Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. The moment October starts, all I want to
Speaker 1: do is watch horror movies. So I thought it would
Speaker 1: be a good select this weekend to release our episode
Speaker 1: on horror movies. If you watch much horror, doesn't take
Speaker 1: long to catch up to the fact that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of creddy horror movies out there. But there's
Speaker 1: also a bunch of really great ones too, and we
Speaker 1: talk about some of them here. I hope this episode
Speaker 1: directs you to some movies that scare your socks off
Speaker 1: this October. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Bryant Towdy, middle names Wayne,
Speaker 1: middle names Malcolm. There we have. I always forget about
Speaker 1: that Malcolm. Yeah, Wayne named after Wayne Coin, right, Uh? No,
Speaker 1: John Vane and you were named after Malcolm in the middle.
Speaker 1: That's right, right. Frankie Munis is my name saying? I
Speaker 1: hope he's okay. Early, Brian Kranston too. I used to
Speaker 1: love that show. Oh, it's a great show. I watched it,
Speaker 1: um like within the last couple of months. I was
Speaker 1: cleaning the house and put it on Netflix and still great. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really is a good show. So you clean your house,
Speaker 1: you put on your VR goggles and just cue up
Speaker 1: Malcolm in the Middle. Yeah. No, I just walk around
Speaker 1: and bump into things and right exactly. But I put
Speaker 1: on like a huge feather duster suit. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: just cleaning and bumping into things. That's right, That's how
Speaker 1: I do it. Yeah, it works kind of Well, someone's
Speaker 1: gonna take that idea. Yeah, they like the shark Nado. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they should just they should sell that suit with
Speaker 1: purple drink. I think you get one spot on the
Speaker 1: floor really really clean. Uh, what are you gonna title
Speaker 1: this one? By the way, because this was your pick,
Speaker 1: and we title our own shows some horror films that
Speaker 1: change the genre, all right, and you should add this
Speaker 1: a k A. How could you guys forget blank? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should say like this. First of all, this is
Speaker 1: a Grabster article, So it's Grabster's list, and he knows
Speaker 1: what he's talking about. If you look at some of
Speaker 1: the entries, some don't even have source tags. He's just like,
Speaker 1: I just know he should just Grabster. But we even
Speaker 1: took his list and carved some out and put some in.
Speaker 1: So this is how about this. This is Josh and
Speaker 1: Chuck's idea of some horror films that change the genre,
Speaker 1: featuring the mind of the grabster. Yes, in other words,
Speaker 1: it is not a complete list of every horror film
Speaker 1: that changed the genre. Yes, because I would argue that well,
Speaker 1: and actually I see grabs or put Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Speaker 1: in there. He said that if this were a top
Speaker 1: fifteen list, that would be in there. So would Alien. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has that Alien ring Goo and the U S
Speaker 1: remake Ring and I would lobby for Well, Psycho didn't
Speaker 1: make it onto his list, which but we're going to
Speaker 1: put that in. And there was one more. Oh, even
Speaker 1: though I didn't really think it was that great, the
Speaker 1: movie Saw, I think kind of changed horror films. And
Speaker 1: that's what this list is. Not best horror films, but
Speaker 1: things that kind of changed the game. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like Saw kind of kicked off that that torture porn, Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't it. I can't remember if it was that or hostile,
Speaker 1: one of the two. It was definitely one of the two.
Speaker 1: For a sub genre. Well, it's pretty accurate, actually it is.
Speaker 1: But most of these are movies that either uh, We're
Speaker 1: or the first of its kind and maybe did start
Speaker 1: a sub genre, or movies that were so popular that
Speaker 1: they just you know, kind of rewrote how people view
Speaker 1: horror movies. Some of them because of marketing, some because
Speaker 1: they were really good movies, some because of box office,
Speaker 1: but all of these I don't think anyone could argue
Speaker 1: did not change the genre. How about that? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's well put dude. Uh. And before we get
Speaker 1: started speaking of horror, I want to give a plug
Speaker 1: to bow my friend Toby's movie that's coming out. He's
Speaker 1: a producer on a movie coming out called The Ghost Story. Yeah, Toby. Uh.
Speaker 1: When we met Toby, well you knew Toby before me,
Speaker 1: of course, because he's your friend and I know him
Speaker 1: through so really, but he was he was small time
Speaker 1: doing short films and stuff. And since that time, and
Speaker 1: this has been within the last like since we've been
Speaker 1: doing this podcast, he's now big time. Yeah. They did
Speaker 1: Pete Dragon yeah, um, and then yeah they have this
Speaker 1: this they did Ain't Them Bodies Saints was I think
Speaker 1: the one that they kind of broke out with, and
Speaker 1: then this one, um definitely kind of falls into that
Speaker 1: same look. And mood and feel what. It's called The
Speaker 1: Ghost Story, and I think it comes out in July,
Speaker 1: and I think it's labeled a drama rather than horror
Speaker 1: or even supernatural or thriller um. But the reason I
Speaker 1: tie it into horrors because A twenty four is releasing
Speaker 1: it and A four is killing it with horror movies lately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good Uh, that's good outfit. They did The Witch,
Speaker 1: they did The Black Coat's Daughter. Have you seen that? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: it's on Amazon Prime. It's on Amazon Prime right now. Dude.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best fourror movies I've seen in
Speaker 1: a while. I think The Witch is probably my favorite
Speaker 1: right now. Black Coats Daughter is a close second. And
Speaker 1: then last night I saw it is at night in
Speaker 1: the theater and it comes at night. Actually upset my
Speaker 1: stomach that ending did it? Was? It was that rough? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we're we've we're at a place with horror
Speaker 1: movies that we haven't been in a long time, like
Speaker 1: a really genuine good spot. Yeah, like the whole torture
Speaker 1: porn sort of era is over and the found footage
Speaker 1: thing is so played. But I think we'd like with
Speaker 1: movies like the which I think we've really like there's
Speaker 1: some really creative uh it follows. Did you see that one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like some just really creative ways of bringing scares that
Speaker 1: I haven't seen before. Get Out. That was amazing. I
Speaker 1: still haven't seen it. You're gonna love it. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: envious of you. It's really it's great movie, Chuck, you're
Speaker 1: gonna love it. Well. I don't get to the movies
Speaker 1: much anymore, and the only time I could was a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, and I elected to see Wonder Woman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not a good choice. A long way of saying congratulations
Speaker 1: to Toby and his new film, Well, it's funny. We
Speaker 1: also need to congratulate Toby too, because Toby just got married.
Speaker 1: Toby and and Nell are now married, so congratulations to
Speaker 1: them as well. So this is this new movie with
Speaker 1: his uh directing partner David Lowry, Yeah, yeah, and Rooney Mara. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they definitely do. So it's gonna be good. I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to it. Okay, So let's get started. Thanks for
Speaker 1: indulging that, Thank you, everybody. So the first the first
Speaker 1: movie on our list is what's widely considered the first
Speaker 1: horror movie, and it's a nine movie out of Germany
Speaker 1: that um basically was the first film that undertook what's
Speaker 1: the artistic movement known as German Expressionism called the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Dr Kaligari. Yeah, I mean some say, like you said,
Speaker 1: it was the first horror movie. Some say it was
Speaker 1: the first cult film. Um it Uh, well, just you
Speaker 1: may not be able to get the whole thing if
Speaker 1: you're not into silent movies, but you should cue up
Speaker 1: a little bit of it and watch a little bit
Speaker 1: of it because it's hugely impactful. Um and still to
Speaker 1: this day like very disconcerting to look at because of
Speaker 1: it how um ominous and weird it looked, just physically looked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like the sets that they built are obviously um constructive manufactured.
Speaker 1: They were not in any way shape before him going
Speaker 1: for realism. They were going for surrealism for sure. And
Speaker 1: so like the staircases are at crazy weird curves and
Speaker 1: angles and um, like everything from the house, the houses,
Speaker 1: rooftops to the blades of grass are super pointy and sharp,
Speaker 1: and and the shadows that they employed were just perfect.
Speaker 1: You've never seen a better use of shadows than this.
Speaker 1: They didn't get in the way they just created this mood.
Speaker 1: And it was the first movie to really kind of
Speaker 1: do that, to just take to use the camera for
Speaker 1: something other than capturing realism. Uh, and it it it
Speaker 1: for that reason, it's considered the first horror movie because
Speaker 1: that that's such a standard part of horror, whether large
Speaker 1: like in large part like in a Tim Burton movie,
Speaker 1: or in small part. You know where you're um, you're
Speaker 1: using small spaces to create claustrophobia. The idea of using
Speaker 1: the set to mess with the viewers mind, I think
Speaker 1: is born in Dr Caligary's cabinet. Yeah. It's almost like
Speaker 1: they they took a child and gave them construction paper
Speaker 1: and said cut out scary things. Uh. And then like
Speaker 1: like that movie The Baba Duke, I think the actual
Speaker 1: book within The Baba Duke was hugely inspired by this, uh,
Speaker 1: the actual movie itself. Um. The plot is about a
Speaker 1: sideshow operator, a hypnotist who um has a patient that
Speaker 1: he takes around of these side shows with sleep disorders.
Speaker 1: Supposedly he's been asleep his entire life, and he uses
Speaker 1: this patient to commit murder. Right, he's like a sleepwalker, Yeah, somnambulist.
Speaker 1: So that in itself is a pretty frightening plot. And
Speaker 1: to think about that being cooked up in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: when there weren't really not such things that you think
Speaker 1: of as horror movies is pretty impressive. Um. And then
Speaker 1: some of the deeper critiques I've seen of it was
Speaker 1: like the the explanation for why the filmmakers chose like
Speaker 1: these weird odd angles to kind of depict insanity or
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, Um, was rooted in World War One.
Speaker 1: The horrors of World War One had just been seen
Speaker 1: and revealed and recently taken place, and it upended Europe
Speaker 1: in general, and especially Germany as well. Um. And that
Speaker 1: the idea is that they might not have had this idea,
Speaker 1: They might not have had this desire, this drive to
Speaker 1: create this this weird set and in fact this weird
Speaker 1: movie had World War One not happened. Yeah. This there's
Speaker 1: this writer Jeff Saparrito, who um kind of put it
Speaker 1: this way about German expressionism because I wasn't exactly sure
Speaker 1: how to define it, but you're kind of right on
Speaker 1: the money, he said. Germany was largely isolated from the
Speaker 1: rest of the world following World War One, so expressionism
Speaker 1: therefore became confined to the country refers to a number
Speaker 1: of creative movements from World War One through the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Expressionist works examined the current in future state of the
Speaker 1: culture through bold and artistic creations of creativity, and often
Speaker 1: explore topics of madness, betrayal, and other intellectual concepts. And
Speaker 1: nothing encapsulates these ideas more than the cabinet of Dr Calla.
Speaker 1: That's basically what I say. Yeah, you did you read
Speaker 1: that or were you just uh that? I don't know
Speaker 1: that that one or not? It sounded kind of familiar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to say you came up with it. Um, so
Speaker 1: the I of the this set is creating like a
Speaker 1: creepy tone and texture to everything. Um, that was Dr Calgary.
Speaker 1: That's how it changed the genre. Yeah, Tim Burton say
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, Um, have you seen Coraline? No? But
Speaker 1: I know it. It's a They did that to a
Speaker 1: very good effect. You know. I think Hodgman does a
Speaker 1: voice in that, doesn't he does? He does the dad.
Speaker 1: He did a spectacular job because you actually forget it's
Speaker 1: Hodgment while you're watching it. That's impossible. Alright, Chuck, Moving on,
Speaker 1: That was We're Gonna fast forward all the way to
Speaker 1: what nineteen sixty nineteen sixty three. If you're talking about
Speaker 1: Blood Feast, well I wasn't, but let's uh. Cybern Simon
Speaker 1: Abraham's of Roger Ebert dot Com says, this Blood Feast
Speaker 1: is a terrible film, and a historically important one too,
Speaker 1: And I think that's sort of the deal with Blood Feast.
Speaker 1: It is not good by any accounts. Did you watch
Speaker 1: any of it? Yeah, sure, it's not good. No, it's
Speaker 1: not good. It's terrible. It was written on a basis
Speaker 1: on a fourteen page outline, didn't even have a script.
Speaker 1: It's got the same cult cloying technicolor of like an
Speaker 1: early Hawaii five oh episode directed by Herschel Gordon Lewis
Speaker 1: and producer David F. Friedman. And basically the idea was this,
Speaker 1: these guys did not see films as art. They saw
Speaker 1: them as a business and thought you were foolish if
Speaker 1: you thought it was anything else. So they sat around
Speaker 1: they brainstormed movies that they thought no one else would make. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they started out making like Porky's esque type movies,
Speaker 1: and they were they were doing fine with that. But
Speaker 1: apparently they were successful enough with it that theyre started
Speaker 1: to be imitators and the market was crowded, so they said,
Speaker 1: where can we go make movies that no one else
Speaker 1: is gonna make? Yeah, because we want to shock people essentially.
Speaker 1: So a couple of ideas they had that did not
Speaker 1: make the list was Conman evangelists and Nazi torture, which
Speaker 1: which were later made exactly. And they finally said, you
Speaker 1: know what no one's really done yet is hardcore gore yep,
Speaker 1: Like everyone always cuts away when the knife comes, and
Speaker 1: you're like, what if we showed the grossest gorrious stuff
Speaker 1: imaginable on screen? Yeah, And even still they didn't show
Speaker 1: so like one of the first murder a woman stabbed
Speaker 1: through the eye and then the murderer hacked their legs
Speaker 1: off of the machete, and they didn't show the knife
Speaker 1: penetrate the eye. They didn't show the machete making contact
Speaker 1: with the skin. But what they did in Blood Feast,
Speaker 1: and what made Blood Feast the first of its kind,
Speaker 1: was they would show the what came after that. They
Speaker 1: would show the brains on the ground, they would show
Speaker 1: the entrails like on the knife. Um, they would show
Speaker 1: the leg being you know that had been dismembered being
Speaker 1: put into a bag and like the wound that was
Speaker 1: left by like that. This was no one had ever
Speaker 1: done anything like that on film before. No, and it
Speaker 1: paid off. They depending on who you ask, the budget
Speaker 1: was uh, anywhere from like twenty to thirty grand and
Speaker 1: it made between seven and thirty million dollars, Like I said,
Speaker 1: depending on where you get your info. But by all
Speaker 1: accounts it was a huge financial success compared to what
Speaker 1: they paid to make it. Yeah, and they shot it
Speaker 1: in um, I think six days or something downe in Miami. Um,
Speaker 1: based on a fourteen page outline. There wasn't even a script,
Speaker 1: it as an outline, and basically it was like, murderer
Speaker 1: goes and kills this girl. Yeah, next girl, murderer comes in,
Speaker 1: kills girl, cuts off leg that kind of thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it matters the movies about serial killer caterer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. There's your plot right there. Um. But the
Speaker 1: the it was just such a revolutionary movie that the
Speaker 1: sensors at the time there wasn't such a thing as
Speaker 1: the m p a A hadn't been formed yet, um,
Speaker 1: And there was basically no one except for local sensors
Speaker 1: overseeing movies, so you know, you you could be playing
Speaker 1: in one town um to all audiences, and then the
Speaker 1: next town over it could be banned. But these sensors
Speaker 1: had never seen anything like it, and they didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do with it. So it was hugely successful
Speaker 1: commercially too. Yeah. And another big impact it had was
Speaker 1: it inspired a generation of special effects. But basically, um,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, young boys who were doing this on
Speaker 1: their own Super eight films right and said, wait, uh,
Speaker 1: I can get a job doing this. Yeah. So including
Speaker 1: Tom Savini I think was inspired by it, wasn't he
Speaker 1: or was he inspired by Yeah? I think he was
Speaker 1: inspired by Blood feast um. And then we should also
Speaker 1: give a mention to the Grand Gun y'all. Is that
Speaker 1: how you think it's pronounced? Grand Guen y'all. It was
Speaker 1: a theater in Paris, I believe, from the late nineteenth
Speaker 1: century onto I think sixty two, so the year before
Speaker 1: Blood Fees came out it had closed up. But it
Speaker 1: used to do this stuff on stage. It was like
Speaker 1: a gore fest um, and there was lots of like
Speaker 1: blood and sex and and like depraved themes in the
Speaker 1: plays that were put on at this theater. People loved it.
Speaker 1: They were crazy for it. Um, and this was kind
Speaker 1: of like the grand gun y'all tradition, put onto film
Speaker 1: for the first time and who right for that? You
Speaker 1: want to take a break, Yeah, let's do it, all right, Charles,
Speaker 1: we're back. So nineteen sixty or nineteen sixty, not eight.
Speaker 1: I've got nineteen sixty eight in front of my face. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that could be no other movie. The Night of
Speaker 1: the Living Dead classic George Romero film. Romero was a
Speaker 1: TV director, making TV commercials. Commercial director. Rather, he was
Speaker 1: also making short films for Mr Rogers neighborhood at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was he was young. Yeah, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know how old he was, but he was pretty
Speaker 1: young guys still. I think when he made Shot and
Speaker 1: Not in the Living Dead, he was like twenty six
Speaker 1: or twenty seven, so uh yeah, but any standard, that's
Speaker 1: still pretty young unless you're twenty three. So he I'm
Speaker 1: he had um. He and his buddies were like, let's
Speaker 1: make a horror movie, but let's not make a stupid
Speaker 1: horror movie. Let's make on with like an actual plot
Speaker 1: that explores like deep themes too, like a good movie.
Speaker 1: Let's let's make the first good horror movie. Well yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and we'll delve into that little more, but that that
Speaker 1: was definitely a different thing at the time. And the
Speaker 1: other different thing was that all the horror movies up
Speaker 1: to that point, uh, they were called the Universal monsters
Speaker 1: from Universal Studios, you know, all the kind of the
Speaker 1: classic Frankenstein and Dracula and Creature from the Black Lagoon
Speaker 1: and the Werewolf, and that was where that was mainstream horror.
Speaker 1: And George Romero comes along and says, um, how about zombies,
Speaker 1: And everyone said, what in the world's a zombie? And
Speaker 1: he said, well, let me define that for every future
Speaker 1: generation of movie and TV goers and lovers. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there have been zombie movies before, but they had been
Speaker 1: things like like Dr Caligari's Cabinet, somebody who was under
Speaker 1: the control of something someone else or something like that,
Speaker 1: there was a hypnotist or this was like the first
Speaker 1: time what we think of a these were ever introduced,
Speaker 1: like flesh eating ghoules who were dead and come back
Speaker 1: to life, just what you think of as a zombie.
Speaker 1: This guy started that genre, like you said, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: shot it outside in in Pittsburgh on about hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollar budget ended up grossing twelve million domestic
Speaker 1: not bad, and I think close to twenty worldwide. And
Speaker 1: um was eventually selected by the Library of Congress for
Speaker 1: preservation in the National Film Registry. It's a good movie.
Speaker 1: It's a very good movie. He shot in black and
Speaker 1: white to save on cost, even though color was the
Speaker 1: standard by that point, and black and white is also
Speaker 1: a little more forgiving for rudimentary special effects. And one
Speaker 1: of the revolutionary things he did was cast a black
Speaker 1: actor as the lead, and for no other reason than hey,
Speaker 1: this guy Dwayne Jones is really good, exactly right. Like,
Speaker 1: he didn't go back and go, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: our our heroes black, so we need to make the
Speaker 1: the whole thing of meditation on race and have him
Speaker 1: confront racism. It was just we're here's the script. And
Speaker 1: then the guy playing the lead just happens to be black,
Speaker 1: and he was the best guy in the auditions. And
Speaker 1: you know this didn't really happen. You didn't just cast
Speaker 1: a black guy as a lead actor for no with
Speaker 1: no like ulterior motive, basically right. So I read this
Speaker 1: review from the from the Time from nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: The year after it came out, young Roger Ebert went
Speaker 1: and watched it and he wrote, um a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: interesting review, which is basically it was about the reaction
Speaker 1: of the audience. And he went to a Saturday matinee
Speaker 1: that was populated almost entirely by ten eleven year olds,
Speaker 1: and they were used to seeing the Creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon for Frankenstein or um. You know, just just
Speaker 1: movies that any kid could handle and could enjoy watching,
Speaker 1: and you know, fun, scary kind of stuff. And he said,
Speaker 1: that's how that that was how the crowd reacted for
Speaker 1: the first half of the movie. But then about the
Speaker 1: point where and here's here comes spoilers. Everybody, if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen either Living Dead, just hit yourself in the
Speaker 1: knee with a hammer. Um. You the the teenage couple
Speaker 1: go to get gas and when their car blows up
Speaker 1: and his engulfs in flames, they die. They're burned to death.
Speaker 1: He said. Right about that time, the tone, the mood
Speaker 1: of the theater changed and there was no like gleeful
Speaker 1: screaming anymore. Kids were starting to like not move and
Speaker 1: we're afraid to like move in their seats, and some
Speaker 1: were quietly crying to themselves, and from that the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole point on, it just got worse and worse
Speaker 1: for these little kids watching this movie. So it was
Speaker 1: a huge impact on horror movies. A uh, like you
Speaker 1: said earlier, it was kind of the first one to
Speaker 1: really sort of delve into other issues like if you
Speaker 1: look up, like significance of not at a living dead
Speaker 1: or um meaning of not a living dead or something
Speaker 1: like that. There scores of articles that have been written
Speaker 1: over the years of how it was a metaphor for
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, or an allegory about distrust of authority
Speaker 1: or the collapse of traditional family. And I think Romero said,
Speaker 1: like I didn't necessarily mean all these things, but you
Speaker 1: can certainly find it in the movie. That is art.
Speaker 1: Like one of the great revelations of my adult life
Speaker 1: is that the artist, the writer, the songwriter, the um,
Speaker 1: the author rarely intends to imbue as much meaning into
Speaker 1: their work as people take from it. That that's part
Speaker 1: of art as interpretation in that neat like you don't
Speaker 1: if you're a writer, if you're a young writer right
Speaker 1: now who's just sitting there racking your brain for how
Speaker 1: to insert metaphor and meaning into this. Just write your
Speaker 1: story and people are going to find it for themselves. Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: I wish somebody had told me that. When I was younger,
Speaker 1: I had teachers that said stuff like that. Oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't like good college professors in English that would when
Speaker 1: students would argue like I think he means this, he
Speaker 1: would say like, you know, he may or she may
Speaker 1: not have meant anything. Right, I's the revelation. I had
Speaker 1: teachers that would just go wrong. Uh. The other thing
Speaker 1: about Night Living Dead is it spawned um obviously the
Speaker 1: zombie genre and uh sequels Dawn of the Dead, Day
Speaker 1: of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, the Walking
Speaker 1: Dead remakes shout out, shout out, Stephen. You know, yeah right,
Speaker 1: why not? I'm still into the Walking Dead. You yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this. Yes, yes, okay, Stephen, you listens. Anyway,
Speaker 1: zombies are at still hot and we can so hot.
Speaker 1: We we owe that all to Mr Romero, master of
Speaker 1: the genre. Yep. Check one more thing too, that that
Speaker 1: NYA Living Dead did that they weren't the first, but
Speaker 1: very famously Romero did was kill off his hero senselessly
Speaker 1: and shockingly. Yeah. At the end, good point. Thanks man. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's move on. Like I said, yes, stay after Christmas.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been uh in Washington, d C. At
Speaker 1: the end of M Street, you might have noticed very
Speaker 1: uh during the daytime, ordinary set of stairs. At nighttime,
Speaker 1: maybe they look creepy to you because those are the
Speaker 1: Exorcist stairs. Yeah. I'm trying to conjure the music in
Speaker 1: my head, but all I'm coming up with is the
Speaker 1: unsolved mysteries music. It was not quite right, so close,
Speaker 1: but it's not. I'm so unsatisfied right now. So The
Speaker 1: Exorcist was based on a book by William Peter Bladdie
Speaker 1: who wrote this uh in one and then in seventy
Speaker 1: three the movie was made. Uh. And there's I think
Speaker 1: I referenced not too long ago a great Mark Marin
Speaker 1: interview with um William Friedkin where he talks about the
Speaker 1: audition process for Linda Blair. So you should go listen
Speaker 1: to that because it was pretty insightful. But um, the
Speaker 1: Exorcists really kind of changed the game, UM and that
Speaker 1: it was a It spawned a bit of a sub
Speaker 1: genre of um demonic movies. Sure, I were like religious based. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though I guess Rosemary's Baby was before that, but
Speaker 1: The Exorcist was such a mega hit and it was
Speaker 1: nominated for Best Picture, the first horror movie to be
Speaker 1: nominated UM for for that, and so it was just
Speaker 1: like it was a big deal. It was. It sold
Speaker 1: six million tickets in about two months. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: This is a horror movie, right, and it came out
Speaker 1: in nowhere. Um. Apparently the effect I had on audiences
Speaker 1: was extremely pronounced. There was a woman in Boston who
Speaker 1: had to be carried from the theater and she goes
Speaker 1: it cost me four dollars, but I only lasted twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: So we're like that's the stories of that got around
Speaker 1: and and people wanted to see, you know, this movie
Speaker 1: can't be that scary, and they went and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that movie is that scary. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it holds up too. I mean, um, special effects are
Speaker 1: they'd never quite hold up. But it's still a very
Speaker 1: creepy movie. Um. Very famously, Linda Blair played the little
Speaker 1: girl who was possessed by a demon, and uh, the
Speaker 1: the heavy hitters were called in to exercises demon, including
Speaker 1: um A Max van Style who was only forty four
Speaker 1: when he played this guy in his easily in his seventies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is he Benjamin Button? Well know they made him up. Wow,
Speaker 1: they did a great job. Yeah, which I don't see
Speaker 1: why they felt the need to do that. I know
Speaker 1: they God, who else did they almost cast? Oh? Brando?
Speaker 1: They almost cast Brando? But that would have been a
Speaker 1: colossal mistake. Well, Friedkin said, you know, as soon as
Speaker 1: you do that, it's a Marlon Brando movie. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think he said picture a Brando picture. Sure, that's
Speaker 1: what they said. Uh. And he'd wanted to be a
Speaker 1: Brando picture. He wanted to be the Exorcist. Um, so
Speaker 1: that you said. It was based on a book from
Speaker 1: two years before by William Peter Bladdie. He he he apparently
Speaker 1: was known as a comedy writer and he wanted to
Speaker 1: do something different. He said, Hey, wouldn't it be funny
Speaker 1: if the little girl's head spun around and she keeped
Speaker 1: green bile? Wait, what do you hear? What I ever
Speaker 1: do with the crucifix? Hey? So? Um? He actually wrote
Speaker 1: the book because he wanted to scare America back to church.
Speaker 1: That was his aim with the book. He believed that
Speaker 1: there was real evil going on the world that part
Speaker 1: of it was because of a a loss of faith
Speaker 1: or a loss of religion, I guess, and that's what
Speaker 1: he wanted to do with it. UM. And when the
Speaker 1: movie came out, there was a huge pushback from religious
Speaker 1: authorities like Billy Graham said he believed the movie itself
Speaker 1: was possessed by a demon. I'm not sure how that
Speaker 1: would happen, but that was like a huge thing at
Speaker 1: the time. UM and a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: other UM religious establishment types were like, don't go see
Speaker 1: that movie. It's evil. But there were some who who
Speaker 1: were part of part of religion, major organized religion, who
Speaker 1: kind of saw through it and said, no, no, this
Speaker 1: is it's good that we're talking about this, that there
Speaker 1: we're telling people, you know, or people are seeing that
Speaker 1: there there's such a thing as like good versus evil
Speaker 1: literally combating on earth, you know, and people are talking
Speaker 1: about this and thinking about it. And so in that sense,
Speaker 1: the Exorcist like really kind of went to bat for
Speaker 1: organized religion. Interesting. I saw another um criticism of it though,
Speaker 1: that that said, one of the themes of the movie
Speaker 1: that the book hadn't really intended but the movie picked
Speaker 1: up on and expounded on, was intergenerational conflict, that that
Speaker 1: it was Reagan the child represented the younger generation who
Speaker 1: was at war with the establishment, and that it even
Speaker 1: goes um so far as to where her mother, the
Speaker 1: actress the movie that she's working on is about campus
Speaker 1: takeover by young radicals, so that that's kind of a
Speaker 1: theme that was apparently part of the subtext, but was
Speaker 1: a major part of it in the movie at least interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought so too, because apparently, I mean, you think
Speaker 1: of intergenerational conflict now, apparently in the late sixties and
Speaker 1: early seventies it was sharper than it probably ever has
Speaker 1: been before or since. Yeah, m hm. The only other
Speaker 1: thing I got is that the the green stuff that
Speaker 1: she projectiles was Anderson's P soup and a little bit
Speaker 1: of oatmeal texture Anderson's PC. Well, but you can't give
Speaker 1: that anymore, Chuck. Let's do Jaws and then we'll take
Speaker 1: a break. I love talking about Jaws. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: Jaws is on you know, I did my top favorite
Speaker 1: movies list at one point on our website, and I
Speaker 1: listed Jaws is my favorite movie favorite of all time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that list changes, but it's Jaws is always
Speaker 1: in my top five. I can watch it anytime it's on. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is one of the I've all. I've often said
Speaker 1: it's a perfect movie. Um. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is there's just not a misstep. Like the casting
Speaker 1: was perfect, the acting was great, the script was great.
Speaker 1: It played out just perfectly throughout the film. Um. He,
Speaker 1: like Spielberg, was just a master storyteller with that movie.
Speaker 1: You were talking about how young George Romero was in
Speaker 1: Night of the Living Dead. Olberg was twenty six when
Speaker 1: he made Jaws. He was thirteen years old. He Uh,
Speaker 1: and he was apparently scared to death when he finished filming.
Speaker 1: The schedule had been for fifty five days, it went
Speaker 1: to a hundred and fifty nine. Yeah. He had I
Speaker 1: think been allotted four million dollars. He ended up spending
Speaker 1: twelve million on it. Um. Yeah, largely because a shooting
Speaker 1: on water is notoriously difficult and be the shark mechanical
Speaker 1: shark they used was legendarily um wonky and how it
Speaker 1: are not wonky but wonky wonky. It didn't work. It
Speaker 1: rarely worked. So they spent a lot of time and
Speaker 1: burnt a lot of hours trying to get this shark
Speaker 1: to do its thing, and uh so much so that
Speaker 1: it didn't even make that many appearances in the movie.
Speaker 1: I think they even kind of scaled it back, and
Speaker 1: that ended up being better for the movie because you
Speaker 1: didn't get as much shark. I looked up the um
Speaker 1: the urban legend about the shark being named after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce,
Speaker 1: and apparently it's true. Really, Yeah, Bruce Rayner was the
Speaker 1: name of Spielberg's lawyer, and the that was the nickname
Speaker 1: for the mechanical shark on the set was Bruce. That's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. So with Jaws, right, we're talking about horror
Speaker 1: movies that changed the genre. Jaws not only changed the
Speaker 1: horror genre, it changed movie making to this day, and
Speaker 1: in multiple ways, multiple massive ways. It changed the entire
Speaker 1: film industry, almost single handedly. Yeah, it was at the time,
Speaker 1: there was a there was no such thing. You take
Speaker 1: it for granted now, but there was no such thing
Speaker 1: as a quote unquote summer release. No, a lot of
Speaker 1: theaters closed down because a C wasn't in every theater
Speaker 1: and people didn't want to sit around in a hot
Speaker 1: movie theater for two hours. Yeah, a summer release or
Speaker 1: a tent pole for home or a blockbuster feature like
Speaker 1: Jaws was the first one of all those. At the
Speaker 1: time when Jaws came out, they used to UM release
Speaker 1: a movie on maybe one two screens and say New
Speaker 1: York or l A for a week, and they did
Speaker 1: make its way to you know, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago for
Speaker 1: a few weeks, and then eventually make it to your
Speaker 1: small town six eight weeks later. That was how movies
Speaker 1: were released, not Jaws. Jaws was released on four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five screens across the country, which is huge,
Speaker 1: which is part of the part of the UM Summer
Speaker 1: Blockbuster release playbook now. Yeah, and it was also the
Speaker 1: first movie to to spend lots and lots of money
Speaker 1: on marketing UM and so I think the studios were like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, if you spend some dough on marketing,
Speaker 1: you released this sing wide, you can make a ton
Speaker 1: of money in the first month that the movie's out
Speaker 1: and you're kind of set, like after that it's anything
Speaker 1: else's gravy. Yeah, and that's after the first week or
Speaker 1: two probably, Yeah, it was. Yeah, the whole the whole
Speaker 1: point of blockbuster now is to get that opening weekend
Speaker 1: to make all your money back in the opening weekend
Speaker 1: and then everything else is gravy on top of it. Right,
Speaker 1: Jaws was it didn't make it. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: it did make its money back in the first weekend
Speaker 1: because it hit a hundred million dollars in like seventy
Speaker 1: eight days or something incredible like that, because it was
Speaker 1: the first movie too had a hundred million dollars and
Speaker 1: it did it in just a couple of months. Even. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it eventually went on to make about two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars domestically, which is I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: great take now, Yeah, you know, much less the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies for a twelve million dollars spend. For sure.
Speaker 1: My only beef here is that I would not consider
Speaker 1: Jaws a horror movie. Yeah. I think it's an adventure film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you're right, with a scary antagonist. Yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how much I quote that movie in my
Speaker 1: day today life. Yeah, just Shark, that's a great that's
Speaker 1: a classic. All right, let's take a break. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: meditate on that line, and we'll talk about a few
Speaker 1: other scary movies, including one that was originally titled Scary
Speaker 1: Movie Okay, moving on to Halloween. Halloween Chuck eight, I
Speaker 1: believe Halloween. Yes, John Carpenter, Uh, the youngish John Carpenter
Speaker 1: who originally titled this movie The Babysitter Murders. No, A
Speaker 1: little on the nose. Yeah, pretty terrifying title, I guess.
Speaker 1: Young Jamie Lee Curtis her very first movie, was it
Speaker 1: really Yeah? Well, she went on to become known as
Speaker 1: the scream Queen for all the horror movies she was in.
Speaker 1: Totally and this was shot in twenty days and uh
Speaker 1: South Pasadena as the Midwest and um it's credited as
Speaker 1: being birthing the slasher genre. Yeah it did, so there
Speaker 1: were slasher films before. The Town That Dreaded Sundown was
Speaker 1: like based on a true crime story actually in Texas
Speaker 1: of one called Black Christmas The Grabster sites from UR
Speaker 1: haven't heard of that one. But the idea of um
Speaker 1: of a faceless almost a like non entity entity coming
Speaker 1: at you, uh and relentlessly stalking you, be impervious to harm,
Speaker 1: as the Webster puts it, um, and just coming at
Speaker 1: you again and again trying to kill you. That that
Speaker 1: was that was all established by Halloween, and it was
Speaker 1: done like too too great effect as well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it holds up. It's still scary. Uh. Michael Myers, of
Speaker 1: course was the killer. Um the music that John Carpenter score.
Speaker 1: I mean, he scores most of his movies himself, but
Speaker 1: very iconic, uh, basic thing. I think he only took
Speaker 1: a couple of days to come up with it. But
Speaker 1: like the Michael Myers character and the mask or so iconic,
Speaker 1: the music is so iconic. Do you know about the mask, right, Chatner? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead. I went and check that one out too
Speaker 1: to verify that it was true. And it definitely is
Speaker 1: true that Michael Myers mask is actually a Captain Kirk
Speaker 1: star Trek mask painted white. That is history. Yep. The
Speaker 1: in the in the script when it came to the mask,
Speaker 1: it just a pale, neutral features of a man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes the whole thing even creepier because he's an
Speaker 1: implacid or is that the right word. I don't know.
Speaker 1: He's just it's just almost like just an emotionless killer.
Speaker 1: It made the fact that he was merciless, ruthless, pitiless
Speaker 1: and and all arbitrarily killing people almost all the more
Speaker 1: pronounced because his expression never changes. Well, to me, the
Speaker 1: two things were creepiest about Halloween was the expression never
Speaker 1: changed because of that mask, and he did not run,
Speaker 1: like oh yeah, he would just walk and you still
Speaker 1: got the feeling like you can't outrun this guy even
Speaker 1: though he's walking. That was another creepy part about it.
Speaker 1: It follows with the walking aspect of it for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the same way that like twenty eight Days Later
Speaker 1: was freaky and that it took zombies and made him run. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or I remember when I saw Friday I'm sorry, h
Speaker 1: Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time and Freddy
Speaker 1: Krueger was running around. I was like, that's not what
Speaker 1: scary dudes do. Yes, scary dudes don't try now they
Speaker 1: walk very creepily towards you and still somehow gained speed
Speaker 1: on you even though you're running full speed. Freddy scared
Speaker 1: me to death the first time I saw that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one was a pretty good one. But Halloween
Speaker 1: established this, Like you said, it established the slasher genre,
Speaker 1: and everything about slasher films still today all rooted in
Speaker 1: Halloween John Carpenter's tropes. Yeah, and again, like you said,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of other slasher films before, but
Speaker 1: none of them grossed close to fifty million bucks. Wow,
Speaker 1: is that how much Halloween made? Yeah, forty seven million
Speaker 1: domestic at about a three hundred thousand dollar budgets. So
Speaker 1: it uh, you know, that's sort of like with The Exorcists,
Speaker 1: Like there were other movies that sort of did this
Speaker 1: thing before, but when you have a huge hit that
Speaker 1: does it was when it sort of redefines the genre
Speaker 1: because it's money. Yeah, that's everyone starts paying attention after all, Right,
Speaker 1: what's next? What's next? My friend? Is a movie that
Speaker 1: came out when I don't know, were you still in college? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: you must have just been out then I was out
Speaker 1: a few years. Okay, Well, regardless around our college era,
Speaker 1: this movie came out. Because up to this point, everything's
Speaker 1: come out either when we were little or before we
Speaker 1: were born. This one was right in our wheelhouse. It
Speaker 1: was The Blair Witch Project, which came out. Yeah, and uh.
Speaker 1: One of the big things that um Blair Witch Project
Speaker 1: did well two things. Really, it established the found footage
Speaker 1: genre or sub genre that is so overplayed now, uh
Speaker 1: in the viral marketing campaign. And that's how I came
Speaker 1: upon it. I remember very specifically being in the apartment
Speaker 1: of Scotty Polito, who you know, he shot our TV show,
Speaker 1: one of my oldest friends. And I was sitting in
Speaker 1: his apartment on Claremont Avenue Indicator and I happened upon this.
Speaker 1: And this was pre Facebook. I don't even know how
Speaker 1: I found it. You before things were being shared around
Speaker 1: and I happened upon this website, the very first Blair
Speaker 1: Witch Project website, and I was like, dude, come over
Speaker 1: here and check this out. This is the scariest thing
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. And I remember the website set it
Speaker 1: up as if it was real, and that this found
Speaker 1: footage thing, it's so overdone now it's hard to go
Speaker 1: back in time and remember when it was fresh. But
Speaker 1: I remember looking at and being like, did this happen?
Speaker 1: Did they really find this footage of this murder in
Speaker 1: the woods? Liked to see this? That was the rumor
Speaker 1: that this was actually real, man. And this is, like
Speaker 1: you said, I mean, this is before the found footage genres.
Speaker 1: So people were being exposed to this concept for the
Speaker 1: first time, and we're kind of falling for it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're either in college or you're just recently out of college,
Speaker 1: so you're maybe slightly more guldbal than you are ten
Speaker 1: years ready to believe it? You want to believe right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, the idea that this was actual found footage,
Speaker 1: it just made it all the more enjoyable and people
Speaker 1: were buying into it. And I think the other part
Speaker 1: of it too, was that the filmmakers, partly because they
Speaker 1: didn't have the budget for actual effects, left a lot
Speaker 1: of the scariest parts to your imagination. Yeah, nor did
Speaker 1: they have the talent to make a good narrative film,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean, they worked on a sixty four
Speaker 1: page script, which I was surprised that it was that
Speaker 1: that big. But they shot it for eight days and
Speaker 1: originally they were going to make it like a documentary
Speaker 1: about the found footage, and then one of them had
Speaker 1: a flash of of perspective was like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: let's just release it like it's found footage. And that
Speaker 1: was that. The rest was history. Yeah, and I'm poking fun.
Speaker 1: That was not very nice at all. Um Eduard of
Speaker 1: Sanchez and Daniel Myrick or Merrick, the co directors, they
Speaker 1: they should be credited with the truly ingenious uh campaign
Speaker 1: and invention that well, they weren't the first to come
Speaker 1: up with on footage, right, there were some films before. Um,
Speaker 1: I've never known how to pronounce it, Mondo Kanne, ermando Kane,
Speaker 1: I think Connie. It's from nineteen sixty two and it
Speaker 1: was supposedly a documentary about um like some like weird
Speaker 1: tribal rituals. I think there's head shrinking maybe involved, and
Speaker 1: it purported to be like real footage. Same with Cannibal Holocaust,
Speaker 1: where if you've never seen Campbell Holocaust, go out and
Speaker 1: watch it right now. It's very disturbing. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: so disturbing that the director of the movie was charged
Speaker 1: with murder because they believed that the actual murders depicted
Speaker 1: they were so realistic. They thought that it was a
Speaker 1: snuff film basically, but it was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: documentary as well. So there was an idea of like
Speaker 1: found footage or documentary style horror movies that had come before,
Speaker 1: but nothing like The Blair Witch where it was just
Speaker 1: straight up these people we found their their old camera, uh,
Speaker 1: and this is what was on it. Well, and they
Speaker 1: were smart enough to kind of dig up an old
Speaker 1: thing that never went huge, you know, and they're like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: like these other movies, they never really hit it big,
Speaker 1: and they it was a timing thing. They they, I mean,
Speaker 1: hats off for them to them, yeah, good for them,
Speaker 1: and to them. Nice going to a right chuck. Scream, Yeah, scream.
Speaker 1: I tease that it was originally titled scary movie. I'm
Speaker 1: glad it wasn't because scary movie is awesome. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's scary movie ever would have been called maybe it
Speaker 1: would have never been made, or maybe they would have
Speaker 1: called that scream. Oh yeah, I guess so. So. Scream
Speaker 1: was a very big deal when it came out. The
Speaker 1: writer Kevin Williamson, um, and this is still the highest
Speaker 1: growing slash of film of all time, basically Scream one. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was huge. I got Nev Campbell's haircut as a
Speaker 1: result of it. Like it was a big, big pop
Speaker 1: culture water mark. It was. And one of the big
Speaker 1: things about it, aside from the boatloads of money that
Speaker 1: it made, was it spawned a sub genre called meta horror,
Speaker 1: which is um even though it had been done by
Speaker 1: no less than its own director Wes Craven. With Wes
Speaker 1: Craven's New Nightmare Uh two years before Scream, it wasn't
Speaker 1: nearly as popular, but met a horror is this idea?
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen Scream, you know they're constantly
Speaker 1: just referencing horror movies, like this is where you know,
Speaker 1: you don't go out and make out in the car
Speaker 1: because that's where you get killed. And then they would
Speaker 1: do that and get killed, right, although I don't think
Speaker 1: that specific thing happened, like don't go back into the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like all the tropes of horror movies are addressed in
Speaker 1: the movie, and they're talking about them as the horror
Speaker 1: movie tropes. Yes, yeah, exactly, maya horror. Yeah. And there
Speaker 1: are plenty of other things that came along better met
Speaker 1: a horror um examples like have you seen Tucker and
Speaker 1: Dale Versus Evil? Uh no? Check it out? Man, all right,
Speaker 1: that's a good movie. Zombie Land. Did see that where
Speaker 1: he's rattling off all of the things that you need
Speaker 1: to notice survive a zombie apocalypse that he learned from
Speaker 1: zombie movies, right, And then Cabin in the Woods. Did
Speaker 1: you see that? One? Great movie? It was a great movie.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really good. I mean from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, it was a great movie. Did you like Scream? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love Scream. I liked all the screams. I only
Speaker 1: saw the first two. The second one I think might
Speaker 1: have been even better than the first to me, And
Speaker 1: that the second was shot Emily worked on that it
Speaker 1: was shot here in at Agnes Scott College. Parts right
Speaker 1: to go back and watch it knowing that now I'll
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I've driven past that place. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I got a few tidbits, like I said. Initial title
Speaker 1: of scary movie um number two. The Weinstein Brothers initially
Speaker 1: offered it to George Romero and Sam Rami, Um, what
Speaker 1: else do I have here? Drew Barrymore was originally supposed
Speaker 1: to play Sydney, the lead character, and then she said, no,
Speaker 1: how about if I just played that girl at the beginning,
Speaker 1: which kind of was a big thing because you see
Speaker 1: Drew Marry Barrymore And it was a big shock when
Speaker 1: she died in the first scene. You know, you can't
Speaker 1: kill off your heroine right away. Yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember that first scene really really scaring
Speaker 1: me when I saw it the first time in the theater.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It's a scary, gruesome, gory. Yeah, very
Speaker 1: well played. Uh. And then before he went to um
Speaker 1: NEV Campbell, he went out to Alicia with Britney Murphy
Speaker 1: and Reese Witherspoon Cambell your christ choice. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the mask, the iconic screen mask apparently wasn't off the
Speaker 1: shelf mask. Wow, that made that company's money. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the wine Steins didn't like it. They were like, I
Speaker 1: hate that mask. Everything else is fine, huh. But west
Speaker 1: Craven said, no, it's got to be the mask. It
Speaker 1: would be stupid. Bob m alright, we're gonna finish up
Speaker 1: with our own edition here. Finally, nineteen sixty Psycho. I
Speaker 1: can't believe this wasn't in the list. I think Ed
Speaker 1: kept this off the list to toy with somebody he
Speaker 1: doesn't like specifically. That's the only explanation. Yeah, because Psycho
Speaker 1: changed everything. Yeah, it really did. I mean it was
Speaker 1: the you could say that it was one of the
Speaker 1: first slasher flicks. It was a early psychological thriller. Um.
Speaker 1: It was based on the real life story of Ed Geen.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't exactly mirror a Gaen's life, but
Speaker 1: the idea of um being obsessed with your mother so
Speaker 1: much that you will commit murder. Uh. It was definitely
Speaker 1: rooted in a Gains story. Um. If you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with ed Geen. He not only he was I don't
Speaker 1: even know if he was a serial killer. I think he.
Speaker 1: I think he murdered one, maybe two people, but more
Speaker 1: than anything, he was a grave robber. But he likes
Speaker 1: to um dress up in people's skin, women's skin and
Speaker 1: pretend he was his own mother. Which, man, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of years on the couch work and that one
Speaker 1: out or you can just die at the hands of
Speaker 1: cops one of the two. Um. And he also inspired
Speaker 1: leather Face from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah, and and Buffalo
Speaker 1: Bill of course. Oh yeah, yeah, Sounds of the Lambs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one guy inspired all those two, all those guys. So
Speaker 1: I found this article Psycho Colan The Horror Movie that
Speaker 1: Changed the Genre by Owen Glieberman or is it Gliberman?
Speaker 1: Think he wrote for Legendary Critic, wrote for e W
Speaker 1: for years and years and now writes for a variety.
Speaker 1: Oh he does. Yeah, but he uh he put it best.
Speaker 1: He said, um, well, you know, the iconic shower scene,
Speaker 1: first of all, is hugely important because it was Hitchcock
Speaker 1: really kind of ripped up the script, not literally, but
Speaker 1: the horror movie script when he kills off Janet Lee
Speaker 1: halfway through the movie. It was you just didn't do
Speaker 1: that at the time. We came out of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: we've seen that come up later on, like at the
Speaker 1: end of Nither Living Dead or Drew Barrymore and Scream.
Speaker 1: Hitchcock was the first one to do that. Yeah, And Uh,
Speaker 1: Glieberman puts it this way. He said he was also
Speaker 1: slicing through years, decades, centuries even of audience expectation that
Speaker 1: the hero or heroine of a fictional work would be
Speaker 1: shielded and protected or would at least die usually the
Speaker 1: end in a way that made some sort of moral
Speaker 1: dramatic sense. Uh. In Psycho, the murder made no sense
Speaker 1: at all, right, And he really kind of hits it
Speaker 1: on the head there. It was like, if you've never
Speaker 1: seen Psycho or heard of it, the movie is just
Speaker 1: going along about this woman who likes steals some money
Speaker 1: from her work, and she's kind of on the lamb
Speaker 1: and checks into this hotel and you don't even know
Speaker 1: it's a horror movie. You're thinking it's a a movie
Speaker 1: about a lady who steals money and is trying to
Speaker 1: get away from getting caught, right, and then just out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, she's hacked up in a shower and at
Speaker 1: the time, audiences and still if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: it's shocking. The audiences were just like they didn't know
Speaker 1: what they'd seen right exactly, So you're not not only
Speaker 1: is is the hero no longer safe? That means maybe
Speaker 1: you're not either. So it has it had a really
Speaker 1: huge unsettling effect. And then Owen Glieberman points out that
Speaker 1: Hitchcock was so smart that he even he he even
Speaker 1: made a nod to the the type of pat expected
Speaker 1: horror that the audience was used to. In the house
Speaker 1: that he used for Psycho, the Bates House. There was
Speaker 1: this huge, rambling Victorian mansion on a hill. There's lots
Speaker 1: of taxidermy, and it was like over over decorated and
Speaker 1: just creepy. But up to that point, like that was horror.
Speaker 1: That was what a horror movie looked like and felt like.
Speaker 1: And this was this was kind of Hitchcock's homage to that,
Speaker 1: but at the same time he was also putting the
Speaker 1: heel of his shoe on it as well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that house was, I mean almost a character in itself.
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever seen the recreation of it, at
Speaker 1: in in Los Angeles. I think it's a universal Did
Speaker 1: you see it? Oh yeah, I never did. The closest
Speaker 1: I came was I think when different Strokes went there.
Speaker 1: That's the closest you got to it. Yeah, uh yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the thing in person, like it's
Speaker 1: it sends a chill up your back just seeing this
Speaker 1: thing in like a sunny Los Angeles day. Still, it's
Speaker 1: such an iconic house, it's like, oh man, uh, there
Speaker 1: it is. That's where Norman Bates lives. He's the most
Speaker 1: disturbed human of all time. Right. So in the movie,
Speaker 1: of course, there was the mother character who is sort
Speaker 1: of referenced throughout the movie. And it is not until
Speaker 1: the end that you realize that there is no mother.
Speaker 1: Mother is dead. There's just Norman Bates and all his
Speaker 1: rage and hang ups. Yeah. So all the monster movies
Speaker 1: about giant ants and or the creature from the Black Billgoon, monsters,
Speaker 1: things that were and other that a normal person had
Speaker 1: to do battle with that was gone. Now the monster
Speaker 1: had been on screen the whole time, and you had
Speaker 1: noticed it. And now what do you think about your
Speaker 1: neighbor who has seemed a little weird from time to
Speaker 1: time before. Could he be a murderer who thinks he's
Speaker 1: his mother, who knows this is what Hitchcock did everybody
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty And you almost get like I think,
Speaker 1: Owen Gliberman points it out. Yeah, he does. At the beginning,
Speaker 1: he basically says like, UM, we probably didn't see Psycho.
Speaker 1: If you're reading this, you're probably too young to have
Speaker 1: seen Psycho in nineteen sixty And we should all feel
Speaker 1: sad that we didn't, because it's so changed everything that
Speaker 1: we can't do anything but take it for granted now.
Speaker 1: And everything that's comes since the and has been trying
Speaker 1: to regain that shock and horror that it instilled in audiences,
Speaker 1: and and thus far no one's actually been able to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah. And the other thing, I remember when
Speaker 1: I saw it when I was younger. I think I
Speaker 1: saw this when I was like fourteen ish, Um, and
Speaker 1: I think I had this impact on just about everyone.
Speaker 1: I don't think I took a shower for a month.
Speaker 1: I was straight up bathtub curtain open, doors open, windows open,
Speaker 1: making your mom watch, she's keeping watch. You know. That
Speaker 1: would have been full circle back to yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: didn't even want to have anything to do with your
Speaker 1: mom No, man, like it changed the shower curtain industry
Speaker 1: for a while after that. Yeah, bet, very good movie.
Speaker 1: And um, there were a couple of Hitchcock movies in
Speaker 1: the last few years. Uh, two different ones, one with
Speaker 1: Anthony Hopkins and one with Toby Jones that were both
Speaker 1: really good. And one was about the years that he
Speaker 1: was making Psycho. The other was about the years when
Speaker 1: he was making The Birds, and they were both really
Speaker 1: really good movies. And you should check those out too.
Speaker 1: You should repeat that. We just got a interjection from Noel,
Speaker 1: so go ahead and say it again, Josh, in case
Speaker 1: it didn't come through. So Nol just said that. Um.
Speaker 1: The director of The Black Coats Daughter is Anthony Perkins,
Speaker 1: who played Norman Bates in Psycho's Son. Wow. He also
Speaker 1: did another movie now that Noel says that, Thanks Noel. Um.
Speaker 1: It's called The Pretty Little Thing That Lives in the House,
Speaker 1: which was another horror movie, a ghost story that was
Speaker 1: his first one, and I think that might be on Netflix.
Speaker 1: It's great. It's a really great movie too. Man. This
Speaker 1: has got me fired up to see some horror movies.
Speaker 1: It's a renaissance of horror Yeah. It's tough though, because
Speaker 1: Emily doesn't really dig it, so I have to just
Speaker 1: find a loane time to do that, to watch in
Speaker 1: the bathroom. All right, Well, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about horror movies, go watch horror movies. Go forth
Speaker 1: and let us know what we missed. For God's sake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out the grabsters list, type
Speaker 1: in horror movies on the search bar at house to
Speaker 1: works dot com and will bring up this fine, fine
Speaker 1: list that you will disagree with. And um, since I
Speaker 1: said disagree, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This from Eric,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna call it what he called it, a
Speaker 1: Schoolhouse Rock and nostalgia theory. Alright, I think he's pretty
Speaker 1: right on this just came in. Actually, there's a hot take, hey,
Speaker 1: guys in Schoolhouse Rocks. So Josh made the statement that
Speaker 1: gen xers are most nostalgic generation attributed to this success
Speaker 1: of Schoolhouse Rock. I'm going to offer my own theory.
Speaker 1: I propose that gen x is nostalgic mostly for pop
Speaker 1: culture because of the prolifer uh that word of child
Speaker 1: targeted advertisements and marketing in the seventies and eighties. Certainly
Speaker 1: something We've talked about this. Theories got like, while our
Speaker 1: little impressionable brains were developing, we're being taught by those
Speaker 1: who are steering pop culture to long for and find
Speaker 1: fulfillment in the toys and other products our cartoons were
Speaker 1: pushing on us. Now it's adults, those messages are still
Speaker 1: deep in our psyche. We can't shake the idea that
Speaker 1: we still really need those Star Wars action figures to
Speaker 1: be happy, not because the toys and the shows were
Speaker 1: so great, because we had been tricked into believing we
Speaker 1: need them. I have nothing scientific to back this up,
Speaker 1: just a hunch yet. What you mean there hasn't been
Speaker 1: a study from m I t alright on Star Wars toys.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised by that as well. I thought
Speaker 1: you were being facetious at first. Yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: which ways up at this point. Nothing scientific to back
Speaker 1: this up, but I'd love to hear what you all think.
Speaker 1: See if anyone out there is any respectable and informed input,
Speaker 1: which Eric, that is from Eric Lewin and Erica. I
Speaker 1: think that's super valid. Yeah I do too, Eric. I
Speaker 1: think you've really hit upon something here, and that's all
Speaker 1: I have to say. About it. If you have a
Speaker 1: great theory, fan theory, real life theory, whatever, we want
Speaker 1: to hear them there, especially if it's interesting. You can
Speaker 1: tweet to us s y s a podcast. You can
Speaker 1: send us an email. The Stuff podcast at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com has always joined us at at Home
Speaker 1: on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff
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