Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And Hey,
Speaker 3: we're back from our break with a brand new episode
Speaker 3: of Weird House Cinema. Today we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen eighty four sci fi fantasy action anthology
Speaker 3: film The Dungeon Master aka Rage War aka the Charles Band.
Speaker 2: Sampler platter, that's right, and I think sampler platter is key. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll come back to this time and time again, but
Speaker 2: this movie really does feel like they are saying, Hey,
Speaker 2: what can what does Charles Band have to offer to you?
Speaker 2: Are you thinking of financing a load of mid budget
Speaker 2: genre film? Consider all that Empire Pictures has to.
Speaker 3: Offer exactly, consider all the props in costumes we already have.
Speaker 2: Yeah you need some desert apocalypse vehicles, we got them.
Speaker 2: Yeah you need some Gromlins, Oh we got gromlins.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, this movie has great gromlins. Now. I
Speaker 3: wonder if you were able to find out the answer
Speaker 3: to this, are the gromlins in this film also leftovers?
Speaker 3: The same way the Metal Storm props are reused or
Speaker 3: is it were these original monsters, Like did John Carl
Speaker 3: Beechler make original monsters?
Speaker 2: I don't know for certain on this, but I suspect
Speaker 2: Beekler created something custom here. I feel like Beechler's segment
Speaker 2: he is one of the he's one of the special
Speaker 2: effects guys in general for this picture, but also he
Speaker 2: wrote and directed one of the segments. I get the
Speaker 2: impression that he put a lot of energy into this,
Speaker 2: and I think these are this is a fresh Gromlin
Speaker 2: that we have.
Speaker 3: So this movie is sometimes build as an anthology film,
Speaker 3: and I think that is correct in a sense, but
Speaker 3: it could also be misleading because when you think of
Speaker 3: an anthology film, usually you think of like three to
Speaker 3: five self contained stories that each sort of have a beginning, middle,
Speaker 3: and end, and they are chained together by some kind
Speaker 3: of framing narrative. This is not like that. Instead, this
Speaker 3: is chaining together something like seven different roughly five minute
Speaker 3: little things in the movie they referred to as challenges.
Speaker 3: So the main premise here is that there is a
Speaker 3: man played by Jeffrey Byron who is so good at
Speaker 3: computers that the devil or some wizard that seems to
Speaker 3: be somewhat equivalent to the Devil says I'm going to
Speaker 3: challenge you to a series of contests, and each of
Speaker 3: these contests is by a different director affiliated with the
Speaker 3: Charles Band Cinematic Universe.
Speaker 2: It would kind of be like, and now that I
Speaker 2: think about this potential comparison, I really like this idea
Speaker 2: and I kind of hope someone does it. It's like
Speaker 2: if you did a film The Labors of Hercule, and
Speaker 2: each labor was a segment directed by a different director,
Speaker 2: written and directed by a different filmmaker, and at the
Speaker 2: end you had like a complete film. But it's also
Speaker 2: less than that because it's you can't really take each
Speaker 2: individual challenge or segment out of this movie and enjoy
Speaker 2: it on its own. For the most part, Icaus you
Speaker 2: sort of can, but like they're not really self contained units,
Speaker 2: and even as a whole, they don't necessarily build much
Speaker 2: one to the other. In fact, different cuts of the
Speaker 2: film have included them in different orders and it doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, this movie, also, I will say, has big
Speaker 3: written by a thirteen year old boy.
Speaker 2: Energy it does, which is one of its charms. It's
Speaker 2: like there is an there's an innocence to it in
Speaker 2: that regard, and it has this in common with a
Speaker 2: number I think of these sort of Charles Band produced
Speaker 2: pictures from this time period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's very much true. It has the sort
Speaker 3: of desires and sensibilities of like a thirteen year old
Speaker 3: Nintendo addict. But also it is a really fun movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, It's a terrifically fun film, full of goofy moments,
Speaker 2: ambitious special effects on a budget and a time constraint.
Speaker 2: I want to say, I want to say that this
Speaker 2: was all shot in like five weeks or something, you know,
Speaker 2: that makes sense, and it mostly good natured charm for
Speaker 2: the you know, on the whole. It's it's also a
Speaker 2: place where you have a lot of first time directors
Speaker 2: really going at it, guys who would continue to grow
Speaker 2: up in the Charles Band Empire pictures Full Moon Universe,
Speaker 2: and here they are like hitting the ground running, you know,
Speaker 2: doing the best they can. Again with limited resources, limited time,
Speaker 2: and having to work with the constraints of this picture.
Speaker 2: I will say, you know, again, very disjointed, challenge segments
Speaker 2: that don't necessarily build one to the next. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, this film takes place almost entirely within
Speaker 2: the dreamscape, and therefore it's almost kind of fitting that
Speaker 2: there is this. There's sometimes a feeling of like weird
Speaker 2: repetition that things don't make a lot of sense. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of dream logic, either intentional or unintentional.
Speaker 3: The solution to most of the challenges is the same,
Speaker 3: and it's not a very interesting one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, imagine if you were a dungeon master, as
Speaker 2: the title suggests, and the solution to all the puzzles
Speaker 2: who gave your players was blasted in the gym with
Speaker 2: a laser you know that would do.
Speaker 3: A little do a little beat boop on your computer
Speaker 3: and then it shoots a laser that was it.
Speaker 2: Was the seven more times than you got it.
Speaker 3: I think this movie should also be taken as a
Speaker 3: tribute to long suffering girlfriends everywhere. You know, they love
Speaker 3: their dude even though he's somewhat irritating and gets them
Speaker 3: into insanely unappealing situations, like Jeffrey Byron, this is the
Speaker 3: third time this week that your relationship with an artificial
Speaker 3: computer woman has gotten me kidnapped by the devil.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well, that kind of leads nicely to my elevator
Speaker 2: pitch for this is Ladies and gentlemen. The following contest
Speaker 2: is a seven round competition for the dominance of reality.
Speaker 2: In the Black Tides, representing magic and immortality, it's Mestima
Speaker 2: the Devil. In the red Shorts, the very short red
Speaker 2: running shorts, we have Paul Bradford representing computers and the
Speaker 2: teachings of Wayne Dyer and girlfriend having so ring the bell.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I'm ringing it. If you can't hear, I'm
Speaker 3: ringing it.
Speaker 2: All right. Let's you know, we don't have to promote
Speaker 2: the film. Let's let the trailer audio promote the film
Speaker 2: a little bit. I don't know if we'll run the
Speaker 2: whole thing. This one repeats itself a little bit, but
Speaker 2: let's have a taste.
Speaker 4: He is a warrior in a wasteland without mercy. He
Speaker 4: has survived where countless others have died. He has destroyed
Speaker 4: all that would kill. He is the only one who
Speaker 4: can face the challenges of.
Speaker 3: The Dungeon Master.
Speaker 4: You are a worthy of Doonet.
Speaker 2: Bring the Dark.
Speaker 3: The Excalibrate.
Speaker 4: A warrior trapped in a timeless void, locked in mortal
Speaker 4: combat against the Overlord, to the agonies of strange beasts
Speaker 4: and lost souls prepare for the end. The Dungeon Master
Speaker 4: rated PG.
Speaker 3: Thirty.
Speaker 2: All right, So the Dungeon Master. One word, how do
Speaker 2: you find it? How do you watch it for yourself?
Speaker 2: If you would like to? Well, For physical media enthusiasts,
Speaker 2: I highly recommend the excellent Aero Video Blu ray release
Speaker 2: from I Believe twenty twenty three, if you can find it.
Speaker 2: I rented it from Atlanta's own video drome, but it
Speaker 2: seems like it's harder to get a hold of right now.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's out of print or it's
Speaker 2: like there's some sort of rights thing or what have you,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't find a place where you could actually
Speaker 2: buy it.
Speaker 3: So I watched two different versions of this movie. The
Speaker 3: first time I saw it was a few weeks ago
Speaker 3: because a friend of mine showed it to me that
Speaker 3: was on some kind of disc. I don't know which
Speaker 3: disc release it was, but I figured it took me
Speaker 3: a while to figure out which cut I was looking
Speaker 3: at where, But originally I saw the theatrical cut, and
Speaker 3: then when we picked it for the show, I went
Speaker 3: back and rewatched it on to B which is the
Speaker 3: only mainstreaming option I'm aware of now where you can
Speaker 3: watch this movie. And it turned out that was a
Speaker 3: different cut of the film, the extended cut, which has
Speaker 3: a long sequence at the beginning, grossly violating the film's
Speaker 3: theatrical PG thirteen rating. And then also it has a
Speaker 3: different order of the challenges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. There are at least three main releases
Speaker 2: of the film, three main cuts. There's the US theatrical cut,
Speaker 2: there is the original Rage War cut that was the
Speaker 2: original title for the picture, and then there's the Euroage
Speaker 2: War cut. So the US theatrical cut, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: sadly chops off the excellent opening dream sequence directed by
Speaker 2: Charles Band in order to secure that precious PG thirteen rating.
Speaker 2: More on that sequence in a bit. The Euroage War
Speaker 2: cut edits out some of the nudity in that sequence,
Speaker 2: along with apparently part of Mestima's cat torture monologue from
Speaker 2: later on in the film, which is not come on,
Speaker 2: not a great loss, but also not like that terrible.
Speaker 2: It's just a monologue. He's not doing anything other than
Speaker 2: chewing up the scenery. And like you said, also the
Speaker 2: challenge sequence differs between Rage War and Dungeon Master cuts.
Speaker 2: But again for the most part, it doesn't really matter
Speaker 2: what order you see the different challenges in. But in
Speaker 2: my opinion, I think you're best off with the Rage
Speaker 2: War cut. This is available on the Arrow Disc. This
Speaker 2: is seemingly also the version on two B, but again
Speaker 2: the Arrow disc has like all three versions, so you
Speaker 2: can sort of mix and match, pick and choose and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Now I can't remember, because I know we talked about
Speaker 3: this off mic as well, But did we already mention
Speaker 3: in this episode that neither of the titles have anything
Speaker 3: to do with the movie?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, Like, there's not really a Master of Dungeons.
Speaker 2: There's absolutely there's not. You might assume from the title,
Speaker 2: as I long did, that this was going to be
Speaker 2: some sort of a Dungeons and dragonsploitation film, you know
Speaker 2: about the dangers of dungeons and dragons. You know, at
Speaker 2: the time period, there are no dangers of dungeons and dragons,
Speaker 2: of the danger of having a good time. But there's
Speaker 2: none of that. Yeah, there's very arguably a dungeon master
Speaker 2: in this. And there's not a Rage War either, whatever
Speaker 2: a rage war would be.
Speaker 3: There's a little bit of rage, there's really not a war.
Speaker 3: I mean there's like a fistfight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's pretty much yet. But I have no
Speaker 2: better title suggestions here, so really really, I mean they're
Speaker 2: both find titles from the Empire Pictures standpoint. All right,
Speaker 2: let's get into the people behind this picture. So we're
Speaker 2: gonna have to approach this one a little bit differently
Speaker 2: because this film has eight credited directors due to its
Speaker 2: various multiple dream sequences and the connecting material. So instead
Speaker 2: of listing them all right here up top, we're going
Speaker 2: to touch in on those individual directors and write as
Speaker 2: we roll through the plot later on. But I will
Speaker 2: go ahead and just cover the rest of the connections
Speaker 2: as usual, because again, this is not a true anthology film.
Speaker 2: The core cast remains the same throughout the picture, but
Speaker 2: we do have to just at the top just acknowledge that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is very much a Charles Band production. And Charles
Speaker 2: Band is credited as one of the directors. I think
Speaker 2: he directed all of the connective tissue in the picture.
Speaker 2: He has an original story credit and he was also
Speaker 2: the producer.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I loved how based on a story by
Speaker 3: Charles Band. What was that story?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Did he write this out as fiction?
Speaker 2: I mean they one of the things that they asked
Speaker 2: I should mention that that excellent Arrow release has a
Speaker 2: nice extended interview with Jeffrey Byron, who plays Paul Bradford,
Speaker 2: our hero, and one of the questions they asked him
Speaker 2: is like, was there actually a full script? And he's like, yes,
Speaker 2: there was a full script for this film, though you know,
Speaker 2: I guess portions of it were of course written by
Speaker 2: different rectors, because each director also wrote their segment, and
Speaker 2: presumably Charles band like wrote out the connective tissue as well.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, I guess he just he had this
Speaker 2: idea one day, what if you were so into computers
Speaker 2: and so good at it that the Devil himself took offense.
Speaker 3: I guess you could take this as a sort of
Speaker 3: update on the like, I don't know, Merlin or Doctor
Speaker 3: Faustus kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Devil went down to Georgia, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're at you're at the edges of human knowledge
Speaker 3: and skill and experience, and then, like you, you receive
Speaker 3: a contact from the world beyond. Except Mistema doesn't primarily
Speaker 3: tempt Paul. He does at one point, but he's not
Speaker 3: mainly there to be a Methistopheles saying, like, you know, here,
Speaker 3: let's make a deal. He wants to fight Paul. He
Speaker 3: wants to say, like your computer against my monsters.
Speaker 2: Right, but he doesn't even really fully understand like computers
Speaker 2: as like technology as a as like the opposite of
Speaker 2: magic or anything like. He seems to think that technology
Speaker 2: is magic and he is here to prove his own
Speaker 2: magical superiority. All right, Well more on the plot here
Speaker 2: in a bit. But yeah. Charles Band born nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2: We've talked about him before in the show Prolific B
Speaker 2: movie writer, director and producer. Active since the early seventies
Speaker 2: and still pumping him out. He's often compared to the
Speaker 2: late Roger Corman, recently passed rest in peace, but I
Speaker 2: think he's I think it's largely an accurate comparison. As
Speaker 2: a producer, he's known for various eighties films under the
Speaker 2: Empire Pictures banner, such as this one, followed in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight after its closing with Full Moon Productions, which
Speaker 2: gave us some of the most memorable nineties video rental
Speaker 2: store selections, and continues to give the world such later
Speaker 2: day Full Moon franchise titles as Evil Bong in the
Speaker 2: Ginger dead Man's film series.
Speaker 3: Now, my impression of the arc of this career is
Speaker 3: that in both cases it leans heavily on horror movies
Speaker 3: that are funny, but the difference being that, like as
Speaker 3: time went on, the jokes became more overt and explicit,
Speaker 3: whereas earlier on most of it was like horror movies
Speaker 3: that you know, were funny, but they weren't winking at
Speaker 3: the camera. They were just like playing it mostly straight
Speaker 3: but being silly.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, And you know, there's something to be
Speaker 2: said for like the Empire Pictures period, you know, actually
Speaker 2: getting some theatrical releases such as Metal Storm, which we've
Speaker 2: talked about on the show, and then later on it
Speaker 2: becomes increasingly like video rental store aimed, and then you know,
Speaker 2: ultimately in the modern era it's more about a digital
Speaker 2: film and so forth. So yeah, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of analysis one could do about, like the changing business
Speaker 2: of motion pictures. And certainly there's something to be said
Speaker 2: for a company that's been able to stay around this
Speaker 2: long in some form or another and still making you know,
Speaker 2: some some level of profit, even if it's I don't know,
Speaker 2: I was going to say something about like maybe not
Speaker 2: making as much of a cultural impact, But who am
Speaker 2: I to doubt the cultural impact of the Evil Bong series.
Speaker 3: I doubt the Evil Bong series will have any lines
Speaker 3: of dialogue that entered the public consciousness the way I
Speaker 3: reject your reality and substitute my own has.
Speaker 2: That's right, that one has has its own reach for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to go through all the Charles
Speaker 2: Band stuff here, but I do want to sort of
Speaker 2: place the Dungeon Master in contact. So this was Band's
Speaker 2: sixth directorial effort, following seventy three's Last Foxtrott in Burbank.
Speaker 2: This was his first film, a sex comedy, edited by
Speaker 2: John Carpenter. Then there was seventy six's Crash, starring Jose
Speaker 2: Ferrer and John Carradine. There was nineteen eighty two's Parasite
Speaker 2: with Demi Moore. Then came nineteen eighty three's The Alchemist.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty three's metal Storm The Destruction of Jared
Speaker 2: Sin a theatrically released three D motion picture that we've
Speaker 2: talked about on on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Metal Storm The Destruction of Jared Sin was wonderful because
Speaker 3: it has such a complicated title, but once again, much
Speaker 3: like Dungeon Master, the title is misleading. There is a Jaredson,
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's a metal Storm, and Jaredsen
Speaker 3: is not destructed in the film. He escapes at the end.
Speaker 2: He's fine, that's right, but still kind of a fun time. So.
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing though, according to Jeffrey Byron, is
Speaker 2: that production on Rage War began the next day after
Speaker 2: they rap production on metal Storm. So like they had
Speaker 2: the rap party, everyone went home at eleven pm, and
Speaker 2: then the next day six am, everyone's up and working
Speaker 2: on Rage War.
Speaker 3: Beautiful, and it's clear that they're not just reusing some
Speaker 3: sets and costumes and props and all that from Metal Storm.
Speaker 3: But it's got the same hero. So if you'll recall,
Speaker 3: in metal Storm, Jeffrey Byron played the Luke Skywalker character,
Speaker 3: it was Tim Thomerson who played the Han solo character.
Speaker 3: There's sort of a sort of Star Wars meets Mad
Speaker 3: Max is the concept of Metal Storm, and Jeffrey Byron
Speaker 3: returns this time to be our computer geek turned hero.
Speaker 2: That's right. Jeffrey Byron born nineteen fifty five, Star of
Speaker 2: metal Storm. Like we said, he was already a reasonably
Speaker 2: experienced TV actor prior to his work with Band. Started
Speaker 2: out as a child actor and actually appeared in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three john Ford film Donovan's Reef. Interesting fact two.
Speaker 2: John Ford was his godfather, and he was also in
Speaker 2: an episode of the original Twilight Zone. He continued to
Speaker 2: work extensively in television after these two Band productions, occasionally
Speaker 2: with film roles, and in twenty twenty two he worked
Speaker 2: with Band again on the band produced mini series The Resonator,
Speaker 2: a Full Moon production.
Speaker 3: The Resonator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know much about it, but I think
Speaker 2: for a while I was subscribed to like the full
Speaker 2: Moon channel on Prime and I saw it featured there
Speaker 2: about it? Never push play?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to make a face comparison that did
Speaker 3: not occur to me until just this very moment. But
Speaker 3: close your eyes and picture this Jeffrey Byron, remove the hair.
Speaker 3: Just look at the face. A little bit like a
Speaker 3: more baby faced version of Vigo Mortensen.
Speaker 2: Do you see do you see? Yeah? Yeah, a bit
Speaker 2: a bit. In this film he has the he's wearing
Speaker 2: glasses a lot because he's supposed to be a nerd,
Speaker 2: but he's one of these. He's like a glasses on nerd,
Speaker 2: glasses off hunk, which we often see in pictures, especially
Speaker 2: this time period. You also see the you know, the
Speaker 2: female variation of this as well, but he's got those
Speaker 2: glasses on. I have to say, I think I think
Speaker 2: he's really fun in this. He brings a lot of
Speaker 2: energy and enthusiasm to the role, and I found that
Speaker 2: he's the extras with him on the arrow disc or
Speaker 2: rather insightfully, he has a lot of great things to
Speaker 2: say about the production and the folks that he worked
Speaker 2: with kind of sums up the like the feeling that
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of the people involved here
Speaker 2: were getting to do things for the first time. I'm
Speaker 2: you know, first time directors. Byron got to got to
Speaker 2: write one of the segments as we'll discuss, got to
Speaker 2: work with his brother on that segment, and also got
Speaker 2: to bring in various like friends from acting school that
Speaker 2: he wanted to work with, So you know, everybody was
Speaker 2: really excited. People got to do a lot of fun things,
Speaker 2: and it seems like it was a pretty pretty fun
Speaker 2: production for the most part. So it's always nice to
Speaker 2: hear those stories.
Speaker 3: This is one of the reasons I imagine people are
Speaker 3: skeptical about the idea that this movie had a full
Speaker 3: script because it feels so much like they're just doing
Speaker 3: whatever they could think of or whatever they wanted to
Speaker 3: do with what they had. You know, it seems very
Speaker 3: much a It has an intense feel of improvisation.
Speaker 2: It really does, so I too kind of take that
Speaker 2: full script with a grain of salt. I wonder how
Speaker 2: much of it was, like, you know, like scene five,
Speaker 2: we do something with the cars from metal Storm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, maybe the full script had had markers like
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Byron fights a troll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because yeah, there's not a lot that goes on
Speaker 2: beyond that in some of these segments.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, I meant like there is, but like
Speaker 3: what would be filled in later as well? What access
Speaker 3: to locations do we already have, what sets do we have,
Speaker 3: What props and costumes do we have? What kind of
Speaker 3: troll makeup can we get together? And it has that
Speaker 3: feel of that it was either something that was from
Speaker 3: a previous movie or somebody was on set wanting to
Speaker 3: try something and this is what they did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right. We've been talking about Masteema the
Speaker 2: demonic figure in this kind of a devil, kind of
Speaker 2: a wizard, played by the terrific Richard Mole, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three through twenty twenty three. Mole sadly passed
Speaker 2: away since we last talked about him on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: He had a role in Metal Storm, but yeah, towering
Speaker 2: I believe. He's six ' eight classically trained actor, best
Speaker 2: known for his role as the good natured giant bailiff
Speaker 2: Bullshannon in all nine seasons one hundred and ninety three
Speaker 2: episodes of the sitcom Night Court from nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety two. So this film and Metal Storm,
Speaker 2: which again he was also in in a reduced part,
Speaker 2: played like a mutant, like warlord or something. These were
Speaker 2: both cyclops. That's right, he was a cyclops. These were
Speaker 2: right before Night Court, so he'd end up shaving his
Speaker 2: head of course for the Bullshannon roll. But he actually
Speaker 2: had a full head of hair for Metal Storm that
Speaker 2: they covered up with a bald cap. And I'm not
Speaker 2: sure at this point if he still has a full
Speaker 2: head of hair and or if he's wearing a wig.
Speaker 2: But what we end up with is Richard Mole with
Speaker 2: this long black hair. He ends up looking a bit
Speaker 2: like Christoph Limbert if Christoph Limbert took the teenage mutant
Speaker 2: Ninja turtled Mutagen you know, and grew, you know, about
Speaker 2: three feet tall and so forth. But it's a really fun,
Speaker 2: over the top devil Wizard performance here.
Speaker 3: He's Richard Mole taken to like ten percent dead heite
Speaker 3: status with Christoph Lambert styling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. We mentioned the long suffering girlfriend, and
Speaker 2: Paul's long suffering girlfriend is the character Gwynn Rogers, played
Speaker 2: by Leslie Wing born nineteen sixty three. So Wing was
Speaker 2: coming off of I believe, a few TV roles and
Speaker 2: would largely work in television up to around two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight according to the databases, but she also pops
Speaker 2: up in such films as nineteen ninety three's Calendar Girl,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six is the Frighteners in nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 2: Strange Land, that's the Dee Snyder scripted horror film. She's
Speaker 2: mostly a tongue in cheek damsel in distress in this film,
Speaker 2: as well as, of course a technophobic, long suffering girlfriend.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, I thought she was able to
Speaker 2: shine through the limitations of these roles, and also generally
Speaker 2: looks phenomenal in every scene, in part I think due
Speaker 2: to the costume design by Kathy Clark.
Speaker 3: Agreed. Yeah, so she plays like a Paul's girlfriend who
Speaker 3: is an aerobics instructor. Because it's nineteen eighty four. You
Speaker 3: know what else would the main character's girlfriend be. She
Speaker 3: teaches aerobics classes, and we get to see those. They're
Speaker 3: just like, let's check in on the aerobics class. And
Speaker 3: she clearly is jealous of Paul's relationship with this talking
Speaker 3: computer woman that seems to dominate his life and his
Speaker 3: decision making. And at the beginning of the movie, I
Speaker 3: feel like we I don't know if this was like
Speaker 3: the intention of the script, but I feel like we
Speaker 3: identify very much more with Gwynn than we do with
Speaker 3: the hero because he's acting ridiculous. She's like, you know,
Speaker 3: you're spending too much time with this computer woman. Why
Speaker 3: don't you, you know, let me know where I stand
Speaker 3: relative to her, And he's like, no, no, we should
Speaker 3: get married. See the computer told me it would be
Speaker 3: a good idea. Yeah, so she's the one really making sense,
Speaker 3: But also she spends a lot of the movie, just
Speaker 3: being like chained to various surfaces in different types of underwear,
Speaker 3: being like save me, Paul, and he's like, okay, I'll
Speaker 3: save you. I do appreciate that one of the less
Speaker 3: creative segments in the movie, which is essentially just a
Speaker 3: scene from Metal Storm slotted into this movie, does do
Speaker 3: one thing right, which is they finally give Gwynn a
Speaker 3: chance to fight back against the bad guys when they
Speaker 3: arms her with a plasma rifle and she starts blowing
Speaker 3: up desert buggies.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, that is the I think the big
Speaker 2: redeeming quality of that segment, which is otherwise not one
Speaker 2: of my favorites. But yeah, at least we get to
Speaker 2: see this character act in a strong fashion.
Speaker 3: But Leslie Wing, as we were saying, does also bring
Speaker 3: a good sense of humor to this role, Like even
Speaker 3: in some of the Damsel in distress scenes, she has
Speaker 3: some very funny moments and funny line deliveries.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, all right, that's the core cast. Those are the
Speaker 2: characters we keep coming back to. But I do want
Speaker 2: to just mention a few cameos of note, and well,
Speaker 2: of course mention them again when they pop up. The
Speaker 2: entire band wasp, that's w asp. No one's exactly sure
Speaker 2: what it's staying as for perhaps white Anglo Saxon Protestants,
Speaker 2: which I'm not sure they were or are, but I
Speaker 2: think there always been a little shifty on what it means,
Speaker 2: if it means anything, and maybe it doesn't, because this
Speaker 2: is like an eighties hair metal band, right, like a
Speaker 2: little bit yeah, what a little bit hair band, a
Speaker 2: little bit Black Sabbath kind of, but not much.
Speaker 3: It seemed to me. The idea is they're they're a
Speaker 3: hair metal band, but they were intentionally trying to be
Speaker 3: shock rockers, like they were. They were saying, Okay, people
Speaker 3: have this idea that these hair metal bands are are
Speaker 3: evil and immoral and decadent. What if we just like
Speaker 3: tried to appear as as immoral and decadent as we
Speaker 3: possibly could. So the main the main singer's persona, as
Speaker 3: far as I can tell, he's like, what if what
Speaker 3: if Ozzy Osbourne were a much worse guy? That's me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm going to sing directly about it, not
Speaker 2: really with details, but just I'm going to tell you
Speaker 2: that I'm that I have no morals and so forth.
Speaker 3: A line from the song he sings in the movie
Speaker 3: it says, I have no morales.
Speaker 2: The front man we're talking about here is Blackie Lalss
Speaker 2: great name, born nineteen fifty six, who is tremendous in
Speaker 2: this section. So I look forward to talking about Blackie
Speaker 2: Lalss later on a few other kind of weird inclusions here.
Speaker 2: Peter Kent born nineteen fifty seven plays one of the zombies,
Speaker 2: but he was Arnold Schwarzenegger's longtime stunt double. We also
Speaker 2: have phil of Fondo Caro born nineteen fifty eight, who
Speaker 2: plays one of the Stone Canyon people.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2: He's a very familiar face from various genre pictures, pictures
Speaker 2: that generally have some sort of a little person role,
Speaker 2: so he's been in everything from Return of the Jedi
Speaker 2: and The Doors to Goolies two, Phantasm two, and various
Speaker 2: band productions. He's really good. He has a lot of charisma,
Speaker 2: so you'll often encounter him in and out of monster
Speaker 2: suits and pictures from this time period.
Speaker 3: He does have a lot of chance to use personality
Speaker 3: in this role. He mostly he's just one of two
Speaker 3: guys who steals Jeffrey Byron's wrist computer and runs away
Speaker 3: with it. And then that leads Jeffrey Byron to have
Speaker 3: to like see some stop motion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Basically, it's like one of those moments where if
Speaker 2: you've seen a lot of films from this period, you'll
Speaker 2: be like, Hey, I know that guy, where's he going?
Speaker 2: And you don't really see me? Okay, yeah, okay. And
Speaker 2: then finally we have an actor credited with the name
Speaker 2: Gina Calabresi playing the girl in the opening dream sequence.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, this is also the name of a character from
Speaker 2: the Miami Vice TV series, so it seems like this
Speaker 2: might be a stage name. But she was also in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty six sci fi girl's rock band Vicious Lips,
Speaker 2: so worth singling out here. She has very, very fetching eyes,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss all right in the score. Hey, this
Speaker 2: is a Charles Band picture, so I don't have to
Speaker 2: tell you that his brother Richard Band born nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 2: was of course involved with the score for this picture.
Speaker 2: But Shirley Walker, who lived nineteen forty five through two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, also has a score credit. She has
Speaker 2: pretty extensive credits as well, and was one of the
Speaker 2: few female American film and television composers and conductors working
Speaker 2: during her heyday, and by working, I mean at times
Speaker 2: like getting like full credit for being like the sole
Speaker 2: composer on various film scores, and she also worked at
Speaker 2: other levels on various scores. She played synth on the
Speaker 2: score for Apocalypse Now and worked in various capacities on
Speaker 2: scores for such films as eighty four's Goolies, nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: six's Escape from La I believe she and Carpenter share
Speaker 2: credit for that one, and she was also involved in
Speaker 2: the score for nineteen eighty nine Batman. She was also
Speaker 2: nominated for three Primetime Emmys, including one nomination for the
Speaker 2: classic Batman the animated series show.
Speaker 3: Oh that had great music for a cheah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she was reading a bit about her. She's
Speaker 2: generally remembered well for her contributions to film score and
Speaker 2: TV scored during this era. All right, and then effects.
Speaker 2: We'll come back to the effects later on, because some
Speaker 2: of the key people directing some of these sequences were
Speaker 2: also big effects names.
Speaker 3: Was it time to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's dream fall into the schlock. Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, Wait, are we talking about the extended opening sequence?
Speaker 2: Or not, Yeah, let's do it, because I, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: it's really good. It sets a nice tone for the
Speaker 2: rest of the film. And I was a little hesitant
Speaker 2: because I'd heard like, well, there's one cut of the
Speaker 2: film that has full frontal nudity at the top, and
Speaker 2: they had, and they removed it before the theatrical release,
Speaker 2: which might made me think that it was going to
Speaker 2: be like more scandalous or trashy, but that's clearly not
Speaker 2: what they were going for. I think they were going
Speaker 2: for something like more Charles Band directed.
Speaker 3: Artsy uh huh. Well, it seems like they were trying
Speaker 3: to get out of the R rating territory orient into
Speaker 3: the PG thirteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so they're like, we can't have full frontal
Speaker 2: female nudity at the beginning, even if it's tasteful, because
Speaker 2: we want that PEG thirteen. All right.
Speaker 3: Well, so the extended version starts with Jeffrey Byron lying
Speaker 3: asleep on a bed with like an electrical lead, like
Speaker 3: an EKG patch attached to his forehead and to his wrist.
Speaker 3: He's very moist and sweaty looking, and he's in a
Speaker 3: dark room full of fog. This is obviously some kind
Speaker 3: of dream land, and he stirs and comes awake, and
Speaker 3: he sees in the room a woman in a red
Speaker 3: dress with hair blowing in the wind, standing there in
Speaker 3: the fog giving him eyes, like really giving him eyes.
Speaker 2: And their great eyes, like I said, just really stares
Speaker 2: trying to do so, I mean not Meg Foster level,
Speaker 2: but like sub Meg Foster intensity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So she walks out of the room. He gets
Speaker 3: up to follow, and he follows her as she goes outside.
Speaker 3: And then this is one of those scenes where I
Speaker 3: feel like somebody just found a cool looking location in
Speaker 3: the world and they were like, let's shoot something there,
Speaker 3: and this is it. So she like goes up a
Speaker 3: staircase onto a weird concrete bunker like construction that is
Speaker 3: one of many identical concrete constructions lined up in the
Speaker 3: in the sand in this clearing. Do you know what
Speaker 3: we were looking at here, Rob?
Speaker 2: It is a bit particular of like fortification location somewhere
Speaker 2: in California, but I don't remember what the name of
Speaker 2: it is. Our California natives can chime in, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it also is very reminiscent of a number of former
Speaker 2: fortifications in the United States that I've visited on vacations
Speaker 2: and so forth. It looks really hot, you know, it's hot,
Speaker 2: like just so much direct sun.
Speaker 3: Well, and Jeffrey Byron is sweaty as heck in this
Speaker 3: in this part of the movie. So they're kind of
Speaker 3: chasing each other around playfully in slow motion, running around
Speaker 3: these bunkers, and they go into a dark hallway with
Speaker 3: a bright light at the end of the one and
Speaker 3: runs in silhouette, and Jeffrey Byron chases and she's like, ooh,
Speaker 3: come down here, and then she suddenly disrobes and is like, yes,
Speaker 3: I love you, Jeffrey Byron. And so they get onto
Speaker 3: a bed in this dark bunker and start to mess around.
Speaker 3: But then suddenly at the other end of the room,
Speaker 3: a steel bulkhead door that looks like it belongs on
Speaker 3: a submarine swings open, and from the other side of
Speaker 3: the door, which is glowing with pink light, these beefy,
Speaker 3: ghoulish mutants pour into the room. And by the way,
Speaker 3: this is all still in slow mo with dreamy music playing,
Speaker 3: and they kidnap the dream woman and slam the door
Speaker 3: shut behind them.
Speaker 2: I like it. I'm already intrigued. What's going on in
Speaker 2: this dream? What does it represent.
Speaker 3: I also like that the monsters here are different types
Speaker 3: of like they're mixed in appearance. One is a full
Speaker 3: on monster head with huge protruding jaws and fangs, and
Speaker 3: some of the other ones just look like regular people
Speaker 3: but just sort of dirty and dressed in rags.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like that moment in the Simpsons
Speaker 2: Treehouse episode The Shinning when all the random monsters spill
Speaker 2: into the refrigerator to grab Homer and drag him away. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, she gets dragged off beyond the submarine door,
Speaker 3: it's slams shut and then bam. Empire Pictures presents Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Byron in Rage War. This is the version that is
Speaker 3: not called Dungeon Master.
Speaker 2: All right, so this is the Rage War cut. But
Speaker 2: if you're watching the US theatrical cut, you don't get
Speaker 2: any like dreams or nudity or monsters. You just get
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Byron waking up right and at the beginning is
Speaker 2: just like, oh, and that's the beginning of the picture.
Speaker 2: And so I just feel like it's less intriguing. Instead
Speaker 2: of asking what does this dream represent? Who's the woman?
Speaker 2: Who are the monsters, It's like how long was this
Speaker 2: guy asleep. I guess.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can understand another reason for cutting it
Speaker 3: out beyond just like trying to get the rating they wanted,
Speaker 3: which is it makes Jeffrey but I know it's just
Speaker 3: a dream, but still makes Jeffrey Byron seem a little
Speaker 3: unfaithful because the woman in his dream is not Gwen.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah it doesn't really And yeah, his faithfulness
Speaker 2: does come up at times as a plot point. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I could see that being a reason for it. And
Speaker 2: I can also imagine it being a situation where if
Speaker 2: your Charli Band or Charlie Band, as jeff Jeffrey Byron
Speaker 2: kept referring to him. You've brought in all these young guys,
Speaker 2: you know, to have their first shot at directing something,
Speaker 2: and then you got to make cuts. You know, you
Speaker 2: cut your own dead. It makes sense. So you know
Speaker 2: you're filming this project, it makes sense to go ahead
Speaker 2: and just cut your own intro, especially if it fulfills
Speaker 2: other needs.
Speaker 3: Now I have another interpretive question about the opening sequence.
Speaker 3: We get to know the artificial intelligence, the computer that
Speaker 3: is Jeffrey Byron's companion here. It is named Cal and
Speaker 3: it has a woman's voice and in many ways is
Speaker 3: treated as an actual feminine entity in addition to just
Speaker 3: having a woman's voice, like Gwynn is jealous of it
Speaker 3: and so forth, And so it makes me wonder, is
Speaker 3: the woman in the opening dream sequence supposed to be
Speaker 3: a fleshly embodiment of cal the computer woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah? I could see that working. All of these things
Speaker 2: would make a lot of sense if the plot didn't
Speaker 2: just veer off in a kind of drastically different direction
Speaker 2: with the introduction of Mestema. You know, yeah, because all
Speaker 2: of this would work if it were like a nineties
Speaker 2: Outer Limits episode about falling in love with the computer,
Speaker 2: and lord knows there are episodes of that show about
Speaker 2: this very topic. But yeah, then it becomes like, and
Speaker 2: then what if the devil showed up the challenged you
Speaker 2: to a game of dream Battle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could have been Charles Band presents her. But
Speaker 3: then it's just like, oh, here's a demon lord coming
Speaker 3: in to do some magic. So anyway, after the credits,
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Byron wakes up. He's been asleep, fitfully hunched over
Speaker 3: a desk in his apartment, wearing a suit. He was
Speaker 3: sleeping in his suit, always a good move. A computer
Speaker 3: general feminine voice says repeatedly, late for repair appointment, please respond,
Speaker 3: going over and over. This is the voice of cal
Speaker 3: Get used to it. There will be a lot of
Speaker 3: it in the movie. Jeffrey Byron thanks his computer and
Speaker 3: gets up to leave, and then we see him at work.
Speaker 3: He's doing repairs on computer equipment. It's nineteen eighty four
Speaker 3: and he is a world class computer geek. He seems
Speaker 3: to be replacing CPUs in some giant mainframe or maybe
Speaker 3: it's just a copy machine.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's some kind of big thing, like you know, mechanical
Speaker 3: machine hulk inside inside an office, and he's like all
Speaker 3: up in the computer guts, just like yankin out circuit
Speaker 3: boards and having a look. And we learn that Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Byron is known as the best troubleshooter in the business.
Speaker 3: And we can see why because when he looks at
Speaker 3: a circuit board, he doesn't just see it with his
Speaker 3: human eyes. He's robbed. Let me know if you had
Speaker 3: a different understanding. But the way I interpreted what we
Speaker 3: see is that when he looks through his glasses, which
Speaker 3: look like regular glasses on the outside, they do some
Speaker 3: kind of analysis, like he's got terminator vision through his glasses,
Speaker 3: so he's actually made like Google Glass or something. A
Speaker 3: good bit early.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was confused for a little bit because at
Speaker 2: first I was like, is Paul a robot? Is he
Speaker 2: an android or a cyborg? Like where are we going
Speaker 2: with this, Charles band? But then yet becomes clear that no,
Speaker 2: he just has Google Glass a few decades early, and yeah,
Speaker 2: this is enhancing his computer repair abilities among other things,
Speaker 2: as we'll discover.
Speaker 3: Well, but it is ambiguous because that is how I
Speaker 3: interpreted it, that he has this AI. You know, he
Speaker 3: has a computer with artificial intelligence. He has a wristwatch
Speaker 3: and a pair of glasses that are augmented with that
Speaker 3: computer somehow, like the computer is instantiated in them. But
Speaker 3: also later Gwyn makes a reference to that experiment you
Speaker 3: were in that linked you with cal and so I
Speaker 3: don't know what that means that he has some enhanced
Speaker 3: ability to communicate with a computer beyond what a normal
Speaker 3: computer geek would have because of an experiment.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Yeah, but yeah, we never hear
Speaker 2: anything else about that. There's no further development on that
Speaker 2: plot point anyway.
Speaker 3: The guy he's working for in the office is just
Speaker 3: like computers ah, they're everywhere. And so Jeffrey's character, as
Speaker 3: we've said, his name is Paul. I'm gonna start calling
Speaker 3: him Paul instead of saying Jeffrey Byron every time. At
Speaker 3: the end of the workday, we see Paul coming out
Speaker 3: of this big, futuristic looking office building and talking to
Speaker 3: a coworker of his. The coworker offers him a ride home,
Speaker 3: but Paul is not going to accept because, as always,
Speaker 3: he wants to run home. Paul is into fitness, and
Speaker 3: Don thinks this is disgusting. Yeah, So we see Paul
Speaker 3: like running around and sort of tapping on his glasses
Speaker 3: or tapping on his wrist to initiate some kind of
Speaker 3: thing that Cal is doing, Like I think she's timing
Speaker 3: his run to get home or something. Now, if Cal
Speaker 3: were just being a fit bit here, that would be
Speaker 3: one thing. Oh, that's very cool, and people didn't have
Speaker 3: those in nineteen eighty four. But Cal has other powers,
Speaker 3: essentially computer telekinesis. So Paul uses Cal to like he's
Speaker 3: running down the sidewalks and he will like beat boop
Speaker 3: on his watch or on his glasses to change the
Speaker 3: color of traffic lights suddenly, so that he never has
Speaker 3: to wait. He can always just run across and never stop.
Speaker 3: Very cool, Paul, very safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again to your point, we have to remember
Speaker 2: Paul is possibly an android. I don't think I really
Speaker 2: thought about this enough during my viewing of the picture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like that's clear, and we don't know he could be
Speaker 2: like full android. We don't know how much of him
Speaker 2: is human anymore. And it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't. Also, during this jogging and cybercrime sequence,
Speaker 3: we meet Gwynn, who is Paul's girlfriend. The camera just
Speaker 3: sort of stops by her dance aerobics class, and my lord,
Speaker 3: the eighties of it all here. This is one of
Speaker 3: the most eighties looking scenes I have ever witnessed.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely yes, the sheen of sweat, the cut of
Speaker 2: the athletics gear, the serious look in the eyes. I
Speaker 2: am a child of the eighties, so I'm here for
Speaker 2: any and all eighties aerobic sequences, from ful Chee's Murder
Speaker 2: Rock to the recent and I thought quite good TV
Speaker 2: series Physical, Like, if it's about aerobics, I'm probably you've
Speaker 2: got my attention. Let's see what it's what's going to happen?
Speaker 3: Specifically, it's dance aerobics, like they're doing a synchronized dance
Speaker 3: routine into a mirror and they're you know, they got
Speaker 3: the full like the spandex, the legwarmers, the headbands, the
Speaker 3: frizzy hair. It's just great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's often a situation where there's either like
Speaker 2: no emotion on the face of the individual doing it,
Speaker 2: or there is like like heightened emotion like this, like
Speaker 2: you know, almost kind of like a plastic exuberance and
Speaker 2: like a big smile something.
Speaker 3: This was really making me think about the Key and
Speaker 3: Peel champions.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was great. So it's great. You know
Speaker 2: they have this in common. This couple is really into
Speaker 2: fitness in their own ways.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. So.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Also, on the way home, Paul stops because he sees
Speaker 3: a vendor selling flowers and he's like, oh, got to
Speaker 3: get some flowers for Gwynn. But then he opened the
Speaker 3: stops and he opens up his wallet and he has
Speaker 3: no money. And it's funny because we get a real
Speaker 3: good shot of the empty wallet. There's just the puckered wallet,
Speaker 3: there nothing in it, and making sure you understand, but
Speaker 3: no problem. Paul goes to a nearby ATM and then
Speaker 3: uses his computer powers to get money out of the ATM.
Speaker 3: Now we I think had a different understanding of what
Speaker 3: was happening here. I interpreted this as Paul was stealing
Speaker 3: money from some random account to go buy the flowers.
Speaker 3: But you thought maybe he was getting his own money out,
Speaker 3: in which case, why would he need to like hack it.
Speaker 2: At first I thought he was hacking it, But then
Speaker 2: there is a line shortly following this. I think when
Speaker 2: he gets back to his apartment about yeah, he gets
Speaker 2: a call or something I don't remember, but there's something
Speaker 2: about his account being overdrawn by like twenty dollars. But
Speaker 2: now I'm second guessing myself and wondering if that's in
Speaker 2: both cuts or if that's something that was added because
Speaker 2: they didn't want to make it seem like he was
Speaker 2: a thief, because Paul is supposed to be a good guy.
Speaker 2: You know, he's supposed to be I guess, you know,
Speaker 2: lawful good And it's a little more ambiguous if he's
Speaker 2: like just getting money out of random ATMs, just using
Speaker 2: his Android powers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. Another way to interpret it is
Speaker 3: that if his account is overdrawn, that would be the
Speaker 3: obvious reason that he could not get his own money out,
Speaker 3: and would have to steal from the ATMU. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it could be. They also put that in to suggest
Speaker 3: like no, no, no, he was getting his own money. It's
Speaker 3: just I don't know. But so anyway, he uses cowl
Speaker 3: to hack an ATM and one way or another gets
Speaker 3: money out of it buys flowers. So back home, Paul
Speaker 3: has computer stuff everywhere. There are big circuit boards leaning
Speaker 3: up against the walls. There's a printer with just reams
Speaker 3: of god knows what's spewing out of it and piling
Speaker 3: up on the floor. It's that kind where what is
Speaker 3: printed out of it is all like attached. You got
Speaker 3: to tear it off. I guess. The apartment has a
Speaker 3: raised entryway with a step down into the living room,
Speaker 3: which I always like.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And when Paul comes in, he now has a ring
Speaker 3: top six pack of diet coke with only one can
Speaker 3: hanging on the rings. Did you notice this? So that
Speaker 3: implies to me that he stopped, possibly stole more money
Speaker 3: to buy six diet cokes and drink five of them
Speaker 3: on the way home.
Speaker 2: Well possibly so oh, I do want to add one
Speaker 2: little tidbit from the Jeffrey Byron extras on the disc.
Speaker 2: This is Jeffrey Byron's actual apartment at the time end
Speaker 2: of the film, like they that I love I love
Speaker 2: it when they have those details like that's how like,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like Gorilla and low budget everything was,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like, what do we have to work
Speaker 2: with here? We got those leftover Apocalypse cars and do
Speaker 2: we have an apartment? Can we just shoot at your apartment? Yes?
Speaker 2: Absolutely we can.
Speaker 3: This is Jeffrey Byron's real empty wallet. This is Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Byron's real computers spitting out realms.
Speaker 2: Of whatever it maybe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, he pops the last diet coke and drinks
Speaker 3: it while talking to Cal. They're talking about I think
Speaker 3: this is the part where Cal's like, bank account overdrawn
Speaker 3: twenty dollars.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's what it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And then Gwenn comes home. She comes home
Speaker 3: with groceries, talking about how she bought swordfish steaks, and
Speaker 3: he's like, Gwen, let's get married. But there is a
Speaker 3: point of friction in the relationship, which is Paul's other relationship,
Speaker 3: the one with Cal and Gwinn is like, Paul, I
Speaker 3: am not going to marry you until we work out
Speaker 3: where I stand relative to that computer, and this is
Speaker 3: the part where she mentions quickly that he had that
Speaker 3: experiment done to him, which is what linked Cal to
Speaker 3: his brain.
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess, so yeah yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Again no details given up that it's just a vague,
Speaker 3: vague sort of suggestion.
Speaker 2: It's still a red flat for sure.
Speaker 3: Yes, So Paul cooks dinner for them. Apparently he did
Speaker 3: a very nice job cooking dinner. She's like, hmm, that
Speaker 3: was so good. But then he blows it by being like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, Cal found this great recipe for me to use. Uh,
Speaker 3: And she's just exasperated by this, and then he offered
Speaker 3: He's like, how about some dessert and pulls out a
Speaker 3: box and it's got an engagement ring in it, and
Speaker 3: Gwynn says, you know, Paul, I love you, but I'm
Speaker 3: still not ready for this. You're just too obsessed with
Speaker 3: this computer. You got to you gotta do something different.
Speaker 3: Paul has a great response to this. He tries to
Speaker 3: convince Gwnn that she should marry him because Cal said
Speaker 3: it was a good idea. So he like sits her
Speaker 3: down in front of the computer and like inputs. He's
Speaker 3: you know, do doo, dude, Like inputting things on the keyboard,
Speaker 3: and uh, says Cal, tell me the probability of success if, like,
Speaker 3: you know, a woman like this marries a man like this,
Speaker 3: And Cal says, probable outcome sex sass, and she looks annoyed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, come on, Paul, get it together.
Speaker 3: Anyway, they go to bed. They sleep on the sleeping
Speaker 3: on a fold out couch in the living room of
Speaker 3: the apartment. So I don't know if Jeffrey Byron's apartment
Speaker 3: here had a bedroom, but uh, that's where they are.
Speaker 3: And then we see through Paul's glasses. They're like sitting
Speaker 3: it's a framed shot. The glasses are sitting on a
Speaker 3: table and we're looking through the lenses, and in the
Speaker 3: lenses we see these jets of green fire lut rising
Speaker 3: up and it's like, oh, something magical is happening. And
Speaker 3: it's happening sort of through the augmented reality interface of
Speaker 3: his computer enhanced glasses, and this takes them into some
Speaker 3: other dream. We see Jeffrey Byron wake up in a
Speaker 3: dream world and he's wearing a different outfit immediately, so
Speaker 3: this is not just his pajamas. He is like in
Speaker 3: sleeveless black tights and they are covered by what I
Speaker 3: think is supposed to be armor, but it is this
Speaker 3: very goofy looking padded gray thing with bulky wristwarmers, one
Speaker 3: of which has computer stuff in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's goofy. I won't argue against that,
Speaker 2: but when you consider how goofy a costume like this
Speaker 2: could be in a picture of this caliber, I feel
Speaker 2: like we got to cut it some slack. Plus they
Speaker 2: do kind of make fun of it later on, so
Speaker 2: I think it's supposed to be a little outrageous, you know,
Speaker 2: and particularly in the slasher segment where he's like running
Speaker 2: around and countering, you know, police officers, and they're kind
Speaker 2: of like, what are you wearing here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, the police officers who don't like jelly donut,
Speaker 3: that's right. Yeah. So Paul wakes up dressed in this stuff.
Speaker 3: He's in this outdoor landscape, green, lush forest, and he
Speaker 3: starts walking around and he comes to a waterfall where
Speaker 3: a dream world version of Gwynn. So doing better? Now,
Speaker 3: now this is your real girlfriend in the dream. He
Speaker 3: comes to a waterfall where a dream world version of
Speaker 3: gwyn So she's like very different looking. She's sort of
Speaker 3: dressed in a sparkly fairy tale outfit. She's got this,
Speaker 3: you know, very elaborate makeup on, and she's like swimming
Speaker 3: around under the falls and he tries to call out
Speaker 3: to her, but she can't hear him. And then he
Speaker 3: starts melting and his skin is blistering and sloughing off,
Speaker 3: and he starts banging against an invisible barrier in the
Speaker 3: air between him and gwyn which in alternate shots is
Speaker 3: represented as a rock wall, so like he can't reach
Speaker 3: her and he's melting. Then he wakes up back in
Speaker 3: his apartment and Gwinn isn't there. Then he turns blue
Speaker 3: and gets zapped to somewhere else. So this is kind
Speaker 3: of convoluted, going back and forth these different places, and
Speaker 3: somewhere else he goes is a location we will return
Speaker 3: to between each of the challenges we see in the movie.
Speaker 3: It's kind of this desert landscape. It's like a big, craggy, dry,
Speaker 3: desiccated mud flat in the nighttime, and it's illuminated by
Speaker 3: these standing jets of fire like we saw reflected in
Speaker 3: the classes earlier. Gwenn is here. She is chained up
Speaker 3: to a rock in her underwear, yelling at Paul for help,
Speaker 3: and Paul is like, Okay, let's try to figure out
Speaker 3: what's happening here, and Gwenn replies, Paul, these are real chains.
Speaker 2: All right. So at this point, like they're in a
Speaker 2: shared dream state. I guess, like the conjoined dreaming is
Speaker 2: taking place. Yes, but then it's like it's very heightened
Speaker 2: and they do not have complete control. They're definitely not lucid.
Speaker 3: Here, right, right, So they're trying to figure out what's
Speaker 3: going on. Gwenn and Sis the chains are real, and
Speaker 3: then uh oh, here comes the big bad. The movie
Speaker 3: really starts to cook when Mistema appears. So Mistema is
Speaker 3: Richard mal dressed like Dracula.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, yeah, they even added to little Widow's peak.
Speaker 2: I noticed that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he's got the long hair, he's got the big,
Speaker 3: big collar, pointy collar, some frilly stuff inside the collar,
Speaker 3: and he's just looking very severe. I think they also
Speaker 3: put some contacts in his eyes to make the pupils
Speaker 3: or irises kind of gleaming.
Speaker 2: I think you're right.
Speaker 3: Anyway. What Mistema does first is he zaps Gwen with
Speaker 3: a laser from his eyes, and this magically changes Gwen's outfit.
Speaker 3: It changes her into some kind of ancient gown. I
Speaker 3: don't know what you'd call this outfit, but she looks
Speaker 3: kind of like a like a princess in a movie
Speaker 3: about ancient Greece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like she's supposed to be in a sword and
Speaker 2: sandals kind of a deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. And then Mistema also zaps Paul and
Speaker 3: changes him back from his pajamas into the costume he
Speaker 3: was wearing a minute ago with the gray padded parts.
Speaker 3: So did we really need the first dream segment? I
Speaker 3: don't know. There was a lot of back and forth
Speaker 3: there that just kind of gets canceled out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just kind of creating a lot of extra
Speaker 2: work here for Kathy Clark.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, the first thing our new villain says
Speaker 3: is you are a worthy opponent for Misteema. So we
Speaker 3: get some of the basic implication of why the villain
Speaker 3: has showed up here. He is impressed by something about Paul.
Speaker 3: He thinks he thinks Paul is strong, Paul is powerful,
Speaker 3: and Paul is a challenge for him. So he says
Speaker 3: to Paul, now you have all power centered on you.
Speaker 3: You may call upon your machines, your magic machines, and
Speaker 3: then he commands that Paul neil.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, So different ways of looking at this,
Speaker 2: Like Paul is either like he's either so good with
Speaker 2: computers that he's attracted the eye or of the Lord
Speaker 2: of Darkness. Either either he's ahead of all the Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley guys working at the time, or Mastema has previously
Speaker 2: challenged and defeated the likes of Steve Wosniak in dream combat,
Speaker 2: or going back to the android thing, like yeah, like
Speaker 2: Steve Wozniak is not an android, Paul is. Paul is
Speaker 2: like literally something special that could attract the ire of
Speaker 2: a demon.
Speaker 3: Well maybe he is, okay, so here's here's the next thing.
Speaker 3: So Paul does neil when Mistema commands him, and then
Speaker 3: Mistema zaps a sword into existence in his hand. He
Speaker 3: raises his arms and he screams by the power of
Speaker 3: the Prince of Darkness, and then he you know, does
Speaker 3: the nighting thing to Paul, and he says, I dub
Speaker 3: the ex calibrate, which is spelled with an eight for
Speaker 3: the eight part, So X calibrate. It's like excalibre and
Speaker 3: calibrate And what did in your mind, Rob, what did
Speaker 3: X calibrate refer to did it refer to exclusively the
Speaker 3: computer or did it refer to Paul or did it
Speaker 3: refer to the composite team of Paul and the computer.
Speaker 2: I guess it's the composite that's That's the best I
Speaker 2: can think of. And with the other caveat that, it's
Speaker 2: probably just a situation where it sounded cool. But if
Speaker 2: I'm being generous, I guess it's supposed to be this
Speaker 2: composite individual.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, after this Cal, which is still the computer,
Speaker 3: maybe now excalibrate or maybe Cal is just part of excalibrate.
Speaker 3: Whatever Cal is inside Paul's wristwarmer. So he's got a
Speaker 3: little pit boy, you know, thing on his wrist that's
Speaker 3: a computer screen. And Cal starts talking and doing like
Speaker 3: a green text on a black screen readout which says
Speaker 3: it says like Misteema equals Beelzebub, Belile Satan, and Mistema
Speaker 3: thinks this is hilarious. He praises Paul's magic powers. Paul
Speaker 3: tries to explain that it's not magic, it's technology, but
Speaker 3: Mistema is not hearing any of this. So Mistema explains
Speaker 3: he's been searching for a worthy magical opponent for centuries.
Speaker 3: Finally he found in Paul. I do wonder how did
Speaker 3: he become aware of Paul. I don't know. But he
Speaker 3: explains that Paul must face, with the help of his
Speaker 3: risk computer, seven challenges, and if he fails even one
Speaker 3: of them, Mistima will devour both of their souls, his
Speaker 3: and Gwinn's. And Gwynn is like Paul, I think he
Speaker 3: means business.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, now the challenge has been laid out,
Speaker 2: Paul has no choice but to accept. And this is
Speaker 2: where we start getting into the challenges again, each one
Speaker 2: directed by a different director. Charles Band is going to
Speaker 2: direct one. Charles Band directed the Connective Tissue. And I
Speaker 2: also want to add that when you look at the
Speaker 2: directorial credits for this picture, there's also a guy by
Speaker 2: the name of Michael Karp born nineteen fifty nine who
Speaker 2: just directed additional scenes, so he's in there somewhere as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now, as we said before, the order of the
Speaker 3: challenges is different depending on which cut you're watching, So
Speaker 3: I think think we're going to talk about them in
Speaker 3: the order they are presented in the Rage War cut
Speaker 3: the extended version. So the first challenge in that is
Speaker 3: the one known as Ice Gallery, written and directed by
Speaker 3: Rose Marie Turco.
Speaker 2: Yeah, writer director. I don't believe her birthday. To his
Speaker 2: public record, she only has a couple of credits on IMDb,
Speaker 2: this and the nineteen eighty three drama Scarred, which she
Speaker 2: also wrote and directed. So yeah, I'm not a lot
Speaker 2: known about her, but this is her work.
Speaker 3: So in this challenge, Masteema teleports Paul somewhere else so
Speaker 3: that he ends up like falling down a tunnel and
Speaker 3: he emerges into a frosty cavern filled with frozen characters.
Speaker 3: It's like if there were a horror movie wax museum
Speaker 3: inside the Wampa Cave on Hawth. So there is a
Speaker 3: sexy werewolf man kind of like, you know, an open
Speaker 3: button shirt with you know, a good physique, but he's
Speaker 3: got a were wolf head. He's sort of a white wolf,
Speaker 3: you know, he's a very cold, frosty looking werewolf. There
Speaker 3: are also zombies, and then in the background there's some
Speaker 3: stuff of questionable cultural sensitivity, like there is a witch
Speaker 3: doctor type character with a bone through his nose. There
Speaker 3: is also a wax figure of a guy in a
Speaker 3: Victorian era top hat with a fluffy red Cravat, and
Speaker 3: Paul and Gwynn are both here. They're both here in
Speaker 3: the icy cave full of wax figures, and they're wandering
Speaker 3: around calling out to one another, but they can't find
Speaker 3: each other. And Paul says, looks like Mestima's private art gallery.
Speaker 3: And then Paul wipes the snow off of a plaque
Speaker 3: underneath the top hat guy and discovers that he has
Speaker 3: labeled Jack the Ripper. So I guess the mystery is solved.
Speaker 2: It was him. So at this point I was just
Speaker 2: trying to figure out, like what's the theme here? Like
Speaker 2: why are all these individuals here? Is it? Like, okay,
Speaker 2: history's greatest monsters, like a wax museum, you know, Hall
Speaker 2: of Killers and so forth, Here's the werewolf, here's Jack
Speaker 2: the Ripper. But then it takes some other interesting directions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, so monster, I mean, Jack the Ripper
Speaker 3: was like a real person and the werewolf is a
Speaker 3: is a fictional monster. But okay, so you know whatever.
Speaker 3: But then Gwinn comes across a frozen Albert Einstein. Not
Speaker 3: just Albert Einstein standing there like the others, he is
Speaker 3: sitting on a throne of ice, cradling a big pointy
Speaker 3: cluster of crystals, like he's, you know, a wizard examining
Speaker 3: a palanteer, and Gwinn says, oh my god, that s Einstein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why is he here? I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: he was you know, he's no saint, but I don't
Speaker 2: know if he's really like belongs in there with a
Speaker 2: werewolf and Jack the Ripper. But okay, okay, movie, let's
Speaker 2: go with it.
Speaker 3: Gwinn says, there's bloody Mary. How does how does windo
Speaker 3: bloody Mary? By sight? They also identify Louis the sixteenth
Speaker 3: with his head in a guillotine, and then Paul says,
Speaker 3: looks like every criminal in the world is here again
Speaker 3: and the werewolf Einstein.
Speaker 2: Hi, I mean the case can be made. The case
Speaker 2: can be made.
Speaker 3: The samurai over there is a criminal for some reason?
Speaker 3: What did he do?
Speaker 2: He's a ronan, I guess.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Gwen then starts freezing solid, yelling out for
Speaker 3: help while Paul sinks under the floor and disappears, and
Speaker 3: then Mistema is like, you know, Gwenn's saying, I'm freezing.
Speaker 3: I can't move my legs, and then Mistema's voice over
Speaker 3: comes in and says, shall I warm you up? And
Speaker 3: then the lights turn red and she thaws out. She
Speaker 3: thaws out, but so does everybody else, and Jack the
Speaker 3: Ripper comes alive, and the werewolf comes alive. They're all
Speaker 3: now menacing, and Jack the Ripper grabs Gwen and starts,
Speaker 3: you know, holding out a knife like he's gonna like
Speaker 3: he's gonna get her. But then Paul comes to the rescue.
Speaker 3: Like first he sank under the floor, but then he
Speaker 3: crawls out of a tunnel. He a samurai tries to
Speaker 3: attack Paul, but he defeats the samurai by I think
Speaker 3: pressing some buttons on is wristwarmer, which like electrifies the samurai.
Speaker 3: And then the samurai you know, gets hit with a laser,
Speaker 3: gets electrified and falls over. And then Paul runs and
Speaker 3: hits Jack the Ripper with a rock, and then they
Speaker 3: figure out the solution to the puzzle. They have to
Speaker 3: use Einstein's ice crystal as a grenade in order to
Speaker 3: defeat the monsters, the criminals, and the random dudes. Challenge
Speaker 3: number one bested.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, it is a pretty fun one.
Speaker 2: I think it's a good one to kick things off.
Speaker 2: In this cut of the film agreed.
Speaker 3: As with many of the ones that will follow, there
Speaker 3: are things that don't make a lot of sense, but
Speaker 3: as you know, it was a fun ride. So Paul
Speaker 3: wakes back up in the holding area again this is
Speaker 3: like the craggy desert arena, and you know, Mistema is impressed.
Speaker 3: He's like, your performance was quite good. Ex calibrate and
Speaker 3: then Paul asks where Gwynn is and Misstema says trust me,
Speaker 3: and Paul says, yeah, well I don't think so, Mistema good,
Speaker 3: comeback all right. So then we were on to challenge
Speaker 3: number two. This is the one called Demons of the Dead,
Speaker 3: directed by John Carl Beekler.
Speaker 2: That's right, John Carl Beekler born nineteen fifty two died
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. Legendary practical effects and makeup master that we've
Speaker 2: talked about on the show previously, I think specifically in
Speaker 2: our episodes on Arena, the Eliminators and Terror Vision. He
Speaker 2: worked on a number of cult classic horror films, including
Speaker 2: eighty five's re Animator, eighty six is from Beyond Just
Speaker 2: a master of flesh and blood, this guy. He also
Speaker 2: had a great career as a director, helming eighty six
Speaker 2: as Troll eighty seven, Cellar Dweller, Friday the Thirteenth, The
Speaker 2: New Blood, and nineteen nineties Goolies Go to College, just
Speaker 2: to name a few there.
Speaker 3: His Friday the Thirteenth movie is often considered a fan favorite.
Speaker 3: It's the one where Jason faces off against the girl
Speaker 3: with telekinesis.
Speaker 2: Oh, God, that one's great. I love that one. So
Speaker 2: they'd say that's the that's the shining jewel. Great effects
Speaker 2: in that one. And that's the thing about Beekler. And
Speaker 2: that's the thing about this segment is like you can
Speaker 2: tell he went all at it. This was his first
Speaker 2: directorial effort, I believe. And also he did all the
Speaker 2: special effects, so he's really throwing everything at the board here,
Speaker 2: like limited runtime, limited resources, but he makes the most
Speaker 2: out of it, right.
Speaker 3: So Paul awakes in a cave full of cobwebs and
Speaker 3: pink lights, and then these zombie warriors start shambling out
Speaker 3: and attacking him. The zombies in this sequence look really great.
Speaker 3: They've got these sort of like sunken dark eyes and
Speaker 3: they look really just evil. They're excellent design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is my favorite of the challenges. I love
Speaker 2: the vibrant color. I like this nightmare world of zombies,
Speaker 2: flesh caves, and ultimately imp kings. So it's really good.
Speaker 3: So Paul starts doing battle with these zombie warriors, but
Speaker 3: the problem is they return to life every time he
Speaker 3: defeats them. He's like beating him up, hitting him with
Speaker 3: swords and stuff, and so he can chop their heads off,
Speaker 3: but they just sort of get back up, pick up
Speaker 3: their heads and come at him again. So Paul runs away,
Speaker 3: but this was funny to me. Not far away. He
Speaker 3: runs like ten paces to the side and encounters a
Speaker 3: nasty little grimlin king sitting on a tiny throne, which
Speaker 3: introduces itself as rat Spit, caretaker of the dead. This
Speaker 3: what do you want to say about the design of
Speaker 3: rat Spit, rob.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean big gromblin energy. Here Beekler is credited
Speaker 2: as playing rat Spit, so I assume he's the puppeteer
Speaker 2: because it's an obvious puppet. I guess he's the voice actor.
Speaker 2: It's a little rough around the edges, but in all
Speaker 2: the right ways for a gromlin, you know, like I
Speaker 2: want it to look like an obvious puppet, Like that's
Speaker 2: part of the pleasure of the thing.
Speaker 3: Rat spit has a gold necklace, has these goat like horns,
Speaker 3: is like a nasty little devil. One side of his mouth,
Speaker 3: the upper lip is just like raised in a permanent sneer,
Speaker 3: and he is holding a scepter that looks to me
Speaker 3: kind of like a very elongated sweet potato.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he could easily be on the cover of a
Speaker 2: metal album. He's really awesome. Perhaps the band's name is Ratspit.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, maybe so. Ratspit says he's the Caretaker of
Speaker 3: the Dead, and then Paul goes dead. This is a
Speaker 3: common Did you notice that a lot of the dialogue
Speaker 3: in the movie had this kind of pattern where, you know,
Speaker 3: a monster villain would would say something like, I'm Caretaker
Speaker 3: of the dead and the character just the other character
Speaker 3: responds dead, just sort of like please continue. Basically. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Ratspit explains that Paul is here to be tested
Speaker 3: against that which every man must face death. So the
Speaker 3: zombie warriors attack again, and Paul first tries to survive
Speaker 3: by blasting the zombies with ex Calibrate. You know, he
Speaker 3: like presses a series of keys on his wrist thing
Speaker 3: and it zaps the with lasers, but that doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Then he comes up with a new plan, zap the
Speaker 3: crystal on Rat spits sweet Potato staff and that makes
Speaker 3: the zombies disappear. And then Paul, after this, is made
Speaker 3: to face a new challenge, a zombie version of himself.
Speaker 2: Oh and this one looks really good too, Yeah it does.
Speaker 3: It does look like Jeffrey Byron basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Paul stares down zombie Paul. But then Zombie Paul disappears,
Speaker 3: and Ratspit is incredulous. He's like, how could you have
Speaker 3: defeated it? You know, this was your own destiny, but
Speaker 3: Paul says it is not his destiny. Then comes the
Speaker 3: most famous exchange in the movie. A voiceover of Misteema
Speaker 3: comes in and the voiceover Estema says, in a future reality,
Speaker 3: I shall destroy you, and Paul replies, I reject your
Speaker 3: reality and I substitute my own.
Speaker 2: Boom. Yeah, there you go. This is a This is
Speaker 2: a famous line from this film. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: as famous as anything from The Dungeon Master is. And
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Byron talks a little bit about it on the
Speaker 2: extras on the Arrow Disc and he says that it's
Speaker 2: actually a line that's stuck with him, you know, throughout
Speaker 2: his life. And lines up with a lot of the
Speaker 2: ideas that he got into via the likes of Wayne
Speaker 2: Dyer manifesting and so forth. So I think that's fair.
Speaker 2: You know, the line is hokey and awesome on our
Speaker 2: side of the screen, but I can understand how like
Speaker 2: a long percolating line spoken by the actor, embodied by
Speaker 2: the actor playing that character, even in something like rage War,
Speaker 2: might come back to you again and again and you know,
Speaker 2: even you know, be in power.
Speaker 3: I don't remember this from my own viewing, but I
Speaker 3: read online that one of the hosts of MythBusters was
Speaker 3: fond of quoting this line. I assume to say, like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to accept defeat on whatever we're trying
Speaker 3: to do, and I'm going to make it work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. I mean it's it may not be.
Speaker 2: It's not the Litany against fear, but if it helps
Speaker 2: you get through your day, go for it. It's fine.
Speaker 3: Okay. So challenge number two defeated. Oh wait, I did
Speaker 3: forget one detail about it, which was very funny. There's
Speaker 3: a part where Paul is mouthing off to Rat Spit,
Speaker 3: and I think he calls him spit Rat, and Rat
Speaker 3: Spit corrects him. He's like rat spit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very defensive on that point.
Speaker 3: But yeah, So back to the desert with Paul.
Speaker 2: That's two down right. We've done two challenges, two of
Speaker 2: them down now, and the movie could end at any
Speaker 2: moment because if he loses one, that's it exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this interlude after the challenge, it starts off
Speaker 3: with Mastema just being a horrible creep and groping at Gwinn,
Speaker 3: and then Paul stops it by shooting him with a
Speaker 3: laser from excalibrate what else this does put a stop
Speaker 3: to it, and Mistema sort of backs off and then
Speaker 3: pivots to having an animated dragon duel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty fun, like it has a color scheme
Speaker 2: that reminds me of Disney's Sleeping View, I bet you know.
Speaker 2: So it's it doesn't last long, it doesn't seem really
Speaker 2: go anywhere, but it's fun. It's nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then it goes on, so they have the
Speaker 3: animated dragon duel and then it's onto just something else.
Speaker 3: So it's very non sequitor a series of things here.
Speaker 3: The next thing is Mastema says, do you fancy music?
Speaker 3: This is a piece of my own composing, and then
Speaker 3: we get a terrible dissonant wall of sound. It's the
Speaker 3: choirs of hell, screams of the damn to that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. And then Paul responds by programming Excalibrate to
Speaker 3: play rock and roll music, very eighties rock and roll music.
Speaker 3: And then Masteema, seemingly offended, is like, you call this
Speaker 3: noise music, you shall have your fill of it. So
Speaker 3: what do you think the next challenge is going to
Speaker 3: be about? It's heavy metal.
Speaker 2: Ah yeah, And this one's a lot of fun too.
Speaker 2: This one is written and directed by Charles Band.
Speaker 3: So we are instantly transported to a Wasp concert. They're
Speaker 3: in side of club. Everybody in the club is wearing
Speaker 3: black leather and a lot of people have gothy makeup on.
Speaker 3: Gwinn is being held hostage on stage by the band Wasp.
Speaker 3: She's in some kind of rock and roll torture device
Speaker 3: on the stage, and it seems that to get to
Speaker 3: her and save her, Paul is going to have to
Speaker 3: go through Wasp.
Speaker 2: That's right. And oh man, there's a lot unwrap here. So,
Speaker 2: I mean Gwenn's outfit looks amazing. Here, we get a
Speaker 2: lot of Blackie Lawless as we'll discuss. And it's interesting
Speaker 2: too that this sequence was shot at the historic Whiskey
Speaker 2: A Go Go venue in West Hollywood, though apparently in
Speaker 2: the dead middle of the night, after closing time, because
Speaker 2: you know, they had shows they need to do, so
Speaker 2: after the concert was finished, after the concert goers we're
Speaker 2: out incomes Charles Band and crew and they filmed this
Speaker 2: awesome sequence.
Speaker 3: Man, that must have been really because I'd imagine the
Speaker 3: concerts go pretty late there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would guess so, Like I think Jeffrey Byron
Speaker 2: and the extra said something about it being at midnight,
Speaker 2: but I'm thinking that's too early. Yeah, It's like I'm
Speaker 2: thinking they were picking up around like two or three, right,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Whiskey a Go Go closing up by midnight, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because this is a venue that goes back to the
Speaker 2: early sixties and hosted all sorts of acts like the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys, that Doors, Motley Crue, Parliament Funkadelic, and of
Speaker 2: course probably WASP I'm getting at least in this movie. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this short segment, this challenge is sort of a
Speaker 3: It embodies a larger genre of horror movies that would
Speaker 3: also be happening at this time period, which is sort
Speaker 3: of metalsploitation. It's like heavy metal meets some kind of
Speaker 3: monstrous evil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little metalsploitation on your sampler platter here, and
Speaker 2: we'll have to, at some point in the future come
Speaker 2: back and do it like a proper full metalsploitation film
Speaker 2: in which your heavy metal bands are either actually demons
Speaker 2: or actual devil worshipers, and and so forth. It's a
Speaker 2: subgenre that I think is a lot of fun. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we get a lot of Blackie loless here, looking like
Speaker 2: a no fielding parody of an eighties rocker. But he's
Speaker 2: just all in on it, just just snarling, big eyed,
Speaker 2: crazy rocker hair. I love it.
Speaker 3: So Paul of course has to go save Gwynn. But
Speaker 3: in order to do that, he will have to face
Speaker 3: his greatest challenge yet, which is getting from the bar
Speaker 3: area back to his spot in the pit, you know,
Speaker 3: getting through the crowd. He has a hard time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of the core part of this challenge,
Speaker 2: isn't it, moving through a crowd? Yeah.
Speaker 3: I Meanwhile, Wasp is singing a song about how they
Speaker 3: are bad. This is the song about I have no morals,
Speaker 3: I do evil.
Speaker 2: Show, don't tell Wasp come on?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, now, so I do enjoy heavy metal, I'm
Speaker 3: not personally a big fan of Wasp. However, this dude's
Speaker 3: outfit is top shelf. His jacket has circular saw blades
Speaker 3: attached to the sleeves, and that's just smart. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's convenient, like you never know when you're gonna need him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it hats off again to Kathy Clark.
Speaker 3: Here. So the singer from Wasp is holding Gwynn hostage
Speaker 3: and Paul gets up on stage to rescue her, but
Speaker 3: then he gets knocked They knock him down into the
Speaker 3: pit again, and the Wasp guy is like, you know,
Speaker 3: he's indicating that he's gonna kill Gwinn with a with
Speaker 3: a machete. But then Paul he thinks about it, and
Speaker 3: he does some beat booping on his Excalibrate and it
Speaker 3: tells him that he can defeat the singer by disintegrating
Speaker 3: him with high frequency sound. But the ultimately that just
Speaker 3: ends up looking like it blasts him with a laser
Speaker 3: again like it does with everything else. So he does that. Also,
Speaker 3: the singer was mastema.
Speaker 2: I feel like if they'd had more time and maybe
Speaker 2: thought this little bit more. He could have like like
Speaker 2: opposed heavy metal music with like electronic ambient music, you know,
Speaker 2: like it could have been more of a proper duel
Speaker 2: back and forth, and then electro ambience wins. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like the powers of Steve Roach overcome the powers
Speaker 2: of Loss. But we don't have that much time.
Speaker 3: I reject your reality and substitutino. Yeah, so back to
Speaker 3: the desert once again, more kind of bandying about threats,
Speaker 3: and dialogue between Misteema and you know, Exclibrate or Paul
Speaker 3: Msteema is like, you performed magnificently, and Paul starts bismirching Misteema.
Speaker 3: He says, you know what you are. You're the lowest
Speaker 3: of the low. You use people for your own entertainment,
Speaker 3: your own little whims and fancies. So they start kind
Speaker 3: of laser zapping back and forth at each other, but
Speaker 3: Paul's laser does nothing to Misteema, and Misteema explains, this
Speaker 3: barrier cannot be penetrated. It is powered by a thousand
Speaker 3: dead souls, so you know it's hard to get through.
Speaker 2: That, all right, Yeah, fair enough, and then we're popped
Speaker 2: into the next challenge. This next one is the Stone
Speaker 2: Canyon Giant sequence, and this one's written and directed and
Speaker 2: special effects by David Allen, who lived nineteen forty four
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety nine. Stop motion animation legend that we
Speaker 2: previously talked about in our episode on the Band produced
Speaker 2: Robot Jocks, which, of course Joy has excellent robot stop
Speaker 2: motion animation in it.
Speaker 3: God, I love robot Chocks.
Speaker 2: So Alan sadly died in nineteen ninety nine at the
Speaker 2: age of fifty four, but during his career he worked
Speaker 2: on the Howling Willow, Freaked Ghostbusters to Young Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 2: and a ton of Charles Band Full Moon productions, providing
Speaker 2: the sort of stop motion work that really set some
Speaker 2: of those films apart, you know, that kind of like
Speaker 2: old fashioned Harry Howsen esque stop motion work. So he's
Speaker 2: the man behind the cool animation bits and laser blasts
Speaker 2: and cue the Wings Serpent. And when he died, he
Speaker 2: was working on The Prime Evils, his sort of magnum opus,
Speaker 2: and it was left unfinished at the time, but there
Speaker 2: were enough notes and materials left behind that his colleague
Speaker 2: Chris Indicott and stop motion animator Kent Burton were able
Speaker 2: to keep working on it. Charles Band ended up raising
Speaker 2: some money through Intoggo that allowed them to finish it,
Speaker 2: and it was finally released in twenty twenty three. It
Speaker 2: even really received a limited theatrical run. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: it yet, but fans seem to love it. I think
Speaker 2: it's just, you know, chocked full of those old fashioned
Speaker 2: Harry Housen style effects, and hey, you know, it'd probably
Speaker 2: make a good double feature with Phil Tippett's Mad God. Oh.
Speaker 3: I just looked it up. This looks great. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: have to check this out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've looked around at reviews and folks really
Speaker 2: seemed to really enjoy it. But yeah, anyway. Prior to
Speaker 2: Dungeon Master, Allen had worked on numerous films with stop
Speaker 2: motion elements, everything from Equinox in seventy to Flesh Gordon
Speaker 2: in seventy four, but also films like eighty one's The
Speaker 2: Howling and eighty three's Twilight Zone the movie. But his
Speaker 2: only directorial credit, according to IMDb, was a nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight short film titled Raiders of the Stone Ring. So
Speaker 2: this was his first I guess real chance it coming
Speaker 2: in and directing something, and then he would follow this
Speaker 2: up with puppet Master two in nineteen ninety that's his
Speaker 2: only other featured directorial credit.
Speaker 3: So in this segment, Paul gets transported unconscious to a
Speaker 3: rocky canyon it looks like somewhere in southern California, and
Speaker 3: he gets his wrist computer stolen by a couple of
Speaker 3: locals while he is asleep, and then he wakes up
Speaker 3: chases to get the computer back, but this chase leads
Speaker 3: him to a temple with a giant stone statue on top,
Speaker 3: and Cal starts sending the alert. The computer says sensing
Speaker 3: occult power and man if only all computers could do that.
Speaker 3: The statue wakes up and becomes a lumbering stop motion
Speaker 3: hulk that chases Paul through the ravine and eventually in
Speaker 3: this case Paul will actually Cal figures out that the
Speaker 3: stone giant is a god named Tammock, which is from Indonesia.
Speaker 3: That was an unexpected detail, and this information seems perhaps
Speaker 3: useful in figuring out that in order to defeat it,
Speaker 3: Paul must use his computer to zap it with a
Speaker 3: laser in the head.
Speaker 2: So exactly the same solution to all of the challenges.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, but once again challenge bested.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ultimately this one is a lot of fun
Speaker 2: because you have this great stop motion creature and you know,
Speaker 2: if you know just a little bit about stop motion work,
Speaker 2: you know it takes forever and is a very laborious
Speaker 2: way to create cinematic magic. So you know, most of
Speaker 2: the effort went into creating this creature and having it actual,
Speaker 2: having an actual interface between it and our live action performance,
Speaker 2: and it works really well.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's short, sweet, to the point, but a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So after this, Paul comes back to the desert
Speaker 3: another interlude with Misteama, and Mistema's got a new thing.
Speaker 3: And now Mistema is like, Okay, if you let me
Speaker 3: keep Gwen, I'll let you go free and I will
Speaker 3: give you wealth sufficient to create your own empire. And
Speaker 3: so Mistema creates this big pile of gold in front
Speaker 3: of Paul, and Paul like picks up a piece of
Speaker 3: gold and he's like nah, tosses it down, doesn't take
Speaker 3: the bait. Next, Misteema tempts Paul with three beautiful women
Speaker 3: who appear and they sort of vamp around him, rubbing
Speaker 3: his arms. And then when Gwenn sees this, she yells foul,
Speaker 3: So will Paul surrender Gwenn sold to Satan in exchange
Speaker 3: for three demonic brides.
Speaker 2: Gwinn thinks there's a chance.
Speaker 3: Yes, Gwinn, clearly she's worried. Yeah, but Paul no. He
Speaker 3: thinks about it for a minute, but then Gwenn like
Speaker 3: yells at him with a scolding tone, and Paul steps away.
Speaker 3: He's like, nope, I turn it down. I reject your reality,
Speaker 3: and I will save Gwen. And this leads Miss Stema
Speaker 3: to raise his arms and shriek in a truly hilarious manner,
Speaker 3: and then we're transported to the next challenge, which is
Speaker 3: the one called Slasher.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is the one written by Jeffrey Byron and
Speaker 2: directed by his brother Steve Stafford, who used the pseudonym
Speaker 2: Steve Ford on this one. This is also alluding to
Speaker 2: their godfather with the Ford moniker, but Byron also cast
Speaker 2: several disacting school friends in the sequence. His brother, Steve
Speaker 2: born nineteen fifty had previously done a lot of work
Speaker 2: as a camera operator on such films as seventy four's
Speaker 2: Young Frankenstein nineteen eighties, The Ninth Configuration, which is a
Speaker 2: very weird film eighty two's Tutsi and Byron indicated in
Speaker 2: the extras on the Arrow Disc that he perhaps had
Speaker 2: had some additional directing experience as well before this, but
Speaker 2: IMDb lists this as Stafford's first directorial effort is directorial debut.
Speaker 2: He'd go on to direct nineteen nineties The Color of
Speaker 2: Evening and various TV projects. It also has a long
Speaker 2: and apparently ongoing career as a helicopter pilot for film productions,
Speaker 2: like stunt work but also like aerial camera stuff.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this one begins in an alleyway. Paul appears
Speaker 3: in an alley. There's like a newspaper headline I think,
Speaker 3: showing Gwyn's death and indicating she is the victim of
Speaker 3: a serial killer. And then Paul finds a dead body
Speaker 3: in the alley next to him, but it's somebody else,
Speaker 3: it's not when and then Mistima comes in with voiceover
Speaker 3: and explains, look, the article you saw is a premonition
Speaker 3: of what tomorrow's paper will be. You have one hour
Speaker 3: to find Gwynn and save her from this serial killer,
Speaker 3: or you will be defeated. Did I get that right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, this is not one of my favorite segments. It doesn't.
Speaker 2: It's fine. It's fine.
Speaker 3: Cops arrive, they find Paul just next to a dead
Speaker 3: body in this alley. They arrest him, throw him into
Speaker 3: the police car, and then drive away, just leaving the
Speaker 3: dead body there with no one guarding the crime scene. Amazing.
Speaker 3: So Paul, while they're riding in the police car, Paul
Speaker 3: looks out the window and he sees Gwynn on the sidewalk,
Speaker 3: so he's like, oh, there she is. I need to
Speaker 3: get back to her. She meanwhile, we learn is going
Speaker 3: to a dancer audition, so I guess she's still like
Speaker 3: she did, you know, dance aerobics in the real world.
Speaker 3: In the stream world, she's just a dancer and she's
Speaker 3: going to an audition that she saw an ad for
Speaker 3: in the paper. Paul uses the computer to like laser
Speaker 3: lock pick his handcuffs, and then meanwhile, we see the
Speaker 3: serial killer puttering around his house from behind. The actor
Speaker 3: who plays the serial killer looks a lot like Paul
Speaker 3: Riser as Burke, and he's I don't know. He's like
Speaker 3: collecting newspaper clippings about all his murders, typical serial killer stuff,
Speaker 3: typical stuff. He's like getting out a box of new scalpels.
Speaker 3: The cops are having a conversation about hating jelly donuts,
Speaker 3: and then in the middle of this, Paul just dives
Speaker 3: out of the police cars. So this apparently is not
Speaker 3: the kind that has doors that lock from the outside.
Speaker 2: Maybe he picked them with his android brain.
Speaker 3: Oh maybe. So cal tells Paul where the next murder
Speaker 3: will take place. It's a dance auditorium, and he runs
Speaker 3: to get there. He gets there and he's looking around
Speaker 3: inside for Gwen. But and the computer tells him like
Speaker 3: sixty seconds to challenge termination, I guess, meaning to stop
Speaker 3: her from getting serial murdered. And he's really taking his time.
Speaker 3: He's just kind of wandering around looking like Gwen Gwenn.
Speaker 3: But then finally he sees her. He's like, oh, there
Speaker 3: she is. He walks in on Burke, getting ready to
Speaker 3: stab her, but then he saves her. That was that
Speaker 3: was it. He saves her from the serial killer. And
Speaker 3: then the cops come and they grab a serial killer.
Speaker 2: So that's that segment. You know, it was different from
Speaker 2: the others. It stands apart, you know. It has some
Speaker 2: ever so light laughs in it, so I you know,
Speaker 2: but for the most part it's another one of these
Speaker 2: segments that really feels like it's just a promotional example
Speaker 2: of what Empire Pictures can do for you.
Speaker 3: Okay, challenging number six, there's only two left. This one
Speaker 3: is the one called Cave Beast, and it was directed
Speaker 3: by Peter Minoogian, who we remember from Arena.
Speaker 2: That's right. I believe we talked about him twice born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine, because he directed the stupendous The Eliminators
Speaker 2: in eighty six and then Arena in eighty nine. This
Speaker 2: was his debut directorial credit, but he served as Band's
Speaker 2: first assistant director on Metal Storm as well as some
Speaker 2: other pictures.
Speaker 3: Eliminators was the one with the Mandroid, the Ninja, the
Speaker 3: Mercenary and by you Betty.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's the one that's mostly about boats.
Speaker 3: It's so about boats.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Eliminators was great. By you, Betty. I love by you, Betty.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Arena, of course is an alien boxing film
Speaker 2: that is great. It's like what if Star Trek was
Speaker 2: mostly about alien Mma and that's your movie.
Speaker 3: We still talk about by you Betty in our household
Speaker 3: pretty often. It's it's She's a point of reference for
Speaker 3: some reason, I guess because she's out like working in
Speaker 3: the heat on the sweaty river. So like whenever we're
Speaker 3: like getting sweaty working in the yard or something, it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm feeling like by you Betty over here.
Speaker 2: There you go, all right, But Cave Beast, you can
Speaker 2: guess where this is going and what it's what the
Speaker 2: main threat.
Speaker 3: You know, they are really reusing some locations. So I
Speaker 3: think the Stone Canyon exterior is the same as the
Speaker 3: exterior and this thing. From from what I can tell,
Speaker 3: we're also just seeing caves over and over that may
Speaker 3: well be the same cave set shot from different angles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is a dream, so it has
Speaker 2: kind of a dream logic sense to it, you know,
Speaker 2: where it's like, oh, man, I was having this dream
Speaker 2: about this cave and there were zombies in it. But
Speaker 2: then I woke up. But man, I went back to sleep,
Speaker 2: and what I had another cave dream, like a slightly
Speaker 2: different one. I was fighting just one monster this time.
Speaker 3: This time the monster is a troll and Paul is
Speaker 3: playing like the Banana bomb game with the troll there
Speaker 3: on different ends of the cave, throwing things at each
Speaker 3: other like rocks and throwing these crystal shards at one another.
Speaker 3: Somehow it ends when somehow a blast coming from somewhere
Speaker 3: causes a rock fall which lands on the troll. I
Speaker 3: watched this twice and I don't understand how or why
Speaker 3: the troll was defeated.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The
Speaker 2: troll looks good, though, Oh yeah, a little devil horns,
Speaker 2: kind of a gargoyle look to it.
Speaker 3: I agree, yeah, good look control. And then the troll
Speaker 3: win killed, transforms into a beautiful angel, like a beautiful
Speaker 3: woman in an angel costume.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Played by stunt woman Diane Carter born nineteen fifty,
Speaker 2: who worked on such films as nineteen eighty is the Return,
Speaker 2: which we covered on Weird House, Blade Runner, and Star
Speaker 2: Trek to the Wrath of Khan, in which she also
Speaker 2: plays a regular one scientist. But here, Yeah, she is
Speaker 2: an angel and her outfit is on the verge of
Speaker 2: endangering that pg. Thirteen.
Speaker 3: There is so much of that in this movie. It's
Speaker 3: almost like they're trying to save money on the costume
Speaker 3: budget with you know, you don't want to spend too
Speaker 3: much on materials.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again, it's a solid costume. Kathy Clark I'll
Speaker 2: mention her again, knocked it out of the park with
Speaker 2: these costumes.
Speaker 3: I mean it looks like they give her full like
Speaker 3: feathery angel wings, even for she never stands up. She's
Speaker 3: just like laying here the transformation form of a dying troll. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the hair too is feather I don't know. Can you
Speaker 3: explain the ending here? So I'm gonna quote it. I'll
Speaker 3: say what happens? Dreamy music starts playing in a gentle voice.
Speaker 3: The angel says, you didn't listen. You would have won
Speaker 3: if you just walked out of the cave. Paul says,
Speaker 3: I didn't know. I had no idea. She says, I
Speaker 3: too transgressed and was banished to this cave. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. If there's something anything I can do, She says,
Speaker 3: you've done it. She disappears, and then Paul challenge bested.
Speaker 3: Paul's trained ported back to the desert of Mistema. That's it.
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, I have no idea what any of that means, Like,
Speaker 2: was she a real angel?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: I don't know it. It makes no sense, but check
Speaker 2: it off the list because it's accomplished.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this time, Mistema is sitting in a big chair,
Speaker 3: surrounded by rocks, fire spears, shoved into the ground, green light,
Speaker 3: and here begins Mistema's famous monologue about setting fire to
Speaker 3: a cat that starts off when I was a lad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of goes on forever too and with
Speaker 2: lots of details, don't I think it's kind of funny
Speaker 2: that it was cut for the euro release. But on
Speaker 2: the other hand, it's like, yeah, this goes on too long.
Speaker 3: Paul responds to the lighting a cat on fire story
Speaker 3: by giving a discourse on the Sanskrit concept of a himsa,
Speaker 3: which is the principle of causing no harm. The way
Speaker 3: Paul explains it is respect for every living creature. And
Speaker 3: Mistema really doesn't like this. But by the way, I
Speaker 3: have questions about Mastema's monologue. At some point Misteema was
Speaker 3: a lad. I thought he was Satan.
Speaker 2: Hmm, yeah, I don't know. He's maybe yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: He's a mortal who becomes a demon lord later because
Speaker 2: of all his sins.
Speaker 3: Maybe, Okay, So Misteema does another monologue after Paul talks
Speaker 3: about a himza. I feel like we should give a
Speaker 3: grade after we assess Masteema's essay here. So the Essay
Speaker 3: goes like this, what conceit? What hypocrisy? You mortals think
Speaker 3: you are so full of heart and soul, love and kindness.
Speaker 3: You think your God looks down on you with tenderness
Speaker 3: and mercy. You're mistaken, my friend. It is humanity, not
Speaker 3: the devil that is read in Tooth and Claw. It
Speaker 3: is your God that reiins down terror on you. Okay,
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like the logic does not really
Speaker 3: connect from one sentence to another. Is he mad? Is
Speaker 3: he talking about God or human humans or what?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Who's the bad guy here? Who you placing the
Speaker 2: blame on? And what does it have to do with
Speaker 2: anything else in the film?
Speaker 3: Nothing? Nothing? Anyway, Paul tells Mastima that he is bored
Speaker 3: because he has no heart and no soul, which makes
Speaker 3: immortality unbearable. So Mastema gets really mad and teleports both
Speaker 3: Paul and Gwynn to the final challenge. This is the
Speaker 3: one called Desert Pursuit aka a five minute version of
Speaker 3: metal Storm The Destruction of Jaredson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the one where they just they are
Speaker 2: straight up using leftover apocalyptic vehicles that they just used
Speaker 2: to shoot metal Storm, And it's written and directed by
Speaker 2: Ted Nicolau born nineteen forty nine. We've talked about Ted
Speaker 2: previously because he directed one of my favorite horror comedies
Speaker 2: of all time nineteen eighty six is Terror Vision, So
Speaker 2: go back to that episode if you want to hear
Speaker 2: more about him. But suffice to say that this sequence
Speaker 2: with his directorial debut, and it's basically just one big
Speaker 2: action sequence using those leftover Apocalypse cars. It may be
Speaker 2: in many respects it's my least favorite challenge in the picture,
Speaker 2: but like we pointed out earlier, at least Gwynn gets to,
Speaker 2: you know, be the hero, the hero for a change,
Speaker 2: and blow things up with a plasma rifle. So it's
Speaker 2: got that going for it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that. I mean, it's just it's fun in
Speaker 3: the same way that Metal Storm is fun. I feel
Speaker 3: like we appreciate this less because we've seen metal Storm.
Speaker 2: It's true, Yeah, but maybe if.
Speaker 3: You hadn't seen metal Storm and didn't know they were
Speaker 3: just you know, essentially lifting a scene out of that
Speaker 3: and putting it in here, it might be more exciting.
Speaker 2: This is the leftover Thanksgiving turkey sandwich exactly. Well, yes,
Speaker 2: I take that. You know, you're generally the my memory
Speaker 2: is the leftover turkey sandwich was better than Thanksgiving, So
Speaker 2: it's not that it's something else, it's leftovers reheat.
Speaker 3: So Paul and Gwyn appear in an airplane graveyard in
Speaker 3: the desert. Cow does a scan and determines inhabitants hostile.
Speaker 3: The inhabitants immediately show up. They're you're basic, you know
Speaker 3: if they made it of Tuscan raiders and lords among us.
Speaker 3: They're guys in sci fi desert punk outfits with hockey masks.
Speaker 3: They were probably exactly the same costumes used in Metal Storm.
Speaker 3: They drive cars that were used in Metal Storm. Paul
Speaker 3: uses his wrist computer to blast the guys and steal
Speaker 3: one of their desert buggies. The warriors getting another one
Speaker 3: of the buggies and speed after them. So it's sort
Speaker 3: of a dollar store mad Max car chase. And yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the part where Gwinn she's like fed up
Speaker 3: with it. She's like, I'm I'm done with all this,
Speaker 3: and she grabs a plasma rifle and blows the other
Speaker 3: cars to bits. So it's more blasting, but from a
Speaker 3: different source than the previous blasting. All of the previous
Speaker 3: lasers came from Paul's wristwarmer. Now it's this big gun
Speaker 3: that Gwinn has. It's the only segment where Gwyn gets
Speaker 3: to shoot bad guys instead of just screaming for help.
Speaker 3: So congrats on that. But then it also ends with
Speaker 3: like Mistema sending them into a game of chicken with
Speaker 3: another desert remote desert car, and like the cars hit
Speaker 3: each other and blow up. But I guess somehow our
Speaker 3: heroes get transported out of them back to the desert,
Speaker 3: and then the final sequence is just is just a
Speaker 3: fist fight between Paul and Mistema and that's how it ends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like basically, Paul is like, well, you know what,
Speaker 2: you have all these advantages because you're immortal and nothing cols,
Speaker 2: why don't you have a mortal fist fight with me
Speaker 2: and we'll settle it that way, a good old fashioned
Speaker 2: cowboy slug fest, and Esteema's like, let's do it. And
Speaker 2: then they just have like a just kind of a
Speaker 2: mediocre brawl at the edge of a pit and Misteema
Speaker 2: like falls into said pitt and is defeated, and like
Speaker 2: basically the movie ends at that point. I think we
Speaker 2: get our one like shot of like, oh they're together
Speaker 2: and happy now. But then we're done.
Speaker 3: No, it's not just that he yeah, pushes Mastema into
Speaker 3: the pit. After the fist fight, they get transported back
Speaker 3: to their apartment. They're standing there in their apartment and
Speaker 3: then Gwynn says, she's like, Okay, Paul, let's get married.
Speaker 3: And also, I'm cool with your computer now.
Speaker 2: I like Cal, Yeah, where what changed her mind? There
Speaker 2: was nothing in the challenges that would support that. But okay,
Speaker 2: fair enough.
Speaker 3: I mean I think she was right to begin with. Again,
Speaker 3: you know, you should be accepting of your your partner's
Speaker 3: hobbies and interests, even if they get a little obsessive sometimes.
Speaker 3: But Paul is clearly way too obsessed with this computer.
Speaker 3: It's not healthy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the reason they just went through these demonic challenges. Yes,
Speaker 2: so really she should be like, Paul, we need to
Speaker 2: have some time apart. I need to think about this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I could understand if at the end she was like,
Speaker 3: you know, tamp it down a little bit, Just tamp
Speaker 3: down the cal a little bit. You treat it more
Speaker 3: like a hobby, spend some time on it. But you
Speaker 3: can't let cal determine your entire life. And it seems
Speaker 3: instead like the conclusion is she's okay with cal. Cal's
Speaker 3: going to make all her decisions for us now hand
Speaker 3: things over to Skynet.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, like he has saved the day,
Speaker 2: right he and to gather, they have defeated the demonic threats.
Speaker 2: So fair enough, happy ending has been earned, so I'll
Speaker 2: accept it. And it is a lot of fun. You know.
Speaker 2: We can rag it for a rag on it for
Speaker 2: its various lapses and logic and how this jointed it
Speaker 2: can feel, but it's a lot of fun. None of
Speaker 2: the there's never really a dull moment. You're constantly trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what's happening, you know, just flowing with
Speaker 2: the dream logic and these often abrupt changes and shift
Speaker 2: in tone. So yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Okay, that doesn't for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing much else to say other than yeah,
Speaker 2: if you're interested and you haven't seen it, go watch
Speaker 2: The Dungeon Master aka Rage War, and you can also
Speaker 2: puzzle over all of these questions as well. All right,
Speaker 2: we'll go in and close it up here, but we'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there as always. Do
Speaker 2: you have particular memories experiences related to viewing the Dungeon
Speaker 2: Master aka Rage War. Which version did you see? Do
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on Whiskey a Go Go? You have
Speaker 2: thoughts on any of the locations featured in the film
Speaker 2: California people right in. We'd love to hear from you,
Speaker 2: And just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. And if you want to see a list
Speaker 2: of all the movies we've covered on Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: thus far, go to letterbox dot com. It's l E
Speaker 2: T T E R B o x D dot com.
Speaker 2: Our username there is weird House, and we have a
Speaker 2: nice list of everything we've covered. You can look at
Speaker 2: all the box art. It's like go into a video
Speaker 2: rental store, but you know in your mind and online
Speaker 2: and so forth, so yeah, check it out. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact a Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
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