Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and uh
Speaker 1: to set us up for the movie that we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about today, I wanted to discuss a problem
Speaker 1: that often arises when you're making a monster movie, and
Speaker 1: that is the problem of picking which kind of monster
Speaker 1: to commit to. You know, it's like, uh uh, maybe
Speaker 1: the family is going out to dinner and everybody's trying
Speaker 1: to decide, oh, where should we go? You know, somebody
Speaker 1: with you know brother brother Daryl wants to go to
Speaker 1: the steakhouse, and and Grandpa wants to go to the
Speaker 1: Mexican restaurant, and so forth. Everybody wants something different. They
Speaker 1: can all have it at the same place, unless you
Speaker 1: go to the king size buffet where you can get
Speaker 1: a little bit of everything on your plate. And that's
Speaker 1: what's going on at the movie today. They decided why
Speaker 1: commit to just one kind of monster? You know, why
Speaker 1: make a movie just about a like monster baboon hagbride
Speaker 1: or a little diminutive rubber merman, goblin or fart zombies
Speaker 1: or a cast member from Cats that has a hook hand.
Speaker 1: What if you could just put them all in the
Speaker 1: same movie and let them all run wild. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that is very much the case with the movie we're
Speaker 1: talking about here today. This is gonna be Spookies from
Speaker 1: six a great year for genre films, though I can't
Speaker 1: lay I we can't credit Spookies for really being a
Speaker 1: part of that. This is this is not a great movie.
Speaker 1: This this may be one of the worst movies we've
Speaker 1: we've discussed for for Weird House, But you know, we're
Speaker 1: still gonna We're still gonna focus on the positives. It
Speaker 1: does have some positives, and I think the monster Buffet
Speaker 1: is the big one, because, Yeah, when you mentioned this,
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of other films that really
Speaker 1: hit the same caliber, uh, you know, of of just
Speaker 1: having multiple different types of monsters. And I mean I
Speaker 1: thought of Gremlins too, but then again, even though those
Speaker 1: are diverse types of Gremlins, they're still gremlins. I thought
Speaker 1: of Monster Squad, but that is still a case where
Speaker 1: those are all like universal monsters that are that have
Speaker 1: been historically paired together, so it's not that weird, it's
Speaker 1: established um or. I thought of say, thirteen ghosts. Both
Speaker 1: versions of it, but especially the later version of it
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. Had thirteen very different types
Speaker 1: of ghosts, but they were all still essentially ghosts. I
Speaker 1: keep meaning to watch that one, Rachel, and I love
Speaker 1: those like late nineties terrible monster movie remakes, you know,
Speaker 1: the nineties, Uh, what's it called? House on Haunted Hill
Speaker 1: and all that, and thinking we're gonna watch thirteen ghosts.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the year it is? It is. I've
Speaker 1: heard it's loud and the scriptor I've heard a plaed
Speaker 1: to it. It's loud, it's got a good cast, and
Speaker 1: it's some neat ghosts in it. But but but okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I see the point you're making. So, yeah, monster Squad,
Speaker 1: and and that combines all of the classic universal monsters
Speaker 1: into one thing. So you've got like a uh an
Speaker 1: Off brand creature from the Black Lagoon, you got a Wolfman,
Speaker 1: you've got a Mummy, you gotta Dracula and so forth.
Speaker 1: But this one, yeah, I like that. This is like
Speaker 1: a Monster Squad, but for obscure or previously unknown monsters
Speaker 1: or monsters that you would not think of is going
Speaker 1: in a monster movie. So it does have sort of
Speaker 1: uh sort of like dirt caked fart zombies that the
Speaker 1: just uh, the just exude flatulence as they chase people
Speaker 1: around in a room. And it does have this like
Speaker 1: baboon bride creature. It does have a like a lady
Speaker 1: who turns into a giant spider. I think maybe she's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a certain kind of yokai um. But
Speaker 1: it's also got like a if you bought a one
Speaker 1: of those grim reapers that goes on your lawn for
Speaker 1: Halloween and raises the scythe up and down and goes
Speaker 1: whoa when people walk by, but it came to life
Speaker 1: and started attacking people. It has that, And it's also
Speaker 1: just got a Jawa, yeah, sort of a yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of a child vampire jawa running around. Yeah. There, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of stuff here, and
Speaker 1: there's not really a good reason why it's all there.
Speaker 1: This is not a movie that's really concerned why people
Speaker 1: or monsters have any reason to be in the same
Speaker 1: place at the same time, and yet there they are. Well,
Speaker 1: this movie did get me thinking about one thing. I
Speaker 1: think maybe maybe maybe the weird structure of this film
Speaker 1: gave me a sort of insight into a curiosity, a
Speaker 1: type of curiosity that powers the construction of certain horror movies,
Speaker 1: and it is I think the same type of curiosity
Speaker 1: that leads people to make those Um this might be
Speaker 1: overly nerdy and obscure, but have you ever seen those
Speaker 1: videos people make on the internet where they just take
Speaker 1: like some like real time strategy video game and they
Speaker 1: just keep pairing different kind of units from the game
Speaker 1: against each other and seeing which one wins. What I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, Okay, so here's my you know, power Mac
Speaker 1: marine versus the the alien screamer queen, and uh, you
Speaker 1: know which one will be victorious. You just do that
Speaker 1: a hundred times, the different types of units. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes eighties horror movies especially kind of work that way.
Speaker 1: But they work with a certain kind of monster or slasher,
Speaker 1: and then with certain types of human stereotypes or or
Speaker 1: personality archetypes. So it's like, what does a nerd versus
Speaker 1: hockey mask slasher look like? Or what does preppy rich
Speaker 1: kid versus merman grimlin look like? You know, it's like
Speaker 1: the bug fights, but with with human stereotypes on one
Speaker 1: side and different types of monsters on the other. Does
Speaker 1: that make any sense. Yeah, yeah, I can see that
Speaker 1: that definitely being a part of the alchemy going into
Speaker 1: some of some of those pictures, But in this case
Speaker 1: it's not. This does not feel like the product of
Speaker 1: an alchemy lab. This seems like the lab has been
Speaker 1: ransacked and all the liquids are are mixing together on
Speaker 1: the table and making random explosions. Oh, this movie does
Speaker 1: have some really good random explosions. You don't see him coming? No, um, so, spookies,
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk about what the basic Elevator
Speaker 1: Vader pitch here is. Um. Basically, the plot, such as
Speaker 1: it exists, is that people, random people are drawn to
Speaker 1: a weird house in a graveyard where Warlock is trying
Speaker 1: to bring his brideback to life, and equally random monsters
Speaker 1: rampage through the shambles of what is essentially a kind
Speaker 1: of resurrected film. I also was thinking of it in
Speaker 1: terms of what if Troll Too had lacked vision and
Speaker 1: just featured more monsters, what a Control Too was more
Speaker 1: of a hodgepodge instead of like one one director's clear
Speaker 1: artistic vision realized to its fullest extent. Right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think for me this film was worse control to this.
Speaker 1: I think this is the worst film we've we we've
Speaker 1: looked at on Weird House and uh and I think
Speaker 1: ultimately I would like not to return to its level.
Speaker 1: But there's still some fun stuff to talk about here.
Speaker 1: Well wait, then, how did you end up on this one?
Speaker 1: What what led you to Spookies? Um? I was familiar
Speaker 1: with the title, and I had signed up for Shutter
Speaker 1: to watch a previous film that we had covered. I
Speaker 1: forget which one, and I was slipping around and there
Speaker 1: was Spooky, So I thought, well, I'm gonna start watching it.
Speaker 1: Let's see what this is like. Okay, So that's that's
Speaker 1: how it came to be. And oh, in the other
Speaker 1: part this is important too. This was right before the
Speaker 1: Labor Day weekend, and I knew we had a shortened
Speaker 1: week coming up, and we were talking about doing, um
Speaker 1: another movie that I think we're gonna be doing for
Speaker 1: next week that is a much better film and has
Speaker 1: some more uh I don't know discuss It has some
Speaker 1: some plot points in that they're gonna be worth discussing more.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, let's save that for next week
Speaker 1: when we have a little more time. Spookies is perhaps
Speaker 1: the that the right amount of movie for what we
Speaker 1: have time to put together. Okay, I got another question.
Speaker 1: The title Spookies. Does it refer to the buffet of
Speaker 1: different kinds of monsters? Are they? Are they the titular spookies?
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess so. I mean I've never heard
Speaker 1: of spooky as a now and that's an adjective, right,
Speaker 1: I think the title sometimes it makes me think of
Speaker 1: things like the jeepers creepers, or phrases like that, or
Speaker 1: the hebe gebes or something where I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: maybe the ideas this film is supposed to give me
Speaker 1: the creepies, Like I have the creepies now because I
Speaker 1: watched this film. Do you mean the spookies the spookies?
Speaker 1: What I say, the creepies, Okay, creep Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have the spookies because I watched the film. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's That's as much as I could figure out. Well.
Speaker 1: I wondered also though, if it was um if it's
Speaker 1: a little like shortened kind of short cute word with
Speaker 1: an S at the end, because it's in the era
Speaker 1: of the Gromlins type movies, so you know, Gremlin's critters
Speaker 1: and all that if it was trying to cash in
Speaker 1: on that, uh Google, is that sort of thing? Did
Speaker 1: they think, Okay, we need something like that to get
Speaker 1: the people picking up the box in the video store?
Speaker 1: How about spookies? Yeah yeah, it was probably something like that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's let's give everyone a taste of
Speaker 1: the trailer audio here so you'll you'll know what you're
Speaker 1: getting into a little bit more. What's this supposed to be?
Speaker 1: Sort of like a part cheesy game or something. I
Speaker 1: know what this is. I mean, I've never seen one
Speaker 1: like this before. It's wegi board. Well, how do you play?
Speaker 1: Don't you need? Dice? Is something you don't play? Board
Speaker 1: is a tool for communication, communication with the dead? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: one way you know this is going to be a
Speaker 1: really good movie is that it has three directors. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and from the get go it apparently had two directors. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: when you get into the production history of this film,
Speaker 1: we're not going to really get into it a lot.
Speaker 1: There's there's a whole documentary that is a special feature
Speaker 1: on the Vinegar Syndrome Blu ray for this and that
Speaker 1: feature is that that that making a feature is longer
Speaker 1: than the film itself has a lot of interviews and
Speaker 1: if you're if you're super into all the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: of of the production of this sort of film, then
Speaker 1: I would say go check that out. But ultimately I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of it was maybe maybe too
Speaker 1: much for me. Like I ultimately I love a movie
Speaker 1: of this caliber, but I don't necessarily need all the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of how it has made. But you know,
Speaker 1: you're my lege will vary, but essentially the key factors
Speaker 1: to keep in mind here is you had you had
Speaker 1: these two directors who had Thomas Dorian and you had
Speaker 1: Brendan Faulkner, and they were the initial directors. And the
Speaker 1: producer was this guy Michael Lee, who was has been
Speaker 1: described as as like a video nasty millionaire who made
Speaker 1: a lot of money importing films into Britain during the
Speaker 1: period where a lot of these were banned. His company,
Speaker 1: I think was was v I Pico Vera VIPKO, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to produce a film. These guys already had
Speaker 1: sort of a pre existing vision and then as a
Speaker 1: producer he had a certain amount of insight into what
Speaker 1: he wanted. Um they shot this film that was going
Speaker 1: to be titled Twisted Souls, and then that a relationship
Speaker 1: fell apart and another director was brought in to finish it,
Speaker 1: and that's this director, Genie Joseph. She ended up directing
Speaker 1: additional footage and completing the picture. And so what we
Speaker 1: have on screen here is is one picture, but there
Speaker 1: you can tell where stuff was added. There's this whole
Speaker 1: additional plot where where there are characters who you never
Speaker 1: see on screen together, so you you can tell. I
Speaker 1: think what the framing narrative is. So if I understand correctly,
Speaker 1: the plot about the party kids who drive around in
Speaker 1: the woods and then end up at a house, a
Speaker 1: random house in the woods, go into the house and
Speaker 1: then are attacked by a buffet of different kinds of monsters.
Speaker 1: That was the original film. And then the framing narrative
Speaker 1: where there is an evil old warlock who is who
Speaker 1: is sacrificing people who wander into his house to the
Speaker 1: monsters in order to revive his dead bride. That is
Speaker 1: the framing narrative that was that was later added to
Speaker 1: sort of boost this up to feature length, right, And yeah, ultimately,
Speaker 1: like I said, don't want, I don't want to get
Speaker 1: into all the ins and outs of the production. Um.
Speaker 1: I did watch the feature att but uh or the
Speaker 1: feature rather, it's it's pretty too long to be a
Speaker 1: feature atte. But I would say that the features simo
Speaker 1: featurissimo here. Uh. You know, I don't think the film
Speaker 1: was ever going to be good. This is not like
Speaker 1: this was on track to be something and and it
Speaker 1: was changing into something else. I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: case to be made for like release the Twisted Souls
Speaker 1: cut or anything of that nature. Um I, I don't.
Speaker 1: I think the film is as fun and memorable as
Speaker 1: it is because you have so much weird stuff going on,
Speaker 1: and you have these two different energies involved in it. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, it wouldn't be Spooky's if it
Speaker 1: wasn't this ridiculous. I gotta say it does make for
Speaker 1: some extremely funny moments, uh, the inner cutting between the
Speaker 1: different plots, because first of all, it gives it an
Speaker 1: energy similar to Pod People, where it has at the beginning,
Speaker 1: like the A, B and C plot, and it's frantically
Speaker 1: cutting back and forth between them at such a pace
Speaker 1: that that you're constantly trying to figure out which movie
Speaker 1: you're in. Um. But then also to to stay on
Speaker 1: the mystery science theater theme for a second. It sometimes
Speaker 1: seems almost as if the Warlock in the framing narrative
Speaker 1: is sort of riffing the movie in in the middle,
Speaker 1: So like the the kids will be walking through the
Speaker 1: house and one of them will make a comment to say, like, uh, wow,
Speaker 1: the so the lights in this place still work? Maybe
Speaker 1: somebody lives here, and then it'll cut to the Warlock
Speaker 1: a different room, different place. You're not even sure where
Speaker 1: he is, but he'll go someone does still live here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I that was a moment that I definitely laughed out.
Speaker 1: Lad Uh. Yeah. The resulting energy is is is weird
Speaker 1: and wonderful. It also feels a bit like the stuff
Speaker 1: with the Warlock that was at it. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: like you decided to make a horror anthology, but you
Speaker 1: only had the one picture to draw upon. Because there's
Speaker 1: certainly been cases where you have like different productions that
Speaker 1: were unfinished or or were recut, and then you have
Speaker 1: them rereleased as part of a horror anthology. Was some
Speaker 1: sort of a framing framing narrative in place, but in
Speaker 1: this case, it's just one the one picture. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a framing narrative around one movie that was not
Speaker 1: going to make it to feature length. I'd say that
Speaker 1: core movie is what maybe sixty minutes? Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much stuff got got cut. I
Speaker 1: know some stuff got cut, but um, is it stuff
Speaker 1: that would have really that I really wanted to see
Speaker 1: instead of this wizard and his strange cat creature? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. All right, well, let me let me go
Speaker 1: ahead and mention some of the other projects that some
Speaker 1: of the other folks were involved in here. So Thomas
Speaker 1: Duran again co director co writer on Twist the Twisted
Speaker 1: Souls portion of this UM. Interestingly enough, he was the
Speaker 1: voice of the monster in Devil's Express, starring Warhawk Tanzania. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I gotta give him credit for that. He also
Speaker 1: worked on a spattering of other genre pictures. Brendan Faulkner Uh,
Speaker 1: also the co director co writer on Twisted Souls, wrote
Speaker 1: in direct Killer Dead. Genie Joseph, who finished the film UM.
Speaker 1: She wrote and directed the horror like Mind Benders. I
Speaker 1: have not seen this, but I looked it up. Apparently
Speaker 1: it's also known as Invasion of the Mind Benders, and
Speaker 1: the VHS cover definitely made me laugh out loud, so
Speaker 1: it says invasion of the mind Benders. And then it
Speaker 1: has like a lady on fire and she's shooting rays
Speaker 1: of light out of her eyeballs over a guy who
Speaker 1: who's looking up in enraptured at a bunch of clouds.
Speaker 1: And then next to it, it's got a tagline says
Speaker 1: controlling a mind is a dangerous thing. I like how
Speaker 1: this does look like a a horror paperback from the eighties,
Speaker 1: So oh yeah, it's got looks more like book art
Speaker 1: than the movie art um and a plot description from
Speaker 1: IMDb on Mind Benders says two teenagers noticed a sudden
Speaker 1: change and their fellow students. No one is able to
Speaker 1: explain this zombie like behavior, which, at the command of
Speaker 1: an unseen alien, makes them punish transgressors with merciless violence. Alright,
Speaker 1: so most of the there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: involved in this. There's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of of loving attention pay to the monsters, and we're
Speaker 1: ultimately not gonna be able to mention all of them
Speaker 1: by name, but I want to mention a few of
Speaker 1: them as well as the writers involved here. So Jennifer
Speaker 1: aspin All was in the makeup department, went on to
Speaker 1: work on a on a lot of projects including Westworld,
Speaker 1: Captain Marvel, and Saturday Night Live. There's a Frankie m
Speaker 1: Ferrell who who was one of the writers on the screenplay.
Speaker 1: He also produced N seven Street Trash. That's a melt
Speaker 1: movie that we've discussed before, and Burgund was a writer
Speaker 1: additional material plus costume design. She was also associate producer
Speaker 1: on the Mask. Yes, the one with Jim Carey in
Speaker 1: a green cartoon face. So did Anne Bergend do the
Speaker 1: costumes and the because we're gonna have some commentary on
Speaker 1: the costumes, she at least did some of them. But
Speaker 1: also you have this guy Tom Malinelli, who is credited
Speaker 1: with art direction, art department and costume design. This is
Speaker 1: another individual who worked on Street Trash. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: guy by the name of al Maglioschetti who plays Lewis
Speaker 1: Wilson in this. I don't remember which one Lewis Wilson was,
Speaker 1: but he also did special effects photography. He went on
Speaker 1: to do visual effects and a lot of big pictures
Speaker 1: including Star Trek, The Undiscovered Country, Water World, uh T two,
Speaker 1: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. The Adams Family, Jason goes
Speaker 1: to Hell and many others. Oh. In fact, so I
Speaker 1: see the connection to uh T two there. But the
Speaker 1: camera operator, the steadicam operator in this movie j Michael Murrow,
Speaker 1: I think, also did steady caam for a lot of
Speaker 1: James Cameron movies, including Terminator Too. Yeah, this is an
Speaker 1: individual that I believe Michael Weldon pointed out as being
Speaker 1: involved in this picture in his right up in one
Speaker 1: of the psychotronic uh in the Psycotronic Video Guide or
Speaker 1: the Psychotronic Video Guide or the Guide to Film, I
Speaker 1: can't remember which one. Now, getting into the actors a
Speaker 1: little bit, there are a number of actors in this
Speaker 1: who didn't really have any other credits. But my favorite
Speaker 1: actor in in this whole picture is Peter Assillo Jr.
Speaker 1: He plays rich is uh Oh, I would say the
Speaker 1: richest character in this film. Um, how would we describe him?
Speaker 1: He's the he's the cut up, He's the He's a Ham,
Speaker 1: He's a Ham, He's constant Ham, glorious Ham, He's a ham.
Speaker 1: Who's You get the sense that he's improvising a lot
Speaker 1: of his lines. There are scenes of just um where
Speaker 1: where it feels like what happened is they just turned
Speaker 1: the camera on him and they're like, Rich, come on,
Speaker 1: you know, just riff a little bit. And so he'll
Speaker 1: like wander around kind of bumping into the other characters
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, hey, how's your sinuses and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. He also, uh is it plays a character
Speaker 1: who loves beer. Uh, And it's clear he loves beer
Speaker 1: because even after the monsters started attacking and all everything
Speaker 1: goes crazy, he's still always got his beer in his hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's a lot of fun in this. He's like
Speaker 1: them tall mustachioed guy that was apparently in real life
Speaker 1: was just always on just was always the goofy cut
Speaker 1: up and was much beloved. Um and and so he
Speaker 1: brings that exact same energy to this role. His character
Speaker 1: Rich has a puppet named Muck, and so he's off.
Speaker 1: He's constantly interacting and harassing the other characters with this puppet.
Speaker 1: And he wears a T shirt that pit ficture features
Speaker 1: an image of himself and the puppet mouke on it. Right.
Speaker 1: So uh, he lived ene through two thousand and seventeen.
Speaker 1: He uh, he played an uncredited zombie and Don of
Speaker 1: the Dead and then went on to do a lot
Speaker 1: of bit parts, um and things, often freaks and crazy,
Speaker 1: sometimes background work. I noticed he pops up even in
Speaker 1: an episode of thirty Rock playing paparazzi character, so you know,
Speaker 1: just somebody click the camera in the background. But then
Speaker 1: we also have this character, Duke, This Duke so interesting.
Speaker 1: How would you how would you describe Duke to everyone?
Speaker 1: Duke is a is a fabulous bully. He's sort of
Speaker 1: the like tough guy, bad guy, bad boy of the group. Um,
Speaker 1: it's hard to convey by describing, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the scenes with Duke in them have this bizarre rhythm
Speaker 1: and logic that you sort of get, you get a
Speaker 1: feel for as the movie goes on, but it can't
Speaker 1: really be compared to anything else I can think about.
Speaker 1: Gonna try to describe one scene just to give you
Speaker 1: an idea of like of duke rhythm, and it goes
Speaker 1: like this, So like they're in the house and Duke
Speaker 1: just pulls a box off the shelf and he opens
Speaker 1: it and an amulet flies out of the box onto
Speaker 1: the floor. And then this other character named Carol picks
Speaker 1: up the amulet and she says, isn't it wonderful? And
Speaker 1: he goes, pretty damn weird. If you ask me, what
Speaker 1: is it art or something? I think it's worth any money.
Speaker 1: And then he immediately from saying this line, turns his
Speaker 1: head to the side and sees a door that has
Speaker 1: just been behind him the whole time, and then he goes,
Speaker 1: what the hell is in here? And he starts jostling
Speaker 1: the lock frantically, and then he breaks a chair across
Speaker 1: the door and starts shoving a board into the door jam,
Speaker 1: trying to pry it open. This is duke energy, would
Speaker 1: you agree? Yes, yes, very much so, he um. I.
Speaker 1: In my notes, I've noted that he was essentially a
Speaker 1: discount Fonzie in a trash bag because he's wearing this
Speaker 1: weird cost him. He's wearing plastic clothes like a shirt
Speaker 1: and pants that are they look like they're made from
Speaker 1: the same material material as like black heavy duty garbage bags. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's like the workout thing or what.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that that is literally what it
Speaker 1: looks like it's made out of. And I, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no explanation. Um my. One of my early
Speaker 1: theories watching this film was that he was perhaps like
Speaker 1: the frontman of a band or something, and that are
Speaker 1: the characters. The human characters in this film. It's essentially
Speaker 1: like a band and some hangers on and like maybe
Speaker 1: they're older, producer. But this is a complete misread on
Speaker 1: my part because there's nothing to support that in the film.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to support any actual connections between any of
Speaker 1: these human characters. Well, this gets you to something about
Speaker 1: the movie, which is that it has one of my
Speaker 1: absolute favorite horror movie tropes, which is the utterly implosible
Speaker 1: friend group. Uh, you know many eighties movies especially have
Speaker 1: this is the eighties were the decade of the implausible
Speaker 1: friend group movie. Though you know, it still happens every
Speaker 1: now and then. But I think you probably know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. But if not, just picture this. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's a horror movie. You've got a group of
Speaker 1: friends hanging out. Maybe they're going to somebody's uncle's cabin
Speaker 1: in the woods, or they're driving around looking for a
Speaker 1: party as in this movie, or something like that, and
Speaker 1: the group consists of people who would never in reality
Speaker 1: to be hanging out together. What you usually get is
Speaker 1: either one or two of each teen subculture archetype that
Speaker 1: the movie wants to show, So you get like a jock,
Speaker 1: a nerd, a punk, a stoner, preppy, rich kid, et cetera,
Speaker 1: instead of what you would imagine would happen in reality,
Speaker 1: which is you'd have like a group of jocks or
Speaker 1: like a group of nerds, a group of stoners, and
Speaker 1: and that would be the friend group. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's sometimes and I guess in your better films,
Speaker 1: you see a diverse group of people brought together by
Speaker 1: by circumstances that then have to survive the monster. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, like maybe it's uh, you know, it's stoner's
Speaker 1: and greaser's because they're both fleeing a storm or something
Speaker 1: and we're holding up in the same place and now
Speaker 1: where have we Now we have to fight goblins or something. Right,
Speaker 1: That's more like you'd get in a Night of the
Speaker 1: Living Dead. You know, different people are sort of driven
Speaker 1: into a into a house by the zombies attacking. It's
Speaker 1: not like they were all hanging out to begin with.
Speaker 1: But in this film, everyone was hanging out to begin with,
Speaker 1: and we're given no explanation why that would be, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think there are a number of reasons this happens.
Speaker 1: Number one is what I was talking about earlier. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the bug fights mentality, Like you you want
Speaker 1: to see different human cultural archetypes being faced with violent
Speaker 1: struggle or extreme circumstances with that kind of like bug
Speaker 1: fights or or video game unit versus unit mentality. Is
Speaker 1: just kind of a basic curiosity about like how does
Speaker 1: this one work? But there's another version of it, I
Speaker 1: think that is sort of there at the core too,
Speaker 1: which is the dead teenager. Movies of the eighties are often,
Speaker 1: in essence clumsy and vulgar morality plays, and as such,
Speaker 1: in a way, you get them trying to sort of
Speaker 1: recreate the dynamics of the Canterbury Tales. So whereas in
Speaker 1: the Canterbury Tales you would might get the Knight's Tale
Speaker 1: and the Partner's Tale and the Wife of Bath, here
Speaker 1: you get the Jock's tail and the punk's tale and
Speaker 1: the nerds tale and uh, and those are the little
Speaker 1: vignettes you see them them go through before they finally
Speaker 1: meet their their end at the ultimate confrontation with the
Speaker 1: monster or mad slasher or whatever it is. I would
Speaker 1: have liked to have seen Rich's Tale. I guess we
Speaker 1: do see Rich's Tale to a certain extent here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of rich rich see Partner's Tale sort of right,
Speaker 1: but also Miller's Tale one of one of the good
Speaker 1: humorous ones. But I totally agree with you. It works
Speaker 1: better when there is some kind of external circumstance that
Speaker 1: can assemble people who are are not naturally friends. But
Speaker 1: in this movie, yeah, it's just like, well, they're all
Speaker 1: hanging out together for no for no reason, they appear
Speaker 1: to hate each other. Yeah, yeah, there there's there's tension
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. Yeah, but we don't really know
Speaker 1: why there's it's not explained, but it's the kind of
Speaker 1: tension that eventually erupts into a full fledged fist fight
Speaker 1: between two of the characters. In fact, between Duke and
Speaker 1: the older guy who I thought was maybe a a
Speaker 1: manager of some sort. They have like an epic quiet
Speaker 1: man asked, fist fight. Yes, and I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: why it occurs. Oh, man, that seems good. Oh and
Speaker 1: and like their girlfriends are they're just like watching them fight,
Speaker 1: and one of them is like, should we stop them?
Speaker 1: And the other one is basically like, no, just let
Speaker 1: them go. And if they've been to set by multiple
Speaker 1: monsters at this point so yeah, it's just not a
Speaker 1: good time for a fist fight. Okay, well, are you
Speaker 1: ready to talk a little more about the plot? Yes,
Speaker 1: such as it is, let's let's get into the plot.
Speaker 1: Uh what So. One of the first things that had
Speaker 1: me laughing in this movie was, I know, this was
Speaker 1: the title of the original film before it was recut
Speaker 1: and supplemented by the additional footage, but this credit was
Speaker 1: given to Twisted Souls inc. Twisted Souls Incorporated. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. That sounds like a like a tattoo company
Speaker 1: or something. I'm not sure what exactly, but so you
Speaker 1: get an opening on a graveyard is very Edwards style
Speaker 1: graveyard with some kind of flimsy looking tombstone owns, and
Speaker 1: then there is a stone crypt cover on one of
Speaker 1: the graves that starts throbbing like it's stretching and deforming.
Speaker 1: And immediately I thought, oh, that that's a nice special effect.
Speaker 1: I think that could be similar that there's a similar
Speaker 1: effect actually in the original Nightmare on Elm Street, where
Speaker 1: you remember the scene where a character is lying on
Speaker 1: a bed dreaming and then on the wall behind them,
Speaker 1: like Freddie's head sort of stretches out through the wall,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm not sure, but I think that
Speaker 1: was accomplished just by using like a sheet, a flexible
Speaker 1: sheet as the wall. And then so you know, the
Speaker 1: actor sticks their head in there, and it looks like
Speaker 1: the wall is actually bending around some surface, some object
Speaker 1: coming out of it. I think the same thing is
Speaker 1: probably going on to the grave here. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a great scene in in Nightmare. That was a great scene. Yea.
Speaker 1: It reminds me a lot of the short story The
Speaker 1: Yellow Wallpaper. Okay, what was Spooky's actually based on an
Speaker 1: early script treatment by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I think I
Speaker 1: recall reading that somewhere. Um, now we so we keep
Speaker 1: seeing this graveyard right out in front of the big
Speaker 1: White Mansion. There's the big White mansion. It's the house
Speaker 1: for the movie. Looks kind of like the White House
Speaker 1: because it has these pillars out there. Well, it does
Speaker 1: have an interesting history because it turns out this is
Speaker 1: the John Ja homestead. That's right, What a bizarre connection.
Speaker 1: So this Spooky's, the movie with fart zombies, was filmed
Speaker 1: at the the the ancestral home of John j. One
Speaker 1: of the US founding fathers, the first Chief Justice of
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this when I watched the movie, but
Speaker 1: it made me think back on it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: could this be interpreted as containing any federalist propaganda? I
Speaker 1: couldn't really, I couldn't really make that work. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: so we'll keep seeing. This is the setting. They show
Speaker 1: you a lot of the setting, and then it cuts
Speaker 1: to this dude in white glove sitting doctor claws style,
Speaker 1: so it's a high back chair. He has got his
Speaker 1: back to the camera, he's got his hand on a
Speaker 1: cane and white gloves. He's got a big old ring on,
Speaker 1: and he is talking to a winter green coffin and
Speaker 1: he says, I convade no longer. The Vinyl Foolish victims
Speaker 1: will be here very soon. So just doing a really
Speaker 1: excellent accent that kind of comes and goes. He doesn't
Speaker 1: always have the accent. Yeah, it's not very consistent. There
Speaker 1: are times where it feels like it's fifty Low Pan
Speaker 1: and fifty Major Todd from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Speaker 1: You know, it's he kind of he's going for some
Speaker 1: sort of a German accent, like that's what he's aiming for,
Speaker 1: but there's a bit of drift to it. The vinyl
Speaker 1: foolish victims. Yeah, yeah, well actually that maybe maybe that
Speaker 1: connects more thematically than I realized, because of course Duke
Speaker 1: does turn out to be wearing vinyl clothes, so at
Speaker 1: least one of the victims is vinyl in nature. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true. But okay, so we get a read on
Speaker 1: the Warlocks plan. This guy is going to sacrifice victims
Speaker 1: in his house in order to resurrect his his wife,
Speaker 1: I think, and and we're led to believe at the
Speaker 1: time that like you know, they loved each other dearly,
Speaker 1: but she has long departed and and she will soon
Speaker 1: be raised and they will be happy together forever. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh and alright, so it seems that at this
Speaker 1: point in the film, like like all right, let's see
Speaker 1: how this occurs. Let's see how this this this happens. Uh,
Speaker 1: then we cut two is that this might be movie
Speaker 1: B or movie C. At this point we cut to
Speaker 1: a guy running around in the woods who looks like
Speaker 1: a cast member from Cats. He looks like a jellical
Speaker 1: cat going to the jelical ball, and he has a
Speaker 1: hook for a hand Yeah, some sort of a wear
Speaker 1: cat with a hook for a hand in this kind
Speaker 1: of strange costume, running around looking, you know, very creepy.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not saying that these are you know,
Speaker 1: it's not thriller level of of creature creation here, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty good and I am legitimately creeped out by
Speaker 1: this guy. Oh and we also get the cast member
Speaker 1: of Cats observing a kid with a backpack who's just
Speaker 1: wandering around by himself in the woods. Is this billy
Speaker 1: or is he just a billy? I think it's billy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you get to movie See I think um.
Speaker 1: And then in movie Cee, we meet our implausible friend
Speaker 1: group which are driving around the woods in two different cars.
Speaker 1: Car number one consists of a bad boy driver. This
Speaker 1: is Duke. He's wearing his black plastic clothes. He's being
Speaker 1: an aggressive jerk from moment one, just screaming at his
Speaker 1: passengers about spilling beer on the upholstery while he's sort
Speaker 1: of zipping around in the dark. And then you see
Speaker 1: car number two. The driver is this much older guy
Speaker 1: who reads as like, uh, the ultimate narc, hanging out
Speaker 1: with these teens around him. He's wearing a suit and tie.
Speaker 1: He has at least fifteen years older than everyone else.
Speaker 1: I thought he was supposed to be somebody's dad, but
Speaker 1: I think he's just a member of this friend group
Speaker 1: who looks like he could be their ad. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I it's never explained, And based on some of the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes interviews that I saw, I don't think
Speaker 1: they knew either. This was not something where like they
Speaker 1: cut out some scenes that explains something. No, it's just
Speaker 1: it's just this is what they was put together, and
Speaker 1: they had no idea what their connections were supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And there's immediately a a rivalry between this guy. We
Speaker 1: find out his name is Peter and Duke. The drivers
Speaker 1: of the two cards don't like each other. Peters talking
Speaker 1: about Duke, he says, I told you we shouldn't have
Speaker 1: followed him first. He starts a fight at that party,
Speaker 1: gets us all thrown out, embarrasses the hell out of us.
Speaker 1: Then he gets us lost out here in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere. So I guess Duke's calling the shots. They're
Speaker 1: all just they're riding for Duke and Duke. Duke is
Speaker 1: not is not proving his worth. Duke is leading them astray. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's so ridiculous. I can't even begin to
Speaker 1: follow it. I guess part of it is the problem
Speaker 1: of having this many monsters in a film. You need
Speaker 1: not one, but two car loads of people to serve
Speaker 1: as victims, and and then you get this kind of
Speaker 1: a situation. Yeah, I guess that's true. Some some movies
Speaker 1: get around that with a van or just hey yeah,
Speaker 1: I just have two groups. You know, there's the one van,
Speaker 1: there's the the other I mean troll to sort of
Speaker 1: managed this right, or the family. And then you had
Speaker 1: the like the boyfriend and his his crew that were
Speaker 1: coming in another vehicle. Uh, they don't have to know
Speaker 1: each other before they get to the house. If you
Speaker 1: just serve them up to a buffet of monsters, they
Speaker 1: could just both arrive at the house. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess they just wanted to have lots of dynamic dialogue
Speaker 1: between all these these people. Uh. And then so we
Speaker 1: then we got back to Billy. I guess this is
Speaker 1: a movie to or b B plot. Um, he's in
Speaker 1: the woods eating a snack cake by himself, and then
Speaker 1: he gets startled by a guy wearing the Denham tuxedo
Speaker 1: who's like, hey, give an old man a light and
Speaker 1: it's very creepy, uh though the guy is not old. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the kid gives him a light. Why does
Speaker 1: this kid kid have a lighter? I don't know. And
Speaker 1: then the guys like go home, and the kids like, no,
Speaker 1: I have plans, big plans. And it turns out his
Speaker 1: parents forgot his thirteenth birthday and that's why he ran
Speaker 1: away from home. So he's just running around in the woods.
Speaker 1: And then the kid walks away from the guy. And
Speaker 1: then the guy in the woods as the kid walks away,
Speaker 1: is just immediately killed by the jelical cat. He gets
Speaker 1: like slashes on his face, like while the kid is
Speaker 1: still in frame walking away. It's yeah, it's such a
Speaker 1: weird series of events because this yet this kid runaway
Speaker 1: kid in in you know, running into a drifter in
Speaker 1: a way that feels like sort of a slice of American,
Speaker 1: a kind of tail, right, But then the drifter is
Speaker 1: just just torn to pieces by the by the wear cat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then so we get a bunch more stuff with
Speaker 1: the witch plot a plot I guess or b plot
Speaker 1: with the one with the warlock trying to resurrect his wife. Um,
Speaker 1: we start seeing his face and I got man, this
Speaker 1: is a I dry warlock. His face is just caked
Speaker 1: with some kind of powder. He needs moisturizer. It is.
Speaker 1: It's bad. Yeah. But we also get to see his
Speaker 1: his wife in the coffin and she kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a blond win owner rider. Yeah. But eventually we
Speaker 1: cut back to the party, party boys, the party kids
Speaker 1: in the cars. They're they're driving around. Eventually they get
Speaker 1: blocked by an obstruction in the road. I think I
Speaker 1: think bust for Jones throws a tree branch on the
Speaker 1: road in front of Duke's car and then they have
Speaker 1: to stop and move it. And uh and Peter Mr
Speaker 1: Nark gets out of his car and he's like, listen, Duke,
Speaker 1: we've been driving around for two hours in circles, getting
Speaker 1: nowhere fast. And then Duke says, right, let's get out
Speaker 1: of this place. And then uh, I wrote this exchange
Speaker 1: down because this was good. Peter says, what are we
Speaker 1: doing now? Duke says, we're partying, man, something you're too
Speaker 1: old to appreciate. Huh. If any of you people want
Speaker 1: to come have some fun, come with us. And then
Speaker 1: Peter says, this is ridiculous. Do you even know where
Speaker 1: you're going, And Duke says, yeah, I'm going nuts. I'm
Speaker 1: going nuts because I gotta stand here and listen to
Speaker 1: you so snappy, so snappy. That's that's some some nmit
Speaker 1: material right there. That's like as sit back from the
Speaker 1: typewriter and kind of like go ah, yeah, alright, But
Speaker 1: we come back to the kid. We come back to
Speaker 1: Billy wandering around. He's going to find the White House
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, he wanders around, he finds the White House.
Speaker 1: He goes inside, of course, because you know horror movie logic,
Speaker 1: you just come across what appears to be an abandoned
Speaker 1: house that is not your house, and you just go in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's you know, we've talked about tales.
Speaker 1: So many old tales involved leaving the trail or you know,
Speaker 1: entering into the wild place where you're not supposed to go,
Speaker 1: and in stories that involve a haunted house. And essentially
Speaker 1: this is a haunted house picture. Um, it's just haunted
Speaker 1: with random monsters instead of ghosts. Um. It's like people
Speaker 1: are drawn to it. People will find a reason to
Speaker 1: go into that haunted house, be it for shelter or
Speaker 1: for treasure, or in this case, um with with with
Speaker 1: the main characters for the potential reality of partying right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and actually the kid also goes into the house
Speaker 1: with the for with partying in mind, because apparently so
Speaker 1: his parents forgot it was his birthday, that's why he
Speaker 1: ran away from home. He wanders into the house. Uh there.
Speaker 1: Oh at this point there's also this is when we
Speaker 1: start seeing a jawa running around just like a like
Speaker 1: a child in a in a in a brown hooded cloak.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Billy the kid, he is in the house
Speaker 1: and he walks into a room full of birthday party
Speaker 1: streamers and sad half inflated balloons, and he goes cool.
Speaker 1: He says, hey, a surprise party, so he didn't forget
Speaker 1: after all, This is really great. So the again, the
Speaker 1: logic of this is that this boy thinks his parents
Speaker 1: through him a surprise birthday party in a random house
Speaker 1: that he walked into in the woods. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: he opens a box that he thinks contains a bowling ball,
Speaker 1: but in fact it's a head and it is the
Speaker 1: Warlock's head, and he goes, happy birthday, Billy, mohaha ha
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, of course there you go but between
Speaker 1: the the old Warlock who we we find out his
Speaker 1: name is Creon. Creon, Yeah, Creon and Billy. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: have this kind of uh discount Mike and the Tall
Speaker 1: Man vibe from Phantasm, you know, creepy old man who's
Speaker 1: mysterious and seems to command supernatural powers. And oh and
Speaker 1: there's of course there are jawa s creatures in both films.
Speaker 1: Though of course Phantasm is on certainly on several levels
Speaker 1: ahead of this, uh, you know, an order of magnitude
Speaker 1: or two above Spookies in terms of quality. But the
Speaker 1: thing you can always say on behalf of Spookies is
Speaker 1: Spookies has more variety. Uh you know. Uh, the Phantasm
Speaker 1: may have like three year so interesting kinds of monsters.
Speaker 1: Spookies has at least nine. Right. So of course, eventually
Speaker 1: the party kids arrive at the house and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's a house. Let's go inside and see if there's
Speaker 1: a party. Uh. Again, this is not the only I
Speaker 1: gotta say, this is not the only movie where this happens.
Speaker 1: This is sort of standard eighties horror movie logic. You
Speaker 1: just arrive at a place and you think there might
Speaker 1: be a party there, and so you go inside and
Speaker 1: try to party, right, And I think Rich has brought
Speaker 1: like snacks and beer, right, that's another part of it.
Speaker 1: So they have brought a certain amount of party with them.
Speaker 1: He has red stripe, and he has chips, and he's
Speaker 1: consuming them. In almost every scene from here on out.
Speaker 1: He's ultimately an optimist here, like like, this is not
Speaker 1: the party we intended to go to, but we're going
Speaker 1: to have a party here. We are going to enjoy
Speaker 1: ourselves in this just obviously haunted house. There's a weird
Speaker 1: sequence after this where the catman chases Billy birthday boy
Speaker 1: Billy around, chases him outside, and then like buries him alive.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, like yeah, Like watching this for the
Speaker 1: first time and not really knowing anything about the production,
Speaker 1: you're thinking, well, Billy's going to be around for a while,
Speaker 1: but no, the wear a cat ambushes him like like
Speaker 1: massacures his face like squat, you know, just I don't
Speaker 1: know if he uses the hook or just his cat clause,
Speaker 1: but swipes him across the face. There's blood. Billy falls
Speaker 1: into a Doug grave and then the cat starts burying
Speaker 1: him alive and buries him alive, and you never see
Speaker 1: Billy again. What. Uh, yeah, this plotline does not return.
Speaker 1: It's just like a like thirteen year old child does
Speaker 1: get killed like at the beginning of this movie, and
Speaker 1: then it doesn't connect to anything. It didn't connect anything.
Speaker 1: Like really speaking, you don't have your you don't have
Speaker 1: a child be your sort of throwaway victim unless there
Speaker 1: are other child characters involved and they have a relationship
Speaker 1: with that child, or you know, the adults have a
Speaker 1: relationship with that child. It generally needs to mean something
Speaker 1: for that to take place, and in this movie it
Speaker 1: means absolutely nothing. It just seems like an idea somebody
Speaker 1: started having and then they just got there like Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know where I'm going with that, I'm done
Speaker 1: with that, onto other things. Yeah, And of course this
Speaker 1: was part of the bit that was filmed afterwards to
Speaker 1: complete the film, so we can ultimately excuse it that way.
Speaker 1: But within the context of the film itself as a
Speaker 1: as a solid, you know, sort of cohesive viewing experience, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's very alarming. Okay. So now you've got the
Speaker 1: party kids in the house, and I guess maybe we
Speaker 1: should mention who all of them are because again, like
Speaker 1: clearly you're supposed to be getting I think a list
Speaker 1: of types, you know, your archetypes. So you've got Duke.
Speaker 1: He's the bad boy, he's the he's the tough guy, bully,
Speaker 1: wearing plastic bad boy clothes. And then Duke's girlfriend's name
Speaker 1: is Linda. She's his his long suffering girlfriend, and she's
Speaker 1: dressed in these bright eighties colors and spins a lot
Speaker 1: of the movie rolling her eyes at duke behavior. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like, oh, brother, that's our Duke.
Speaker 1: Then you've got Peter, the you know, the seventy five
Speaker 1: year old, uh accountant, who I guess maybe you might
Speaker 1: think was one of the protagonists. Uh. At first, I
Speaker 1: thought the protagonist of the film was going to be
Speaker 1: Peter's girlfriend, Megan, because she at least initially has that
Speaker 1: sensible protagonist energy in a in a horror movie with
Speaker 1: the group like this. But I noticed more and more
Speaker 1: as the movie goes on that that evaporates, and then
Speaker 1: she mainly becomes characterized by like just making statements of
Speaker 1: fatalistic despair. She just says things like there's no escape,
Speaker 1: every one of us is going to die. Wow. So
Speaker 1: she starts out as the Sigourney Weaver potential Sigourney Weaver
Speaker 1: the picture and becomes the Bill Paxton at the picture. Yes,
Speaker 1: Megan Yeah. The descent of Megan Um, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: a supremely positive and optimistic force with them. The film
Speaker 1: is Rich the jokester who's got a puppet who loves
Speaker 1: beer and chips. Uh, and he just sort of like
Speaker 1: he bumbles through every scene. There are moments where he
Speaker 1: shows flashes of fear, but there are other times where
Speaker 1: he's being like attacked by a monster and he's just like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: come on, you know, if you're gonna kill me, bring
Speaker 1: it on. And then we got a couple of characters
Speaker 1: named Adrian and Dave. Adrian is I think supposed to
Speaker 1: be a British fancy fashion lady wearing this like cool
Speaker 1: cream colored jacket, and her boyfriend Dave is like also
Speaker 1: I think supposed to be a kind of like fancy
Speaker 1: rich guy. He's an allergic man with sinus problems. He's
Speaker 1: wearing a khaki jacket. I think these two are supposed
Speaker 1: to be fussy and fancy. They're like rich city people
Speaker 1: who are just over it and they want to get
Speaker 1: a cab back to soho or whatever. Yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: kind of what the what are the characters in um
Speaker 1: Christmas Vacation? Todd and Margot? They're sort of the Todd
Speaker 1: and Margot of this, Okay, Yeah, they're kind of like
Speaker 1: American psycho people. Yeah. Now she's played by Charlotte Alexandria,
Speaker 1: who is a French actor who apparently did a lot
Speaker 1: of fairly diverse smattering of film in Europe before coming
Speaker 1: over and playing this. And in the documentary they mentioned
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this actually verified anywhere, but they said
Speaker 1: that she played the Virgin Mary in the Life of Brian. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I don't know about that. Uh. And then the
Speaker 1: last two people there is Carol, who's got curly blonde
Speaker 1: hair and seems like maybe she is of like a
Speaker 1: spiritual persuasion. You get the vibe like she could do
Speaker 1: your horoscope, I think. And then you've got Carol's boyfriend, Lewis,
Speaker 1: who has no characteristics that I could identify except that
Speaker 1: he wears denim and I think he's played by somebody
Speaker 1: who did some effects for the movie. Yes, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of that and this, especially when
Speaker 1: you get into the monsters people in the monster suits
Speaker 1: are not are not necessarily designated actors. They are also
Speaker 1: involved in other other parts of the production. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: here's where you get into like that scene I talked
Speaker 1: about earlier where they're just like finding things and Duke
Speaker 1: is just continually turning his attention from one destructive project
Speaker 1: to another. Uh. He's like prying open doors and smashing
Speaker 1: stuff and uh. And at one point somebody's like Duke,
Speaker 1: stop doing that, and he goes like, I don't care
Speaker 1: about this old creep joint. Uh. But he gets the
Speaker 1: door open and and he gets attacked by a desiccated corpse.
Speaker 1: It's just like a corpse falls out of the closet
Speaker 1: and he's like, nah, it's fake. The thing about that corpse,
Speaker 1: this is just so this Yeah, this is just a
Speaker 1: scene where the corpse falls out of the closet on him.
Speaker 1: But later on in the film we see that this
Speaker 1: corpse is completely articulated and and can be brought to life.
Speaker 1: There's there's so much love and uh and detail that
Speaker 1: went into the creation of the various monsters in this
Speaker 1: So I I will say that that is That's the
Speaker 1: best thing I can say about this film is that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of love went into the creation of these
Speaker 1: various zombies and corpses and uh, monsters and grim reapers,
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be. You know it has. So
Speaker 1: after this they get into a wegi aboard scene, and
Speaker 1: this is sort of when all hell breaks loose, right
Speaker 1: Like they start they find a wegi board. Of course,
Speaker 1: Carol is the one who's like, oh, I know how
Speaker 1: this thing works, that it's a tool. She says, it's
Speaker 1: not a game, it's a tool the dead can reach
Speaker 1: out to us. And so they play with the wig
Speaker 1: aboard and the Warlock ends up telling them answers to
Speaker 1: questions through it, like they ask, will we ever leave
Speaker 1: this house? And he says no and then um and
Speaker 1: then the warlock transforms Carol into a demon by making
Speaker 1: a vein on his forehead throb and the camera zooms
Speaker 1: in on the vein on his forehead, and then Carol
Speaker 1: turns into like one of the demons from Evil Dad. Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's overtly evil dead ask and uh and oh,
Speaker 1: and I should point out the wigi board has pictures
Speaker 1: of the various monsters on it, so I think the
Speaker 1: wegi board is supposed to be involved in the summoning
Speaker 1: or unleashing of this various monster, but we don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how or why that is the case. One thing
Speaker 1: I found funny is that the warlock in this movie
Speaker 1: keeps making chess metaphors for what he's doing, and they're
Speaker 1: often inappropriate or I don't see how they apply to
Speaker 1: what he's talking about. Like hes like it's just like
Speaker 1: a game of chess. But he's referring to trapping everybody
Speaker 1: in a house. Yeah, do you have to trap your opponent?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you you form traps for people
Speaker 1: in ChIL I don't know. It didn't seem super applicable. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's even enough there not aren't quite
Speaker 1: enough monsters to be an entire chess set anyway, right,
Speaker 1: But it's close, it's actually pretty close. But here's where
Speaker 1: you get to the standard. You know, you you probably
Speaker 1: if you've seen horror movies before, you know the format.
Speaker 1: After this, the the you know, all hell breaks loose.
Speaker 1: Various monsters are unleashed and the party crew barricade themselves
Speaker 1: inside the house, and they're gonna of course split up
Speaker 1: and get attacked one by one by by different types
Speaker 1: of monsters. I like how after they first barricade themselves inside, Peter,
Speaker 1: the older guy, he it seems he recognizes they have
Speaker 1: reached this point in the plot and then explains as much.
Speaker 1: He pretty much says, for the rest of the movie,
Speaker 1: we will now be picked off one by one. Yes.
Speaker 1: And so they split up, like Duke and Linda go
Speaker 1: one way, and they end up encountering some zombies that
Speaker 1: keep farting. Uh, we can talk about that if you want.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what to make of that scene. Peter
Speaker 1: and Meghan and Rich go another way, Dave and Adrian
Speaker 1: stay put. They encounter some gremlins. I think. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about those fart undies. Um, they're they're credited
Speaker 1: as being the Muckman. Even though they don't look particularly mucky.
Speaker 1: They look very dry to me, like sort of dry
Speaker 1: dog biscuit mummies. Yeah, crumbling and short, short, short crust. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's in a basement and they are wine casts.
Speaker 1: And ultimately they're defeated by melting them with wine, which
Speaker 1: is when the effect looks pretty good, I have to say.
Speaker 1: And the Muckman don't look bad add but clearly at
Speaker 1: some point in post production and I think the making
Speaker 1: of gets into this a little bit. They decided, well,
Speaker 1: let's add fart noises, and I think the rationale was
Speaker 1: they look kind of swamp thingy, so maybe swamp equals
Speaker 1: uh niquals fart noises. Yeah. But but it also reminds
Speaker 1: me of some behind the scenes stuff I heard about
Speaker 1: the cartoon Invader Zim where they were talking about putting
Speaker 1: together a scene and if they didn't feel like the
Speaker 1: scene was funny enough, they would just keep adding sound
Speaker 1: effects to it until they were satisfied. And so that's
Speaker 1: what this felt like to me. They were like they
Speaker 1: were thinking, this needs something, this needs something else. Maybe
Speaker 1: the answer is fart noises. It also reminds me of
Speaker 1: something I think I recall Stephen King writing years ago
Speaker 1: about how when he's writing a scene and he and
Speaker 1: he's trying to make it really scary and he can
Speaker 1: tell it's just not scary, and he doesn't he can't
Speaker 1: figure out how to make it work. Then he just
Speaker 1: dials up the grossness factor. It's sort of like to
Speaker 1: to salvage something that he can't otherwise figure out how
Speaker 1: to make work, just make it disgusting, right, And so
Speaker 1: that's what they go for here. I don't think it works.
Speaker 1: It just comes off as kind of awkward and dumb. Um.
Speaker 1: But I have to say the muckman themselves, I don't
Speaker 1: think they look bad. I think they look pretty good,
Speaker 1: which is, you know the same thing I'd say for
Speaker 1: most of the creatures in this Well, yeah, I'd say
Speaker 1: that's the best thing about the movie is at least
Speaker 1: a solid two thirds of the monsters look great. And
Speaker 1: you never know what you're gonna get. It's just it's
Speaker 1: it will be totally unexpected. Uh So, another kind of
Speaker 1: encounter we get is that the rich, fussy people, Dave
Speaker 1: and Adrian, they're they're they're sort of being catty at
Speaker 1: each other. They're at each other's throats, and then they
Speaker 1: get groblin. They wait, sorry, is the term gromlin or groblin? Um?
Speaker 1: I say grom Land, but it's a made up word,
Speaker 1: so you can certainly say groblin instead. No, No, I
Speaker 1: want to respect your your your your terminology here gromlin. Yes,
Speaker 1: So they get Gromlin. They get attacked by a little
Speaker 1: green rubber gremlin merman with a like fish gator tail.
Speaker 1: Uh And there is a long scene of Adrian fighting
Speaker 1: the Gromlins while synth Funeral Music plays music choice very weird.
Speaker 1: It's like a shopping mall version of Mozart's Requiem while
Speaker 1: she's struggling with this little rubber critter. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's it's actually not a bad scene. Like she's
Speaker 1: she's good in this fighting making it. It's one of
Speaker 1: these where a person is often fighting, um, a puppet
Speaker 1: or fighting just a prop, you know, and acting like
Speaker 1: it's attacking them. But she she does a good job
Speaker 1: with the scene. And then also ultimately the Gromlin looks
Speaker 1: pretty good. It Uh, it's well designed. It. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not like it's not Hobgoblin's level. Um, it's maybe a
Speaker 1: little above that. Yeah, i'd say above Hobgoblins. Definitely below Rimlin's.
Speaker 1: Maybe on the level of ghoulies. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's fair. Oh No. At some point in here we
Speaker 1: get an update on the Warlock framing narrative, which which
Speaker 1: is this probably won't be all that surprising, But it
Speaker 1: turns out the lady in the coffin, who is being
Speaker 1: revived by the evil magic of the Warlock, does not
Speaker 1: want to come back from the dead. She does not
Speaker 1: like the Warlock guy, and she was just fine with
Speaker 1: her eternal slumber, not interested in his his satanic, you know,
Speaker 1: magical deal, and she's just like, get me out of here.
Speaker 1: Sometimes dead is better, you know. Yeah. Oh, but but
Speaker 1: to mention some of the other monster scenes, which which
Speaker 1: are mostly pretty great. H So Adrian gets attacked by
Speaker 1: so she beats the Gromlin she like hits it with
Speaker 1: the fire poker I think, and crushes it with a
Speaker 1: bookshelf or something, and then she runs off. Then she
Speaker 1: gets attacked by a different creature. This time it is
Speaker 1: the creature from the Electric Contestines Lagoon. Very nice looking monster,
Speaker 1: very mutac very creative. I don't I can't think of
Speaker 1: an other film where a monster uses like belly tentacles
Speaker 1: to not only grab but also electrocute of victim and
Speaker 1: in doing so melt her face off with like a
Speaker 1: stop motion effect, which is really nice. There's another monster
Speaker 1: we get to see I mentioned earlier, like the the
Speaker 1: zombie Baboon bride Hag, which is where the Warlock lady
Speaker 1: escapes or you know, the warlocks bride escapes and she
Speaker 1: she gets away from him, wanders into some catacombs and
Speaker 1: then she gets attacked by this baboon creature. Yeah, puppeteer
Speaker 1: is clearly in shot in the lower left hand corner
Speaker 1: of the screen at one point. Um but yeah, still
Speaker 1: still a fun sequence, but probably one of the ultimately
Speaker 1: one of the weaker looking puppet creatures that we encounter,
Speaker 1: and also one that doesn't I really don't know what
Speaker 1: exactly are we going for here now. Somehow, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Duke and Peter end up in a fist fight.
Speaker 1: The characters reunite. Megan's like, um, well we're all going
Speaker 1: to die and that's just how it is, and uh,
Speaker 1: and Duke is like I want I want to fight,
Speaker 1: and Peters like okay buck oh and so they just
Speaker 1: starts slugging it out and uh and does this fight
Speaker 1: end with Duke dead? I don't recall. I do not
Speaker 1: remember either. Yeah, I don't remember what actually kills Duke.
Speaker 1: I think the Grim Reaper does. Oh yeah, because the yeah,
Speaker 1: like a statue of the Grim Reaper comes to life
Speaker 1: and then it attacks them. I think it kills Duke
Speaker 1: and Peter. The old guy literally dives right through a
Speaker 1: closed door like bust st Yeah. Yeah, it's always insane
Speaker 1: enough when someone like throws himself through glass in one
Speaker 1: of these films, which yeah, I mean people cann and
Speaker 1: do throw themselves through glass sometimes if the circumstances right,
Speaker 1: but in movies it takes on an entirely different air.
Speaker 1: People often pop up completely unscathed. They do it with
Speaker 1: just on the fly, without a lot of thought. But
Speaker 1: in this case, it's not even a window. It's a
Speaker 1: wooden door. Yeah, that was a nice detail, fortunately made
Speaker 1: completely out of balsa wood. Uh. The jokester rich at
Speaker 1: some point he thought he was going to get killed
Speaker 1: earlier by one of the evil dead zombies, but then
Speaker 1: he just keeps wandering around with his beer and his chips,
Speaker 1: and he eventually wanders into it like a lady leads
Speaker 1: him into a cave, and then she transforms into a
Speaker 1: giant spider so I think she's supposed to be like
Speaker 1: a like a spider woman creature of some type, and
Speaker 1: she she sucks all his fluids out, which is a
Speaker 1: nice effect. It is. It's a nice effect. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a fun sequence, but also one that raises questions
Speaker 1: about sort of the the energy economy of this film,
Speaker 1: because a lot of work went into this they have
Speaker 1: like a custom Spider Woman layer. There there's a different
Speaker 1: actor playing this sort of Japanese Jora Gumo spider woman,
Speaker 1: and she doesn't just she doesn't just like you know,
Speaker 1: suddenly reveal, oh she has half a spider face or
Speaker 1: suddenly she's a spider No. There there's like five stages
Speaker 1: to this transformation, uh, each one involving some some either
Speaker 1: impressive or ambitious uh practical effects so uh and that's
Speaker 1: not even counting the rich head that has then deflated
Speaker 1: like a balloon when he sucked dry. Yeah, it likes
Speaker 1: so much like the content is severely like eyebrow raising
Speaker 1: but really great effects. But likewise, with the very next scene,
Speaker 1: which is the Grim Reaper fight on the balcony, like
Speaker 1: the old guy Peter ends up fighting this, it's just
Speaker 1: death personified with the scythe This is this is one
Speaker 1: that definitely reminded me of the key m Peel Grimlin's
Speaker 1: to Um pitch meeting skit. Uh. There's the one where
Speaker 1: the guy recommends that Hulk Hogan be in the picture
Speaker 1: and they're like, whoa hold the phone, You're you're talking
Speaker 1: Hulk Hogan, you're pro wrestler. It's it's similar to that.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, we're gonna put the Grim Reaper in this.
Speaker 1: The personification of death a highly symbolic character that is
Speaker 1: very rarely actually incorporated into some sort of a film.
Speaker 1: I mean there are examples of this, obviously, including stuff
Speaker 1: like Bill and Tad or or I guess what. The
Speaker 1: Final Destination films to a certain extent without that character
Speaker 1: like really appearing on the screen. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: like the Grim Reaper is, is not a physical entity
Speaker 1: that you talk about people encountering, unless you're dealing with
Speaker 1: a property that is being fairly satirical or extremely symbolic.
Speaker 1: Well wait, sorry, thinking back to the Final Destination movies,
Speaker 1: does Tony Todd actually play the Grim Reaper or just
Speaker 1: a guy who knows about the Grim Reaper? Oh? I'm
Speaker 1: not sure on this. I have a very vague memory
Speaker 1: of these films, and I don't think I saw all
Speaker 1: of them. Tony Todd, of course, as the actor played
Speaker 1: Candy Man uh and is is a great actor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember if he's just kind of the wise
Speaker 1: man who knows the ways of death or his death embodied.
Speaker 1: I recall, like several of those movies have a scene
Speaker 1: where the characters go they meet him and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's up. And he's like and he tells them like
Speaker 1: facts about death. He's like, I don't know, He's just like,
Speaker 1: did you know? Um? I recall in the first one
Speaker 1: he refers to the Grim Reaper as a mac daddy. Now,
Speaker 1: is Tony Todd? I can't remember. Is Tony Todd wearing
Speaker 1: like a black robe? Does he have like a scythe
Speaker 1: pin on his shirt or anything? I don't recall the
Speaker 1: capacity in which he has encountered in the later films
Speaker 1: and the first film, I think he plays a guy
Speaker 1: who is interpreted as a mortuary worker. Like they break
Speaker 1: into a morgue where one of the people is being
Speaker 1: kept and he's just there and uh, and he tells
Speaker 1: them facts about death and then tells them that like
Speaker 1: they can't escape death because death is a mac daddy. Well,
Speaker 1: this thing, I mean, it's a great cameo. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: Grim Reaper, however, can be defeated. And the way they
Speaker 1: defeat him is pretty hilarious. Yeah. They like knocking. So
Speaker 1: Peter I think punches him or somehow knocks him off
Speaker 1: the balcony and then he explodes just like explodes in
Speaker 1: a giant fireball. He's made of gasoline. Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: truck that has gone off a cliff in an action
Speaker 1: film or a Mad Max movie or something, and it
Speaker 1: just burst into a just a big fireball at the bottom.
Speaker 1: That's what death does when you knock him off a roof. So, uh,
Speaker 1: there's some more, just sort of like wrapping up the
Speaker 1: plot kind of stuff. There is a scene at the
Speaker 1: end that I gotta say, as as much as I
Speaker 1: enjoyed some of the monster scenes early on, the ending
Speaker 1: scene was excruciating. It just goes on and on and on.
Speaker 1: It's basically a chase where uh, the woman who has
Speaker 1: been awoken from her eternal slumber by the sacrifices within
Speaker 1: the house and just trying to escape her like evil
Speaker 1: warlock husband. She runs out of the house and then
Speaker 1: zombies keep attacking her and she just keeps running from them,
Speaker 1: and it's playing this driving synth music that's kind of
Speaker 1: like good and getting you pumped up at first, but
Speaker 1: then it just goes on and on and on and on,
Speaker 1: and I thought I was gonna start screaming. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: I had a similar experience like I've been I was
Speaker 1: kind of really more enthusiastic about these monsters and some
Speaker 1: of the acting, but then this whole sequence hits and
Speaker 1: I begin to feel like a little weird, like a
Speaker 1: little nauseous, you know, like like it was it was
Speaker 1: getting psychedelic in the bad sense, like this scene is
Speaker 1: the brown acid, you know, Yes, And it did seem
Speaker 1: to go. I don't think it's actually that long. I
Speaker 1: think it's maybe it's less than ten minutes, but it
Speaker 1: just feels it's just dragging. It really drags. And then
Speaker 1: basically at the end we get our nice like sort
Speaker 1: of crazy dark ending where Creon finally comes bursting up
Speaker 1: through that grave, the pulsating grave from the beginning of
Speaker 1: the film. He's laughing maniacally. We cut to the Jawa
Speaker 1: child laughing maniacally, and then freeze frame on Creon laughing,
Speaker 1: and that's the real credits. Yes, and that's spookies. Spookies,
Speaker 1: you know. I can't stop thinking about your comparison of
Speaker 1: the Grim Reaper with with the Hulkster from from the
Speaker 1: Key and Peel skit Um. Something about that is connecting
Speaker 1: very strongly for me. Yeah, I mean, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: have the Grim Reaper in your picture. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to criticize the one thing that really works
Speaker 1: about the film, the monster buffet. Like the Grim Reaper
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be on the buffet. He like he
Speaker 1: he needs to be an entree that you order special,
Speaker 1: like maybe you have a side item with that. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, like this is the Grim Reaper.
Speaker 1: He's a big deal. He needs to be your your
Speaker 1: big bad uh. And instead of just one of the
Speaker 1: random things summoned by the Luigi board. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: could be part of the buffet, but at least needs
Speaker 1: to be a special part of the buffet. So it's
Speaker 1: not just like one more thing you scoop out of
Speaker 1: a steam tray. It is. It's the roast beef carving station,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like the special the the endpoint this
Speaker 1: like this is where the real stuff is. However, I
Speaker 1: will say the Grim Reaper looks pretty cool. Like all
Speaker 1: these you can you can question why these monsters are
Speaker 1: in it, but ultimately all the monsters are pretty fun
Speaker 1: to look at on screen when they show up. Uh,
Speaker 1: some of them look great, some of them look ambitious
Speaker 1: but but interesting. Uh. They are ultimately the stars of
Speaker 1: this picture. I want to be a reap of maniac
Speaker 1: have fun with my family and friends. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: is there anything you know? Sometimes we do a deeper
Speaker 1: read of some of the things that some of the
Speaker 1: aspects of a particular film. But this this film is
Speaker 1: kind of like a It's like a meta material that
Speaker 1: that resists any stain or um or or water, affi
Speaker 1: beads of fixing to it. Everything just runs off of it.
Speaker 1: There's not a aren't a lot of deep thoughts we
Speaker 1: can really have about Spookies, but that's all right. It
Speaker 1: wicks away cognition, it does. Yeah, don't watch this film
Speaker 1: if you want to want to have deep thoughts about
Speaker 1: virtually anything. But if you want to see some some
Speaker 1: kind of groovy monsters, it's it's worth taking a look at,
Speaker 1: which leads to our next point, where can you watch Spookies?
Speaker 1: Well again, Vinegar Syndrome put out an awesome blue ray
Speaker 1: of the movie, especially if you're a hardcore spooky fan.
Speaker 1: That's what you need to pick up. Uh. It's a
Speaker 1: four K restoration from the thirty five millimeter original camera
Speaker 1: negative pack full of special bonuses. But you can also
Speaker 1: stream this film via shutter or a MC yes, American
Speaker 1: movie Classics, because this is Spookies after all. Is there
Speaker 1: a Criterion Collection edition? And I'm sorry I keep making
Speaker 1: that joke. Vinegar syndrome is your Criterion addition for for
Speaker 1: films like this. I promise I'll stop now, Okay, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close the tomb on this
Speaker 1: one and and try and see let's shut But certainly
Speaker 1: we'll be back with another Weird House Cinema episode next Friday.
Speaker 1: I believe we're gonna be talking about a film of
Speaker 1: of superior quality, both objectively and subjectively speaking. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, you can check out all these episodes of
Speaker 1: Weird Hout Cinema that published on Friday's and the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We are primarily a
Speaker 1: science podcast, but we set aside most of the science
Speaker 1: on Fridays to discuss a weird film. Core episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, and on Monday. We do listener mail rerun
Speaker 1: on the weekend. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello. You can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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