Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and hey, you know we're all kind of writing
Speaker 1: high I guess on a little alien fever here. So
Speaker 1: here is another film that clearly was inspired, at least
Speaker 1: in part by alien and aliens. We're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about Split Second, which takes place in the future
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eight. This is an episode that
Speaker 1: Joe and I recorded back in let's see it would
Speaker 1: have been March of twenty twenty one. But it's a
Speaker 1: real fun one. Rugger Howard as the grumpiest detective of
Speaker 1: all time going up against some kind of monster. Let's
Speaker 1: dive in and explore the film.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Jim McCormick, and we have got a post
Speaker 3: apocalyptic buddy cop movie for you today.
Speaker 1: That's right, So peel a chocolate off the side of
Speaker 1: your fridge, sugar down your coffee, and prepare for the
Speaker 1: ride that is nineteen ninety two's Split Second.
Speaker 3: Now this was new to me. I actually just finished
Speaker 3: watching it minutes ago. But you had already seen this one,
Speaker 3: I think last year or the year before or something,
Speaker 3: so you brought it back up for the show.
Speaker 1: Right right. I had watched it in one setting sometime
Speaker 1: in the last few years, and I was watching it
Speaker 1: late at night, so I got a little sleepy towards
Speaker 1: the end. Not not the film's fault, but but my fault.
Speaker 1: This time around, I watched it in chunks, often first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning, while I myself was having a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee, So I really got to appreciate every detail,
Speaker 1: every nook and cranny of this film. And I feel
Speaker 1: like second helpings of split second yeah really paid off
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 3: Now, did this movie convince you to use about three
Speaker 3: quarters of a cup of sugar per mug of coffee?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, as well, we'll get into in this
Speaker 1: we there's just such all reckless disregard for our hero's
Speaker 1: health as he does he doesn't drink, which I think
Speaker 1: is anymore anymore. Yes, he's given up the alcohol, but
Speaker 1: has taken to just reckless consumption of chocolate and sugar
Speaker 1: heavy caffeine.
Speaker 3: And like his teeth are like Swiss cheese, Like he
Speaker 3: is just and I bet this world. So this is
Speaker 3: a dystopian future buddy cop movie that is set in
Speaker 3: a future London that has been flooded by global warming.
Speaker 3: So like the water levels have risen, the Thames is
Speaker 3: now creeping out into the outer burrows, I guess, so
Speaker 3: all the streets are now like the canals of Venice
Speaker 3: just flooded with gross, muddy rat water, and the cops
Speaker 3: have to like drive around in them in these big
Speaker 3: jeeps that can drive in the shallow water, or actually
Speaker 3: navigate them in fan boats like it's a bayou movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is the again, this is a ninety
Speaker 1: two film, so this is the future of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. But one of the things about this film
Speaker 1: is that I feel like it does have a really
Speaker 1: solid visual feel. It has a great esthetic. You know,
Speaker 1: just all these scenes of just a two wet London
Speaker 1: and everything's at least partially flooded. It's just a soggy
Speaker 1: mess and everything else the rest of the world has
Speaker 1: a suitably industrial grime to it as well. It looks.
Speaker 1: It looks great. I really enjoyed the look of the film.
Speaker 3: It's the steam injected, microbial matt future of Highlander two,
Speaker 3: where everything is always just dark and moist and unpleasant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a little bit of a blade runner DNA
Speaker 1: in this for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll discuss.
Speaker 1: Another great thing about this film, and we'll touch on
Speaker 1: this time and time again too, is that it has
Speaker 1: all the hallmarks of the film in which the script
Speaker 1: has been reworked multiple times with different intense in mind,
Speaker 1: and it's result it results in a kind of chaos
Speaker 1: in key places, kind of ambiguity that can in the
Speaker 1: right proportions, work really well for a detective story or
Speaker 1: a monster story, and luckily this film is both.
Speaker 3: I would say for me, this was one of the
Speaker 3: funniest movies we have watched so far for weird House cinema.
Speaker 3: And to explain what I mean, so it has it's
Speaker 3: like a cargo truck just packed with every grizzled, macho
Speaker 3: buddy cop movie cliche and every dystopian sci fi cliche
Speaker 3: all together, but at such a volume and velocity that
Speaker 3: it does not seem just like lazy hack writing, but
Speaker 3: more kind of transcendent parody. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: it doesn't go to the level of parity where it's
Speaker 3: winking at you about it. It plays it straight, which
Speaker 3: makes for a much funnier end product.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I feel like when we laugh at this film,
Speaker 1: and I laughed at it at two, we're not laughing,
Speaker 1: you know, at somebody's face, old art or something here.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not just we're not. It's not like
Speaker 1: a mean laugh. I feel like we are laughing in
Speaker 1: a way that was intended by at least a large
Speaker 1: number of people involved in this film.
Speaker 3: Yes, Split Second is not a failure. It succeeds.
Speaker 1: Yes, though that.
Speaker 3: Seems to have been lost on people when it originally
Speaker 3: came out, who seemed to just regard it. Why or
Speaker 3: at least some of the reviews we were looking at
Speaker 3: people were just saying, like another you know, hackneyed, cliched
Speaker 3: dystopian sci fi movie, you can skip it. I think
Speaker 3: this one is worth a solidly worth a watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, when I looked it up after i'd seen
Speaker 1: it the second time, I looked it up in the
Speaker 1: Psychotronic Video Guide from Michael Weldon, and I found he
Speaker 1: didn't care for it. He called it a quote boring, dull,
Speaker 1: misty science fiction movie. And yeah, I agreed to disagree
Speaker 1: on this one because I think it's pretty terrific. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Maybe it was just too fresh
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six and hasn't hadn't aged enough yet.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. But then again, you could also argue
Speaker 1: that the tropes wouldn't have been as trod well trod
Speaker 1: in the early nineties as they would be in the
Speaker 1: year twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of the funny stuff in this movie
Speaker 3: would continue to be used unironically for the next like
Speaker 3: decade or two in straightforward like a list cop moviees. Oh,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if we've been mentioned. Also, this
Speaker 3: is a monster movie, so it is a dystopian sci
Speaker 3: fi movie, a grizzled buddy cop movie, and a monster
Speaker 3: movie all crammed into one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your here's your elevator?
Speaker 3: Pitch okay.
Speaker 1: In the Gritty Future of two thousand and eight, a
Speaker 1: murderous horror emerges from the flooded London underground, and only
Speaker 1: the gruffiest cop imaginable, supercharged on a diet of anxiety,
Speaker 1: coffee and chocolate, can stop it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you noticed that you said gruffiest,
Speaker 3: which I think is that is the right term, because
Speaker 3: he's gruff Andy's scruffy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a combination. It's a hybrid that he has
Speaker 1: absorbed the DNA of both qualities.
Speaker 3: Let's say that trailer audio.
Speaker 4: He can hear it's heartbeat.
Speaker 1: He knows it's out there.
Speaker 3: Somebody must have seen something.
Speaker 4: He knows what it can do. You're telling me, but's
Speaker 4: something running around loose in this city, ripping a half out.
Speaker 1: Of people any kingdom.
Speaker 3: Maybe eat some for breakfast.
Speaker 4: Now it's really pissing him off.
Speaker 1: But and his new partner work makes.
Speaker 4: Two paranoid people with guns are a menace to society.
Speaker 4: You need paranoid too. If you like this, follow you
Speaker 4: rutger howerd split second, nice timing, split second.
Speaker 3: All right, well, oh sorry, did you specify before that
Speaker 3: this is a rutger Hower film.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we did. It'll probably be obvious
Speaker 1: to a number of people. And maybe there's a picture
Speaker 1: of rutger Hower, you know, capping this thing off. But yees,
Speaker 1: this is this is a rutger Hower extravaganza in the
Speaker 1: same way that modern film fans a lot of you
Speaker 1: like the cage rage. This one is filled with Howard power.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, oh yeah, but.
Speaker 1: There are other people involved too. Let's start where we
Speaker 1: tend to start. Let's start with the director. Okay, the
Speaker 1: guy by the name of Tony Mayleem, English director who
Speaker 1: also directed the nineteen eighty one slasher film The Burning.
Speaker 1: Mayleem also went on to do a fair amount of
Speaker 1: documentary work, and I'm to understand Split Second was a
Speaker 1: particularly grueling project for him, and he had to step
Speaker 1: away towards the end of the production and let Ian
Speaker 1: Sharp finish directing the picture.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, I can imagine this might have been some
Speaker 3: trouble because you're dealing with a lot of flooded sets.
Speaker 3: I mean almost you know, like every other set in
Speaker 3: this movie. There's just water everywhere, and I would imagine
Speaker 3: that makes filming very difficult and tedious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you gotta have a pigeon wrangler. You gotta
Speaker 1: have a rat wrangler. Oh yeah, you gotta have a
Speaker 1: Hower wrangler, and every every everybody's got to be on hand.
Speaker 3: I didn't check for the credits, but was there an
Speaker 3: assistant to mister Howard in there?
Speaker 1: I didn't notice. Yeah, I should have. I should have looked.
Speaker 1: Somebody had to get him his coffee.
Speaker 3: The HOWERD power generator.
Speaker 1: Uh, he might I think he might be self powering.
Speaker 1: I really don't know enough about We'll get We'll get
Speaker 1: to Howard in a second.
Speaker 3: How power is renewable?
Speaker 1: Yes. Now, the writer on this is a guy named
Speaker 1: Gary Scott Thompson. Not a lot that I know about him,
Speaker 1: except that he is the guy who gave us Too Fast,
Speaker 1: Too Furious. He also wrote The Hollow Man Joe, it
Speaker 1: was Too Fast, Too Furious, one of the good fast
Speaker 1: furious movies.
Speaker 3: No, you generally want to stay away from the even
Speaker 3: numbered ones until you get to around six or eight.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Once you get once you get past five, everything is
Speaker 3: like bad but worth watchings. Everything's kind of good bad
Speaker 3: after that's where you're in, like the Flying Cars era.
Speaker 3: The real ones you want to stay away from, I
Speaker 3: think are like two and four, which I remember being
Speaker 3: rather boring.
Speaker 1: All right, cool, I'll keep that in mind well.
Speaker 3: And also the Hollow Man. God. I love Paul Verhoven,
Speaker 3: but that is just a dreadful movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember anything good about that one. Now.
Speaker 1: As for split second here again, this script seems like
Speaker 1: it was probably changed a number of times, and I
Speaker 1: think that was the case based on some just IMDb
Speaker 1: stuff I looked at. It has a lot of the
Speaker 1: obvious signs of Blade Runner and alien on it, as
Speaker 1: you would expect at that time, and certainly casting Rudger
Speaker 1: Howard is that was one of the films he made
Speaker 1: a big splash in a Blade Runner. But it also
Speaker 1: to me anyway, I feel like there's a huge two
Speaker 1: thousand a d comics influence here as well. I have
Speaker 1: no proof of that. And Gary Scott Thompson, I believe,
Speaker 1: is an American writer, not British, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of British folks involved in this one, and I
Speaker 1: feel like it thematically has a lot of the elements
Speaker 1: you find in those original Judge Dread comics, you know,
Speaker 1: where there's a grittiness, but there's also this comedic and
Speaker 1: satiric vein going through everything like everything's over the top, like,
Speaker 1: and we lose some of that in the americanized versions
Speaker 1: of Judge Dread, you know where in the films, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Judge Dread is, you know, grumbling and blasting things with
Speaker 1: an enormous gun, but he doesn't have a humorous maid
Speaker 1: or funny robots in his life like he does in
Speaker 1: the comics.
Speaker 3: So one thing that's funny about this movie is that
Speaker 3: it is very British. It's not just incidentally set in London.
Speaker 3: Like the setting is very pointedly British, and some of
Speaker 3: the characters are very pointedly British in the way they're characterized.
Speaker 3: But our main hero, Rutger Howard, despite being Rutger Howard,
Speaker 3: is a very American cop character. He's very much like
Speaker 3: an American tough guy cop lead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, despite of course being Dutch. Rutger Howard
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen forty four and died in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: In this he plays Harley Stone, a character we will
Speaker 1: discuss at length here, but yeah, he was a wonderful actor, environmentalist.
Speaker 1: He also had a nonprofit aimed at HIV and AIDS
Speaker 1: awareness called the Rugger Howard Starfish Association, and he wrote
Speaker 1: to prominence in the films a fellow Dutchman of filmmaker
Speaker 1: Paul of Villehoven, who we just mentioned and made a
Speaker 1: huge splash in American cinema in nineteen eighty two's Blade Runner.
Speaker 1: He's also very notable in nineteen eighty five's Lady Hawk
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighty six is the Hitcher, and he's worked
Speaker 1: with Hooven culminated in the nineteen eighty five medieval adventure
Speaker 1: film that I have not seen, Flesh and Blood, which
Speaker 1: co star Jennifer Jason Lee and Ronald Lacey. And I
Speaker 1: understand that the two disagreed on the nature of his character.
Speaker 1: Howard wanted to get away from villain roles, but Verhoven
Speaker 1: wanted him to play a more morally ambiguous character. And
Speaker 1: that's an interesting wrinkle to think about because in this
Speaker 1: obviously he's our hero, and I can't think of a
Speaker 1: lot of films like Later On where he played anything
Speaker 1: other than a protagonist, you know, like what are the
Speaker 1: big rudger howand villain roles? Yeah, you named Blade Runner
Speaker 1: the hitcher, But anything else.
Speaker 3: Well, I would argue that maybe you shouldn't even think
Speaker 3: of him necessarily as the villain of Blade Runner. I mean,
Speaker 3: in Blade Runners, I would say he's something more like
Speaker 3: the creature in Frankenstein, as someone true does bad things,
Speaker 3: who harms people, but in other ways is sort of
Speaker 3: a sort of a babe in the wilderness, Like he's
Speaker 3: he's lost and desperate and doesn't know what to do
Speaker 3: with his own mortality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can easily imagine, like the filmmaking system
Speaker 1: that after Blade Runner is like, oh, can we get
Speaker 1: Howard to play this terrorist? Can we get Howard to
Speaker 1: play this evil king? And it sounds like he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want those type of roles. Want I want
Speaker 1: something different and I want and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: my mind come turns to Batman begins.
Speaker 3: Right, he's a corrupt businessman.
Speaker 1: He's a corrupt businessman, but he's yeah, he's a suit
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think he's also I remember, God, I haven't
Speaker 3: seen sin City in many years, but I remember him
Speaker 3: being some kind of evil corrupt, like yeah or something
Speaker 3: in that. Also.
Speaker 1: Okay, well he maybe managed to sprinkle some villainy in
Speaker 1: the later movies, but yeah. He went on to be
Speaker 1: in a ton of films and TV projects, one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five acting credits on IMDb, and they really
Speaker 1: run the gamut from B movies to blockbusters. Like he
Speaker 1: was just in a lot of stuff and he's just
Speaker 1: I've never seen him in something where I'm like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's boring. You know, he's he's an exciting element even
Speaker 1: in a bad picture.
Speaker 3: Oh, you should try to watch Dariu Argento's Dracula.
Speaker 1: Okay, yah is the second time you've challenged me on
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not saying I've watched it. I'm saying I've
Speaker 3: never been able to watch more than like sixty seconds
Speaker 3: of it. Okay, But so, I guess if we're talking
Speaker 3: about Rutger, how are we got to talk about the
Speaker 3: tears in the rain monologue? Which this is a famous moment,
Speaker 3: probably the most famous moment of Rutger Howard's career, also
Speaker 3: the most famous moment of Blade Runner the movie. The
Speaker 3: context is, of course, Harrison Ford in the movie plays Deckard,
Speaker 3: who is a type of police officer or bounty hunter
Speaker 3: who is hired to quote retire escaped replicants. Replicants are
Speaker 3: you know, sort of androids or humanoids who are created
Speaker 3: by this company to essentially be forced labor, and they
Speaker 3: have a very short lifespan so that they don't you know,
Speaker 3: get off and get ideas about independence. They can only
Speaker 3: live for something like four years. And so the plot
Speaker 3: of Blade Runner is that there are a group of
Speaker 3: replicants who escape and they're trying to find a way
Speaker 3: to get more life. They want to extend their lifespan. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Harrison Ford deckerd is trying to hunt them down, and
Speaker 3: in the end of the movie, he's chasing around in
Speaker 3: a building while the rain is pouring outside. He's chasing
Speaker 3: Rutger Howard's character, a replicant named Roy Bates, and there's
Speaker 3: a moment where where Deckard is almost about to fall
Speaker 3: to his death off the roof, but then Roy Batty
Speaker 3: grabs his arm and saves him, despite him being there
Speaker 3: to kill him. He saves him, and then he gives
Speaker 3: this speech. It's a soliloquy. He says, I've seen things
Speaker 3: you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the
Speaker 3: shoulder of Orian, I watch seabeams glitter in the dark
Speaker 3: near the Tanhuser Gate. All those moments will be lost
Speaker 3: in time, like Tears in Rain. It's a beautiful moment
Speaker 3: and a beautiful metaphor. But what I've read is that
Speaker 3: apparently there was a line similar to that already in
Speaker 3: the script, which I think was written by David Peeples.
Speaker 3: But apparently Rutger Hower himself rewrote the line before filming,
Speaker 3: and he was the person who added the comparison to
Speaker 3: Tears in Rain, the most famous part of it. So
Speaker 3: that's from the actor himself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've always been impressed by that and of course
Speaker 1: that that monologue we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 1: Oh here's the line that DJs should be using in
Speaker 1: their tracks. They they they definitely got the memo on
Speaker 1: Tears and Rain, because man, I can think of so
Speaker 1: many different mixes and tracks where something from from Roy
Speaker 1: pops up, that props up on it's a I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just a great piece.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's such a great line that in a
Speaker 3: way it's kind of lost its power by being over
Speaker 3: analyzed and over quoted.
Speaker 1: There's a band called Grumbling Fur and they have a
Speaker 1: song titled the Ballad of Roy Batty and it's this
Speaker 1: this kind of somber British song, but it's the lyrics
Speaker 1: are that that monologue.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So check that out if you want.
Speaker 3: But here a very different role in this So he
Speaker 3: plays in Blade Runner. He is a tragic Frankenstein's creature
Speaker 3: type character who who doesn't understand the point of his
Speaker 3: own existence. He wants more life, but he can't have it,
Speaker 3: and he and he ends in this tragic, introspective state.
Speaker 3: In split second, Hower is just Hower is the ultimate
Speaker 3: like beef steak grumpy cop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he is. He is something. It's worth noting
Speaker 1: that he was I believe forty seven or forty eight
Speaker 1: at the time, so this is, you know, slightly older
Speaker 1: Rutger Hower certainly compared to like Blade Runner and stuff.
Speaker 1: He's carrying a bit of weight in this though, though
Speaker 1: nothing that feels like awkward or anything. But I think
Speaker 1: it feel like it feels like his physicality works perfectly
Speaker 1: well portraying this cop on the edge, he's not taken
Speaker 1: care of himself, who lives this reckless lifestyle and the
Speaker 1: bit of a slob. And yeah, again, while they avoid
Speaker 1: the hard drinking stereotype in this because he's apparently quit drinking,
Speaker 1: he does smoke like a chimney, just constantly smoking, consumes
Speaker 1: copious amounts of coffee, sugar, chocolate. And man, that name too,
Speaker 1: Harler Stone. It's motorcycle plus rocks. You know, you couldn't
Speaker 1: do any better than that.
Speaker 3: That was the thing that convinced me to watch this movie.
Speaker 3: I looked it up and I saw the main character
Speaker 3: is named Harley Stone, and I was, yeah, I'm in.
Speaker 1: Yep, I mean yeah, and he has I think a
Speaker 1: Harley in his apartment, so it's I guess that's part
Speaker 1: of it, but actually no, no.
Speaker 3: It was multiple things. I'm sorry I have to add
Speaker 3: on his name is Harley Stone. And then of course
Speaker 3: it becomes here's your new partner, buddy cop movie. It's
Speaker 3: like Tango and Cash, but said in the future, where
Speaker 3: there's a he's got a partner who's the opposite of
Speaker 3: him in every way, and this partner is named Dick Durkin.
Speaker 1: Yep, Harley and Dick. The Adventures off. Well, we've touched
Speaker 1: on the tropes here, but like one of the big
Speaker 1: tropes with this guy with Harley Stone is he's the worst.
Speaker 1: I can't stand him, but he's the best. We've got
Speaker 1: to use him, like he's just a walking disaster, but
Speaker 1: nobody does it better than Harley Stone, so we have
Speaker 1: to use him. He's the only one who can get
Speaker 1: our man and or monster exactly. It's the you're a
Speaker 1: loose cannon, you're off the force, you're the only man
Speaker 1: for the job. And Howard is I mean, he is
Speaker 1: so good in this because this character, this Harley Stone.
Speaker 1: At time, there are all these moments where you realize
Speaker 1: that the film is winking at you, that it's you
Speaker 1: know that he's just so over the top he's just
Speaker 1: doing what he's doing in the way he's acting is
Speaker 1: just it's it's just ridiculous. But yet Howard also walks
Speaker 1: that line to where he is, you know. I feel
Speaker 1: he is definitely cool in a lot of the film too,
Speaker 1: in a way that the mini actors wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to pull that off, you know, like like here's this
Speaker 1: uh this, you know, this this over the hill rundown cop.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he looks pretty cool in those glasses and
Speaker 1: that giant leather coat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it never gets too juicy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's ultimately just a joy to watch him.
Speaker 1: I think some of the best scenes are ones where
Speaker 1: they're just we're just going about about a day. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a ride along with Harley Stone as he does
Speaker 1: things like like shave at a bar where he has
Speaker 1: shown up for breakfast, you know, things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he goes to like a moody night club for
Speaker 3: breakfast where they're playing Knights in White Satin on the
Speaker 3: jukebox and they give him a big old play to
Speaker 3: full Inger. I think it is a full English breakfast
Speaker 3: that it's not just eggs and bacon, but there's baked
Speaker 3: beans on that plate and he's slurping it up and
Speaker 3: shaving with an electric razor over his plate.
Speaker 1: Yep. And yeah, so, oh my god, he's just so good.
Speaker 1: But let's talk a little bit about that partner. This
Speaker 1: would be again, Detective Dick Durkin, played by an actor
Speaker 1: by the name of Alistair Duncan.
Speaker 3: You know I love this guy too. I think he's great.
Speaker 1: In this role. Like again, he hits just the right note,
Speaker 1: like he's he's not too comedic, he's just comedic enough.
Speaker 3: He's the perfect foil to Harley Stone. So they're setting
Speaker 3: it up like a you know, a Rigs and Myrtle
Speaker 3: or Tango and Cash kind of thing where they're opposites,
Speaker 3: but they end up complimenting each other. And this guy,
Speaker 3: this guy is the the wimpy bookish nerd who went
Speaker 3: to Oxford.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean not completely wimpy. He's a he's
Speaker 1: very fitness conscious, right, that's true. And uh and and
Speaker 1: he's a yeah, but he's by the books. He's he's
Speaker 1: I think he's doing tai chi in one scene. And
Speaker 1: he of course course Rutger Howard's character Stone is like
Speaker 1: just so anxiety written. At one point, he's like, let
Speaker 1: me give you a massage, let me, let me help
Speaker 1: you out. He's like, don't touch me, like's take the
Speaker 1: gun in his nose. But but yeah, yeah, he's great
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Duncan perfectly fine actor. He's done an increasing amount of
Speaker 1: high profile voice work over the over the years, especially
Speaker 1: in major video games, but he was a steady actor
Speaker 1: in the nineties as well, showed up on things like
Speaker 1: Highlander of the TV series Hercules Murder. She wrote, so
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3: Wait, he's not the voice of Wheatley in Portal Too,
Speaker 3: is he?
Speaker 1: He might be. I don't know. I didn't look that
Speaker 1: one up specifically, but I did notice that he's okay,
Speaker 1: you know, for instance, you know the Mortor games where
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry I looked it up. No, that's a guy
Speaker 3: named Stephen Merchant. But but for a second I thought
Speaker 3: it was possible.
Speaker 1: Stephen Stephen, they're kind of cut from the same cloth, though,
Speaker 1: I can imagine Merchant in this role. But no, Alster Duncan.
Speaker 1: I believe one of his more high profile roles is
Speaker 1: those the Shadow of Mordor games. He played like the
Speaker 1: raith elf that is your alter ego or whatnot? I
Speaker 1: haven't really played the games, but he's that character.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, but let's.
Speaker 1: Not forget our female lead, Joe Ooh.
Speaker 3: So this movie has Kim Katroll in it. She plays
Speaker 3: Michelle McLain and so of course. Kim Catrall is a
Speaker 3: Canadian actress, probably best known today for being part of
Speaker 3: the main cast of Sex and the City, but with
Speaker 3: a long career of lots of interesting movie and TV roles.
Speaker 3: More in the Weird House, Wheelhouse, you might say, Big
Speaker 3: Trouble in Little China and which she plays Gracie Law
Speaker 3: or Star Trek six The Undiscovered Country, which I think
Speaker 3: she was filming either right around the same time as
Speaker 3: Split Second or simultaneous to Split Second. Yeah, because of
Speaker 3: the hair right right, And I gotta say I love
Speaker 3: Kim Katroll. People who have only seen her in like
Speaker 3: more straightforward roles I think might not appreciate just how
Speaker 3: good her comic timing is and how good she is
Speaker 3: at walking that fine line, which is like exactly what
Speaker 3: she's doing in this movie, that tight rope of like
Speaker 3: absurdity and parody but not quite Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, absolutely certainly. Big Dub and Little China
Speaker 1: is a great example of her work. But prior to
Speaker 1: Sex and the City, she was in a fair amount
Speaker 1: of genre pictures. She kind of reinvented hersel herself, I
Speaker 1: guess with the Sex and the City role. But before
Speaker 1: that she was in she was in an episode of
Speaker 1: the nineties Outer Limits. I don't think one I've seen yet,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to get to it as I steadily
Speaker 1: make my way through all that. But she was also
Speaker 1: in a nineteen ninety eight TV adaptation of Peter Binchley's Creature,
Speaker 1: in which she and Craig T. Nelson battle a Nazi
Speaker 1: engineered killer shark.
Speaker 3: I watched that on TV when it premiered when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. I think I was in I don't know,
Speaker 3: it would have been like sixth grade or something, and yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: it was a it was a winner.
Speaker 1: So Kim is great and split second given the limited
Speaker 1: amount of stuff that she's given to work with. So
Speaker 1: this is a film where she doesn't have much of
Speaker 1: a role, but she manages to shine through that role anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, let's talk about some of the other bit
Speaker 1: players in this. Oh, you have this guy, Alin Armstrong
Speaker 1: is Alan. I'm sorry it's a Alan, but I guess
Speaker 1: it's Alan Alan, I don't know. I'm just gonna call
Speaker 1: him Thrasher because that's his character's name. So. Born in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, Armstrong is a great British character actor.
Speaker 1: You would recognize him for instance, very recognizable face. But
Speaker 1: he's been in films such as Kroll, Braveheart, Van Helsing
Speaker 1: and Sleepy Hollow, The Double There and tons of TV
Speaker 1: work and he's great in this because he plays the
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a trope too. You have your
Speaker 1: problematic cop, but then you have their just just completely
Speaker 1: enraged boss who just can't take this guy anymore. But
Speaker 1: he's the best, so you got to work with him.
Speaker 1: And that's what Thrasher is. Thrasher manages to be like
Speaker 1: the angriest, foulest police chief ever, like just bristling with
Speaker 1: with with rage. Just his face, his kind of already
Speaker 1: gargoylish face is just twisted with anger and just resentment
Speaker 1: of Stone. And he also has I love his hair
Speaker 1: in this because he has this great dying widow's peak,
Speaker 1: you know where it's like it used to be a
Speaker 1: widow's peak and now it's barely anything, and it somehow
Speaker 1: elevates the character to an even greater level of just again,
Speaker 1: just such visceral hate in every breath he takes.
Speaker 3: At the British casting office, they were like, get me
Speaker 3: the actor who's every breath says you're off the force.
Speaker 3: Here's your new partner.
Speaker 1: Yes, except louder and more intense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he has some expletives in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he's wonderful in this and he has some
Speaker 1: great scenes. Now the next actor of note Sale doesn't
Speaker 1: really have any great scenes but is just by all accounts,
Speaker 1: was a tremendous actor, Pete Posselthwaite who from nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six through twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: I love Pete.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you don't recognize the name, look him
Speaker 1: up you'll recognize the face. Tremendous English actor with instantly
Speaker 1: recognizable from such films as Alien three, In the Name
Speaker 1: of the Father, Amistad, The Sharp Films, The Lost World,
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park. I believe he was the big game hunter
Speaker 1: character in that.
Speaker 3: Yep, Yep, he was yep.
Speaker 1: Great look great actor. Again, not much of a role
Speaker 1: for him in this, but you know, he's great in
Speaker 1: so many other things. We have to point him out.
Speaker 3: Well, most of the parts in this movie are sort
Speaker 3: of underwritten compared to the main two cops. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: the cast members really do shine through, Like you were
Speaker 3: saying with Kim Cattrall and Alan Armstrong, they all kind
Speaker 3: of bring you to attention.
Speaker 1: Now, one interesting thing about Pustlethwaite in this is that
Speaker 1: he's a guy who largely kept out of the spotlight,
Speaker 1: but he was passionate about various causes, including anti war
Speaker 1: protests and environmentalism, which is which is interesting given the
Speaker 1: you know, the environmental I don't want to say theme
Speaker 1: of this film, but like mild sprinkling to the plot.
Speaker 1: Because he starred in a film in two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine titled The Age of Stupid, in which quote a
Speaker 1: failed archivist looks at old footage from the year two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight to understand why humankind failed to address
Speaker 1: climate change. So basically it's a documentary, and at some
Speaker 1: point in making the film they decided they wanted to
Speaker 1: add a like a fictional narrative structure to it, where
Speaker 1: it's like somebody from the future looking back on today.
Speaker 1: And they reached out to him because they knew he
Speaker 1: was great, and they knew that he was interested in
Speaker 1: these causes, and he ended up signing up for it,
Speaker 1: and it allowed the film to just to reach a
Speaker 1: lot more theaters and to really reach far more people
Speaker 1: with its message. So it's a documentary but has a
Speaker 1: sci fi narrative structure.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Now, there's another character in this movie that is
Speaker 3: very weird, but we don't get to until like the
Speaker 3: last ten to fifteen minutes of the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I kept thinking, did I miss Michael J.
Speaker 1: Pollard Because Michael J. Pollard who is in this He
Speaker 1: plays this rat catcher character and it's a very small role,
Speaker 1: but he has a very fun scene with our detectives. Now. Pollard,
Speaker 1: American actor, lived thirty nine through twenty nineteen, probably best
Speaker 1: well known for his one of his earlier roles in
Speaker 1: Bonnie and Clyde. Well, I say earlier roles, but he
Speaker 1: also was in a lot of TV stuff before that,
Speaker 1: like Andy Griffiths Show, Classic Star Trek, Alvert Hitchcock Presents.
Speaker 1: But he was in sixty seven's Bonnie and Clyde.
Speaker 3: That's the one with Warren Bady, Yeah, Faye Dunaway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since I've seen that, but I can picture it,
Speaker 1: like I remember his character Pollard was also, I mean,
Speaker 1: he was in a bunch of stuff, but you might
Speaker 1: recognize him from Scrooged. He was in Roxanne in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, and some listeners to Weird House especially might
Speaker 1: remember him from Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses.
Speaker 1: He was also, like a lot of actors of that generation,
Speaker 1: he showed up on Tales for the Crypt in an
Speaker 1: episode titled Came the Dawn. So he wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff always good, all right, just a couple of
Speaker 1: more two small acting roles of note here. Ian Durry
Speaker 1: plays his character JJ. Very small part, but this is
Speaker 1: Ian Durry of the Blockheads, and he was part of
Speaker 1: the new wave in post punk scene, lived forty two
Speaker 1: through two thousand. I don't really know him or his work,
Speaker 1: but as a fun easter egg, I imagine for some
Speaker 1: of you music fans out.
Speaker 3: There, I don't remember who JJ was in the movie.
Speaker 1: I think I'm like thirty five percent sure he was
Speaker 1: the bartender, but I don't remember. I just know he's
Speaker 1: in it. And then there's this also, this character in
Speaker 1: it named pad O'Donnell, played by an actor by the
Speaker 1: name of Tony Steadman or Steedman. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: this is an English character actor who played Socrates and
Speaker 1: Bill and Ted. Oh okay, yeah, so in this he's
Speaker 1: just the guy who checks out weapons at the London
Speaker 1: Police Department.
Speaker 3: Well, actually all he does is he says like, no,
Speaker 3: you can't have that, and then they grab it behind
Speaker 3: his back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He's like that gun's too big and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: we're taking it.
Speaker 3: We need big guns.
Speaker 1: He's like, all right, I did what I could. Now
Speaker 1: getting into some of the other people involved in this.
Speaker 1: This is also pretty interesting because you listen to the
Speaker 1: musical score in this film, and it's from my point
Speaker 1: of view, it's not bad. It's it's at least not
Speaker 1: you know, classical piano, but it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of lukewarm. It has kind of like hell
Speaker 1: razorily hell Hell razory synth chrals at times. You know,
Speaker 1: it's got some synth drums and so forth. So it
Speaker 1: works for me. I never hated it, but it's interesting
Speaker 1: considering what might have been.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, now, how did you come across this
Speaker 3: next fact? Give me the story.
Speaker 1: Well, there's not much story, like a lot of these things.
Speaker 1: I think I was just reading IMDb too much, And
Speaker 1: it was noted that the filmmakers actually rejected the original score,
Speaker 1: which was composed by the legendary Wendy Carlos.
Speaker 3: How could you reject Wendy Carlos score?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Wendy Carlos is a legend basically twofold.
Speaker 1: On one hand, she wrote the scores for this like
Speaker 1: the Shining Tron Clockwork Orange, but also just in general,
Speaker 1: she's a true pioneer of electronic music and the use
Speaker 1: of the synthesizer. Yeah, Andy, as we touched on on
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind before. She's also a great
Speaker 1: solar photographer. So how could you say no?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy. So yeah, the score they ended up
Speaker 3: going with, I feel like it is extremely generic. It's
Speaker 3: just doo doo doo doom doo doo don is a
Speaker 3: standard ominous future drums and drone. And I went and
Speaker 3: I looked up some clips because you provided a link.
Speaker 3: There's like an AllMusic page where Wendy Carlos at some
Speaker 3: point released a collection of lost or themes from movies,
Speaker 3: including a couple of things she composed for this movie
Speaker 3: that never actually made it into the film. The two
Speaker 3: tracks here are Visit to a Morgue and Returned to
Speaker 3: the More, which I thought was funny, but I checked
Speaker 3: him out, and having heard both side by side, I'm
Speaker 3: certain her complete score would have been one hundred times better.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I listened it to these tracks as well, and
Speaker 1: I think they sound great. I'd loved it to hear
Speaker 1: the whole thing. If you want to listen to these tracks,
Speaker 1: the album to look up is Rediscovering Lost Scores, Volume two.
Speaker 1: I'll try to include a link to it on the
Speaker 1: post I do for this episode at samoodomusic dot com.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's quite good. Sadly, I don't think you
Speaker 1: can find this on Spotify right now.
Speaker 3: Wendy Carlos is still alive. I don't know if she's
Speaker 3: composing anymore, but filmmakers out there, if you have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to get a Wendy Carlos score in your movie,
Speaker 3: don't pass it up now.
Speaker 1: One last interesting individual involved in the creation of Split Second,
Speaker 1: Stephen Norrington was involved in the creature design, so some
Speaker 1: of you might recognize the name. This is London born
Speaker 1: effects makeup artist who worked on such films as Aliens,
Speaker 1: Young Sherlock Holmes, Hardware, Alien three, Jim Henson's The Taylor,
Speaker 1: and then he would go on from this to direct
Speaker 1: a film titled Death Machine with Brad Dorif and Richard
Speaker 1: Brake before I think any I don't think I knew
Speaker 1: who Richard Brake was at that time, but he's since
Speaker 1: gone on to make a name for himself as a
Speaker 1: as a reliable, intimidating character actor. But he followed this
Speaker 1: film up Norrington did directing nineteen ninety eight's Blade, the
Speaker 1: film that started all of the Marvel Cinematic universe, starring,
Speaker 1: of course, Wesley Snipes.
Speaker 3: Now I know you're kind of a bladehead, and I
Speaker 3: the only I think. I've only seen the original Blade
Speaker 3: once many many years ago, like in middle school, and
Speaker 3: that's that's about all I know.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, you need to see it again because it
Speaker 1: absolutely holds up.
Speaker 3: I do remember. I remember a lot of gross scenes
Speaker 3: where they're like they're like shining a flashlight on a
Speaker 3: on a big fat vampire to like burn his skin
Speaker 3: and make him talk.
Speaker 1: Yep, Yep that happened. Yeah, that that's that's a fun thing.
Speaker 1: I love the first two Blade movies and uh and
Speaker 1: that that was that was Norton here. But from there
Speaker 1: he went on to make a film title The Last
Speaker 1: Minute that I don't know anything about, and then the
Speaker 1: film that caused him to I think peace out on
Speaker 1: directing entirely The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But I believe
Speaker 1: he has continued to work in effects in other areas
Speaker 1: of filmmaking.
Speaker 3: I never saw that one, but it is notorious. I
Speaker 3: remember the day that my friends had been out and
Speaker 3: seen it earlier in the day, and then I was
Speaker 3: hanging out with them later in the day and they
Speaker 3: could not stop talking about how awful. It was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I never saw it. I read the graphic novels
Speaker 1: by Alan Moore and loved those, and it has so
Speaker 1: many tremendous actors in it. But yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was apparently no fun for anybody that was involved in
Speaker 1: it or solid. But you know, this brings me to
Speaker 1: a good point that I feel like we need to,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure we hammer home every now and then.
Speaker 1: Is that, you know, between norm Rington's case and Meleem's
Speaker 1: experiences that we mentioned earlier, I think it's always worth
Speaker 1: reminding ourselves that it's an endeavor for any motion picture
Speaker 1: to be made, and it's ultimately kind of a minor
Speaker 1: miracle that any creative process of the scope actually reaches completion.
Speaker 1: And the stresses of creative projects like this are very real.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's you know, it's surprising you don't
Speaker 1: see more pictures where people you just have to step
Speaker 1: away from it because it's too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of the kind of beautiful things about
Speaker 3: B cinema, emphasized in even in great movies like the
Speaker 3: movie ed Wood about the actual director ed Wood, that
Speaker 3: B movies, to whatever extent they succeed or fail, can
Speaker 3: often be funny, but it's also it's kind of it's
Speaker 3: kind of magical that they get made at all.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get into the movie itself. This
Speaker 1: one starts out with an opening scroll and opening some
Speaker 1: text to read, which I always like because I feel
Speaker 1: like that way, time travelers from the early days of
Speaker 1: cinema won't be instantly out of place when they go
Speaker 1: to the movie theater. You know, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a talkie, it's going to be a lot, but it's
Speaker 1: going to start off the old fashioned way with some
Speaker 1: words on a screen.
Speaker 3: And a guy playing the piano in the side of
Speaker 3: the theater.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, the opening scroll is after forty days and
Speaker 1: nights of torrential rain, the city is largely submerged below water,
Speaker 1: a result of the devastating effects of continued global warming.
Speaker 1: The warnings ignored for decades have now resulted in undreamed
Speaker 1: of levels of pollution where day has become almost endless night.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll have to check, but I do not
Speaker 3: recall endless night being one of the one of the
Speaker 3: proposed consequences of a warming climate.
Speaker 1: No, it's day for night sometimes now, Yeah, this one
Speaker 1: this and also it also brings up the idea that
Speaker 1: it was just it recently rained a lot, which also
Speaker 1: seems out of keep. Like I thought it was just
Speaker 1: the fact that London is pretty flooded these days because
Speaker 1: of rising you know, rising sea levels, but also some
Speaker 1: other like sinking issues that have been going on with
Speaker 1: the city for some time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, so they start while they're showing this text
Speaker 3: crawl like the Star Wars thing. Instead of a starfield,
Speaker 3: it's panning over an aerial shot of a flooded London
Speaker 3: with a kind of sinister tangerine sun flaring in the background,
Speaker 3: and it's brighter in that opening panning shot than it
Speaker 3: is at any other point in the movie. True, true,
Speaker 3: But I did find myself wondering how did they achieve
Speaker 3: this shot because it does actually look like an aerial
Speaker 3: shot of London and it does actually look flooded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are details you see, especially as they sort
Speaker 1: of re use this footage later in the film. You
Speaker 1: can see like, oh, yeah, that looks like a lake
Speaker 1: over here. And you know they didn't do it digitally.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was wondering what was going on there?
Speaker 3: I mean, did they did London actually flood at some
Speaker 3: point and this was real footage of it that they
Speaker 3: digitally altered somehow, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But it's convincing. It does set the stage. And again,
Speaker 1: let the city is just a flooded mess throughout this
Speaker 1: entire picture. You buy it completely. It's not like they
Speaker 1: just give you this bit of world building and then
Speaker 1: that it's is ignored for the rest of the film. No,
Speaker 1: It's present in virtually every shot.
Speaker 3: And one thing I like is that before you see
Speaker 3: the title of the movie, you just see Rutger Hower read.
Speaker 1: Letters as it should be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then when the title of the movie comes up,
Speaker 3: it looks really funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for a film with such a strong sense of
Speaker 1: its own aesthetics, the title card just looks really dumb.
Speaker 1: The letters are like these big blue balloons, like there
Speaker 1: should be floating in the sky of a Mario Brothers level.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and it's so it's it says split second.
Speaker 3: But I was experienced a kind of I was seeing
Speaker 3: a kind of selective dyslexic effect where it was hard
Speaker 3: for me do not see the title as spilt second.
Speaker 3: And then also because of the way the L and
Speaker 3: the capitol I come together sput second, kind of like
Speaker 3: the celebrity Jeopardy four and flicks problem. And I've just
Speaker 3: now I wondered for the first time, what is the
Speaker 3: significance of the title split second.
Speaker 1: I don't think it has any significance at all other
Speaker 1: than it just implies a pacing that is largely backed
Speaker 1: up by the picture. You know, stuff is just happening,
Speaker 1: and characters are especially stone. It just has a gut
Speaker 1: level response to everything. So I guess that's the extent
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the movie might as well be called exciting exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, yeah, they didn't take long for rug or
Speaker 1: Howard to pop up. He has a lot of screen
Speaker 1: time in this and the first I think we see
Speaker 1: of him is he's walking up in leather, scratching his groin,
Speaker 1: putting on a pair of shades. He's got a big
Speaker 1: old gun. And then shortly thereafter my favorite, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite sequences in the film, he lights his cigar
Speaker 1: with a blowtorch, then gets out of his vehicle calls
Speaker 1: a dog a dickhead on his way into a grimy nightclub.
Speaker 1: For some reason, it's just so, it's such a funny scene.
Speaker 1: Like when I saw that scene the first time I
Speaker 1: watched the film, I was like, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: watching all of this.
Speaker 3: I'm in Before he even gets in the car, we
Speaker 3: just get this corridor advancing scene. This is our introduction
Speaker 3: to our protagonist. And god his costume. So he's got
Speaker 3: the sci fi stomper boots. I guess these are these
Speaker 3: are actual all weather boots of some kind. I don't
Speaker 3: know what they're called, but they're the ones with a
Speaker 3: bunch of straps and buckles poking out all over the place.
Speaker 3: And then we get holster vision, like an extreme close
Speaker 3: up of all his different holsters and the guns in them.
Speaker 3: Of course he's wearing a long coat, right, kalflinth coat,
Speaker 3: because hey, you know, how else are they going to
Speaker 3: know that you're bad?
Speaker 1: Yeah, despite it being like really humid looking in this city,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, it just seems like the smells,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you would.
Speaker 3: Not want to wear that coat, I don't think. And
Speaker 3: then and then he's wearing just plastic pants with a
Speaker 3: gut stabber silver belt buckle. It looks like if he
Speaker 3: bends over to tie his shoes to cause internal bleeding
Speaker 3: and is large intestine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And you don't get the sense that he's
Speaker 1: purchased any new This character has not purchased any new
Speaker 1: clothing since he's let himself go, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right exactly. Sunglasses with tiny frames like the beady
Speaker 3: little circular frames that are about the size of a quarter,
Speaker 3: like they simultaneously like they kind of look cool but
Speaker 3: it's also funny. Yeah. And cigar in his mouth at
Speaker 3: all times, just pathological oral fixation. It never leaves his lips.
Speaker 1: Yeap constantly, just a halo of smoke around his head.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. So in a way, he's kind of a
Speaker 3: dystopian sci Fi Pouci.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but but again is rugger Hower and he
Speaker 1: manages to strike that balance where it you know, you
Speaker 1: in any given scene, you're either buying into the coolness
Speaker 1: or noticing again the wink in his performance and or
Speaker 1: the writing.
Speaker 3: So here's a question I don't know if you have
Speaker 3: an answer to. Maybe if you don't, maybe the listeners
Speaker 3: can add some input. Where does the law coats as
Speaker 3: cool thing come from in movies? Where you got a
Speaker 3: character who's just a real like just bad to the bone,
Speaker 3: he's got to wear like a calf length coat.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I don't know, but it's it's
Speaker 1: been around for a while at this point. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be going away anytime soon.
Speaker 3: Like it was already in place at this time, really
Speaker 3: realized in Matrix Chic. But yeah, but this was way
Speaker 3: before that, and it was definitely in movies even before this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have an answer for that. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: one we can our listeners will have some insight on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. Oh, and also this movie is if anybody
Speaker 3: out there is actually like a gun owner or into
Speaker 3: firearms safety at all, this movie will just make you
Speaker 3: shudder because all Rutger Howard does is just walk around
Speaker 3: swinging big guns all over the place and tossing them
Speaker 3: around like Duffel bags.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, gesturing with them. He'll stick a gun in
Speaker 1: your face for virtually no reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to play around, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, other character, other characters to pick up on this
Speaker 1: this recklessness and start engaging in it. And boy, there's
Speaker 1: some big gun Like the guns look good in this,
Speaker 1: like the gun these are some some video game asque weapons,
Speaker 1: you know, Like he has this pistol that just looks
Speaker 1: like a big just sci fi cannon. And then later
Speaker 1: these like mini gun looking combat shotgun things. It's pretty crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not joking about that. They literally have like
Speaker 3: it's like a mini gun barrel, so like the multiple
Speaker 3: barrels and the rotating I don't know what you call
Speaker 3: that piece, but like like like what Jesse Ventura has
Speaker 3: in Predator, except it's supposed to be shotgun barrels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a shot gun gatlin gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then at the very beginning, so we see
Speaker 3: him coming down the corridor showing off his cool look,
Speaker 3: and then he gets into a jeep and drives away,
Speaker 3: and of course we see that his car is just
Speaker 3: a rolling sty It is full of garbage, mostly coffee
Speaker 3: cups and the containers of sugary products.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like he's a one brand guy when it
Speaker 1: comes to these sugary things. I think maybe they're donuts
Speaker 1: or chocolate balls. But like when we say that he
Speaker 1: lives on a diet, like that's directly from the film
Speaker 1: that they say that he lives on a diet of
Speaker 1: of what caffeine, sugar and anxiety anxiety? No caffeine, no sugar,
Speaker 1: chocolate in anxiety or is it sugar?
Speaker 3: I think coffee sugar or sugar chocolate in an anxiety?
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah, I think so. And so that's
Speaker 1: like literally if he's not smoking, and or if he's smoking,
Speaker 1: he's also liable to be consuming chocolate and putting just
Speaker 1: tons of sugar. Like it's a scene where he fills
Speaker 1: up his coffee in an office and it's just like
Speaker 1: thirty percent sugar and then the rest is coffee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he's driving around. You mentioned that he's
Speaker 3: on his way to this filthy night club he's going to.
Speaker 3: But also for some reason at the very beginning, it's
Speaker 3: it's not established why this is at all he's being
Speaker 3: pursued by police, so he is a police detective. But
Speaker 3: he's also like, while he's driving around, there are cops
Speaker 3: chasing him, being like where there's Harley Stone going just unbeatable. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But he ends up in this dirty night club that
Speaker 3: he has to enter through like a corrugated aluminum sewer
Speaker 3: tunnel that has a bunch of wet socks dangling from
Speaker 3: the walls. And I don't know what the deal with
Speaker 3: that was. But he goes inside. He's told there's a
Speaker 3: two drink minimum, and he orders two coffees with extra sugar,
Speaker 3: and he seems to be here trying to scope things out.
Speaker 3: It's like he's got a sixth sense that there is
Speaker 3: a that there is Duin's afoot in the club, and
Speaker 3: he's just scoping around and eventually ends up trying to
Speaker 3: make a phone call I think, but it's hard to
Speaker 3: understand what he's saying on the phone because he's still
Speaker 3: got the cigar in his mouth.
Speaker 1: He's not here for fun, though, because I don't think
Speaker 1: Harley Stone does fun, not anymore.
Speaker 3: No, he does not go to the club to party.
Speaker 3: He goes to the club to find the killer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he's looking for somebody I guess the killer. But
Speaker 3: then meanwhile there's a scream and we find that a
Speaker 3: woman has been murdered in the bathroom. There's blood splattered everywhere,
Speaker 3: her heart has been removed, and there is there are
Speaker 3: the words I'm back scrawled on the mirror in blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is one of many scenes that will
Speaker 1: come in this film where a filthy environment is sprawled
Speaker 1: with blood and it looks it looks great like this
Speaker 1: film man Like Again, the aesthetics of this film are
Speaker 1: pretty tremendous, and there's something about like it has an
Speaker 1: almost erotic fixation on blood and death. And you see
Speaker 1: the first taste of it in this scene.
Speaker 3: And we see that Harley Stone, the character is also
Speaker 3: fixated because he's he's not just on a case. He
Speaker 3: is obsessed. He starts chasing down the blood trail that's
Speaker 3: running out of the bathroom. He's freaking out. He's pointing
Speaker 3: his gun at random people as he runs through these alleys.
Speaker 3: Other police are trying to like join in and help him,
Speaker 3: I think, but he's screaming at them to get out
Speaker 3: of his way. And here I believe we have a
Speaker 3: classic case of take it too personal.
Speaker 1: Yep, he's taking it too personal.
Speaker 3: She says, he's taking it too personal. That's right, you
Speaker 3: can't stop. I mean, he's the best, even if he
Speaker 3: is taking it too personal. And the whole chase we
Speaker 3: get this doom doom. We hear a heart beating and
Speaker 3: heavy breathing that suggests a psychic connection somehow between the
Speaker 3: killer and Harley Stone. But I guess somehow he gets subdued.
Speaker 3: I think he ends up like on a fire escape,
Speaker 3: just kind of I don't know, hyperventilating and leaning against
Speaker 3: the railing. And then we cut to the fan boats,
Speaker 3: you know, the Bayou boats, except they're out on the Thames,
Speaker 3: and we hear the Chief of Police Thrasher, talking to
Speaker 3: this other guy, and we get some backstory on Harleystone.
Speaker 3: Is he talking to Dick Durkin?
Speaker 1: I think so, yeah, because he's preparing him, because again,
Speaker 1: he's the best. We've got to use him. But we
Speaker 1: need a good cop to pal around with him, to
Speaker 1: keep tabs on him and keep him from getting out
Speaker 1: of hand.
Speaker 3: Right, We need a nerd cop to put a leash
Speaker 3: on the loose cannon cop. Yeah, And so it's just
Speaker 3: perfect cop movie cliches. Butt on a fan boat on
Speaker 3: the Thames, and Thrasher talks about how it took four
Speaker 3: officers to subdue Harley Stone and now he's in lock
Speaker 3: up and Dick Dirkin is so curious what happened to
Speaker 3: Harley Stone to make him this way? And Thrasher says, well,
Speaker 3: a serial killer murdered his partner Foster three years ago
Speaker 3: and he was there when it happened. And Dick Dirkin says, oh,
Speaker 3: is it survivor's guilt and Thrasher says, nah, just plain guilt.
Speaker 3: He had an affair with Foster's wife, left her, hit
Speaker 3: the booze went over the edge. Now he lives on
Speaker 3: here's the quote anxiety, coffee and chocolate. Oh. And they
Speaker 3: specified that he's worked in every hell hole in the
Speaker 3: world and he's been fired from all of them, and
Speaker 3: they say he's the best.
Speaker 1: S Yeah, what are these other hell holes? I wonder
Speaker 1: It's like there's a whole there's a whole universe of
Speaker 1: Harley Stone adventures we don't know anything about.
Speaker 3: Right, So he's worked in like every city in the
Speaker 3: world or something, or only the ones that are hell holes,
Speaker 3: which are those yep?
Speaker 1: Just every like flooded, monster ridden Metropolis on Earth.
Speaker 3: I guess we may have missed our chance for a
Speaker 3: prequel that's like the Adventures of Harley Stone in I
Speaker 3: don't know, New Orleans or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know who the young Rutger Hower would be.
Speaker 1: I mean, he can't really replace him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But so Harley Stone's back in the station. He's
Speaker 3: raging against the bars and lock up, rattling them, and
Speaker 3: then he gets out eventually and he's getting coffee. And
Speaker 3: here we get one of the great coffee scenes where
Speaker 3: he puts like, you know, eighteen spoonfuls of sugar in.
Speaker 3: And then we meet Pete Postelwaite and they have a
Speaker 3: big confrontation. It is clear that Rutger and Pete do
Speaker 3: not like one another, right.
Speaker 1: I think it's later revealed that Pete's character was also
Speaker 1: the slain partner's best friend, and so he holds it
Speaker 1: against him.
Speaker 3: Right, And then there's a great chief chewout scene. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so he gets invited it into the chief's office
Speaker 3: to get Harley Stone gets chewed out. We hear all
Speaker 3: about how he's a loose cannon, how he's taken it
Speaker 3: to personal, how he's off the force, and then here's
Speaker 3: your new partner. And the new partner, of course, is
Speaker 3: Dick Dirkin, the nerd from Oxford who is getting filled
Speaker 3: in on the case. And he's like, I thought we
Speaker 3: were dealing with the psychotic, not a psychopath. But the
Speaker 3: scoop on Dick Dirkin is that he's an expert on
Speaker 3: serial killers. He's a sort of lily livered college boy
Speaker 3: who went to Oxford, and Harley Stone does not like him.
Speaker 3: I think Harley Stone, I think, clearly believes that the
Speaker 3: book Learning is weak and puny.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like any kind of premeditation is is puny.
Speaker 1: Like Stone again, he rules from the gut. He's he's
Speaker 1: just all action and no chill. There's just his brain
Speaker 1: is just like an exploding rat of anxiety and of
Speaker 1: you know, fueled with caffeine and sugar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then oh oh oh, and then so can
Speaker 3: you explain to me what you think is implied to
Speaker 3: have happened in the following scene, because right after the
Speaker 3: chew out, Harley Stone goes back to his desk and
Speaker 3: there's just a cooler with a heart in it. There,
Speaker 3: like a cooler full of ice that's got a chewed
Speaker 3: up heart. And I don't know why it's on ice,
Speaker 3: because this is not going to be a successful transplant
Speaker 3: or like donor organ, it has a bite taken out
Speaker 3: of it, but for some reason, it's on ice in
Speaker 3: a cooler sitting right next to his desk. Are we
Speaker 3: to understand that this heart has been delivered by the
Speaker 3: killer to his desk?
Speaker 1: I think, okay, so out of picture, I would say
Speaker 1: this is a clear sign of an earlier draft of
Speaker 1: the plot. I think at one point this screenplay did
Speaker 1: not have a monster in it. It was just a
Speaker 1: serial killer flick, or supposed to be a serial color story.
Speaker 1: I think if I'm going to try and read into
Speaker 1: the movie, I'm going to want to live within the
Speaker 1: narrative of the film. The monster killer villain and must
Speaker 1: have hired at delivery service to deliver this heart. And
Speaker 1: they must have stolen the cooler and some ice from
Speaker 1: like a local store in order just to mess with Stone.
Speaker 3: Why the ice? The heart's not going to be used
Speaker 3: for anything.
Speaker 1: I think it basically the well out of picture. The
Speaker 1: reason is that because it looks really cool glistening among
Speaker 1: the ice. You know, it's a beautiful one of these
Speaker 1: scenes that again things that are dead or bleeding in
Speaker 1: this film are the only things that are beautiful aside
Speaker 1: from Kim Katrell. Everything else is grizzly and dirty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think that's the real reason. Otherwise, I
Speaker 1: guess just shock value, just to be like, hey, here's
Speaker 1: this heart on ice.
Speaker 3: Maybe the dewey, glistening cubes of ice as they slowly
Speaker 3: melt into a puddle, they symbolize the fleetingness of human life.
Speaker 1: I guess. So, yeah, it's impossible to say. With this
Speaker 1: monster slash Killer.
Speaker 3: They pretty much go straight out into the field. So
Speaker 3: it's Harley Stone and Dick Dirkin learning to be buddy
Speaker 3: cops and finding out about each other, finding out about
Speaker 3: each other's minds and bodies as they investigate the scenes
Speaker 3: of the crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and oh man, there's so many great hijinks that
Speaker 1: come out of this as they feel each other, and
Speaker 1: it's basically you know, odd couple mixed buddy cop kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But it's just really well done.
Speaker 3: There's a part where a murder gets called in and
Speaker 3: they go to investigate the murder and it's like on
Speaker 3: the top floor of an apartment building and we see
Speaker 3: that Harley Stone has trouble climbing the stairs, I guess
Speaker 3: because he's out of shape, and he asks to stop
Speaker 3: for a cigar halfway.
Speaker 1: Up, out of breath. Got to stop and smoke.
Speaker 3: Right, But so we find there's another victim of the
Speaker 3: killer up in this apartment. It's a twenty eight year
Speaker 3: old man who has had his heart torn out, and
Speaker 3: Stone somehow knows intuitively what the time of death was.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the hints picking up on
Speaker 3: the thing at the club earlier, that there's a psychic
Speaker 3: connection between Harley Stone and the killer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, and here we get a there's a really funny
Speaker 3: part here where there's just a rat execution, Like the
Speaker 3: partner he Harley Stone pulls out his gun and it
Speaker 3: looks like he's about to shoot Dick Durkin in the face,
Speaker 3: but instead he shoots right over his shoulder to shoot
Speaker 3: a rat that was going to bite him or something.
Speaker 1: It was a monster It looked like a monster rat too,
Speaker 1: because there are plenty of live rats in this picture,
Speaker 1: but right before he shoots it, it looks like it's
Speaker 1: a like a puppet rat and looks extra gross. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, couch that within the narrative
Speaker 1: as you will.
Speaker 3: Oh, and clearly the killer is trying to send a
Speaker 3: message with these crimes, because there are multiple messages for Stone,
Speaker 3: his dead former partner's gun is at the scene of
Speaker 3: this crime, and there is an occult symbol in blood
Speaker 3: on the ceiling and Drkin immediately starts coming up with
Speaker 3: theories about this. He's I guess he knows all about astrology,
Speaker 3: and he's like, it's the symbolifical it's gonna used in
Speaker 3: the occult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of occult nonsense that it's brought
Speaker 1: up as they try and figure out this killer.
Speaker 3: Oh and then there's a there's a great moment where
Speaker 3: they get they get to Harley Stone a dental cast
Speaker 3: based on the bites on the heart and it's a
Speaker 3: giant beast mouth. But still, after this, everybody's talking about
Speaker 3: a serial killer, like this isn't just an obvious piece
Speaker 3: of evidence that it's a monster they're dealing with. Yeah,
Speaker 3: is this a serial killer with a panther's head?
Speaker 1: Because as well, we'll find out later and becomes increasingly
Speaker 1: clear this is not a human we're going up against.
Speaker 1: This is a monster. This is essentially a grindle beast.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And meanwhile, some things happen. Harley Stone has
Speaker 3: another like anxiety attack in an alley and starts shooting
Speaker 3: his gun randomly at the sky. I think he has
Speaker 3: to get talked down, but eventually, finally we get to
Speaker 3: meet Kim Katrol. So Harley Stone goes to I think
Speaker 3: the grave of his former partner. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And she's there, she's placing memento on his grave. Is
Speaker 3: she supposed to be his dead partner's widow? I might
Speaker 3: have missed that, Yes, yes, okay, because they've previously had
Speaker 3: a relationship, right, Okay, Well, as soon as he arrives,
Speaker 3: she shows concern for his well being. She observes that
Speaker 3: he is he is not the cleanest or the most
Speaker 3: well rested, and that he needs caring for.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, So they go back to this apartment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they go back to his filthy apartment that just
Speaker 3: looks like the inside of of like an unethical animal enclosure.
Speaker 1: It is it is. I mean, it's like every scene
Speaker 1: in this film, it's like they went wild decorating it.
Speaker 1: There's so many grizzly details in this this just pig
Speaker 1: style that he lives in, including live pigeons and live rats.
Speaker 3: Yes, live pigeons, live rats. So a few other details
Speaker 3: I want to run by you to make sure I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken here. Number one, does he keep his gun
Speaker 3: in a refrigerator?
Speaker 1: Yes, though we don't have a clear indication that the
Speaker 1: refrigerator is on.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe it's just using a broken refrigerator as a shelf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has an actual refrigerator in which he keeps
Speaker 1: other foul things. But there's like a convenient store refrigerator
Speaker 1: that might not be plugged up. It has like a
Speaker 1: shotgun and some AMMO in it.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's what I thought. And then also, yeah, the
Speaker 3: apartment's full of live pigeons and motorcycles. There are just
Speaker 3: his apartment is full of motorcycles.
Speaker 1: How motorcycle signs as well?
Speaker 3: Yes, how did he get them in there? Did he
Speaker 3: get those Harley Davidson's up the steps?
Speaker 1: I guess so?
Speaker 3: And then also we at one point we see inside
Speaker 3: his refrigerator, which seems to contain exclusively coffee. And then
Speaker 3: like mud, there's just a big, just a big canister
Speaker 3: of mud that is spilled everywhere.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there are chocolates in there, or perhaps don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. They're chocolate things that he eats out
Speaker 1: of those little bags. So the refrigerator has those bags
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah and yeah, and also these foul looking chocolates.
Speaker 3: And so basically, as soon as they get to his apartment, well,
Speaker 3: Kim Katrol is still surveying the land of disgust. She
Speaker 3: she he like falls asleep on the couch with a
Speaker 3: cigarette burning right next to his eye, and she has
Speaker 3: to go put it out for him. But I think
Speaker 3: the implication is this, this this filthy down on his
Speaker 3: luck cop uh just just needs his own his own
Speaker 3: personal Kim Katrol to help make his house into a home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's really she's not tremendously disgusted by this environment.
Speaker 3: No, she she kind of rolls with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, despite being like this angelic being really yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh. At some point also, I think to emphasize how
Speaker 3: dirty he is, he combs his hair with like a
Speaker 3: shoe polish brush.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, yep, because he does groom himself. He's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, completely abandoned self care. But what self care
Speaker 1: he does, it's reckless in the wrong place, is like
Speaker 1: at a bar.
Speaker 3: At some point later, Durkin and Harley Stone are driving
Speaker 3: around and they're trying to like outmacho each other. Rutger
Speaker 3: Hower is derisively tossing aside books that he finds in
Speaker 3: the car. The implication, I think is that like books
Speaker 3: are for weak, puny men.
Speaker 1: M yep, yep. I think. This is also the scene
Speaker 1: where we find out that Durkin has sex every night.
Speaker 3: That is what he claims. Though you wonder if he's
Speaker 3: just trying to impress Harley Stone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Stone is doubtful.
Speaker 3: Oh oh oh, and then there was this fascinating strain.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, while they're out doing something, I don't remember
Speaker 3: what they're doing, they're driving somewhere and we see Kim
Speaker 3: catroll back at Harley Stone's rancid cell and she finds
Speaker 3: a bunch of chocolates that are just stuck to the
Speaker 3: outside of the filthy refrigerator in the shape of a heart,
Speaker 3: and then she plucks one off of the refrigerator facade
Speaker 3: and she eats it. Disgusting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this made no sense that you would like, why
Speaker 1: are they stuck there? Why are they being stored there
Speaker 1: again in a place that clearly pigeons and rats have
Speaker 1: access to. It seems like a terrible move, even if
Speaker 1: you want ready access to your chocolate. And then for
Speaker 1: her to be like, oh, this is fine, this is normal.
Speaker 1: I'm hungry for chocolate.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, no, no, no, I remember where they were going. Now,
Speaker 3: this is when they're going out to get quote breakfast,
Speaker 3: but they go to like the moody night club that's
Speaker 3: playing Knights in White Satin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then that's where he shaves.
Speaker 3: He shaves over his plate at the bar.
Speaker 1: But they're getting work done. They're figuring out what the
Speaker 1: killer might be.
Speaker 3: Right, Durkin has a theory. He thinks that he's like,
Speaker 3: I think you and this killer are on the same
Speaker 3: psychic wavelength. What sign are you? And it's revealed that
Speaker 3: he's a scorpio, and Durkin has all kinds of astrological
Speaker 3: theories about when the killer strikes. And then meanwhile, there
Speaker 3: is a tent scene where the killer breaks into Harley's
Speaker 3: apartment while Kim Catral is taking a shower. It's very
Speaker 3: psycho and he's sneaking around doing his heartbeat thing, and
Speaker 3: of course Harley gets a bad feeling, you know, get
Speaker 3: through his psychic connection and him and Durkin run back
Speaker 3: to the apartment and they're they're rushing up to the rescue.
Speaker 3: I was really afraid Kim Katral was going to be killed,
Speaker 3: but nope. Instead they heard her scream earlier, but she
Speaker 3: screamed because the water got cold, and instead somebody somewhere
Speaker 3: else in the building got their heart ripped out. So
Speaker 3: Stone and Durkin chase, and then a lot happens really fast.
Speaker 3: We find somebody else with their heart ripped out. Durkin
Speaker 3: gets blasted with a shotgun by the killer.
Speaker 1: And what looks like he's blasted through a window with
Speaker 1: it as well, so you just think he's dead at that.
Speaker 3: Point, yeah, And then yeah, yeah, he goes out the
Speaker 3: window after getting hit like in the belly with a
Speaker 3: scatter gun. And then we also find out Kim Katral
Speaker 3: gets bitten on the shoulder by the monster somehow.
Speaker 1: Though we do not see that happen, though they're.
Speaker 3: Still talking about this being a human killer. And again,
Speaker 3: this is one of the things where like I think
Speaker 3: the script I don't know, like like you were saying earlier,
Speaker 3: like the earlier drafts are showing through, because are we
Speaker 3: to understand in the final version of the movie that
Speaker 3: the monster shot Durkin with a shotgun.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and if I was watching for it this time,
Speaker 1: and it's the shotgun is clearly held by monsterous hands.
Speaker 1: So our monster is clearly capable of utilizing modern tools,
Speaker 1: well like the cooler that he somehow got delivered through
Speaker 1: a shipping service, but also he can handle a shotgun.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, But anyway, we find out after this
Speaker 3: big shootout, we find out everybody's okay. Durkin is in fact,
Speaker 3: is not dead. He's like, haven't you ever heard of
Speaker 3: a bulletproof vest? And Kim Catral's okay. But Harley Stone
Speaker 3: has another panic attack again. He starts freaking out in
Speaker 3: the alley and he has to get sedated by cops.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, it is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to see a hero suffer a panic attack in a
Speaker 1: film like split second, like a believable panic attack, you know,
Speaker 1: not like a and not one that reeks of like
Speaker 1: machismo all that much, because generally in a film like this,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a rule that stress never gets on
Speaker 1: top of your hero. You know, there they're up for
Speaker 1: the battle. You know, It's like Beowulf doesn't have a
Speaker 1: panic attack, so I don't know, in a way, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a nice human element that that Harley Stone
Speaker 1: is is human enough to, you know, to not be
Speaker 1: able to stay on top of it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is unusual. So he is a gruff and
Speaker 3: absurdly macho in that classic cop protagonist's style. But he
Speaker 3: also clearly has real anxiety issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like to the point where there's a medical intervention
Speaker 1: here because he's having such a panic attack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that does not seem usual. I can't think of
Speaker 3: other examples of that. Maybe there are some, but oh oh,
Speaker 3: And then we get a good flashback scene where it's
Speaker 3: revealed that he saw his partner get slaughtered by the killer.
Speaker 3: He just like, they're walking around in ankle deep water
Speaker 3: in some gross place and and his partner just gets
Speaker 3: yanked down under the water and then the killer somehow
Speaker 3: mauls him, mauls Harley Stone, leaving a big scratch on
Speaker 3: his arm. And then after Harley Stone comes to later,
Speaker 3: Durkin sees the big scar going down from his shoulder
Speaker 3: to his arm and he's like, that's it, that's the
Speaker 3: psychic connection. But back at the station, there's another great
Speaker 3: chief chewout scene where there's suddenly just an exposition dump.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, we got to move this plot along.
Speaker 3: So there you find out that during the gunfight earlier,
Speaker 3: Rutger Howard shot the killer a bunch of times and
Speaker 3: yet it's still alive, so something's up. And then they
Speaker 3: also get some lab reports back where they say that
Speaker 3: the Killer's DNA is polymorphic. It has the DNA of
Speaker 3: all its previous victims put together, including Harley Stone I
Speaker 3: think from when he got scratched by it, and it
Speaker 3: has his dead former partner's fingerprints, and it has like
Speaker 3: rat DNA and rat virus DNA. Yeah, this scene is
Speaker 3: a supreme pizza. They're getting you everything.
Speaker 1: All the topic click all the boxes.
Speaker 3: Yes. Oh, and then there's a great so right after this,
Speaker 3: there's a great scene where Durkin and Harley Stone go
Speaker 3: to the morgue because they realize, oh, the killer didn't
Speaker 3: manage to get the last victim's heart. The heart is
Speaker 3: still in them. So they're like, oh, it's going to
Speaker 3: come back to the morgue and try to get the heart.
Speaker 3: So they go to the morgue. This is actually kind
Speaker 3: of a cool looking scene the way it's set up,
Speaker 3: with like all the plastic and there are these nasty
Speaker 3: like ivy bags everywhere.
Speaker 1: But otherwise it's a very sterile and wide environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because again this film it there's an eroticism of death.
Speaker 1: So the cleanest, holiest place, the holiest scene in the
Speaker 1: entire film, the holiest setting is the morgue. Yes, it
Speaker 1: feels like a heaven with corpses in it.
Speaker 3: And since they're returning to the Morgue here, I think
Speaker 3: this would have been the occasion for Wendy Carlos's return
Speaker 3: to the Morgue theme, which you can hear a clip
Speaker 3: of online. Yeah, and you know, once again we wish
Speaker 3: we'd had that score. But so they're creeping around trying
Speaker 3: to find things. They end up pointing their guns at
Speaker 3: some unwitting lab technician who's.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, know what's going on.
Speaker 3: And then there is a really funny part where they
Speaker 3: start they start to see that the ceiling panels are jiggling. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think that means, oh, the monster is up there,
Speaker 3: and they have to face the monster, and there's a
Speaker 3: big scene where they start shooting at it while it's
Speaker 3: running around, and eventually it escapes, but Durkin, having now
Speaker 3: confronted the monster, firsthand is a changed man.
Speaker 1: Yes, and here we get to probably my favorite part
Speaker 1: of the whole film, the conversion.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is where so Durkin has encountered the killer
Speaker 1: and he is shaken by this and he undergoes what
Speaker 1: is kind of a religious conversion, and Stone is here
Speaker 1: to guide him along the way. So he's like that
Speaker 1: anxiety you're feeling, now, well here, First of all, that
Speaker 1: anxiety is good. That will fuel you. But you need
Speaker 1: more fuel. You need these chocolates. Eat this chocolate, drink
Speaker 1: of this burnt coffee that's thirty percent sugar. And now
Speaker 1: let's get you a giant gun right out of you know,
Speaker 1: some kil's video game. This is the Harley Stone Way,
Speaker 1: and this is how you're going to live your life
Speaker 1: from here on out. And I am not exaggerating.
Speaker 3: Chocolate, sugar, coffee and the guns from Doom. And he
Speaker 3: converts him to the religion of Harley Stone. You are
Speaker 3: one thousand percent correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he stays converted for the rest of the picture.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, and he basically reverts to adolescents. So he
Speaker 3: like really starts loving Harley Stone's motorcycles in this apartment,
Speaker 3: sits on them and he goes like.
Speaker 1: Broom, broom, yep, yep, and he keeps mumbling it's like
Speaker 1: a mantra. He's like, we need big freaking guns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need big freaking guns, big freaking guns.
Speaker 3: And he also starts dressing like Harley Stone. I don't
Speaker 3: remember when this starts, but he puts on a big
Speaker 3: leather coat.
Speaker 1: Yep. So again it's it's so like, this is this
Speaker 1: was no accident, this is this is brilliant.
Speaker 3: And then I guess maybe after this point, I'm going
Speaker 3: to describe the plot in less detail, but we'll just
Speaker 3: say it goes into third act Overdrive, and there are
Speaker 3: various people getting kidnapped. Durkin gets kidnapped and then Harley
Speaker 3: Stone goes back to get him. Michelle McLain gets kidnapped.
Speaker 3: That's Kim Cattrol. She goes missing and then they're trying
Speaker 3: to find her. There's a great part where after Durkin
Speaker 3: has been kidnapped to the monster has apparently like carved
Speaker 3: all of this like occult symbology into his chest and
Speaker 3: then they realize like, wait, it's not a cult symbols,
Speaker 3: it's a map, and they're like holding a map up
Speaker 3: to his chest while he's bleeding everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bleeding chest. It looks it was awful, like he
Speaker 1: needs to go to the emergency room. But you know
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, bundle up, grab some chocolate. We're
Speaker 1: going out in the field.
Speaker 3: And there's a big set piece at the end where
Speaker 3: they have to go rescue Kim Katrol in like a
Speaker 3: flooded subway tunnel, and they confront the monster and there
Speaker 3: are various kinds of like traps and weapons setups they
Speaker 3: use against him. They try to use electricity, and they
Speaker 3: try to use explosives, and then in the end, I
Speaker 3: this was totally inexplicable to me. Did you understand why
Speaker 3: Harley Stone was able to do a Temple of Doom
Speaker 3: style reverse heart ripping on the monster?
Speaker 1: I think it was. I think it's kind of like
Speaker 1: when obi Wan battles General Grievous, Like General Grievous has
Speaker 1: damaged enough in the battle that obi Wan is able
Speaker 1: to target the inner weak spot. Okay, So I think
Speaker 1: that's basically what's happened here. Is like all their attempts
Speaker 1: to blow him up and shoot him and to electrocute him,
Speaker 1: it managed to expose the heart enough that he was
Speaker 1: able to reach in and pull this grotesque like black,
Speaker 1: just solid black heart out of the monster that continues
Speaker 1: to beat like NonStop after he rips.
Speaker 3: It out, and then he shoots it while it's in
Speaker 3: his hand point blank. Yes, it looks like he would
Speaker 3: have shot his fingers off.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: But so one of my favorite things about this movie.
Speaker 3: I kept thinking, like, Okay, so what are we going
Speaker 3: to find out about the monster in the end, We're
Speaker 3: going to find out like it's actually his former partner
Speaker 3: as or something like that, But nope, like it has no,
Speaker 3: it's not any character we previously knew. It doesn't really
Speaker 3: have any causal connection to anything else that happens in
Speaker 3: the story. It's only really apparently after Harley Stone, just
Speaker 3: because they happened to have met before. Like, it's just
Speaker 3: a random monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But it's increasingly difficult to try and figure out
Speaker 1: what this monster's supposed to be, huh, because we have
Speaker 1: all these strange qualities that are brought up, some oftentimes conflicting.
Speaker 1: So we know it's it's humanoid but not human. It
Speaker 1: lives in the sewers and flooded ruins. It has rat
Speaker 1: DNA but it also has DNA from all of its victims,
Speaker 1: so it's some sort of a gene stealer. It's intelligent,
Speaker 1: it knows human language, it knows occult symbology. It can
Speaker 1: use weapons and tools and delivery services. But it's also
Speaker 1: this total grindel monster. It's a bestial killer. It has
Speaker 1: monster hands and monster teeth. We're largely left to assume
Speaker 1: it is completely organic and or naked, but in one
Speaker 1: of the rare mpses we see of it, it has
Speaker 1: this kind of motorcycle visor kind of head that makes
Speaker 1: you think, well, maybe it's part robot or something, or
Speaker 1: costume or something as well.
Speaker 3: It looks like a cross between the xenomorph venom and
Speaker 3: like Judge Dread with the helmet.
Speaker 1: Well, this more specifically reminds me of Judge Death. I believe,
Speaker 1: one of the foul evil judges where you have like
Speaker 1: the big teeth underneath the Yeah, I think that's Judge Dead.
Speaker 1: I may have my Judge all.
Speaker 3: I don't know Judge Dread world all that. Well, I
Speaker 3: just being like, yes, you're exactly right. Its head does
Speaker 3: look like a helmet with a solid black visor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And on top of that, it may think it's
Speaker 1: the devil, or is the devil? It eats human hearts.
Speaker 1: There's a psychic connection between it and the people it's harmed,
Speaker 1: or at least with stone. Is itself obsessed with the
Speaker 1: occult and the Chinese zodiac. It's active during the year
Speaker 1: at the rat and again it's weird. Black heart continues
Speaker 1: to beat outside its body, so you're left asking, like,
Speaker 1: what exactly is this thing? Did a human killer mutate
Speaker 1: into this in the sewers? Is it an emergent horror,
Speaker 1: a genetically engineered monster, an alien? We just don't know.
Speaker 3: Is it a rat virus that took on bodily form?
Speaker 3: What was the part about it being a rat virus?
Speaker 3: There's just like one line about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, perhaps all these rewrites are the cause. But
Speaker 1: ultimately I really liked this. I love not knowing what
Speaker 1: this thing is because again, monstrosity is often about category confusion,
Speaker 1: and this monster is confusing.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, there's a.
Speaker 1: Chaotic ambiguity about it, and I find that. I ultimately
Speaker 1: really like that it's emerged from the inhuman realm and
Speaker 1: humans are able to kill it. Possibly we have that
Speaker 1: stinger with the bubbles, but human understanding fails any attempt
Speaker 1: to comprehend it, and so it has this kind of
Speaker 1: pure monstrosity to it that it works. And they also
Speaker 1: don't shoot it a lot. We don't see much of it,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of mys regarding what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't change a thing.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: One thing I forgot to mention that I thought was
Speaker 3: great about the conversion to the religion of Harley Stone
Speaker 3: is that you also see after the plot is resolved,
Speaker 3: like further religious disciplining to keep him on the path.
Speaker 3: Because Durkin at one point they ask after they've beaten
Speaker 3: the monster, I think Kim Katral says, is it dead?
Speaker 3: And Durkin says, existentially, that's difficult to answer. Philosophy of
Speaker 3: death is one of my hobbies. And then they both
Speaker 3: yell at him like Drkin. I think the implication is that,
Speaker 3: uh oh, it sounds like he's reverting to his puny
Speaker 3: milksop intellectual personality and they need to like, you know,
Speaker 3: whip him to make sure he adheres to the harley
Speaker 3: Stone Path.
Speaker 1: Yeah, eat some chocolate and have some more coffee and
Speaker 1: cigars right now. Ah. Yeah. I feel like the Harley
Speaker 1: Stone Way is also similar to like my taste in films,
Speaker 1: and perhaps someone out there might see one of the
Speaker 1: films we cover on Weird House and for the first
Speaker 1: time and experience a similar conversion, you know, like something
Speaker 1: has shaken you, something has changed after seeing a film
Speaker 1: like Split Second or Mad Love or Teens in the Universe.
Speaker 1: What do I do now? Well, let us recommend this
Speaker 1: cinematic diet of chocolate, brain jarring coffee and violent excess.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Put that coat on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, put this coat on. Have a seat on this motorcycle.
Speaker 3: Gets you some plastic pants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this one's really fun. I recommend it. Let's
Speaker 1: see places to see it. I think we both watched
Speaker 1: it streaming on Amazon Prime. It's part of the Prime
Speaker 1: streaming plan right now, at least in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's probably. I think it's one of these films is
Speaker 1: ultimately available wherever you buy or rent things digitally. Got
Speaker 1: to check, Yeah, yeah, I forgot to check if there
Speaker 1: was like a really good Blu ray or anything of it.
Speaker 1: But I hope there is. If not, there should be one.
Speaker 3: Wait, I thought you, I thought the last time you
Speaker 3: watched it you rented it from videodrome.
Speaker 1: No last time, or did I hmm hmm.
Speaker 3: Our local video store where yes you can still rent
Speaker 3: movies on disc.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent place. Well I would have rented it there.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, I take that back. There is
Speaker 1: this is not the addition that I rented if I
Speaker 1: did rent it, But there is a very handsome looking
Speaker 1: Blu ray of this available now Criteria not Criterion. It
Speaker 1: looks like it's MVD, I'm not familiar with that. But
Speaker 1: it has some wonderful brand new art on the cover
Speaker 1: that looks absolutely snazzy. Looks like this came out. Oh,
Speaker 1: this just came out in August of last year, so
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, check this out. I feel kind
Speaker 1: of foolish for not picking this up on Blu ray now.
Speaker 1: And it looks like it. Oh my goodness. It has
Speaker 1: audio commentary, teraries, it has a bunch of stuff on it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you're into this, go check it out.
Speaker 3: The tagline on the cover. So a few things about
Speaker 3: the box art. I think this is the original box
Speaker 3: art that may have the newer version may have something
Speaker 3: more elaborate. Yeah, first of all, the old box art
Speaker 3: looks like a Sega Genesis game, Yes you see that.
Speaker 3: And then second I want to talk about the taglines
Speaker 3: says rutger Hower split Second, and then it says he's
Speaker 3: seen the future now he has to kill it.
Speaker 1: Ah, and he does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he kills the future. Oh and it also says
Speaker 3: he'll need bigger guns. It's like they couldn't decide, so
Speaker 3: they included both possible taglines.
Speaker 1: Yeah I think that.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this this Blu ray looks impressive and has a
Speaker 1: mini poster that comes with it with the original style
Speaker 1: VHS artwork. But I don't say see anything about a
Speaker 1: Windy Carlos score being an option on there. So sadly
Speaker 1: that will remain lost to history.
Speaker 3: If you got connections in the film world you want
Speaker 3: to put out a new remastered version of Split Second
Speaker 3: with the all new, original Windy Carlos score, I would
Speaker 3: pay top dollar for that day.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We're talking thirty to forty bucks here. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: make it happen. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and close this one out, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there, you know, people who saw Split
Speaker 1: Second back in the day when it came out, people
Speaker 1: who've discovered it since then. What are your thoughts on
Speaker 1: the film with the performances yeah, everything's on the table.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Weird House Cinema, this publishes every Friday in
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. You can
Speaker 1: find that feed wherever you get your podcasts, and we
Speaker 1: just asked you rate, review and subscribe as I have
Speaker 1: been doing. If you go to Summuta music dot com,
Speaker 1: it's se m U T A m U s I
Speaker 1: C dot com. That's a little personal blog, but I
Speaker 1: will put up bits about the episodes of Weird House there.
Speaker 1: So some of these other media bits that I've discussed here,
Speaker 1: I'll include them there for your easy.
Speaker 3: Access huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer
Speaker 3: Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
Speaker 3: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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