t know. I thought it struck kind of an interesting balance. Uh, I don’t know if it was perfect, but I don’t know. I’m interested to hear what you thought.
Todd: I don’t know. Like I’ll be honest with you, I had a hard time staying awake. Now, I was watching it at like 11:30 PM or something like that.
I’d had a long day. My parents are still visiting. We’ve been running a little hard, and so I was already pretty tired going into this. But I kind of expected it to perk me up. I thought this was gonna be this fun, irreverent, satirical black comedy that everybody says it is, and both my dad and I found it hard to stay awake.
About halfway through I wanted so bad to just shut it off and finish it in the morning, but unfortunately, I mean he was watching it with me and he was staying up too, so I just pushed through. So I don’t know if that affected my reception of it, but w- I was just groaning and rolling my eyes through the whole thing, and I didn’t find it particularly funny, and I didn’t find it scary at all.
I was pretty disappointed overall. It wasn’t what I remember from flashes of my childhood.
Craig: Yeah. Gosh. I don’t know how we want to approach it, but I mean, I, I feel similarly and I r- first of all, I just decided, like, I’m just gonna watch this. I’m not gonna take any notes. How serious can it be? And so I cuddle up in bed and turned all the lights off.
Had the, you know, laptop, like, right there next to me, and I got about halfway through it and I was like, “I have to turn this off and go to sleep.” And it was early, like- Ah. Like, it was earlier than I would usually go to bed. So I was like, “No, I’m just gonna wait until the morning.”
Todd: No.
Craig: And then I finish it this morning.
Yeah, I mean, it is kind of slow and there’s really not a ton that happens, but it’s odd.
Todd: Definitely odd.
Craig: Well, and I, I, I think that that oddity saves it, and I, there, like, there are some interesting performances. I don’t think it’s poorly shot or anything.
Todd: No.
Craig: And I kinda think that maybe they got what they were going for because originally, and I don’t remember, it was s- I don’t remember if it was attached to a particular director initially, but the, I know that the original script was a lot darker.
It was written by a couple of brothers, I guess, Robert and Stephen Charles Jaff, and it was, like, I don’t know, just more violent and graphic and had, like, bestiality in it and stuff. But when they got the director, Kevin Connor, he said that he would do it, but he wanted it to be a dark comedy because some of the crazier elements, I guess he thought if we played this totally straight, audiences aren’t gonna buy it.
Todd: Yeah. And I can see that.
Craig: Yeah. And I can see that too. I think it was probably… I, I, I certainly wouldn’t, I don’t think. I mean, it would, it would take a lot to get me on board with some of these plot points if they weren’t presented in a ridiculous fashion, because they are ridiculous. Yeah. So- I don’t know.
I think it was, it was, uh, intended to be a little dark and weird and quirky, but it is a little bit slow too. I mean, I… How do, how do we wanna talk about what it’s about? I mean, it’s-
Todd: Well, ultimately it’s, it’s a little bit inspired, I would say, slightly Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in that you have a, not a whole family, but you got, you got, you got a guy, and Nuts is not his wife, it’s his sister, right?
Craig: It’s, I, yeah, I thought it was his wife- For
Todd: the longest time … or
Craig: girlfriend or something for the longest time, but apparently it’s his sister,
Todd: right? Yeah. So you got Vincent and Ida, and instead of running a restaurant, they run a motel. The Motel Hello, you know, which conveniently the O burns out at points to make it Motel Hell.
Right. And he serves his famous meats. Smoked meat. Smoked meats. Farmer Vincent’s Smoked Meats. This
Craig: is it.
Todd: So it’s so similar in that way to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ’cause they had what? They had a barbecue place, didn’t they? Yeah.
Craig: I’m not confusing
Todd: that with-
Craig: That may have been part two. I don’t remember.
Todd: Oh, maybe that was part two.
Craig: They definitely did cook people up, though, and serve them to people, that’s for sure.
Todd: Yeah. And so, um, it, you know, it really kicks off with Farmer V- Vincent, who’s this man played by Rory Calhoun, who is a pretty well-known Western guy. He was in a million Westerns and all over television and stuff I think if you watch movies and TV in the ’80s, in particular if you were into Westerns, you would recognize this guy right away.
Craig: Yeah, he’s got a really recognizable face. I didn’t watch those types of things. My grandparents, my mom’s parents were into those shows, so they were kind of always on in the background. But he has that typical look, and if you look him up on- online, you’ll see old black and white photos of him where he’s, you know, a handsome, rugged kinda looking guy.
But ironically, I think I read that he was kind of known as being the reliable, trustworthy, good guy in most of the stuff that he did back in the day. So to put him in this more menacing role was a switch for him, but I thought that it played well because he’s supposed to be charming. Like, they’re well-respected in their community, and his meats are famous.
Todd: Yes. His smoked meats with no preservatives at all. I, I don’t know how this works. With
Craig: no preservatives.
Todd: I think you’d wanna refrigerate these no preservative smoked meats a lot more than they ever do in this movie, but… It’s, it’s similar, isn’t it, a way similar to Tourist Trap and Chuck Connors? I mean, it’s almost the-
Craig: Yeah.
Yeah, for sure …
Todd: it’s got a similar vibe. And you’ve got, again, this guy who played mostly, uh, the good guy in old country Westerns who’s later in his career playing against type in a horror movie just the year before this, Tourist Trap. The movie feels a bit like Tourist Trap, and- It does … weirdly enough, it’s almost like these guys swap notes, right?
Like, “Hey, uh, you should be in a horror movie like I was last year.” “Okay, I’ll do that. Thank you, partner.”
Craig: Yeah, they are strikingly similar now that you mention it. I mean, even down to I, I feel like there was old man, young… Well, that guy, whoever you were just talking about, there was a love interest that was younger than him just-
Todd: Yes
Craig: kind of like there is here, which is also-
Todd: Yes. …
Craig: weird, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The sister, Ida, is played by Nancy Parsons, and I’m like, “I recognize her. She’s been in stuff,” and she totally has. I think probably what I remember her from around the same time was Porky’s.
Clip: Yeah.
Craig: Porky’s, uh, I think, I don’t know how many of them there were.
I think there were… I know there were two. There may have been three, and I think that she played the same character. I don’t remember if she was a coach or, or what, but she was such a popular character in the first one that they put her on the poster for the second one. And she’s hilarious. And she also played Janice Van Meter in Steel Magnolias- Right
who was the heavyset woman that Dolly Parton and Olympia Dukakis make fun of on the dance floor, and they say she looks like two pigs rustling under a blanket or something.
Todd: Oh, God. Oh. Oh,
Craig: Iris Van Meter.
Todd: Back in the ’80s it was so fun to f- to laugh at fat people, right? God.
Craig: But she’s funny. Like- She is … and, and she, i- if, if you look at her IMDb, I mean, she’s again been in everything.
Th- I, I could say the same thing about Rory Calhoun. You look at his IMDb page, you know, it’s just hundreds of credits with him in one episode of such and such. And same thing with her. She played a nurse a lot. She played a coach a lot, like in one episode of that show that you used to watch. Mm-hmm. And she’s very recognizable.
And I, I like the two of them. And I read that they were both really pleasant to work with, and they enjoyed each other, working with each other. I don’t remember who it was, somebody involved, I don’t remember if it was the director, but somebody in an interview much later talked about the making of the movie and said that it was a really positive experience.
They had a really good time. So that’s nice.
Todd: One would hope so. Definitely much more positive and pleasant time apparently than Texas Chainsaw Massacre was.
Craig: Yeah. Though again, some similarities because this d- because he do- well, he makes smoked meats. The big twist is what he’s making them out of, which is people, which is a twist enough.
Right. But that’s not the weird part. The fact, the fact that he sets up not even elaborate, but very simple traps on like a curve in the road to cause people to have accidents, and then he like gets them and turns them into meat, that’s, that’s enough for a horror movie. But that’s not the weird part. No.
Like that’s-
Todd: It’s not the movie
Craig: And I don’t even really understand- Ugh … the weird part either.
Todd: It’s so bizarre. It is so bizarre, and it just happens without any explanation whatsoever, and this must have been what turned off a lot of people reading it. I think the, the brothers who wrote this, that combo really had a hard time getting studios interested in this.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: U- United Artists finally came around after initially rejecting it because these shock films around 1980, 1979 were be- becoming big, and they’re like, “Well, this is a fricking bizarre, shocking thing, so maybe this will be a big hit.” So that’s why they picked it up, is because it was so strange and bizarre.
But before, just, just years before that, nobody wanted to touch it for that reason, and you can understand why. Ah, I guess we’ll get to it, but right now, like you said, it, it really… I, I think it jumps right in. You know, for a movie that felt a little slow, and certainly not slow because nothing was happening, but just slow to get to the interesting stuff, I thought, it starts off very promising.
Vincent is at his motel. He, uh, walks past his, uh, sister sleeping, so we establish that he’s got that girl, Ida, in there. Mm-hmm. They’ve got a preacher on television that they’re watching who turns out to be Wolfman Jack.
Clip: Heat of hell, right? You bet. They walked across the sands and they knew they were sinners.
They knew that they didn’t know the word of the book that told them how they should behave, and they would get
Todd: And that perked my dad’s ears up, because Wolfman Jack is from his era of radio. A very, very famous syndicated radio show out of, was it New York City? I can’t remember exactly. “Well, Wolfman Jack here.”
“Playing all the hits for you tonight.”
He’s been in a few horror movies. God, he was a featured voice in that
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Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2
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We tackle Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 thanks to a patron request, expecting another cheap public-domain cash grab after the poorly reviewed first film, but we’re surprised by the improved budget, production value, and approach.We discuss how the sequel goes meta by treating the first movie as a film-within-the-film, allowing recasts and retcons, and how the movie leans into extreme, Terrifier-style gore with a huge rave massacre and creative kills.
We break down the updated creature designs—especially Owl as a mastermind and Tigger’s Freddy-inspired vibe—plus Christopher Robin’s added backstory involving a mad scientist, kidnapped children, and Pooh revealed as his brother Billy. We also cover the ending, mid-credits tease of Pooh and Piglet returning, and the franchise’s planned crossover “cinematic universe.”
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey 2 (2024)Episode 495, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, this actually came as a request from one of our patrons, Jessica. And it’s a good thing she did request this, because I don’t think you and I would have voluntarily done this movie. Who knows? We probably would have gotten to it.
We’ve done a lot of strange things on this. But I think you and I bo- well, I don’t know. I’m just gonna speak for me right now, is I have not been at all interested in this twisted childhood universe of- Mm-hmm … public domain, you know, pre-Disney character childhood favorites like Winnie the Pooh and Bambi and Pinocchio and all that stuff they’re making horror movies of.
Because of the first of these, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, I didn’t watch it, but I saw screenshots from it and I read the reviews and it sounded like it was absolute garbage. That’s what everybody said about it, and sounded like a quick cash grab. And it was produced by a guy who does these just quickie direct-to-video movies for, like, $10,000.
You know, they shoot them in like 5 to 10 days and put them on the shelves. Which, don’t get me wrong, this is a very respectful thing to do.
Craig: Yeah,
Todd: sure. It’s fine. It, it makes money and it has an audience, and I actually enjoy a lot of those films. So I’m not knocking the idea that you will take something that’s coming out, make a cheap copy of it, or do something quirky and clever like this, but not put m- many resources into it, you know, and throw it out there not expecting it to do much, but at least hoping to make some money off of it.
That’s fine, but, uh, it’s not typically the kind of thing I want to sit down and watch usually. So I, I didn’t give it this much credit at all. And then to see that they made a sequel of it, I was like, “Oh my God, of course.” You know? Just the, the weirdness of it gave them… I think that movie had $50,000 budget and it grossed over 7 million.
This movie had a $500,000 budget and grossed about 7 million worldwide. So you know, there’s an audience for it. But the first one is not well reviewed. It’s like 3% on Rotten Tomatoes. This one is closer to 50, and I have to say, I was actually surprised. This wasn’t what I was expecting. I guess the more money that went into it and a few talented people came on board to up things quite a bit.
And it wasn’t what I expected, let’s just put it that way. I don’t think it bears much resemblance to the original movie at all. So, you know, thanks Jessica for the request, and I’m looking forward to chatting about this with Craig. This seems like one of those movies you might have had on in the background.
Craig: No, because I could almost repeat verbatim what you just said. The first one really turned me off. Now, I was initially kind of interested when they first announced the first Blood and Honey, and you know, the story was, it was because A.A. Milne’s original characters from the Winnie-the-Pooh, the first Winnie-the-Pooh book had entered public domain, and they were gonna make a horror movie out of it.
And I thought, “Well, that’s really stupid,” but-
Todd: Could be fun …
Craig: it could be a lot of fun. Yeah. Right. And so I was kind of excited about it, and, you know, anything that I would see about it, it didn’t sound particularly promising once it was actually in production, and I was seeing stills and the, the guys just looked like any big slasher guy in a relatively inexpensive rubber mask.
Like it- Yeah … it didn’t look good. But I thought I’d give it a chance anyway, and it, you know, it opened in a fairly promising fashion in the same way that this one does with an animated sequence that gives the background. And just for any of you who haven’t seen the films and you’re interested in the background, the first movie, the background is that Christopher Robin didn’t meet, you know, fuzzy stuffed animal type things in the Hundred Acre Woods.
He actually met these, like, human animal hybrids or, like, anthropomorphized animals and, and befriended them and took care of them. But then when he went off to college, he abandoned them and, and there was nobody to feed them, so they starved through a harsh winter and ate Eeyore.
Which traumatized them, and they vowed never to speak again. And in the first movie, Christopher Robin wants… Like, he gets engaged and he wants to take his fiancee to meet his friends in the woods. So- … he, he takes her there and they savagely murder her and, like, I think torture him and stuff. Now, I only know beyond the animated part what happened really, because I started watching it once and I got to where the animals…
Oh, and the animals in that movie also, like, vowed to never speak. So in that movie, the first movie apparently I think, Pooh says one thing maybe, but they really don’t speak ’cause they vowed not to. I got through the animated sequence, which was promising, but then just the first five to 10 minutes after that were so bad that I turned it off and I never went back to it.
And like you, that turned me off from the rest of them. I really had not much interest, even though looking at them from afar, they seemed to be getting better, at least in terms of production quality, probably due to budget. And some of them started sounding interesting. Like, I Had heard some good things about the Bambi one.
I think it’s called, like, Bambi: The Reckoning or something like that. Right. And I had seen a couple of clips from it. It’s, it’s big time CGI, but it looks maybe kind of interesting. And then the next one that’s coming out, Pinocchio Unstrung-
Todd: Which, a great title by the way …
Craig: it is really good, has Robert Englund in it.
Todd: It does, really?
Craig: Yeah. Robert Englund is Jiminy Cricket, and- Another guy, big guy in, in horror is playing Geppetto. I can’t think of him, but he’s… If you look it up right quick, Richard something maybe. You would recognize him immediately because he’s been a menacing, scary guy in a million things that we’ve reviewed.
So-
Todd: Mm-hmm …
Craig: I mean, just the attachment of those folks gives me hope that maybe they’re getting better. Okay, that was my perspective going into this. This request came at least a month ago. I have no idea when this will actually get posted, but in our timeline, this request came at least a month ago, and I think we were kind of like subtly putting it off.
And eventually I was like, “We should just, we should just do it.” I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it going in, but I was surprised too. Mm-hmm. It wasn’t what I expected either, and I would say that while I’m not gonna give it a glowing review, I’m glad I saw it. Like, I genuinely am glad I saw it, and it’s not bad.
Todd: Right. Well-
Craig: I, I didn’t not like it.
Todd: You did not like it. I mean, production value is great. The gore effects are fine. You know, there’s obviously some CGI supplementals in here. But I could tell that this would appeal, and I think it probably came at the right time. This seems to, I think, appeal to a crowd that The Terrifier would appeal to because it seems like the attempt here is to just keep things very extreme.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: And I guess that’s, that’s really what the writer-director/producer of the whole thing, Rhys Frake-Waterfield, had said outright. He said he wanted to make a sequel to that first one, improve it, get a much bigger budget, and take everything extreme. And at least one of the actors, I think the one who played Tigger in here, said that he took a lot of his inspiration for his character from The Terrifier, as well as Freddy Krueger and somebody else.
So-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: they had that in mind. And, you know, The Terrifier 2 I think had just come out around this time as well. So it shows, I would imagine there’s a lot of crossover between these two audiences. You know, once word gets out about how gory this is and how extreme the killings are, then probably a lot of folks, uh, who liked The Terrifier movies and were kind of on that bandwagon would jump over and want to see this.
And because it delivers on that front, I think.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: But also, the acting is good.
Clip: Yeah.
Todd: I think the acting’s fine. It’s great. E- even, uh, the guy who plays Christopher Robin, who I guess is reprising his role from the first movie?
Craig: No. Am I right about that? Okay. So this is… No. This is one of the things that I think is coolest about this movie.
They solve lots of problems from the first movie by making this movie meta.
Todd: Right.
Craig: In that the first movie is actually a cinematic film of true events that happens to the people in this movie. Does that make sense?
Todd: Yeah, it’s kind of like Scream and what was that one? S- Stab.
Craig: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. As though, you know…
S- yes, exactly. So what we saw, the first movie that we saw was a, a filmed, uh, version, a fictionalized account of something that actually happened to the people that we are now being introduced to. So that changes… That, that solves the recast problem- Mm … because the guy in the first movie was just an actor playing the real Christopher Robin who we’re seeing now.
Um- Right … it also allows them to retcon things just by saying, “Oh, well, they changed it for the movie.” So the, the animals now can speak because, you know, the film just added that element of them vowing never to speak or whatever. And they can also justify the change in the appearance of the villains because these are the real villains, and that was just a cheap movie knockoff of them.
Mm. And they do look a lot better in this. I, I- Oh, yeah … I wouldn’t go so far as to say Pooh looks… I don’t know. I still think he could have looked better, but some of the creature design, particularly Owl, I thought was fantastic. Yeah.
Todd: He was a… I’m sorry. He was a producer Scott Chambers. He, he’s an actor too. He’s acted in a lot of movies, but he was a, a producing partner, still is I suppose, a producing partner of, um, of Rhys- uh, Frake-Water- Waterfield for a lot of those other films. So he, he produced the first film and decided to step in- Gotcha
and, uh, and act in this one. I think he does a great job, even though this is certainly not his first acting credit. He’s been in a lot of, uh, these straight to video… And I think that’s why he’s so good. I, I actually thought he was really good in this. If it weren’t for… And this movie really focuses around him.
Craig: I think he’s directing the next one, by the way.
Todd: Oh, is that right? Okay. I think so. Yeah, they got a third one coming up, and they’ve got two released last year, right? The Bambi one and the Peter Pan. There’s a Peter Pan.
Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Todd: And then the, the Pinocchio one’s coming up, if it hasn’t been released already.
Uh, it’s c- it was coming up this year at, at least. You are right. And they wanna do crossover movies. They wanna take- But I think they’re
Craig: filming that now …
Todd: the whole Avengers attitude. Yeah.
Craig: They’re either filming the crossover one or Blood and Honey 3. I don’t remember. They’re filming one of them now. But yeah, they’re crossing them all over and, like, they’re treating it- They- they’re using the Marvel model- Yeah
where they start out with these individual movies, then they cross them over, bring in even more characters. Like, they’re gonna bring in, like, Mary Poppins and- … Sleeping Beauty, and there are several others. But they’re gonna bring them in in the big Avengers style one so that the, they can then spin them off into a phase two of other Uh, individual movies.
Todd: It’s, it’s so smart because when you think about it from just, even just a purely business but also creative aspect, I mean, this is why we have public domain. Disney themselves took these stories like Pinocchio- Sure … and, and, and Sleeping Beauty, you know, that they didn’t have to pay any rights to, and really owned them in a way.
You know, for childhood, like, when people think of Pinocchio they, they immediately think of Disney.
Clip: Yeah.
Todd: It’s just part of the zeitgeist now. And so with these originals falling out of public domain, now somebody else can come over and kinda skirt around everything that Disney has set up. But the Disney part of it is helping to bolster these movies really- Right
because everyone’s so familiar with these stories because they’re… the Disney move- movie versions of them are so beloved for multiple generations now.
Craig: Mm-hmm.&
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Color Out Of Space
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Notas do episódio
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() { var player = document.getElementById("player-6aee0c50123b6"); podlovePlayerCache.add([{"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-json\/podlove-web-player\/shortcode\/publisher\/8609","data":{"version":5,"show":{"title":"2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast","subtitle":"Reviewing horror movies every week, both classic and modern films!","summary":"We're just two die-hard horror fans with new thoughts on both favorite and obscure horror films from yesterday to today. We watch and review one horror movie a week from the perspective of fun, with a lot of film criticism thrown in.","poster":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/cache\/podlove\/02\/085c156dd2d0a6b4aff1544eb04da0\/2-guys-and-a-chainsaw-a-horror-movie-review-podcast_500x.png","link":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com"},"title":"Color Out Of Space","subtitle":"We tackle 2019\u2019s \u2018Color Out of Space,\u2019 a Nicolas Cage-led adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft\u2019s story, inspired by our recent disappointment with \u2018The Curse.\u2019","summary":"We talk about why Cage is unfairly maligned, how this film captures Lovecraft\u2019s bleak, unknowable cosmic horror, and why the movie\u2019s cinematography and surreal color effects are such a standout. From the meteor hitting the family farm to the contaminated well water, warped time, and terrifying body-horror transformations, we break down what worked, what felt unnecessary (including some exposition), and why the film still lands as a gorgeous, disturbing ride. We also compare story vs. movie elements, discuss the ending\u2019s lingering dread, and touch on director Richard Stanley\u2019s comeback and hoped-for Lovecraft trilogy.","publicationDate":"2026-06-25T12:01:11-05:00","duration":"00:58:53.740","poster":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/cache\/podlove\/15\/c4647b9af9db159c477a16c48237f7\/color-out-of-space_500x.jpg","link":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/2026\/06\/25\/color-out-of-space\/","chapters":[],"audio":[{"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/podlove\/file\/786\/s\/webplayer\/c\/website\/color-out-of-space.mp3","size":"42397793","title":"MP3 Audio (mp3)","mimeType":"audio\/mpeg"}],"files":[{"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/podlove\/file\/786\/s\/webplayer\/color-out-of-space.mp3","size":"42397793","title":"MP3 Audio","mimeType":"audio\/mpeg"}],"contributors":[]}}, {"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-json\/podlove-web-player\/shortcode\/config\/2guys-config\/theme\/default","data":{"activeTab":"chapters","subscribe-button":null,"share":{"channels":["facebook","twitter","whats-app","linkedin","pinterest","xing","mail","link"],"outlet":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/podlove-web-player\/web-player\/share.html","sharePlaytime":true},"related-episodes":{"source":"disabled","value":null},"version":5,"theme":{"tokens":{"brand":"#E64415","brandDark":"#235973","brandDarkest":"#1A3A4A","brandLightest":"#E9F1F5","shadeDark":"#807E7C","shadeBase":"#807E7C","contrast":"#000","alt":"#fff"},"fonts":{"ci":{"name":"ci","family":["-apple-system","BlinkMacSystemFont","Segoe UI","Roboto","Helvetica","Arial","sans-serif","Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji\", \"Segoe UI Symbol"],"src":[],"weight":800},"regular":{"name":"regular","family":["-apple-system","BlinkMacSystemFont","Segoe UI","Roboto","Helvetica","Arial","sans-serif","Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji\", \"Segoe UI Symbol"],"src":[],"weight":300},"bold":{"name":"bold","family":["-apple-system","BlinkMacSystemFont","Segoe UI","Roboto","Helvetica","Arial","sans-serif","Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji\", \"Segoe UI Symbol"],"src":[],"weight":700}}},"base":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/podlove-web-player\/web-player\/"}}]); podlovePlayer(player, "https://chainsawhorror.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/publisher/8609", "https://chainsawhorror.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/2guys-config/theme/default").then(function() { player && player.classList.remove("podlove-web-player-loading"); }); });
We tackle 2019’s ‘Color Out of Space,’ a Nicolas Cage-led adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s story, inspired by our recent disappointment with ‘The Curse.’We talk about why Cage is unfairly maligned, how this film captures Lovecraft’s bleak, unknowable cosmic horror, and why the movie’s cinematography and surreal color effects are such a standout.
From the meteor hitting the family farm to the contaminated well water, warped time, and terrifying body-horror transformations, we break down what worked, what felt unnecessary (including some exposition), and why the film still lands as a gorgeous, disturbing ride.
We also compare story vs. movie elements, discuss the ending’s lingering dread, and touch on director Richard Stanley’s comeback and hoped-for Lovecraft trilogy.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Color Out Of Space (2019)Episode 494, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig
Todd: This week we’re doing a film that came out in 2019. 2019 doesn’t seem like that long ago to me- No … but actually it’s been a while. It’s been, like, seven years, so I guess it’s an older movie, whose standards you’re going by.
But, you know, we’ve always been apologists for Nicolas Cage. Both Craig and I think that he is an unfairly maligned actor. Did you see that interview that I posted to our patrons recently?
Craig: I don’t think so.
Todd: So I found an interview with him that The New York Times just did just last month or two, and it was very extensive and, you know, they just talked to him.
I mean, Nicolas Cage, I like the guy. I love his work. I think he’s an actor who does a lot of different interesting things, and he’s not afraid to be crazy, and I think people love to make fun of him. But there comes this tipping point where it’s just the thing you do, right? “Oh, Nicolas Cage, like, he’s this crazy guy, and, and we make fun of him, and he’s not serious,” and all that.
But don’t get me wrong, he’s, he’s eccentric. As an individual, he’s clearly eccentric. He seems to know that. He’s very self-aware, and he takes all these different projects, and he’s just interested in doing different stuff. He wants to stretch himself as an actor and do different things. And he also has his own little shtick, but I have no problem with the guy.
In fact, I really enjoy almost everything I see him in. And I, I… So anyway, I like Nicolas Cage, and I think you were inspired to pick this movie because of a movie we did recently, right?
Craig: Just a couple weeks ago, I think. Yeah.
Todd: Yeah. What was the connection? I can’t rem-
Craig: We watched The Curse. I don’t rem- the, the ’80s.
Wil Wheaton-
Todd: Right …
Craig: the family on the farm. And I think both of us were aware that it was based on a Lovecraft story, but in looking into that movie, we, you know, found specifically that it was based on the Lovecraft story, The Color Out of Space. And we knew that this was another adaptation of the same story.
And, and both of us were left underwhelmed by The Curse. So I thought, while it’s still fresh in mind, why not do 2019’s Color Out of Space and see, you know… We’ll, of course, talk about it on its own merits, but I figured we could draw comparisons to the other one, too.
Todd: There you go. Yeah. And, and I think that’s, that’s apropos.
Like, like, there’s a lot to talk about as far as comparing these two films. Have you read the original story?
Craig: I- yesterday I did, after, after I watched this. Yeah, after I watched this, I was, um, curious, and I had time, so I, uh, listened to it and read along at the same time. Have you? You said you might, but I, I know you’ve been really busy.
Todd: God, I wanted to, but I’m traveling through Thailand with my family right now. I’ve been in Japan, I’ve been in Thailand, and it’s me and my parents and Kenji, and we’ve just been so busy that it was- Enough for me to just watch this movie. I actually woke up at 5:00 AM to watch this movie- Ugh … just to make sure that I could see it Yeah
before he woke up and before we got busy with our day, and now it’s evening time and we’re recording this. So, um- Yeah, ’cause I knew if I waited till evening I might not give myself the time. We might be-
Craig: Sure …
Todd: stuck in a taxi in Bangkok traffic somewhere, and I’d be freaking out. So I managed to watch this, and I didn’t do any research or anything on it, but, uh, I really enjoyed it a lot.
Craig: Good.
Todd: I was really glad you picked it. I’m gonna just show all my cards at once. I thought it was a little long
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: But aside from that, like what a well-made movie. And I felt like, not having read the short story, just n- being familiar, I’ve read a few Lovecraft short stories. I was like, “This has to be a far better adaptation of the short story than The Curse ended up being.”
Am I right or wrong about that?
Craig: No, it is. It’s better. Honestly, in, you know, having seen them both now and then reading the story afterwards, they both kind of draw from the same elements of the story kind of in different ways. Like, there are certainly things that happen, like specific details of the narrative that happen in both movies.
And, and in terms of that, neither of them really deviates a ton from the overall story, but that’s kind of the thing with Lovecraft stories. I’ve, I’ve said… God, it’s probably been years ago, we talked about Lovecraft, and I said that I’m a huge fan of his intellectual property. Reading him is a challenge for me, not because the text is challenging, you know, it’s, it’s relatively common language, but he writes in a really vague manner.
Like, all of his… Not all, but most of the stories that I’ve read are, are told from a first narrator’s perspective, and it sounds very much like folklore, and it kind of sounds like if an old, gosh, I don’t know, you know, some old bearded man telling you some story that his grandpappy told him. And so-
Todd: It’s very narrated, right?
It’s not
Craig: like a- It, it’s very narrated, and there’s not a whole lot of detail. Like-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: you really have to fill in the blanks with your imagination, which is good. I mean, I think that that’s, you know, a, an appropriate technique for storytelling. It’s
Todd: part of his appeal, I think, honestly.
Craig: Right. But when I say, like, I’m a fan of his intellectual property, like the whole Cthulhu mythos and that whole universe that he built, you know, the, y- you know, a, a, a whole, you know, communities and, and different cities and towns and universities and-
all of these ancient gods and all of these stories interconnected, like all of that is, is, is great. I, I’m super on board with it. And I really like all of the things that had been influenced by… Like, I love Lovecraftian stuff. Like, I love The Thing and any, you know-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: big Kaiju-type thing and… But all of that is so visual and so fantastic, and when you read it in his stories, it’s suggested.
Like-
Todd: Yeah, he’s vague there. Well-
Craig: It’s very, very vague
Todd: It’s definitely worth talking about. It, it’s a little stodgy too, right? It’s a very old school way of writing, I think. But what you say, it, it’s like a guy imparting a story without giving a lot of detail. Like Stephen King he is not.
Craig: Right.
Todd: Uh, he’s like the opposite.
He’s gonna tell you the general gist of what happened, but your brain is gonna have to fill in the details. And I think that, I think that’s why he’s mined so much for material.
Craig: Well, and that makes sense.
Todd: Number one it’s public domain, so it’s free to mine. But yeah, you’re… Number two, you can then take this one story and you can really g- fill in the detail yourself however you want.
And what I really enjoy about him is he’s quite bleak. Almost like Poe in a way, where most of the stories, they don’t end well. Because it, the whole notion is that we are but insignificant nothings in the s- scope of the universe, and there are entities and beings and gods that are far greater to us that, that we’re just like ants to them under their feet.
Like, we’re nothing. Like, we’re just nothing. That that’s a horrifying thing to come face to face with, and you have… There’s nothing you can do about it. Like, if you do come face to face with it… Like, some of this with Lovecraft is that just coming face to face with it, you’ll go insane.
Craig: Yes.
Todd: Conceptually, these beings and these gods and everything are just so far removed from how we are in our world and our lives, and they’re so far bigger than us, that when we are faced with them our minds can’t comprehend them.
Our minds break.
Craig: Right, and they are unfathomable-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: and therefore also indescribable. So
Todd: Exactly, so he doesn’t bother.
Craig: Right. He can’t describe it. You can’t describe it. Yeah, exactly. It’s unfathomable. And, and like that relates to this story too. Yes. Like this color out of space is unfathomable. Like, you can’t describe it.
I mean, we can kind of maybe kind of compare it to something, but it’s nothing like that.
Todd: Yeah. And I think that’s what this movie did really well, is it- You know, it didn’t bother to try to describe everything. It was very visual and it relied a lot on the color, and there were lots of little symptoms of what was happening, but we never really know.
Craig: No.
Todd: Where did this come from? Why is it there? What are the implications? How does it work? Anything like that. We just know it’s horrible to us, but also, in a way, it’s beautiful. And that’s, I think, the thing that I kinda came away from this movie with, was this sense that… What’s the word I’m looking for?
Just in awe. This is bleak. This is sad. This is horror, what happens to this family, what happens to people. But ultimately, this was nothing against them.
Craig: No. You know what I mean? No, no, no.
Todd: This was nothing against them or anybody else. This wasn’t a masked murderer with an agenda going through and killing people.
This wasn’t some entity that came down that wants to take over or whatever. This is just a thing that happened to these people that is far beyond their understanding and who they are and whatever. And for them, it’s horrifying because it destroys them But ultimately, it’s just the universe at work , you know?
Craig: Right.
Todd: And that’s terrifying.
Craig: True. Right. A- a- and yes, I don’t think that there’s any malice. I, I think that the movie more so than the story tries to give it some explanation. I mean, we’ll get into what it’s about. It’s about a meteor that falls on a farm and then weird stuff starts happening.
Right.
Craig: In the movie, at one point, and I’m getting way ahead of myself, but th- there’s something about they wanted to come here and recreate their own world or something.
Right. I don’t know. I wrote it down in my notes. So I, I think that it’s very much suggested in the movie that it’s some sort of sentient alien presence of some kind. But again, still vague, you know, like nebulous. We don’t really know for sure. In the story, it’s even… They just don’t know. Like Yeah … it came…
A- a- I mean, that’s one of the last lines, and I think they even use it in the movie. Like at the end, somebody says, “It was just a color out of space.” Like, and, and that’s the only way that they can describe it. The other thing that I like about Lovecraft’s stories, and again, it’s been a long time since I’ve read any others, but I feel like they are self-contained.
Like this is something that happened. You know what I mean? Like- Yeah … there, there, there’s a beginning and an end, and we’re actually looking at it y- from like a hi- a historical perspective. We’re looking at something that happened in the past. That’s why it feels like folklore. And I, and that’s cool. And the movie, I think, is good in the storytelling in that way, too.
But I think the thing that I was most impressed with in the movie was just how pretty it was to look at. Like- Hmm … this, I, I thought the cinematography was so great. Like it opens just with these shots from seemingly the floor of this very tall forest. I have no k- idea what type of trees these are, but- Yeah
a really super, super high canopy. It’s
Todd: almost otherworldly, honestly.
Craig: Yeah. It’s beautiful. Yeah. And it’s all in gray, and there’s mist and stuff. And, and there’s an opening passage that comes from the opening paragraph of the story that just describes the land and the history and, and suggests that it, you know, there’s lore about it or whatever.
And then I thought that it was- I don’t know. This is one of the only, I guess, issues that I had with the movie is that they then cut to what could look potentially like a period scene where it’s a girl, like, in a cape in a circle of stones and maybe candles. I don’t remember. But she’s, like, chanting
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Night School
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We dig into the 1981 slasher Night School, drawn in by Mark Irwin’s cinematography and the film’s giallo-inspired mystery setup.Shot on location in Boston, it leans on familiar tropes—black gloves, an obscured killer, and a whodunit investigation—but stands out with stylish, restrained beheading set pieces, clever editing, and memorable sound design.
We walk through standout sequences like the aquarium kill and the restaurant “stew” fake-out, debate the soapier relationship drama around Professor Millet and Eleanor, and react to the reveal of the killer and a lengthy motorcycle chase.
By the end, we agree it’s well-made and visually strong, even if watching so many early ’80s slashers back-to-back dulled the impact.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Night School (1981)Episode 493, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week was my turn to pick. I just can’t get off of these 1981 slasher films. There are just so darn many of them to find, and I’m always finding something new. I think this one I was led to because a couple weeks ago we did another ’81 slasher, and we were really talking about how nice the cinematography was.
And the cinematographer for that one was Mark Irwin. Mark Irwin has done a ton of stuff. He’s worked pretty closely with David Cronenberg. He’s done a lot of these old horror movies that we’ve done. The Brood, Scanner. Well, we haven’t done Scanners yet, I guess. Videodrome- Mm … The Fly, The Blob remake that we loved so much.
Uh, Robocop movies, Robocop 2, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Dumb and Dumber. Like, the list goes on. This guy’s a major cinematographer. He’s done a bunch of horror, and then he kinda went into comedy there in the ’90s, so. Anyway, as I was going through his stuff, I saw this one, Night School, which pops up on my lists every now and then, and I thought, “Oh, that would be kind of fun.”
Another slasher movie. It looks to be somewhat giallo inspired, and it had some pretty nice things that people had said about it. So this is Night School from 1981. Craig, d- have you ever seen this before?
Craig: Nope. As far as I know, never heard of it. I mean, Night School is a pretty generic title for one of these ’80s horror movies, so-
Todd: Yeah
Craig: maybe I’ve heard it before, I don’t know. But I s- definitely don’t think that I had seen it, so I I really don’t have any history with it at all, so this was my first experience with it.
Todd: Yeah, mine too. In fact, I don’t even remember seeing it, like, on the shelves or anything like that. I
Craig: don’t either.
Todd: But the director is, uh, Ken Hughes.
Ken Hughes is quite prolific. He did Chitty Chitty Bang Bang wrote and directed.
Craig: That movie scared me when I was a kid.
Todd: Oh my God. That was my… Yeah, that’s- It should … gateway horror, that movie.
Craig: The, I… It wasn’t something that we watched in our house, and so s- I don’t know, a teacher showed it to us at school, and, like, I was terrified.
Todd: Oh, man. Yeah, the Child Catcher in that is just- Yeah … scary. I… Someday I’m gonna show that to Kenji, but I w- I… ‘Cause he likes musicals, but I do wonder if it’s gonna give him nightmares, that Child Catcher. But yeah, so Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Night School was actually, this was his very last film before he…
I mean, he didn’t pass away, he just retired. And he passed away in 2001 at the ripe old age of 79. So, uh-
Clip: Mm.
Todd: Yeah, what a film to go out on. Just slasher movie that has a few different things in it, but a lot of things the same. I don’t know. Let, l- Do we just dive into it? Do you have any, like, overall thoughts you wanna say?
Craig: No, I guess. I mean, I th- I think that my feelings on this one might be kind of tainted by the fact that we’ve done so many of them in a row.
Todd: Yeah. Comparing them now, aren’t we?
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And after a while it’s like, okay. They’re all the
Todd: same.
Craig: To some extent, and, and that’s fine. I mean, to some extent that’s what I like about them.
I, I kind of know what I’m getting into. I kind of know what to expect. I’m looking for certain tropes and things. But when you watch them back to back to back, and, heh, I don’t know i- if we’re keeping this some kind of big secret, but, like, we did the last, I don’t know, what, seven episodes, like, in a marathon.
Todd: That’s right. We, we have not given ourselves any break between these movies. So you’re right, it feels like we’ve seen six of these.
Craig: Yeah, like straight back to back. So, uh- Oh,
Todd: we should take a break.
Craig: Yeah, maybe so Yeah, so I don’t know. I, I, I guess we just jump into it. There are, you know, as, as you already mentioned, the cinematography is good.
It’s shot w- in Boston, is that right?
Todd: Yeah, almost entirely on location in Boston.
Craig: Yeah, and the locations are great, and I think that I read that up until this point, Boston hadn’t really been used as a shooting location much, if at all, like maybe a movie or two before that.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: It is a really cool, you know, ki- you know, the streets look old and, and historic, and it’s all lit very well, and all of that looks great.
It’s just as far as plot is concerned, I’m like, “Yeah, l- l- the last three episodes we did, just, like, kinda listen to those.” It’s
Todd: kind of the same plot, yeah.
Craig: Pretty much the same. It really is. Especially since, you know, we’re doing these older ones that s- it’s… As you were saying it a minute ago when you were saying it’s got elements of giallo, it’s giallo inspired.
Well, yeah, we always say that because they all are. Mm-hmm. I mean, even e- even what became the more prototypical ’80s slashers still were inspired by giallo. Like-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: they didn’t carry over every element, but… So it’s funny, but this one specifically is, you know, uh, uh, many of the same details, the black gloves, the obscured figure.
You don’t know who it is until the end, and it’s a mystery, and there are people investigating the mystery. And so that’s the base- … of it, but we can get into the more details of what’s actually going on in this one.
Todd: Yeah, there are quite a few characters in here, and I think this one sets it apart from maybe one of the last ones we did where there were, seemed to be a very small cast, so there weren’t a lot of people to be thinking about or to be suspects.
This kicks off at a daycare as it’s letting out, a daycare in the middle of the city, and this woman, Anne Barrens, is just sitting with this little girl, Lisa, on a merry-go-round. One of those classic, classic old-school merry-go-rounds that I probably aren’t… They don’t put in, uh, playgrounds anymore, do they? I think they’re deemed fairly unsafe, but I love them.
We
Craig: had one at, uh, our elementary school here until recently. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. I haven’t been by in a while.
Todd: I mean, it’s the kind of thing when you look at it, and I think about it now, man, we would w- you know, we would spin each other around on these things so- till we were almost flying off.
And if somebody, I don’t know, rolled underneath it, that wouldn’t be good. Yeah, they were- Probably not. I, I don’t know how none of us ever got injured on… Well, some of us probably did get injured on these things, but I really miss those old school playground equipment.
Craig: Especially since, you know, our playgrounds were just on concrete.
Mm. Like, at least now they put down, like, those rubber chips or whatever.
Todd: That’s true. Well, Anne Behrens is about to get it. She’s a teacher there.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Seems like she’s… And we later learn she’s going to night school to get her teaching certification.
Craig: Yeah, and that’s the only reference to night school at all throughout the whole rest of the movie.
Todd: More or less, yeah, exactly. Well, it was originally titled Terror Eyes. Terror Eyes, E-Y-E-S. Yeah. Which is… I think Night School’s better, honestly. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That one’s a little too cute for its own good. Yeah, everybody kinda leaves, and she’s just sitting there chilling, and a dude comes up on a motorcycle, and he is wearing a big black motorcycle helmet.
Honestly, it’s like, uh, half of Daft Punk is what w- is what, what this looks like.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: One of those big-ass motorcycle helmets with the visor that’s completely dark and almost goes halfway around the head. And, and, uh, he’s dressed in all black, like a leather, tight leather jacket, all sleeves, and leather gloves, and leather pants.
Just all black.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Very scary, actually. I mean, if somebody had approached me like this, I wouldn’t have been as chill as she was at first. And then he just starts spinning her around on the merry-go-round. I thought this was a clever scene. So she’s flying around on the merry-go-round, and as he’s, she’s coming by, he whips out this knife, and it’s unique.
Mm. One of, one of the unique things about this movie is the knife he’s carrying around. It’s c- it’s curved inward a little bit. It, it’s just very, got a very stylistic look to it. And I guess it was modeled after some tribe or something. This kind of ceremonial knife- Mm … known as the kukri. Used as both a tool and a weapon on the Indian subcontinent, and it is the, still the basic utility knife of the Gurkha, sometimes called a Gurkha blade or a Gurkha knife.
Thank you, Wikipedia. And he, uh, as she comes around, he, like, has it in front of her like he’s gonna cut her face with it. He r- raises it up, he raises it up. He’s really taunting her, he’s teasing her. And then as she comes around one last time, he raises it above his head and apparently lops her head right off.
This is a beheading movie. Everybody gets beheaded.
Clip: Uh-huh.
Todd: Which reminds me of the poster for this one. There’s a, there’s a report card on it. It says, “A is for apple, B is for bed, C is for coed, D is for dead- … F is for failing to keep your head.” Oh, boy. Night School: A Lesson in Terror.
Craig: Wow. Maybe that’s why we never saw it.
Todd: That might be. That sounds, that
Craig: sounds pretty
Todd: bad. They looked at that and kind of went, “This is stupid.” Yeah. So, uh, he cuts her head off. Then we g- switch over to Judd. Judd and Stevie, his wife, getting ready for a night on the town, and suddenly he gets called away. He’s a police detective. She’s very upset about it.
Do we ever
Craig: see Stevie again? No. Do we ever… I don’t think we… We never s- I don’t think we do … This poor girl. They’re like… They’re getting ready to have a romantic evening, and he gets called away, and then he’s just gone for weeks. We never see him again. I know, right? And they make such a big deal out of this.
Clip: Oh, Judd, it’s your day off. You promised. I’m sorry, Stevie, but it’s important. Stevie, look, why don’t you just… Honey, honey, honestly, I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to. I know, but- Come on. Let me make it up to you. Why don’t you book a table at The Ragged Glove for about 7:00? I’ll be done by then It’s my job.
Yeah. Well, it’s a lousy job
Todd: Poor Stevie. That’s- She never sees her husband … hilarious We never see her. Ever again.
It’s so funny. So anyway, he gets called out, and it turns out this is the second killing in a week. Her- the severed head of her was found in a bucket of water far away from the body, and it turns out that the first killing, the body’s head was found in a pond. And so from these two things… Okay, so this guy’s got, like, a goofy sidekick.
Craig: Are you talking about the cop now?
Todd: Yeah, I’m talking about the cop. The cop’s got a goofy sidekick. His sidekick decides that he- that there’s a pattern, something weird about water. So, uh, Judd decides to go and investigate Wendell College girls school, which is where she was going in the evenings studying to be a teacher.
And they keep talking about his Harvard degree. There is this kind of irritating continuous theme and thread going here of the fact that this guy has a degree and his partner does not, and I think his wife even says something. He even says something about his degree when he’s with his wife, and then later somebody says, “Well, that’s what you get when you got a Harvard degree.”
It’s like, oh my God, okay, so this guy’s educated. We got that. And I guess he’s surrounded by uneducated people who are really, really take issue with that or-
Craig: I didn’t even notice. You were… No. You were paying much closer attention.
Todd: You didn’t notice that? Oh, it kept coming up. Well anyway, at the girls school he goes in, and there’s a professor giving an anthropology lesson.
He just goes into the, the class she was taking.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And as is typical in these movies, this guyR
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The Curse
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We dig into the film’s infamous behind-the-scenes stories—David Keith’s chaotic directing, Lucio Fulci’s debated influence, and Wheaton’s accounts of mistreatment on set—though we don’t endorse any of it.
Then we break down the movie’s slow build, scattered subplots, and the core story of a meteor contaminating well water, triggering grotesque practical effects and a family’s unsettling transformation. We debate what still works (the gore, the mother’s progression, the score) versus what feels padded or underdeveloped, and we compare it to later adaptations like the 2019 Nicolas Cage film.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript The Curse (1987)Episode 492, 2 Guys and A Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw
I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. Craig, this week it was your turn, and you picked a movie. I’m really happy you picked it because I never saw it before, but I pass by it on the shelves all the time. It has a very iconic cover art. It’s got, like, this big demonic hand coming up through farm fields holding, like, a farmhouse in it with the lightning striking around it and the…
I don’t know, it just looks really freaky, like some demonic forces are taking over some small town, and it has Wil Wheaton in it. This is 1987’s The Curse. We did The Curse Part II, and there’s a Curse Part III and a Curse Part IV. All of them are made from, uh, by Italians, including this one, and none of them are really related to each other.
No. They’re just sequels in name only to capitalize on the apparent success and popularity of the original.
Craig: Cult success, yeah.
Todd: Yeah. The first time I had seen it, but I know you have seen this one before, right?
Craig: Yeah. I grew up watching this. I don’t know which of my memories are real and which ones are constructed, but I seem to remember watching this with my cousins, Nick and Steve, some summer.
We always rented tons of horror movies back in the day when you just said, “Yeah, my dad said it was okay,” and they’d, you know, hand you R-rated movies over the counter or whatever.
Todd: Those were the days.
Craig: And our dads really did say… I know. It- those were the days. And our dads really did say it was okay, but it was a different time.
And of course, I was just drawn to horror movies in general, but I was a big fan of Wil Wheaton’s, because this came out just, I think, a year after or a year or so after his big breakout in Stand by Me, which is, remains one of my-
Todd: Mm …
Craig: favorite movies, uh, of all time. I, I think it’s a great movie, and I think that he’s fantastic in it.
So, you know, seeing him… And of course, this movie, which was shot on a, a much smaller budget, i- is, is not nearly as good and does not showcase his skills nearly as much, but- … seeing him on, on the box certainly drew me to it. Oh, boy. And, you know, I was a fan of it then, and I know that I’ve seen it since. I think I, you know, pull it out or, or pull it up some, from somewhere every once in a while and, and watch it, but I haven’t seen it in a really long time.
And again, you know, you and I sometimes mention how watching these movies, you know, on our own just for fun is kind of a different experience than watching them for the podcast. Like, we really do try to kind of watch more closely and with a more critical eye and try to look at the different components of it and stuff.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: And so doing that this time- It’s far from perfect.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: There,
Todd: there’s- Uh, Wil Wheaton himself is not a fan. I don’t even think he… I think he refuses to sign materials related to this movie when he’s at conventions.
Craig: He does, and the movie is interesting because it’s, it’s an adaptation of-
Todd: H.P.
Lovecraft …
Craig: H- H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space, which I haven’t read, but I hear is Lovecraft’s own personal favorite of his short stories. They Americanized the story and, and have some social commentary on the economic stuff that was going on with farmers in, un- in the Reagan area, era at the time.
So it’s inspired by the story, and the key elements of the story are there, but it’s, it, it’s definitely an adaptation. Really, what goes on behind the scenes is kind of more interesting than the movie itself.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: The movie was directed by David Keith, who is an actor. He was in An Officer and a Gentleman, and he was in, like, Major League and, and some other stuff, and he’s continued to work since then.
But the studio that made the movie, and I don’t remember what it was, had signed him on to star in another movie, and when that fell through, they offered him this as his directorial debut. And Wil Wheaton said that he was just awful, that he was… You know, he had a, a big ego, you know, coming off of his acting career.
But he had never directed before, didn’t know what he was doing. Said he was coked out all the time and just chasing skirt all the time, like was not a good director at all. And on top of that, like, Wil Wheaton didn’t even wanna do the movie. He didn’t like the script, you know. Stand by Me had done so well, and he had gotten so much, you know, great critical response, not just the film itself, but him specifically.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: Um, and, and he didn’t wanna do this dumb horror movie, but his mother… And he doesn’t… You know, in the stuff that I saw, he doesn’t talk extensively about his parents, but they don’t sound great because I guess his mom kind of arranged this meeting with the producers and the filmmakers without his agent present.
And they kind of strong-armed him into taking the movie. His, his parents, I guess, were enticed… Th- they were gonna pay Wheaton $100,000 for the role, which I guess was big for him at the time, even though I also read that he only ended up, he himself only ended up making 15 cents on the dollar for that.
Todd: Wow.
Craig: So, a big salary for him. They did the outdoor photography on David Keith’s farm. It was initially- … supposed to be, it was initially supposed to be filmed in Los Angeles, but he, Keith, had just bought a big ranch in Tennessee, and he’s like, “No, let’s just shoot it on my ranch.” So they did. So the outdoor stuff was all filmed there, but the, the, all of the interior shots were shot in Rome.
So the whole family was also gonna get a free trip to Rome, and they were gonna give Wil Wheaton’s real-life little sister, Amy Wheaton, a role in the film.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: So that was a real sweet deal according to his parents, and they kind of strong-armed him into signing it And apparently it was just a nightmare from beginning to end.
You know, he- Wil Wheaton says that he and his sister both were both physically and verbally and mentally abused on the set. He says that he was touched inappropriately by two adults in the production and that he didn’t feel protected by any of them. Ironically enough, the person that he felt most protected by was the guy that played the creepy older brother character in the movie-
who he said in real life was very gentle and loving and was really kind of one of the only people who stepped up to protect him and his little sister, Wil and his little sister.
Todd: Man.
Craig: And, and not only that, but after… They filmed all of the outdoor photography first in America, but then they sw- moved production to Rome and completely ignored all American child labor laws.
So he and his sister were working 12-hour days with no breaks five days a week, a- again, being physically abused. One of the most shocking things that I read, there’s a scene in the movie, we’ll talk about it when we get there in the plot, but there’s a scene in the movie where the little girl, Wil Wheaton’s little sister, is attacked by chickens and, and that whole thing, reading about how that was done is nightmarish.
But what I found particularly disturbing was that in the aftermath of that, she’s supposed to have scratches on her face, and this was all done in Italy. Rather… The makeup folks, rather than-
Todd: Applying makeup …
Craig: applying makeup would cut her with a scalpel-
Todd: That’s crazy …
Craig: to make those marks on her face. Now, I can’t imagine how they could have justified that.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I, I, I mean, I imagine they could have said, “Well, you know, scalpels are such fine instruments that it likely won’t scar.” But s- nonetheless, like, where were these kids’ parents? And if they were around, they were shit bag parents.
Todd: Yeah. Was that not the sequence that was directed by an uncredited Lucio Fulci?
Craig: Well, he’s credited, but he’s only credited for effects and something else. But, like, I guess there’s a lot of debate about how much he actually put into it. Hm. Some people have claimed that really despite what… And by the way, he, he was credited, but with an Anglicized name, as were all of the Italian people who- Hm
worked on this. They Anglicized their names for the credits. But somebody, I don’t know if it was the director or another producer or something, said that Fulci really was the second unit director and that he did, he was really the one calling the shots most of the time And I can only imagine that that’s true because-
Todd: You got this first-time d-
Craig: Yeah, you got a first-time director, and particularly the second half of the movie just absolutely reeks of Fulci.
Like-
Todd: Yeah. It’s true.
Craig: And, and, and, and a lot of it is the special effects, but even just beyond that, the mood, the pacing, the cinematography, I mean, it, it just absolutely reeks of him. So I have a feeling that David Keith owes a lot more to Fulci than the credits give him credit for. But the reason that I throw all that right out there at the beginning is because I didn’t know any of that until today.
Mm. This was just a movie that I had watched when I was a kid, and something that has been on our list literally probably the entire time that we have been doing this podcast because it is something that I, I liked as a kid.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But I wanted to get that all out of the way just so that people know that in talking about this movie, of course we in no way endorse or approve of any of that in the way that it was made.
And, and I completely 100% Understand why Wil Wheaton doesn’t want really anything to do with it, refuses to sign memorabilia for it, and, and eventually wrote an op-ed about why, you know, he has such distaste for it simply because he’s a great guy. Wil Wheaton is a really cool guy.
Todd: Yeah, he is.
Craig: And, you know, he is, is really great about meeting with fans and, you know, he’s a big fan of sci-fi and, and genre films himself.
You know, he’s kind of a fanboy, so he understands fans. I mean, he’s really, really good to fans. And he said that he just wanted to get it all out there because he felt the need, anytime anybody would bring something from The Curse, he felt the need to explain why he wouldn’t sign it. And, and so he just wanted to get it out there to try to have to avoid having to explain it every single time.
Todd: Yeah. Makes
Craig: sense. So anyway, it’s got an kind of an ugly backstory, but I think that we’ll ki- And we acknowledge that, and of course, we don’t approve or endorse o- of, you know, treating anybody that way, especially children. But we’ll look at it as a movie and, and just acknowledge that ugly stuff.
Todd: Yeah.
We’ll talk about the artistic merits of this work of art and, uh, while acknowledging that maybe the production of it wasn’t… We’ve had to do this before with Clownhouse and-
Craig: Right …
Todd: several other films that, you know, have, uh, unfortunate histories, but, uh, let’s separate that for the purposes of our discussion today and just talk about the movie as a movie, and, uh, that’s what we’re gonna do.
I, I wondered if you have different opinions about this film now as you did when you were a kid. Watching it now fresh with adult eyes, do you feel differently about it?
Craig: I guess so. I mean, I don’t know how I responded to certain things when I was younger, but the core of the story, the sci-fi part of it, and the special effects part of it, I think still stand up.
I mean, it’s still very B movie, but as a movie it stands up. There’s a lot of fat that could’ve been trimmed, just unnecessary stuff, like stupid stuff like- All of that stuff with the dumb, I don’t know what he is, like the real estate guy-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: Charlie Davidson.
Todd: What’s the point of any
Craig: of that? Trying to buy their farm and, you know, like, I don’t know, at some point there’s some talk about, like, there’s like a, a dam is gonna go up and they’re…
Todd: I don’t know. There’s- It doesn’t matter.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Yeah. Like, it, this isn’t a Goonies situation where the plot hinges on these people being motivated by the potential of their farm being sold or their land being taken from them, that that motivates them in any way, shape, or form throughout the plot of the movie.
No, it’s just, like, a thing that fills time.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: That this guy’s running around and apparently trying to sell these farmers’ land for them, and that’s it. But it doesn’t matter a whit to the story. That character, that whole bit could be excised from the movie and it would make no difference whatsoever, so it’s really weird that it’s
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Impetigore
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() { var player = document.getElementById("player-6aee0c505ec65"); podlovePlayerCache.add([{"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-json\/podlove-web-player\ …
Notas do episódio
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() { var player = document.getElementById("player-6aee0c505ec65"); podlovePlayerCache.add([{"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-json\/podlove-web-player\/shortcode\/publisher\/8395","data":{"version":5,"show":{"title":"2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast","subtitle":"Reviewing horror movies every week, both classic and modern films!","summary":"We're just two die-hard horror fans with new thoughts on both favorite and obscure horror films from yesterday to today. We watch and review one horror movie a week from the perspective of fun, with a lot of film criticism thrown in.","poster":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/cache\/podlove\/02\/085c156dd2d0a6b4aff1544eb04da0\/2-guys-and-a-chainsaw-a-horror-movie-review-podcast_500x.png","link":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com"},"title":"Impetigore","subtitle":"We jump back into international horror with Joko Anwar\u2019s 2020 Indonesian folk-horror hit, Impetigore, a Shudder release that earned major festival acclaim and became Indonesia\u2019s Oscar submission.","summary":"We talk about how the film\u2019s Jakarta-to-remote-village setup builds atmosphere, the boldness of its dialogue and staging, and the gorgeous candlelit cinematography inspired by shadow puppetry. Along the way we unpack the twisty mystery, the curse at the heart of the village, and the film\u2019s disturbing violence, including the skinning and the chilling connection between human skin and puppet-making. We also debate the movie\u2019s big exposition dumps, its cultural specificity, and why\u2014subtitles and all\u2014it\u2019s still a compelling, well-made horror story worth seeking out.","publicationDate":"2026-06-04T22:13:16-05:00","duration":"01:00:02.651","poster":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/cache\/podlove\/e0\/3af9c3dcfb34d04bf449bc87c84c81\/impetigore_500x.jpg","link":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/2026\/06\/04\/impetigore\/","chapters":[],"audio":[{"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/podlove\/file\/798\/s\/webplayer\/c\/website\/impetigore.mp3","size":"43232697","title":"MP3 Audio (mp3)","mimeType":"audio\/mpeg"}],"files":[{"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/podlove\/file\/798\/s\/webplayer\/impetigore.mp3","size":"43232697","title":"MP3 Audio","mimeType":"audio\/mpeg"}],"contributors":[]}}, {"url":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-json\/podlove-web-player\/shortcode\/config\/2guys-config\/theme\/default","data":{"activeTab":"chapters","subscribe-button":null,"share":{"channels":["facebook","twitter","whats-app","linkedin","pinterest","xing","mail","link"],"outlet":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/podlove-web-player\/web-player\/share.html","sharePlaytime":true},"related-episodes":{"source":"disabled","value":null},"version":5,"theme":{"tokens":{"brand":"#E64415","brandDark":"#235973","brandDarkest":"#1A3A4A","brandLightest":"#E9F1F5","shadeDark":"#807E7C","shadeBase":"#807E7C","contrast":"#000","alt":"#fff"},"fonts":{"ci":{"name":"ci","family":["-apple-system","BlinkMacSystemFont","Segoe UI","Roboto","Helvetica","Arial","sans-serif","Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji\", \"Segoe UI Symbol"],"src":[],"weight":800},"regular":{"name":"regular","family":["-apple-system","BlinkMacSystemFont","Segoe UI","Roboto","Helvetica","Arial","sans-serif","Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji\", \"Segoe UI Symbol"],"src":[],"weight":300},"bold":{"name":"bold","family":["-apple-system","BlinkMacSystemFont","Segoe UI","Roboto","Helvetica","Arial","sans-serif","Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji\", \"Segoe UI Symbol"],"src":[],"weight":700}}},"base":"https:\/\/chainsawhorror.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/podlove-web-player\/web-player\/"}}]); podlovePlayer(player, "https://chainsawhorror.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/publisher/8395", "https://chainsawhorror.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/2guys-config/theme/default").then(function() { player && player.classList.remove("podlove-web-player-loading"); }); });We jump back into international horror with Joko Anwar’s 2020 Indonesian folk-horror hit, Impetigore, a Shudder release that earned major festival acclaim and became Indonesia’s Oscar submission.
We talk about how the film’s Jakarta-to-remote-village setup builds atmosphere, the boldness of its dialogue and staging, and the gorgeous candlelit cinematography inspired by shadow puppetry.
Along the way we unpack the twisty mystery, the curse at the heart of the village, and the film’s disturbing violence, including the skinning and the chilling connection between human skin and puppet-making. We also debate the movie’s big exposition dumps, its cultural specificity, and why—subtitles and all—it’s still a compelling, well-made horror story worth seeking out.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Impetigore (2019)Episode 491, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, uh, we go from a request to an international horror film. I don’t think we do enough of these, honestly. There’s a lot of good horror happening outside of the US and, uh, the UK and stuff, and, uh, we tend to focus a little bit on the Western side.
And there are countries out there such as Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, that are well known for being longtime rabid fans of horror movies and have long histories of doing horror movies back to, like, the ’60s and ’70s. I think the last Indonesian horror movie we did, which was also our first Indonesian horror movie we did, was Satan’s Slaves back in 2023 By Joko Anwar, who is one of these directors who snuck into a cinema when he was really, really young, saw a horror movie, was really, really scared by it, and inspired for the rest of his life, wanted to be a director, and specifically wanted to approach cinema from the language of horror.
He was just… And he’s been very successful since then. Satan’s Slaves was a pet project of his. Gosh, I think when we did that, I was actually reporting from Jakarta w- with my, uh, then Indonesian girlfriend, now recently ex-girlfriend. Here we are revisiting this. It, it’s kind of a shame really that Liz is not here to give her perspective on this because, uh, this, this one that we’re doing now, Impetigore, which came two films later for Joko Anwar, is very, very steeped in Indonesian culture.
Satan’s Slaves was a movie that… It was a remake actually of a movie from the ’70s, I believe, or ’80s, that he saw that he really, really loved and, and it was like a pet project for him to finally get that remade. After he had a few successful films under his belt, he was able to do that. This one is a complete original written and directed by him, and it was released in 2020.
Sundance, got very, very good reviews. It was actually a contender. It was Indonesia’s official submission for the Oscars for the international category, and it’s not often a horror movie gets, gets submitted for that.
Craig: Right.
Todd: Uh, it didn’t win, but it got lots of acclaim at other film festivals. It has like a 92% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
It seems like this movie obviously was a big hit in its home country, and wh- where it premiered in the US and Canada, the UK I think, was on Shudder. Following the success of Satan’s Slaves, which was one of their biggest hits, they decided to collaborate with Anwar a bit more and, uh, so Impetigore was released there.
And so I think that’s where most people are gonna be able to see it now. Uh, I’ve got a short list of Joko Anwar movies I want us to do, and so I’m glad we could finally come to this one. I hadn’t seen it before. How about you, Craig?
Craig: No. I’m sure I had… Y- you know, ’cause I, I pay for Shudder, and I scroll through it periodically, and I’m sure that I saw it there.
As you know, these days I’m not particularly drawn to foreign language films unless there’s a dub, and there’s not for this, I don’t, I don’t think.
Todd: You had to read. Sorry, the English teacher had to read.
Craig: Well, to be honest with you, this one, especially in the first half of the movie, less so in the second half, but in the first half of the movie, there’s quite a bit of talking, and it goes by very quickly.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: So you really have… You really do have to keep your eyes on the subtitles- More than I typically would like. True. But whatever. I mean, I, I still knew what was going on, a- as much as I was meant to, I think. I also think there may have been a couple wonky translation things. Minor, minor things. But no, I hadn’t watched it before, and, and I’m glad.
You know, this, the podcast gives me motivation to see these movies that I probably wouldn’t just watch on my own. Alan’s certainly not gonna watch- … a subtitled movie abso- with me. Absolutely not. Not a horror movie, anyway. So I’m, I’m glad to have had the opportunity to watch it, and I think it’s, it’s worth watching.
One of the things that I like about these foreign films is I, I think that yes, they’re often steeped in a culture that I’m not particularly familiar with. So I don’t know what is real and what’s entirely fiction, but it is nice to kind of see different parts of the world and, and these stories, at least the foreign films that we’ve done, typically have original plot lines and interesting things going on that you haven’t seen a bazillion times over.
I mean, this movie shares similarities to some things like Wicker Man. I, I felt like it was l- like, it like those folk horror movies. Absolutely. And it may strictly be because it’s foreign, but also there’s focus on the gore. The plot lines are not at all similar, but it also reminded me, ugh, it’s escaped me.
What’s that controversial movie that they skin a girl at the end so that she can have, like, a transcendental experience?
Todd: Oh, uh, Martyrs. Martyrs.
Craig: Martyrs, yeah. Shades of that. Shades of lots of things. Yeah. I mean, shades of Hostel 2, if you wanna get right down to it. True. But still, still an original story that I was invested in, and I liked the way that, uh, I liked the pacing of it and the way that it played out.
I, I, I was entertained.
Todd: Well, you know, I was reading some interviews with some of the, with the director, and one of the things that surprised him was how well it was received internationally because he said, “You know, I, I didn’t shoot this for an international audience. I shot it for an Indonesian audience, and there’s a lot of Indonesian culture in here.”
And so he kinda wondered how that would translate and come across. And sort of like you said, there’s just a lot of common themes here. It is at heart, in a way A typical ghost story in that there’s a ghost, th- they have something that needs to be done in order to banish them or solve the curse or whatever like that, and that, and that kind of happens.
So in that way, it’s very similar. But in other ways, you know, this is very much taking place in Indonesia. You know, the, the two ladies start out this movie in Jakarta as tollbooth operators, and then we end up in a very, very remote village, which is very common. Indonesia, by the way, is a huge country.
It’s made up of tons of islands, and I don’t know if you realize this, many people don’t, it’s the fourth largest country in the world by population. No, I didn’t know that. Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a pretty big country, and it’s got a lot of different languages, a lot of different cultures in it. So it’s a, it’s a really interesting place.
It’s got a very, very rich history and a lot of rich folklore as well, and that’s what he drew from. But also, he’s put in this movie some things that you wouldn’t normally see in Indonesian cinema, like this dialogue at the beginning in the tollbooth between these two ladies. It’s just so casual, really, that, that you wouldn’t normally see that in an Indonesian movie.
And also, there’s a toilet scene later that, where the girls are talking in a toilet and, and all that, and, and again, something that you wouldn’t normally see. And that’s something that the director and the actors talked about, about how… Uh, some of the actors actually said that’s really what compelled them to participate in this movie was they just thought that the script was bold and unique for Indonesia.
But, uh, anyway, yeah, there’s these two girls, uh, who are chatting in a tollbooth. They’re young ladies, they’re in Jakarta, and they’re gossiping back and forth. And I thought this dialogue was very real and very legit. This is just the sort of chatter that anybody would be having late at night with their coworkers.
And I guess they’re talking over their phones because they’re in separate booths. But, uh One of the things they’re talking about, you know, is, “Oh, this creepy guy often visits me in this car,” and this other dude, you know, who drives through with his truck all the time is trying to m- make a pass at me, yada, yada, yada.
Maya and Din. And, uh, Maya ends up saying, “Oh, this creepy car guy’s coming again.” And this guy is creepy. In his car, he pulls up to the toll booth, and he’s just staring at this woman. He gives her his money, and she gives him his ticket or whatever, but then he parks past the booth, gets out of his car, and starts walking to her, which is totally freaking her out.
And I thought this was an interesting scenario. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of scenario in a horror movie because when you think about it, in a toll booth, this is a solitary place, but it’s also kinda busy.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: You know? But it’s busy with people who are busy passing through and in their own cars, and so, uh, what a, what a clever idea to have this creepy guy approaching her in this place where she is vulnerable even though she is sort of surrounded by people, and there will be people coming through.
Craig: Yeah. I mean, it’s late at night, and it seemed like it wasn’t, you know-
Todd: Super busy …
Craig: bustling. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it is a public space, but, I mean, you also think about it, she’s basically in an eight-by-four-foot box. There’s- Yeah … there’s nowhere really for her to flee to, and she struggles with getting it…
And, and this guy, I don’t remember if he talks to her-
Todd: He does …
Craig: or asks her name or something.
Todd: He asks if she’s from a particular village and asks who her father is, and then when she sort of says, “M- m- mm, no,” and he walks away, but then when he goes back to his car, he pulls a machete out.
Craig: Right, and he chases her with it and gets her down on the ground, and he says something like, “We just don’t want what your family left behind.
Take it back.” But then the police show up, and they shoot him. And we cut to l- later, where the, the two women, I think, are now selling clothes, like, I don’t know, they’re vendors or something. They want to open their own clothing store, but they don’t have any money, and this is when Maya starts talking about her parents, and you’re gonna have to refresh my memory.
I watched this last night, and I don’t even remember some of the details.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: She doesn’t know her parents?
Todd: Right. She was raised by her aunt and uncle and then taken to the city. All she knows is she grew up outside of the city, and they took her to the city when she was, like, five years old or something.
Craig: But what makes her think now about it? I guess just because the guy asked about her dad and the village or something?
Todd: Specifically, he mentioned her dad, Kidono Wango, or something like that. And she didn’t know w- who this guy was or who her dad was, but then she goes back and she ends up looking through some photos, and she finds this one photo of her aunt and uncle with her as a five-year-old standing in front of this big house.
And on the back it has that name, that Ki Donowongo, and the name of the village on it.
Craig: I see. I see.
Todd: Yeah, so now she kinda knows for the first time, because l- you know, she later kind of explains that her aunt and uncle didn’t talk about her parents at all, and didn’t really tell her much about her past, and they’re gone.
So she’s thinking, “Oh, there’s this huge house here. This might be my inheritance. Maybe I can go back to this village and claim this, you know, and have some money So that’s her initial motivation.
Craig: Right. And y- I mean, that’s, uh, kind of presumptuous. Like, like the, the whole, the whole plan is they’re just gonna show up and I guess- Prove
claim this house and then they can sell it and have money to, you know, for their future and their business and, and whatnot. This was the scene that you were talking about. I, I feel like they’re having this conversation about maybe being able to sell the house while Maya is sitting on the toilet. And at one point I think maybe she got a little bit cut or something by the machete.
She wasn’t badly injured, but there’s a little cut on her leg, and I don’t know if it’s from the machete or if it’s from something else, but there’s a little cut, there’s a little cut on her leg and she pulls something out of it which I can only… Like, it’s like a tiny little scroll, but it almo- it looks like a, like a fortune out of a fortune cookie.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But she can’t read it. I guess it’s not her language or whatever. Right. And she doesn’t seem particularly concerned- Concerned … that she pulled that thing out of her leg.
Todd: Well, I, I think she seems a little disturbed by it, but like what can she do? You, you forgot that when the guy had her down on the ground with the machete he saw the scar on her leg.
She had a scar there before and he dug into it- Oh, okay … with the machete. So she- Oh, okay … she had bee
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Mausoleum
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We talk about how hard it is to find, why it feels more like late-’70s TV horror than an ’80s theatrical release, and how its “so bad it’s funny” charm makes it perfect for a group watch. Along the way we highlight the recognizable cast, the goofy demon-possession plot, the constant green-glowing mausoleum, and the over-the-top practical effects that go from silly to outrageous.
Between awkward editing, absurd kill scenes, and tonal whiplash comedy moments, we end up with mixed feelings—but plenty to laugh about.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Mausoleum (1983)Episode 490, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Poscast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: For this week’s, uh, episode, I went to ChatGPT, and I was going between two movies. I- gosh, I don’t remember what the other one was off the top of my head, but it was a slasher from the ’80s, ’cause I’m just in this mood for these early ’80s slashers.
We’ve done quite a few of them in a row here. And this one, which I knew was more supernatural, and I thought, “Well, we could shake it up,” but I, I would really kinda like to see the better one. And ChatGPT recommended we go with Mausoleum from 1983 instead of the slasher that I had because it said, “Honestly, I think this one’s gonna be way, way more fun for you to talk about in your podcast because it’s it’s pretty nuts.”
Craig: Fair.
Todd: And, uh, I have to say, sometimes ChatGPT is right on the money.
Craig: Sometimes.
Todd: Yeah. This is gonna be a blast to chat about. This is, uh, Mausoleum from 1983. It’s just been on my list for a very long time. Glad to finally tick it off, and I can’t wait to talk about it.
Craig: I’m glad you’re excited.
Todd: How about you, uh, Craig?
Do you have any history with this at all?
Craig: Absolutely not. Had never heard of it. Can’t imagine. I, I mean, I guess. I mean, it was really early ’80s, so I would’ve been, like, four, uh- Yeah, of course … when it came out. So when it was on video, it probably seemed old to me. I don’t know. And, and it’s not super easy to find.
No. I found it on the Roku Channel. Hmm. So you can find it. I didn’t even check YouTube. It’s pr- it may be on YouTube as well. It wouldn’t surprise me. But it’s interesting.
Todd: Interesting it is. It has some interesting history behind it too. Apparently, this was, um, partially, at least partially mob funded. One of the most famous, uh, mobsters actually.
He’s out there. He, he was in prison for a while. He found Jesus, like, in the early ’90s, and then when he got out of prison, he started, basically, he wrote a book about how bad it is to be a mobster and how awful the mafia is. He went out on, on speaking engagements and talking and the faith circuit and all this stuff.
And now he actually has a pretty cool, actually, YouTube channel that’s very active right now and talking about the, the underworld, the mob, the mafia, that kind of thing. And, uh, this guy’s name is Michael Franzese. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. Former mobster who was a capo regime in the Colombo crime family in New York City, and this was one of his earlier efforts to legitimize some of his businesses, but a lot of it was la- money laundering as well.
Interestingly, then there turned out to be, I think, after that, probably because of this, a number of legal disputes over who originally owned the rights to the story, who owns the rights to the film production. I don’t know how those were all settled, but there, quite a few people involved went in to try to take, take a piece of this.
And yeah, it made, like, $1.3 million. Really? Yeah, it wasn’t huge, but it had a very limited theatrical release and then of course it went to laser disc and VHS and DVD eventually. It got a Vinegar Syndrome cleanup and re-release that apparently sold out in 24 hours.
Craig: Oh my gosh.
Todd: Yeah. So this movie’s got its fans, and I can see why.
This movie is one of those so bad it’s funny movies. Honestly, I think it’s right there smack dab in the middle of that spectrum. If you watch this with your friends, you will just laugh at the absurdity of most of it.
Craig: Yeah, it’s silly and I, you know, uh, there are certainly parts of it that could never air on TV, but it, it felt very much kind of like a movie of the week.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: You know? Like a scary movie of the week. There was something about it, I was kind of surprised to see that it came out in 1983 because it has a really late ’70s feel to me. Mm. At one point they even go to, like, what I would only describe as a disco.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And the, the fashion kind of looks ’70s and I don’t know, it just had kind of a TV q- the, the effects had kind of a TV quality or maybe even, like, those early Disney movies like-
Clip: Mm-hmm
Craig: Watcher In The Woods or Lady In White or whatever. Like, those types of effects that at the time I’m sure looked great but, you know, these days look very dated. But I agree with you that I can kind of see why this movie would have its fans, because I think if I had seen it when I was a kid, I would have a lot of nostalgia for it.
‘Cause it is weird and goofy, and there’s boobs in it, and like crazy stuff going on. So I get it. But I, I, I bet a large part of that audience is people who grew up with it, would be my bet.
Todd: Yeah. I almost liken it to some of the Richard Tenney movies, like, um, in the ’90s. So this is early ’80s, but in the early ’90s he was doing like Night of the Demons and Witchboard.
Witchboard in particular-
Craig: Okay. Yeah …
Todd: with just like really bad acting and really silly supernatural nonsense.
Craig: I can see that.
Todd: Corny, you know, in many ways and, and very basic and simple, but they have a charm that we kinda like, you know? I think we’re big fans of Witchboard, even though we would not say it’s a-
Craig: Yeah
Todd: it’s a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.
Craig: No, it’s a bad movie, but I grew up with it and I, yeah. Yeah.
Todd: Yeah. This, this seems like just an earlier one of those along those lines, and you can tell they probably had a lot of fun making it. And, uh- I can see
Craig: that …
Todd: and so for that I really enjoyed watching it.
I think I would’ve enjoyed watching it a lot more if you’d been there with me and- Yeah. You know, there’s even some, some stars in here, a couple. The, this one woman, Lawanda Page, was on Sanford and Sons.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: You know, she was the aunt in Sanford and Sons for the whole run of that, and, uh, in quite a few movies and all over television, so you know, I recognized her.
It was weird seeing her in this because it doesn’t do her much credit. You know? She, the directing is lousy and so her performance doesn’t come off as great, but that’s not her fault.
Craig: I thought she was hilarious. She was one of my favorite parts of the movie.
Todd: Oh, she was.
Craig: She just, she just came in to drop stupid one-liners.
Ugh. We’ll, we’ll get there. We will. She, she was funny though.
Todd: And then Bobby Bressi Who unfortunately, this was just one of the few… She seems to have had promise to be an early s- to, to be a scream queen.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: And she r- apparently really wanted to. She was embracing her role in these horror movies and said, “I, you know, I could be doing this forever.
I wouldn’t mind. If I get old, then I’ll, I’ll be a witch or a villain or something in these. I, I don’t care. I like that about it.” Unfortunately, she r- didn’t end up being in too many. This was one of her first, and aside from, uh, let’s see, what else was she in? She was in Surf Nazis Must Die, that Troma movie.
A movie called Evil Spawn, both in 1987, and that was pretty much it, so she didn’t get very… Oh, and she was in Ghoulies. She was the temptress in Ghoulies a c- a year after this. Oh,
Craig: okay.
Todd: So she had four-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: four movies and s- they were, they were… Ghoulies is famous and Surf Nazis Must Die has its followers and is, is pretty well known, so, uh, she, she gave it her all.
But man-
Craig: She looks a lot to me like, uh, Barbara Crampton, and-
Todd: Yes …
Craig: you know, it’s too bad that she, uh, didn’t get more stuff. ‘Cause I, I mean, she was fine in this movie. I liked her. She’s very beautiful.
Todd: Oh, yeah. She’s got a great body, and you see a lot of it-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: over
Craig: and over again. She was a Playmate, wasn’t she?
Todd: Yeah, she was. I’m
Craig: pretty sure she… Yeah.
Todd: She didn’t mind. One time Playmate bunny. Was a music teacher before that. Oh, the places our lives take us in our careers.
Craig: Right? Well, I read that the guy that played her husband was, like, a child evangelist.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: Did you read that? It
Todd: is so nuts. Isn’t that
Craig: weird?
Todd: Traveling around the country. Did you recognize him from anything else?
Craig: No.
Todd: Oh, God. I looked at him and I was like, “Oh my God, this is the guy from Starcrash.” Have you ever seen Starcrash?
Craig: No. Uh-
Todd: 1978. Is it a Roger Corman movie, or is it one of his protege? Nope. It’s an Italian film by Luigi Cozzi, but it is a Star Wars knockoff that you must be seen to be believed.
It is so out there that it is a blast, and he stars in that as Akton, a star god. David Hasselhoff and Christopher Plummer are in that movie. I mean- Oh
Craig: my gosh …
Todd: you really, you need to go out and see Starcrash sometime when you’re bored at home. You will have a blast. And he’s just… He’s in that movie, he’s just like he is in this movie.
The guy can’t help but crack a smile most of the time- … no matter what’s going on, right? He smiles. Like, the most serious stuff is happening to him, and he seems like, eh, half the time he’s kinda pretty willing to go along with it. Never too concerned. Yeah. Which isn’t good for this role that he’s in, honestly.
He needed to display a little more range, I’m afraid. But yeah, Marjoe Gortner. What a name. Wow. And our other famous person in here, uh, probably the most famous, is Norman Burton. He was the, uh, psychiatrist in here, and this guy’s been in Planet of the Apes, the James Bond movies, The Towering Inferno, he was in Bloodsport, the, all over television in the ’80s.
I mean, this guy’s got a ton of credits to his name, and he’s very, I think very recognizable, so… Yeah, so this, uh, oddly enough, this movie has some star power, and that’s what we see in a lot of these early horror movies, isn’t it? Like, these people come over from television and do these movies that are…
You, you wonder what they’re doing there. I guess the answer is the mob calls in its favors. Yeah. Yes. Working, yeah, making money in between bigger projects. So anyway, Mausoleum. By the way, did you find it interesting that the credits were so zoomy in the very beginning?
Craig: Uh-
Todd: Did that bother you?
Craig: No, I don’t remember.
I just remember that it was, like, over a cemetery and that it looked like TV, like-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: that era TV credits.
Todd: It… Yeah, just, like, red text on a, right in- Uh-huh … the middle of the screen. But then after it had displayed, it would, like, zoom towards the camera like it’s-
Craig: Oh, no. I didn’t notice …
Todd: like this is a sci-fi movie or something like that.
Every time, zoom towards the camera. I was like, “Well, that was a choice.” But anyway, Susan, this little, this young, young girl is crying at the grave of her mother, and there’s this woman beside her who we later learn is her aunt, uh, this, her mother’s sister named Cora.
Craig: Right.
Todd: I didn’t rec- really recognize her.
I don’t think she’s been in too much.
Craig: No, I didn’t either. I just, I read that she, uh… We quickly jump in time, and the woman who plays Cora is actually younger than the woman who plays adult Susan. Yeah.
Todd: It’s kind of funny. That’s funny. Yeah. The woman, Bobbi Bresee, they say that she’s, like, 30 in the movie.
This woman, I’m sorry, like, she’s beautiful and she’s very young, but she looks older than 30.
Craig: Yeah, she does.
Todd: Yeah. Anyway, but this girl’s young. What, uh, what would you say? She’s, like, 12 or something maybe?
Craig: I don’t know.
Todd: 1
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Man's Best Friend
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After breaking into the Emax lab for a story, reporter Lori inadvertently rescues Max, a genetically engineered dog spliced with traits like speed, strength, climbing, camouflage, and even acid urine—then chaos follows as the mad scientist Dr. Jarrett and the police close in.
We talk standout cast and effects, the surprisingly sitcom-like tone and Spielberg-ish score, and set pieces ranging from a swallowed cat to an escalating chase back to the lab. Max ultimately dies stopping Jarrett, but a final reveal hints his legacy lives on in a litter of puppies—including one that looks a lot like Max.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Man’s Best Friend (1993)Episode 489, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: It was Craig’s turn to pick this week, and wouldn’t you know it, I think his love for dogs is showing through. If you’re a longtime listener of this podcast, you’ll know that, uh, which of the two of us are the major pet lovers.
We both love pets, don’t get me wrong, but I’m more of a cat guy, and, uh, Craig is a dog guy. So, uh, I think he decided … I don’t know why you chose this. This is 1993’s Man’s Best Friend, written and directed by John Lafia, who’s responsible for the Child’s Play franchise. I think he wrote the first one. He directed the second one.
He’s done a few other things, but… And then he did this movie, which is chock-full of stars. But I had heard of it. I, I think it was somewhere on our list somewhere to do eventually, but I hadn’t seen it, and I didn’t really know much about it. How about you, Craig? Had you seen this before?
Craig: I know that I had.
I think I probably saw it when it came out when I was younger. I mean, I guess I would’ve been, like, a freshman in high school-
Todd: Mm-hmm …
Craig: just because I thought that the box art looked awesome.
Todd: It is pretty badass, yeah.
Craig: It’s, like, this Rottweiler-looking, mean, snarling dog’s face, and, like, half of it is, like, a cyborg dog.
Todd: Yeah. Oddly.
Craig: And yeah. And then Lance Henriksen is down in the bottom corner. And you know, of course, I knew him from a bazillion things. Yeah. So I’m sure I watched it then when I was a kid, and then I’m pretty sure that I watched it again. I haven’t mentioned it in a long time, but when I was doing my internship in another town where I didn’t know anybody, and s- all I did was hang out in my apartment and rent several horror movies a day and- Yeah
this I, I’m s- I’m sure I re-watched it then. But honestly, I didn’t remember anything about it going into it And so I popped it on last night, and I am so excited to talk about it. I’m
Todd: glad you are. There are so many people in this. Oh my God, I, I really kind of went in blind, and Ally Sheedy, Lance Henriksen, the freaking, that kid actor, J.D.
Daniels from The Mighty Ducks, and John Cassini, and I don’t know if you know Robert Costanzo. You might not know his name- Yeah … but you know his face- Yeah … in every movie that’s ever been made in the modern era, I think.
Craig: Yeah. He’s
Todd: in it
Craig: somewhere. He, uh, he was in an episode of, uh, Golden Girls. He played a coach.
Todd: He’s been in everything. Any time you need this- I
Craig: know …
Todd: big, fat, bald Italian guy, he’s the one.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Always making some wisecrack remark.
Craig: You, you, you click on the See All tab on his IMDb page, and you have to scroll for, like, pages and pages. Like- … he’s been working for decades. He’s been in everything.
Todd: It’s been amazing.
This is the guy I wanna be, you know? As a famous actor- Right? … that’s the kind of famous actor I’d wanna be. Just this dude who does like- Definitely … five to 10 movies a year, all these small roles. Probably very few people are stopping him on the street and telling him how- Right … how amazing he is, you know?
He just gets to live a normal life, but also be in so many movies, work with so many cool people, and probably make a nice living for himself.
Craig: Sure,
Todd: sure. I mean, God, his residuals alone must be insane. I should look up his house. Can you look that stuff up online? Like, what does Robert Costanzo’s- Probably
house look like? I’ll bet it’ll surprise you. Even Bob Shay has a very small cameo in here.
Craig: Yeah. ‘
Todd: Cause it’s New Line produced and- Oh my word, what a movie, what a movie.
Craig: Yeah, there’s… And so the guy who wrote and directed it, John Lafia, he was a co-writer on the first Child’s Play named Chucky, and then he directed Child’s Play 2.
And we both really liked Child’s Play 2. Oh
Todd: yeah,
Craig: absolutely. And his special effects guy on this, Kevin Yagher, I guess is a big special effects guy- Oh, yeah … but he worked with Lafia on, on Child’s Play, and he designed Chucky and he did all the work on the puppets, and he also did all the other, like, makeup and gore effects too.
Todd: Yeah, I mean, he did The Cryptkeeper too. I mean, he’s, he’s definitely- Did he? … a big special effects guy, yeah.
Craig: Right.
Todd: We’ve done a lot of movies that Kevin Yagher has, uh, contributed to.
Craig: And then ex- Okay, so it’s a movie about a dog, really, and oh God- … I can’t wait to talk about so many things about it, but, like, the dog, you know, doesn’t talk, but it makes dog noises.
And I just assumed that they just got, you know, got stock dog noises from somewhere. But apparently they had Frank Welker, the voice of Megatron and Scooby-Doo, come in and do a lot of Max’s- … uh, voice work too.
Todd: That’s, that’s one of those things where you’d c- you kinda wonder like, “Really? D- was that necessary?”
I’m glad the guy got some work, and I’m s- you know, I’m a voice actor. I understand there’s talent involved. You can’t just get anybody off the street to come in and do these voices. But, uh, you know, a- as a voice actor who’s not fa- a, also a famous actor, it, it irks me a little bit when nowadays instead of getting, like, professional voice actors in for cartoons and things, they get stars in- Right
to do these voices. And this is just, like, another step in that other direction where w- did you have to get this really, really famous voice actor to come in and do the dog sounds for this? Or could you gotten, like, a, a guy who would’ve liked his break? It’s like Vin Diesel being Groot. Really? Yeah. Really?
Craig: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know, but I mean, he did a good job because- Yeah … sounded like a real dog to me.
Todd: Sure did.
Craig: And I don’t even know, did you mention Ally Sheedy when you were talking about-
Todd: I don’t think you heard half of what I said because you’re repeating almost everything.
Craig: I’m sorry. I must not be paying attention to you- No, it’s okay
because I’m so excited. You’re- Seriously …
Todd: No, I’m, I’m teasing you. I’m teasing you. No, yeah, I’d mentioned Ally Sheedy right off the bat, and I was like, “Ah, I haven’t seen Ally Sheedy in a while. Is she even still around doing stuff?” I don’t even know.
Craig: Honestly, I just have so many things rolling around in my head that, like, as I was watching it last night that I wanted to talk about that I think I’m distracted.
So let me start out with Ally Sheedy by saying it struck me very early on that this movie has almost an identical plot to Short Circuit.
Todd: Oh my God
Craig: There’s, you know- You’re
Todd: right …
Craig: evil scientists create this dangerous science experiment that then escapes and finds Ally Sheedy, who sees the good in it and tries to protect it from the evil scientists.
Todd: Uh-huh.
Craig: And the dangerous e- science experiment, like, protects her from harm. Bad things, right. Uh-huh. Like-
Todd: Until, uh, it r- reaches its limitations in some way. It, it goes a little off the ra- you know, it, it’s not a perfect one-for-one. Right. Right. But, you know, up until that point- Exactly … you’re right, it is strikingly similar.
And I think that’s not an altogether… I mean, there are other movies like that too, right? Where somebody has to rescue something, uh, from a… Sort of like Fly to the Navigator, I guess you could say. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s a little like that. Uh-huh. There’s, there’s a lot. It’s a template, for sure.
Craig: Well, and the other thing that Ally Sheedy contributes that I just found so interesting and bizarre about this movie, and ultimately what made it stand out in such a unique way that I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so weird, I wanna tell people about it”- Hmm
is this movie is shot like a family comedy about a family who, like, adopts this-
Todd: I
Craig: know … dog that then causes mischief.
Todd: Ah.
Craig: And it’s, it’s shot like that, and it’s scored like that.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: And Ally Sheedy brings a levity to it like that. And like-
Todd: Everybody does, really. Lance Henriksen almost feels out of place in this movie.
He feels like the only person who has anything other than wacky.
Craig: But he’s kind of the cartoonish villain from- Yeah … those types of family movies too.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: Ah. It’s so strange.
Todd: That’s what I found a little off-putting about it. I think other people might say, “Oh, that’s what kinda makes this unique and charming and interesting,” and I like the idea of going that direction.
You know, we’ve al- we’ve often talked about how flipping expectations on their heads a little bit can have this interesting effect, like scoring something… Like, like we’ve talked about, uh, An American Werewolf in London, that horrific transformation scene has this beautiful ballad over it, Blue Moon, right?
Mm-hmm. And, and in this case you can see what they were thinking. They were like, “Let’s make this like Beethoven-”
Craig: Yeah “…
Todd: except we’re gonna make it really gory, and the dog’s killing people.”
Craig: Right.
Todd: And you can think, “Wow, that’ll have an effect.” And the effect it has for me was just like, “What the hell am I watching?”
For most of it, to be honest with you. I tried to keep an open mind through the whole thing, and I tried to enjoy it, but I- Oh, I, I, I have to admit, the vibe as I was watching it was, “This is the movie I have on in the background while I’m doing other things.”
Craig: See, and I just found it so odd that I couldn’t stop-
Todd: Yeah
watching.
Craig: I was fascinated by it. Plus I do love dogs. And that’s the other thing, like this killer dog, for I would say, I don’t know, the first 70% of the movie, I mean, he’s ornery. He kills people every once in a while. But for the most part he’s like this really sweet, big cuddly dog. Mm-hmm. And like, and he’s adorable.
God, and I, uh, you’ll have to play a little bit of the score because, you know, it’s like the score under some nostalgic movie from your childhood. It’s-
Todd: Oh, exactly. It’s like a Steven Spielberg type score. Really is.
Craig: Yeah. Or like the score under the beginning of Something Wicked This Way Comes where it’s…
Oh gosh. It’s-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: it’s hard to describe but you- Doesn’t
Todd: even have that edge to it.
Craig: No. You would recognize it when you hear it. But-
Todd: Mm-hmm …
Craig: yeah. All of those things. And I, it’s funny, I, I didn’t know what you would think of it, but as I was watching it, I was thinking w- I’m sure I was inspired by one scene in the movie in particular, but it reminded me a little bit of that movie that we watched about that cat.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: That cat that was possessed by another cat.
Todd: Exactly. I thought exactly the same thing. Uninvited is what it was called. Not The- Yeah … Uninvited. Uninvited.
Craig: I felt like it was goofy in that way.
Todd: Uh-huh. It was.
Craig: I feel like this movie is just kind of a much more polished version of that. Yeah. And maybe for some people that
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The Slayer
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Notas do episódio
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We dig into its standout Tybee Island, Georgia locations (including the fort ruins and the abandoned theater), the surprisingly gorgeous orchestral score, and how the film tries to blend standard slasher beats with surreal, dreamlike, potentially supernatural elements. Along the way we break down the small adult-couple cast dynamic, the slow soap-opera pacing, the shadowy killer presentation, and several kills (including a memorable pitchfork moment) while noting the heavy A Nightmare on Elm Street parallels. We also unpack the confusing, ambiguity-driven ending and why the movie feels ambitious even when it doesn’t fully land.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript The Slayer (1982)Episode 488, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: Well, I wanted to take us back to another ’80s horror movie, you know, this sweet spot in the early ’80s between ’81 and ’82. We did a whole theme month, I think, on ’82 horror, but there was still so much that we haven’t covered yet that I just keep pulling out of the ether.
Just when I think I’ve covered most of the weird, kind of obscure things from 1982, I’ll be on Tubi and I’ll be like, “Oh my God, there’s like five more things here,” all of which I’ve never heard of before, and most of which look at least a little intriguing. And I’m, I’m kind of a completionist in this way.
I love seeing what, what’s going on at this time period. And, uh, we just covered one a couple weeks ago. I wanted to keep going with this theme, and so I found this movie called The Slayer from 1982. It was, I don’t know, it was somehow in my list somewhere that kind of wanted to get to. I don’t remember what I originally read about it.
Nothing special. Just thought we’d go in blind and see how this turned out. And, uh, here we are. First time I had seen it, but it is available on Tubi. How about you, Craig? Had you seen this before or heard of it?
Craig: No. No, I’d never seen of it or heard of it. And, you know, we don’t get paid by them. Tubi, if you’re listening, you could give us, you know, a shout-out.
Um, but seriously, like, really of all of the streaming services, I find that its catalog is kind of the most diverse, and they’ve got things coming and going all the time. You can almost always find… And, and to be fair, a lot of times- Tubi Fair … you have to wade through a… To be fair, a lot of times you have to wade through a lot of crap.
Like-
Todd: Oh, yeah …
Craig: I can’t tell you how many times, but that’s usually newer stuff, like lower budget new stuff that I put on and I can tell in the first five minutes, I’m like- Yes … this was shot on an iPhone. The acting is already terrible. I, I don’t, I’m not even gonna give it a try. But this older stuff, you will find, uh, some interesting stuff in there, some, some gems.
And I don’t know if I would classify this as a gem, but it’s interesting. Yeah. Uh, and I think it’ll be interesting to talk about.
Todd: It’s gonna be really fun to talk about. It’s directed by this guy, uh, named J. S. Cardone or Cardone. I don’t know how you pronounce those names. And, uh, he’s done a handful of genre films, about 20 or so, all kind of like this, little horror, little thriller.
Stuff mostly either for TV or for straight to video it seems like. This one obviously did come out in the theater before it, it went to video.
Craig: The only thing that I recognized on his list was he did the Prom Night remake.
Todd: Yeah. Have you seen that?
Craig: Yeah, and I remember next to nothing about it, which is never a good sign.
I mean, I, it was very typical of those 2000 slashers. Nothing, nothing to write home about.
Todd: Well, this one in a way is very typical of these early 80s slashers. You know, we’ve done things like The Mutilator and the one that we did a couple weeks ago. These are shot in the US, so this is not a Canadian one.
In fact, this one was shot down in Georgia, and I was– As we were watching this, I thought, “God, these locations look so familiar to me,” and I’m trying to figure out, is it just because most of these movies take place in the same few settings, or is it because these are the actual locations I’ve seen other movies in?
And so I did a bit of a deep dive to figure out where this was shot, and it was shot on Tybee Island in Georgia. Mm-hmm. And indeed, we’ve seen a couple films that were shot on this island.
Craig: Oh, really?
Todd: Yeah. One of which was, well, The Menu. You remember The Menu? That’s a newer one.
Craig: Oh, yeah.
Todd: Uh, that was shot there.
At least, uh, it got, production got moved there about halfway through. But the other one we saw that was shot there was, uh, The Beach House. Remember that one?
Craig: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Todd: Baywatch has been shot there. Some Cobra Kai episodes have been shot there. And then it’s home to a couple forts. There’s, uh, Fort Screven, which is from like the Spanish American War, and there’s a Fort Pulaski, which is more Civil War era.
And I pi- pulled up the vi- because there’s a point in here where they walk through these ruins of, you know- Uh-huh … e- early on in the movie, and I thought, “God, I mean, what are those? We never see them again. That’s gotta be some location thing.”
Craig: I know.
Todd: And I think those might be the ruins from Fort Screven.
But while I was looking up Fort Screven, I saw- found this Fort Pulaski that’s also on that island, which is more brick walls and things like that. Again- Uh-huh … it’s Civil War era. And that is where Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies was filmed.
Craig: Oh. And
Todd: I tell you- That’s funny … you pull up those pictures, and you’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, clearly.”
Right, right. And it’s been the site of a lot of these things too. And there’s a theater in this movie, an abandoned, bombed out looking old theater that now has been completely restored and renovated and is a very active theater. In fact, in the movie, it’s clearly just sitting kind of by itself in the middle of nowhere on what maybe was an old main street or something of this, this, uh, island.
But I think the island since the early ’80s has really undergone some, you know-
Craig: Oh, yeah …
Todd: renovations and stuff. And now it looks beautiful. And that, that whole area, like, there’s, there’s buildings around it, and it’s clearly on, like, a street and, and, uh, there’s a lot of activity around that theater and stuff.
So it’s really neat to see, you know, how these old set locations, either they stay the same, they get razed or, in this case, just really built up. It’s, it, it was fun ’cause that theater is kind of a bit of a set piece toward the end of the movie and-
Craig: Yeah. Well, and, and the whole island really serves as a, a really cool set piece.
I mean, you talked about them walking through that fort at the very beginning, and it looks really cool. Yeah. And it’s obviously, you know, it’s, it’s clearly an actual location. Th- and I feel like that’s what they were doing. Like, as soon as they arrive on the island, and we’ll backtrack a little bit here in a second, but as soon as these characters arrive on the island, they have to trek, like, all the way across it to get to where they’re actually staying And I think that they just did that to take advantage of the location.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Why would you not film on that location? Frankly, I, I question why they never went back there. I thought surely they would go back. Surely there would be some sort of climactic chase or scene or something- Right … there, and they never really do. That theater that you said, it’s like a, a rundown theater, and when I say r- like uninhabited, you know, it’s a shell of a theater basically.
Yeah. But it is cool looking, and you can totally tell it’s practical. And y- when you say, you know, you said it must have developed some since the ’80s. Well, yeah, I, I think that when they shot there, it was pretty much abandoned. I mean, very… almost uninhabited. And now I think, like, you know, you said The Beach House was filmed there.
That was a, a whole community of fancy beach houses. A- and like you said, they have renovated that theater, and at some point, I don’t know if it was for an anniversary or a celebration of the 4K release or something, they did a s- a screening of this movie there for the locals.
Todd: Oh.
Craig: And apparently some of the locals remembered when the cast and crew came through and all that stuff, so.
Oh, that’s so cool. Yeah, I mean, it’s, that’s, that’s one of the cool things about it. I mean, it’s shot on a really cool location. It’s on an island, so you get lots of beach footage, and the house that they end up staying in is, is really cool. I’m not sure. I didn’t read anything I would have kind of a difficult time believing that the exterior and the interior w- really went together.
Yeah. Um, only, only because the exterior looks a little bit run-down, not nearly as much as the theater. Maybe still inhabitable, but by the time they get inside, it’s, it’s super, super nice.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I don’t know if they filmed those on sets or, or what, but-
Todd: I’m not sure …
Craig: yeah, the, the setting itself is, you know, a big perk for the film as a whole.
Todd: And it’s a little nostalgic too, because so many of these movies, whether they take place, oh, in the woods, on a ca- summer camp, or here on the beach, you get inside these homes and they almost all look the same, don’t they?
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Wood panels, ’70s era homes with, you know, a couple floors in them, and a big living room, and an odd kitchen in the back, and often, like, a patio out front.
I mean, this is the template for the house that the slashers happen in.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And I was, again, I was just thinking about The Mutilator because of the setting. I think when we did The Mutilator, we were talking about how unusual it seemed to have this setting that normally is, like, a summer camp, or it’s in the woods.
Instead, it’s a cabin on the beach.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: And The Mutilator came out two years after this movie, so actually this one precedes it. I don’t know what other cabin on the beach movie there were. I get Bay of Blood, that Italian movie from way back- Mm-hmm … that precedes all of this, and sort of the prototypical slasher.
But, uh, yeah, I liked the setting. I thought the setting was almost as much a character as everything else, and it really fit in with the dreamy, drama-y nature of all of this. So much more you can do with the water, and the ocean, and the horizon, and the beach, and all the… I don’t wanna get too deep in here, but, like, you know, the, just all these imagery of the beach, and the sand, and ever-shifting patterns, and high tide, and low tide, and- Sure
all that, I think really helps play into the themes that they’re going for. Which I think are actually kind of ambitious. I feel like this movie, ultimately I found it kind of plodding and mostly-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: boring and slow.
Craig: Yes.
Todd: But I think they were aiming for something that they just didn’t quite hit.
Craig: Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with you. It just seemed like every scene that wasn’t a, like, suspenseful kill scene just went on, like, three or four beats too long.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Why am I still watching this? Like, anyway. Y- you had talked about how it really kind of is one of those standard slashers of the era, and it is, almost to a frustrating amount- Hmm
for me. Because I feel like the filmmakers were attempting something different, and it just didn’t actually ever get realized. It, more or le- In terms of the way that it’s shot and the way that it looks and the way that the villain or, or killer or whatever is shown to us, it could be any slasher movie.
It could be Mutilator, it could be I Know What You Did Last Summer, it could be, you know, any typical slasher. But I feel like he tried to weave into the story this surreal, dreamlike, potentially supernatural element-
Todd: Mm-hmm …
Craig: that I wish they would’ve leaned heavier into Before the last two seconds.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Or, or before the last five minutes.
And, and maybe that had something to do with, you know, I don’t know, uh, budget. You know, I, I know that the studio that made this… I think that they were already done filming when the studio that made this went bankrupt, and they just kind of put together what they had. Like, I, I read that when it initially came out it hadn’t even been color corrected.
Like, a lot of the scenes were in pitch black because they hadn’t really done anything with them. I’m assuming that the one that we saw was the 4K transfer because I didn’t find that to be the case. No. I, I felt like even in the dark scenes I could pretty much tell what was going on.
Todd: Honestly, I thought it was really well lit and really beautifully shot, honestly.
But yeah, I suppose that if we had seen this on VHS, you know-
Craig: Right …
Todd: 20, 30 years ago it would’ve been very different picture for-
Craig: Yeah. And,
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Send Help
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We go modern with Sam Raimi’s 2026 horror-thriller Send Help, now streaming on Hulu, and break down why its genre-blending tone (dark comedy, survival adventure, romance fake-outs, and brutal horror beats) works so well.
We talk about Raimi’s signature style, the small-cast setup, and the power-dynamics story between office underdog Linda Little (Rachel McAdams) and her arrogant boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) after a plane crash strands them on an island.From the chaotic crash sequence to the boar hunt, shifting sympathies, and escalating psychological violence, we dig into the film’s twists, the mansion reveal, and that sharp final-year-later payoff. Along the way we hit the box office/streaming success, standout performances, and why the ending feels so satisfyingly wicked.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Send Help (2026)Episode 487, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: We’re going pretty modern today. This, this movie came out this year. I think it’s something that Craig saw, really enjoyed, and thought we should do. And I think you guys’ll be happy to hear us talk about it as well.
It, it involves one of our all-time favorite directors, Sam Raimi, with his newest movie. And, you know, Sam Raimi doesn’t direct too many movies these days, so- Mm-hmm … it always perks my interest very quickly the minute I see that he’s got something new on his plate, because I’ve always loved… Oh, I, I don’t… I think I’ve probably loved everything he’s ever done, honestly.
He’s just a very reliable director. He’s got a good vision. He’s got good knack for picking stories to tell, and he tells them well. This is 2026’s Send Help. Yeah, and it’s streaming right now on Hulu, right? Is it a Hulu exclusive?
Craig: I believe so. Well, I mean, y- I think you can rent or buy it elsewhere, but-
Todd: No
Craig: yeah, as far as streaming is concerned, I think it’s on Hulu or Disney Plus with Hulu But yeah, it just came out this year. As of this recording, which I have no idea when this will come out, but as of this recording, it is the number one streaming film on Hulu and has been for a while.
Todd: Oh.
Craig: It did surprisingly well.
It’s shot on a small budget. I wanna say it shot on a budget of, like, $40 mill- million, which is really impressive ’cause it looks really good.
Todd: Yeah, it does.
Craig: Yeah. And, and $40 million is a relatively low budget for a studio film like this.
Todd: Nowadays.
Craig: Yeah, nowadays. It’s Sam Raimi’s first horror movie since Drag Me to Hell, which- Wow
came out a long time ago. Sure did. Geez. Like, I don’t even remember. Like you said, he just doesn’t do as many movies as he used to anymore, but he was interested in this movie for a long time. I wanna say, like, since 2019 he had been pitching some variation of this movie. But pandemic era, they wanted to take it direct to streaming, and he didn’t want to.
He wanted a theatrical release, and so they just kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. And eventually he got around to it after Doctor Strange and the Multitude of Madness, or Multiverse, excuse me- Ah … Multiverse of Madness.
Todd: Did he direct that?
Craig: I- yeah, I think so. Oh. And he, in that film, he worked with Amy Adams, who’s very famous for many things, but I know her mostly from Mean Girls and The Notebook, but she’s been working consistently since she was young.
She’s fantastic. And he agrees with me and recognized that, and felt like she was underutilized in Doctor Strange, and, and he really, really wanted to work with her again. She was kind of his only choice for the lead role in this film. It did great. At the box office it far exceeded expectations. Even opening weekend I think it was projected to get, like, $14 million or something, and I think it got closer to 20, like 19.1 or something like that.
Hmm. And then, I believe it opened at number one and held that position for three weeks, which is really rare-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: for horror movies because horror fans are so rabid that if there’s something that they wanna see-
Todd: We go see it …
Craig: nine out of 10 times they’re gonna go see it opening weekend, right? Yeah,
Todd: right away.
Craig: And so then usually at least by the third week there’s a huge drop-off, and I think by the third week they had only dropped, like, I don’t remember if it was, like, $1 million or something in, in revenue and, and they still held on to that number one spot despite some other pretty big openings, so- Yeah, I, I think it kind of surprised everyone, and it surprised me because I had seen the trailer, and I really like Amy Adams.
Not only have I enjoyed her performances, but I’ve heard other professionals speak about her, other actors, other directors, and, uh, I’ve never heard anybody have a bad word to say about her. I’ve, I’ve seen her, you know, in, like, talk show appearances as herself. She seems very confident. She seems to n- really know who she is and what she wants to do.
And from very early on in her career, like after the success of Mean Girls, she probably could have gone on to do a bazillion romantic comedies, generic romantic comedies just based on her looks and obvious talent alone, but she didn’t wanna limit herself to that. She wanted to stretch herself and, and push boundaries.
And, and I think that that shows in this movie. But there are lots of things that we can talk about. One of the reasons it surprised me was because I saw some of the horror elements in the trailer, but I also saw some comedic elements, and I thought, “I’m not really sure what this is going to be.”
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Going in, watching it, I was surprised, and I think that it really is a movie that blends genres really, really well and, and kind of Keeps the audience on its toes and messes with the audience.
Todd: It does.
Craig: When you’ve got such a limited cast, basically these two actors, Amy Adams and Dylan O’Brien, who was the lead, I believe, in the Maze Runner film series- Oh,
Todd: was he?
Okay. I only saw the first one of those, and that was years ago.
Craig: Yeah, he was al- well, he was probably a kid then. Uh, he was in another horror movie, I think, called Love and Monsters, which was a big monster effects movie, which was good. I like him too, and I think he’s a great cast for this role. But when you’ve only got two characters, typically it’s fairly established y- the dynamic and who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy.
Right. And this movie messes with you.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed … There’s so much. There, there’s so much Raimi in it. I had forgotten since the first time I watched it how action-packed it is in places, and then also how intimate and quiet it is in other places. I had kind of forgotten about all of the Raimi throwbacks, and I think a big part of that is because the first time I saw this, I had seen the trailer before the theatrical release, then I kind of forgot about it.
Then I was just flipping around on Hulu and it had just released. I was by myself and, uh, I was like, “Well, I, I may as well just watch it.” So I watched the whole thing. I liked it. Then I went to look it up on IMDb to read stuff about it, and it was only then that I realized that Sam Raimi directed it. Hmm.
So I didn’t even know until after the fact. So seeing it a second time, I was picking up on a lot more of the stylistic things that are typical of his films. And I think one of the reasons that we like him is that he is familiar in some ways.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: His filmmaking style is familiar. You know, people have various opinions on this, but I feel like Sam Raimi does fan service, and as a fan, I like fan service.
Todd: No, as we’ve said before, we like to be serviced.
Craig: So if you can’t tell already based on my enthusiasm, I really enjoyed this movie, and I’m excited to hear what you thought of it and what you found interesting about it.
Todd: Well, I agree with everything you said. The other thing that I think I really like about Sam Raimi is there’s always An element of humor in everything he does.
He’s got a wicked sense of humor, and that translates through the camera. You know, it comes through the cinematography, the camera moves and things, a lot of which he developed way back when he was doing the, the first Evil Dead movie. And his colleagues on that were all childhood friends, grew up making Super 8 movies together, were remarking like, “What got into this guy?”
Like, “What is all this crazy stuff he’s suddenly coming up with now on this movie?” And so he’s just a real creative dude, and he knows how to shoot a lot of different things. And, you know, he’s done horror, but then he also did Spi- the original Spider-Man movies. Yeah. So he did superhero. He did Darkman before that, actually.
And he’s also done really sweet things. He’s done, um, A Simple Plan. Oh m- oh my God, that movie is insane, and that’s a real tense drama. And you’re right that this one has all those Raimi-isms in the filmmaking itself, but then the story also messes with us quite a bit. It, the story’s funny. In fact, it’s darkly comic.
And-
Clip: Yeah …
Todd: I think that probably leads to its broad appeal. This maybe of all the movies he’s made might be his most, I mean, putting Spider-Man aside, might be his most broadly appealing film because it’s got a little bit of everything in there. It’s got a little bit of adventure. It’s got the promise of a romantic comedy.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: It has, uh, horror elements. It has thriller elements. It, it keeps you on your toes guessing like a thriller does. You just don’t really know exactly where it’s going to go. And if… Honestly, I was a little pissed at you for the first, I don’t know, half of this movie because I was like, “Craig, we’re a horror podcast.”
“I, I know, I know Sam Raimi directed this, but come on, man. Like, we’re supposed to be doing horror movies. And just because, like, a woman thinks she sees a zombie behind her head or something like that doesn’t make this a horror movie.” But, uh, after a while, yeah, it, it became very much a horror movie, and then you could kinda see all along how it got there.
A- and it’s also really believable. There’s nothing terribly fantastic about this. I liked the characters. I thought they came across as very real, maybe a little stereotypical in the, in the-
Craig: Sure, especially in the beginning, yeah …
Todd: in the beginning. Uh, you know, they’re, they’re playing it up considerably in the beginning to give you this contrast between this woman who is Linda Little, played by Rachel McAdams-
Craig: Amy, no.
Amy Adams, right? No, no, I have it wrong in my notes.
Todd: Yeah, you had it wrong.
Craig: I, I corrected it earlier. Sorry, I said it wrong the first time. Thank you.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: That’s terrible because I, I was just getting ready to go on and on about how great she is and how honestly I think that she probably- Was a huge draw.
‘Cause I think that she, if, if not necessarily as obviously, ’cause I just messed her name up with Amy Adams. I do that all the time, I mix up both up, and I, I think they’re both great actresses. I, I
Todd: like them both. Well, just the name. I mean, you had, you had everything else right- Right … what you were saying.
She was in Mean Girls- Right … and yeah.
Craig: Right. But Rachel McAdams, I think is such a familiar face, especially to our generation. But because of Mean Girls cross-generationally, I think that anybody our age or younger knows that movie.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Or almost everybody knows that movie and, and, and loves that movie. I suppose I could be wrong, but I think the production may owe a lot to her appeal for at least how well it did initially.
I think she was a big draw.
Todd: You’re right, she does have that cross-genre appeal, cross-generational appeal. You’re right, that probably is a big, a big thing. She’s playing a, a woman who… I, I mean, it’s interesting because she comes across as just another person at a cubicle in this company, until you realize that everyone is in a cubicle at this company, except for the douchebag nepo-bros at the top.
Craig: Right.
Todd: The four or five high-power executives who are high-fiving each other, they’re all men, having their meetings in their glass conference room, taking credit for everything that the people below them do, disdainfully in some circumstances looking down on everybody else out there. But she actually has been at the company for a very long time.
Apparently she’s got this role to play in just doing a lot of very, very hard work.
Craig: Well, she, she was like the president of the company’s right-hand gal.
Todd: That’s what I mean, yeah.
Craig: But he died.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: And, and though he had assured her that she would be getting a promotion to VP, the nepo son comes in and he’s just this, you know, dude bro.
This is… I, I was gonna say one of the few criticisms I have of it, and it’s really not a criticism becaus
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Hatching
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Notas do episódio
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We dive into the 2022 Finnish satirical, absurdist psychological body horror film ‘Hatching.’We talk about why we finally picked it, its Sundance buzz and critical praise, and how its quiet pacing and gorgeous cinematography build tension. From the disturbing mommy-blogger facade and relentless pressure on young gymnast Tinja to the eerie egg she incubates and the practical-effects creature that emerges, we unpack the film’s doppelgänger angle, psychic connection, and escalating attacks.
Along the way we explore the movie’s layers of metaphor—maternity, repression, puberty, body image, and parents vicariously living through kids—leading to an ending we found bleak, satisfying, and thematically sharp.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Hatching (2022)Episode 486, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week’s episode was, uh, Craig’s choice. You said to me, “What are you feeling like? You feeling like foreign film? You feeling grindhouse?” And I could have done both, and I don’t know, I just flipped a coin and thought, “Yeah, let’s, let’s do foreign this time around.”
Since we’ve been doing some foreign films lately, I’m kind of in the mood. And this is a, uh, tw- 2022, I love how it’s listed on Wikipedia, satirical, absurdist, psychological body horror film Yeah … which kind of works, I suppose, called Hatching. And it is the, uh, first effort from writer-director Hanna Bergholm, and got major, major awards when it came out.
It… This premiered at Sundance in 2022, got sold to over 75 countries. It has, uh, like a th- 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes called it one of the 10 best horror movies of 2022. It won the Grand Prize and Jury Youth Award at the Gendarme Film Festival in France. Several other awards. I think it was listed the best Finnish film of 2022, so it- it’s- it’s definitely very well critically received.
I had not heard of it before, and I’m really curious what made you decide to pick this one this week.
Craig: I had read about it when it came out and thought that it sounded like an interesting premise, unique, so I was interested. I, I don’t know… I’m sure at some point in time I knew that it was Finnish, but by the time that it finally came around to streaming, I went to put it on, you know, I was just browsing through things, and realized that it was in Finnish and there was no dub.
And so that just kind of kept me away from it for a while.
Todd: Hmm.
Craig: Because more often than not, if I’m just, you know, scrolling through Tubi or wherever trying to find something to watch, I’m not looking for something to seriously sit down and pay a lot of attention to. It’s, it’s more just to kind of have something on in the background that I can chat with other people during it or, or, you know, look at my phone or whatever.
And obviously, if it’s, you know, strictly subtitles, I can’t do that. I was also surprised to see that this came out in 2022. Time goes by so fast when you’re old. Like-
Todd: Yeah, it
Craig: does … I, I, I would have guessed a couple of years ago. But the reason that I picked it, and I am not sure, it, it must have been on Bloody Disgusting, ’cause that’s one of the only horror sites that I look at anymore.
But there was some article, like- five other doppelganger movies you should see before, I don’t know, some doppelganger movie that recently came out.
Todd: Okay.
Craig: And I was, I was looking through it, and this movie was on the list, and I didn’t know that this was a doppelganger movie. I thought it was about a girl who hatches some big monstrous bird, and that’s the whole premise.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: So that, that piqued my curiosity, and it also just gave me an excuse to finally getting around to it. I know you enjoy foreign films, so I thought we’d give it a shot.
Todd: Yeah. Here we go. Well, it is also about a girl hatching a giant bird. At least for a while. Yeah, I, I really enjoyed this. I have to say it was, uh, beautifully shot.
The settings, the lighting, everything was quite perfect and gorgeous, but it was slow. But I don’t think it was slow in a bad way. I was really engaged by the pacing, the look of it, what was happening to these families. It’s just one of those movies that’s definitely taking its time helping you to get to know the characters and all their subtleties as they go through life.
It feels a little artsy in some respects, but not in an aloof way. Kind of just a down-to-earth… The, the sort of movie that honestly you don’t see from a lot of American directors. You, you do tend to see-
Craig: Yeah …
Todd: from European-style films. Wouldn’t you say?
Craig: Yeah. And I don’t r- really know how to describe it, but I didn’t find it to be slow at all.
I, I thought that the story was very well-paced and that there was a lot going on and that the tension was taut most of the time. Mm. There was never a moment when I felt bored. Even when just small things were happening, in my mind I’m thinking, “I see what this is setting up for, and I’m upset by it.” Like, very small things.
For example, very early on in the movie, our young protagonist finds that a new next-door neighbor family has moved in who also has a young daughter approximately her age, and the young daughter has a little French bulldog that she’s playing with out in the backyard. And I thought- I see where this is going, and I don’t like it.
Oh my God.
Todd: That soon, huh?
Craig: Yeah, yeah. Well, and because I knew… I, I, I tried not to read too much about it. The whole doppelganger thing intrigued me, but I didn’t wanna know too much about it going in. So I didn’t know every element of what was going to happen, but I did know that it was a creature feature with practical effects.
Todd: Ah, and I didn’t. I knew nothing about it when I went into it. Literally nothing. Well- Except the name.
Craig: So, so you didn’t even know that she was, like, raising this big egg? Like, you didn’t even- No … see the-
Todd: Well, I saw a girl with an egg, but I didn’t know if it was metaphorical or what the deal was, so.
Craig: I see. I see.
Okay. Yeah. Well, I, I at least knew that, that it was a creature feature, and so I saw where things were going. And I think it builds the tension by giving us a very limited pool of victims, and they’re all pretty… You don’t have the lamb to the slo- you know, just, like, the, the scapegoats, the easy kill-offs.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: All of the potential victims, their deaths are gonna carry some pretty major gravity.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: So I thought that was good. The things that you were saying about it, like, I… It, it being shot well. From the very beginning, I also had read body horror in the description, but the… I, I feel like the very opening shot is a cut back and forth between this young girl I would say she’s what?
Like 13 probably.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Craig: And she’s doing gymnastics in her living room, and it l- looks like a very opulent, nice house. In fact, it may even have been a special little living space for her ’cause it was all in, like, pink and stuff. I don’t know.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: And it cuts back and forth from that to an overhead shot of this, like, idyllic, wealthy, suburban neighborhood with, you know, lots of trees and big yards and, and that kind of stuff.
And immediately I was taken … I was like, “Oh, this is going to be body horror,” because I was horrified by the angles that they were shooting her body.
Todd: Oh.
Craig: L- she, she looked so frail-
Todd: Mm …
Craig: and thin and unhealthy and bird-like. Like, I, I- That’s true … picked that out right away. The, the way that she was bending and her bones protruded and her shoulder blades were protruding- Oh
it looked very bird-like right from the very beginning. And I, I just think it’s, you know, it’s a well-done movie. It’s … It got an interesting style. You kind of come to find that that perspective that we were seeing her doing the gymnastics from is the mother filming with her cellphone. And right away I knew that I hated this woman because-
Todd: Yeah
Craig: she’s one of those mom bloggers, which I think is just one of the most disgusting, self-centered, vacuous, child abusive things that parents can do. And it’s, it’s very clear from the beginning that she is cultivating this picture-perfect life. And any time anybody’s doing that, it’s not true. There is always something going on behind the scenes, and I think the movie has a lot to say about that.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: But yeah, right from the, right from the get-go I was … It’s like, “Okay, this is interesting. I’m meeting interesting characters. It’s an interesting setup.” I was ready to go.
Todd: I was laughing out loud when the mother… Of course, it’s so stereotypical, mo- this mother mommy blogger place. These people are in a wealthy neighborhood.
Everything is picture perfect in their house and their yard, outside. The picture is picture perfect. Like, you know, every frame of this movie is really beautiful. And this woman is skirting around, like you said, filming her family. She’s even sitting down with her daughter. Her daughter’s name is Tina, I believe, right?
She sits down with Tina, and they’re going through a new intro video that she’s created that is this, like, sickeningly sweet- highly produced video of the family. Dad gardening out back, and oh, hi, with a little smile, and them skipping through the yard in slow motion and all this stuff. It looks like the intro to some reality TV show or something.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And she says to… I can’t remember if she says it to the camera or if it’s what’s written down, is that these are just days in the life of an average, normal Finnish family.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And I’m like, oh, my God, this is how out of touch these people can often be, right? They’re- Mm-hmm. You know, I, we’re all a little out of touch.
I think we all tend to imagine that we are average, and the way everybody else lives is, you know, weighed off of that. You know, that’s part of the problem why we have a hard time understanding each other sometimes. But-
Craig: Probably.
Todd: Yeah, so you know immediately that you’re gonna hate this woman, and she’s gonna be annoying through the whole thing, and also that you, you really start to very early on, I think, hate what she’s starting to put her daughter through.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Her daughter comes home from rehearsals or lessons or something like that. I mean, I know I’m jumping a little ahead in the plot, but I wanted to get to this early, and sees her mom kissing the repairman-
Craig: Mm-hmm …
Todd: who’s, like, fixing a light fixture in their house. This was a light fixture that got knocked down when a bird got loose, and we’ll talk about that in a second.
And they turn around. He’s a little embarrassed. Mom acts like it’s nothing. He walks out the door, and Mom later goes into the room with the girl and sits down and says, “So I guess you saw that.” And the girl’s like, “Yeah.” And she says, “You know what? Sometimes adults have special friends.” The girl’s like, “Well, what about Daddy?”
And Mommy says, “Well, you know how Daddy is, but this will be our little girl secret, right?” This actress is so good. You can see the conflicted emotions on her face.
Craig: The little girl?
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: Uh, and by the way, her name is Siri Solle- Sololina, I believe, and this is her acting debut.
Craig: And she was picked out of a search of, like, well over 1,000 girls.
It was a huge search, yeah, for her casting.
Todd: Well, they found her because the look on her face throughout a lot of this movie, but especially here, it just says it all. On, on the one hand, she’s a little horrified. She’s not sure what to make of it, but you also know that she’s too young to fully understand it, and she realizes she doesn’t fully understand it, and she loves her mom, and she kind of wants to connect with her, so she kind of smiles and that becomes this thing.
And I was like, “that woman.” I’m like- Yeah, it’s awful. She’s terrible. She’s awful. And, and she immediately goes off on a work trip, which we all know what she’s doing. In fact, her daughter knows what she’s doing, and- H- you know, when the mom goes and talks to the dad a- as she comes home from this work trip, h- the dad’s like, “How was your work trip?”
“Oh, it was fine.” And she looks at her daughter and she winks. This conspiratory little wink to her. Tina just kinda half smiles, and then later in the movie she comes up to her and has a heart-to-heart with her like she is one of her friends at school and says, “You know, I think I’m in love.” And her daughter gets this bright, beaming smile on her face and she says, “Yeah, this guy…”
What is his name? Torvald or something like that.
Craig: I don’t know. “
Todd: This is the first time I think I’ve ever loved anyone in my whole life.” And of course immediately her face falls, and it’s falling for a couple reasons, right? One is she’s like, “Oh, this isn’t my dad that
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New York Ripper
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We head back into giallo territory with Lucio Fulci’s notorious 1982 slasher, The New York Ripper, to see if its reputation for brutality lives up to the hype.We talk through Fulci’s stylized approach, the gritty early ’80s New York locations, and how the film’s sleaze and eroticized violence make it a challenging watch, especially with its mean-spirited tone toward women.
Along the way we unpack the duck-voiced killer calls, the procedural investigation, the disjointed plotting, and the extreme gore effects—particularly the razor-blade murder and eye trauma. We also cover the film’s reveal involving Peter, his hospitalized daughter, a dead-end suspect, and the bleak final moments that leave the story on a dark note.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript New York Ripper (1982)Episode 485, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. This week, thought we’d go back to the giallo genre. It’s more of a slasher really, but from one of our favorite giallo artists, Lucio Fulci, known as being one of the gorier of the Italian directors back in the, uh, ’70s and ’80s.
This is one of his later ones, 1982, The New York Ripper. The- I’ve been wanting to do this one forever because it is fairly notorious as being one of his most brutal movies. People say it’s one of his most brutal and sadistic ones, and so I was just really curious to see if it lived up to the hype. So here we are.
Craig, uh, had you heard of this one before or seen it?
Craig: Nope. Didn’t know anything about it.
Todd: That’s what I figured. You really don’t dive into these Italian movies like I do, do you? You’re not as into them.
Craig: No, not typically, but I do appreciate you bringing them in every once in a while because I wouldn’t see them otherwise.
I respect the genre and I think that these filmmakers make some really interesting and innovative choices, and I think that they inspired a lot of the more contemporary directors and filmmakers that I have a lot of admiration for. So I, you know, I appreciate it as a genre. Is it my go-to? No, certainly not.
And to be very fair, of the ones that we’ve watched, this is not my favorite. There have been some that I have genuinely enjoyed or at least, you know, thought, “Oh, that’s interesting.” A- a- and that’s not to say that I don’t find this one interesting. I do find it interesting, but, you know, I think the way that I tend to approach the podcast specifically, and that probably reflects the way that my mind works, is that I think of things in a more linear way.
Like I sometimes feel like I have to try to be like, “But, but Todd, Todd, you’re jumping to the end. Let’s, let’s walk through it.”
Todd: Yeah,
Craig: sometimes. And,
Todd: and- You don’t like me talking about things ahead of time.
Craig: And with a movie like this, I found that very difficult because honestly, I didn’t really know what was going on.
I, even up until the end of the movie, I was like, “Who is the main character of this movie?” Like, I don’t- Really? Yeah, I found it to be a little confusing, and I’ve, you know, since then read a lot about it and read that, you know, that’s kind of a giallo thing. It’s especially kind of a Fulci thing, like he’s not necessarily interested as much in a linear plot as he is in interesting and creative and artistic scenes and-
Todd: Blood and gore, and violence against women.
Craig: Yeah. A- and blood and gore and, and yeah, and, and I, and I get it. I do get it. I think it’s interesting. I understand why people have talked about it because I, I do think it’s interesting to talk about, but it was a challenge For me. In fact, we were supposed to talk about this movie last week, and circumstances didn’t allow that.
And so I watched this movie last week, and after I was done watching it, I thought, “I don’t get it. I don’t really remember anything about it.” And so when we were intended to reconvene this weekend, I got up very early this morning and watched the second half of it again, and I was like, “I, I, I mean, I, I, I guess I have a better grasp of who some of these people are, but I’m still not really sure I get it.”
Todd: Interesting. You know, that’s fair, and you’re absolutely right. A lot of these movies don’t concern themselves very much with a plot that makes sense. Oftentimes, uh, there’s a lot of, there’s weird twists in logic and leaps of, “Oh, come on,” you know, type movie logic and especially in the investigative aspect of it.
So many of these giallos are basically there’s a masked killer, and he’s going around killing people, and we never see his face, but we see his hands a lot, and we see a lot of stabbing, a lot of blood, a lot of gore. And eventually, the cop or the detective or the man who happened to witness it, who’s been pulled in on the case is going through lots of different clues or from body to body to try to sort out and get close to who the killer is.
Often there’s a twist, and, you know, I mean, these are formulas for most movies anyway, right? Like, this isn’t unique to giallo, of course.
Craig: No, no, no. I mean, I, I think there is a foundation of, like, crime procedural here.
Todd: This one is very much a crime procedural.
Craig: Yeah, but it’s very stylized. It’s, it’s far more stylized, and, and I feel like the focus is more on the style than the story.
Yeah. And that’s okay. I just, I… That’s not the way that my mind typically processes things, so it was just a challenge for me.
Todd: Okay, that’s fair. I’m kinda surprised to hear you say that because I, I honestly felt like this was one of the easiest to follow of the giallos that we’ve seen. I’m not trying to…
I don’t know. I maybe I was just- Okay.
Clip: Well, sorry.
Todd: Well, I mean, be- because it was so standard crime procedural, I mean, you could kind of predict exactly what was gonna happen at each moment. It’s like a girl gets killed, and then-
Craig: Well, yeah, you could predict that a girl’s gonna get cut up every 10 minutes, but I didn’t know who it was or why.
And like-
Todd: Most of them were randos.
Craig: Well, w- were they? I mean, they were all- Like beautiful women-
Todd: Yeah …
Craig: for the most part that I recall. Gosh, I have so many things to say. I w- I came into this saying I, I don’t have anything to say about this movie.
Todd: Well, I, I woke you up. I guess my little, my little dig at you really got you going, didn’t it?
Craig: It did. It did. Now you got a- That, I, that was something else that I think maybe kind of took me out was that it felt mean. Yeah. Like, it felt-
Todd: This is a mean-spirited movie, I think.
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I don’t know. I, uh, no more necessarily exploitive than other movies that we’ve seen.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: But I, I don’t know.
It just…
Todd: I don’t know, man. I,
Craig: this one- It’s, I don’t know. It, it felt like Fulci… If I didn’t know it was him, and we’ve seen other movies that he’s done, and he’s always very graphic, and y- you know, there’s nudity and violence, and there was just something about this that made me think, “Oh, this guy hates women.”
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: Especially attractive women.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: He wants to hurt them. Why does he wanna hurt these women so badly? And, like, it wasn’t, for me, enjoyable to watch.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: And it, it, it also felt, one scene in particular, and it’s nearer the end of the movie, so we can wait to talk about it, but it, it, because the violence felt not only very graphic And mean, but also eroticized.
Yeah. And that really bothered me. Like-
Todd: We’re not fans of sexual violence,
Craig: yeah. No. And it wasn’t like, it wasn’t rape. It wasn’t even overtly sexual. I, I’m just gonna say it, the woman’s nipples were hard as rocks, and I’m like, I don’t know. As her breasts were being, like, sliced up with a razor blade.
Todd: Right.
Craig: Maybe it was just very cold in the room. I don’t know. But that, I found that to be very unsettling.
Todd: Distasteful.
Craig: D- y- yeah. Yeah. I, I didn’t like that. I don’t know. I, I didn’t hate the movie overall, but there were certain parts of it that I just found distasteful to me, and that’s just my sensibilities.
That’s not to say that anybody else who, yourself included, who may have enjoyed the movie overall, I’m, I don’t think you’re a gross perv. I, it, it was just, I didn’t like certain aspects of it.
Todd: I gotcha. Uh, well, Fulci himself gets a lot of flack for, uh, being a bit misogynistic, and people who’ve worked with him have said they’re s- kind of surprised at how misogynistic towards women he is.
Although women who have worked with him on his sets have said that he’s lovely to work with.
Craig: Well, good. I’m glad to hear it.
Todd: Yeah. In his art, anyway, you know, in the scripts that he co-writes and writes and the movies he directs, it’s almost entirely violence towards women. But to be fair, isn’t that 90% of the slasher genre that’s out there?
Yes, yes. So, you know, take that into consideration. However, what you’re saying is w- this, this exists on a spectrum, and I would say this movie is definitely at the extreme end. It, there were times that felt very porny. More porny in this movie than a lot of, most of the giallos we see, actually. There’s a live sex show happening.
There’s guys getting ready to rape a woman. There’s a woman tied up as she’s being cut up, and like you said, w- they’re being cut up. The woman gets cut up towards the end. W- as she’s lying naked on bed, just as close up as you can get.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Almost reveling in the blood and the gore as this razor blade slashes slowly and deliberately and carefully across, yeah, her erect nipple as well as other parts.
And it’s, it is, it’s difficult to watch. I mean, it should be, but that’s the point of the movie, right? And I think The New York Ripper, I was looking forward to this because a lot of these giallos take place in Italy or in Europe somewhere, mostly in Italy. And part of what I really like about them is seeing the old ’70s Italy, and the girls, and the, the dresses they’re wearing, and the hairstyles, and the sets, and all that stuff.
I, I dig that.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: Occasionally they’ll try to set them somewhere else, but then they’ll sub in Italy for whatever city they’re in. Like, “Oh, we’re in Chicago,” but it’s really not, clearly not Chicago.
Craig: Right.
Todd: Here it’s pretty obvious they filmed a good portion of the movie in New York because there’s a lot more exteriors than just establishing shots here.
There’s a lot on the streets, there’s a lot of the city, there’s a lot of the bay. And that part I really liked. I thought that, that set it apart from a lot of the other giallos at this time.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: And like we have talked about before in other similar films, just Basket Case comes to mind.
Craig: Basket Case.
Todd: Right? You were gonna say it, weren’t ya? A couple o- weeks ago we did another one, I can’t remember the name of it, that also took place in New York and it showed a gritty New York City. And I feel like part of why this movie feels so gross and porny is that Fulci is deliberately going over the top to make New York a seedy, nasty character in this film.
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: He just makes New York look like it’s this crime-ridden scum place where there’s nothing clean and there’s n- nothing but strip clubs, and sex shows, and Times Square, and dark alleys, and people getting murdered and running down dark empty streets and no one helping them. You know?
Clip: Mm-hmm.
Todd: And it, I feel like that was part of his goal, was to get this gritty, gross New York sort of Jack the Ripper style thing going.
And in that level he definitely succeeded.
Craig: Yeah. For sure.
Todd: To the extent that I can say I like this movie, like, uh, just like you said, of course I don’t like seeing women g- get cut up, but I liked that aspect of this movie, that it was really going for this different angle, I suppose, on the giallo.
Craig: Well, and, you know, I, I am fully prepared to acknowledge that Fulci is Of skilled filmmaker.
I don’t think there are many people that would-
Todd: Doubt that …
Craig: argue otherwise.
Todd: Right.
Craig: I mean e- even that scene that disturbed me, it was shot beautifully. I mean it, it was, it was shot- That’s part of the problem, but yeah … the framing of it, yeah. I mean- Yeah … it, it was shot beautifully and, and the special effects were disturbingly realistic and-
Todd: More realistic gore in this one than usual, yeah.
Craig: Yeah, I mean, I, I could go on and on. Like, the soundtrack behind it was perfectly appropriate and, and fitting to the tone and made you uncomfortable. It’s done very well. I’m- I’m hesitant to criticize it at all. A- a- and it’s really not a criticism, it’s just me acknowledging that it’
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Happy Birthday To Me
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We tackle a listener request and celebrate our birthday month by diving into the 1981 Canadian slasher Happy Birthday to Me.We talk about the movie’s iconic shish kebab kill, its giallo-inspired mystery setup, and the nonstop barrage of over-the-top red herrings that make the nearly two-hour runtime feel even longer. Along the way we dig into the prep school “Top 10,” the creative (and sometimes cut-down) kill scenes, Virginia’s traumatic flashbacks and experimental brain procedure, and the surprisingly stacked talent behind the production, including Glenn Ford.
We break down the movie’s wildly convoluted twist ending, why it feels like a last-minute rewrite, and why—despite its flaws—we ultimately had a fun time with it.
Expand to read episode transcript Automatic Transcript Happy Birthday To Me (1981)Episode 484, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast
Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week we are doing a listener request. You know on our website there is option for you to talk to us. You just click that link, and you’ll instantly go to a place where you don’t have to download anything, you don’t have to install any weird plugin or log in.
All you have to do is click a button and use your computer or your phone’s microphone and immediately record up to a 90-second message, which then just gets sent right to us. Well, a couple weeks ago, we heard from Mr. Beak, and he made a very specific request for us.
Mr. Beak: Hey guys, this is Mr. Beak up in, uh, Minnesota.
Long time listener, first time caller. Been a fan for, like, five years now. Listened to many of your episodes multiple times. Uh, just wanted to pop in and say, uh, appreciate what you do. Gotten a lot of good recommendations from you guys, and I’ve also avoided a lot of terrible movies because of you guys, and I appreciate that.
I have a little bit of an ulterior motive. Figured I might as well pop in here and throw a recommendation for Happy Birthday to Me. I think you guys will have a really fun conversation about that one, especially the ending. Hope you have a good one. Bye.
Todd: And so, uh, we decided, you know what? April is our birthday month, right?
Yeah.
Craig: Mm-hmm.
Todd: So here we are. Thought it would be very appropriate to go ahead and dive in to this Canadian slasher film from 1981 that has been on our list forever called Happy Birthday to Me.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And happy birthday to you, Craig.
Craig: Well, thanks. Happy birthday to you.
Todd: I hope you had a good one this year.
Craig: Yeah, I did. I mean, the older you get, I, I don’t know if you feel the same way, but the older you get the less eventful it feels. Like-
Todd: Yeah, yeah …
Craig: it really just feels like another day. Somebody will maybe-
Todd: Do a little thing for you? Yeah.
Craig: Yeah, do a little thing for you, but it’s no big deal, and, like, uh, that’s fine.
Right. Like it gets to a point, it gets to a point… Not to say that if you like to go out and celebrate your birthdays, good for you. You’re just probably a more fun person than I am. I’m fully content to cook a nice meal at home, maybe have a piece of cake or something and-
Todd: Yeah … that’s
Craig: good enough.
Todd: That’s totally good enough for us.
We don’t even necessarily wanna be reminded of how old we’re getting.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And also it’s, it’s a heck of a lot better than, you know, setting nice beautiful table with party favors and decorations and a beautiful cake, and then none of your friends show up.
Craig: Yeah, that would suck.
Todd: That would really, really suck as we, as we hear about in this movie.
I’ve been wanting to see this movie forever, probably for the same reason you have. It has a very iconic poster-
Clip: Mm-hmm …
Todd: and cover that is impossible to miss of a guy basically getting a shish kebab skewer through his mouth. And it’s hard to miss. It’s very… It, it’s, you know… I mean, you don’t see blood or anything.
It’s right just before the moment of impact, but- Mm-hmm … you know, it makes a statement.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: I read that the makers of the film were not so keen on that. They, they really had preferred that things be a little more subtle and not focus so much on the violence of the movie. But, you know, that’s what it’s here for.
It’s a typical ’80s slasher coming on the heels of Halloween and a whole bunch of other Canadian slashers that came out around this time, of which we have reviewed a ton.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: And it does have the effect of making you wait to w- when’s that shish kebab scene gonna come in come into play? True. I spent most of the movie like, “Is this it?
Is this it? Oh, they’re eating some food. Is this gonna be the shish kebab?” And then it comes at the weirdest time. Yeah. And there’s so much about this movie that I loved to laugh at, that I can’t wait to talk about it. If even just the cover art alone, the poster says, “John will never eat shish kebab again,” even though there is no character named John in this movie.
No. And then it says… It literally, all this is printed on the poster on this, on this photo. “Steven will never ride a motorcycle again. Greg will never lift weights again. Who’s killing Crawford High’s snobbish top 10? At the rate they’re going, there will be no one left for J- Virginia’s birthday party alive.”
I love it.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: I love it, and I love the spirit of it.
Craig: That lays it out pretty well. Yeah, there’s, there, there is no John. There’s, I mean, I, there’s a Steven if you count the fact that he’s French and- … it’s the French version of Steven. But-
Todd: Yeah, there’s another Steven. He doesn’t die that way …
Craig: think I read that, um, maybe the poster was designed before they had even really finalized the script or-
Todd: Yeah.
And that’s not uncommon. It happens a lot.
Craig: Yeah.
Todd: What we did a movie, Dolls, where the whole movie was the poster came first, and then the movie came after that. I think Terrorvision was the same. This happens all the time in these low budget q- quickie exploitation films.
Craig: Yeah. It was also a time when you would go to the video store and you would see an interesting cover, and then you would pick it up and look at the scenes on the back and be like, “Oh, that looks good,” and then those no- scenes are nowhere to be found in the movie.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: I remember that happening multiple times, and that was a little frustrating. It, it
Todd: does. Ugh.
Craig: Ugh.
Todd: I, I had not seen this before. Had you?
Craig: No. And really, the title is, you know, uh, I don’t know if it’s familiar or if it’s just such a… I, I was aware that there was a movie out there called Happy Birthday to Me, but for whatever reason, I don’t know if I just never naturally came across it or If I looked at the back or something and it didn’t look particularly appealing to me.
I mean, it’s surprising to me. I love these old slashers. And now, as I’ve said a bazillion times on this show, having seen it, I’m really surprised I hadn’t seen it before.
Todd: Right? Yeah.
Craig: And I’m really surprised that I hadn’t even seen it referenced all that often, because this isn’t some little, you know, indie film that…
You know, this was, this had a lot of money behind it. It was a big studio film.
Todd: Yeah.
Craig: There were, you know, the production team behind it had, you know, uh- Serious experience …
Todd: I, I think
Craig: that… Yeah, and like they helped launch the career of, like, Ivan Reitman and some other Canadian folks.
Todd: Well, even J. Lee Thompson, the director here, was already a well-respected director in the…
He’s, he’s British.
Craig: An Oscar nominee.
Todd: Yeah, Oscar nominee. He did– He ended up, after this movie, he ended… And he’s a, he was an old guy by this time. He was already, well, not that old. 60, I think. In 40s or 60s. But then after this, he went on to work for Cannon.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: And did a whole ton of those Cannon movies in the, in the ’80s, and that’s more or less, I think, how he more or less finished out his career.
He was very well respected. He was well known for bringing movies in very efficiently, usually within the budget and under the time. Gregory Peck himself listed him as one of the only four directors he could trust to tell him whether or not he was faking his performance.
Craig: Oh, wow.
Todd: He directed one of the Planet of the Apes movies.
He was originally gonna direct the original. And he was a great fan of Martin Scorsese, and you can tell from, I think, this movie that it has a lot of early, especially early Scorsese vibe to it, and-
Craig: Mm-hmm …
Todd: and I, and ultimately I felt like it was a pretty well-made movie, really well put together. It looked beautiful, had some interesting cinematography and-
Craig: Yeah
Todd: like you said, a l- clearly a lot of talent behind it before you even get to the actors.
Craig: Right. And, and, you know, the effects look good. It’s really well shot. I, I think that it suffers from a pretty weak script and ultimately they kinda didn’t know what they were doing and there was a big rewrite right at the end which kind of throws everything else off a little bit.
Clip: Yeah.
Craig: But it looks really good. A- and like I said, the effects look really good. So there’s obviously skill and talent going into it, but when you’re working with a script that’s relatively mediocre. Now you said that it was kind of a typical ’80s slasher, and it is. And that it was typical is part of the reason they felt like they needed to change things up at the end with that rewrite.
Todd: Mm.
Craig: But though it’s typical in formula, I feel like it does make a solid effort to try to stand out.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: It’s right there on the poster, the, the shish kabob thing. The other kills are unique in a similar way. It’s just, you know, not something that you see every day.
Todd: Right.
Craig: It’s not just a guy with a machete.
It’s not just a guy with an ax. It’s not just a guy with a gimmick. It’s just let’s find some creative ways to kill these people, gruesome ways, and make it look really good And then you’ve kind of got the standard whodunit with a black gloved figure s- creeping around and- Yeah … lots of killer POV and that kind of stuff.
But that stuff works too.
Todd: It does. It’s very giallo inspired, especially, I think, the ending. As convoluted as the whole thing ends up becoming and how it’s rooted to this mysterious past of this main character that we get revealed to us over time that’s, itself is kind of crazy. I think it seems like around this era, the Canadian slasher films were doing a lot to cop off of the Italian giallos- Yeah
whereas the American slasher films seem to be going a different direction. W- watching this, it reminded me a lot of Sweet Sixteen and The Initiation.
Craig: Oh, yeah.
Todd: And you know, those movies-
Craig: We’ve done 100 of them.
Todd: We have. And even Prom Night, they lean heavy into the mystery.
Craig: Yeah, Terror Train.
Todd: Terror Train, uh, Graduation Day.
A lot of the same actors in some of these.
Craig: Uh-huh.
Todd: But they lean heavily into the mystery. And just like the Italian giallo movies, one of the ways they preserve the mystery is they just go to the same formula of a lot of killer POV with the black gloves. And so you can never tell if it’s a man or a woman or what their physicality is or anything like that.
Craig: Right.
Todd: And also there’s… I, I thought hilariously in this movie they did that old trope where the person sees the killer. Of course, we don’t see the killer, but the person sees and it’s like, “Oh, hey, it’s you.” “
Craig: Oh, hey.” “
Todd: How are you doing? Uh, hey, what’s that knife doing in your hand?” God.
Craig: I love that gag. I love that gag.
Todd: That gag happens, like, three times in this movie and it’s so charming.
Craig: Yeah. The other thing, and I don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad thing, but it was clearly very intentional, but it was so over the top that I al- You know, it’s funny, but I kind of couldn’t help but roll my eyes. This movie is just chock-full of kind of the most ridiculous red herrings.
Todd: Yes.
Craig: Like, so many r- red herrings.
Todd: The most ridiculous ones I, maybe we’ve encountered altogether in a movie to date.
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