WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: Ghosthouse 0:00:02.470 --> 0:00:11.900 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.340 --> 0:00:16.120 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.400 And this is Joe McCormick. And on today's Halloween season 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:22.700 edition of Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking 0:00:22.730 --> 0:00:28.480 about the 1988 Italo Poltergeist film, Ghost House, directed by 0:00:28.660 --> 0:00:33.920 Italian cannibal dream weaver Umberto Lindsay, a notorious schlockmonger who 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:38.120 I think made a lot of more serious kind of 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:41.500 western and crime and jello movies earlier in his career, 0:00:41.580 --> 0:00:47.360 but his output in the 80s is very infamous horror 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:48.590 and genre trash. 0:00:49.050 --> 0:00:53.470 Yeah, as we'll discuss, he is often heralded as the 0:00:53.630 --> 0:00:59.140 guy who Introduce the subgenre of the Italian cannibal exploitation film. So, 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:03.800 you know, that's it's hard to outlive that. But there's 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:05.410 more to him than that. We'll get into that when 0:01:05.420 --> 0:01:07.490 we talk about about the director. 0:01:08.010 --> 0:01:11.230 So last week we did a couple of core episodes 0:01:11.550 --> 0:01:16.050 about stories of haunted houses from ancient Greece and Rome. 0:01:16.860 --> 0:01:19.220 And in those episodes, we ended up talking about the 0:01:19.380 --> 0:01:22.160 essence of the haunted house tale, like what makes it 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.060 different from other kinds of ghost stories and folk tales. 0:01:25.770 --> 0:01:27.970 So I thought it might be cool to do a 0:01:28.310 --> 0:01:30.830 haunted house movie and see how it fits into the 0:01:30.870 --> 0:01:33.650 genre tradition. But I was also at the same time 0:01:33.709 --> 0:01:37.110 like feeling the call of Italian schlock. And by God, 0:01:37.140 --> 0:01:42.270 this film checks both boxes. So Ghost House is obviously 0:01:42.470 --> 0:01:47.420 a riff on the 1982 American horror movie Poltergeist, which 0:01:47.500 --> 0:01:51.520 was made by Tobey Hooper and Steven Spielberg. And like 0:01:51.860 --> 0:01:56.140 a lot of Italian genre copycat films of this era, 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:01.010 it's interesting the way it borrows from Poltergeist in that 0:02:02.050 --> 0:02:05.930 what it copies from its predecessor is not the overall 0:02:05.970 --> 0:02:10.040 plot and structure, which is quite different. But instead it 0:02:10.100 --> 0:02:14.710 borrows individual images, props, and set pieces so that you 0:02:14.750 --> 0:02:18.770 can watch this basically totally different movie, but every now 0:02:18.810 --> 0:02:21.530 and then hit a scene or an image and be like, Hey, that's, 0:02:21.690 --> 0:02:26.010 that's from Poltergeist. And, uh, so for example, this movie 0:02:26.050 --> 0:02:29.910 has a very prominent creepy clown doll that is obviously 0:02:30.389 --> 0:02:33.940 based on the clown doll from Poltergeist and has weird 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.139 haunted stuff happening on a TV like Poltergeist. It has 0:02:37.180 --> 0:02:39.760 a little blonde girl. It has a bunch of other 0:02:40.060 --> 0:02:43.620 just individual moments and images. Like, I think there's sort 0:02:43.660 --> 0:02:47.040 of an attempt to recreate the feeling of that slimy 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:50.820 pool scene in Poltergeist with the weird subfloor that is 0:02:50.910 --> 0:02:52.540 flooded with white goop here. 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:55.730 Yeah, though I think they managed to create something that 0:02:55.750 --> 0:02:59.710 feels even weirder than what we get in Poltergeist. And 0:02:59.870 --> 0:03:01.889 this was a high point in the film for me, 0:03:01.950 --> 0:03:05.370 for sure. Though, again, I think that the Poltergeist comparison 0:03:05.510 --> 0:03:10.109 is absolutely spot on. Yeah. But in a way, like 0:03:10.130 --> 0:03:13.340 you were saying, it's almost like inspired by the trailer 0:03:13.380 --> 0:03:17.860 for Poltergeist or inspired by promotional images from Poltergeist, that 0:03:17.900 --> 0:03:18.340 sort of thing. 0:03:18.700 --> 0:03:22.299 What is lifted is not the story overall, but memorable 0:03:22.460 --> 0:03:23.300 images from. 0:03:23.620 --> 0:03:27.440 Yeah. And I didn't get into a bunch of interviews 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:31.160 on this one, but I've encountered enough of this material 0:03:31.210 --> 0:03:33.470 to know that sometimes the way it works is like, 0:03:34.370 --> 0:03:36.850 it's not necessarily the director that is like, hey, I 0:03:36.890 --> 0:03:39.240 want to make a ripoff of Poltergeist. So it's, it's 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:41.380 sometimes it's the money people were like, you know, it'd 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.620 be great if we had our own poltergeist to get 0:03:43.660 --> 0:03:46.860 in on this poltergeist money. And there's this understanding. I 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:49.200 was like, okay, we need to make the producers happy. Well, 0:03:49.220 --> 0:03:51.940 let's at least make sure that there are some identifiable 0:03:52.020 --> 0:03:55.040 visual motifs that are present. So they'll, they'll feel like 0:03:55.060 --> 0:03:58.100 they're getting their money's worth out of this investment. Yeah. 0:03:58.340 --> 0:04:00.600 Wait, do I remember right? That the producer here was 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:01.860 Joe D'Amato? Yeah. 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.520 Joe D'Amato is one of the producers on this. So 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:06.970 the schlock runs deep on this one for sure. 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.550 Okay. So like we were saying, the plot structure is 0:04:10.610 --> 0:04:14.550 totally different from Poltergeist. This has a surprising amount of 0:04:14.590 --> 0:04:19.830 ham radio in it. Poltergeist, I think, is a more 0:04:19.990 --> 0:04:24.180 traditional haunted house story, like the structure we were talking 0:04:24.210 --> 0:04:26.540 about in our core episodes on the haunted houses of 0:04:26.580 --> 0:04:29.820 the ancient world, where the house is infected with ghosts 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.960 because we later learn that its construction disturbed an old 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.820 cemetery and brought the spirits out of their rest. So 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:40.330 the ghosts are localized to the house and it's a 0:04:40.430 --> 0:04:42.890 haunting classical haunting in that sense. 0:04:43.010 --> 0:04:45.230 Yeah like it seeped into the the earth and into 0:04:45.270 --> 0:04:47.820 the house that was built upon it uh poltergeist is 0:04:47.860 --> 0:04:51.500 also broadly an american family under siege film uh which 0:04:51.540 --> 0:04:56.180 some critics point out to being a recurring post-frontier hallmark 0:04:56.220 --> 0:04:59.089 of american cinema and you certainly see it notably in 0:04:59.110 --> 0:05:02.489 a number of spielberg films uh you know the Uh, 0:05:02.900 --> 0:05:05.010 and then I guess poltergeist is kind of an interesting 0:05:05.070 --> 0:05:07.310 example of that as well. The idea that like the 0:05:07.370 --> 0:05:13.910 American dream exists on stolen ground that is cursed and, uh, 0:05:14.430 --> 0:05:17.810 and the, the family is like beset, uh, uh, on 0:05:17.870 --> 0:05:22.510 all sides, uh, due to like this infringement upon the spirit. 0:05:22.550 --> 0:05:24.390 So there's a lot to unwrap there. And I think 0:05:24.410 --> 0:05:26.770 that's one of the reasons that poltergeist is so, uh, 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.280 Stuck in so many people's memories. It's stuck in mine, too, 0:05:30.300 --> 0:05:31.940 because I think I saw it when I was like 0:05:32.020 --> 0:05:32.780 seven or something. 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:33.700 Yeah. 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.520 Well, I mean, Poltergeist, if you're going to lift images 0:05:37.580 --> 0:05:39.480 from a movie, it's a good movie to lift images 0:05:39.580 --> 0:05:41.640 from because some of them are so indelible. 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:45.460 Yeah. And often sort of, to a certain extent, non sequiturs. 0:05:45.580 --> 0:05:48.810 Like it's just haunted stuff is happening. Haunted effects are happening. 0:05:49.260 --> 0:05:53.750 So it's kind of like, yeah, let's go ahead and 0:05:53.970 --> 0:05:55.830 borrow that one and do something different with it. 0:05:56.370 --> 0:05:59.430 Yeah, so that's Poltergeist. It's, you might say, at least 0:05:59.490 --> 0:06:03.050 structurally classic haunted house, though it has its own updates 0:06:03.110 --> 0:06:04.650 in a way. Like, you know, one thing I was 0:06:04.690 --> 0:06:07.330 thinking about is in our core episodes on haunted houses, 0:06:07.740 --> 0:06:09.400 we talked about how it's usually got to be an 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.540 old house, but in Poltergeist, it's not, right? It's a 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:16.400 fairly new house, isn't it? Yeah, and so instead, what 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:20.020 is old is the land itself and something about the 0:06:20.060 --> 0:06:21.500 land the house is built on. 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.140 Yeah, and I think in that, Poltergeist was, there was 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:26.240 a certain, they were subverting the trope a little bit 0:06:26.700 --> 0:06:33.539 but also playing on, I think, something in haunting reportings 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:36.460 of the time. It's like the idea that there could 0:06:36.500 --> 0:06:39.690 be something ghostly even in a new construction. 0:06:40.230 --> 0:06:43.349 Yeah, totally. Whereas in Ghost House, I think in the end, 0:06:43.430 --> 0:06:47.670 you could question whether this movie even meets the definition 0:06:47.730 --> 0:06:50.810 of a haunted house story once we learn the cause 0:06:50.850 --> 0:06:54.039 of the hauntings. It's really more like a haunted doll 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.669 story where... almost all of the action just happens to 0:06:57.710 --> 0:07:01.610 be confined to one house because that's where the doll is. Actually, no, 0:07:01.630 --> 0:07:03.410 that's not where the doll is, is it? We learn 0:07:03.450 --> 0:07:05.190 later the doll is somewhere else, but the doll is 0:07:05.310 --> 0:07:07.920 focusing all of its haunting energy on this house. 0:07:08.390 --> 0:07:09.920 Yeah, and then later it seems like the doll can 0:07:09.940 --> 0:07:12.060 also go other places as well. So yeah, I think 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:16.660 definitely haunted doll house. Sorry, haunted doll movie instead of 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:17.700 haunted house movie. 0:07:17.740 --> 0:07:21.160 Yes, yeah. Another thing I was thinking about is I 0:07:21.180 --> 0:07:23.560 haven't seen a lot of Umberto Lindsay movies. I've never 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.700 cracked into his, you know, cannibal stuff. Uh, but one 0:07:27.740 --> 0:07:32.270 thing I can guess is that Umberto Lindsay really loved 0:07:32.350 --> 0:07:37.390 making a movie where people make a 100% optional journey 0:07:37.530 --> 0:07:40.790 to a demonic haunted house, fail to leave even when 0:07:40.830 --> 0:07:43.750 they could, and then get cut in half. Because I 0:07:43.810 --> 0:07:47.520 re if I remember correctly, the one other Umberto Lindsay 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:51.090 movie I've seen is Has exactly the same plot. People 0:07:51.130 --> 0:07:52.950 go to a haunted house, except in this movie, it's 0:07:52.990 --> 0:07:54.890 a copycat of The Shining. They go up to a 0:07:54.930 --> 0:07:59.010 haunted hotel in the mountains. From what I recall, they 0:07:59.050 --> 0:08:02.470 could leave, but they just don't for some reason. And 0:08:03.030 --> 0:08:06.290 somebody gets cut in half in the basement. It's a made-for-TV, 0:08:06.370 --> 0:08:11.600 made-for-Italian-TV copycat called The House of Lost Souls from 1989. 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:13.220 I'd been thinking we might come back to that at 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:13.680 some point. 0:08:14.470 --> 0:08:16.350 Yeah, Umberto Lindsay comes up a fair amount on the 0:08:16.390 --> 0:08:19.920 show in Connections when we talk about the different actors 0:08:19.980 --> 0:08:22.500 and directors and writers and musicians and what else they've 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:26.000 worked on. But this is the first time we've actually 0:08:26.020 --> 0:08:27.640 covered one on Weird Al Cinema, and I think it's 0:08:27.660 --> 0:08:30.260 the first time I've even watched an Umberto Lindsay film. 0:08:31.620 --> 0:08:34.530 Despite the fact that he was an Italian director working 0:08:34.650 --> 0:08:39.430 in schlock and exploitation and genre cinema alongside the likes 0:08:39.570 --> 0:08:45.860 of Fulci, Cosi, Margheretti and others, certainly other directors, his 0:08:45.940 --> 0:08:48.190 peers we've discussed on the show before. Yeah. 0:08:48.670 --> 0:08:53.150 And I think somehow, maybe at least as a distant producer, 0:08:53.790 --> 0:08:56.630 Fulci was involved in those Houses of Doom movies, which 0:08:56.690 --> 0:08:58.410 included the House of Lost Souls. 0:08:59.150 --> 0:09:03.340 Okay. Oh, also of note, this movie was titled La 0:09:03.380 --> 0:09:07.000 Casa 3 in Italy. So at least for the Italian market, 0:09:07.380 --> 0:09:09.480 it was promoted as the third Evil Dead movie. 0:09:09.860 --> 0:09:11.060 Oh, makes perfect sense. 0:09:11.100 --> 0:09:11.340 Yeah. 0:09:12.020 --> 0:09:13.479 Dead by dawn. Yeah. 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.720 But it, it, of course, just in the, in the 0:09:16.740 --> 0:09:19.319 same way, it doesn't actually resemble a poltergeist film. It 0:09:19.340 --> 0:09:24.640 also doesn't resemble an evil dead film. So even less so. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:27.179 quick stats for this film, just cause, uh, this was 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:31.589 on my mind. This is film 265 for weird house cinema. Um, 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.569 I recently watched an old episode of the office in 0:09:34.610 --> 0:09:37.010 which Dwight Schrute claims to have seen over 240 films. So, 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.180 It's notable that without even realizing it, we met the 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:44.600 shrewd point on Weird House Cinema when we covered The 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.940 Last Temptation of Christ and we surpassed it with Nemesis. 0:09:50.100 --> 0:09:53.640 It's pretty cool to imagine Dwight watching either Last Temptation 0:09:53.820 --> 0:09:54.559 or Nemesis. 0:09:55.559 --> 0:10:00.410 Yeah, both present some interesting ideas, don't they? All right, Joe, 0:10:00.429 --> 0:10:03.090 do you have an elevator pitch for Ghost House? 0:10:03.390 --> 0:10:05.410 It's like the devil does ham radio. 0:10:05.429 --> 0:10:08.840 Yeah. There is a lot of ham radio. It's kind 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:10.740 of surprising they didn't put that up front. 0:10:11.100 --> 0:10:11.280 Yeah. 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.100 There are other supernatural ham radio films, and maybe what 0:10:15.140 --> 0:10:17.820 we're picking up on here is somebody had an idea 0:10:17.860 --> 0:10:20.500 for a ham radio-based horror film, and this is the 0:10:20.620 --> 0:10:22.130 ultimate form it ends up taking. 0:10:23.309 --> 0:10:25.969 I saw one with some friends, I think, when I 0:10:26.010 --> 0:10:27.870 was in high school in the movie theater. It was 0:10:27.890 --> 0:10:30.630 called Frequency. Yeah, yeah. 0:10:30.790 --> 0:10:32.020 Is that based on a math story? Maybe. 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:32.140 Maybe. 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:37.439 I remember it had, like, time-traveling ham radio where somebody's, like, 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:39.699 talking to somebody. I think a guy was talking to 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:42.729 his dad in the past, and they're solving a murder 0:10:42.770 --> 0:10:43.610 mystery together. 0:10:43.630 --> 0:10:47.610 Okay. Not a Matheson story, but maybe it's just something 0:10:47.670 --> 0:10:51.790 about the pitch reminded me of that. Yeah, Dennis Quaid, 0:10:51.809 --> 0:10:52.150 I believe. 0:10:52.490 --> 0:10:56.440 Yeah. And I think also the guy who played Jesus 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:57.920 in the Mel Gibson Jesus movie. 0:10:58.059 --> 0:11:01.960 Yeah, Jim Caviezel's in that, as is Michael Cera, his 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:03.260 first film. Oh. 0:11:03.750 --> 0:11:05.189 I don't remember that at all. I guess I would 0:11:05.230 --> 0:11:06.290 not have known him at the time. 0:11:06.309 --> 0:11:09.250 All right, but let's get back to Ghost House here. 0:11:09.530 --> 0:11:12.670 If you were interested in seeing Ghost House, my standards 0:11:12.730 --> 0:11:15.550 see this in the best quality possible mantra doesn't quite 0:11:15.610 --> 0:11:18.210 apply here. I think this might be a film best 0:11:18.270 --> 0:11:21.949 enjoyed as part of a double feature Blu-ray set, double 0:11:21.990 --> 0:11:26.010 feature DVD set, a random find on Amazon Prime, or 0:11:26.090 --> 0:11:29.530 perhaps enjoyed as a bootleg VHS or on a disc 0:11:29.580 --> 0:11:32.300 of unknown origin. I don't know. There's just something about 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.809 it that feels like it should be encountered more than 0:11:36.870 --> 0:11:40.070 like sought out. But it has been put out in 0:11:40.650 --> 0:11:43.670 physical media treatment a few different times. It's actually been 0:11:43.690 --> 0:11:46.800 put out as a solo Blu-ray, as well as a 0:11:46.820 --> 0:11:49.780 solo DVD in some markets anyway, as part of a 0:11:49.820 --> 0:11:54.260 double feature with 89's Witchery, a.k.a. La Casa 4. that 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.300 has Linda Blair and David Hasselhoff in it. Wow. As 0:11:57.350 --> 0:12:00.010 well as an earlier DVD double feature with the sex 0:12:00.050 --> 0:12:03.770 comedy Firehouse. As far as I could tell, no connective 0:12:03.809 --> 0:12:07.070 tissue between Ghost House and Firehouse, other than they just 0:12:07.170 --> 0:12:11.550 have house in the titles. The Riff Trax guys did 0:12:11.610 --> 0:12:14.080 Ghost House at some point. I haven't seen that one. 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:17.819 But obviously there's plenty to work with in this movie, 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:18.940 so I bet it's a pretty good riff. 0:12:19.500 --> 0:12:21.280 You didn't see the one that was a double feature 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.020 with season one of Full House? 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.739 No. It was full house, one word. That's the key. 0:12:26.900 --> 0:12:30.080 Because ghost house is one word for this film. Firehouse 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.339 is one. It depends if you're going to break it 0:12:32.380 --> 0:12:34.180 up or not. I can't recall if full house for 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:35.540 the TV show is one word or two. 0:12:36.210 --> 0:12:40.050 Actually, the best way to watch this movie is you 0:12:40.090 --> 0:12:42.449 try to buy your child a used copy of a 0:12:42.470 --> 0:12:45.150 VHS tape of Casper the Friendly Ghost. But then when 0:12:45.170 --> 0:12:47.530 you open it up, this is the tape that's in there. 0:12:47.550 --> 0:12:59.730 There you go. All right, let's get into the people 0:12:59.750 --> 0:13:03.170 who made this movie. Let's talk some more about Umberto Lindsay. 0:13:04.429 --> 0:13:07.050 He's a director. He also has a story credit. He 0:13:07.090 --> 0:13:11.990 lived 1931 through 2017. Credited on this film is Humphrey Humbert, 0:13:12.610 --> 0:13:15.790 which even as fake names used by Italian directors go, 0:13:16.170 --> 0:13:19.770 is pretty fake sounding. But anyway, Italian director and writer 0:13:19.830 --> 0:13:23.230 whose credits go back to the 1950s. best known internationally, 0:13:23.270 --> 0:13:27.050 and perhaps best remembered for his various genre pictures, particularly 0:13:27.090 --> 0:13:31.360 the schlockier ones. But as is generally the case with 0:13:31.380 --> 0:13:33.600 many of his peers as well, his work fell into 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.660 various genres, depending on what was marketable at the time. 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.360 So some of his earlier pictures included the 61 pirate 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:44.140 film Queen of the Seas, 62's The Triumph of Robin Hood, 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:49.050 63's Catherine of Russia. He also directed the Peplum, a 0:13:49.110 --> 0:13:54.170 few different Peplum movies, including Zorro, against Machiste in 63. 0:13:54.170 --> 0:13:57.069 So you got this, a double there, um, Italian muscle 0:13:57.090 --> 0:14:04.350 man versus or meeting Zorro from, uh, from, from Mexico. 0:14:04.410 --> 0:14:06.319 So that's, that's pretty, pretty fascinating. 0:14:06.460 --> 0:14:07.250 I like the idea. 0:14:07.270 --> 0:14:12.880 Yeah. Uh, in 65, he did 008 operation exterminate, which 0:14:12.980 --> 0:14:16.900 is an amazing title. It rhymes. Yeah. No denying that. Um, 0:14:17.940 --> 0:14:21.780 Let's see. And of course, multiple Giallo films like 69's Orgasmo, 0:14:22.300 --> 0:14:25.800 70's A Quiet Place to Kill, and Knife of Ice 0:14:25.860 --> 0:14:29.510 in 72, all with Carol Baker. And I'm to understand 0:14:29.530 --> 0:14:33.390 that some of these Carol Baker films have been, they're 0:14:33.410 --> 0:14:36.530 regarded as a bit higher in quality compared to some 0:14:36.550 --> 0:14:39.770 of his later pictures. But I haven't seen them myself, 0:14:39.810 --> 0:14:40.510 so I can't really. 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.080 Speak to them. I'm not looking at his filmography now, 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.260 but I remember from when I did, he's got some 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:48.140 of these movies with complicated titles. I think one is 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:53.440 called The Rat, The Gun, and The Fist or something. 0:14:54.490 --> 0:14:58.590 That sounds good. Let's see, in the 70s, this is 0:14:58.630 --> 0:15:02.330 when he really tends to get into schlockier exploitation waters. 0:15:02.670 --> 0:15:06.190 There's 74 is Almost Human, which sounds like a monster movie, 0:15:06.210 --> 0:15:09.600 but it's a crime movie. 75's Eyeball, which is a 0:15:09.620 --> 0:15:13.600 Giallo film with its own following and I think is 0:15:13.860 --> 0:15:18.170 some implied eyeball violence. And it's important to note that, yeah, 0:15:18.210 --> 0:15:23.110 he's widely credited with creating the Italian cannibal exploitation subgenre 0:15:23.410 --> 0:15:27.950 with the 1972 film Man from the Deep River. That title, 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:29.940 that just sounds like a Western or something, but just 0:15:30.300 --> 0:15:31.620 full jungle cannibal movie. 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.420 That could be a drama. That could have Robert Redford 0:15:34.460 --> 0:15:34.680 in it. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:38.510 Yeah. Yeah, this is not such a film. And he 0:15:38.550 --> 0:15:42.520 continued to feed the subgenre with 1980's Eaten Alive that 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:47.440 has Janet Agron in it. And also 81's Cannibal Ferox 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.860 with Giovanni Radici in it. We've covered a number of 0:15:51.900 --> 0:15:54.350 films in which he plays. Generally some sort of a 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:59.310 low life or creep. Or misunderstood individual who ends up 0:15:59.370 --> 0:16:01.410 getting a drill through his head. Or maybe I'm confusing 0:16:01.450 --> 0:16:02.270 him with another actor. 0:16:02.660 --> 0:16:04.620 Oh, is he the guy who gets the drill to 0:16:04.660 --> 0:16:06.840 the head in City of the Living Dead? 0:16:06.860 --> 0:16:09.700 I think so. I think so. If not, it's a 0:16:09.860 --> 0:16:11.900 different guy and I'm confusing him. But anyway, that's the 0:16:11.940 --> 0:16:13.200 sort of role he would tend to play. 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:15.300 I was actually going to mention that scene in this 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:20.680 episode because Ghost House has random unrelated murders taking place 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:23.340 in it that are like the drill scene in City 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:25.500 of the Living Dead where it's like, no, this isn't 0:16:25.570 --> 0:16:28.490 the main supernatural action, but also just here's a murderer. 0:16:28.860 --> 0:16:36.239 Yeah, just, you know, gore showcase cinema. Exactly. So let's see. 0:16:36.300 --> 0:16:40.120 He also directed the 1980 sci-fi zombie movie Nightmare City, 0:16:40.810 --> 0:16:44.190 as well as the 83 sword and sorcery film Iron Master. 0:16:44.530 --> 0:16:47.890 George Eastman's in that one playing, I presume, the villain. 0:16:48.930 --> 0:16:52.270 Ghost House comes about a few after a few different 0:16:52.290 --> 0:16:56.030 war movies and right before the Florida biker rampage film 0:16:56.090 --> 0:16:56.790 Nightmare Beach. 0:16:57.630 --> 0:16:59.750 I've heard Nightmare Beach described as a slasher. 0:16:59.770 --> 0:17:03.690 I think it is like it's a biker movie, but 0:17:03.710 --> 0:17:06.129 it's like a slashing rampage. I don't know if it's 0:17:06.170 --> 0:17:09.869 a ghost or just like a revenger sort of a situation. 0:17:10.070 --> 0:17:11.970 But yeah, I think you're right as well. It is 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.340 also a slasher. And then his last film was the 0:17:15.340 --> 0:17:19.460 92 action flick Mean Tricks starring Charles Napier. Oh, and 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.980 he directed 91's Detective Malone, which had Fred Williamson in 0:17:23.020 --> 0:17:25.380 it in the starring role, also known as the Black 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:27.530 Cobra 4. 0:17:27.530 --> 0:17:31.670 Okay, well, I have a very little appetite for those 0:17:31.930 --> 0:17:35.670 cannibal movies, pun intended, but I think maybe some of 0:17:35.710 --> 0:17:38.609 the sci-fi horror movies from the 70s or 80s are 0:17:38.630 --> 0:17:40.930 going to be our sweet spot for the next Humberto 0:17:40.970 --> 0:17:41.649 Lindsay movie. 0:17:42.010 --> 0:17:46.139 Yeah, yeah, we'll see. Let's see. So again, here's a 0:17:46.180 --> 0:17:49.840 story credit. We also have somebody with a dialogue credit, 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:55.219 which is fabulous considering the dialogue in this movie. It's 0:17:55.280 --> 0:18:02.340 credited to Shelia Goldberg. active from 73 through 2016. Actress, 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:07.139 dialogue coach, and writer who, yeah, is responsible for one 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:12.080 of Ghost House's most entertaining features, absolutely ludicrous dialogue. I 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:13.440 don't know. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:15.600 and say, we don't know how ludicrous it would have 0:18:15.619 --> 0:18:18.660 been had she not been there to coax it into 0:18:18.700 --> 0:18:21.250 the form that we have. Her other credits in this 0:18:21.290 --> 0:18:27.550 vein include Stage Fright in 87. That's Michele Suave. who 0:18:27.570 --> 0:18:32.020 we've talked about before on the show. Also, 88's Zombie 5, 0:18:32.020 --> 0:18:34.699 Killing Birds. She has a story credit on that one. 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:38.820 We're going to mention that one a lot in Connections here. 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:41.879 And 89's Beyond the Door 3, writing credit there. And 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.379 she also was a dialogue coach on 85's Phenomena and 0:18:45.900 --> 0:18:49.740 89's The Black Cat. Okay. And I believe she is 0:18:49.900 --> 0:18:53.199 slash was, again, I don't know what her, if she's 0:18:53.220 --> 0:18:56.690 still out there, you know, her dates are not public record. 0:18:57.140 --> 0:19:00.270 But I think she was an American who worked on 0:19:00.369 --> 0:19:03.810 English dialogue in a number of these Italian productions or 0:19:03.850 --> 0:19:04.750 international productions. 0:19:05.470 --> 0:19:08.350 Oh, I see. So is the idea maybe that Lindsay 0:19:08.430 --> 0:19:12.250 or Lindsay and somebody else write the story and then 0:19:12.290 --> 0:19:15.740 Goldberg is there to sort of Americanize the dialogue? 0:19:15.980 --> 0:19:19.600 I think so, yeah. Maybe even sort of in translation 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:21.980 to some extent because this is one of those movies, 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:23.400 I don't know if we've really gotten into this yet, 0:19:23.460 --> 0:19:26.380 but this is an Italian production, but it is filmed... 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:34.940 On location in Massachusetts and in Boston specifically. So, yeah, 0:19:35.020 --> 0:19:39.440 and it's using local, I think local American talent in 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:41.650 many cases, but they also brought some people over. So 0:19:41.950 --> 0:19:42.630 it's a mix here. 0:19:43.150 --> 0:19:43.330 Yeah. 0:19:43.990 --> 0:19:46.490 And then we also have Cynthia McGavin. She has a 0:19:46.510 --> 0:19:49.410 screenplay credit. This is her only credit, so I don't 0:19:49.430 --> 0:19:51.660 have any more information. on who she is or what 0:19:51.700 --> 0:19:54.899 she did here. So that's the script. And then we 0:19:54.940 --> 0:19:57.790 have the people bringing the script to life on the 0:19:57.950 --> 0:20:01.850 acting front. And yeah, we have some interesting casting here 0:20:01.869 --> 0:20:03.530 as well. We also have some people who are just 0:20:03.690 --> 0:20:06.399 in this and nothing else. And we'll kind of breeze 0:20:06.420 --> 0:20:09.190 through them. But right at the top of the star 0:20:09.410 --> 0:20:15.270 is Laura Wendell, playing the character Martha, born 1965, German-born 0:20:15.350 --> 0:20:18.689 child model and actress turned grown person model and actress, 0:20:19.109 --> 0:20:22.420 best known for her work in European exploitation films. She 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:26.300 is the daughter of American pro football player and actor 0:20:26.619 --> 0:20:32.679 Walt Barnes and German actress Britta Wendell. Walt Barnes, her father, 0:20:33.230 --> 0:20:36.369 was in a ton of films, including 73's High Plains Drifter, 0:20:36.890 --> 0:20:41.970 77's Pete's Dragon, 78's Every Which Way But Loose. I 0:20:42.010 --> 0:20:43.970 just realized when I put this in the notes, I've 0:20:43.990 --> 0:20:46.060 been thinking of that film as Every Which Way But 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:47.760 Loose the whole time, but it's Loose? 0:20:48.859 --> 0:20:50.260 I don't know. I've never seen it. I think that's 0:20:50.300 --> 0:20:50.880 the title, though. 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.000 Wow. What does that even mean? I don't know. Now 0:20:54.020 --> 0:20:56.500 I'm questioning everything about my reality. I've never seen this 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:56.719 Abe movie. 0:20:56.740 --> 0:20:59.899 It's like Every Which Way But Loose. That sounds like 0:20:59.940 --> 0:21:03.420 something that's a like a pre-existing phrase that I'm not 0:21:03.460 --> 0:21:04.540 familiar with. 0:21:05.020 --> 0:21:05.240 Yeah. 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:07.050 That's a Clint Eastwood movie, isn't it? 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:09.139 It is. It's a Clint Eastwood ape movie. 0:21:09.580 --> 0:21:10.600 Ape movie, okay. 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:12.760 Supposedly a great ape movie, but I'm not sure. 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:17.440 Well, every which way but loose suggests all kinds of tight. 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:20.750 Yeah, but it's totally different. Every which way but loose 0:21:20.810 --> 0:21:23.990 sounds like, yeah, I'm really dedicated. I'm winning this. That's 0:21:24.030 --> 0:21:26.570 what I got when I looked at the box art 0:21:26.590 --> 0:21:28.590 of the poster art. It's like, yeah, this guy and 0:21:28.609 --> 0:21:30.970 this ape are just in it to win it. Nothing's 0:21:31.010 --> 0:21:31.649 going to stop them. 0:21:31.670 --> 0:21:32.490 Every kind of winning. 0:21:32.750 --> 0:21:37.300 Yeah, but apparently not. Anyway, her father was also in 0:21:38.020 --> 0:21:41.300 a couple of animal attack movies, 77's Day of the Animals, 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:46.280 73's Pigs, with an exclamation point. And then her mother, Britta, 0:21:46.300 --> 0:21:50.460 was in two films, 72's Roma and 73's Redneck. So 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.540 Laura was kind of born into the business, began modeling 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:57.720 and acting pretty young. Her first credit is My Dear 0:21:57.790 --> 0:22:01.199 Killer in 72. And she had a supporting role in 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:05.240 Argento's Tenebrae in 82. In 86, she was in Lamberto 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.220 Bava's You'll Die at Midnight. In 88, she was in 0:22:08.260 --> 0:22:11.080 Zombie Five Killer Birds. In 88, she was in The 0:22:11.140 --> 0:22:14.380 Red Monks. And she was in the 91 erotic drama 0:22:14.420 --> 0:22:17.869 Husbands and Lovers with Julian Sands. She did some TV 0:22:17.900 --> 0:22:20.869 work in 93 and I believe retired from acting at 0:22:20.910 --> 0:22:22.890 that point at the age of 26. So, yeah, she's 0:22:23.270 --> 0:22:25.010 only like 22 or 23 in Ghost House. Okay. 0:22:28.430 --> 0:22:32.100 So Martha is one half of our main character duo. 0:22:32.150 --> 0:22:35.919 The other half is her boyfriend, Paul, right? Paul is 0:22:35.980 --> 0:22:37.960 the ham radio guy. Yeah. 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:42.020 Paul is played by Greg Rhodes. Age is not public record. 0:22:42.740 --> 0:22:45.440 Prior to Ghost House, he played bit parts like background 0:22:45.500 --> 0:22:49.540 parts in 87's Fatal Attraction and Hello Mary Lou Prom 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:53.389 Night 2. So I believe American actor, local talent that 0:22:53.410 --> 0:22:56.960 was brought in. Afterwards, he appeared in 1990's Fatal Exam 0:22:57.000 --> 0:23:01.320 and Deadly Manner and then Almost Hollywood in 94. So yeah, 0:23:01.420 --> 0:23:04.199 not much known about him. But this is our prime couple. 0:23:04.740 --> 0:23:13.790 And they are... They are tremendous. Again, the dialogue that 0:23:13.830 --> 0:23:16.770 they're working with is not great. And they bring an 0:23:17.390 --> 0:23:21.410 energy to this performance and to this relationship that is... 0:23:22.070 --> 0:23:25.149 never really believable, but you can't look away from it. 0:23:25.170 --> 0:23:28.109 There's just something perfect about it. Like they're always arguing 0:23:28.150 --> 0:23:30.790 with each other and the substance of the argument, the 0:23:31.170 --> 0:23:36.400 language of the argument is just laugh inducing. It's amazing. Yeah. 0:23:36.460 --> 0:23:39.179 I love the scene where she's mad. She's like, you 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:41.260 could have let me sleep a little later. And he's like, 0:23:41.300 --> 0:23:42.959 we've got to get on the road. There may have 0:23:42.980 --> 0:23:45.400 been a murder. Yeah. 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:49.490 It's just, oh my goodness. It's amazing. Again, I don't 0:23:49.510 --> 0:23:51.200 want to I don't want it to be one of 0:23:51.220 --> 0:23:53.419 these cases where I'm making it sound like these are 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:56.420 bad actors that are making it bad. Like, no, there's 0:23:57.020 --> 0:23:59.300 a lot of blame to go around. But the final 0:23:59.340 --> 0:24:01.939 form that it takes is just cheesy goodness. 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:04.250 Yeah, or a lot of credit to go around. Yeah, 0:24:04.270 --> 0:24:07.470 a lot of credit. This is like, yeah, the dialogue scenes. 0:24:07.570 --> 0:24:10.270 I noticed this especially after the first time I watched it. 0:24:11.750 --> 0:24:14.570 You called out all of their arguing scenes, which kind 0:24:14.630 --> 0:24:17.610 of just faded into the general chaos for me. So 0:24:17.710 --> 0:24:20.340 on the second watch, I really noticed all of the 0:24:20.480 --> 0:24:23.659 arguments that are about nothing and go nowhere and they 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:26.040 just fade in and out. It's so funny. 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:28.570 Like if you want to have the couple, the main 0:24:28.590 --> 0:24:31.110 characters in your film frequently talk about the chili they're 0:24:31.130 --> 0:24:33.609 planning to have for dinner. Do you want that to 0:24:33.650 --> 0:24:37.229 be completely believable? No. Like you, if you're devoting that 0:24:37.270 --> 0:24:39.810 much time to it, you want it to feel like 0:24:39.869 --> 0:24:41.450 it feels in this movie. You want it to feel 0:24:41.840 --> 0:24:43.919 weirdly fake in a way that you can't quite put 0:24:43.940 --> 0:24:46.580 your finger on. Like, I don't believe these people have 0:24:46.619 --> 0:24:49.220 ever had chili or, or are about to have chili, 0:24:49.280 --> 0:24:50.480 and I don't know what it means. 0:24:51.070 --> 0:24:55.050 Also, interesting choice about the character Paul to make him, 0:24:56.290 --> 0:24:59.149 in some scenes, he comes off as a normal and 0:24:59.450 --> 0:25:03.669 resourceful guy, and in other scenes, he is an absolute psycho, 0:25:03.790 --> 0:25:07.520 just like hostile aggro for no detectable reason. 0:25:07.540 --> 0:25:07.619 Yeah. 0:25:07.800 --> 0:25:13.260 Yeah, it's ridiculous. All right, so those are our two 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:17.520 main characters. And watching the movie, I generally have a 0:25:17.580 --> 0:25:20.340 good idea about why they're in any given scene at 0:25:20.380 --> 0:25:23.399 any given moment, for the most part. Same cannot be 0:25:23.420 --> 0:25:25.020 said for a lot of the other characters who kind 0:25:25.060 --> 0:25:28.910 of wander in and out of the action. But we'll 0:25:28.950 --> 0:25:32.870 discuss them here. So we have a character named Susan, 0:25:33.390 --> 0:25:39.149 played by Wanja Mary Sellers, born 1962. Kenyan-born Italian actress, 0:25:39.190 --> 0:25:41.560 best known by horror fans for her roles in Stage 0:25:41.600 --> 0:25:44.530 Fright from 1987. this movie ghost house, as well as 0:25:44.530 --> 0:25:49.130 91 is the crawlers also known as troll three creepers 0:25:49.530 --> 0:25:55.600 or contamination 0.7. Um, even before like Godzilla minus zero 0:25:55.650 --> 0:25:58.359 and so forth, you know, we've already had some, some interesting, um, 0:25:59.040 --> 0:26:01.959 numerology here in this title. Uh, but this last one, 0:26:02.380 --> 0:26:07.540 the crawlers was directed by her husband, uh, Fabrizio Laurenti. And, uh, they're, 0:26:07.619 --> 0:26:10.619 they're still married. Weirdly enough, I found an article in 0:26:10.660 --> 0:26:13.780 the sun from last year, uh, about her and her husband, 0:26:13.840 --> 0:26:18.040 about their relationship and their long distance, the long distance 0:26:18.100 --> 0:26:20.139 nature of the relationship, like one working on a project 0:26:20.180 --> 0:26:22.220 in Mexico city. And the other one, I think back 0:26:22.260 --> 0:26:27.430 in Rome, um, uh, look that up if you're interested. But, um, uh, she, 0:26:27.670 --> 0:26:31.189 she also has a background role in the last temptation 0:26:31.210 --> 0:26:33.890 of Christ. We've, this has come up before, you know, that, that, 0:26:34.230 --> 0:26:36.780 that production made use of a lot of local Italian 0:26:36.840 --> 0:26:39.840 talent to sort of fill in the scenes. And so 0:26:39.880 --> 0:26:42.430 she's in there somewhere. And she continued to not only 0:26:42.570 --> 0:26:44.770 act in Italian cinema and TV, but is also an 0:26:44.790 --> 0:26:46.490 award-winning writer and director herself. 0:26:47.690 --> 0:26:51.090 So the character Susan is part of a quartet of 0:26:51.190 --> 0:26:55.820 characters that our main couple meet at the titular ghost house. 0:26:56.170 --> 0:26:56.410 Yeah. 0:26:56.760 --> 0:26:58.520 So they go to the ghost house and there just 0:26:58.560 --> 0:27:01.200 happened to be four other people already kind of hanging 0:27:01.240 --> 0:27:04.540 out and squatting. They're doing ham radio. And Susan is 0:27:04.640 --> 0:27:07.720 one of them. Susan is the motorcyclist of the group. 0:27:08.580 --> 0:27:08.820 Yeah. 0:27:08.900 --> 0:27:11.710 And this, This is one of those things. It's difficult 0:27:11.750 --> 0:27:13.850 to remember why they're there, because they're there for no 0:27:13.910 --> 0:27:20.250 good reason. They're included with the house, but they're just randos. 0:27:20.270 --> 0:27:23.210 I think they ask and they say, well, nobody was here, 0:27:23.310 --> 0:27:25.750 so it seemed like a good place to do ham radio. 0:27:26.050 --> 0:27:28.830 Yeah, the filmmakers knew that they needed some more bodies 0:27:30.109 --> 0:27:31.850 to be killed in the haunted house, so we just 0:27:31.869 --> 0:27:35.689 had to show up. We heeded the call. So this 0:27:35.730 --> 0:27:37.890 is where we're going to get into multiple characters played 0:27:37.910 --> 0:27:40.850 by actors who really only appear in this movie. We 0:27:40.869 --> 0:27:45.149 have the character Mark, played by Ron Hawk. This is 0:27:45.190 --> 0:27:47.690 his only film credit. We have the character Jim, played 0:27:47.710 --> 0:27:51.450 by Martin Jay, British actor apparently, who was in just 0:27:51.490 --> 0:27:55.179 a couple of other things, including 97's Galaxy Girls. We 0:27:55.200 --> 0:27:58.679 have the character Tina, who really gets a lot of 0:27:58.700 --> 0:28:02.800 screen time, played by Kate Silver. Only film credit. Nothing 0:28:02.840 --> 0:28:03.540 else besides this. 0:28:05.280 --> 0:28:07.859 Tina almost seems the most like an actor of any 0:28:08.320 --> 0:28:08.980 of this group. 0:28:09.520 --> 0:28:11.620 Yeah, Tina was one I was like, oh, I wonder 0:28:11.640 --> 0:28:13.420 what she went on to do. And maybe she went 0:28:13.480 --> 0:28:16.400 on to do great things. Greater things than Ghost House, 0:28:16.460 --> 0:28:17.240 but we'll never know. 0:28:17.740 --> 0:28:20.899 The character Jim does appear on screen and in scenes, 0:28:20.960 --> 0:28:23.540 but actually his most notable presence in the movie is 0:28:23.619 --> 0:28:24.800 as an audio sample. 0:28:26.540 --> 0:28:26.780 Yeah. 0:28:27.380 --> 0:28:31.780 Saying, help me, for the love of God, help me, please. 0:28:34.930 --> 0:28:37.340 Let's see, who else do we have here? Oh, we have, 0:28:37.380 --> 0:28:41.800 this is a non-victim character. We have, what is his name, Valkos? 0:28:42.120 --> 0:28:42.739 Valkos. 0:28:42.860 --> 0:28:47.800 Yeah, played by Donald O'Brien. So yes, if you've been 0:28:47.860 --> 0:28:50.840 listening to our recent episodes, this is our Fulci cyborg 0:28:50.940 --> 0:28:55.500 from Warriors of the Year 2072. This time back in 0:28:55.540 --> 0:28:56.560 non-cyborg form. 0:28:57.220 --> 0:29:00.390 He's the guy who betrays the main characters and he's 0:29:00.410 --> 0:29:01.390 got the cyber eye? 0:29:01.490 --> 0:29:04.410 Yeah, that's the guy. The guy who I also mentioned 0:29:04.430 --> 0:29:08.150 in that episode as being the titular Dr. Butcher MD 0:29:08.770 --> 0:29:13.060 in 1980s Dr. Butcher MD, a.k.a. Zombie Holocaust. Nice. So 0:29:13.130 --> 0:29:15.100 here he's a deranged man in overalls. 0:29:15.540 --> 0:29:20.000 Yeah, he's a hillbilly named Valkos living in Scituate, Massachusetts. 0:29:22.740 --> 0:29:25.760 I mean, there are hillbillies everywhere. We know. We've all 0:29:25.800 --> 0:29:28.580 read enough Stephen King books to know that anywhere you go, 0:29:28.720 --> 0:29:33.050 you're going to find some hillbillies. some red-blooded Americans. Named Valkos. 0:29:33.610 --> 0:29:38.190 Named Valkos, yeah. I don't know about Valkos' name. All right, 0:29:38.250 --> 0:29:40.880 and then we also have, we mentioned that there is 0:29:41.520 --> 0:29:43.900 a creepy clown doll, and then there is a ghost girl. 0:29:44.340 --> 0:29:48.920 The ghost girl is Henriette, and she is played by 0:29:49.290 --> 0:29:53.910 an actress by the name of Kristen Fogoralsa. I may 0:29:53.950 --> 0:29:55.950 not be pronouncing that correctly, but this is her only 0:29:55.990 --> 0:29:58.300 credit as well. she might as well be an actual 0:29:58.360 --> 0:30:01.020 ghost as far as I can tell from the movie databases. 0:30:01.220 --> 0:30:03.260 I don't think she speaks in the movie. 0:30:04.000 --> 0:30:08.280 She doesn't have to. The clown speaks for her with murder. 0:30:09.480 --> 0:30:14.500 And some singing, perhaps. Okay, another character that we have 0:30:14.880 --> 0:30:18.220 that pops up and just kind of leaves after... He 0:30:18.480 --> 0:30:21.820 does get some good scenes, but we have Pepe. I 0:30:21.860 --> 0:30:23.870 know we have some questions about this character's name, but 0:30:23.900 --> 0:30:27.750 he's credited... at least on some of the databases, as Pepe. 0:30:28.070 --> 0:30:31.260 He's played by William Moon. This is his only credit. 0:30:32.260 --> 0:30:34.220 And I feel like this guy had a fair amount 0:30:34.280 --> 0:30:36.940 of screen presence. I don't know. I was kind of 0:30:36.960 --> 0:30:39.080 surprised to see that he wasn't in anything else as well. 0:30:39.480 --> 0:30:42.260 It feels like he's having more fun than any other 0:30:42.400 --> 0:30:43.260 actor in the film. 0:30:43.460 --> 0:30:43.720 Yeah. 0:30:43.880 --> 0:30:45.520 He's, like, enjoying his role. 0:30:46.180 --> 0:30:49.380 And his dialogue, you know, all the dialogue in this 0:30:49.420 --> 0:30:51.600 movie is hokey, but it's maybe a little more believable 0:30:51.620 --> 0:30:52.560 from this guy. I don't know. 0:30:53.070 --> 0:30:56.040 Yeah, almost makes you wonder if it might have been improvised. 0:30:56.380 --> 0:30:59.600 It's a little bit quicker and more natural than anybody 0:30:59.660 --> 0:31:00.520 else's lines. 0:31:00.600 --> 0:31:02.200 Yeah, I agree. I agree. 0:31:03.040 --> 0:31:05.640 Like the part where he tells the joke about hitchhiking. 0:31:05.700 --> 0:31:08.660 He says, the hitching part's cool. It's the hiking that sucks. 0:31:08.870 --> 0:31:09.670 It's like, oh, okay. 0:31:09.690 --> 0:31:12.490 Yeah, and he starts listing the different places that suck. 0:31:12.590 --> 0:31:14.890 And he's like, you know, I think everywhere sucks. 0:31:15.290 --> 0:31:16.110 Everywhere sucks. 0:31:16.190 --> 0:31:19.250 Yeah. And I'm not going to run through the rest 0:31:19.290 --> 0:31:22.990 of the cast. This trend continues. But there is a 0:31:23.030 --> 0:31:25.810 mortician character that did stand out to me, played by 0:31:25.850 --> 0:31:31.110 the actor Robert Champagne, who lived 1938 through 2007. American 0:31:31.190 --> 0:31:36.350 actor who also appeared in 89's Witchery and 93's Mattos Salem. 0:31:36.470 --> 0:31:39.920 This is a kid's ghost pirate movie. I looked it up. 0:31:40.240 --> 0:31:43.620 I've never seen it, but some people seem to have 0:31:43.680 --> 0:31:48.410 feelings about it. I don't know. Kid's movie. Apparently... entertaining 0:31:48.430 --> 0:31:48.870 if you're a kid. 0:31:49.320 --> 0:31:52.660 In this movie, he's a card. Interesting face, interesting voice, 0:31:53.300 --> 0:31:55.820 and he gets to deliver some of the core exposition 0:31:56.020 --> 0:31:57.959 and gets murdered by Valkos. 0:31:58.080 --> 0:32:03.160 Yeah, he gets a pretty brutal demise for sure. As 0:32:03.180 --> 0:32:05.800 we'll be discussing, the special effects in Ghost House are 0:32:05.820 --> 0:32:10.040 pretty great. On the whole, really, I loved all the 0:32:10.060 --> 0:32:14.340 special effects. There's some really creative effects. What they try 0:32:14.380 --> 0:32:18.440 to do, they do well. And these are credited to 0:32:18.520 --> 0:32:23.280 Robert Gold, Dan McClensky, and Roland Park. They all worked 0:32:23.320 --> 0:32:25.400 on Stage Fright together. They all worked on a film 0:32:25.420 --> 0:32:29.600 called Inner Zone from 89. And Gold is credited on 0:32:29.820 --> 0:32:36.260 83's 2020 Texas Gladiators, Joe D'Amato's Bronx movie Endgame from 83, 0:32:36.260 --> 0:32:38.540 Zombie 5, Killer Birds, and The Crawlers. 0:32:39.460 --> 0:32:41.570 Man, Killer Birds is just calling to us, isn't it? 0:32:41.570 --> 0:32:42.420 I know, it's everywhere. 0:32:42.440 --> 0:32:45.070 I may have to check it out. 0:32:45.760 --> 0:32:48.100 And then the score on this movie is pretty incredible 0:32:48.140 --> 0:32:51.890 as well. I thought it was highly effective. Exactly what 0:32:51.910 --> 0:32:55.310 you want from an Italian horror movie. So a lot 0:32:55.350 --> 0:32:59.650 of synth, a lot of electronic vibes. And then also 0:32:59.770 --> 0:33:03.330 this creepy clown song that we're going to be referencing 0:33:03.370 --> 0:33:09.220 a lot that is legitimately creepy, feels haunted, feels like 0:33:09.280 --> 0:33:11.460 it has a life outside of this film. 0:33:12.720 --> 0:33:14.800 I think we should have a name for it because 0:33:14.820 --> 0:33:17.320 it plays 10,000 times in the movie and we're going 0:33:17.340 --> 0:33:19.870 to have to just keep referring to it. I was thinking. 0:33:19.910 --> 0:33:21.430 They call it that stupid song. 0:33:21.590 --> 0:33:24.709 That stupid song. I was thinking of it as the 0:33:24.750 --> 0:33:27.970 demon clown jingle because it has a kind of commercial 0:33:28.070 --> 0:33:31.760 jingle quality. It's like something that would play in a 0:33:31.800 --> 0:33:33.160 TV ad for hell. 0:33:34.080 --> 0:33:34.340 Yeah. 0:33:34.700 --> 0:33:35.900 It's like, come try hell. 0:33:35.920 --> 0:33:42.190 Yeah. Yeah, I've seen it informally just called Creepy Clown 0:33:42.210 --> 0:33:45.910 Song before. You can actually pull up the score for 0:33:45.930 --> 0:33:50.420 this movie on whatever your favorite streaming service is. And 0:33:50.440 --> 0:33:53.980 it is included. It is not called Creepy Clown Song. 0:33:54.020 --> 0:33:58.560 It is called Ninia Suspense or Ninia Suspensa, which I 0:33:58.620 --> 0:34:01.990 think just means like suspense dirge or suspense funeral song 0:34:02.050 --> 0:34:06.050 or something. So maybe not the most insightful title here either. 0:34:06.550 --> 0:34:08.950 Well, since we're already talking about the song, I guess 0:34:08.969 --> 0:34:11.290 we should go ahead and describe it. Because again, it's 0:34:11.310 --> 0:34:14.109 a big part of what the movie is like, because 0:34:14.150 --> 0:34:17.480 you hear it so many times. The Demon Clown jingle 0:34:17.739 --> 0:34:21.520 is this insane looping melody played on what sounds like 0:34:21.540 --> 0:34:27.080 an electric organ with a distorted helium gremlin voice talking 0:34:27.160 --> 0:34:30.239 over the top. And Rob, we spoke off camera about 0:34:30.300 --> 0:34:32.910 how it is hard to tell what the voice is saying, 0:34:32.989 --> 0:34:36.120 but to me, it sounds like it's saying, are you up? 0:34:36.320 --> 0:34:39.340 Are you there? Are you there? And that is also 0:34:39.480 --> 0:34:43.759 what the, uh, subtitles on my version trans transcribed for 0:34:43.800 --> 0:34:45.960 it to say, but I think it's not supposed to 0:34:46.020 --> 0:34:48.279 be decipherable. I think you're not really supposed to be 0:34:48.340 --> 0:34:51.090 able to tell what it's saying. Uh, there is a 0:34:51.170 --> 0:34:54.590 later part in the movie where the character Paul uses 0:34:54.650 --> 0:34:58.410 his computer to analyze, analyze what the song is saying. 0:34:58.530 --> 0:35:01.330 And it decides it is saying the word burial, which 0:35:01.370 --> 0:35:02.150 I don't hear at all. 0:35:02.170 --> 0:35:02.630 Hmm. 0:35:03.440 --> 0:35:09.560 <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> 0:35:09.660 --> 0:35:15.090 And then there's a kind of a sound. And it's just, 0:35:15.300 --> 0:35:16.870 it's very, very creepy. 0:35:17.710 --> 0:35:19.150 Silver shamrock. 0:35:20.450 --> 0:35:22.029 It does have that kind of vibe. Yeah, a little 0:35:22.070 --> 0:35:25.890 bit like a jingle from hell. So who's responsible for 0:35:25.930 --> 0:35:30.640 all of this music? Well, mainly we have Piero Montanari, 0:35:30.719 --> 0:35:34.890 who lived 1946 through 2023. Italian composer who worked on 0:35:34.989 --> 0:35:39.110 several Joe D'Amato films and worked mostly in erotic and 0:35:39.150 --> 0:35:43.090 adult cinema. But he also scored Umberto Lindsay's The Hell's 0:35:43.140 --> 0:35:48.200 Gate in 89, D'Amato's Return from Death or Frankenstein 2000 0:35:48.200 --> 0:35:51.860 in 91. That one stars Donald O'Brien. Ghost House is 0:35:52.020 --> 0:35:54.080 probably his best known work. And yeah, I have to 0:35:54.120 --> 0:35:56.840 say it's a fun score. Very fun score. Even outside 0:35:56.860 --> 0:35:59.540 of the setting aside the clown track for a minute. 0:35:59.900 --> 0:36:02.530 I think it has some great, great synth action here. 0:36:02.900 --> 0:36:04.050 It's the kind of thing I can put on in 0:36:04.090 --> 0:36:06.850 the background. And this one was released on vinyl by 0:36:06.890 --> 0:36:10.009 TerraVision in 2016. And I think it may be more 0:36:10.030 --> 0:36:12.850 of a collector's item now in that regard. And of course, again, 0:36:12.890 --> 0:36:14.710 you can stream it wherever. I was streaming it on 0:36:14.770 --> 0:36:15.430 Apple earlier. 0:36:16.170 --> 0:36:17.860 I have to shout out there are at least a 0:36:17.930 --> 0:36:21.279 couple of points in the movie where the music is 0:36:21.540 --> 0:36:25.480 really funny. Not because the music is bad or anything, 0:36:25.540 --> 0:36:29.300 but because of incredibly jarring music transitions. 0:36:30.239 --> 0:36:30.450 Yeah. 0:36:31.060 --> 0:36:34.160 Like where suddenly it's playing the demon clown song and 0:36:34.200 --> 0:36:37.200 then it just hard cuts to, you know, jazz you 0:36:37.219 --> 0:36:38.980 would hear on the home shopping channel. 0:36:40.200 --> 0:36:43.609 Yeah. Yeah. That's a solid point for sure. And then 0:36:44.170 --> 0:36:46.790 totally the film is like that as well. Yeah. Suddenly 0:36:47.830 --> 0:36:50.069 we're in a horrendous murder and then we're talking about 0:36:50.110 --> 0:36:53.529 chili again or something to that effect. Yeah. So again, 0:36:53.550 --> 0:36:57.880 the creepy clown song is titled Ninnia suspense or suspense. 0:36:58.620 --> 0:37:01.490 You can look that up. on on your streaming service 0:37:01.510 --> 0:37:03.549 you may be able to make it your ringtone today 0:37:03.570 --> 0:37:05.680 so you know go ahead and do that and report 0:37:05.719 --> 0:37:07.460 back in a week tell us how that has worked 0:37:07.560 --> 0:37:11.100 out for you but uh interestingly enough uh when you 0:37:11.160 --> 0:37:13.800 when you pull it up on streaming the this particular 0:37:13.840 --> 0:37:16.380 track the creepy clown song is credited to a different 0:37:16.460 --> 0:37:22.580 artist it's roberto spandoni born 1963 and i was looking 0:37:22.620 --> 0:37:25.920 him up i'm pretty sure this is the guy based 0:37:25.940 --> 0:37:28.549 off you know discogs and other sources but This guy's 0:37:28.590 --> 0:37:32.640 an Italian composer and guitarist who's worked mostly in jazz. 0:37:32.680 --> 0:37:35.820 And I believe he's a jazz composition professor. And I 0:37:35.840 --> 0:37:38.800 think outside of this one track hasn't worked in film. 0:37:38.840 --> 0:37:42.290 So just like a one-off that he did for cinema 0:37:42.390 --> 0:37:42.810 at the time. 0:37:43.530 --> 0:37:46.009 I love how often you find that people who in 0:37:46.110 --> 0:37:52.210 some capacity worked in these schlocky B movies are now teaching. 0:37:52.610 --> 0:37:55.459 They're like in academia somewhere. And so you think about 0:37:55.540 --> 0:37:58.359 all of the students who have like, over the years 0:37:58.380 --> 0:38:00.800 who have gone through and found out like my professor 0:38:00.840 --> 0:38:03.500 did music for ghost house. Yeah. 0:38:03.560 --> 0:38:05.140 I mean, I mean, you think about it, you know, 0:38:05.400 --> 0:38:08.680 these guys were all, you know, either struggling academics or 0:38:09.020 --> 0:38:12.650 working professionals, working musicians, and somebody needs some music for 0:38:12.670 --> 0:38:15.089 a film. And, you know, you might not think it's 0:38:15.130 --> 0:38:16.989 a great film, but in many of these cases, they're like, 0:38:17.050 --> 0:38:19.049 Oh yeah, they're going to see this. It's, it's for 0:38:19.250 --> 0:38:22.290 a foreign market. Nobody's ever even know I worked on it. So, 0:38:22.350 --> 0:38:23.609 you know, no big deal. 0:38:24.590 --> 0:38:29.270 It reminds me of when we watched, uh, What was it? Oh, 0:38:29.350 --> 0:38:31.650 it was the Paganini horror. And they had an interview 0:38:31.690 --> 0:38:33.930 with that actor who was like, you know, I was 0:38:33.989 --> 0:38:36.030 young when I did this movie. I was just happy 0:38:36.050 --> 0:38:38.910 to get work. And I, I never, it never occurred 0:38:38.969 --> 0:38:41.700 to me that people 20 years later would ever watch 0:38:41.760 --> 0:38:43.760 this movie again or know what it was. 0:38:43.780 --> 0:38:46.700 Yeah. Yeah. There's the sense that some of these films 0:38:46.719 --> 0:38:49.500 were just, you're releasing it into the air and it 0:38:49.520 --> 0:38:53.680 would just fly away. Um, there is, I think three 0:38:53.719 --> 0:38:56.009 other tracks on the score here that are credited to 0:38:56.050 --> 0:39:01.259 Simon Boswell. Born 1953. He's an English film composer whose 0:39:01.300 --> 0:39:05.140 many credits include Italian horror films like Phenomena, Demons 2, 0:39:05.140 --> 0:39:10.030 Stage Fright again, but also 89's Santa Sangre, 1990's Hardware, 0:39:10.489 --> 0:39:14.470 92's Dust Devil, 94's Shallow Grave, 95's Lord of Illusion, 0:39:15.130 --> 0:39:18.529 and let's see, Hackers from the same year. And 1999's 0:39:18.550 --> 0:39:21.750 A Midsummer Night's Dream as well. So yeah, still working 0:39:21.770 --> 0:39:25.200 to this day. So that's the soundscape of Ghost House. 0:39:34.570 --> 0:39:36.259 Well, are you ready to talk about the plot? 0:39:37.469 --> 0:39:39.160 Sure, let's make sense of this plot. 0:39:39.440 --> 0:39:42.000 Okay, so the film begins with a prologue. It says 0:39:42.060 --> 0:39:44.760 it's set 20 years in the past. And the opening 0:39:44.820 --> 0:39:47.690 shot is of a house at dusk with these tangled 0:39:47.890 --> 0:39:51.410 black tree limbs silhouetted in the foreground. The opening shot 0:39:51.469 --> 0:39:56.410 actually looks much nicer than the aesthetic sensibility of the 0:39:56.450 --> 0:39:59.109 rest of the movie. This almost makes it look like 0:39:59.160 --> 0:40:02.380 it's going to be kind of artful. So don't get 0:40:02.420 --> 0:40:04.379 the wrong idea right at the top here. But this 0:40:04.440 --> 0:40:06.880 is the house in the movie, the ghost house. 0:40:07.340 --> 0:40:10.299 Yeah, and this is actually an historic house. This is 0:40:10.340 --> 0:40:14.880 the Ellis Estate in Situate, Massachusetts. And fun fact, it's 0:40:14.920 --> 0:40:17.839 the same house used in House by the Cemetery, the 0:40:17.880 --> 0:40:19.840 Fulci film that we've discussed on the show before. 0:40:20.840 --> 0:40:23.480 Do you think they were putting ads in like Italian 0:40:23.520 --> 0:40:26.020 publications that are like, hey, do you need a spooky 0:40:26.040 --> 0:40:28.820 house for your genre film? 0:40:29.080 --> 0:40:29.340 Yeah. 0:40:29.360 --> 0:40:30.819 Come to Scituate, Massachusetts. 0:40:30.900 --> 0:40:32.700 Maybe so. Maybe so. I don't know. Maybe it was 0:40:32.719 --> 0:40:36.100 a referral situation. I'm not sure. But I did not 0:40:36.140 --> 0:40:38.120 recognize it. I didn't say like, oh my goodness, it's 0:40:38.160 --> 0:40:39.960 the House by the Cemetery house. No, no. 0:40:40.460 --> 0:40:41.660 I wouldn't have recognized it either. 0:40:41.680 --> 0:40:41.819 Yeah. 0:40:42.420 --> 0:40:46.360 So I don't know a lot about houses and domestic architecture, 0:40:46.460 --> 0:40:48.400 but I went and did a little bit of digging 0:40:48.420 --> 0:40:51.529 to figure out the right terminology to describe this. So 0:40:51.550 --> 0:40:53.910 I think this is a house in what you would 0:40:53.969 --> 0:40:58.750 call the Queen Anne architectural style. It is tall with 0:40:58.930 --> 0:41:02.350 asymmetrical features. It's got a round turret at one corner, 0:41:02.800 --> 0:41:06.580 bay windows, verandas on different parts and sides of the house. 0:41:07.010 --> 0:41:10.870 And then a big, steep A-frame gabled portion of the 0:41:10.910 --> 0:41:13.930 second floor over the front facade. It looks like a 0:41:13.989 --> 0:41:16.630 perfect house for a haunting. You know, it's big, roomy, 0:41:16.870 --> 0:41:20.910 old world. It looks very creaky. May have sharpened panes 0:41:20.950 --> 0:41:23.980 of glass hanging like a guillotine blade from the ceiling. 0:41:24.540 --> 0:41:26.520 And so it's got everything you need. 0:41:27.280 --> 0:41:28.859 Yeah, absolutely. Totally looks the part. 0:41:29.739 --> 0:41:32.160 And in the opening shot, a single window on the 0:41:32.200 --> 0:41:34.969 second floor is illuminated. The rest of the house is dark. 0:41:35.550 --> 0:41:37.970 And we cut around to other exterior shots that look 0:41:37.989 --> 0:41:41.100 like they could literally be different houses. Maybe somehow they're 0:41:41.140 --> 0:41:41.540 the same. 0:41:41.560 --> 0:41:41.899 I don't know. 0:41:41.940 --> 0:41:46.200 This house is bigger. Like in some dimensions, it's bigger 0:41:46.280 --> 0:41:48.220 than it looks in others. I think it might actually 0:41:48.260 --> 0:41:52.450 be much longer than it is wide. Anyway, we hear 0:41:52.469 --> 0:41:56.590 a loud cat screech, like a meow. And then inside 0:41:56.670 --> 0:42:01.330 we see a severe looking man in a sleeveless cardigan 0:42:01.410 --> 0:42:05.839 wandering the halls, calling out for somebody named Henrietta. This 0:42:05.900 --> 0:42:08.420 dude to me looked a little bit like David Byrne 0:42:08.460 --> 0:42:13.080 of the talking heads, but temper that with some doubtiness. 0:42:13.180 --> 0:42:17.120 Like think David Byrne crossed with like a Midwest church 0:42:17.219 --> 0:42:21.080 deacon who thinks hot dogs are too spicy. And so 0:42:21.120 --> 0:42:24.239 this guy is, he sounds very annoyed. He searches up 0:42:24.280 --> 0:42:27.580 and down looking for the kid. And eventually he approaches 0:42:27.660 --> 0:42:30.140 the door to the basement and we can hear music 0:42:30.280 --> 0:42:33.080 coming from the other side. What is the song? It 0:42:33.160 --> 0:42:35.790 is the Demon Clown jingle. It's coming up from the basement. 0:42:36.890 --> 0:42:39.890 And so the guy in the cardigan goes through the door, 0:42:40.010 --> 0:42:42.490 goes down the stairs where he sees a very fake 0:42:42.690 --> 0:42:45.819 dead cat covered in blood with its face frozen in 0:42:45.900 --> 0:42:48.900 midi owl. Then he goes on down to the basement, 0:42:48.940 --> 0:42:51.739 which is filled with junk. You've got stacks of boxes, 0:42:51.880 --> 0:42:55.759 dusty old appliances and stuff. And there he finds a 0:42:55.820 --> 0:42:58.040 girl who I think is supposed to be 11 years 0:42:58.160 --> 0:43:00.980 old at this point. She's in a white dress holding 0:43:01.020 --> 0:43:04.299 a pair of scissors with blood all over them. Presumably 0:43:04.360 --> 0:43:08.100 this is Henrietta. The dude goes up to Henrietta. He 0:43:08.160 --> 0:43:11.299 takes the bloody scissors out of her hands. And then 0:43:11.440 --> 0:43:13.680 with venom in his voice, he says, how could you 0:43:13.820 --> 0:43:16.759 do such a thing to one of God's innocent creatures? 0:43:17.500 --> 0:43:20.220 She looks up at him and seems to be weeping blood. 0:43:20.320 --> 0:43:22.470 She like wipes her eye and it seems kind of red. 0:43:23.040 --> 0:43:25.680 And then the dude adds, and on your birthday of 0:43:25.780 --> 0:43:28.569 all days, that's the worst day to stab a cat 0:43:28.610 --> 0:43:29.230 with scissors. 0:43:29.469 --> 0:43:33.690 Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Animal, uh, murder and mutilation, especially 0:43:33.730 --> 0:43:34.890 bad on your own birthday. 0:43:34.930 --> 0:43:38.259 Come on, save it for Easter. Come on. So the 0:43:38.300 --> 0:43:41.219 old guy, he points at Henrietta and he says, uh, 0:43:41.500 --> 0:43:44.680 she has committed a very grave sin and her punishment 0:43:45.020 --> 0:43:47.620 is that he's going to lock her in the basement 0:43:47.800 --> 0:43:50.529 in the dark with the dead cat. And she'll just 0:43:50.570 --> 0:43:52.970 have to stay down there in the dark by herself 0:43:53.160 --> 0:43:55.560 and pray for the Lord to have mercy on her soul. 0:43:55.580 --> 0:43:57.760 I mean, that's good parenting. 0:43:59.260 --> 0:44:01.780 Yeah, I mean, when is this supposed to take place? 0:44:01.780 --> 0:44:04.560 1967, I think. Okay, yeah. 0:44:05.239 --> 0:44:07.740 So maybe they just didn't know that this is exactly 0:44:07.800 --> 0:44:09.960 how you end up with deadly ghost girls. 0:44:10.480 --> 0:44:10.990 I think so. 0:44:11.070 --> 0:44:13.250 Some sort of a traumatic punishment like this. 0:44:13.730 --> 0:44:16.029 Well, it's weird in so many ways. I mean, so 0:44:16.090 --> 0:44:18.370 it starts off with this situation that if you took 0:44:18.410 --> 0:44:21.029 it seriously, it's horrifying. Like you find, you find a 0:44:21.070 --> 0:44:24.230 child has, has murdered a pet, like killed an animal. 0:44:25.050 --> 0:44:28.370 But then the way the movie is characterizing it, it's 0:44:28.450 --> 0:44:32.799 like trying to show that the father is having this horrible, uh, 0:44:33.219 --> 0:44:36.620 kind of overly churchy negative reaction to it. Like he's 0:44:36.660 --> 0:44:39.920 the dad in footloose who won't allow any dancing except here. 0:44:39.960 --> 0:44:41.560 He won't allow any cat stabbing. 0:44:42.410 --> 0:44:44.650 I think this is a prime example of something that 0:44:44.670 --> 0:44:50.130 you see throughout this movie. Take away all of the 0:44:50.190 --> 0:44:54.630 goofy things about it. The actual script is pretty mean 0:44:54.670 --> 0:44:59.469 and nasty. And if it were realized perfectly with a 0:45:00.670 --> 0:45:05.070 level of writing and acting that elevated that material, I 0:45:05.110 --> 0:45:06.800 don't think I would ever want to watch it. Because 0:45:06.820 --> 0:45:10.420 it would just be a really mean, nasty film. Wallowing 0:45:10.460 --> 0:45:16.160 in horribleness. But the way that it's realized, we end 0:45:16.200 --> 0:45:18.960 up laughing at it more than we're feeling the horror. 0:45:20.260 --> 0:45:21.930 Which is good, because otherwise I wouldn't want to watch 0:45:21.969 --> 0:45:25.970 this movie. As it is, I find it richly entertaining. 0:45:26.350 --> 0:45:30.089 A very funny horror movie that is tempered from its 0:45:30.190 --> 0:45:34.780 darkness and meanness mainly by the texture of the acting 0:45:34.900 --> 0:45:40.380 and of the dialogue specifically. So anyway, as the dude promised, 0:45:40.420 --> 0:45:43.230 he Goes up the staircase, closes the door, switches out 0:45:43.270 --> 0:45:46.110 the light, leaves the child down there. Now alone in 0:45:46.150 --> 0:45:49.069 the dark, Henrietta goes to retrieve something. She is hidden 0:45:49.090 --> 0:45:52.930 behind a stack of boxes. It is a nightmarish clown doll. 0:45:53.910 --> 0:45:56.670 It's big. It's like about the size of Henrietta herself. 0:45:56.830 --> 0:46:00.090 It's got a bulbous red nose, kind of peachy skin, 0:46:00.290 --> 0:46:04.390 cherry cheeks with these triangular brows over its eyes, and 0:46:04.450 --> 0:46:09.180 a grotesque smiling mouth filled with carved teeth. Obviously, it's 0:46:09.219 --> 0:46:12.049 a play on the Nightmare Clown from Poltergeist. It looks 0:46:12.110 --> 0:46:14.930 extremely similar. Rob, I've got pictures of both for you 0:46:14.969 --> 0:46:18.950 to look at here in the outline. Obviously, one is 0:46:18.989 --> 0:46:19.910 modeled on the other. 0:46:19.930 --> 0:46:24.489 Yeah, I think ultimately, though, the Ghost House clown doll 0:46:24.510 --> 0:46:27.450 looks even creepier, especially since we get two different versions 0:46:27.489 --> 0:46:30.969 of its face. It has the evil sharp-toothed version and 0:46:31.010 --> 0:46:34.739 then the typical toy face as well. And I think 0:46:34.760 --> 0:46:36.819 there is something about the size of the doll that 0:46:36.860 --> 0:46:41.050 does work very well because she is not a small 0:46:41.110 --> 0:46:43.710 little girl. She looks like she's probably one of these 0:46:44.110 --> 0:46:47.710 girls who's kind of tall for her age. And then, again, 0:46:47.830 --> 0:46:51.830 the clown doll looks like about her size. And so 0:46:51.950 --> 0:46:56.170 visually it reads both as girl is too old to 0:46:56.230 --> 0:46:59.850 have a doll like this and also doll is way 0:46:59.890 --> 0:47:02.029 too big for what it is. And somehow it kind 0:47:02.090 --> 0:47:05.450 of speaks to some sort of a very unhealthy relationship 0:47:05.489 --> 0:47:09.730 between the two and an outsized power in the doll. Yeah. 0:47:09.830 --> 0:47:12.989 And then that's backed up by the action we see next, 0:47:13.070 --> 0:47:16.180 which is that Henrietta, she takes this creepy looking doll 0:47:16.219 --> 0:47:18.739 and she like snuggles it. She like lays her head 0:47:18.820 --> 0:47:21.819 on its shoulder. Like, Oh doll, you know, clown from hell. 0:47:21.880 --> 0:47:23.100 You're my only friend now. 0:47:23.820 --> 0:47:24.000 Yeah. 0:47:24.540 --> 0:47:27.540 And so upstairs, the father is now talking to another woman, 0:47:27.640 --> 0:47:31.560 presumably Henrietta's mother. She's a lady in an apron making 0:47:31.620 --> 0:47:34.560 tea in the kitchen. And the father insists that something 0:47:34.600 --> 0:47:37.030 has come over Henrietta. It's as if she were under 0:47:37.070 --> 0:47:39.569 a terrible spell. And the mother says, how could you 0:47:39.630 --> 0:47:42.850 say that? She's just a little girl. And we learned 0:47:43.110 --> 0:47:45.509 the dude's name, the guy's name is Sam, by the way. 0:47:45.570 --> 0:47:48.610 So she calls it, the mother calls him Sam. Anyway, 0:47:48.770 --> 0:47:52.509 Sam then grabs a bunch of light bulbs out of 0:47:52.530 --> 0:47:55.430 a cabinet. This action, when you actually pay attention to 0:47:55.469 --> 0:47:58.589 what's happening, it looks so bizarre. He's like, just got 0:47:58.790 --> 0:48:02.270 fists full of light bulbs and He's grabbing all these 0:48:02.370 --> 0:48:04.890 light bulbs at once and he goes into the living 0:48:04.930 --> 0:48:07.469 room to screw one of them into a light fixture. 0:48:07.489 --> 0:48:12.290 And when he does, the demon clown jingle starts playing again. 0:48:12.310 --> 0:48:15.190 Are you up? Are you there? That whole thing. And 0:48:15.350 --> 0:48:18.069 then we actually get a pretty creative special effect that 0:48:18.090 --> 0:48:20.790 we're going to see multiple times in the movie. This 0:48:20.850 --> 0:48:25.489 is where the glowing light bulb begins to inflate like 0:48:25.550 --> 0:48:28.009 a balloon. So it looks like the glass is somehow 0:48:28.110 --> 0:48:32.710 ballooning up. until finally it pops, shooting glass everywhere. 0:48:32.730 --> 0:48:36.370 Yeah, very well done. Like, very well executed, and also 0:48:36.430 --> 0:48:40.990 just visually very creative. And it's a sort of effect 0:48:41.010 --> 0:48:43.350 that they keep doing in different ways, and we'll discuss 0:48:43.370 --> 0:48:46.649 the different ways that it's rolled out, which I think 0:48:46.710 --> 0:48:49.360 works very well because it kind of reads like Ghost 0:48:49.380 --> 0:48:53.200 House has a particular idea of how supernatural energy manifests, 0:48:53.760 --> 0:48:59.580 and it particularly has a way of distorting glass. Uh, so, uh, yeah, absolutely. Uh, 0:48:59.810 --> 0:49:02.100 you know, a whole bunch of thumbs up for this 0:49:02.160 --> 0:49:03.480 particular effect right here. 0:49:03.800 --> 0:49:07.020 Yeah. The demon clown is like the magneto of silicate 0:49:07.040 --> 0:49:11.400 to like, yeah, manipulates glass. Uh, and it's not just 0:49:11.460 --> 0:49:13.770 light bulbs. We see it happen with these jars of 0:49:13.870 --> 0:49:14.930 liquids later. 0:49:14.989 --> 0:49:18.150 Yeah. A mirror. There's a great mirror scene. So yeah, 0:49:18.170 --> 0:49:20.590 this is all absolutely top notch as far as I'm concerned. 0:49:20.950 --> 0:49:24.310 So old Sam kneels down to clean up the broken glass. 0:49:24.430 --> 0:49:28.300 And while he does, we see a filthy bandaged hand. 0:49:28.340 --> 0:49:31.640 It looks like a mummy's hand holding an axe. This 0:49:31.700 --> 0:49:34.719 figure with an axe approaches Sam from behind. Then just 0:49:34.780 --> 0:49:38.140 as he turns and gasps in horror, it whacks him 0:49:38.200 --> 0:49:40.700 on the top of the head with the axe. splits 0:49:40.760 --> 0:49:43.100 his head open in a cutaway that looks like they 0:49:43.140 --> 0:49:45.680 might've filmed this on a cantaloupe with a mask and 0:49:45.719 --> 0:49:46.160 a wig. 0:49:46.180 --> 0:49:50.560 Yeah. But it's still, it looks nasty. It's a nasty 0:49:50.760 --> 0:49:53.239 gore effect for sure. And one of those, you know, it's, 0:49:53.440 --> 0:49:54.920 this is one of those films where, you know, you're 0:49:54.940 --> 0:49:57.359 not going to cut away when there's an impact. Uh, 0:49:57.520 --> 0:49:58.960 so it looks gross. 0:49:59.680 --> 0:50:02.060 Then the mom comes out. Uh, she sees what happened 0:50:02.080 --> 0:50:04.640 to the guy. She screams, then looks at a mirror 0:50:04.700 --> 0:50:08.229 on the wall. And here we get more glass manipulation. 0:50:08.270 --> 0:50:12.670 So the mirror starts warping and turning into, I don't 0:50:12.690 --> 0:50:14.009 know what the right term for this would be. It's 0:50:14.030 --> 0:50:17.230 like an active funhouse mirror. It's like a funhouse mirror 0:50:17.250 --> 0:50:21.620 that is warping and bending in real time. And eventually 0:50:21.660 --> 0:50:24.120 it shatters, shoots a bunch of glass in her face, 0:50:24.460 --> 0:50:26.540 and then the mummy hand attacks her with a knife. 0:50:29.340 --> 0:50:31.600 So do we ever find out what the deal is 0:50:31.640 --> 0:50:32.299 with the mummy hand? 0:50:33.250 --> 0:50:36.219 No, I don't think so. I don't think it's ever. Well, 0:50:36.580 --> 0:50:40.580 the only, well, could it be that it is the, uh, 0:50:40.700 --> 0:50:43.719 the maggot Reaper that we see later on? 0:50:43.900 --> 0:50:47.720 Yeah. Whoever that guy is might be hand here. Okay. 0:50:47.880 --> 0:50:49.940 I got no clarity on maggot Reaper. I was going 0:50:49.960 --> 0:50:52.360 to ask you if you could figure out. 0:50:52.410 --> 0:50:54.089 Yeah. I just suddenly realized it was like, oh yeah, 0:50:54.110 --> 0:50:56.010 there was a mummy hand and I have no idea 0:50:56.090 --> 0:50:57.710 how this pans out later in the film. Okay. 0:50:58.739 --> 0:51:01.860 That's my best guess is it's Maggot Reaper. Okay. Anyway, 0:51:02.219 --> 0:51:04.930 so we cut away now to Henrietta and the clown 0:51:04.969 --> 0:51:07.770 in the basement. Henrietta looks at the clown. She looks 0:51:07.850 --> 0:51:09.930 at it, doesn't say anything, but it's kind of like, 0:51:09.989 --> 0:51:12.049 do you think everything's going to be all right? And 0:51:12.070 --> 0:51:15.850 then she hugs it. And then this droning satanic synthesizer 0:51:15.910 --> 0:51:19.049 chord swells. And then we get one of these hilarious 0:51:19.110 --> 0:51:23.420 smash cuts. Smash cut from the satanic music and the 0:51:23.480 --> 0:51:26.700 clown in the basement in the dark. to a marina 0:51:26.739 --> 0:51:30.629 full of yachts on the Boston waterfront with shopping mall 0:51:30.670 --> 0:51:33.350 jazz playing, you know, ba-doop, boop, boop, ba-doop. It's kind 0:51:33.390 --> 0:51:36.710 of elevator music and text on screen that says 20 0:51:36.710 --> 0:51:37.270 years later. 0:51:37.630 --> 0:51:39.130 Yeah, that's right. We're finally going to meet up with 0:51:39.190 --> 0:51:43.239 our two main characters as they, what, they're talking about chili, 0:51:43.280 --> 0:51:43.560 I think. 0:51:43.680 --> 0:51:46.860 That's the thing I remember. So they're Martha and Paul. 0:51:46.900 --> 0:51:48.940 They are a couple in their 20s living in a 0:51:48.980 --> 0:51:50.660 big studio apartment in Boston. 0:51:50.900 --> 0:51:53.080 A big one too, like wide open. Huge, yeah. 0:51:53.870 --> 0:51:55.609 Uh, so I was, I've got a comment about that 0:51:55.630 --> 0:51:57.250 in a minute, but I was going to ask it, 0:51:57.730 --> 0:52:00.310 do you understand what Martha is doing? Is she supposed 0:52:00.330 --> 0:52:03.750 to be a graduate student? Uh, because she mentions, I 0:52:03.790 --> 0:52:07.589 think she is in school, but she mentioned something about 0:52:07.650 --> 0:52:11.130 being held up late at the library when she's on 0:52:11.590 --> 0:52:14.690 the phone with Paul and Paul gives her a vague 0:52:14.790 --> 0:52:18.089 warning that something like, Oh, be careful. Don't get into 0:52:18.150 --> 0:52:20.770 any trouble or you'll lose your scholarship and have to 0:52:20.810 --> 0:52:23.730 go back to Amsterdam. I was thinking, what kind of 0:52:23.850 --> 0:52:27.680 trouble is she getting into at the library? I thought 0:52:27.900 --> 0:52:31.000 what that would mean is that she's like an investigative 0:52:31.040 --> 0:52:34.360 journalist or something, or she's like digging into a conspiracy, 0:52:34.460 --> 0:52:36.160 something they don't want her to know about. It goes 0:52:36.180 --> 0:52:38.819 all the way to the top. But this never gets 0:52:38.900 --> 0:52:41.950 mentioned again, so I have no idea what the hypothetical 0:52:42.010 --> 0:52:43.150 library trouble is. 0:52:43.170 --> 0:52:48.150 I think that the Umberto Lindsay screenplay writing here is 0:52:48.210 --> 0:52:52.420 that not everything has to connect to anything else. or 0:52:52.500 --> 0:52:57.130 mean anything in and of itself. Just have the characters 0:52:57.190 --> 0:53:00.569 say some things. It doesn't have to connect in any 0:53:00.630 --> 0:53:01.930 way to anything that matters. 0:53:02.330 --> 0:53:05.109 But even if it didn't connect, I wonder, what could 0:53:05.170 --> 0:53:08.710 he have been thinking that the character means here? What 0:53:08.810 --> 0:53:10.880 is in Paul's head when he's thinking she could be 0:53:10.910 --> 0:53:12.439 in trouble at the library? 0:53:12.620 --> 0:53:16.080 Yeah, I think all it is is just this vague 0:53:16.120 --> 0:53:20.980 attempt to create the sense that, yeah, she's a modern woman. 0:53:21.040 --> 0:53:24.230 She's a student. And they have kind of like a, 0:53:24.290 --> 0:53:27.609 you know, they have a fun, happy relationship where he's like, 0:53:27.650 --> 0:53:29.989 don't get into trouble. Like it just doesn't, it doesn't 0:53:30.010 --> 0:53:31.430 mean anything. All right. 0:53:41.000 --> 0:53:44.560 Uh, anyway, Paul, uh, we, a little bit about him too. 0:53:44.660 --> 0:53:48.040 He works in data processing. He says multiple times in 0:53:48.060 --> 0:53:51.000 the movie, sorry, data processing, I think is his pronunciation. 0:53:52.120 --> 0:53:55.540 And so he's a data processing by day and also 0:53:55.680 --> 0:53:58.140 major ham radio hobbyist by day. 0:53:58.160 --> 0:53:59.219 He's a tech guy. 0:53:59.480 --> 0:54:02.540 He's sitting in his apartment. He's a call sign K1UR. 0:54:03.200 --> 0:54:04.799 So in the middle of the apartment, he's got this 0:54:04.840 --> 0:54:08.009 big table with a beige 1980s computer, a bunch of 0:54:08.110 --> 0:54:11.390 radio equipment. When we first meet him, he is sitting 0:54:11.430 --> 0:54:14.570 at this desk wearing a teal shirt tucked into khakis, 0:54:15.030 --> 0:54:17.290 talking to somebody on the radio. And I could not 0:54:17.350 --> 0:54:19.890 understand this conversation, but like, why is he talking about 0:54:19.969 --> 0:54:20.870 Simon Le Bon? 0:54:21.830 --> 0:54:24.870 Yeah, I thought it was going to be more. The 0:54:24.910 --> 0:54:27.680 best I could figure out is maybe he's running data 0:54:28.040 --> 0:54:30.520 on popular musicians and celebrities or something. 0:54:30.540 --> 0:54:33.640 That would be some data processing. 0:54:33.739 --> 0:54:36.460 Yeah, or maybe I am also trying to read too 0:54:36.500 --> 0:54:39.299 much into dialogue that just means nothing here. 0:54:41.210 --> 0:54:44.330 Well, I transcribed one of the lines. He's talking to 0:54:44.350 --> 0:54:47.379 this person. He says, I can appreciate your feelings about 0:54:47.460 --> 0:54:49.940 Simon Le Bon. You've been talking about him for a week. 0:54:50.120 --> 0:54:54.340 How does your boyfriend feel about him? Okay. 0:54:54.980 --> 0:54:57.680 So, yeah, is he talking to somebody who is just 0:54:57.719 --> 0:55:00.509 a fan? Or is he talking to somebody who's, like, 0:55:00.770 --> 0:55:03.670 in the world? And I'm not sure. And certainly at 0:55:03.690 --> 0:55:05.410 this point in the movie, I had no idea. It's like, 0:55:05.710 --> 0:55:09.370 are these people in the music industry? You know, we've 0:55:09.430 --> 0:55:11.529 only just met these characters, and all we have are 0:55:11.570 --> 0:55:13.950 sort of, like, vague comments to try and piece together 0:55:13.969 --> 0:55:14.360 who they are. 0:55:15.060 --> 0:55:17.640 I'm a roadie for Simon Le Bon, but I also 0:55:17.700 --> 0:55:19.910 take time while we're on tour to get on the 0:55:19.950 --> 0:55:24.850 ham radio. Yeah. Anyway, so we can see in the 0:55:24.870 --> 0:55:28.089 scene that, as we mentioned a minute ago, Paul and 0:55:28.130 --> 0:55:32.540 Martha have a very nice, very spacious, tastefully furnished apartment. 0:55:33.239 --> 0:55:35.379 So I think we're supposed to understand that Paul makes 0:55:35.500 --> 0:55:38.320 very good money in data processing. He's some kind of 0:55:38.360 --> 0:55:39.320 computer yuppie. 0:55:39.640 --> 0:55:42.700 Yeah, it's got to be processed. Somebody's got to do it. Yeah. 0:55:42.739 --> 0:55:43.920 He's the man. Yeah. 0:55:44.960 --> 0:55:47.980 The phone rings during the scene and Paul tells this 0:55:48.020 --> 0:55:49.860 person he's talking to on the radio. He has to 0:55:49.920 --> 0:55:53.020 say goodbye. The phone call is from Martha at a 0:55:53.060 --> 0:55:55.900 pay phone. And they have this weird conversation I mentioned 0:55:55.960 --> 0:55:58.620 earlier about like, don't get in trouble at the library. 0:55:59.340 --> 0:56:02.500 Then Paul says he made a pot of chili. Martha 0:56:02.520 --> 0:56:04.940 looks very happy at this news. And she says, I 0:56:05.219 --> 0:56:07.719 wrote this down. She says, keep it hot. I'll be 0:56:07.780 --> 0:56:10.600 there in about two hours. Oh, and one more thing. 0:56:11.140 --> 0:56:16.700 Keep yourself hot too. Legitimate laugh out loud at that. 0:56:16.900 --> 0:56:17.560 Oh my God. 0:56:18.180 --> 0:56:24.509 Oh man. This is just incredible dialogue. Keep yourself hot too. 0:56:24.870 --> 0:56:26.589 Along with the chili. Keep the chili hot. 0:56:27.250 --> 0:56:31.090 I have no doubt that someone has definitely said something 0:56:31.170 --> 0:56:34.710 like this before, but afterwards they have cringed hard and 0:56:34.730 --> 0:56:36.340 they've been like, oh my God, did I just say 0:56:36.430 --> 0:56:39.650 keep yourself hot like a bowl of chili? I did. Oh, 0:56:39.770 --> 0:56:44.030 I'm such a, such a weirdo. Uh, here perfectly happy 0:56:44.050 --> 0:56:45.390 with this remark. Yeah. 0:56:45.750 --> 0:56:48.210 And she actually, she looks like really proud of herself. 0:56:48.290 --> 0:56:51.050 She like hits the phone down and smiles like, Ooh. 0:56:52.950 --> 0:56:54.010 Oh my goodness. Yeah. 0:56:54.969 --> 0:56:57.509 Uh, and then after the call, Paul gets back on 0:56:57.550 --> 0:57:00.670 the radio and starts talking to somebody about, uh, who 0:57:00.790 --> 0:57:04.390 is more popular in the city of Denver, Kim Basinger 0:57:04.530 --> 0:57:05.529 or Kelly LeBrock. 0:57:05.910 --> 0:57:09.400 Hmm. Hmm. That's a tough one. Maybe Kelly LeBrock. I 0:57:09.420 --> 0:57:11.600 don't know. Had weird science come out yet. I'm not sure. 0:57:12.120 --> 0:57:13.080 I don't know. 0:57:13.080 --> 0:57:13.239 88. 0:57:13.239 --> 0:57:14.279 I think so. Yeah. 0:57:14.600 --> 0:57:17.500 Kelly, Kelly LeBrock. I'm going with Kelly LeBrock on this one. Okay. Yeah. 0:57:19.000 --> 0:57:22.280 Anyway, we cut to later. Martha is back home. Now they're, 0:57:22.380 --> 0:57:25.460 they're kind of puttering around in the bedroom and Martha 0:57:25.580 --> 0:57:29.350 sees that something is bothering Paul. She asks him about it. 0:57:29.480 --> 0:57:32.220 He tells a story. I had to loosely transcribe this 0:57:32.260 --> 0:57:35.990 part too. He says, something really weird happened last night. 0:57:36.240 --> 0:57:39.220 It was about 1130. I was trying to reach Denver 0:57:40.080 --> 0:57:42.740 when all of a sudden the radio just went crazy. 0:57:42.760 --> 0:57:47.580 I mean, completely crazy. Martha says, what's weird about that? 0:57:48.700 --> 0:57:51.960 Paul says, because it never happened before. I mean, all 0:57:51.980 --> 0:57:54.780 the circuits just went haywire. And then all of a 0:57:54.820 --> 0:57:58.030 sudden I heard this voice calling for help and then 0:57:58.070 --> 0:58:03.900 a terrible scream, really terrible scream. Martha says, who was it? 0:58:04.170 --> 0:58:07.110 Paul says, I don't know. But whoever it was, he 0:58:07.150 --> 0:58:11.050 sounded really scared to death. Martha says, I'm starving. I'm 0:58:11.070 --> 0:58:14.050 going to get some chili. Paul says, get me some too, 0:58:14.140 --> 0:58:15.800 will you? Extra jalapenos? 0:58:17.680 --> 0:58:22.000 Slow down there, partner. Oh, boy. Again, for some reason, 0:58:22.040 --> 0:58:24.260 I just find it very improbable that these two are 0:58:24.280 --> 0:58:27.660 going to actually eat chili or even know what chili is. 0:58:27.800 --> 0:58:31.920 I'm not believing it. There's nothing believable about this chili dialogue. 0:58:32.230 --> 0:58:34.590 What do you think Paul's chili recipe? Is he one 0:58:34.670 --> 0:58:37.730 of those guys who there's no chili whatsoever in the chili? 0:58:37.790 --> 0:58:39.890 It's just tomatoes and ground beef? 0:58:40.530 --> 0:58:45.020 Maybe, yeah, if that. I left this movie wondering if 0:58:45.060 --> 0:58:48.240 people eat chili at all. That's how unbelievable this exchange was. 0:58:48.440 --> 0:58:50.140 And then we just happened to have chili last night 0:58:50.180 --> 0:58:55.440 for dinner. But this movie made it seem like it's 0:58:55.500 --> 0:58:57.880 something just made up. That's how unbelievable the dialogue. 0:58:58.930 --> 0:59:02.169 Anyway, after this, Paul remembers something. He's like, oh, I'm late. 0:59:02.230 --> 0:59:06.680 I was supposed to call K7ET. So his ham radio 0:59:06.700 --> 0:59:09.450 hobby really here, it feels more like his hobby is 0:59:09.550 --> 0:59:12.120 chat room. Like he's just got people he's supposed to 0:59:12.180 --> 0:59:12.580 talk to. 0:59:12.600 --> 0:59:17.820 This is his prime social interaction here outside of the house. Okay. 0:59:18.220 --> 0:59:20.200 So he throws the teal shirt back on, goes to 0:59:20.240 --> 0:59:22.740 the radio and it makes these horrible squealing noises. He 0:59:22.780 --> 0:59:25.910 kind of squints at it. But then suddenly he calls 0:59:25.990 --> 0:59:28.430 out to Martha to bring over his tape recorder and 0:59:29.060 --> 0:59:31.320 I think it was in this scene that I noticed 0:59:32.020 --> 0:59:35.640 it looks like they have multiple copies of the same 0:59:35.780 --> 0:59:39.370 edition of a newspaper sitting on the table. So they're 0:59:39.470 --> 0:59:42.990 kind of not stacked perfectly on top of each other, 0:59:43.110 --> 0:59:45.250 and they look like they have the same front page. 0:59:46.130 --> 0:59:48.710 Well, maybe the particular article they wanted to save, so 0:59:48.750 --> 0:59:51.030 they got three copies. They want to send copies to friends. 0:59:51.350 --> 0:59:52.210 I guess it could be, yeah. 0:59:52.230 --> 0:59:52.550 Yeah. 0:59:54.390 --> 0:59:56.510 All the trouble I got into at the library was 0:59:56.570 --> 0:59:58.630 mentioned in an article in the crime report. 0:59:58.990 --> 1:00:01.230 Yeah, yeah. Got to cut that out and send that 1:00:01.250 --> 1:00:01.730 home to mom. 1:00:02.730 --> 1:00:05.450 Anyway, so they hit record on the tape machine and 1:00:05.890 --> 1:00:08.410 then a voice cuts through the static on the radio. 1:00:08.430 --> 1:00:11.830 It is a rather twerpy sounding male voice that calls 1:00:11.890 --> 1:00:16.790 out for help. It says, help me for God's sake, 1:00:17.090 --> 1:00:21.090 somebody help me. And then there's a scream and then 1:00:21.130 --> 1:00:25.650 another scream. And then the demon clown jingle plays. So 1:00:25.730 --> 1:00:28.030 they listened for a bit, then it cuts off. What 1:00:28.070 --> 1:00:31.250 was all that about? Uh, Martha says she thinks it 1:00:31.310 --> 1:00:34.830 might just be a stupid prank. And then Paul says, quote, 1:00:35.330 --> 1:00:38.370 nobody would pull a stunt like that. It's unethical. 1:00:38.390 --> 1:00:39.010 Yeah. 1:00:40.340 --> 1:00:42.700 Besides it sounded real to me. 1:00:42.720 --> 1:00:43.560 Did it? 1:00:43.640 --> 1:00:45.380 It didn't sound that real to me. 1:00:45.400 --> 1:00:45.480 Yeah. 1:00:47.340 --> 1:00:49.500 So they listened to the tape again and then Martha 1:00:49.520 --> 1:00:53.530 gets an idea. she says to Paul, hey, is it 1:00:53.590 --> 1:00:58.100 possible for you to calculate the location of the radio 1:00:58.200 --> 1:01:01.140 that sent that signal? Because if so, we can go 1:01:01.240 --> 1:01:04.140 find out for ourselves if it was real. And honey, 1:01:04.540 --> 1:01:07.030 your man works in data processing. Of course he can 1:01:07.070 --> 1:01:09.870 do that. He's got a computer, for God's sake. So yes, 1:01:09.930 --> 1:01:12.950 he can calculate where that signal came from. So they 1:01:12.990 --> 1:01:15.070 put on a pot of coffee and Paul gets to work. 1:01:16.060 --> 1:01:17.780 Did you notice in the scene that he's got a 1:01:17.920 --> 1:01:20.960 wood carving of his call sign sitting on top of 1:01:20.980 --> 1:01:23.340 the radio, a little wood carving K1UR? 1:01:23.570 --> 1:01:26.910 He's so into this. I didn't even stop to wonder 1:01:26.970 --> 1:01:29.970 if what he's proposing here is technologically possible. I just 1:01:29.990 --> 1:01:32.730 don't know about ham radio, if you can triangulate the 1:01:32.770 --> 1:01:33.640 signal or anything. 1:01:34.700 --> 1:01:39.490 That's a good question. You absolutely can't signal hunting... is 1:01:39.530 --> 1:01:42.419 a thing within amateur radio and there are even like 1:01:42.620 --> 1:01:45.760 a transmitter hunting contests, but generally I think you have 1:01:45.780 --> 1:01:48.700 to be mobile on those from like, you know, people 1:01:48.740 --> 1:01:52.680 take directional antennas out and they go driving around, you know, 1:01:52.700 --> 1:01:55.260 like looking for a hidden transmitter. So that, that's like 1:01:55.300 --> 1:01:59.610 a type of game that some radio hobbyists play. I don't, 1:02:00.470 --> 1:02:03.390 that's a good question. I don't know how feasible triangulating 1:02:03.430 --> 1:02:05.850 a signal is from a single point. Like if you're 1:02:05.890 --> 1:02:08.470 just at your house and you're not moving around, you can't. 1:02:08.970 --> 1:02:09.090 Yeah. 1:02:09.640 --> 1:02:13.120 Ham radio enthusiasts listening to the show. Fact check this 1:02:13.160 --> 1:02:14.800 for us and report back. Yeah. 1:02:14.940 --> 1:02:17.940 Maybe if you can compare notes with other people, you know, 1:02:17.980 --> 1:02:22.910 other people receiving. Anyway, so the next morning, Paul and 1:02:23.150 --> 1:02:25.950 Martha are loading luggage into Paul's truck. It's a pickup 1:02:26.010 --> 1:02:29.630 truck with a camper top on back. And this is 1:02:29.690 --> 1:02:31.630 the scene where Martha's like, did you have to wake 1:02:31.670 --> 1:02:35.430 me up so early? And with palpable annoyance, Paul says, 1:02:35.470 --> 1:02:37.770 we have to find that radio. A crime may have 1:02:37.790 --> 1:02:41.410 been committed, maybe even murder. Like she wasn't there when 1:02:41.450 --> 1:02:45.030 they were listening. So, you know, they hit the road 1:02:45.190 --> 1:02:46.850 and it shows them when they're leaving town, they're on 1:02:46.870 --> 1:02:49.640 the freeway and they're in the far left lane driving 1:02:49.910 --> 1:02:52.640 the slowest of anybody around them and cars are passing 1:02:52.680 --> 1:02:55.990 them on the right. Uh, so where are they going? Well, 1:02:56.070 --> 1:02:58.300 I think the house that they go to is going 1:02:58.320 --> 1:03:00.940 to end up being in this small town in Massachusetts. 1:03:01.000 --> 1:03:05.660 It's situate, which is like a coastal town, uh, in Massachusetts. Uh, 1:03:05.680 --> 1:03:07.920 but on the way they end up driving through a 1:03:08.000 --> 1:03:10.840 neighborhood that looks like it's right on the coast. So 1:03:11.090 --> 1:03:14.450 I don't know if they're taking shortcuts or what, but 1:03:14.630 --> 1:03:17.250 in this neighborhood, this is where Martha and Paul encountered 1:03:17.270 --> 1:03:20.510 this character, uh, Pepe that we will meet again in 1:03:21.010 --> 1:03:24.630 the IMDB credits. He's Pepe. The question about his name 1:03:24.770 --> 1:03:28.230 only arose for me because in the subtitles of the movie, 1:03:28.250 --> 1:03:29.750 they call him Pam Pam. 1:03:29.970 --> 1:03:32.550 Pam Pam? I don't think that's right. I've never heard 1:03:32.610 --> 1:03:34.410 anybody in the world named Pam Pam. 1:03:34.850 --> 1:03:40.810 Yeah. Yeah. So Pepe is a hitchhiker. He's wearing UMass gear. 1:03:41.190 --> 1:03:42.810 So I think he's supposed to be a college student. 1:03:42.830 --> 1:03:44.720 He's got like a UMass hat on and then he's 1:03:44.760 --> 1:03:50.870 got a Manchester hockey jacket. So, yeah, he's hitchhiking. He 1:03:50.910 --> 1:03:53.530 flags down Martha and Paul for a ride by running 1:03:53.590 --> 1:03:55.590 out in the middle of the street and blocking the 1:03:55.610 --> 1:03:59.880 path of their car. And then Paul shows extreme irritation. 1:03:59.900 --> 1:04:02.180 This is one of those first scenes where Paul is 1:04:02.220 --> 1:04:05.500 just way over the top aggro at somebody, but he 1:04:05.560 --> 1:04:08.580 does give him a ride. So he's like really furious 1:04:08.620 --> 1:04:10.120 at this guy, but he's like, yeah, get in. Um, 1:04:12.080 --> 1:04:15.420 and then, uh, so, uh, the Pepe gets in the car. 1:04:15.440 --> 1:04:18.520 This is where he has the joke about how hitching's fun. 1:04:18.580 --> 1:04:21.200 It's the hiking part that sucks. Then he talks about 1:04:21.220 --> 1:04:23.939 how Massachusetts sucks. And then he talks about how every 1:04:23.980 --> 1:04:27.200 place sucks. After this, he's like, he's like plenty of 1:04:27.220 --> 1:04:28.810 the younger in that letter. He's like, Hey, do you 1:04:28.850 --> 1:04:31.440 believe in ghosts? I don't know where it brings it up. 1:04:32.010 --> 1:04:35.150 Paul says, no, the hitchhiker says he does believe in ghosts. 1:04:35.510 --> 1:04:39.690 And then we get the skeleton hand prank. Uh, so Rob, 1:04:39.790 --> 1:04:41.880 do you know what these toys are called? The thing 1:04:41.890 --> 1:04:44.280 where you, it's like a hand that you can manipulate 1:04:44.300 --> 1:04:46.680 by like pulling triggers and the fingers move. 1:04:46.900 --> 1:04:49.380 Oh yeah. Yeah. Just grabbers is what we always called them. 1:04:49.400 --> 1:04:52.720 There may be a, different trade names for them. But yeah, 1:04:52.940 --> 1:04:54.959 they still make them today. They're still a lot of fun. 1:04:55.280 --> 1:04:55.520 Yeah. 1:04:55.540 --> 1:04:59.140 Still kind of useless. Sometimes, I mean, it varies. The 1:04:59.200 --> 1:05:02.240 ones that are just claws, those can actually be rather 1:05:02.340 --> 1:05:04.740 good and can also help people who, you know, have 1:05:04.950 --> 1:05:08.630 issues picking things up, you know, or, you know, there 1:05:08.650 --> 1:05:11.050 are some sort of mobility issues, that sort of thing. 1:05:11.370 --> 1:05:13.390 But the ones that are shaped like hands that just 1:05:13.430 --> 1:05:18.370 kind of do a, those generally barely work. And I 1:05:18.370 --> 1:05:19.400 think that's more what this is. 1:05:19.710 --> 1:05:21.550 When I was a kid, I had a Terminator hand, 1:05:21.570 --> 1:05:23.760 one of those. That was one of my favorite toys 1:05:23.800 --> 1:05:24.900 of mine. It was pretty cool. 1:05:24.920 --> 1:05:28.340 Yeah, I had the claw. But then eventually we had 1:05:28.380 --> 1:05:30.360 a dog that chewed it up. For some reason, we 1:05:30.400 --> 1:05:33.040 kept it, but it no longer could pick anything up 1:05:33.060 --> 1:05:33.890 because it had been chewed. 1:05:34.330 --> 1:05:37.630 Well, Pepe's version of this is a skeleton hand that 1:05:37.650 --> 1:05:40.950 he can move the fingers on, and he scares Martha 1:05:40.990 --> 1:05:43.280 with it. He puts it on her shoulder and freaks 1:05:43.320 --> 1:05:46.210 her out. So I think it's funny that this guy 1:05:46.270 --> 1:05:50.490 gets into a car with a driver that's already incredibly 1:05:50.570 --> 1:05:52.820 hostile to him from the jump. And then he just 1:05:52.880 --> 1:05:56.440 keeps on rolling, like riling them up further. 1:05:56.460 --> 1:05:59.620 Yeah, this is another scene in the film that feels 1:05:59.660 --> 1:06:02.180 very confused. Like, what sort of hitchhiker was this supposed 1:06:02.220 --> 1:06:04.660 to be? Like, at some point, what's the screenplay calling 1:06:04.680 --> 1:06:07.230 for more of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre hitchhiker who's just 1:06:07.270 --> 1:06:10.530 like completely deranged and who knows what they're going to 1:06:10.550 --> 1:06:13.840 do next? But then the performance and the actor playing 1:06:14.060 --> 1:06:17.400 the role of Pepe feels very down to earth and likable. 1:06:17.460 --> 1:06:20.720 And it just creates a lot of confusion as to 1:06:20.860 --> 1:06:23.050 who is this guy supposed to be and who is he? 1:06:24.130 --> 1:06:27.290 So they eventually drop the hitchhiker off. And then after 1:06:27.330 --> 1:06:30.970 they drive away, he says, you should believe in ghosts, P-Brain. 1:06:31.700 --> 1:06:36.479 And then later Martha realizes that the hitchhiker pickpocketed $ 5 1:06:36.360 --> 1:06:39.840 off of her quote with that stupid trick, presumably meaning 1:06:39.880 --> 1:06:43.120 the skeleton grabber hand. And if so, I was just 1:06:43.140 --> 1:06:46.990 thinking that is seriously impressive. Like sleight of hand is 1:06:47.030 --> 1:06:49.910 hard enough with your flesh hands, but like sleight of 1:06:49.950 --> 1:06:53.610 hand with a Mecca skeleton finger, that's like world-class. 1:06:53.810 --> 1:06:57.090 Yeah. Especially again, since many of these grabbers have never 1:06:57.150 --> 1:07:00.340 been effectively used to pick anything up. So yeah. If 1:07:00.400 --> 1:07:02.420 he can pickpocket with it. Wow. More power to him. 1:07:02.440 --> 1:07:03.360 He earned that five bucks. 1:07:04.220 --> 1:07:07.470 So suddenly they're here at the house. The radio, which 1:07:07.570 --> 1:07:11.730 is now somehow like working inside the truck, beeps. And 1:07:11.790 --> 1:07:13.950 then the truck pulls up in front of the Queen 1:07:14.030 --> 1:07:17.290 Anne house from the prologue. So they sit there looking 1:07:17.330 --> 1:07:20.880 at this house and a disturbed looking man in overalls 1:07:20.960 --> 1:07:24.500 walks up on their truck. He's got beard stubble, a scar. 1:07:24.520 --> 1:07:26.860 He might as well be chewing a piece of hay. 1:07:26.920 --> 1:07:30.870 He's that kind of character. This is Valkos. And when 1:07:30.910 --> 1:07:33.950 Martha sees him, she screams. The first thing he says 1:07:34.050 --> 1:07:36.630 is he indicates the house and he says, nobody lives 1:07:36.690 --> 1:07:37.310 there anymore. 1:07:37.450 --> 1:07:38.270 Just rats. 1:07:39.430 --> 1:07:42.350 And Valkos is suspicious of what they're doing here. He 1:07:42.450 --> 1:07:45.950 asks where they're from. Somehow this question gets Paul talking 1:07:45.970 --> 1:07:49.610 about how he's in data processing. And Valkos doesn't like 1:07:49.660 --> 1:07:52.420 the sound of that. Paul clarifies that it means he 1:07:52.460 --> 1:07:56.580 works with computers. And then Valkos lets forth a mighty scoff. 1:07:56.680 --> 1:08:00.300 He's like, computers, please. And then he just wanders away, 1:08:00.380 --> 1:08:04.970 clutching his shovel. And, uh, Paul, uh, Martha says, I 1:08:05.230 --> 1:08:08.350 thought he was going to attack us. And Paul says, 1:08:08.410 --> 1:08:13.160 you've got some imagination, like indicating Valcos would never attack us. 1:08:13.440 --> 1:08:18.790 Yeah. This, this tall scowling, um, Strange man that we've 1:08:18.810 --> 1:08:22.100 encountered in the woods. Yeah, I think he might attack us. 1:08:22.160 --> 1:08:23.500 I think it's very much in the cards. 1:08:23.780 --> 1:08:25.840 Who will attack us with a meat cleaver later. 1:08:25.880 --> 1:08:28.020 Yeah, we will see him brutally murder people later in 1:08:28.060 --> 1:08:30.460 the picture. So, yeah, I think it was in the cards. 1:08:31.100 --> 1:08:33.610 I think Paul and Martha should argue about this. They 1:08:33.630 --> 1:08:36.250 need to have an argument. But anyway, they drive up 1:08:36.290 --> 1:08:38.189 to the house, even though they were already at the house. 1:08:38.490 --> 1:08:41.130 And then they get out and look around. There's a 1:08:41.189 --> 1:08:44.210 bat scare here where Martha sees a bat on the veranda. 1:08:44.470 --> 1:08:47.179 And then she starts talking about how there is something 1:08:47.400 --> 1:08:49.680 evil in the house and they need to leave. And 1:08:49.720 --> 1:08:52.080 Paul's like, come on, don't be silly. There's no such 1:08:52.140 --> 1:08:56.000 thing as evil. And they break in and they wander 1:08:56.040 --> 1:08:58.180 around looking at things, you know, a bunch of old 1:08:58.240 --> 1:09:01.990 rooms covered in cobwebs. There are knives hanging on the wall. 1:09:02.370 --> 1:09:05.510 Martha in the kitchen, she fondles one of the knives 1:09:05.650 --> 1:09:07.720 and then gets blood on her hand. So there was 1:09:07.770 --> 1:09:10.259 blood on the knife and she doesn't mention this to Paul. 1:09:11.990 --> 1:09:15.600 Eventually they follow some noises into the attic. which in 1:09:15.640 --> 1:09:19.870 this case you reach via an iron spiral staircase. Pretty awesome. Rob, 1:09:19.890 --> 1:09:22.269 I don't know if you're as fond of spiral staircases 1:09:22.330 --> 1:09:23.550 as I am, but I'm a sucker for them. 1:09:23.570 --> 1:09:26.110 They generally look pretty cool on camera, that's for sure. 1:09:26.450 --> 1:09:29.790 Yeah, I always love a spiral staircase. But they go 1:09:29.870 --> 1:09:32.600 up and they find an amateur radio rig in the attic. 1:09:32.990 --> 1:09:36.260 Paul makes some kind of comment about the brand. He's like, oh, 1:09:36.340 --> 1:09:39.780 it's a Yaesu. I don't know what that means. I 1:09:39.800 --> 1:09:44.310 looked it up. That is a real radio manufacturer, but Uh, anyway, 1:09:44.610 --> 1:09:46.570 they're up there and then a guy sneaks up, uh, 1:09:46.689 --> 1:09:49.150 sneaks up behind them on the stairs and confronts them. 1:09:49.170 --> 1:09:55.230 It is a guy wearing this huge oversized olive green vest. Actually, 1:09:55.610 --> 1:09:58.470 basically everybody's wearing vests in this scene. Paul's got a 1:09:58.530 --> 1:10:01.390 vest on too. Uh, and the guy who comes up 1:10:01.410 --> 1:10:04.550 the stairs is holding at first what looks like a knife. 1:10:04.610 --> 1:10:06.630 He's holding something out as a weapon, but then you 1:10:06.670 --> 1:10:10.110 can see in other shots, it's a honing steel. It's 1:10:10.150 --> 1:10:12.290 what you use to hone your knives on. 1:10:12.310 --> 1:10:12.380 Hmm. 1:10:13.160 --> 1:10:16.240 I don't know why he's holding it like that. So 1:10:16.260 --> 1:10:19.420 the guy claims that the radio is his. Paul says, 1:10:19.700 --> 1:10:23.080 you live here? And this guy says, no, we're here 1:10:23.200 --> 1:10:27.049 on vacation. My camper's parked out in the yard. I'm 1:10:27.110 --> 1:10:29.969 here with my brother and his girlfriend. My sister Tina's 1:10:30.010 --> 1:10:32.330 with us, too. My name's Jim Dallin. 1:10:32.770 --> 1:10:36.229 This is another great unnatural exchange where he just lists 1:10:36.310 --> 1:10:38.290 all the additional characters you're going to meet in. 1:10:38.229 --> 1:10:40.130 The next scene. Here's the cast sheet. 1:10:40.390 --> 1:10:40.670 Mm-hmm. 1:10:41.210 --> 1:10:43.710 He demands to know who Paul and Martha are. And 1:10:43.790 --> 1:10:48.590 Paul says, just a ham operator like yourself. You wouldn't 1:10:48.610 --> 1:10:53.410 hurt a ham brother. And so Jim is suspicious of them, 1:10:53.590 --> 1:10:56.050 but Paul and Martha played the tape that they made. 1:10:56.530 --> 1:10:58.979 And we realized that the guy, the guy who's calling 1:10:59.020 --> 1:11:01.720 for help, who was calling on the radio that they taped, 1:11:01.780 --> 1:11:04.860 that is Jim's voice. It's him. And they listened to 1:11:04.880 --> 1:11:08.150 the whole thing, including the jingle. Jim denies that it 1:11:08.229 --> 1:11:10.710 could be a broadcast he made because he says he 1:11:10.729 --> 1:11:14.179 wasn't transmitting at the time Paul received it. And in fact, 1:11:14.220 --> 1:11:16.580 he says he has not even put the aerial, not 1:11:16.600 --> 1:11:18.500 put the antenna up on the roof yet. So it 1:11:18.560 --> 1:11:21.580 couldn't have been him. And then he invites Paul to 1:11:21.620 --> 1:11:23.800 come out onto the roof with him to prove it. 1:11:23.900 --> 1:11:26.650 And Paul's like, okay, I'll come take a look. Always 1:11:26.670 --> 1:11:30.090 good to like follow a hostile weapon clutching stranger onto 1:11:30.130 --> 1:11:30.590 the roof. 1:11:30.990 --> 1:11:31.070 Yeah. 1:11:31.090 --> 1:11:31.170 Yeah. 1:11:32.910 --> 1:11:35.610 Then meanwhile, so they go up there and Martha's left 1:11:35.670 --> 1:11:38.389 alone in the house and the demon clown song plays again. 1:11:38.410 --> 1:11:42.050 Not from the tape. It's just playing somewhere inside the house. 1:11:42.479 --> 1:11:45.940 So Martha wanders downstairs to follow the sound. She eventually 1:11:46.040 --> 1:11:48.780 ends up in the basement where she is attacked by 1:11:48.840 --> 1:11:53.759 various poltergeisty phenomena. There are more glass containers that inflate 1:11:53.800 --> 1:11:56.460 like balloons and then burst. Again, this is a pretty 1:11:56.500 --> 1:12:00.320 neat little trick. The furnace burps fire at her. And 1:12:00.360 --> 1:12:03.380 then she turns and sees that the washing machine is 1:12:03.439 --> 1:12:06.960 going and inside through the glass, she sees a head. 1:12:06.979 --> 1:12:09.640 It's just a head in there kind of, you know, 1:12:09.680 --> 1:12:10.300 going around. 1:12:10.700 --> 1:12:12.920 Oh yeah. I love the head effect here. I mean, 1:12:12.939 --> 1:12:15.700 I love this whole scene because I love any of 1:12:15.720 --> 1:12:20.020 these glass containers inflating and bursting. But the washing machine, 1:12:20.060 --> 1:12:22.900 especially there's some sort of like bloated head inside and it, 1:12:23.439 --> 1:12:27.599 It looks really good. It looks very convincing. There's some 1:12:27.850 --> 1:12:30.509 various gifs of this online you can pull up as well. 1:12:31.229 --> 1:12:34.150 Video clips. It's a horrifying sequence. 1:12:34.430 --> 1:12:35.790 Hats off to whoever made that. 1:12:35.810 --> 1:12:39.189 I don't know how the head factors in. Maybe it's 1:12:39.250 --> 1:12:41.059 the little girl's mom's head. I don't know. 1:12:42.479 --> 1:12:44.540 Yeah, I'm looking at the picture now. It doesn't look 1:12:44.620 --> 1:12:45.860 like anybody else in the movie. 1:12:46.280 --> 1:12:48.280 Of course, it's been in the washing machine a while. 1:12:48.340 --> 1:12:53.230 That'll distort things. It's like when a dollar goes through 1:12:53.250 --> 1:12:53.710 the wash. 1:12:55.510 --> 1:12:57.030 It's going to be hell on the filters. 1:13:07.160 --> 1:13:10.780 So Jim and Paul hear Martha screaming and they go 1:13:10.820 --> 1:13:13.480 to her and then she can't really explain what happened. 1:13:13.520 --> 1:13:15.910 It's like, was that real or am I losing my mind? 1:13:15.930 --> 1:13:20.600 The head is no longer there, obviously. So somewhere around here, 1:13:20.660 --> 1:13:23.020 we meet the other three main characters in the movie, 1:13:23.120 --> 1:13:27.660 Jim's companions. That's Tina, Mark and Susan. And our introduction 1:13:27.680 --> 1:13:30.460 to them is them yelling at each other about Susan's 1:13:30.520 --> 1:13:34.960 motorcycle being too loud or not. There's a conference in 1:13:35.000 --> 1:13:40.519 the driveway. Amazing dialogue in the scene as usual. So Jim, 1:13:40.740 --> 1:13:44.450 Jim vouches for Paul's story. He says, Paul's telling the truth. 1:13:44.610 --> 1:13:48.850 I listened to that tape about 20 times. Like, Oh 1:13:48.860 --> 1:13:50.860 my God, I don't know how anybody could listen to 1:13:50.900 --> 1:13:52.130 that 20 times, that song. 1:13:52.189 --> 1:13:53.830 I mean, I feel like we hear it 20 times 1:13:53.870 --> 1:13:55.110 throughout the picture. 1:13:55.130 --> 1:13:55.770 Oh, we probably do, yeah. 1:13:55.850 --> 1:13:57.610 And then again, I was listening to it on my 1:13:57.670 --> 1:14:00.410 phone and then I was like, I've got to tag 1:14:00.430 --> 1:14:03.870 some other track. I can't feed the algorithm of my 1:14:03.910 --> 1:14:06.410 Apple Music with this. Or he's going to think, oh, 1:14:06.590 --> 1:14:10.690 more creepy clown tracks. This is what Rob wants to 1:14:10.750 --> 1:14:11.450 listen to right now. 1:14:11.570 --> 1:14:13.650 Yeah, let's throw this on when you're out for a run. 1:14:13.670 --> 1:14:16.330 Yeah, it's going to be on my running playlist for sure. 1:14:17.729 --> 1:14:20.080 And then so he says, yeah, Paul's telling the truth. 1:14:20.140 --> 1:14:22.280 I listened to the tape 20 times. Susan says, it 1:14:22.360 --> 1:14:26.120 doesn't mean anything. It's just a bunch of nonsense. And 1:14:26.160 --> 1:14:29.540 then Paul says, yeah, right. And so is what happened 1:14:29.580 --> 1:14:34.790 to Martha in the cellar. But it did happen. Something 1:14:34.810 --> 1:14:37.590 got a little transposed there. 1:14:37.610 --> 1:14:40.889 Yeah, I think so. But I do love this line. 1:14:40.930 --> 1:14:42.980 It doesn't mean anything. It's just a bunch of nonsense. 1:14:43.300 --> 1:14:47.000 Speaks volumes for what we experience in this movie. 1:14:47.700 --> 1:14:51.599 At some point, Mark says, maybe there's something supernatural about 1:14:51.640 --> 1:14:54.660 all this, guys. And Paul says, I don't know. All 1:14:54.780 --> 1:14:55.920 I know are computers. 1:14:57.700 --> 1:15:00.179 I miss computers so much. There's one point where he's like, 1:15:00.720 --> 1:15:02.280 I'll have to look it up on my computer when 1:15:02.300 --> 1:15:04.099 I get back to my apartment. And like, that's such 1:15:04.140 --> 1:15:06.280 a dated and telling line. You know, we think about 1:15:06.320 --> 1:15:09.059 now we carry at least some portion of our computer 1:15:09.100 --> 1:15:11.590 world with us at all times. And here he's like, oh, yeah, 1:15:11.600 --> 1:15:12.860 my computer's back in Boston. 1:15:13.580 --> 1:15:15.080 When I heard that line, I was like, is he 1:15:15.100 --> 1:15:17.100 even telling the truth or does he just want to 1:15:17.140 --> 1:15:19.860 get back to his computer? He's like, I would really 1:15:19.939 --> 1:15:22.950 need my, I need some computer time to solve this mystery. 1:15:22.970 --> 1:15:29.389 He misses it. So, by the way, Susan and Tina 1:15:29.530 --> 1:15:31.990 are often at each other's throats and they are in 1:15:32.030 --> 1:15:35.820 this scene. They don't really like each other. Susan is 1:15:35.900 --> 1:15:39.360 dismissive of the idea of the supernatural. Tina just, I 1:15:39.400 --> 1:15:41.140 don't know if she really cares about the issue. She 1:15:41.160 --> 1:15:46.620 just generally seems anti-Susan. And there's a later conversation where Susan, 1:15:46.740 --> 1:15:52.540 who's posing like Aphrodite on her motorcycle, asks Tina why 1:15:52.620 --> 1:15:54.940 she didn't tell them that she ran away from her 1:15:55.000 --> 1:15:58.470 boarding school. Tina says that she has permission from the 1:15:58.510 --> 1:16:02.530 headmistress to be away. And Susan is like, no, I 1:16:02.570 --> 1:16:03.910 just got off the phone with her. 1:16:04.330 --> 1:16:04.590 What? 1:16:04.610 --> 1:16:09.840 I don't know. So among these characters, Tina has a 1:16:09.880 --> 1:16:13.440 reputation for lying. And Tina responds to this thing about 1:16:13.470 --> 1:16:16.530 the headmistress by yelling at them and saying, idiots, you're 1:16:16.630 --> 1:16:19.030 all against me. I hate you. I hate you all. 1:16:19.870 --> 1:16:23.130 By the way, lots of characters are wearing denim top 1:16:23.189 --> 1:16:27.790 and bottom, like multiple vests and multiple denim jacket, jeans, 1:16:28.130 --> 1:16:29.389 sometimes even denim shirt. 1:16:29.850 --> 1:16:32.610 Yeah. And if you're having any confusion about which character 1:16:32.670 --> 1:16:33.930 is which, this is not going to help. 1:16:34.430 --> 1:16:38.269 Hmm. Uh, so I just realized I'm wearing a denim 1:16:38.300 --> 1:16:40.100 shirt today. I didn't even do that on purpose. It 1:16:40.140 --> 1:16:44.640 must've been subconscious thinking about this movie. Uh, so will 1:16:44.700 --> 1:16:46.460 we ever get to the bottom of this? Well, they 1:16:46.500 --> 1:16:50.040 make a plan, uh, Martha and Paul, they're going to 1:16:50.200 --> 1:16:53.520 drive a few miles away in their truck and listen 1:16:53.580 --> 1:16:56.439 to the same frequency again all night. Cause they brought 1:16:56.479 --> 1:16:58.150 the radio with them so they can sit in the 1:16:58.189 --> 1:17:01.130 back of the truck and listen. Meanwhile, the others are 1:17:01.150 --> 1:17:02.970 going to listen to the radio here at the house. 1:17:03.580 --> 1:17:06.389 Mark says, what do you think will happen? And Paul says, 1:17:06.590 --> 1:17:09.430 we'll see. So I don't even know what this, what 1:17:09.490 --> 1:17:10.470 is this supposed to prove? 1:17:11.330 --> 1:17:15.210 Are they still trying to triangulate a location here? Because 1:17:15.250 --> 1:17:18.019 they found it. What's the shed? Like they end up 1:17:18.070 --> 1:17:21.160 finding the shed, right? Somehow we get to that shed, right? 1:17:21.180 --> 1:17:22.400 Some sort of additional building. 1:17:23.500 --> 1:17:25.400 The only time I remember getting to another building is 1:17:25.439 --> 1:17:29.600 when Valkos chases somebody. Yeah. Or somebody chases Valkos. 1:17:29.660 --> 1:17:30.300 Maybe it's that. 1:17:30.320 --> 1:17:33.849 I don't know. No, they already, they already found the radio. 1:17:33.870 --> 1:17:36.270 They found the location. So I don't, I really don't 1:17:36.310 --> 1:17:38.830 understand what they're trying to prove with this experiment. They're 1:17:38.850 --> 1:17:40.750 just like, well, I'm going to go two miles away 1:17:40.810 --> 1:17:42.870 and listen all night and you listen here and then 1:17:42.890 --> 1:17:43.769 we'll see what happens. 1:17:44.189 --> 1:17:45.770 Maybe this is something that was just lost in the 1:17:45.850 --> 1:17:49.070 edit or in tinkering with the script. I don't know. 1:17:50.610 --> 1:17:53.360 Uh, Paul asks Martha, if she wants to come with 1:17:53.420 --> 1:17:56.120 him on this mission to listen to the radio all night, 1:17:56.260 --> 1:17:58.420 she replies that she does not want to go back 1:17:58.479 --> 1:18:01.260 to Boston. first of all, that was not one of 1:18:01.300 --> 1:18:03.720 the options. I think it's either come with me two 1:18:03.760 --> 1:18:06.120 miles away or stay here at the house. But also, 1:18:06.400 --> 1:18:08.520 why does she not want to go back to Boston? Like, 1:18:08.540 --> 1:18:10.360 you've got chili leftovers in the fridge there. 1:18:10.780 --> 1:18:13.040 Yeah, I mean, unless they polished it off, we don't 1:18:13.100 --> 1:18:16.059 know how much chili they made. But presumably quite a lot. 1:18:16.100 --> 1:18:18.160 That's one of the whole reasons you make chili. Something that, 1:18:18.380 --> 1:18:21.380 you know, could have been lost on the movie makers here. 1:18:21.439 --> 1:18:23.480 They might not have realized that that's the whole deal. 1:18:23.500 --> 1:18:24.880 Chili is for leftovers. Yeah. 1:18:25.080 --> 1:18:26.280 The whole point is leftovers. 1:18:26.439 --> 1:18:28.620 Yeah, you're not making chili for this meal. You're making 1:18:28.640 --> 1:18:31.560 chili for the next, like, three or four meals. Yeah. 1:18:32.860 --> 1:18:35.360 Uh, so anyway, Susan ends up going with Paul and 1:18:35.390 --> 1:18:37.730 Martha in the truck. Uh, by the way, Val coast 1:18:37.790 --> 1:18:40.030 is spying on everybody from the bushes all through this 1:18:40.070 --> 1:18:42.090 part of the movie. So they do the plan. They 1:18:42.130 --> 1:18:45.590 listen to the radio all night. Now there's some ludicrous 1:18:45.630 --> 1:18:49.910 dialogue while everybody sits around expressing their boredom. Uh, Tina, 1:18:50.160 --> 1:18:52.780 hangs out in the camper trailer at the house where 1:18:52.800 --> 1:18:55.800 they've got a little tv in the trailer and while 1:18:55.820 --> 1:18:58.060 she's in there suddenly a new show pops up on 1:18:58.080 --> 1:19:01.240 the screen it is the grinning little girl and her 1:19:01.280 --> 1:19:04.280 clown from hell that's the show i guess and the 1:19:04.320 --> 1:19:07.850 clown jingle plays henrietta cries blood on the tv and 1:19:07.930 --> 1:19:10.990 tina freaks out I love all the old brands on 1:19:11.030 --> 1:19:13.700 display in the trailer. So I noticed they've got Lipton 1:19:13.760 --> 1:19:18.019 tea bags, a box of 100, Ajax powder, Coffee Mate, 1:19:18.400 --> 1:19:20.930 and then Heinz ketchup sitting on the edge of the 1:19:20.990 --> 1:19:24.820 sink like they're going to wash dishes with it. But 1:19:24.939 --> 1:19:27.060 then there's a, I was actually kind of wondering how 1:19:27.100 --> 1:19:30.099 they did this. There's a shaking the camper special effect 1:19:30.180 --> 1:19:32.460 where inside the camper, you can see it's rocking back 1:19:32.500 --> 1:19:35.150 and forth violently and everything's sliding around. And then she 1:19:35.189 --> 1:19:38.630 goes outside the camper and it's shaking around outside too. 1:19:38.670 --> 1:19:41.970 They must have something behind it. That's like lifting it up. 1:19:43.410 --> 1:19:47.150 But anyway, there are general hauntings inside the house too, 1:19:47.229 --> 1:19:50.740 with Jim and Mark. They hear the clown song. They 1:19:50.780 --> 1:19:54.710 go into, they go to investigate. Jim ends up encountering 1:19:54.770 --> 1:19:58.090 the creepy child with the clown by her side in 1:19:58.110 --> 1:20:01.610 the basement. And here's where we get a murder. So 1:20:02.090 --> 1:20:05.590 earlier in the basement, I noticed that there was an 1:20:05.670 --> 1:20:10.400 electric fan with no cage around the blades, just lying 1:20:10.479 --> 1:20:14.040 on top of a shelf. It's like Chekhov's uncaged fan blades. 1:20:14.120 --> 1:20:16.800 Yeah, especially in a movie like this. You know that's 1:20:16.840 --> 1:20:17.920 going to cut into some flesh. 1:20:18.479 --> 1:20:21.220 I've seen House of Lost Souls. I think I know 1:20:21.260 --> 1:20:24.570 what Umberto Lindsay is into. So the fan turns on, 1:20:24.610 --> 1:20:27.650 of course, under ghost power. It whirs up and then 1:20:27.770 --> 1:20:31.390 it breaks and it flings a blade into Jim's throat. 1:20:32.070 --> 1:20:35.280 And as this happens, he calls out the same things 1:20:35.320 --> 1:20:37.720 we heard on the radio earlier. You know, for God's sake, 1:20:37.920 --> 1:20:42.200 help me. So the radio signal was not exactly a ghost. 1:20:42.280 --> 1:20:45.680 It was a transmission from the future. Kind of interesting. 1:20:45.740 --> 1:20:48.090 What does that mean? It turns out to not really 1:20:48.130 --> 1:20:48.770 be significant. 1:20:48.930 --> 1:20:51.310 I know. This is one of those films where occasionally 1:20:51.390 --> 1:20:53.849 they'll touch on something that sounds like, man, you could 1:20:53.870 --> 1:20:56.070 have really pulled on that string and where could it 1:20:56.090 --> 1:20:58.810 have taken us? We have a message from the future 1:20:59.070 --> 1:21:03.810 or how about the fact that supernatural energy does seem 1:21:03.850 --> 1:21:07.939 to be an actual electricity that can power household items? 1:21:08.040 --> 1:21:13.200 Like surely our tech bro main character here might have 1:21:13.360 --> 1:21:15.420 picked up on that and maybe thought, you know, hey, 1:21:15.460 --> 1:21:17.910 we could harness this. Look at powerful cities. 1:21:18.130 --> 1:21:21.330 Clean energy, clean energy for the world powered by ghosts. 1:21:21.470 --> 1:21:23.950 Yeah, there you go. Like how haunted is Boston? Well, 1:21:23.970 --> 1:21:25.730 let's use those ghosts to power Boston. 1:21:26.090 --> 1:21:29.570 We just need a, like a rage race inside a reactor. Yeah, 1:21:30.830 --> 1:21:31.390 I can see it. 1:21:31.390 --> 1:21:32.010 Yeah. 1:21:32.770 --> 1:21:35.970 So, uh, uh, let's see, Tina runs down into the basement. 1:21:36.030 --> 1:21:38.879 She finds Jim's body there, but then she has an, an, 1:21:39.100 --> 1:21:41.860 another encounter with the creepy little girl who is stroking 1:21:41.900 --> 1:21:45.470 the clown dolls chin. Sorry, folks, we just had a 1:21:45.490 --> 1:21:47.610 break for a second because we were hearing strange noises. 1:21:47.630 --> 1:21:51.350 I think it's actually something totally not supernatural happening in 1:21:51.370 --> 1:21:53.350 my house. But we did have to wonder if it 1:21:53.390 --> 1:21:57.390 was something a little bit clowny. Oh, this is the 1:21:57.410 --> 1:22:00.559 part in the movie where Mark, the character Mark, is 1:22:00.600 --> 1:22:02.340 in the house. And he has a showdown with a 1:22:02.600 --> 1:22:05.460 Doberman dog that has enormous nipples. 1:22:06.080 --> 1:22:11.320 Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Doberman. A popular horror effect of 1:22:11.360 --> 1:22:14.410 the time. Certainly. I think Dobermans kind of got a 1:22:14.610 --> 1:22:19.439 bad rap due to their usage in films like this. Because, 1:22:20.270 --> 1:22:22.519 I mean, I've met some Dobermans that I was very 1:22:22.560 --> 1:22:24.560 much afraid of, but I've also met some Dobermans that 1:22:24.580 --> 1:22:26.240 were rather sweet. Oh, yeah. 1:22:26.720 --> 1:22:28.240 I had a friend with a Doberman when I was 1:22:28.280 --> 1:22:29.540 little and it was a sweet dog. 1:22:29.760 --> 1:22:29.920 Yeah. 1:22:30.340 --> 1:22:34.200 Yeah. Okay. So this, yeah, this guy sees a Doberman 1:22:34.240 --> 1:22:38.890 that's got enormous nipples and it's snarling at him. And then, uh, 1:22:38.950 --> 1:22:42.750 to make matters worse, uh, Valcos suddenly appears in the 1:22:42.790 --> 1:22:45.410 house from out of nowhere with a meat cleaver and 1:22:45.430 --> 1:22:48.880 just starts chasing people around. He chases Tina. Then Mark 1:22:48.950 --> 1:22:51.640 fights him. Then Valcos kicks Mark in the crotch and 1:22:51.680 --> 1:22:55.220 runs away. Mark chases him into the basement of, I 1:22:55.280 --> 1:22:57.720 think another house, or maybe this is the shed you 1:22:57.740 --> 1:22:58.480 were thinking of. 1:22:58.720 --> 1:22:59.760 Yeah, I think so. 1:23:00.020 --> 1:23:02.580 And then they fight some more. Valcos attacks Mark with 1:23:02.620 --> 1:23:05.759 a pitchfork, stabs him in the shoulder and The others 1:23:05.800 --> 1:23:08.439 arrive and they come back to the house and intervene. 1:23:09.020 --> 1:23:11.900 Paul puts Valkos in a chokehold and then drops him 1:23:11.939 --> 1:23:13.780 to the floor. I didn't know that Paul knew these 1:23:14.000 --> 1:23:15.139 like submission moves. 1:23:15.260 --> 1:23:17.260 Yeah. I mean, you gotta be ready. Yeah. 1:23:17.729 --> 1:23:20.930 And then when he falls to the floor, Martha says, look, 1:23:21.110 --> 1:23:26.990 it's that man. So all the characters like share their 1:23:27.030 --> 1:23:31.330 experiences and awkwardly phrased ways. And then they find Jim's 1:23:31.390 --> 1:23:34.710 body in the basement. Valkos runs away into the woods. 1:23:35.370 --> 1:23:38.630 And in the aftermath, at one point, they're all talking 1:23:38.670 --> 1:23:41.210 and they're like, hey, did anyone tell Tina about Jim? 1:23:41.670 --> 1:23:44.980 And Martha says, I gave her a tranquilizer. She's asleep. 1:23:45.200 --> 1:23:47.500 I was like, what? Is Martha a doctor? Or are 1:23:47.520 --> 1:23:51.059 people in 1988 just walking around with tranquilizers to hand out? 1:23:51.220 --> 1:23:53.270 It was acceptable in the 80s. Yeah. 1:23:53.370 --> 1:23:59.820 Okay. So... After this, Martha hears a dog barking inside 1:23:59.840 --> 1:24:03.400 the house and she goes in. Well, first she like 1:24:03.439 --> 1:24:06.740 starts opening cabinets in the camper trailer. And I was 1:24:06.780 --> 1:24:08.729 thinking like, wait, is she looking for the dog in 1:24:08.750 --> 1:24:10.929 the cabinets? But I realized she's looking for a weapon. 1:24:10.950 --> 1:24:12.790 And then she pulls out what I think is a 1:24:12.830 --> 1:24:14.049 rotisserie skewer. 1:24:14.070 --> 1:24:15.350 All right. It'll do in a pinch. 1:24:16.550 --> 1:24:19.530 She takes it into the house. There she finds a 1:24:19.590 --> 1:24:22.670 child's bedroom full of creepy toys, starts digging through the 1:24:22.689 --> 1:24:24.850 toy box. And eventually, what do you think she's going 1:24:24.870 --> 1:24:27.630 to find? Clown doll. When she sees that the jingle 1:24:27.670 --> 1:24:31.610 plays and the clown's face changes to show teeth, more 1:24:31.689 --> 1:24:34.630 poltergeisty stuff like toys flying all over the room and, 1:24:34.910 --> 1:24:38.059 you know, feathers puffing out of pillows and all up 1:24:38.100 --> 1:24:42.000 in the air. Then after this, Martha is actually attacked 1:24:42.080 --> 1:24:44.840 by the clown doll. Like it grabs her throat and 1:24:44.880 --> 1:24:48.320 she screams and screams until Paul comes running. She rants 1:24:48.360 --> 1:24:50.059 at him about the doll, but then he goes to 1:24:50.100 --> 1:24:52.160 look at it and the clown is gone. 1:24:52.180 --> 1:24:52.250 Hmm. 1:24:53.970 --> 1:24:56.750 So after this, they get the law involved. They're going 1:24:56.770 --> 1:24:59.730 to call the police. I guess I'll summarize what happens 1:24:59.970 --> 1:25:02.170 in the next portion a little more quickly. 1:25:02.189 --> 1:25:03.950 Yeah, because this goes nowhere, basically. 1:25:03.990 --> 1:25:07.720 Yeah, totally. So the police arrive on scene. They assume 1:25:07.740 --> 1:25:10.780 that Jim was killed by Valkos. I want to mention 1:25:10.820 --> 1:25:13.580 that the coroner who's talking to the detective has a 1:25:13.640 --> 1:25:16.500 voice that sounds like Bobby Pickett in the Monster Mash. 1:25:16.979 --> 1:25:19.099 Yeah, yeah. This is one of those films where you're like, 1:25:19.180 --> 1:25:21.160 I wonder how they're going to depict the coroner and 1:25:21.200 --> 1:25:23.820 then later the mortician in a movie like this. I 1:25:23.820 --> 1:25:25.180 was like, oh yeah, they're going to play them up 1:25:25.220 --> 1:25:26.219 for maximum creeps. 1:25:26.939 --> 1:25:30.180 So the, the, the coroner is like, I will, I 1:25:30.200 --> 1:25:32.820 will see you at the autopsy tomorrow. 1:25:33.350 --> 1:25:36.290 Yeah. Like all these guys are just actual necromancers. 1:25:36.350 --> 1:25:41.130 Yeah. The detective explains that, uh, Valcos is the caretaker 1:25:41.170 --> 1:25:43.390 of the house and he's sort of obsessed with it. 1:25:43.430 --> 1:25:46.580 That would explain why he's attacking people here. We also 1:25:46.620 --> 1:25:48.780 learn about the events we saw in the prologue, the 1:25:48.820 --> 1:25:51.880 murders in the house 20 years ago and what happened afterwards. 1:25:52.460 --> 1:25:54.770 We learned that the girl from the prologue was later 1:25:54.860 --> 1:25:58.090 found dead, locked in the cellar. And this leads to 1:25:58.110 --> 1:26:01.370 the investigation portion of the film. Like we talked about 1:26:01.410 --> 1:26:04.370 in our core episodes, again, on the haunted houses, these 1:26:04.490 --> 1:26:08.389 modern haunted house stories usually require some kind of detective work. 1:26:08.450 --> 1:26:11.910 The protagonist has to bring the story of the ghost 1:26:12.050 --> 1:26:16.440 to light in some ways to resolve it. So Martha 1:26:16.500 --> 1:26:19.990 and Paul... go on an investigation. First, they go back 1:26:20.050 --> 1:26:22.270 to Boston. This is the part where Paul says he 1:26:22.310 --> 1:26:26.410 needs his computer. Paul uses his computer to analyze the 1:26:26.470 --> 1:26:29.480 words from the Demon Clown jingle from the tape they made. 1:26:29.979 --> 1:26:33.500 Martha exasperatedly yells at him that he will never be 1:26:33.580 --> 1:26:36.519 able to decipher the lyrics. And then Paul says, I 1:26:36.640 --> 1:26:39.740 wrote this down, the fact that the computer doesn't know 1:26:40.020 --> 1:26:46.470 proves that I'm right. Huh? But about what? Then they 1:26:46.550 --> 1:26:49.510 argue about more things like he talks about how the 1:26:49.570 --> 1:26:54.280 voice was something that came from the future. And then 1:26:54.420 --> 1:26:56.720 Martha says, you can't know what's going to happen in 1:26:56.740 --> 1:26:59.220 the future. And Paul says, yes, you can. Cases of 1:26:59.300 --> 1:27:01.020 precognition have occurred. 1:27:01.260 --> 1:27:04.450 Paul is just a sucker for any idea here. Yes. Yeah. 1:27:04.470 --> 1:27:06.150 It's like it's happened. I heard about it. 1:27:06.680 --> 1:27:08.780 In fact, he literally says, she's like, since when do 1:27:08.800 --> 1:27:10.480 you believe in that stuff? And he says, for the 1:27:10.520 --> 1:27:13.460 past 45 minutes, I checked out this book while you 1:27:13.479 --> 1:27:16.010 were in the shower. And it's a book about precognition. 1:27:16.030 --> 1:27:17.690 Well, at least he checked out a book. I mean. 1:27:18.700 --> 1:27:21.660 It's a little more believable than just, uh, I, I 1:27:21.680 --> 1:27:24.700 looked at Reddit and now I asked, uh, I asked, uh, 1:27:24.840 --> 1:27:28.280 AI and it said that it's legit. So now I'm 100% convinced. 1:27:28.420 --> 1:27:30.200 Well, that's what it would be now. And yeah, back 1:27:30.240 --> 1:27:31.920 then you had to go check out a book while 1:27:32.400 --> 1:27:33.500 Martha's in the show. 1:27:33.680 --> 1:27:39.090 Seriously risk losing interest before you got your answer. 1:27:39.210 --> 1:27:41.010 Uh, this is, you notice, this is one of those 1:27:41.050 --> 1:27:45.070 movies that has the problem of, the characters are several 1:27:45.170 --> 1:27:48.670 steps behind the audience and figuring out what's going on. 1:27:48.689 --> 1:27:52.320 That's always a, I mean, I feel like that only 1:27:52.400 --> 1:27:55.580 really works in a comedy in a movie in like 1:27:55.620 --> 1:27:58.420 a serious horror movie or something. It, you kind of 1:27:58.460 --> 1:28:01.080 have to have the audience and the characters find things 1:28:01.180 --> 1:28:02.880 out at the same time, you know? 1:28:03.300 --> 1:28:07.070 Yeah. Well, the less, you know, the more mystery there 1:28:07.210 --> 1:28:10.160 is and the mystery is powerful and, builds up the, 1:28:10.180 --> 1:28:14.200 you know, the weirdness, the sense of terror. And I mean, 1:28:14.240 --> 1:28:16.740 I guess we still have that to a certain extent 1:28:16.780 --> 1:28:18.920 because not everything lines up in this movie. So there's 1:28:18.939 --> 1:28:21.559 kind of like accidental mystery, accidental enigma. 1:28:22.020 --> 1:28:25.010 But it's funny that you have stuff like the characters, 1:28:25.020 --> 1:28:28.370 like 20 minutes after the audience has already figured out 1:28:28.490 --> 1:28:31.210 that the radio signal was from the future. Finally, the 1:28:31.250 --> 1:28:32.850 protagonist is figuring that out. 1:28:32.870 --> 1:28:33.010 Yeah. 1:28:34.360 --> 1:28:38.679 And eventually the computer does decipher the message. It determines 1:28:38.740 --> 1:28:41.330 that the word burial. is part of the clown jingle. 1:28:41.490 --> 1:28:44.759 So Eureka, but then why, what does this reveal? 1:28:45.760 --> 1:28:49.210 Yeah, this never fully explained. Um, but I liked it. 1:28:49.260 --> 1:28:50.880 I liked the idea that it's like, oh, the song 1:28:50.920 --> 1:28:54.000 is saying burial. I guess that sounds, it sounds pretty 1:28:54.040 --> 1:28:57.140 heavy and I guess it does tie in maybe to, 1:28:57.340 --> 1:28:59.040 I mean, we are going to have to unearth a grave. 1:28:59.479 --> 1:29:01.830 To sort of solve this situation. So we'll see where 1:29:01.850 --> 1:29:02.170 it goes. 1:29:02.410 --> 1:29:06.530 Well, it leads them to the job of Henrietta's father. 1:29:06.689 --> 1:29:10.710 So they learn from the police that Sam Baker, the 1:29:10.770 --> 1:29:14.090 father of Henrietta, was a funeral director. So next they 1:29:14.110 --> 1:29:16.340 go to the funeral home where he worked and they 1:29:16.400 --> 1:29:19.640 interrogate his former co-worker about him. This guy, again, is 1:29:19.680 --> 1:29:20.759 a strange character. 1:29:20.780 --> 1:29:23.580 This is Champagne, the mortician. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. 1:29:24.160 --> 1:29:27.900 This guy is like, Sam was a wonderful man, a 1:29:28.180 --> 1:29:30.740 great man, a mentor to me, but he did have 1:29:30.920 --> 1:29:34.940 one practice I didn't fully approve of, which was grave robbing. 1:29:35.140 --> 1:29:37.120 Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah, he would steal things off 1:29:37.140 --> 1:29:39.700 the corpses, but we couldn't fire him because he was just, 1:29:39.770 --> 1:29:41.780 he was so damn good at his job otherwise. 1:29:42.270 --> 1:29:45.050 So he would steal from the dead. And in one instance, 1:29:45.110 --> 1:29:48.350 he stole a clown doll from the body of a 1:29:48.410 --> 1:29:51.410 dead child and gave it to his daughter as a gift. 1:29:51.729 --> 1:29:57.130 Very cool behavior. And then he, uh, so this, they 1:29:57.170 --> 1:29:59.890 learned this and this sends them on another quest to 1:29:59.930 --> 1:30:04.350 the cemetery to talk to old Mr. Harvey, the cemetery manager. Uh, 1:30:05.050 --> 1:30:07.879 there's a random detour here where Valcos shows up to 1:30:07.950 --> 1:30:11.680 kill the funeral home guy that Paul talked to. It's 1:30:11.760 --> 1:30:14.139 one of those movie murders where the victim makes no 1:30:14.220 --> 1:30:17.320 attempt to escape. Like Valcos shows up and then the 1:30:17.380 --> 1:30:20.720 funeral guy is just going like, no Valcos, no. And 1:30:20.780 --> 1:30:22.219 like not running or anything. 1:30:22.240 --> 1:30:22.320 Yeah. 1:30:22.610 --> 1:30:24.950 Yeah, and it also just leaves us kind of hanging, like, 1:30:24.990 --> 1:30:27.410 what's the relationship between these two? Like, it's kind of 1:30:27.450 --> 1:30:31.070 implied that Valkos was doing bad things for the mortician, but, 1:30:32.330 --> 1:30:33.979 and then suddenly, or they had some sort of a 1:30:34.060 --> 1:30:36.960 dangerous relationship that suddenly goes haywire. 1:30:37.120 --> 1:30:39.860 Well, he does speak to him with familiarity when he 1:30:39.939 --> 1:30:40.660 shows up, yeah. 1:30:40.960 --> 1:30:44.300 But I was left wondering, like, what's the deal here? 1:30:45.120 --> 1:30:47.960 We never know, because, yeah, Valkos beats him in the 1:30:47.979 --> 1:30:50.760 head with something and then stuffs him in a coffin. 1:30:51.310 --> 1:30:53.110 And I was thinking like, what's happening next to the coffin? 1:30:53.150 --> 1:30:54.940 Is he going to cremate him or bury him alive? 1:30:55.060 --> 1:30:55.540 We don't see. 1:30:55.900 --> 1:30:56.219 Nothing. 1:30:56.439 --> 1:30:56.639 Yeah. 1:31:06.170 --> 1:31:08.750 So we do learn that the doll is the source 1:31:08.950 --> 1:31:11.550 of the evil. And again, it's another one of those 1:31:11.570 --> 1:31:14.970 things where the audience is so far ahead of the characters. 1:31:15.010 --> 1:31:19.430 The movie establishes like 4,000% more than is necessary that 1:31:19.470 --> 1:31:22.630 the doll is the cause of the trouble. And so 1:31:23.610 --> 1:31:26.890 they keep like characters keep finding this out over and 1:31:27.070 --> 1:31:29.250 over and the audience is like, yes, we get it. 1:31:29.270 --> 1:31:32.990 The clown is bad. Yeah. Uh, so meanwhile, back at 1:31:33.030 --> 1:31:36.440 the house, Mark, Tina and Susan, uh, they are supposed 1:31:36.479 --> 1:31:38.560 to leave the house. They've already said, yeah, we're about 1:31:38.600 --> 1:31:41.559 to leave, but they don't, they have engine trouble. And 1:31:41.600 --> 1:31:44.900 then Mark's like, well, you know, should we call triple a? No, 1:31:44.979 --> 1:31:47.490 I need a part to fix things. I can do it. 1:31:47.810 --> 1:31:52.229 So they just end up staying at the murder clown house. Also, eventually, 1:31:52.710 --> 1:31:57.769 Pepe shows up. The UMass hitchhiker who thinks everything sucks. 1:31:58.050 --> 1:31:59.530 He shows up and he's like, I need a place 1:31:59.570 --> 1:32:01.510 to crash. And this house is as good as any. 1:32:01.610 --> 1:32:03.530 What are the odds he'd end up in the exact 1:32:03.570 --> 1:32:04.070 same house? 1:32:04.380 --> 1:32:06.980 Yeah, it's like this character just showed back up to die. 1:32:07.000 --> 1:32:10.160 You know it right away. He's on borrowed time now. 1:32:10.700 --> 1:32:13.350 So when he arrives, he pranks people by sneaking up 1:32:13.390 --> 1:32:15.650 behind them and grabbing them across the face with the 1:32:15.660 --> 1:32:19.390 skeleton hand. And then Pepe goes inside the house and 1:32:19.410 --> 1:32:21.530 he checks out what they've got in the pantry. He 1:32:21.610 --> 1:32:25.170 sticks his hand into a box of Pepperidge Farm garlic 1:32:25.189 --> 1:32:28.610 and onion croutons, but the box is just full of cockroaches. 1:32:30.130 --> 1:32:32.410 And then he disappears for a while and then randomly 1:32:32.430 --> 1:32:33.050 turns up as a. 1:32:33.030 --> 1:32:36.610 Dead body later. Yeah, I don't think we even see 1:32:36.650 --> 1:32:38.920 his death on screen. He's just like, knock at the 1:32:38.960 --> 1:32:41.040 door or something, and there he is, bloodied and wounded, 1:32:41.100 --> 1:32:42.780 and he falls over dead. Yeah. 1:32:43.220 --> 1:32:45.679 Somewhere in here, there is a scene I found conceptually 1:32:45.740 --> 1:32:50.160 hilarious where the coroner explains to the police detective that 1:32:50.300 --> 1:32:54.439 Jim could not have been murdered because the autopsy revealed 1:32:54.580 --> 1:32:58.300 that the fan blade hit him in the throat from below, 1:32:58.700 --> 1:33:02.620 from an upward angle, with the implication is that's not 1:33:02.729 --> 1:33:04.870 possible if it was wielded by a human. 1:33:04.890 --> 1:33:09.560 Okay, yeah. I'm not sure that makes complete sense i 1:33:09.600 --> 1:33:13.260 mean i think we've all consumed enough forensics uh information 1:33:13.280 --> 1:33:16.139 you know believable or not in like you know cop 1:33:16.200 --> 1:33:19.880 media where we kind of get the idea that you 1:33:20.140 --> 1:33:23.480 know objects can do strange things when they're in motion 1:33:23.580 --> 1:33:27.000 or ricocheting off of exploding material that sort of thing. 1:33:27.520 --> 1:33:29.890 But i like how it's like oh the angle of 1:33:29.979 --> 1:33:34.370 the fan blade proves that ghosts are real yeah But 1:33:34.410 --> 1:33:37.030 so as you can guess, most of the remaining characters 1:33:37.090 --> 1:33:38.929 are just going to bite it one way or another, 1:33:39.310 --> 1:33:41.689 getting ghosted in the house. Yeah, we got to. 1:33:41.610 --> 1:33:44.070 Whittle down that cast before we can close out the picture. 1:33:44.450 --> 1:33:47.100 Tina goes into the house. She gets chopped in half 1:33:47.180 --> 1:33:49.420 by a pane of glass that falls from the ceiling. 1:33:50.200 --> 1:33:52.320 Susan has a freak out where she's staring in the 1:33:52.420 --> 1:33:55.460 mirror over the bathroom sink and blood starts coming out 1:33:55.500 --> 1:33:57.479 of the faucet. I think this is a take on 1:33:57.520 --> 1:33:59.880 the bathroom mirror freak out in Poltergeist. 1:34:00.240 --> 1:34:05.000 Yeah, yeah. In Poltergeist, there's like Actually, it's one of 1:34:05.020 --> 1:34:07.680 the effects in Poltergeist that doesn't hold up all that well, 1:34:08.260 --> 1:34:12.600 where the meat is being pulled off of the face. Here, 1:34:12.680 --> 1:34:15.309 we don't get the full extent of that, but it's 1:34:15.360 --> 1:34:17.590 still pretty creepy. Though it did leave me wondering, because 1:34:17.630 --> 1:34:19.349 we come back to this sink later and it's still 1:34:19.390 --> 1:34:21.929 running blood, and I'm like, is it hot? Is it cold? 1:34:22.090 --> 1:34:24.870 Is it hot and cold? What's the full plumbing situation 1:34:24.930 --> 1:34:26.130 with the blood faucet here? 1:34:26.150 --> 1:34:28.350 She just left it running? Won't somebody think about the 1:34:28.390 --> 1:34:28.889 blood bill? 1:34:28.910 --> 1:34:30.130 I know. Yeah. 1:34:31.650 --> 1:34:35.059 So Mark also goes into the house and then he 1:34:35.340 --> 1:34:38.880 falls through the floor into a pit of white slime. 1:34:39.300 --> 1:34:43.060 Oh, yeah. This is an amazing moment. I've seen some 1:34:43.100 --> 1:34:47.480 people describe this online as like boiling milk. I really 1:34:47.520 --> 1:34:50.540 got the sense that this is just it's like ectoplasm. 1:34:50.700 --> 1:34:54.660 Like this place is maybe so haunted that there's like 1:34:54.700 --> 1:34:59.240 a deposit of just pure ectoplasm underneath the house. And 1:34:59.290 --> 1:35:02.349 he falls right into it. And then he manages to 1:35:02.790 --> 1:35:06.700 emerge from it again, still covered in goop and so 1:35:06.840 --> 1:35:09.040 out of it, maybe not even fully human anymore. We 1:35:09.080 --> 1:35:13.620 don't know. But this sequence is just so nuts and 1:35:13.680 --> 1:35:17.240 so goopy. It made me feel like this is something 1:35:17.310 --> 1:35:19.929 right out of Boxer's Omen. It's that kind of black 1:35:20.010 --> 1:35:24.430 magic action. That's where it would fit in. Here, it 1:35:24.510 --> 1:35:28.210 is just completely nuts out of nowhere, and I love it. 1:35:28.630 --> 1:35:30.770 It kind of half melts him. I was going to 1:35:30.810 --> 1:35:33.610 say that it looks like, it doesn't exactly look like 1:35:33.770 --> 1:35:38.280 milk to me. It looks more like cornstarch slurry or something. 1:35:38.340 --> 1:35:41.800 Yeah, or oobleck. Yeah, exactly. That's what oobleck is, the 1:35:41.840 --> 1:35:46.030 cornstarch slurry. So yeah, that's exactly what it feels like. 1:35:46.590 --> 1:35:49.170 But yeah, in terms of the world of the film, 1:35:49.410 --> 1:35:51.490 I guess ectoplasm is the only thing that makes sense. 1:35:51.689 --> 1:35:54.050 Yeah. But it's kind of melting him like it's doing 1:35:54.090 --> 1:35:56.740 something bad to him. It's a little bit Emil and Robocop. 1:35:56.939 --> 1:35:57.840 Yeah. Yeah. 1:35:57.939 --> 1:36:01.360 Absolutely. Then he crawls out. He crawls. So it doesn't 1:36:01.400 --> 1:36:05.360 fully kill him. He crawls out and then wanders into 1:36:05.380 --> 1:36:08.820 the other room where his terrified girlfriend, Susan, has been 1:36:08.860 --> 1:36:11.410 hanging out. And then she stabs him with a knife 1:36:11.550 --> 1:36:13.370 because she doesn't recognize it's him. 1:36:13.410 --> 1:36:15.870 Then she gets the realization for the freak out. Yeah. 1:36:16.939 --> 1:36:20.009 But yeah, love the ectoplasm pit here. This was actually 1:36:20.070 --> 1:36:21.870 one of the things where you pick the movie and 1:36:21.890 --> 1:36:23.390 I was like, oh, I don't know anything about it. 1:36:23.410 --> 1:36:25.349 And I looked up a few stills and I saw 1:36:25.390 --> 1:36:27.550 a still of the ectoplasm pit and I'm like, okay, 1:36:27.670 --> 1:36:28.090 I'm all in. 1:36:28.470 --> 1:36:28.710 Yeah. 1:36:28.970 --> 1:36:29.750 Did not disappoint. 1:36:30.490 --> 1:36:32.710 So let's see a few more threads to wrap up 1:36:32.750 --> 1:36:36.150 in the plot here. So Martha and Paul are going 1:36:36.170 --> 1:36:38.710 to have to investigate at the cemetery where the final 1:36:38.890 --> 1:36:42.229 resolution here is going to take place. So much stupid 1:36:42.290 --> 1:36:45.259 arguing between Martha and Paul at this point, just arguing 1:36:45.300 --> 1:36:48.710 about nothing. when they get there, Paul goes off to 1:36:49.050 --> 1:36:52.040 solve the mystery and Martha is left in the car 1:36:52.200 --> 1:36:56.200 and then she gets attacked by Valcos. Uh, Valcos chases 1:36:56.240 --> 1:36:59.200 her around. Somehow Valcos just dies. Like, did a ghost 1:36:59.260 --> 1:36:59.700 kill him? 1:37:00.080 --> 1:37:03.120 He's suddenly hanging from the neck. Like he, like he 1:37:03.160 --> 1:37:06.360 hanged himself or a ghost hanged him. I don't know 1:37:06.510 --> 1:37:09.150 how it came to pass, but suddenly he's dead. Yeah. 1:37:09.930 --> 1:37:13.320 And in a way, I mean, probably just sloppy use of, um, 1:37:13.810 --> 1:37:16.570 a frightening image that's been utilized in various other films. 1:37:17.110 --> 1:37:21.440 So Martha then finds the tomb of Henrietta, but she 1:37:21.450 --> 1:37:23.960 gets locked inside. I think she's trying to hide from Valco. 1:37:24.000 --> 1:37:27.380 She goes in, gets locked inside. She's in there screaming. 1:37:27.460 --> 1:37:29.980 And then Paul comes and tries to open the door. 1:37:30.060 --> 1:37:33.900 He uses Valco's sickle to open the crypt door. They're 1:37:33.920 --> 1:37:35.840 just random tarantulas in the crypt. 1:37:35.939 --> 1:37:37.839 Just tarantula hanging out on the casket. 1:37:38.220 --> 1:37:41.220 And he, Paul gets Martha out of the crypt and like, 1:37:41.360 --> 1:37:43.100 you know, puts her in the truck and gives her 1:37:43.140 --> 1:37:47.470 a bottle of Jack Daniels. And she's like, Paul, I 1:37:47.530 --> 1:37:51.750 saw death. So at this point, Susan is the only 1:37:51.790 --> 1:37:54.640 character left alive at the house. And she's being chased 1:37:54.700 --> 1:37:57.820 around by the Big Nipple Doberman and then also by 1:37:57.860 --> 1:38:00.660 a new figure, the Maggot Reaper. Rob, what's your take 1:38:00.720 --> 1:38:01.460 on Maggot Reaper? 1:38:01.800 --> 1:38:05.540 Oh, I love Maggot Reaper. And we've said Maggot Reaper 1:38:05.620 --> 1:38:07.160 enough now that it sounds like it would be a 1:38:07.229 --> 1:38:09.389 great name for some sort of a doom sludge band. 1:38:09.930 --> 1:38:12.510 And I hope that Maggot Reaper exists and is out 1:38:12.550 --> 1:38:18.480 there making music. But yeah, well, maybe not that song, but, 1:38:18.920 --> 1:38:21.180 but yeah, maggot Reaper. I can totally see that on 1:38:21.260 --> 1:38:25.120 a t-shirt. I think there's something inspired and yet completely 1:38:25.200 --> 1:38:28.370 sloppy and shoddy about the whole prospect here, which is 1:38:28.430 --> 1:38:30.860 perfect for this film because maggot Reaper is just a 1:38:30.900 --> 1:38:34.360 grim reaper, but with a whole bunch of, I think 1:38:34.380 --> 1:38:36.660 they're actual maggots in this case. I don't think they're 1:38:37.400 --> 1:38:40.820 another variety of critter, but yeah, it's like just a 1:38:40.860 --> 1:38:43.690 bunch of maggots thrown under the face, the skeletal face 1:38:43.750 --> 1:38:48.410 of the reaper, and then he just wanders after you. So, yeah, 1:38:48.450 --> 1:38:50.430 you know, there's a little bit of Fulci energy and 1:38:50.450 --> 1:38:53.590 it makes me think of, you know, use of maggots 1:38:53.670 --> 1:38:56.100 in various other horror films. 1:38:56.110 --> 1:38:57.620 Oh, in City of the Living Dead when there's the 1:38:57.660 --> 1:38:58.240 maggot storm. 1:38:58.260 --> 1:39:00.920 The maggot wind, yeah. Well, this is, yeah, this is 1:39:00.960 --> 1:39:03.540 Maggot Reaper, a similar take where you just throw some 1:39:03.560 --> 1:39:05.980 maggots on it and it makes it creepier and it does, 1:39:06.500 --> 1:39:10.139 but it also doesn't at the same time. It's, again, 1:39:10.340 --> 1:39:13.400 the effect looks fine for what it is, but yeah, 1:39:13.479 --> 1:39:13.939 it's odd. 1:39:15.170 --> 1:39:18.350 So the maggot reapers creeping up on Susan, you know, 1:39:18.570 --> 1:39:20.680 what's going to happen to her. It seems like she's doomed. 1:39:20.840 --> 1:39:24.680 But meanwhile, Paul is at the cemetery and he, that 1:39:24.800 --> 1:39:28.200 he and Martha have discovered the grave of Henrietta and 1:39:28.260 --> 1:39:31.500 inside the grave. What's in that coffin. It's not just 1:39:31.820 --> 1:39:35.770 the girl's body, like perfectly preserved, but also uncorrupted. 1:39:35.790 --> 1:39:36.010 Yeah. 1:39:36.030 --> 1:39:40.629 She's like a saint, you know, incorruptible, um, uh, perfectly preserved, 1:39:40.670 --> 1:39:41.570 but also the clown. 1:39:41.890 --> 1:39:42.110 Yeah. 1:39:42.170 --> 1:39:44.769 Clowns in there in the coffin with her. And his 1:39:44.810 --> 1:39:46.610 solution is, well, I know what I gotta do. I 1:39:46.630 --> 1:39:50.850 gotta burn this. So he like pours gasoline on it 1:39:50.979 --> 1:39:53.459 and sets it on fire and that fixes the problem. 1:39:53.560 --> 1:39:57.530 You know, it's just like Athena Doris. And so he, uh, 1:39:57.620 --> 1:40:00.660 he burns the clown and this saves Susan, the maggot 1:40:00.680 --> 1:40:04.990 Reaper disappears. Uh, there is, there's like a weird noodley 1:40:05.050 --> 1:40:08.389 synthesizer riff that plays when this happens. It's very funny. 1:40:08.410 --> 1:40:12.309 And so Susan actually lives, uh, the clown doll burns. 1:40:12.970 --> 1:40:17.360 And we see while the burning is happening, the cemetery manager, Mr. Harvey, 1:40:17.380 --> 1:40:20.000 he's like leaning into the tomb and he crosses himself. 1:40:20.900 --> 1:40:23.019 There's almost this look like somebody should have done this 1:40:23.060 --> 1:40:27.810 a long time ago. And there's kind of a wrap 1:40:27.910 --> 1:40:30.570 up where they're talking to the police. The detective comes 1:40:30.770 --> 1:40:33.110 out and he's like, you know, I told the district attorney, 1:40:33.130 --> 1:40:35.870 I think he blames the whole thing on Valcos. And 1:40:35.910 --> 1:40:39.150 he says, people want to be reassured. Believe me, they 1:40:39.170 --> 1:40:42.500 don't want to know about ghosts and curses and whatnot. 1:40:43.890 --> 1:40:47.150 And same thing comes across to Susan. Paul tells Susan, 1:40:47.330 --> 1:40:49.030 I know how you feel, but you're going to have 1:40:49.070 --> 1:40:50.890 to learn to live with it on your own. You 1:40:50.910 --> 1:40:54.269 can never tell anyone. And then Susan rides away on 1:40:54.310 --> 1:40:57.640 her motorcycle. So it's back to Boston for our main couple, 1:40:57.689 --> 1:41:00.679 I guess. And seems like it's going to be happily 1:41:00.740 --> 1:41:03.320 ever after. But then the movie just is not happy 1:41:03.360 --> 1:41:05.680 with that. No, cannot be happily ever after. We got 1:41:05.780 --> 1:41:07.240 to put some kind of stinger in there. 1:41:07.260 --> 1:41:10.800 Yeah, we get a mean, nasty ending here that again, 1:41:11.240 --> 1:41:13.540 would actually feel mean and nasty if it wasn't also 1:41:13.600 --> 1:41:16.860 just hilarious. Yeah. As it's realized here on the screen. 1:41:17.240 --> 1:41:19.120 The way it breaks down is, yeah, Martha and Paul 1:41:19.160 --> 1:41:22.420 are in Boston. You know, lovers on different sides of 1:41:22.439 --> 1:41:25.900 the streets calling to each other. He's going to cross 1:41:25.939 --> 1:41:27.650 the street to get to her. She turns around. What 1:41:27.670 --> 1:41:30.170 does she see in the shop window? But the clown doll. 1:41:30.570 --> 1:41:34.270 That's right. And she goes, uh-oh, something's wrong here. And 1:41:34.610 --> 1:41:36.650 he tries to make his way across the street. He's 1:41:36.689 --> 1:41:39.229 hit by a bus and killed the. 1:41:39.920 --> 1:41:42.540 the end cut to credits it's also it's a scene 1:41:42.600 --> 1:41:46.010 later used in Final Destination oh yeah yeah just a 1:41:46.020 --> 1:41:49.750 random bus to you know it's like you can't escape. 1:41:49.990 --> 1:41:53.210 I mean nothing is it is shocking anytime in a 1:41:53.250 --> 1:41:55.030 film where someone's hit by a bus or a car 1:41:55.050 --> 1:41:58.330 or something to the point where if someone's about to 1:41:58.370 --> 1:42:00.530 cross a street in a movie or a TV show 1:42:00.850 --> 1:42:03.030 and we're spending any amount of time on it I 1:42:03.050 --> 1:42:05.500 start getting really nervous like no this guy this dude's 1:42:05.520 --> 1:42:07.780 about to get hit by a vehicle like it's the 1:42:07.820 --> 1:42:10.900 setup and it's too much And then like half the 1:42:10.920 --> 1:42:13.620 time it actually happens. I guess it does play on 1:42:13.640 --> 1:42:17.280 a common fear and a common dangerous reality of streets 1:42:17.320 --> 1:42:19.050 and vehicles and clown dolls. 1:42:19.330 --> 1:42:22.110 All of that aside, I really like Martha's cool jacket 1:42:22.250 --> 1:42:25.270 in this last scene. She's like a denim jacket with 1:42:25.290 --> 1:42:27.630 this crazy leather fringe everywhere. 1:42:27.650 --> 1:42:30.470 I will say we've been having a fair amount of 1:42:30.510 --> 1:42:34.640 fun with Martha's delivery in this film, but her final scream, 1:42:35.040 --> 1:42:37.620 I think, is very effective and well done. And her 1:42:37.720 --> 1:42:41.210 final frozen look of horror over which we roll the credits. 1:42:42.770 --> 1:42:45.610 And read about who is the caterer on this picture 1:42:45.689 --> 1:42:49.370 and so forth. It's not the caterer, maybe it's payroll 1:42:49.410 --> 1:42:53.730 or something. Sometimes it's kind of hilarious when you have 1:42:53.760 --> 1:42:57.019 this emotionally evocative scene that's frozen and you're reading about 1:42:57.060 --> 1:43:01.139 the caterer. Or who drove the truck, that sort of thing. 1:43:01.979 --> 1:43:06.500 So what's the best third movie in the Evil Dead franchise? 1:43:06.540 --> 1:43:08.140 Is it this one or Army of Darkness? 1:43:09.660 --> 1:43:13.389 Well, there's two very different films. I don't know. In 1:43:13.430 --> 1:43:17.870 a way, both films have some gonzo energy going on, 1:43:19.450 --> 1:43:25.390 but definitely realized to different degrees. But Ghost House, it 1:43:25.689 --> 1:43:28.269 is a lot of fun. This is a film with 1:43:28.310 --> 1:43:30.190 a lot of goofiness to it. I bet the riff 1:43:30.220 --> 1:43:33.360 track for it is pretty fun. I haven't checked it 1:43:33.380 --> 1:43:35.960 out myself, but there's a lot to have fun with here. 1:43:35.979 --> 1:43:39.750 Totally. Totally. Okay. Well, that's all I've got on ghost house. 1:43:40.670 --> 1:43:43.170 Yeah. I think we, we more than covered it here. Uh, 1:43:43.720 --> 1:43:45.820 we would, we'd have to do, sometimes we'll go ahead 1:43:45.860 --> 1:43:48.939 and do the mental gymnastics necessary to that. It's necessary. 1:43:48.960 --> 1:43:52.220 They're necessary to make the plot make sense, but I 1:43:52.260 --> 1:43:54.019 feel like we would need a lot more time with 1:43:54.060 --> 1:43:57.420 ghost house to really like figure out how the doll 1:43:57.479 --> 1:44:01.760 ties in to maggot Reaper, the mummy hand from earlier. Like, 1:44:01.820 --> 1:44:05.269 what does it all mean? Um, this is something that, uh, 1:44:05.939 --> 1:44:08.250 Film critics and commentators are going to have to continue 1:44:08.270 --> 1:44:11.630 to piece together for, I think, decades, decades and decades. 1:44:12.930 --> 1:44:15.030 And it could just be one of those fractal mysteries 1:44:15.070 --> 1:44:17.729 of nature. The deeper you look, the more questions emerge. 1:44:18.030 --> 1:44:20.950 Yeah. So, yeah, I think Ghost House is a lot 1:44:20.990 --> 1:44:24.930 of fun. I've noticed some people online kind of, as 1:44:24.970 --> 1:44:29.309 with a lot of Umberto Lindsay, I think sometimes people 1:44:29.430 --> 1:44:33.720 see it as kind of lukewarm. Like it's not Troll 3. 1:44:33.720 --> 1:44:36.920 And it's also not housed by the cemetery. And that's true, 1:44:37.680 --> 1:44:40.339 but it's somewhere in the middle and its own comfortable 1:44:40.400 --> 1:44:43.849 zone of like creepiness and schlockiness. And I think there's 1:44:43.890 --> 1:44:47.010 a lot to enjoy here. Did I say troll three? 1:44:47.050 --> 1:44:49.570 I meant troll two. Oh, I thought you meant like 1:44:49.670 --> 1:44:50.590 the next troll two. 1:44:50.630 --> 1:44:53.030 The next troll. Yeah. Don't get me started on what 1:44:53.090 --> 1:44:55.839 film was called troll three, but no, troll two, troll 1:44:55.850 --> 1:44:56.480 two is what I meant. 1:44:57.640 --> 1:45:00.650 I agree. It is neither one. I'd say it's Closer 1:45:00.770 --> 1:45:02.690 to the Troll 2 end of the spectrum than the 1:45:02.729 --> 1:45:04.030 House by the Cemetery end. 1:45:04.729 --> 1:45:08.610 Yeah, except when the effects are really firing up on 1:45:08.650 --> 1:45:11.420 all cylinders. And then I think it's pretty strong. Yeah. 1:45:12.260 --> 1:45:16.320 But yeah, I would say definitely some fun, pretty funny, 1:45:16.680 --> 1:45:17.820 spooky Halloween viewing. 1:45:18.939 --> 1:45:21.980 All right. Well, that's Ghost House. We'd love to hear 1:45:22.000 --> 1:45:26.080 from everyone out there. If not about Ghost House itself, 1:45:26.240 --> 1:45:29.750 then maybe about Poltergeist. Or any other haunted house movie, 1:45:30.050 --> 1:45:33.790 haunted doll movie, haunted clown doll movies. Any of these 1:45:33.830 --> 1:45:36.910 genres and subgenres are fair game. Write in. We'd love 1:45:36.930 --> 1:45:39.810 to hear from you. Just in general, you know, it's Halloween. 1:45:39.840 --> 1:45:42.080 I always like to hear what do people watch around Halloween? 1:45:42.320 --> 1:45:45.559 Are there certain films that you watch every year? Were 1:45:45.600 --> 1:45:48.960 there a particular couple of films that you made sure 1:45:48.979 --> 1:45:51.480 to watch this year? That's exactly the kind of thing 1:45:51.520 --> 1:45:53.600 we'd like to tear into when we get into our 1:45:53.640 --> 1:45:57.220 Halloween hangover edition of Lister Mail, which we'll get to 1:45:57.320 --> 1:45:57.820 in November. 1:45:58.340 --> 1:46:00.300 Absolutely. Please send your favorites, yeah. 1:46:00.979 --> 1:46:02.540 In the meantime, we'll just remind you that Stuff to 1:46:02.560 --> 1:46:04.639 Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast 1:46:04.660 --> 1:46:08.260 with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form on Wednesday, 1:46:08.460 --> 1:46:10.720 and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns 1:46:10.740 --> 1:46:12.300 to just talk about a weird film here on Weird 1:46:12.340 --> 1:46:17.210 House Cinema. Let's see, if you're on letterboxd.com, we are 1:46:17.270 --> 1:46:19.229 weirdhouse on there. You'll find a nice list of all 1:46:19.250 --> 1:46:21.950 the movies we've covered over the years and sometimes a 1:46:21.990 --> 1:46:25.229 peek ahead at what comes next. Wherever you get the podcast, 1:46:25.390 --> 1:46:28.170 in audio form or in video form on Netflix or 1:46:29.229 --> 1:46:31.590 We just ask that you rate, review, subscribe. 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