Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the nineteen eighty one
Speaker 3: American horror movie The Bugins, directed by James L. Conway,
Speaker 3: starring Rebecca Balding and Fred McCarran.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 3: I think it's a bit of serendipity that you got
Speaker 3: to watch this movie on an airplane on the way
Speaker 3: back from actually being in some caverns like seen in
Speaker 3: the movie The Buggins.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, as featured in The Buggins. Yes, actual caves,
Speaker 2: which may come back to in some upcoming episodes of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But yeah, fresh off of
Speaker 2: some adventures in some actual caves, I got to experience
Speaker 2: these adventures in probably not actual caves. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I read somewhere that the cave sets here or the
Speaker 3: mine whatever, you know, the underground cavern sets were built
Speaker 3: in a grocery store, I think.
Speaker 2: Okay, but a look pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But so you were on an airplane, maybe with
Speaker 3: a head cold, watching The Buggins. That sounds like a
Speaker 3: that's a mind space.
Speaker 2: And clearly as the as the filmmakers intended, with me
Speaker 2: occasionally having to like lean forward if there's like a
Speaker 2: little bit of nudity in the film to keep the
Speaker 2: people in the seats behind me from seeing it and
Speaker 2: wondering what I'm watching, but not that there's a lot
Speaker 2: of nudity in this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So before you ask, yes, this is a movie,
Speaker 3: I picked about eighty percent on the basis of the
Speaker 3: title I came across. I'd never seen The Buggins before. Uh,
Speaker 3: And I got to the title and I watched the trailer,
Speaker 3: and the trailer is great because there's no narration for
Speaker 3: most of it. It's just scenes from the movie, a
Speaker 3: lot of screaming, you know, creature cam kind of looking
Speaker 3: up from the floor, chasing people around. And then it
Speaker 3: gets to the very end of the trailer and suddenly
Speaker 3: a deep voice comes on. I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: Don Lafontaine or whoever, but somebody comes on and says,
Speaker 3: there is no escape the Buggins. That's all. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: well you got to watch this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's almost like he didn't really know exactly how
Speaker 2: to land the Boogins. How he felt about that. I
Speaker 2: don't know how I feel about the Buggins. It makes
Speaker 2: me think of Boogers. It makes me think of Boogieman
Speaker 2: and boogey Men. And I think when you first brought
Speaker 2: this movie up, I had a moment where it's like,
Speaker 2: is I confused this film with the Willies and maybe
Speaker 2: to a certain extent, creepyzoids, Like there are a.
Speaker 3: Few critters, a little bit of that critters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of silly monster named films, but the
Speaker 2: one i'd seen before, Munchies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is okay, very important question by your criteria. Is
Speaker 3: the Buggins a Gromlin's film? No, No, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are just I don't want to spoil too
Speaker 2: much about the creatures, though. I guess at this point
Speaker 2: we'll go ahead and just remind you if you want to,
Speaker 2: if you want to experience the Buggins without any additional knowledge,
Speaker 2: now's a good time to jump off and go watch
Speaker 2: the Boogins. But otherwise we're going to spoil stuff. I
Speaker 2: will say that the creatures and the Boogins, the titular Boogins,
Speaker 2: are not They're not clowning around. They are predatory monsters.
Speaker 3: There's no mischief, there's no Grimlins quality they're they're not
Speaker 3: making jokes. There are a lot of jokes in the film,
Speaker 3: and there is mischief, but it's by the human characters. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So The Buggins is a low budget I would have
Speaker 3: to be honest and say slightly annoying, but in other
Speaker 3: ways cozy and sort of adorable tunnel underground themed monster
Speaker 3: movie set in the Colorado Rockies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good read. I wasn't annoyed
Speaker 2: by it. I guess my tolerance for annoyance and B
Speaker 2: movies is pretty high at this point.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not saying it's a bad time, Like
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed The Buggins, but Roger I found moderately
Speaker 3: too severely grading.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll go with moderately, But maybe I was just
Speaker 2: I was just really chilled out on the plane for
Speaker 2: this one. But I do agree with the coziness. I
Speaker 2: felt like this movie had a really strong seventies sitcom
Speaker 2: sort of vibe, a little bit like sex comedy sitcom,
Speaker 2: like basically Three's Company, except without a laugh track. I
Speaker 2: think you could have dropped a laugh track in here
Speaker 2: and a nineteen seventies early eighties audience would have known
Speaker 2: how to react. And you also have no like don
Speaker 2: knots or anything. Instead of don knots, you have killer
Speaker 2: rubber monsters. But yeah, in its own way, this made
Speaker 2: it kind of charming. He felt kind of safe with
Speaker 2: these characters, even though these characters, as we will learn,
Speaker 2: are not safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, the premise of The Buggins is a a
Speaker 3: couple of young mine workers guys in their twenties named
Speaker 3: Mark and Roger rent a cabin. While they're not like
Speaker 3: experienced mine workers, they're doing a summer contract or something
Speaker 3: to clean up an abandoned silver mine in the mountains
Speaker 3: of Colorado, and they invite up to join them at
Speaker 3: the cabin, a couple of lady friends and also a
Speaker 3: very cute, very doomed, and very talented dog. We'll have
Speaker 3: more to say about the dog as we go on,
Speaker 3: But while they're there in the cabin and working in
Speaker 3: the mines, the characters discover a bloodthirsty evil has been
Speaker 3: unleashed from the caverns below. So we mentioned the cozy
Speaker 3: vibe of the movie, and one way I would put
Speaker 3: this is that, and several other critics have written this
Speaker 3: I wasn't the first to notice it, but I agree
Speaker 3: with this assessment. The Buggins blends two familiar horror movie aesthetics,
Speaker 3: and those two aesthetics are on one and the wiggly
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties creature feature moves like the crawling Eye or
Speaker 3: Earth versus the Spider, think, a kind of goofy rubber
Speaker 3: monster and a g whiz sensibility. It blends that on
Speaker 3: the one hand, and then on the other hand, the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties teen slasher movie like Friday the Thirteenth or
Speaker 3: prom Night. And I would say that the way these
Speaker 3: pieces come together is that the movie has the structure
Speaker 3: and setting of the post Halloween slasher film, but it
Speaker 3: has the soul, the rubber soul, and the cozy quaintness
Speaker 3: of the drive in monster movie. Do you get what
Speaker 3: I'm saying there?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, Like it doesn't really have any of the
Speaker 2: mild to severe sleeves of like an early eighties slasher picture.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the characters have more of that like nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties nineteen sixties heart to them. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and the weird thing is there is a character
Speaker 3: who is I think explicitly supposed to have a sleazy connotation,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of a Scooby Doo version.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very overt and silly.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. You get the impression that he's maybe I'll talk. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot. He talks a lot about how much
Speaker 2: he wants to make the sex, but I don't think
Speaker 2: it ever gets around to it. In this picture.
Speaker 3: He does does well well. They're interrupted by the police
Speaker 3: in the one scene where I don't know how far
Speaker 3: they got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how much sexing actually occurred. It
Speaker 2: seems like there was a definite cutoff plane and I'm
Speaker 2: not sure they ever got it back around to picking
Speaker 2: up where they left off.
Speaker 3: So I looked into the reception history of The Boogins.
Speaker 3: Did critics like the movie? Opinions seem mixed, But in
Speaker 3: the July nineteen eighty two edition of the Twilight Zone magazine,
Speaker 3: this movie got a humming endorsement from author Stephen King.
Speaker 3: So Stephen King had stepped in to do guest film reviews.
Speaker 3: I think the regular film critic was away for some reason,
Speaker 3: and so he has a column in this issue of
Speaker 3: Twilight Zone magazine called Digging the Buggins, in which he
Speaker 3: called it quote a wildly energetic monster movie. Now, I
Speaker 3: liked The Buggins, but I don't know if that's how
Speaker 3: I would describe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think energetic is a stretch. It's pretty laid
Speaker 2: back and relaxed for the most part. Yeah, so some
Speaker 2: great scenes with tension to them, but yeah, even by
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one standards, I wouldn't say it's particularly energetic.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the same year that we got
Speaker 2: the first Evil Dead film and Joe Dante's The Howling,
Speaker 2: So yeah, those are.
Speaker 3: Both much more energetic. Yeah, but there's a sort of
Speaker 3: King's take, and haven't I wasn't able to find the
Speaker 3: full text of this article. I don't think it's been
Speaker 3: digitized online anywhere, but I found a blog post where
Speaker 3: somebody was summarizing it, and they said that in this
Speaker 3: film review, Stephen King scolds audiences for only wanting mad
Speaker 3: slasher movies and for thinking themselves above a rubber monster.
Speaker 3: You know, he's sort of making the case that a
Speaker 3: classic nineteen fifty style rubber monster is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 3: And there I would agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with that. I love Stephen King.
Speaker 2: I'm never going to stop loving Stephen King, but I
Speaker 2: will add that he has never been shy about going
Speaker 2: all in on something that he loves if it's like it.
Speaker 2: Certainly if it's a new adaptation of his own work
Speaker 2: that he digs. But yeah, he can be very enthusiastic
Speaker 2: about the things that he likes.
Speaker 3: Now, one thing I thought would be worth discussing about
Speaker 3: The Buggins before we get into talking about the cast
Speaker 3: and crew is the production company that put it out.
Speaker 3: So let's do a sidebar on Taft International Pictures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is very fascinating. As I'll get into it,
Speaker 2: I read I was reading a little bit about this
Speaker 2: via Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Film Guides.
Speaker 3: Okay, so my main source on this was an AV
Speaker 3: Club review of The Boogins by Keith Phipps, which went
Speaker 3: a bit into the history of this company. It wasn't
Speaker 3: originally Taft International Pictures. It was previously known as Sun
Speaker 3: Classic Pictures, but Son with two ends like the guitar
Speaker 3: amplifier brand.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, because I believe if you only had
Speaker 2: one in, it's an adult publisher. So they had They're like,
Speaker 2: I put another in on there and then then they'll
Speaker 2: know it's for family content.
Speaker 3: So Phipps referred to Sun Classic Pictures as quote one
Speaker 3: of the most profitably disreputable film distributors in cinematic history,
Speaker 3: despite not being an adult content thing. Instead, they were
Speaker 3: disreputable due to their track record of putting out factually
Speaker 3: decrepit documentaries and running shameless advertising and putting together like
Speaker 3: TV and radio promo spots for the movies that would
Speaker 3: promise way too much, way more than these movies we're
Speaker 3: going to deliver. You know, you'd get some kind of
Speaker 3: low budget, dubious documentary and it would be sold as
Speaker 3: like the most amazing revelation in film history and that
Speaker 3: sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. So this is a Sun
Speaker 2: Classics was a Utah based company dealt mostly in documentaries,
Speaker 2: but again not classy documentaries, sensational nineteen seventies docs that
Speaker 2: we'd rightfully identify as conspiracy theory and cryptic cryptic flicks
Speaker 2: today really sort of the forerunners, the mind poisoning forerunners
Speaker 2: of later day conspiracy thought, I would.
Speaker 3: Say, yeah, the media arm of that. So some examples
Speaker 3: that they did religiously themed documentaries and also conspiracy ones,
Speaker 3: historical conspiracy things. So one, for example is a famous
Speaker 3: one called In Search of Noah's Arc from nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: a movie that famously claimed to have found the final
Speaker 3: resting place of Noah's Ark on a mountain in Turkey.
Speaker 3: There's another one they put out called Beyond and Back
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy eight, which is a movie about near
Speaker 3: death experiences and it's talking about people who went to
Speaker 3: the afterlife and then said they came back. Another one
Speaker 3: is called In Search of Historic Jesus from nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: where in his review Phipps includes a quote from the
Speaker 3: TV spots promoting this film. The quote is, there are
Speaker 3: eighteen years of Jesus's life. The Bible doesn't account for
Speaker 3: where did he spend those missing years. You'll find new
Speaker 3: answers in this startling motion picture. Obviously you won't. But anyway, yes,
Speaker 3: they were putting out documentary content of that sort, but
Speaker 3: they also you mentioned family friendly programming. In the seventies,
Speaker 3: Sun Classic made a lot of money putting out stuff
Speaker 3: like the Life and Times of Grizzly Adams starring Dan Haggerty,
Speaker 3: both the movie from nineteen seventy four and its TV spinoff,
Speaker 3: and these were big hits.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they also did these sort of like you
Speaker 2: almost get the sense of these were adaptations of classics
Speaker 2: for like students to watch. They did a seventy nine
Speaker 2: adaptation of the follow The House of Usher, and then
Speaker 2: also and I think that one had Martin Landau in it,
Speaker 2: and then a TV adaptation of Sleepy Hollow starring Jeff Goldbloom.
Speaker 2: We'll come back to that one. That one actually won
Speaker 2: some awards for them.
Speaker 3: I wonder if it's similar to the Roger Korman thinking
Speaker 3: and adapting Poe Like, well, if you're adapting classic literature,
Speaker 3: you get the benefit of both. It's out of copyright protection,
Speaker 3: so it's public domain. And then also this is something
Speaker 3: that people might watch in schools, so you get some
Speaker 3: automatic uptake because it is quote classic literature, you but
Speaker 3: it's also horror, you know, so you can kind of
Speaker 3: lean into the more exploitation elements if you want to.
Speaker 2: So a lot of so definitely some family friendly content. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some dubious documentary work that is at times promoting things
Speaker 2: like ancient aliens and also attempting to use scientific information
Speaker 2: to prop up Christian theology. So an interesting company here.
Speaker 3: But apart from the content Phipps pointed out how in
Speaker 3: the seventies, Sun prospered through very particular marketing and distribution tactics.
Speaker 3: So Sun used a distribution tactic known as four walling,
Speaker 3: where instead of the normal method you would use when
Speaker 3: you release a film of splitting box office sales with
Speaker 3: the venue that's showing the film instead the distributor. In
Speaker 3: four walling, the distributor would pay movie theaters a flat
Speaker 3: fee to rent them out for a particular time, and
Speaker 3: then the distributor would keep one hundred percent of the
Speaker 3: ticket sales. And so Sun would do this, but instead
Speaker 3: of releasing everywhere at once, they would target specific market.
Speaker 3: So they might go to a you know, a small
Speaker 3: town or rural local media market, rent out the local
Speaker 3: theaters to show their movie, keep one hundred percent of
Speaker 3: the ticket sales, and then just flood the local TV
Speaker 3: and radio waves with an advertising campaign. And then they
Speaker 3: would keep one hundred percent of the ticket sales, you know,
Speaker 3: by funneling everybody in town into the theater to see
Speaker 3: this Bible movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everyone has to know about the historic Jesus
Speaker 2: because it's all we're hearing about.
Speaker 3: And apparently they made pretty good money this way now.
Speaker 3: For some reason, I wasn't sure about what caused this shift.
Speaker 3: Maybe you had some information on this. But by about
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine or eighty, something shifted and Sun which
Speaker 3: had at this point adopted the new name of Taft
Speaker 3: International Pictures, I think were they maybe acquired by another company.
Speaker 2: It's my understanding that they were acquired at this point
Speaker 2: by Taft Broadcasting, which it actually ties back to Published,
Speaker 2: a public company that was owned by the brother of
Speaker 2: Howard Taff, So it has some roots to it, Okay,
Speaker 2: presidential roots, if you will.
Speaker 3: So this company around the year nineteen eighty shifted from
Speaker 3: making family entertainment like Grizzly Adams and religious documentaries and
Speaker 3: conspiracy stuff too, science fiction and R rated horror. So
Speaker 3: in the year nineteen eighty they released the sci fi
Speaker 3: thriller Hangar eighteen with Darren McGavin of Oh I'm blanking
Speaker 3: on the name of the show Culchak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, The Nightstalker.
Speaker 3: And also had Robert Vaughan from Battle Beyond the Stars
Speaker 3: and the movies we've talked about. I think Hangar eighteen
Speaker 3: was featured on a very early episode of Mystery Science
Speaker 3: Theater three thousand. I don't know if you've seen this one.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've seen that one, but that sounds right.
Speaker 3: So that's nineteen eighty and then in nineteen eighty one
Speaker 3: we get there are rated horror extravaganza The Buggins.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things that Michael Weldon points out
Speaker 2: is that this was a lot raunchier than previous fare
Speaker 2: from some classics. But I have to stress, like only
Speaker 2: mildly ron raunchy compared to family films and rather tame documentaries.
Speaker 2: I guess because it's like, yeah, there's a butt at
Speaker 2: one point, what more can you say? Some talk of
Speaker 2: sex and some amount of blood, a little bit of gore,
Speaker 2: but nothing crazy, certainly by today's standards.
Speaker 3: Though I did want to say I think the part
Speaker 3: of the movie where we see a butt is one
Speaker 3: of the funniest moments in the film because of a
Speaker 3: cinematography choice where the camera does almost a crash zoom
Speaker 3: on the butt, like it's the shining and there's a
Speaker 3: bloody haget, except it's just somebody's butt.
Speaker 2: I do not remember this particular zoom all that well.
Speaker 2: I think this is probably a part of in my
Speaker 2: viewing where I was kind of like hunching over to
Speaker 2: make sure that the people behind me weren't questioning my viewing.
Speaker 3: Habits scandalizing the family.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So technically this was not their first horror venture,
Speaker 2: because you know I mentioned follow the House of Usher,
Speaker 2: but it certainly would not be their last either. They
Speaker 2: would go on to have a hand in the production
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty three's Kujo, nineteen eighty seven's The Monster Squad,
Speaker 2: as well as nineteen eighty sevens The Running Man, which
Speaker 2: of course was another loose Stephen King adaptation.
Speaker 3: Okay, that is interesting. All three of these movies have
Speaker 3: their fans. I think, you know, these are not totally
Speaker 3: disregarded in horror history.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I have to admit I've never seen
Speaker 2: Kujo or read Kujo, so I don't have a lot
Speaker 2: to say about that. Grew up with The Running Man,
Speaker 2: you know, it's pretty wild. The Monster Squad recently rewatched.
Speaker 2: I have mixed thoughts about it, but yeah, does have
Speaker 2: great monsters in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, one thing I think we need to address
Speaker 3: in the beginning here is the title The Boogins. We
Speaker 3: have been assuming, and I think we'll continue to assume
Speaker 3: in the episode that the buggins is the name of
Speaker 3: the type of creature that attacks that we have to
Speaker 3: that's just an inference on our part, because the movie
Speaker 3: doesn't say that. I think the word buggins is said
Speaker 3: one time in the film, and it is said by
Speaker 3: John Lormer's character as he is like collapsing to die
Speaker 3: in a cave, and he just says buogin and it's
Speaker 3: not clear exactly what he means, but it's while these
Speaker 3: monsters are attacking, So I think it's got And there's
Speaker 3: an s at the end of the word, so it's
Speaker 3: like plural. So it's like, I think this has got
Speaker 3: to be the name of the monsters. But I was
Speaker 3: trying to get some clarity on where this word comes from,
Speaker 3: what it means. I can't source this to anything really solid,
Speaker 3: but at least in the IMDb trivia page, they say
Speaker 3: that the buggins is not actually a term from the
Speaker 3: mining world. It's not a monster of folklore or anything.
Speaker 3: It is a word that was, as far as he knows,
Speaker 3: invented by the screen writer David O'Malley quote using the
Speaker 3: word boogieman as its root. His original title for the movie,
Speaker 3: though it had already been used.
Speaker 2: Okay, so can't call it a boogeyman called Buggins instead, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which I don't know. Again, kind of a silly name.
Speaker 2: It does, at least, you know, for us modern viewers,
Speaker 2: it makes us think of things like gremlins. It sounds
Speaker 2: a little war full of whimsy than it actually is, because, again,
Speaker 2: as we'll find out, these are just predatory monsters from
Speaker 2: the deep.
Speaker 3: A few other things that different reviewers have noted about
Speaker 3: the film that I also found notable inexplicable relationship with
Speaker 3: the one dog in the movie. So, the characters in
Speaker 3: the film have an extremely cute dog named Tiger, and
Speaker 3: all they ever do is complain about how they don't
Speaker 3: like Tiger and what a burden he is. I've never
Speaker 3: heard people be this hard on a dog before, and
Speaker 3: it's especially weird because the dog is very lovable and
Speaker 3: a really good dog. Actor like, this dog is hitting
Speaker 3: his marks, he pulls reaction shots for the camera. Tiger
Speaker 3: is amazing.
Speaker 2: Tiger is great. Yeah, Unfortunately, we have no idea the
Speaker 2: name of this actual dog. Maybe the dog's name is
Speaker 2: Tiger as well, but it's not one of these K
Speaker 2: nine actors that is credited but it's an amazing performance, Yeah,
Speaker 2: hitting his mark, reaction shots, a lot of screen time. Really,
Speaker 2: we get like lots of scenes in which Tiger is
Speaker 2: exploring the old house and then is having encounters with
Speaker 2: the monster before we really get to see it. So
Speaker 2: I would say, arguably the best the best performance in
Speaker 2: the picture. And that's not and I'm not even doing
Speaker 2: saying that to try and like shame the the human
Speaker 2: actors here, Like Tiger is just that good.
Speaker 3: Another thing that basically every reviewer makes a note of
Speaker 3: is the weirdness of the character. Roger and I agree.
Speaker 3: I think this has to be the single horniest character
Speaker 3: ever written. Almost every single line of dialogue this character
Speaker 3: speaks is about how he is ready for sex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: Like while he's at work, while he's doing anything, that's
Speaker 3: what he's talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The the actor playing him, who will get to
Speaker 2: in a bed, has this kind of kind of a
Speaker 2: Dana Carvey vibe to him, Like it's a little bit
Speaker 2: like Dana Carvey and it has that that like how
Speaker 2: like how sleazy can a Dana Carvey character be that
Speaker 2: sort of thing? So he ends up feeling, you know, fairly,
Speaker 2: you know, he's fairly likable, Like, even though he keeps
Speaker 2: talking about how he wants to have sex and he's
Speaker 2: gonna have sex, like, he doesn't come off particularly gross
Speaker 2: or threatening about it. It's just like he's a happy,
Speaker 2: go lucky guy and he's excited to see his girlfriend again.
Speaker 2: He hasn't seen her in you know, however long it's been.
Speaker 3: He is a weirdly like a preopadic Garth's just strange
Speaker 3: type of character portrayal. And the other thing I think
Speaker 3: we have to mention is the unusual design of the Buggins.
Speaker 3: I don't know whether to criticize or commend to the
Speaker 3: movie for the Buggins design. I still have been thinking
Speaker 3: about it for days and still haven't made up my
Speaker 3: mind about it. Credit I think to the movie for
Speaker 3: the Buggins reveal being quite an unusual type of monster.
Speaker 3: I can't think of anything exactly like it, so it
Speaker 3: feels kind of original. But also when you see it,
Speaker 3: you're like, really, that's the thing. I don't know. It's
Speaker 3: something about the size of it, and the anatomy is underwhelming,
Speaker 3: but also different enough to be maybe kind of worthy.
Speaker 3: I don't know what are your thoughts here.
Speaker 2: I guess in general, I would say they were ambitious
Speaker 2: enough to go for something other than just a man
Speaker 2: in a monster suit. Yeah, but I think maybe they
Speaker 2: should have gone with a man in a monster suit.
Speaker 2: Like it's a mix. Like they they went for it,
Speaker 2: and in some shots, like the final creature looks good
Speaker 2: and at least is very interesting and original, but I
Speaker 2: don't know that I love it, Like I wasn't even
Speaker 2: it didn't leave me that curious even to go look
Speaker 2: up like pictures of the full creature so much. I'm
Speaker 2: just kind of like, well, I guess that's fine. But
Speaker 2: they also seem to maybe realize well, probably a combination
Speaker 2: of realizing what they had and also knowing that there's
Speaker 2: a lot to be gained in not showing us the
Speaker 2: full monster. So there's a lot of build up to
Speaker 2: any reveals that we get. These monsters seem to have
Speaker 2: some sort of like a tentacle attack, and so a
Speaker 2: lot of good use is made of that, like characters
Speaker 2: being grabbed and pulled off screen or downstairs or underneath things.
Speaker 3: There are a couple of I think genuinely effective horror
Speaker 3: images or set pieces in the movie. Not so much
Speaker 3: once you finally get the Buggins reveal. But before we'll
Speaker 3: get to this later. I I thought one scene that
Speaker 3: actually looks pretty scary and was memorable was the scene
Speaker 3: where it attacks through the intake grate on the floor,
Speaker 3: you know, and the great bends down and it becomes
Speaker 3: a pit.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 3: I thought that was good, pretty scary looking, an unusual image,
Speaker 3: almost in kind of a Jallo way, striking in the
Speaker 3: way that it manipulates or uses strangely a familiar object
Speaker 3: that we all have around us in our houses, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would agree with that, And
Speaker 2: I'd say also, they do a great job of making
Speaker 2: sure that the Buggins is completely lethal. It is a
Speaker 2: deadly adversary, and they treat it very seriously, and and
Speaker 2: that rubs off on the viewer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rob, you had an elevator pitch for this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's basically the Minds of Maria, except Buggins instead
Speaker 2: of Ballrock. The Buggins are our ball Rock.
Speaker 3: I did not think about the minds of Maria, But
Speaker 3: you're so right. They were warned not to go in,
Speaker 3: the entrance was sealed. They had decided to go in anyway,
Speaker 3: and they dug too deep and unleashed something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is a familiar trope in various various
Speaker 2: horror movies, horror stories, even some Stephen King stories as well,
Speaker 2: where you have some sort of a creature that is
Speaker 2: either it's in some sort of like deep environment that
Speaker 2: has been opened up, you know, a real environment or
Speaker 2: a magical environment that has been accessed via human mining
Speaker 2: and then is covered up again but then unlocked once more.
Speaker 2: Now we could ask a lot of questions about how
Speaker 2: this creature actually lives deep underground. What kind of triglafauna
Speaker 2: is this, But you know, don't ask too many questions.
Speaker 2: But I guess it eats something down there, but it's
Speaker 2: more excited about eating humans and or dogs.
Speaker 3: Well, actually I have some other thoughts about that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Think it does not eat humans because we never see
Speaker 3: it humans. It attacks humans, but the human corpses that
Speaker 3: we find in the movie are completely They've got all
Speaker 3: their flesh intact. I mean they're wounded and they.
Speaker 2: Just kind of wounds the face and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it doesn't eat the flesh of the humans,
Speaker 3: and that makes me think that something else is going on.
Speaker 3: It's not attacking because it is a hungry predator. I'm
Speaker 3: wondering if it's territorial or is it attacking to protect
Speaker 3: its nest or whatever. You know, We just there's so
Speaker 3: much we don't know about the ethology of the Bogins.
Speaker 2: We need some sort of shady documentary to do a
Speaker 2: jump in on this and give us some ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the Bugin's mine.
Speaker 2: Yeah all right. Well at this point you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I actually do need to go watch The Boogins. Well,
Speaker 2: it's widely available for digital purchase in rental. Again, I
Speaker 2: watched it on my phone on a flight, but you
Speaker 2: can also get it on Blu Ray from Keno Lorber.
Speaker 2: They put out a twenty twenty four release of the
Speaker 2: film and it has a number of fun sounding extras
Speaker 2: on it, so it seems to have despite being maybe
Speaker 2: a obscure pick, it has a really solid physical release.
Speaker 3: Should we talk about the connections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into it here. And a lot of
Speaker 2: these connections are going to tie directly into Sun Classics.
Speaker 2: A lot of the people involved were Sun Classics folks
Speaker 2: who at least started out with Sun.
Speaker 3: Classics Sun Veterans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, two ins two right. Yeah. So the director
Speaker 2: here is James L. Conway born nineteen fifty American writer, director,
Speaker 2: and producer who got his start with Sun Classics, beginning
Speaker 2: with the seventy six documentary In Search of Noah's Art,
Speaker 2: which we already mentioned, and then four episodes of the
Speaker 2: TV spinoff of Son's Grizzly Adams film in seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Subsequent Sun projects included The Lincoln Conspiracy and Last of
Speaker 2: the Mohicans, as well as Incredible Rocky Mountain Race in
Speaker 2: seventy seven, Beyond and Back and Donner Pass, The Road
Speaker 2: to Survival in seventy eight, eight episodes of Greatest Heroes
Speaker 2: of the Bible and The Fall of the House of
Speaker 2: Usher in seventy nine, Hangar eighteen in nineteen eighty, and
Speaker 2: Earthbound in eighty one, and this was of course followed
Speaker 2: by The Buggins all right After The Buggins, he sticks
Speaker 2: with Son a while longer on some more conspiracy docs
Speaker 2: in the early eighties before turning increasingly back to TV directing,
Speaker 2: and he goes on to have quite a career in television.
Speaker 2: Among his credits, he directed the Seat of multiple Star
Speaker 2: Trek episodes, so three episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation,
Speaker 2: four episodes of Voyager seven, episodes of Deep Space, nine
Speaker 2: five episodes of Enterprise, and then episodes of such shows
Speaker 2: as Smallville, Supernatural, the Orville, and eight episodes of the Magicians,
Speaker 2: a rather fun series based on the books of lev Grossman.
Speaker 3: I've never seen it, but I saw that he had
Speaker 3: I think he was involved in directing episodes of Charmed
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it Charmed as well. Yeah, there'll be a
Speaker 2: connection here to his wife as well. That's that was
Speaker 2: an Aaron Spelling Witches show, I believe.
Speaker 3: I don't really know. I just saw Armed was like
Speaker 3: often the first thing that would come up when you
Speaker 3: google this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, very successful in television, and he
Speaker 2: was nominated for a nineteen eighty one Primetime Emmy for
Speaker 2: the Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the category of Outstanding
Speaker 2: Children's Program.
Speaker 3: Is this the one that had Jeff Goldblum in it?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: As Akabad Krane. I haven't seen it, but that's what
Speaker 2: I've heard about for years and was excited to see
Speaker 2: it tied in here.
Speaker 3: Now, there was one name in the credits here I
Speaker 3: was briefly confused about because the IMDb lists the screenwriters
Speaker 3: as David O'Malley and Jim Kof, But in the movie
Speaker 3: itself the script was credited to O'Malley and Bob Hunt.
Speaker 3: But I think Bob Hunt is a pen name.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's the pen name that Jim Coof uses here.
Speaker 2: Born nineteen fifty one, writer and producer. This was his
Speaker 2: first credited produced screenplay, but he'd go on to become
Speaker 2: a pretty well known screenwriter. A lot of folks may
Speaker 2: recognize his name from nineteen eighty one's A Hidden, ninety
Speaker 2: eight Rush Hour, two thousand and four's National Treasure, twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen's Money Monster, and a whole bunch of episodes of
Speaker 2: TV's Grim which he also created and produced.
Speaker 3: Okay, for a while, I've had The Hidden on the
Speaker 3: list of movies to check out, potentially for Weird House.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I haven't seen it, but it looks pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2: I want to also point out that this screenwriter is
Speaker 2: also tied into questionable nineteen seventies documentary work, because he
Speaker 2: was apparently a researcher on the Leonard Nimoy hosted Insart
Speaker 2: Shops series back in nineteen seventy eight. Wow, you get
Speaker 2: the impression all these guys you know they were destined
Speaker 2: for other things, but they were initially stuck in this
Speaker 2: world of grimy, questionable documentaries in.
Speaker 3: The Bermuda Triangle zone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just had to escape it. That's our screenwriter.
Speaker 2: But then we also have our one of our main screenwriter,
Speaker 2: but we also have a story credit to Thomas C. Chapman,
Speaker 2: who nineteen forty six through twenty eleven a SUN writer
Speaker 2: and producer, whose first writing credit was seventy three's Deadly Fathoms.
Speaker 2: That was a SUN a diving documentary film narrated by
Speaker 2: Rod Serling and then David O'Malley story screenwriter. O'Malley got
Speaker 2: his start on Deadly Fathoms, with subsequent work including various
Speaker 2: SUN projects, but also seventy eight It's the House of
Speaker 2: the Dead, two episodes of seventy nine's More Can Mindy,
Speaker 2: and ninety three's Fatal Instinct, directed by Carl Reiner that
Speaker 2: was I do vaguely remember trailers for this. This was
Speaker 2: a Basic Instinct Instinct spoof that starred Armanda Sante, and
Speaker 2: O'Malley has also worked as a director Away.
Speaker 3: Based on the title, I guess that would be a
Speaker 3: spoof of the nineties erotic thriller, generally like Fatal Instinct,
Speaker 3: Fatal Attractions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess they kind of slammed two of them
Speaker 2: together there. Yeah. I may have even seen part of
Speaker 2: it on TV. I don't remember.
Speaker 3: I've never seen this one.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into our cast here, starting with
Speaker 2: our heroin, Trish played by Rebecca Balding.
Speaker 3: Fundamentally likable heroine. Yes, absolutely, yeah. Rebecca Balding is a
Speaker 3: very nice presence in this film, whatever else is going on,
Speaker 3: she just seems like, you know, Trisha's got her head
Speaker 3: on straight, and Rebecca Balding just does a very likable energy.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. So she lived nineteen forty eight through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, Arkansas born. She'd been working in TV since
Speaker 2: seventy six at this point, appearing on episodes of shows
Speaker 2: like The Bionic Woman, Supertrain nineteen episodes of Soap That
Speaker 2: was probably her biggest role at the time. She'd also
Speaker 2: already done one other horror film, seventy nine Silent Scream,
Speaker 2: which was produced and written by the Wheat Brothers who
Speaker 2: had gone to give us Pitch Black, among other things,
Speaker 2: and co starring Barbara Steele and Cameron Mitchell. So I'm
Speaker 2: curious about that one. She'd continued to work in TV
Speaker 2: through most of her career and had a recurring character
Speaker 2: on TV's Charmed in the late nineties. Too early to
Speaker 2: mid two thousands.
Speaker 3: I have read anecdotes about Rebecca Balding and James L. Conway.
Speaker 3: The version of the story I read is that they
Speaker 3: met for The Bogins, like, she showed up for casting
Speaker 3: and the moment they met, James L. Conway was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: I think I'm in love with her. And then the
Speaker 3: story goes that like two weeks into filming, she proposed
Speaker 3: marriage to him and they got married.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. So yeah, well yeah, and would remain married
Speaker 2: until she passed away in twenty twenty two. But yeah,
Speaker 2: and then would work together again obviously on Charmed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I agree, she's she's got great girl next door charm
Speaker 2: in this film. You know, it's just really good.
Speaker 3: The Bogins is a love story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Ultimately, I don't want any of the characters in
Speaker 2: this film to be killed by slimy monsters from the
Speaker 2: Silver Mine, but especially not Trish.
Speaker 3: Okay, but so in the movie, Trish has a love interest,
Speaker 3: and that is the character Mark played by Fred McCarran.
Speaker 2: Right, right, and she does her characters does not know
Speaker 2: Mark previously.
Speaker 3: This is this is one of the weird things about
Speaker 3: the setup of the film. We'll talk more about this later.
Speaker 2: So Mark is played by Fred McCarran, who have nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty one through two thousand and six American actor who's
Speaker 2: credited TV in film work goes back to I think
Speaker 2: around seventy seven. He shows up in a bit background
Speaker 2: part in nineteen seventy sevens The Goodbye Girl, and before
Speaker 2: this film, he also had a supporting role in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties Zana Dude. That's the roller skating movie that starred
Speaker 2: Olivia Newton John. Subsequent to credits included eighty three's The
Speaker 2: Star Chamber and various TV credits as well. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I really liked the character Mark here. Just a very
Speaker 2: likable seventies, you know, late seventies, early eighties sitcom romantic
Speaker 2: lead type. You know.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, he's a good compliment to Trisha. So Rebecca
Speaker 3: Balding has girl next Door energy, Fred mccerrn has boy
Speaker 3: next door energy. He's just a kind of nice, strapping
Speaker 3: young lad who is He spends a lot of the
Speaker 3: movie just humoring This guy will get to in a
Speaker 3: minute Roger, Like they have this this dynamic where Roger
Speaker 3: is just monologue, doing horny monologues and Fred Mccaherrn's just like,
Speaker 3: you're crazy, man, But yeah he's sweet.
Speaker 2: All right. So that's that's our main couple. But then
Speaker 2: we also have this other couple. Jessica is Trisha's friend.
Speaker 2: Trish and Jessica have come up together to visit the mountains.
Speaker 2: Jessica is played by Anne Marie Martin born nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Martin's acting credits go back to seventy six and include
Speaker 2: various TV shows and such films as seventy nine as
Speaker 2: The Shape of Things to Come and the nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: slasher film prom Night, starting Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Speaker 3: Even without knowing that's the rest of her resume, I
Speaker 3: somehow feel like Anne Marie Martin brings the slasher movie
Speaker 3: energy with her into this film. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, Like once I saw she was in prom Night,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I think I saw Prom Night ages ago.
Speaker 2: I don't remember much about it, but I'm absolutely certain
Speaker 2: her character dies in it. You can tell, like, where
Speaker 2: are you build in the credits for a slasher film,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, yeah, you're in the victims zone for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. I've never thought about it
Speaker 3: like that, but basically, yeah, if you are neither top billing,
Speaker 3: if you're like not top billed, and you're above like
Speaker 3: seven or eighth build, you are definitely going down.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So. Her subsequent films include ude eighty one's Halloween,
Speaker 2: two eighty four's Runaway, and two hundred and ninety eight
Speaker 2: episodes of Days of Our Lives from eighty two through
Speaker 2: eighty five. Now that that Runaway credit is important to
Speaker 2: mention here because she was married to popular novelist Michael
Speaker 2: Crichton from eighty seven through two thousand and two, and
Speaker 2: actually co wrote the nineteen ninety six film Twister with him.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, okay, yeah, I rewatched Twister a few years
Speaker 3: back and that was a I remember it being a
Speaker 3: pretty fun time.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very it's kind of a silly movie
Speaker 3: and that the sometimes you feel like the tornado really
Speaker 3: has a mind, like it's chasing you know. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a fun ride.
Speaker 2: And Runaway I would I would be interested in coming
Speaker 2: back to that one. Runaway. Oh, it's a It is
Speaker 2: a silly movie with very very dangerous, very unconvincing robots, okay,
Speaker 2: and some unique casting. All right, So that's Jessica. Jessica's
Speaker 2: boyfriend is Roger, who we've been talking about a lot already.
Speaker 2: Roger is our horn dog.
Speaker 3: Whereas he calls himself hormone man.
Speaker 2: Hormone man. Yes, that's right, he calls himself that. Nobody
Speaker 2: else calls him that. Yeah, I really.
Speaker 3: He has a whole hormone man act like he does
Speaker 3: a bit.
Speaker 2: He lays it on so thick. I am suspicious whether
Speaker 2: Roger has actually had sex before. I think he's a
Speaker 2: little little two out there with all of this stuff.
Speaker 2: I think we're building up to his first time.
Speaker 3: It conveys an insecurity and a nervousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And then again, he has this likable quality
Speaker 2: to him where he doesn't He talks about sex all
Speaker 2: the time, but doesn't come off as particularly sleazy.
Speaker 3: So I think he crosses the line in a couple
Speaker 3: of points, but most of the time he just comes
Speaker 3: off as dorky.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, more of a dork. I would agree
Speaker 2: with that. So he's played here by Jeff harr I
Speaker 2: couldn't find any dates on Jeff Harland, but he's still
Speaker 2: around and I think still working. He'd worked in TV
Speaker 2: for a few years prior to this film, popping up
Speaker 2: on the likes of Morgan Mindy and Buck Rogers in
Speaker 2: the twenty fifth century, and has remained active over the decades.
Speaker 2: He pops up in an episode of Parks and Recreation,
Speaker 2: and also he was he plays like a doctor in
Speaker 2: one episode of the relaunch of the Roseanne series.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, I wonder, Well, I'm trying to think who
Speaker 3: this guy could have been in Parks and rec.
Speaker 2: He shows up in a single episode, and my family
Speaker 2: is actually doing a big rewatch of Parks and rec
Speaker 2: right now, and I think we're in the next to
Speaker 2: the last series, and I don't think we've gotten to
Speaker 2: his part yet. Oh but now I'm on the lookout.
Speaker 3: If I just had to guess, I'd say he stands
Speaker 3: up in a meeting to make it inane comment.
Speaker 2: I saw a screenshot, and I think that would be
Speaker 2: a good guess. But I saw a screenshot and I
Speaker 2: think maybe he's a local business or politician type that
Speaker 2: they're going to encounter later on. But I could be
Speaker 2: wrong on that. It's also like that I've seen him
Speaker 2: already and just was not looking to recognize anyone.
Speaker 3: So the characters we just talked about are our main four,
Speaker 3: some of twenty somethings in the movie, but there are
Speaker 3: also a couple of other major characters who are the
Speaker 3: older mind guys, like the boss at the Mind Brian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're gonna have less details on these guys,
Speaker 2: but Brian is played by John Crawford who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty through twenty ten, and his credits include seventy twos,
Speaker 2: The Poseidon Adventure. In seventy six is the Enforcer and
Speaker 2: then his second in command if you will, is this
Speaker 2: guy Dan played by Med Flory who lived twenty six
Speaker 2: through twenty fourteen, and his credits include a supporting role
Speaker 2: in sixty threes, The Nutty Professor.
Speaker 3: Oh, and this movie also has a crazy Ralph character.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got John Lormer, who many people will remember
Speaker 3: from creep Show. I Want My Cake.
Speaker 2: That's the Yeah, the probably my least watched segment from
Speaker 2: creep Show. I think I've sometimes skipped over that one.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's where a lot of people are going
Speaker 2: to recognize him from but this is guy. Yeah. John
Speaker 2: Lormer lived nineteen oh six through nineteen eighty six and
Speaker 2: has a very long history with television. His TV credits
Speaker 2: go back to I think the late nineteen forties, and
Speaker 2: his credits include I can't even begin the list all
Speaker 2: of them here, but include. It includes four episodes of
Speaker 2: the original Twilight Zone, he pops up on The Andy
Speaker 2: Griffith Show, the old sixties Batman series, the original Star Trek,
Speaker 2: and much more. His film credits include nineteen seventy five's
Speaker 2: Rooster Cogburn. He's also one of these guys that I
Speaker 2: think pretty much always played an old man, one of
Speaker 2: those actors.
Speaker 3: Oh, who are the other ones who came up like that? Lately?
Speaker 3: It's the guy plays the old man in home alone,
Speaker 3: the old man at the airport who was in something
Speaker 3: we saw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know if we've talked about him directly,
Speaker 2: but William Hickey is one of the actors I always
Speaker 2: think of in this category, Like it seems like he
Speaker 2: just always played an old man, even when he wasn't
Speaker 2: that old of a a right, Yeah, all right, just
Speaker 2: a few more credits behind the scenes here before we
Speaker 2: get into the plot. We mentioned the Bogins. We've got
Speaker 2: we have to we have to give credit to the
Speaker 2: creators of the Bogins. Design and construction colon Boogin goes
Speaker 2: to two individuals, Ken Horn and William Munns, and both
Speaker 2: of these guys worked in a number of cool effects
Speaker 2: pictures from the seventies and the eighties. So Horn his
Speaker 2: credits include seventy sevens The Hills Have Eyes, seventy nine's
Speaker 2: Tourist Trap, Hangar eighty eight, nineteen eighties, Battle Beyond the Stars,
Speaker 2: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow nineteen eighties, The Return which
Speaker 2: we've talked about, eighty one's Demonoid swamp Thing, eighty two's
Speaker 2: Conan the Barbarian, and eighty seven's Creepyzoids Wow. And then
Speaker 2: William Muns his credits include swamp Thing eighty two on that,
Speaker 2: eighty two's The Beast Master, eighty five is The Return
Speaker 2: of the Living Dead, and nineteen eighty eight's The Monsters Today. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I think these guys definitely knew what they
Speaker 2: were doing, and you know, given the you know, the
Speaker 2: obvious constraints here, I feel like, again, I feel like
Speaker 2: the Buggins looks pretty good. I just at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, I'm like, maybe they should have gone
Speaker 2: with a monstous suit Hindsight's twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I come? I'd say this maybe an example
Speaker 3: of execution is more solid than the design, which is questionable.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense? Like? Yeah, real is like, once
Speaker 3: you've got your mission, here's what the Buggins is going
Speaker 3: to look like. I feel like they executed that about
Speaker 3: as well as it could have been done.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, though they do have design and construction credits.
Speaker 3: Yess that's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they they would they would benefit from our praise
Speaker 2: and our criticism here. Yeah, I don't know. I guess
Speaker 2: one of my things is like, what is the buggin
Speaker 2: supposed to be? Like what kind of triglafauna is it?
Speaker 2: Is it like a cave cricket? Is it a turtle?
Speaker 2: Is it an octopus? Like I thought it was going
Speaker 2: to be a cave octopus before we actually found out
Speaker 2: what it is. A reminder there's no such thing as
Speaker 2: like a freshwater cave octopus.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's it's a spider turtle, rat octopus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's okay. It's a weird hybrid concept, and I
Speaker 2: guess given the design elements here, they did a pretty
Speaker 2: good job. All right. Finally, the music here is by
Speaker 2: Bob Summers. I have to say, pretty solid late seventies
Speaker 2: early eighties kind of slasher theme music here. You know,
Speaker 2: when we get into the tense moments, it does a
Speaker 2: fine job.
Speaker 3: Definitely works pretty well in the trailer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Summers. We've talked about Summers in passing before because
Speaker 2: he did the score for The Eliminators, the mostly boat
Speaker 2: based action adventure sci fi film that we watched a
Speaker 2: few years back.
Speaker 3: Scientist, Mercenary, Mandroid Ninja together they become the Eliminator.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So he'd worked on that. He worked on
Speaker 2: a film called The Night, and he worked in the
Speaker 2: music department on a number of films such as Sideways,
Speaker 2: Night of the Comet and metal Storm. Also worked on
Speaker 2: various Sun Classics projects.
Speaker 3: Oh, metal Storm, the Destruction of Jared Sen exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there you go. All right, Well, are you ready to
Speaker 3: talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Let's jump in.
Speaker 3: We begin with a Taft International Pictures logo. Looks very classy,
Speaker 3: copper text, gleaming. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I liked it. I got a little excited. You know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of neat when you see a different film
Speaker 2: production logo that you haven't seen before. You're like, oh,
Speaker 2: feels a little different. I don't know exactly what to expect.
Speaker 3: Some things like I didn't know this movie was made
Speaker 3: by a bank kind of looks like it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And then we get a red out and the title
Speaker 3: is scribbled in a kind of cursive font in red
Speaker 3: on a black background. And after this we moved to
Speaker 3: a very Ken Burns style pan and zoom sequence over
Speaker 3: some cpa toned old newspapers and photographs, old timey harmonica
Speaker 3: music plays, and all these newspaper clippings are from the
Speaker 3: eighteen eighties. At first, they're from a newspaper called the
Speaker 3: Silver City Gazette, with headlines like silver strike in high country,
Speaker 3: mother loads struck in rockies, hundreds pour into the mountains,
Speaker 3: richest vein in history. And then you get photos that
Speaker 3: show men standing proudly beside mine entrances or chipping away
Speaker 3: at veins of oar with little picks. And then we
Speaker 3: start getting different kinds of headlines. These are from the
Speaker 3: nineteen tens. They say things like two more cave ins,
Speaker 3: safety inspector do twenty seven trapped in mine miners feared
Speaker 3: dead and then miners report attacks in mine, and finally
Speaker 3: mine closed.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that the general vibe of this intro is
Speaker 2: maybe in keeping with the documentaries that had come out
Speaker 2: previously from Sun.
Speaker 3: Classics Documentary Tactics. I didn't even make that connection, but yeah,
Speaker 3: the kinburns, pan and zoom, and they had previously been
Speaker 3: making all of these documentary films. That makes a lot
Speaker 3: of sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, start with what you know.
Speaker 3: So the action begins with a scene at the reopening
Speaker 3: of an abandoned silver mine in the mountains, just outside
Speaker 3: of a Colorado town called Silver City. So all around
Speaker 3: the entrance snow is piled high and we can see
Speaker 3: evergreen trees in the distance, a high altitude mountain environment.
Speaker 3: And here we meet four characters. You've got the two
Speaker 3: bosses in charge of the operation. You've got Brian played
Speaker 3: by John Crawford, who has a likable enough demeanor, but
Speaker 3: he's also a tough, no nonsense kind of guy. You know,
Speaker 3: he's there to get work done. He's wearing a very
Speaker 3: tight jean jacket. I feel like man wardrobe department. I
Speaker 3: feel like they should have gotten him a better jacket.
Speaker 3: And then you've got Dan played by Med Flory. So
Speaker 3: both just kind of medium grizzled, older guys. They've got
Speaker 3: some mining experience. Yeah, and then you've got the two
Speaker 3: younger employees, these guys in their twenties played by Fred
Speaker 3: McCarron and Roger are played by Jeff Harlan. Mark is
Speaker 3: a strapping young lad. He is friendly, he's mild mannered.
Speaker 3: And Roger, as we've been saying, is a nervous, sort
Speaker 3: of obnoxious horn dog who has Dana Carvey energy.
Speaker 2: And it's worth noting like none of these guys are
Speaker 2: are bad at all, Like even our I think in
Speaker 2: a picture from certainly from later on in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties and certainly into the nineties, at least one of
Speaker 2: the bosses here would have been a hard ass or
Speaker 2: would have been a villain of some sort.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but they're none of these are villains.
Speaker 2: Yea. Yeah, they're pretty good bosses. They're very understanding, you know.
Speaker 2: So I again that comfy vibe here. We're at least
Speaker 2: when we're in the human realm, we're among friends. It's
Speaker 2: the buggins we have to worry about.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Yeah, this is about human camaraderie
Speaker 3: in the face of an overwhelming evil that is from below. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So the boss is the chains off the gate and
Speaker 3: they open up the tunnel and the younger guys haul
Speaker 3: up a generator, and all of Roger's dialogue at this
Speaker 3: point is stuff about He's like listing the number of
Speaker 3: hours and minutes it's been since it was last six
Speaker 3: o'clock and Mark and Roger are They also talk about
Speaker 3: how they're new to mine work, so the older guys
Speaker 3: have to show them the ropes. So the first phase
Speaker 3: of reopening the mine seems to be setting up lights
Speaker 3: and checking the old structural timbers and the mine shaft.
Speaker 3: So Dan knocks on one of these old wooden props
Speaker 3: with a hammer, and this big shower of dust falls
Speaker 3: and he says that one's okay, which I thought was funny, like,
Speaker 3: doesn't seem okay. But then while they're doing this, the
Speaker 3: younger guys ask Dan why the mine was closed in
Speaker 3: the first place, and he says, oh, they kept having
Speaker 3: cave ins, And so we get to not quite look
Speaker 3: at the camera and shrug, but almost that kind of
Speaker 3: thing where where Roger is like, we're not getting paid
Speaker 3: enough for this. So while the guys are busy wiring
Speaker 3: up lights. They start talking about their sos and the
Speaker 3: situation is they are going to be renting a cabin
Speaker 3: while they're in town for this job, and Roger has
Speaker 3: for the upcoming weekend, has invited his girlfriend Jessica to
Speaker 3: come up from Denver and visit to stay over at
Speaker 3: the cabin. Jessica is bringing with her her single friend Trish,
Speaker 3: with whom she went to college. They went to journalism
Speaker 3: school together, and Trish and Mark are supposed to be
Speaker 3: each other's blind dates for the weekend. I feel like
Speaker 3: I want to insert a buzzer sound here. The first
Speaker 3: time I was watching this, that kind of went over
Speaker 3: my head, But when I went back on it, I
Speaker 3: was like, wait a minute, what it's a blind date,
Speaker 3: a destination multi day blind date where you're staying in
Speaker 3: the same house. I don't folks, do not do this
Speaker 3: to your single friends a blind date. It's debatable whether
Speaker 3: that's a good idea at all, But if you're going
Speaker 3: to do a blind date, I feel like it has
Speaker 3: to be short and easy to leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, on one hand, maybe this is
Speaker 2: acceptable in the eighties, but also it just it feels
Speaker 2: like that sitcom energy you know where it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: these two don't know each other, they're gonna make a
Speaker 2: love connection. You know. It works well enough for the picture,
Speaker 2: but doesn't hold up the close scrutiny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Mark is skeptical about this multi day destination
Speaker 3: blind date, but Roger is offering him assurances laced with
Speaker 3: horny weirdness, like he's like, I saw Trish naked in
Speaker 3: a hot tub, You're gonna like her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they seem to have no plan for the weekend,
Speaker 2: like there's no talk of I mean, obviously Roger has planned.
Speaker 2: Roger has plans, but it's I'm not hearing anything about
Speaker 2: the hikes they're planning to go on. It seems like
Speaker 2: there's a vague plan to make spaghetti. But then it's
Speaker 2: like the guys end up working most of the time anyway,
Speaker 2: So yeah, it wasn't really well constructed this weekend.
Speaker 3: When they never talk about skiing. But when we see
Speaker 3: the ladies driving up in their car, they have skis
Speaker 3: on the Vestroy car, so it's like maybe they had
Speaker 3: plans to ski. But so once the older guys start
Speaker 3: blasting the mine with dynamite to clear out some of
Speaker 3: the old cavens, we cut away to Creeper Cam. There's
Speaker 3: this old guy played by John Lormer, the guy from
Speaker 3: Creep Show, standing on a snowy hill overlooking the mine entrance.
Speaker 3: And when we first see him, he's in a plaid
Speaker 3: coat with this big fleece collar and he's got it
Speaker 3: flipped up like Dracula. He looks like Rocky Mountain Dracula
Speaker 3: and Mountain Tracula.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And for the first three quarters of the movie
Speaker 3: there are going to be a lot of scenes of
Speaker 3: this old guy lurking around outside wherever.
Speaker 2: The characters are. And we know from the get go
Speaker 2: what this guy's here for. This is the old dude
Speaker 2: who's gonna warn us about the evil Like there's no
Speaker 2: doubt about it. That's the old Doom.
Speaker 3: He's that guy. Anyway, at the end of the workday,
Speaker 3: Mark and Roger head out talking about how they have
Speaker 3: to pack up so they can move into the cabin
Speaker 3: the next day. Next we get to I think a
Speaker 3: scene where the filmmakers realized, hold on, we can't make
Speaker 3: the audience wait another hour before somebody gets killed by
Speaker 3: the bugins, so we need to pull out a random
Speaker 3: character to get to you know, become boogins meet here
Speaker 3: at the beginning, So enter the character of did you
Speaker 3: understand her as the land lady, like the owner of
Speaker 3: the cabin?
Speaker 2: I guess, so, I guess she's the landlady. Maybe she's
Speaker 2: also a real litter as well.
Speaker 3: Maybe. Yeah, So she's taking care of the cabin for
Speaker 3: some reason, heading up to the cabin that Roger and
Speaker 3: Mark have already rented, and she's getting it ready for
Speaker 3: them to arrive the next day. I think she said
Speaker 3: she has to get the heat going. So when we
Speaker 3: first meet her, she's driving alone up the snowy mountain
Speaker 3: road in a wood paneled station wagon, and then a
Speaker 3: deer wanders into the middle of the road in front
Speaker 3: of her, and she somewhat comically exclaims, oh my god
Speaker 3: and swerves off the road. And then, without a whole
Speaker 3: lot of ado, she's like, well enough of that, and
Speaker 3: gets out of her wrecked car, leaves it in the ditch,
Speaker 3: and walks the rest of the way to the cabin.
Speaker 3: And then as soon as I saw the cabin, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, the one that explodes in the trailer. Okay,
Speaker 3: they got to give that away.
Speaker 2: Now, is this character Martha?
Speaker 3: I don't remember if we ever learned her name. Yeah,
Speaker 3: why were you looking up who the actress is? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was looking. There is a character named Martha played
Speaker 2: by Marcia Dangerfield, so possibly her. She was also in
Speaker 2: Footloose in eighty four. Oh, okay, in bats in ninety nine.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm like you, I don't remember her ever
Speaker 2: actually being named.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, the cops might say her name later, but
Speaker 3: I don't remember what it is. Anyway. She arrives and
Speaker 3: she walks around in the house in the dark with
Speaker 3: a flashlight, cursing at things. She eventually gets the power
Speaker 3: on and she makes a phone call to somebody, explaining
Speaker 3: what happened and explaining that she will need to stay
Speaker 3: the night because her car is wrecked. Meanwhile, outside, John
Speaker 3: Lormer pulls up and starts sneaking around in the snow,
Speaker 3: peeping in windows and stuff, looking very pained. Then the
Speaker 3: landlord goes into the basement to light the furnace. The
Speaker 3: basement is a major location in this film. Many times
Speaker 3: characters have to go down into the basement. It's pretty
Speaker 3: standard in terms of layout. They didn't go out of
Speaker 3: their way to make it super creepy. It's just like
Speaker 3: a furnace water heater, stacks of cardboard boxes and old
Speaker 3: junk and wooden stairs descending from the kitchen. While she's
Speaker 3: down there, the landlady thinks she hears a sound there's
Speaker 3: something rustling behind the boxes, but then the sound goes
Speaker 3: away and she heads up to bed. Later we see
Speaker 3: her in bed with a book, and down below we
Speaker 3: get our first Boggin's point of view shot. It's kind
Speaker 3: of wobbling around on the basement floor and then slowly
Speaker 3: ooching up the stairs like an inch worm. You can
Speaker 3: kind of get the camera motion of it creeping. So
Speaker 3: the landlady something. She gets out of bed, goes to
Speaker 3: the kitchen cautiously and draws a knife from the block,
Speaker 3: but the knife is going to do her no good
Speaker 3: against the Bugin's menace. Suddenly, she sees something that we
Speaker 3: can't see approaching her. She screams, and then, in an
Speaker 3: attack that will be repeated several times in the movie,
Speaker 3: something seems to grab her by the ankle from below
Speaker 3: and yank her off her feet, and then it drags her, screaming,
Speaker 3: across the floor and down into the basement. Here I
Speaker 3: thought it might be good to do a sidebar on
Speaker 3: the characteristics of the Buggins attacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because this is something we'll see multiple times throughout
Speaker 2: the picture.
Speaker 3: It's kind of interesting. I think the movie is not
Speaker 3: totally unique in this regard. There are similar, you know,
Speaker 3: tricks employed in movies that have small monsters that attack
Speaker 3: from the ground level. But it is kind of interesting
Speaker 3: that the movie has a lot of shots from the
Speaker 3: ground lingering on people's feet and legs, a kind of
Speaker 3: predatory watching of people's feet and legs. And I think
Speaker 3: this is in part trying to take advantage of that
Speaker 3: fear that people have about things reaching out from under
Speaker 3: something and grabbing them by the feet. You know, there
Speaker 3: are different versions of this. I remember a more innocent version,
Speaker 3: like when I was a kid, I had a fear
Speaker 3: and understood it as a common fear among other children
Speaker 3: that something could reach out from under my bed and
Speaker 3: get my feet. So this would lead to, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're getting back in bed at night and it's
Speaker 3: dark and you're scared, you kind of like run and
Speaker 3: leap onto the bed, so you're never too close to
Speaker 3: the bed with your feet on the ground, so something
Speaker 3: couldn't reach out and get you. But I was also
Speaker 3: thinking about this in a more sinister fashion. The adult
Speaker 3: version is an urban legend that's actually very common. It
Speaker 3: is the parking lot slasher who hides under women's cars
Speaker 3: and slashes the victims achilles tendon while she's opening the
Speaker 3: car door, making it impossible for her to run away.
Speaker 3: I assume you've heard this before.
Speaker 2: You know. I don't think I heard this one before.
Speaker 2: It sounds very impractical, like, yes, you're going to hide
Speaker 2: out under a car like that's pretty cramped unless you're
Speaker 2: hanging out under big old trucks. And then once you've
Speaker 2: slashed the victim, you're going to crawl out and then
Speaker 2: attack them again. It seems like you're just gonna They're
Speaker 2: going to put the boots to you before you even
Speaker 2: craw out from underneath the car.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I looked this up, and this is for
Speaker 3: the most part, not something that actually happened, at least
Speaker 3: I think there now. I'm not sure about the details.
Speaker 3: I think there may have been a case much later,
Speaker 3: like long after this was already an urban legend of
Speaker 3: something like this happening, But at least in the early times,
Speaker 3: when stories about this were spreading like wildfire, this was
Speaker 3: not happening. There are you know, no records at the
Speaker 3: time of anybody ever doing this. So it's just a
Speaker 3: thing that I think captured people's imagination because it just
Speaker 3: like taps into natural fears. We have fears about kind
Speaker 3: of you know, places people could be hiding. You're like
Speaker 3: not examining the practicality of how much space is there
Speaker 3: really under the car, how much. It's just like it's creepy,
Speaker 3: I think, in the same for the same reason that
Speaker 3: it's creepy to imagine a monster reaching out from under
Speaker 3: your bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it probably comes down to like our
Speaker 2: natural tendency to be on the lookout for things like
Speaker 2: you know, serpents in the grass, or or the potential
Speaker 2: that that some sort of a naturally occurring like small
Speaker 2: cave or overhang might have some sort of a creature
Speaker 2: held up in it and if you get too close
Speaker 2: then they might you know, attack and self defense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think the movie is trying to take
Speaker 3: advantage of that kind of fear. They're reaching out from
Speaker 3: under something and getting you by the feet fear, and
Speaker 3: so that is what the Buggins cam is tapping into
Speaker 3: in a way. So we see from the monster's point
Speaker 3: of view, as like feet and leg go by, but
Speaker 3: then also as people cower and scream as the monster
Speaker 3: is approaching from the floor looking up at them, and
Speaker 3: then also the attack. The Buggins attack almost always has
Speaker 3: a pulling or dragging action. The victim is seized by
Speaker 3: some extremity, usually by the feet, but sometimes by an arm,
Speaker 3: like if they reach into something and then dragged away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it seems like the Biggins has at least
Speaker 2: two tentacles going on some sort of arms. One is
Speaker 2: for grabbing and the other is for slashing at a distance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got a nail on the end of the tentacle.
Speaker 3: So the next day the cops pull the landlady's car
Speaker 3: out of the ditch. There's no sign of her around
Speaker 3: and down at the mine, our boys are still exploring
Speaker 3: and they're mapping out the tunnels. They find a cave in,
Speaker 3: perhaps the one that closed the mine in nineteen twelve,
Speaker 3: and they start clearing away the rubble by hand. I
Speaker 3: don't know what you actually used to clear a rubble
Speaker 3: in a tunnel. Maybe you just pick him up, and
Speaker 3: maybe maybe that is what you do. But finally it
Speaker 3: is time to meet Jessica and Trish our main two
Speaker 3: women characters. So they're making a trip up the mountain.
Speaker 3: They're on the highway in Jessica's yellow Volkswagen, which is
Speaker 3: named Molly. Jessica is driving and Trish is navigating, though
Speaker 3: Trish is really struggling to decipher the map, and Trish
Speaker 3: makes a joke about the fact that Jessica is the
Speaker 3: kind of person who names her car. Jessica's defense is
Speaker 3: that at least she's not as bad as Roger. Again,
Speaker 3: this is her own boyfriend who names certain parts of
Speaker 3: his own body. And then she leans over to whisper.
Speaker 3: He calls it herman.
Speaker 2: Wow, what part does he call herman? Is the butt?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: We could have no idea what part of the body
Speaker 3: it would be. Yeah, we'll have to assume his gallbladder
Speaker 3: is Hermann. So Jessica pulls over so they can let
Speaker 3: their dog, Tiger, have a bathroom break. Tiger is an
Speaker 3: off leash mania. He just runs off into the woods.
Speaker 3: They set him loose, and then they're kind of surprised
Speaker 3: when he doesn't immediately come back. They're like, why did
Speaker 3: he run away?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So the next scene Jessica and Trish are walking around
Speaker 3: in the snow calling for the dog and complaining about
Speaker 3: him and calling him names. You know, come here at
Speaker 3: Weasel Breath. I don't know if we've already discussed everything
Speaker 3: that needs to be said about this, but one of
Speaker 3: the most shocking things about this movie to me is
Speaker 3: the non stop expression of negative sentiment about this cute
Speaker 3: little dog. It feels almost like the screenwriters thought they
Speaker 3: should include a cute dog, but maybe they hated dogs
Speaker 3: and just assumed everybody else does too. What did you
Speaker 3: make of this?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. They do trash talk the dog.
Speaker 3: A lot, non stop. They never say anything nice about
Speaker 3: the dog.
Speaker 2: But the dog is also absolutely cute and is one
Speaker 2: of the stars of the picture. And you know, we
Speaker 2: don't have we I don't think we as the viewer
Speaker 2: have reason to hate the dog. The dog's not going
Speaker 2: around doing things that deserve death by monster or anything.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It made me, I did. It did
Speaker 2: make me reflect a little bit on my relationship with
Speaker 2: my own pet, who's not a dog and is a cat.
Speaker 2: But you know, I probably talk a lot of trash
Speaker 2: about this cat. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I love this cat, even even when she's you know,
Speaker 2: acting against me and actively jumping out at my feet
Speaker 2: from underneath things, oh interest, much like a Boogin's. So yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, they do spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 2: trash about Tiger.
Speaker 3: So after a while they get tired of looking for
Speaker 3: Tiger and they head back to the car. I don't
Speaker 3: know if I mean like they're planning on leaving without
Speaker 3: him or something. But then when they get there, Tiger
Speaker 3: is sitting on top of the Volkswagen like womp womp.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, you could have you could have dropped a
Speaker 2: laugh track on this film, and it would have worked
Speaker 2: perfectly for much of it. Like it's it clearly has
Speaker 2: that good natured comedy energy going on.
Speaker 3: The next scene is pretty funny. Back at the mine,
Speaker 3: the guys break through the rubble pile and just beyond it,
Speaker 3: the tunnel opens up into this big chamber. It's shimmering
Speaker 3: with purple light. They go in and it is an
Speaker 3: underground lake or pond. There's this big, you know, very
Speaker 3: still water, massive still water covered with fog. It's kind
Speaker 3: of atmospheric at first, you know, it's not the most
Speaker 3: expensive set ever, but it's you know, they get it
Speaker 3: gets an atmosphere. They followed the edges of the lake
Speaker 3: and we see things moving in the water below, but
Speaker 3: they don't see it. And then they come across a
Speaker 3: gigantic pile of clean, dry, bleached bones. One of the other,
Speaker 3: one of the older guys, picks up a human skull
Speaker 3: and says, that looks human. What else is it going
Speaker 3: to be?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, he's in his spare time, he reads
Speaker 2: up on human ancestors, and so he was very curious
Speaker 2: to see if this was indeed a modern human.
Speaker 3: Skulls Australopithecus in the cave. Yeah, so, you know, they've
Speaker 3: got this massive bone midden in the cave. In the cave,
Speaker 3: it seems to contain the bones of twenty or thirty
Speaker 3: human bodies. They're all mixed up and jumbled together, and
Speaker 3: they're like, what could have caused this? And they're like, well,
Speaker 3: it probably a gas leak or something. You know, these
Speaker 3: are the miners who died in here.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, we just glimpse something like a large creature swimming
Speaker 2: in the underwater pool, but no cause for alarm. Let's
Speaker 2: just keep looking for that silver.
Speaker 3: So Trish and Jessica arrive at the cabin, Jess claims
Speaker 3: the room with a big brass bed for herself and Roger,
Speaker 3: and she starts testing out the bed like jumping on it,
Speaker 3: and it immediately breaks and falls to the floor. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Trish wants to take a shower, but she can't get
Speaker 3: hot water, so she goes to the basement to turn
Speaker 3: on the water heater, and while down there, she hears
Speaker 3: some odd noises and there's some suspense while she reeps
Speaker 3: around looking for the source of the scuffling. But this
Speaker 3: ends with a poodle scare because Tiger jumps out from
Speaker 3: behind some boxes. Next, we check back in with the
Speaker 3: boys at the mine. Roger is narrating in graphic detail
Speaker 3: his strategic plans for sex Well. The boss interrupts them
Speaker 3: to say that somebody has to drive to Denver overnight
Speaker 3: to pick up new maps that they're going to need
Speaker 3: for the next morning, and it's got to be Roger
Speaker 3: because the boss needs needs Mark there, I think for
Speaker 3: some electrical tasks, and Mark has the electrical knowledge and
Speaker 3: Roger is like, no, Boss, my girlfriend just got up here.
Speaker 3: It's been twelve days. But the boss does not sympathize,
Speaker 3: so they make plans for Roger to take the boss's
Speaker 3: pickup truck and he's gonna leave at three am for
Speaker 3: some reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I didn't fully understand the timing of all
Speaker 2: of this, but yeah he has. But he assures him
Speaker 2: it's like, look, you've got you don't have to leave
Speaker 2: till three am. Do whatever hormone Man stuff you have
Speaker 2: to do up until three am, but then you've got
Speaker 2: to go to Denver and pick up the maps.
Speaker 3: This is the first scene where Roger does a Hormone
Speaker 3: Man monologue. So he starts referring to himself as hormone Man,
Speaker 3: and he's narrating it like a Superman radio serial. You know,
Speaker 3: Hormone Man can leap tall buildings of sex. And while
Speaker 3: Hormone Man is yammering, we suddenly pan over to the
Speaker 3: grizzled old Codure and he's just like spying on Hormone Man.
Speaker 3: And so we're just gonna get a lot more creeping
Speaker 3: scenes throughout where the old Man is. You know, he's
Speaker 3: outside wherever they are, like looking at people.
Speaker 2: But it's still it's like, I'm not buying for a
Speaker 2: second that this guy's a threat. It's like he's here
Speaker 2: to tell us about the monster. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. His message is not I'm
Speaker 3: going to harm hormone man. It's that hormone Man is
Speaker 3: in danger and needs MP.
Speaker 2: But he's very anti social, He's I guess the whole time,
Speaker 2: He's like, should I tell him? Is now a good
Speaker 2: time for me? Don't? I don't want to come off
Speaker 2: as awkward or weird, but I've got to warn him
Speaker 2: about these boogets.
Speaker 3: So back in the cab our, Core cast is finally united.
Speaker 3: Jessica and hormone Man have a screaming tickle fight, and
Speaker 3: Trish and Mark's first meeting happens in the middle of this.
Speaker 3: So like, Mark comes in the front door balancing a
Speaker 3: bunch of boxes from the liquor store heavy Core's presence
Speaker 3: in this film, Core's banquet, and he's got a box
Speaker 3: of a vodka brand I'd never heard of, called barren
Speaker 3: Rothshield Vodka. Meanwhile, Trish gets out of the shower to
Speaker 3: investigate the screaming the tickle fight and is standing in
Speaker 3: the doorway half wrapped in a towel. And this is
Speaker 3: the part where we get that unintentionally funny moment where
Speaker 3: the camera does a Jallo style like glide zoom on
Speaker 3: Trish's butt, and then yeah, it's very weird, like it's
Speaker 3: the way a Jallo movie would like zoom on a
Speaker 3: bloody weapon, you know, like, oh, there's the clue. But
Speaker 3: so Mark and Trish are both embarrassed and they make
Speaker 3: an awkward introduction. But then later she comes out into
Speaker 3: the kitchen and joins Mark and they start to get
Speaker 3: to know each other. You know, they're bonding a bit
Speaker 3: over first scornful mockery of our beloved Tiger, including one
Speaker 3: part where Mark he's like, yeah, I went to school
Speaker 3: for electrical engineering. The reason is I'm trying to invent
Speaker 3: a dog sized electric chair for Tiger.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they share some cores banquet, and then we
Speaker 3: get a bit of their backstory too. So Mark, you know,
Speaker 3: got out of electrical engineering school. He's working this mind
Speaker 3: job until he figures out what he wants to do next.
Speaker 3: Trish and Jessica went to journalism school together, and Trish
Speaker 3: just got a job at the Denver Post working on
Speaker 3: their Sunday magazine, so she is aspiring for a bigger
Speaker 3: career in journalism. And then there's a knock at the door.
Speaker 3: Who is it? It's the cops. They are trying to
Speaker 3: find the land lady who disappeared earlier. Her car was
Speaker 3: found in the ditch, but nobody knows where she is,
Speaker 3: so the cops come in and they have to end
Speaker 3: up interrupting Jessica and Hormone Man in the middle of
Speaker 3: whatever they're doing. So now since everybody is out of
Speaker 3: the cops, of course they don't find out anything, so
Speaker 3: they leave, and now that everybody's out of bed, our
Speaker 3: heroes decide to go into town to get some supper,
Speaker 3: and they're gonna leave Tiger by himself at the house
Speaker 3: to chew on Roger's shoes, so we stay with Tiger
Speaker 3: for a bit. Tiger again choose on hormone man shoes,
Speaker 3: and then he hears a noise in the basement and
Speaker 3: he goes to sniff it out once again. Wonderful dog
Speaker 3: reaction shots and growling and lip curling. Very expressive, little
Speaker 3: little curly haired dog. He yaps a bit at what's
Speaker 3: going on in the basement and this leads to a
Speaker 3: Buggins attack. We see Buggins Cam come up out of
Speaker 3: the basement into the kitchen and Tiger hides in a
Speaker 3: kitchen cabinet while we see the Buggins cam like rushing
Speaker 3: toward him. And at this point I just assumed Tiger
Speaker 3: was done for like already could put but he pops
Speaker 3: up again later, so I guess the cabinet door was
Speaker 3: enough protection, which is very funny in retrospect once we
Speaker 3: see the Buggins like flicking huge a furniture out of
Speaker 3: the way like nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wasn't surprised that Tiger survived this encounter because
Speaker 2: it seemed like the film had already devoted a lot
Speaker 2: of time to Tiger, and also just sort of the
Speaker 2: general knowledge that you shouldn't kill off a dog in
Speaker 2: a film if you can avoid it. Not that it's
Speaker 2: stopped plenty of films that we've watched for weirdout cinema.
Speaker 3: Well, but they do later.
Speaker 2: That's the weird thing. I don't remember Tiger dying, Yeah,
Speaker 2: pointed out to me when we get back to it.
Speaker 2: Maybe I was hiding the film from people or something.
Speaker 3: It happens off screen, but okay, it does happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And I guess it's surprising that Tiger would
Speaker 2: eventually get killed in this It seems like tiger would
Speaker 2: be your survivor because he's again he's great. I would
Speaker 2: put this performance and the way they shot it like
Speaker 2: on par with Jonesy and Aliens. You know, easier to
Speaker 2: do with a dog than a cat. But still we're invested.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny that you pointed out he's a survivor
Speaker 3: because he does have the eye of the tiger.
Speaker 2: M that's true.
Speaker 3: So at dinner, our four some they stumble out of
Speaker 3: a restaurant complaining about the bad food, and then they
Speaker 3: head over to the billiard hall where the bosses are
Speaker 3: shooting some pool. Because remember, hormone Man has to get
Speaker 3: the keys to the truck so he can do the
Speaker 3: overnight drive. So hormone Man takes the truck and the
Speaker 3: other three hang out.
Speaker 2: I want to point out this surprised me, and I
Speaker 2: think maybe speaks again to the good natured heart of
Speaker 2: this film. Roger has been talking this big game about
Speaker 2: the sex, and his bosses are even like, look, you
Speaker 2: can do whatever you want till till three am. That's
Speaker 2: when you have to leave. Roger instead of like pushing
Speaker 2: to the absolute limit of his time and then leaving
Speaker 2: for his work trip, is like I need to go
Speaker 2: to bed early so I can get up at three am.
Speaker 2: Like he's so he's ultimately so responsible. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and he's telling the other people, He's like, y'all
Speaker 3: hang out, y'all have a good time. I'm gonna go.
Speaker 3: I gotta go do my thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so the other three hang out at the billiard
Speaker 3: hall with the bosses. Yeah, and that's weird. Jessica, it
Speaker 3: turns out, is a pool hustler. She starts She's absolutely
Speaker 3: destroying Dan at pool for money, and he keeps going
Speaker 3: double or nothing and she keeps winning. Meanwhile, Mark and
Speaker 3: Trish sit at a table drinking with Brian and again
Speaker 3: hilarious that this destination multi day blind date has turned
Speaker 3: into getting drunk with my blind date's boss.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Luckily, everybody's just a likable character and to get
Speaker 2: along so well.
Speaker 3: However, Trish does learn some important clues in the scene.
Speaker 3: Brian tells her about the history of the mine, so
Speaker 3: she learns that there were cave ins. She learns about
Speaker 3: the big pile of human bones they just found. By
Speaker 3: the way, have they reported these unburied human remains to authorities?
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Because we go back to the mine later and
Speaker 3: they're still there. Nobody's done anything about him, so Trish
Speaker 3: gets interested in this and says she's going to go
Speaker 3: to the local newspaper office the next and check it
Speaker 3: all out. Also later in the scene, we get to
Speaker 3: see Mark and Trish getting into a bit of awkward
Speaker 3: but gentle flirting. They're kind of hitting it off now,
Speaker 3: and they decide they want to head back to the
Speaker 3: cabin for some romantic time in front of a roaring fire,
Speaker 3: so they leave Jessica playing pool with the mind bosses.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: The next scene is, unfortunately the death of hormone Man. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a hormone man comes home. He finds a mess all
Speaker 3: over the floor. He blames it on Tiger and then
Speaker 3: he runs around the house cussing at the dog, but
Speaker 3: he can't find the dog. Then hormone Man gets into bed.
Speaker 3: We know this won't be for long. Buggins Cam fires
Speaker 3: up in the basement starts zooming around, going around the
Speaker 3: boxes in the dark. Then Roger decides he needs to
Speaker 3: get out of bed and leave for his midnight road trip.
Speaker 3: But when he gets dressed he goes out to the garage,
Speaker 3: he is seized by the ankle from something under the
Speaker 3: truck and dragged screaming underneath. So more of this grab
Speaker 3: from underneath the car horror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he gets the full business. He gets the
Speaker 2: like the claw of the throat.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, he gets messed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no doubt. Like it's not like, oh, we've
Speaker 2: got to save Roger later on, like Roger's toast.
Speaker 3: So by the time Trish and Mark get home, Roger
Speaker 3: is missing. They assume he's already left on his trip.
Speaker 3: So they build a big, roaring fire and they have
Speaker 3: sex on the living room floor. And in the middle
Speaker 3: of this there is yet more of what we initially
Speaker 3: assume is Boogin's cam, but it turns out to be
Speaker 3: Tiger cam. Something's creeping on them on the floor, but
Speaker 3: then it's Tiger and he's just like yep, yep, And
Speaker 3: so turns out Tiger is fine. While looking for the
Speaker 3: dog the next day, Mark finds a weird hole in
Speaker 3: the wall of the basement. It's partially boarded up, but
Speaker 3: not really, and this apparently leads off into a strange
Speaker 3: rock tunnel. He shines his flashlight down the hole but
Speaker 3: does not pursue it any further. Meanwhile, Jessica bakes a
Speaker 3: chocolate cake and talks with Trish about the prospect of
Speaker 3: marriage Trisha. Trisha is interested in getting married one day.
Speaker 3: Jessica rejects the idea, saying, can you imagine being married
Speaker 3: to Roger with eight horny little rugrats drinking beer? I
Speaker 3: was like, what, I think they'd only have beer if
Speaker 3: you gave it to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know, but I guess she perhaps
Speaker 2: rightfully thinks that maybe Roger is not marriage material.
Speaker 3: He's not ready at least, yeah, maybe he will mature anyway.
Speaker 3: Trish heads off to the local newspaper office, the Silver
Speaker 3: City Gazette, to go into research mode. So while she's
Speaker 3: there digging into the archives about the mine, she talks
Speaker 3: with this older lady who has worked in the newspaper
Speaker 3: business for years, and this older lady is trying to
Speaker 3: pitch her stories. She's like, Oh, you should do a
Speaker 3: story on when the Denver Post had the first girl
Speaker 3: paper boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then then Trisha's like, actually, I want to
Speaker 2: talk about the mining accidents. And for a second, I
Speaker 2: was kind of expecting it to be like, oh, we
Speaker 2: don't talk about the mining accidents around here, or get
Speaker 2: some resistance, but She's like, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Actually,
Speaker 2: let's research that now, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Trish learns all about the tragic history of
Speaker 3: the mine, the strange sightings, the cave ins, She learns
Speaker 3: of a man who was sent to a mental institution
Speaker 3: after trying to collapse the mine with dynamite, and then
Speaker 3: finally reports that some miners inside the mind said they
Speaker 3: were attacked by something.
Speaker 2: You know, I want to jump ahead to something that
Speaker 2: is going to be revealed later, but we've already gotten
Speaker 2: a sense off here, and that is that supposedly all
Speaker 2: of the houses in this area are connected via basement
Speaker 2: tunnels to the mines.
Speaker 3: Bizarre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it. We get some great payoff
Speaker 2: in the film with this, but it does not make
Speaker 2: logical sense to me.
Speaker 3: I don't think it makes any sense at all, except
Speaker 3: that they had to have a way for the Buggins
Speaker 3: to get into their house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you want it to be a mine menace movie,
Speaker 2: but also a basement menace movie, so you need a
Speaker 2: system of tuns connecting those things.
Speaker 3: So we are later told by John Lormer's character that
Speaker 3: all the houses in town are connected to the mine.
Speaker 3: By Sam hols.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were just like, we just want ways for
Speaker 2: people to get to work without having to go out
Speaker 2: in the snow. What if they could just cart directly
Speaker 2: from their basement too?
Speaker 3: Oh that's true. Yeah, it makes me think about like,
Speaker 3: you know, far far northern college campuses and stuff that
Speaker 3: underground passageways. So meanwhile, that day at work at the mine,
Speaker 3: there is vandalism. Someone has painted death on the mine entrance.
Speaker 3: I wonder who that was. Inside the mine, Mark and
Speaker 3: Dan are looking at this huge pile of human bones
Speaker 3: they found earlier, and Mark finally observes, He's like, you know,
Speaker 3: if these guys died from a cave in or a
Speaker 3: gas leak, wouldn't you find whole skeletons instead of this
Speaker 3: big pile of random bones all mixed up. And Dan says, yeah,
Speaker 3: that is odd.
Speaker 2: You have a dance kind of like that's that's above
Speaker 2: my pay grade though, I'm just here for the silver.
Speaker 3: Also here, the old coadure is like stealing sticks of
Speaker 3: dynamite out of the back of a truck. Trish comes
Speaker 3: to visit Mark at work and they start comparing discoveries.
Speaker 3: They learned that we learned that Jessica has found the
Speaker 3: boss's truck still in the garage at the cabin, So
Speaker 3: where's hormone man. Also, Trish tells Mark what she learned
Speaker 3: at the newspaper office. There's weird things are doing, and
Speaker 3: so Trish decides she's going to go back to the
Speaker 3: cabin to see what's up. And then back at the
Speaker 3: cabin here we get another Boogain's attack. So Jessica is
Speaker 3: in the shower singing she'll be coming around the mountain
Speaker 3: when she comes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, public domain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just notice like the inhabitants of this cat
Speaker 3: are really diligent about hygiene. There's just lots of bathing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean I feel like I'm if it's cold,
Speaker 2: taking a hot shower or something you can do, right,
Speaker 2: that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Tiger is barking at her through the door.
Speaker 3: She tells him to be quiet, and then while the
Speaker 3: water is running, guess what happens in the basement fires
Speaker 3: up the Buggins cam And then here we get to
Speaker 3: what I was saying earlier is I think the best
Speaker 3: horror set piece in the movie the intake grate. There's
Speaker 3: a furnace intake vent on the floor covered by a
Speaker 3: metal grate, and suddenly a tentacle reaches up through the
Speaker 3: grate and we see the metal folding down inwards in
Speaker 3: this uncanny way, almost like it's melting. And then the
Speaker 3: warped grate just becomes this ominous gaping hole in the floor,
Speaker 3: like a dark pit, and Tiger barks at it. He
Speaker 3: wanders up to investigate, and then suddenly, from beneath something
Speaker 3: zooms on Tiger and there's a squealing sound. So we
Speaker 3: don't see it, but this is the The implication is, oh,
Speaker 3: that it got Tiger.
Speaker 2: Oh man. See, I think I was in disbelief, like
Speaker 2: I just couldn't imagine Tiger would be dead at this point,
Speaker 2: Tiger's going to come back once more, but he does not.
Speaker 2: But I love the use of the grade here because
Speaker 2: I remember I think maybe maybe one of the houses
Speaker 2: that I grew up in had one of these, and
Speaker 2: I think maybe my grandparents' house had one. And as
Speaker 2: a kid, there is that weird sense of like there's
Speaker 2: an underworld down there. You know, you can see through
Speaker 2: the grate, and maybe you can see like an old penny,
Speaker 2: maybe a small toy that fell down there and can
Speaker 2: never be reclaimed or at least as far as you know,
Speaker 2: it cannot be reclaimed.
Speaker 3: We lived in houses with these, and strangely enough, our
Speaker 3: dog was always really freaked out by them, Like if
Speaker 3: he had to cross the grade in the floor, he
Speaker 3: would jump over it.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to step on it.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe that had to do with just the
Speaker 3: sensation on his paws, but he also acted just generally
Speaker 3: afraid of.
Speaker 2: It's like there's dust down there. It's it's a weird vibe.
Speaker 3: And so anyway, the sound makes Jessica get out of
Speaker 3: the shower. She has to investigate. She wraps herself in
Speaker 3: a towel and goes looking, and while she's checking out
Speaker 3: the grate, she is attacked. Something grabs her by the
Speaker 3: arm and pulls her into the grate. She manages to
Speaker 3: get away, but her arm is all bloodied now and
Speaker 3: this turns into a chase. So we still don't see
Speaker 3: the full form of the monster, but it chases Jessica
Speaker 3: through the house. She's chucking things at it kind of
Speaker 3: half heartedly, just like tosses a kettle at it and stuff.
Speaker 3: She also puts obstacles in the way, and the monster
Speaker 3: bats aside furniture and doors and smashes through them like
Speaker 3: it's nothing. Eventually, she I think, retreats into the pantry.
Speaker 3: The monster smashes through the door and one of the
Speaker 3: tentacles gets her. It slashes at her neck with some
Speaker 3: kind of claw. Now back in the mine, in the
Speaker 3: cavern with the underground pond, things turn horrible. Dan finds
Speaker 3: the dead body of hormone man floating in the water,
Speaker 3: and his face is sort of melted off, but his
Speaker 3: body is not eaten, So again, Buggins don't seem to
Speaker 3: be eating people. And then there's a confrontation. Lormer is
Speaker 3: suddenly here in the room with a stick of dynamite
Speaker 3: and a lighter, and he's explaining how he has to
Speaker 3: blow up the mine again. He's got to get it
Speaker 3: closed because they've opened it and the evil has escaped.
Speaker 3: Though I was confused because if they just reopened the
Speaker 3: main mine shaft, what would that change about the Buggins
Speaker 3: getting to and from all the houses that are connected
Speaker 3: to the mine via tunnels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. It raises so many questions about
Speaker 2: the tunnel infrastructure in this town. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So in the middle of this, Mark realizes that Jessica
Speaker 3: and Trish are in danger. So he rushes off to
Speaker 3: the house. He stops to call the police and send
Speaker 3: them ahead also but this leaves Brian and Dan in
Speaker 3: the mine with John Lormer, and before Lormer can use
Speaker 3: the dynamite to close the mine again, Dan is attacked
Speaker 3: by the monster and then John Lormer is also. He
Speaker 3: like sinks to the ground in terror, and this is
Speaker 3: the part where he sized the word buggins. And then
Speaker 3: he also gets got you know. Actually the tentacle reaches
Speaker 3: out from the water, grabs him by the head and
Speaker 3: drags him into the water by the head. That's kind
Speaker 3: of gross looking.
Speaker 2: At So at this point have we lost both silver
Speaker 2: mine bosses and the old Brian's still okay? Okay?
Speaker 3: Are they have been boggins again?
Speaker 2: It's without the nastiness of an actual slasher film. We
Speaker 2: have no deaths in this movie where we as the
Speaker 2: audience are supposed to enjoy it on some level, either
Speaker 2: in an understandable way or a nasty way, you know,
Speaker 2: or a judgmental way. Like Again, a different sort of
Speaker 2: picture would have like the nasty boss finally gets killed
Speaker 2: or the morally objectionable victim character finally gets attacked, But
Speaker 2: instead like everybody's reasonable, reasonably nice, and we don't want
Speaker 2: to see them killed by predatory monsters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does not have the quality that some slasher
Speaker 3: films have of resentful violence, where it's like you're seeing
Speaker 3: people get what's coming to them. It doesn't feel like that.
Speaker 3: So so back at the cabin, Trisha arrives and she
Speaker 3: finds the whole scene. So there's trash scattered all over
Speaker 3: the floor, water running in the shower, the gaping grate
Speaker 3: in the floor. It kind of reminds me of you
Speaker 3: get a scene like this in a lot of slasher
Speaker 3: movies of this era. It's like the scene where Laurie
Speaker 3: goes across the street to the other house in Halloween,
Speaker 3: where she's investigating figuring out what's going on. So it's
Speaker 3: a suspenseful investigation where the main heroine is trying to
Speaker 3: figure out what happened to everyone. Eventually, Trish comes across
Speaker 3: a blood stain on the floor where Jessica was killed,
Speaker 3: and there's a funny moment where she like kneels down.
Speaker 3: It's clearly just a puddle of blood on the floor.
Speaker 3: She reaches down and touches it, and then when she
Speaker 3: touches the blood. It's like, ugh, I don't know what
Speaker 3: she learned by touching it. Maybe it wasn't clear that
Speaker 3: it was wet, but the so there's a blood trail
Speaker 3: from that part of the floor leading down into the basement.
Speaker 3: Trish arms herself with a pitchfork and descends into the teller,
Speaker 3: finds more blood, touches it again, finds Jessica's body, and
Speaker 3: as she tries to climb the stairs and get away,
Speaker 3: there is a Buggins attack. Trisha is grabbed by the
Speaker 3: ankle from below the stairs, so once again there reaching
Speaker 3: for the feet thing. And while Trisha is being attacked
Speaker 3: by the Buggins, the cops and Mark arrive and the
Speaker 3: sheriff shoots the monster and so Trisha is able to
Speaker 3: get away from it and we finally get our first
Speaker 3: look at the Buggins. The Buggins reveal happens here and
Speaker 3: it is a big like what so it's a spider
Speaker 3: turtle that's kind of mammalian in the head a little
Speaker 3: bit and has tentacles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what it makes me think of. There's
Speaker 2: a topic we discussed on Stuff to Build your Mind
Speaker 2: in the past about what happens when you have too
Speaker 2: many elements in a particular imaginary work. How Like if
Speaker 2: you have two things like, oh, it's part man, it's
Speaker 2: part horse, Like, okay, that's evocative, But if you have
Speaker 2: three to five things, Yeah, we don't necessarily know what
Speaker 2: to make of it.
Speaker 3: Okay, folks, we just had to go off Mike for
Speaker 3: a minute to figure out, try to remember what this
Speaker 3: thing was talking. It was when we did a core
Speaker 3: episode on a paper in the journal Cognitive Science from
Speaker 3: two thousand and six by norn zion at All called
Speaker 3: Memory and Mystery, the cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive Narratives.
Speaker 3: It's been a while since we talked about this, so
Speaker 3: I might not have all the details right, but basically
Speaker 3: it was looking into what is the right number of
Speaker 3: weird elements for a story or an image to have
Speaker 3: in order to be maximally memorable. Something that's totally mundane
Speaker 3: is not very memorable. If something is too weird, has
Speaker 3: too many things going on, it's also not that memorable.
Speaker 3: So it's like, you know, just having the right number
Speaker 3: of twists on a familiar idea is what makes it
Speaker 3: maximally memorable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's the error here. There are
Speaker 2: too many elements that I'm just doesn't leave an impression.
Speaker 2: If they had just gone with say spider turtle or
Speaker 2: squid rat, then I would they would have left more
Speaker 2: of an impression. But instead they went for all of
Speaker 2: it at once, and my mind just doesn't really know
Speaker 2: what to think of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right anyway. So they shoot the
Speaker 3: Biggins and then the cops like it's all dead now, instead.
Speaker 2: Of and they got me here. I was a sucker,
Speaker 2: and I was like, okay, seems about right, and maybe
Speaker 2: it's kind of like that fifty sixties charm here. You know,
Speaker 2: so many of those pictures ended with law enforcement showing
Speaker 2: up and killing the threat. I was just like, all right,
Speaker 2: totally say with cops have here, They've done it, saved
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 3: But no, the Buggins then wakes up and it eats
Speaker 3: the cops face, bites him right on the face, and
Speaker 3: starts getting and we never get any explanation of the Buggins.
Speaker 3: By the way, so the house catches fire. There's no
Speaker 3: way to escape up the stairs, so Mark and Trish
Speaker 3: have to escape to wear into the tunnels.
Speaker 2: The tunnels. This is great, so it's paying off no
Speaker 2: matter how weird it is. It's paying off.
Speaker 3: They go through the hole in the well, we see
Speaker 3: the cabin explode, just explode, like the walls are made
Speaker 3: of c four uh. And they are again attacked in
Speaker 3: the tunnels by the Buggins. This At this point, Mark
Speaker 3: gets attacked and Trish saves him by smashing one of
Speaker 3: the creatures of the big timber beam. They encounter Brian,
Speaker 3: who is still alive at this point, but then Brian
Speaker 3: gets snatched from above and kind of hanged by a
Speaker 3: Buggins tentacle. That's creepy. Yeah, But then Trish and Mark flee.
Speaker 3: They go out to the mine entrance, which wait a minute,
Speaker 3: how far away was the cabin from the mine, Like
Speaker 3: they made it all the way. Yeah, So they make
Speaker 3: it out the mine entrance. The Buggins are chasing them,
Speaker 3: and they use dynamite to blast the tunnel shut in
Speaker 3: the end, which, on one hand, you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: they're safe now. But wait a minute, there were still
Speaker 3: all those other tunnels, so the Buoguans could just go
Speaker 3: out the other way and come get them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, have we truly isolated the Bugin's threat? And
Speaker 2: how many Biggins were down there? How many escaped, how
Speaker 2: many other Bogins related fatalities have occurred in the Tri
Speaker 2: County area. We just don't know.
Speaker 3: Bugin's danger remains, so Trish and Mark are okay, though
Speaker 3: they walk away while the credits roll in sad music plays,
Speaker 3: and that's the end of the Buggins.
Speaker 2: You know. Thinking back on it now, I can really
Speaker 2: see why Stephen King probably dug the movie so much,
Speaker 2: you know, because you can see a number of things
Speaker 2: that King is notable for digging, you know, the old
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties monster movies obviously, but also kind of
Speaker 2: like that, you know, he's very much a part of that,
Speaker 2: like nineteen eighties, like to a certain extent, nastier trend
Speaker 2: in horror, you know, also the sort of the working
Speaker 2: Joe vibes of it all and underground tunnels, you know,
Speaker 2: shades of Night Shift here to a certain extent, the
Speaker 2: Night Shift had better monsters.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I can see Stephen King just enjoying a silly
Speaker 3: monster movie, hm, maybe for way in ways that are
Speaker 3: not totally related to its objective merits. Yeah, and just
Speaker 3: wanting to go into battle for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and uh yeah, and I honor that for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because at the end of the day, Yeah, the Boogins
Speaker 2: is a very watchable, very fun film. The monsters feel dangerous.
Speaker 2: They might be a little goofy when you finally get
Speaker 2: to see them, but I mean, compared to other rubber
Speaker 2: monsters that we've that have been revealed to us in films,
Speaker 2: these things are not bad at all. I don't want
Speaker 2: to I don't want to make it sound like they're
Speaker 2: particularly crappy looking or anything.
Speaker 3: Something's not quite working perfectly with them, but they do
Speaker 3: work on some level. I mean, it's not the the
Speaker 3: Eye creatures.
Speaker 2: Right, They're not so goofy looking that we're just laughing
Speaker 2: out loud when we finally see them. We're just kind
Speaker 2: of like scratching your head, like, huh, that's in them,
Speaker 2: that's the Boogins.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, yeah, okay, I see yeah, rat spider, turtle, octopus. Yeah, okay, hmm.
Speaker 3: Gives you something to think about. They go home. Chew
Speaker 3: on that a little bit. Why the rat, spider, turtle octopus?
Speaker 2: Where do they come from? Where indeed do they end
Speaker 2: up going? We have no idea. We just know that
Speaker 2: we shouldn't have disturbed them to begin with.
Speaker 3: One last question before we wrap up any more thoughts
Speaker 3: about can you see the legacy of like Bermuda Triangle
Speaker 3: and Bible documentaries in this horror movie? Does that come
Speaker 3: through it all? Like what's happening?
Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, we can definitely see the
Speaker 2: documentary influence on the initial setup, but also in the
Speaker 2: sense that in documentaries are typically stories in which is
Speaker 2: certainly when you think of like seventies and eighties, like,
Speaker 2: none of the humans are the bad guys, They're just
Speaker 2: normal people, you know, out there in the world. And
Speaker 2: then there is a mystery beyond human life, beyond normal life,
Speaker 2: and so the bookends closely matches up with that. There's
Speaker 2: some sort of strange mystery beyond us. But you know,
Speaker 2: the human characters are just for the most part, likable folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is. I can see it in the going
Speaker 3: into the archives segment to like try and find the
Speaker 3: old stories that give you something sensational to talk about.
Speaker 3: I can also see, not to be mean, but in
Speaker 3: the feeling of trying to make more of something than
Speaker 3: there is there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: And then finally also I would say in the sense
Speaker 3: of oh, making like Bermuda Triangle documentaries there's a kind
Speaker 3: of you were warned there's a danger out there, you know,
Speaker 3: we had the warning that we didn't listen to the
Speaker 3: prophetic voice sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can also see it as sort of a
Speaker 2: payoff to the frustration of making those documentaries where they're like,
Speaker 2: why don't we just make a horror movie and then
Speaker 2: we get to choose what the thing is and the
Speaker 2: thing is absolutely real, and then it can murder a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of people.
Speaker 3: You don't have to feel bad about making stuff up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just like absolutely make something up, and then
Speaker 2: we can make it as cool as we want to
Speaker 2: make it and don't have to like read between the
Speaker 2: lines and like torture the data to try and summon
Speaker 2: the specter of them on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, Well, once again I enjoyed the Bogins. I
Speaker 3: hope you did too, Rob.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one was a fun one, good pick. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's the random title based choices that end up being
Speaker 2: the most rewarding. All right, well we're going to go
Speaker 2: and close it out here. Just a reminder to everyone
Speaker 2: out there. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just watch a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: We've been doing these for years. You can find episodes
Speaker 2: of Weird House Cinema in the archive wherever you get
Speaker 2: your audio podcasts. If you are on letterbox dot com,
Speaker 2: look us up we are Weird House and you'll find
Speaker 2: a nice list of all the movies we've covered over
Speaker 2: the years, and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming
Speaker 2: out next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at con tact at Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow your Mind dot com.
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