Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb. You might be wondering, Hey, why are we
Speaker 1: getting a rewind today? Shouldn't just be a normal episode. Well,
Speaker 1: this particular rewind is accounting for the July fourth holiday,
Speaker 1: which is a corporate corporate company holiday. We had it off,
Speaker 1: so rather than really rush things and to get a
Speaker 1: fresh episode out, we're just going to do a rerun here.
Speaker 1: This is an episode that originally published October twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. In this episode, I sat down with
Speaker 1: guest co host David Streepy, a friend of mine and
Speaker 1: a host of the Talking Tofu podcast, to discuss the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven Gromlins movie The gate It is a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, full of sleepovers, tiny demons, and of
Speaker 1: course the Gateway to Hell. So dive right in and
Speaker 1: enjoy it and we'll see you next week with the
Speaker 1: brand new Weird House.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: Joe is on parental leave, so I have a special
Speaker 1: guest co host for this episode. It is David Streepy.
Speaker 1: Who co hosts the podcast Talking Tofu.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, thank you, Congratulations to Joe. I'm a long
Speaker 3: time stuffy and is that what you call your fans?
Speaker 3: Do your fans have a.
Speaker 1: I don't think they have a name.
Speaker 3: Stuffy, yes, mindies, mindies, mindies, weird housies.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe yeah. I don't know they really call themselves anything.
Speaker 1: Do fans of your podcast call themselves something?
Speaker 3: We call them toeheads, but don't I don't know anybody
Speaker 3: who has self identified as a or you know, we
Speaker 3: have fans. I don't know that anybody's waving the towhead
Speaker 3: flag really loudly and proudly yet, but we're trying to
Speaker 3: get it in there.
Speaker 1: What's your quick elevator pitch description of talking Tofu?
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, so my wife and I are a couple
Speaker 3: of goblins when it comes to snacking. We are both vegans.
Speaker 3: We couldn't really find a fun podcast about vegan snacking,
Speaker 3: so we decided to make one ourselves. It's i'd say
Speaker 3: thirty percent snacking and seventy percent whatever else is going
Speaker 3: on in our lives. We just finished a recording. We
Speaker 3: went to Universal Studios, Florida try out the vegan food there.
Speaker 3: It was mostly about the rides that we rode and
Speaker 3: the things that we encountered while we were there, a
Speaker 3: little bit about the food, but just having fun with
Speaker 3: our family. And most episodes are kind of follow that trend.
Speaker 1: It's a very funny podcast though, thank you, Well, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of laughter.
Speaker 3: You're too nice, Thank you.
Speaker 1: And you guys have done some movie episodes before as well.
Speaker 1: Talked about what are some of the movies you guys
Speaker 1: have chatted about.
Speaker 3: Let's see, we've done Screen three. I think we've done
Speaker 3: Scream two and Scream three, and because this is spooky season,
Speaker 3: you may expect Scream four to happen. We usually pair
Speaker 3: that with some vegan candy that we'll go through and
Speaker 3: snack on while we recount the plot. We also do.
Speaker 3: We've done When Harry Met Sally, which I had never
Speaker 3: seen before, which it's an amazing movie.
Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've seen it.
Speaker 1: This is the one with the big Foot in it,
Speaker 1: the sasquatch.
Speaker 3: No, that's Harry and Anderson. Common misconception, very common misconception.
Speaker 1: That's the one I've seen, not this one.
Speaker 3: You gotta see When Harry met Sally. We should have
Speaker 3: done when Harry met Sally for Spooky Season. Fantastic movie.
Speaker 3: Though you got to you gotta check it out. I
Speaker 3: know the rest of the world was already there. I
Speaker 3: was kind of late to the party, but it really
Speaker 3: holds up. So yeah, we'll do that. We've watched singles,
Speaker 3: the Cameron Crowe movie from nineteen ninety two, that's the
Speaker 3: grunge scene, and Seattle. It's probably not a very accurate
Speaker 3: representation of the grunge scene in Seattle nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 3: but had a lot of fun with that one. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's kind of all over the place, things that one
Speaker 3: or the other of us have held dear in our
Speaker 3: hearts that the other one hasn't seen. I think most
Speaker 3: recently we did Hackers from nineteen ninety five, Johnny Lee Miller,
Speaker 3: Angelina Joe Lee, Fantastic Movie. I mean, there's there's a
Speaker 3: good movie, there's a great movie. There's a fantastic movie.
Speaker 3: None of these are objective terms, really, but for me,
Speaker 3: it just really just hits me right in the core.
Speaker 1: But Hackers one hundred percent accurate when it comes to
Speaker 1: the hacking lifestyle of the time period.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent accurate. All computers on the inside look
Speaker 3: like cityscapes drawn in green lines that you have to
Speaker 3: navigate through and find the right door to put the
Speaker 3: right icon into. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of being late to the party on films,
Speaker 1: the film we're going to be talking about here today,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven's The Gate. This is a film that
Speaker 1: I think we're both in the same boat on this one, right,
Speaker 1: we both have memories of at least some of the
Speaker 1: promotional materials for this film, but neither of us had
Speaker 1: seen it until now.
Speaker 3: That's right. I was really familiar with this one as
Speaker 3: a kid. I was pretty shy about scary movies as
Speaker 3: a kid, and particularly I remember getting specifically burned with
Speaker 3: Poltergeist because Poltergeist I did see as a child, as
Speaker 3: an eight year old, it had a child in it,
Speaker 3: so I thought that it was okay for children, and
Speaker 3: that film's very not okay for children, very not okay for.
Speaker 1: Children, and not at all. I too saw Poltergeist at
Speaker 1: at a very young age. It was one of these
Speaker 1: where I think my aunt had taped a bunch of
Speaker 1: movies off of HBO, and I don't even know how
Speaker 1: this ended up happening, but I ended up watching at
Speaker 1: least parts of Poltergeist, and it just really scared the
Speaker 1: heck out of me. I just I would even just
Speaker 1: hearing it. Was one of these things where whatever the
Speaker 1: movie was that was taped, they're like three movies taped
Speaker 1: per vhs, and whatever was taped directly ahead of Poltergeist
Speaker 1: was a family film of some kind, and so you
Speaker 1: had to like super on your guard to stop the
Speaker 1: tape before the Poltergeist intro started playing, because that alone
Speaker 1: would creep me out.
Speaker 3: I think Poltergeist was one that really stuck out to me,
Speaker 3: not just as an incorrect read that child means safe
Speaker 3: for children, but it was gross horror it was, and
Speaker 3: that was the first exposure that I had really had
Speaker 3: to gross out stuff being in a film. So I
Speaker 3: thought that horror movies were ghosts jumping out at you.
Speaker 3: I was a child. I had no idea. I thought
Speaker 3: that it was just you know, haunted house things that
Speaker 3: would scare you. But the grossness of it fascinated and
Speaker 3: terrified me. It was not I was not brave enough
Speaker 3: to overcome my terror to indulge the fascination of it.
Speaker 3: And still it's one of those ones that to this
Speaker 3: day I can't really go back to just because of
Speaker 3: how badly it scarred me as a child. But I
Speaker 3: guess my point being that around that time I was
Speaker 3: seeing the marketing for The Gate, I was seeing the
Speaker 3: marketing for House, which was another movie. I lump all
Speaker 3: of those together in kind of that not for me
Speaker 3: as a child, a not for me kind of category. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the trailer and the VHS art really stuck out to
Speaker 3: me and kind of reinforced the not for meness of it,
Speaker 3: I think, and specifically the poster art, the VHS cover art.
Speaker 3: It's very sinister, very dark, does not seem like it's
Speaker 3: going to be for children. And I don't want to
Speaker 3: jump too far ahead. I don't know that this movie
Speaker 3: is for children, but it's definitely kid friendly, I think,
Speaker 3: more than I was expecting. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's support The Gate is surprisingly kid for and
Speaker 1: and Yeah, that comparison to Poltergeist, I think is very apt.
Speaker 1: It feels in many ways like Poltergeist for kids. Like
Speaker 1: one of the things that I still find terrifying and
Speaker 1: terrifying and super weird about Poulter Guys, even looking back
Speaker 1: on it and having rewatched it as an adult, is
Speaker 1: that it seems like a movie where not just typical
Speaker 1: haunted house stuff happens, but like you, but you don't
Speaker 1: know what will happen. There seem to be no rules
Speaker 1: regarding what's going to jump out at you. One second,
Speaker 1: it's somebody thinks their face is meat. Then pizza is
Speaker 1: crawling around, and then some sort of extra dimensional dragon
Speaker 1: is climbing out of the wall or something. It's just
Speaker 1: whatever the effects team can think up is going to
Speaker 1: come at you. And there's a similar vibe in the Gate.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the kids in the Gate
Speaker 1: feel like like real central characters with actual identities and
Speaker 1: relationships to each other, and the film doesn't have a
Speaker 1: mean objective in its relationship to those children, or presumably
Speaker 1: to the children that may be watching the film.
Speaker 3: That's a good point, And I think a big difference
Speaker 3: for me would probably be the in Pultry guys, they
Speaker 3: they wanted you to either leave the house or they'd
Speaker 3: kill you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Gate.
Speaker 3: I'm not really sure what the Gate wants or what
Speaker 3: the demons in the Gate want. They don't. They only
Speaker 3: seem to want to get out of the Gate, and
Speaker 3: I guess I guess that's it. I guess they don't
Speaker 3: care who's in their path or what happens to the
Speaker 3: people in their path. But then they spend a lot
Speaker 3: of time with the people who are in their path,
Speaker 3: and that kind of confuses me a little bit about
Speaker 3: it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll discuss when we get into the plot. They
Speaker 1: do seem to have a couple of things they need
Speaker 1: to check off the box. I mean maybe one big objective,
Speaker 1: but kind of a roundabout way to get there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's a solid plan that
Speaker 3: they can refer to. It's a lot of instinct.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I never saw this film as a kid. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing The Box sar weirdly enough at some point.
Speaker 1: I I remember I watched the nineteen ninety sequel The
Speaker 1: Gate two on TV at some point in the nineties,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. And the main thing that sticks out to
Speaker 1: me in that is that it features a lot of
Speaker 1: demonic wish granting, in which the thing that you wished
Speaker 1: for literally turns to poop like the next day. So
Speaker 1: there's like a scene where the night before, some awful
Speaker 1: teenager wished for a sports car, and you know, he's
Speaker 1: torn around all over the place in the sports car
Speaker 1: during the night the next day, there's just like an
Speaker 1: elephant's worth of poop in front of the house.
Speaker 3: And this happens multiple times.
Speaker 1: Well I think, so, yeah, anything you wish for it
Speaker 1: turns to poop.
Speaker 3: What So, I don't want to get too hung up
Speaker 3: on this, but is this the same big demon from
Speaker 3: the Gate one?
Speaker 1: I don't remember. The only thing I remember vaguely is
Speaker 1: the older Terry character and played by the same actor.
Speaker 1: He's back in the sequel. Some of the creative team
Speaker 1: and the director of the same But the only thing
Speaker 1: I remember is demonic wishes turned to poop the next morning.
Speaker 1: And you know, at the time, it was like, all right,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense. That's the demon's work.
Speaker 3: That's a bullseye of a premise. And I love the
Speaker 3: idea that this demon tried his best to get out
Speaker 3: of that gate legitimately in this episode or in this movie,
Speaker 3: but then in his retirement he just kind of became
Speaker 3: a trickster wish fulfillment and and that was how he
Speaker 3: went out. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember. I can't really speak to the
Speaker 1: quality of Gate two, but I do admire that they
Speaker 1: went in a slightly different direction on it. They didn't
Speaker 1: just do the gate again. But at any rate, the gate, too,
Speaker 1: is a discussion for another time. We're here to talk
Speaker 1: about the gate. So you mentioned that trailer. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and listen to that trailer audio right here.
Speaker 4: Great, there is a passageway to the most evil place.
Speaker 4: You can imagine, a gate behind which the demons waked
Speaker 4: to take back what was once theirs. And now someone
Speaker 4: has opened the gate.
Speaker 1: This is weird. Tarring soon decomposed corns or dead father.
Speaker 4: Who knows, tearing o hair the hands.
Speaker 3: The police. You got demons.
Speaker 4: Mean?
Speaker 2: You guys are serious about that demon stuff.
Speaker 1: Demons were kind.
Speaker 4: You've been bad. They have opened the gate. Great, it's
Speaker 4: not too late.
Speaker 1: All right. Great trailer probably not one hundred percent loyal
Speaker 1: to the actual tone of the film, but we have
Speaker 1: excellent narration by the great Percy Rodriguez, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen through two thousand and seven. He was also an
Speaker 1: accomplished actor, but he did a ton of voiceovers for
Speaker 1: film trailers in the seventies and eighties, and his voice
Speaker 1: alone is to make is enough to make you think, well,
Speaker 1: this is not for children. Listen to this very scary
Speaker 1: adult talk about the.
Speaker 3: Gait one hundred percent. This reinforces the hey, this is
Speaker 3: not for me. It also really showcases some of the movies'
Speaker 3: biggest moments and gives you some of the biggest effects.
Speaker 3: It holds a few things back, but the overall tone's
Speaker 3: very sinister.
Speaker 1: It's very dark.
Speaker 3: It seems paced as almost kind of a torturous movie
Speaker 3: like the It really showcases the peril that the kids
Speaker 3: are all in and kind of their reaction to that peril.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if I had the GB's hearing about this movie,
Speaker 3: this trailer definitely would have scared me away for good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of screaming kids, but you don't
Speaker 1: really see all the scenes of kids being strong in it,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of scenes where the kids
Speaker 1: are brave and admirable in the film. But yeah, also
Speaker 1: it does spoil a lot of the big effects in
Speaker 1: the movie, So don't watch the trailer if you are
Speaker 1: looking to go into this one kind of fresh.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. I think the uh I was blessed
Speaker 3: with distance between the last time I had seen the
Speaker 3: trailer for this movie and actually watching the movie, because
Speaker 3: I came into it pretty cold and then rewatched the
Speaker 3: trailer after the fact. And I was really glad I did,
Speaker 3: because I was very surprised by how competent this movie
Speaker 3: is and by how much I enjoyed everything that happened
Speaker 3: in it, even though it wasn't what I was expecting.
Speaker 4: It to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, before we get into the connections the
Speaker 1: people involved in this movie, where can you watch it? Well,
Speaker 1: The Gate was a fairly big release. It's widely available
Speaker 1: for digital purchase in rental everywhere. I streamed it as
Speaker 1: part of AMC Plus, but I think it's also available
Speaker 1: on some free streaming sites. And it's also a pretty
Speaker 1: stacked Blu Ray edition that came out in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and it's loaded with extras.
Speaker 3: That's amazing to me that such a lovingly curated Blu
Speaker 3: Ray would exist of this movie. It amazes me that
Speaker 3: there's a sequel to it and it, you know, it
Speaker 3: strikes me as a largely forgotten film, and that's clearly
Speaker 3: not the case. That's my mystery to the how of
Speaker 3: what his legacy is.
Speaker 1: All Right, let's start to the top. The director is
Speaker 1: Tybord Takach born nineteen fifty four, Hungarian born director who
Speaker 1: kicked off his career with the nineteen seventy eight Canadian
Speaker 1: dystopian rock opera Metal Messiah. After this film, he did
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine's I Madman and The Gate two. He
Speaker 1: directed four different episodes of the nineteen nineties Outer Limits
Speaker 1: series Dave Whoa. I don't know if we've actually watched
Speaker 1: any of these. They include If These Walls Could Talk,
Speaker 1: The Voyage Home, White Light Forever, and Blood Brothers.
Speaker 3: The Voyage Homes sounds familiar, but that's also a Star
Speaker 3: Trek movie, so I might just be thinking of that.
Speaker 1: His subsequent credits include a mix of TV episodes and
Speaker 1: eventually some sci fi original programming you know, bat Caliber film,
Speaker 1: including two thousand and five's Mansquito, which, at the time
Speaker 1: when it first came out, I think looked pretty bad,
Speaker 1: but we had no idea about how bad direct to
Speaker 1: sci fi channel movies would get.
Speaker 3: And you know I today, I am committing to come
Speaker 3: back for your Manskedo episode.
Speaker 1: I'm not brave enough yet. I gotta get my courage up,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's the director. The writer is Michael
Speaker 1: Nankin born nineteen fifty five. Accomplished TV director, writer, and producer.
Speaker 1: He wrote nineteen eighty seven's Ruskies, and episodes of TV
Speaker 1: shows such as Life goes On, Chicago Hope, the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties Flipper Show. As a directory, He's done a ton
Speaker 1: of TV work, including episodes of Life Goes On, the
Speaker 1: Battlestar Galactica reboot, and one episode of The Good Lord Bird.
Speaker 1: And I think he also wrote I Madman as well.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, it doesn't surprise me that he's predominantly
Speaker 3: a TV writer, because I got a very TV vibe
Speaker 3: from the snappiness of the dialogue in this movie, especially
Speaker 3: the way that the children talk to each other, I
Speaker 3: thought was very authentic first of all, but also really snappy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't clearly remember specific episodes of Life Goes On,
Speaker 1: but I think I watched some of it, and it
Speaker 1: was just that was a time during which I watched
Speaker 1: a lot of TV, So even if I didn't watch
Speaker 1: the show directly, I was very aware of it. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was like there was a wholesomeness to that show
Speaker 1: that makes sense once you've watched The Gate all the
Speaker 1: way through. Otherwise you might think life goes On in
Speaker 1: the Gate? What could they possibly common? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's you get down to some of the character work.
Speaker 1: I think it makes sense.
Speaker 3: I think there's there's definitely a thread in the amount
Speaker 3: of care and respect given to a family dynamic, and
Speaker 3: especially the way that kids interact with each other, which
Speaker 3: is really difficult I think for an adult to right.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get into the kids. In fact, I don't
Speaker 1: have any data in here on the adult actors in
Speaker 1: the film. They all have just brief roles for the
Speaker 1: most part, mom and dad and dad, and any adult
Speaker 1: supervision is completely absent from the entire film, which was
Speaker 1: an interesting choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that the parents occupy maybe forty five seconds
Speaker 3: of screen time, and most of that time they are
Speaker 3: either punishing the children or bad mouthing Glenn's friend to Glenn,
Speaker 3: which is just bad behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well Glenn. Yeah, Glenn is our central character,
Speaker 1: our main kid in this and interestingly enough, is played
Speaker 1: by Stephen Dorf. Yeah. This is the film debut of
Speaker 1: Stephen Dorf born nineteen seventy three. I think he's like
Speaker 1: twelve in this, though he looks even younger. You buy
Speaker 1: him as even younger. I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: has to do with the he has a very you know,
Speaker 1: he has a little bit of baby fat in his
Speaker 1: face still and has a very childlike quality to his face.
Speaker 3: Definitely, twelve is a shock to me. I would have
Speaker 3: said eight seven or eight.
Speaker 1: Now when we say the name Stephen Dorf, most people
Speaker 1: out there probably familiar with him from such works as
Speaker 1: a Blade. Of course, he plays the villainous Deacon Frost
Speaker 1: opposite Wesley Snipes in that nineteen ninety eight film. He
Speaker 1: was in Stuart Gordon's Space Truckers in ninety six. He
Speaker 1: did some bigger also some bigger roles in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: including the Power of One and Post Blade. He was
Speaker 1: in such films as John Waters Cecil be Himented in
Speaker 1: two thousand, he was in what I remember is being
Speaker 1: a terrible horror movie from two thousand and two Fear
Speaker 1: dot Com.
Speaker 3: I have never seen any of these movies. Having not
Speaker 3: seen Blade is one of my secret shames, so I'm
Speaker 3: glad to reveal it here for your listeners. I do
Speaker 3: need to correct that, especially before you know the rebooted
Speaker 3: Blade comes out. So yeah, the the Gate is one
Speaker 3: of my exposure to Stephen Dorth and it's a good one.
Speaker 1: Now. Prior to this, he he did have some roles
Speaker 1: on a few different TV shows, including the new Leave
Speaker 1: It to Beaver, Different Strokes, and in Love and War.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with that last one, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd already gotten his feet a little bit wet in
Speaker 1: the whole child actor realm. And then he's off to
Speaker 1: the races as the star of the Gate.
Speaker 3: And he does it competently. I can't. He carries so
Speaker 3: much of this movie. It's it's really hard to overstate
Speaker 3: how competent of an actor he is in this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's shocking, especially that there are times too
Speaker 1: where you'll he'll act in a certain way and you
Speaker 1: can sort of see the grown up Stephen Dorf through him,
Speaker 1: especially if you've seen other Stephen Dorf films and you're like,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of weird. It's like staring through
Speaker 1: a time tunnel or something. All right. So that's Glenn
Speaker 1: the brother, and then we also have Glenn's sister, al
Speaker 1: Al is played by Krista Denton born nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: and I think she does a great job in this too.
Speaker 1: She was only active from nineteen eighty four through nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: This is probably her most prominent role, but she also
Speaker 1: had some parts in nineteen eighty five of The Bad Seed,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six's Eight Million Ways to Die and some
Speaker 1: episodes of Silver Spoons Growing Pains, and the new Leave
Speaker 1: It to Beaver.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: What I lack in Blade knowledge I make up for
Speaker 3: in the new Leave It to Beaver knowledge. I was
Speaker 3: pretty fond of this series as a child. It was
Speaker 3: on some syndication for couldn't have been more than a
Speaker 3: summer or a summer at a fall. But when it
Speaker 3: was there, I was fascinated with the idea of reboots.
Speaker 3: I had obviously seen Leave It to Beaver on Nick
Speaker 3: at Night and was just fascinated by the fact that
Speaker 3: they could grow up and continue the series later, a
Speaker 3: premise that is just worn to shreds at this point
Speaker 3: with every show under the sun, the question of oh,
Speaker 3: what would they be like now? You know, But back
Speaker 3: then it was still pretty novel.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: You had your Return to may Berry's, you had your
Speaker 3: New Leave It to Beaver. But this one to take
Speaker 3: kind of a sidebar. It started in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 3: as a two hour movie made for television called Still
Speaker 3: the Beaver. That movie featured Ed Beagley Jr. Featured a
Speaker 3: young Corey Feldman not. I don't think this was his
Speaker 3: first role or anything. But some pretty pretty stars studied
Speaker 3: made for TV movie back then.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh wow, they were some actors from the
Speaker 1: original Leave It to Beaver, right.
Speaker 3: I think so. Yes, Jerry Mathers does reprise his role
Speaker 3: as the Beaver, and that's consistent with the series as well.
Speaker 3: Ed Bagley Junior Corey Feldman do not hang around for
Speaker 3: the series. I think the series doesn't happen until a
Speaker 3: couple of years later, mid to late eighties, so I
Speaker 3: think they rebooted the reboot kind of in that time,
Speaker 3: but it's all lumped under one new Leave It to
Speaker 3: Beaver umbrella.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that it went one hundred and two
Speaker 1: episodes four seasons, because I remember I remember this existing.
Speaker 1: I remember having watched reruns of Leave It to Beaver
Speaker 1: on nickod Night. I remember parents and grandparents attesting to
Speaker 1: the fact that, yes, this is a good show, and
Speaker 1: then I remember coming to them excited and saying, guess what,
Speaker 1: Leave It to Beaver is back, and maybe it was
Speaker 1: a little bit shocked that they weren't as excited as
Speaker 1: I was. I specifically remember an episode where there were
Speaker 1: a pair of tennis shoes that a child in the
Speaker 1: show really wanted I guess the Beaver's son or something.
Speaker 1: And they were called Earth Angels, and they would play
Speaker 1: that song Earth Angel every time he was lusting after
Speaker 1: these beautiful sneakers that had little wings on them.
Speaker 3: That's pretty great. That's pretty great. I think with the
Speaker 3: show like this, the lift is really getting the elements
Speaker 3: together to make it. Once you've got that going, you
Speaker 3: can probably turn out one hundred and two episodes, just
Speaker 3: as you can do ten.
Speaker 1: All Right, we have one more essential child to get
Speaker 1: to here, and that is Terry. Terry is Glenn's friend.
Speaker 1: This is Glenn's best friend, we believe here, played by
Speaker 1: Lewis Tripp, who was born nineteen seventy three. Just a
Speaker 1: really pitch perfect performance as this awkward, nerdy eighties kid
Speaker 1: who's super into heavy metal and also is just just
Speaker 1: ready to research the heck out of a demonic problem
Speaker 1: once it emerges.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's such a great casting choice. I think he's
Speaker 3: this from the parents view, he's this bad influence to Glenn,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't really look that stereotypical bad influence part.
Speaker 3: He definitely does kind of nudge Glenn in a more
Speaker 3: destructive direction and in a kind of rule breaky direction.
Speaker 3: Glenn probably would have gone there on his own though
Speaker 3: in a lot of these cases, but he has the
Speaker 3: awkwardness of a latch key kid who has yet to
Speaker 3: process some trauma from his past, which his mother died
Speaker 3: before the events of the movie, which kind of plays
Speaker 3: into the plot of it, and his dad. We just
Speaker 3: we see that he's not around. I don't think that
Speaker 3: we see him at all. So just a really specific
Speaker 3: character that he brings a lot too and delivers it
Speaker 3: really convincingly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he's he's really in a way. I feel
Speaker 1: like he's the he's right alongside Glenn. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: you can't discount and Glenn as being an essential part
Speaker 1: of the film, but the Terry's right there next to.
Speaker 3: Him, one hundred percent. Right from the jump too. I
Speaker 3: think he sets a lot of the actions into motion,
Speaker 3: and he seems to want to believe just in general,
Speaker 3: he seems to want to believe in something, and that
Speaker 3: desire to do that also helps push kind of the
Speaker 3: events of the of the movie forward and ultimately the
Speaker 3: solution to the problem. Yeah, now you said that he
Speaker 3: was in the Gate too. Is he the star of
Speaker 3: the Gate too?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's the if memory serves correctly, And I
Speaker 1: did glance at some at a brief summary of the plot,
Speaker 1: I believe in the sequel, the idea is that Glenn
Speaker 1: has moved away, okay, and Terry is left there in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. He's a bit older. I think he's a
Speaker 1: full blown teenager by this point, so he's an awkward
Speaker 1: teen and then gets sucked into another demonic plot.
Speaker 3: Is it a different Gate or is it the same Gate?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean maybe the same Gate, maybe
Speaker 1: different demons because now we have wishes involved, so maybe
Speaker 1: it's a different demonic scheme. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all from Hell, right, so maybe it's
Speaker 3: just different doors at the same house and different rooms
Speaker 3: in the same house, some different demon demonic inhabitants in
Speaker 3: those different rooms. But it's fascinating that Terry's back at it.
Speaker 3: Good for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this this actor Lewis Trip. He wasn't in much.
Speaker 1: He was again. He was in The Gate and The
Speaker 1: Gate too, obviously. He appeared on the nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 1: Canadian psychic TV show Seeing Things, which starred Louis del Grande.
Speaker 1: This is the if you're not familiar with him, this
Speaker 1: is the exploding head guy from Scanners. The guy's had up,
Speaker 1: oh my god, amazing mustache, but he had a full
Speaker 1: like a pretty I'm not sure how long it went,
Speaker 1: but I remember from my childhood when I lived in
Speaker 1: Canada that we had one TV channel and when seeing
Speaker 1: things came on, we would watch it. I do not
Speaker 1: remember this child showing up on the show, but I
Speaker 1: remember the show.
Speaker 3: I got to check this show out. It seems like
Speaker 3: it's right up my alley.
Speaker 1: It had a really jazzy theme song. Nice all right. Now,
Speaker 1: there are two other kids that show up in the film.
Speaker 1: These are friends of Owl's. They are the Lee sisters,
Speaker 1: and they're worth noting that they're fun in the film.
Speaker 1: They're not central characters, but the actors who played them
Speaker 1: are each, in their own way, pretty interesting. So first
Speaker 1: there's Lori Lee played by Kelly Rowan born nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: This is a Canadian actor who was active up until
Speaker 1: I think twenty sixteen on screen and TV. She did
Speaker 1: a lot of TV work, but also had roles in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one's Hook, nineteen ninety five's Candy Man, Farewell
Speaker 1: to the Flesh, ninety five's Assassins, also Lonesome Dove, The
Speaker 1: Outlaw Years, and the OC. Wow.
Speaker 3: I know that she's not responsible for this, but Farewell
Speaker 3: to the Flesh is a fantastic subtitle for a movie.
Speaker 1: She was also Dave in not one, but two episodes
Speaker 1: of the nineties Outer Limits in Another Life and Virtual Future.
Speaker 1: Virtual Future apparently featured both Josh Brolin and David Warner.
Speaker 3: Wow. So there's a lot of Outer Limits thread flowing
Speaker 3: through this cast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, you got Canadian actors. You get Canadian actors
Speaker 1: that were active in the nineties, and there's there's like
Speaker 1: a what seventy five percent chance maybe greater that they
Speaker 1: were on at least one episode of the Outer One.
Speaker 3: That's true. It's a rite of passage.
Speaker 1: Now. The other Lee sister, Linda Lee, is played by
Speaker 1: Jennifer Irwin born nineteen seventy five. Terrific Canadian actor who
Speaker 1: has starred in a ton of great stuff over the years,
Speaker 1: done guest spots and plenty of other shows. And we're
Speaker 1: talking some big name TV comedies, and she's she's still
Speaker 1: very much active.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she is fantastic and everything. Every time she shows up,
Speaker 3: even if it's just for a scene, she feels like
Speaker 3: she's a regular. She really steals the scene every time.
Speaker 3: I know her most intimately from The Goldbergs, where she
Speaker 3: plays the across the street neighbor of the Goldbergs, the
Speaker 3: titular Goldbergs. The main character has his best friend who
Speaker 3: is the neighbor, and this is the mother of that
Speaker 3: best friend, and she and Beverly Goldberg, the mom, have
Speaker 3: a tough start to their relationship. They're kind of antagonistic
Speaker 3: to each other, but then become best friends. And she's
Speaker 3: a recurring character, just fantastic and really nails that dynamic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she's If you're not sure out there who
Speaker 1: she is, you look her up, you'll recognize her instantly,
Speaker 1: especially if you've watched such shows as TVs, the Canadian
Speaker 1: TV show Slings and Arrows, Eastbound and Down, Halt and
Speaker 1: Catch Fire, Superstore, Iye, Zombie, and she said guest roles
Speaker 1: on such shows as Better Off, Ted, Party, Down, Shit's, Creak,
Speaker 1: Hacks and Physical. So she's popped up all over the
Speaker 1: place and is really delightful and everything she's in. Definitely,
Speaker 1: but this was only her third role so she's super
Speaker 1: young in this. If you didn't look her up, you
Speaker 1: might think that actor looks kind of familiar, but I
Speaker 1: can't really place her.
Speaker 3: I think that was the situation I was in watching
Speaker 3: this was I kind of had to be reminded that
Speaker 3: this was her. She's so much younger than the roles
Speaker 3: that I remember her in.
Speaker 1: All Right, Getting a little bit behind the scenes here
Speaker 1: this movie. If you watch the trailer, if you actually
Speaker 1: watch it, you'll realize this is an effects movie. I
Speaker 1: went into it not expecting it to be just wall
Speaker 1: to wall amazing special effects, but it.
Speaker 3: Is one hundred percent. It is a showcase for the
Speaker 3: effects work as much as it is anything else. And
Speaker 3: I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean
Speaker 3: that it's the full gallery of what you can do
Speaker 3: with stop motion, what you can do with force, perspective,
Speaker 3: the whole gamut.
Speaker 1: Now there's a whole crew working on this one, obviously,
Speaker 1: but the main visual effects credit here goes to Randall
Speaker 1: William Cook born nineteen fifty one, American special effects wizard
Speaker 1: and director. They really put together, He and his team
Speaker 1: really put together just so many strange and wonderful effects
Speaker 1: of varying things, like really the Poltergeist system of you. You
Speaker 1: never know what's going to come at you. It might
Speaker 1: be a horrific body horror effect, it might be a
Speaker 1: zombie or one of the showcases of this film, tiny
Speaker 1: demon's running all over the place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and being dismembered and turning into little wormy bits
Speaker 3: that can reconstitute.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, the wormy bits are a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So Cook. He has been involved in a just a
Speaker 1: ton of great heart and sci fi special effects film
Speaker 1: over the years. I mean some when I say great,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're a little on the cheap side, but they're
Speaker 1: in films where you still love the effects. Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: he worked on a Laser Blast, which is a film
Speaker 1: that it's not a great film, but it has just
Speaker 1: charming and lovable special effects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the effects are not the reason that the film
Speaker 3: is bad by a long shot, And in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways there what redeemed the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah. To a similar extent, he was in Q The
Speaker 1: Wings Serpent, but also he was on the crew anyway
Speaker 1: for such films as The Thing, Ghostbusters twenty ten, Fright Night, Poltergeist, two,
Speaker 1: Highway to Hell, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Speaker 3: It doesn't surprise me at all. He's involved with these
Speaker 3: big titles seeing what was pulled off in this movie.
Speaker 1: And his credits kind of go all over the place too.
Speaker 1: For instance, he directed one episode of TV's Life Goes On,
Speaker 1: which we already mentioned. He also did a movie. He
Speaker 1: directed a film from ninety six titled Demon in the Bottle.
Speaker 1: I had to look this one up. I was not
Speaker 1: familiar with it, but apparently it was the product of
Speaker 1: a one time deal between Disney and full Moon Entertainment
Speaker 1: who Charles band production house.
Speaker 3: That is wild.
Speaker 1: He acted in the Demon in the Bottle movie as well,
Speaker 1: and he also has cameos in a weird nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine film titled Doctor Caligari, which has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the cabinet of Doctor Caligari but is instead more
Speaker 1: of an erotic peewee's playhouse sort of the art film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a weird one. But then he also has roles
Speaker 1: essentially cameos in King Kong and The Fellowship of the Ring,
Speaker 1: so you never know where this guy's going to pop up.
Speaker 1: And finally, the music in this film really solid atmospheric
Speaker 1: electronic score by Michael Hoenig and J. Peter Robinson totally agree.
Speaker 3: I think the ambient score here is more of the
Speaker 3: synthesized ambient score, is one of the standouts for this
Speaker 3: for me. It really nails the tone just right from
Speaker 3: the jump and really just accentuates all of those moments
Speaker 3: just the way you think that they would and really
Speaker 3: just elevates the entire movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this one. I don't know for me personally,
Speaker 1: this would be like a stands on its own sort
Speaker 1: of score that I would just like listen to and
Speaker 1: jam out to. But it's one that just works perfectly
Speaker 1: with the film. You can listen to it on its
Speaker 1: own and jam out to it. It's I think it's
Speaker 1: streaming most places, and they've even been There's at least
Speaker 1: one special vinyl edition I saw online that has like
Speaker 1: a pink vinyl record and the sleeve is made to
Speaker 1: where it doesn't feature the movies art. It resembles a
Speaker 1: very important heavy metal that is a prop and a
Speaker 1: plot piece in the film.
Speaker 3: I wonder if it has all of the koutrama of
Speaker 3: the album too, with kind of the lore and the
Speaker 3: deep stuff that helped solve the problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Evil Book of Demonology, that's right, just a
Speaker 1: part of the record release. I think you mean the
Speaker 1: Dark Book, the Dark Book, Yes, the Bible for Demon's
Speaker 1: that's right, all right, well, well briefly. Michael Hoenig born
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, German composer who briefly toured with Tangerine
Speaker 1: Dream in nineteen seventy five, So I assume that he's
Speaker 1: responsible for the synthier parts of the score. He was
Speaker 1: a synth performer on nineteen eighty one's Galaxy of Terror,
Speaker 1: and other scores include The Max Headroom Show, nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight's The Blob, and he also worked on the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight video game Balder's Gait in its two thousand sequel.
Speaker 3: Oh Wow Nice, Yeah, it's you know, I said it before.
Speaker 3: It's hard to overstate how effective the synth is at
Speaker 3: creating the vibe in this movie, right from the beginning.
Speaker 1: The other guy involved. J. Peter Robinson born nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1: I suspect he's maybe responsible for the more traditional aspects
Speaker 1: of the film. Just going off on a limb here,
Speaker 1: I suspect he was responsible for the more traditional aspects
Speaker 1: of the score, just looking at the other films that
Speaker 1: he he has Composer credits on an English composer, he
Speaker 1: worked on such films as Return of the Living Dead,
Speaker 1: two Cocktail, Blind Fury, which is a weird, weird film.
Speaker 1: That one. It's one where Rudger Howard is a blind man.
Speaker 1: I believe who Wayne's world in Sino Man, New Nightmare,
Speaker 1: Mind Ripper, and many more.
Speaker 3: Wow, it makes me wonder probably this is the case
Speaker 3: that he wrote the metal song that is so pivotal
Speaker 3: to the plot, as well as maybe the party music
Speaker 3: from the Teen Party. I sound like such an old
Speaker 3: man calling it the teen Party.
Speaker 1: Now I was able to id one of the Teen
Speaker 1: Party songs. We'll come back to that one nice. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get in the plot of this one. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: how do we kick this one off?
Speaker 4: Dave?
Speaker 3: All Right, So, I don't know if I've made this
Speaker 3: clear yet, but I'm a pretty big fan of the
Speaker 3: synth music and the opening credits. You get this ambient
Speaker 3: chime that just really for me. It tells me you're home,
Speaker 3: You're in a good place. Enjoy the next eighty some
Speaker 3: odd minutes, and it takes us right into kind of
Speaker 3: a I guess it's spoiling it out of the gate
Speaker 3: to call it a dream sequence, but it starts out
Speaker 3: pretty dark.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, a lot of films like this I
Speaker 1: think would would maybe spend more time establishing a real
Speaker 1: world dynamic I'm thinking of. I'm thinking a films like
Speaker 1: The Never Ending Story and so forth, where you get
Speaker 1: to see, like what is day to day life like
Speaker 1: for this child or these children, and then let's throw
Speaker 1: them into the supernatural. But this film just kicks off
Speaker 1: right inside of a dream. We see Glenn walking around, right,
Speaker 1: he's checking out what we see his bedroom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he walked into his front door and
Speaker 3: the house is empty. It's an amazing house. It's actually
Speaker 3: a real house that they shot this in amazing gorgeous decor.
Speaker 3: And then he walks into what's basically my dream bedroom
Speaker 3: from the eighties, which you know. There are colored desk lamps,
Speaker 3: those metallic desk lamps that have different colors to them.
Speaker 3: There are orange sheer curtains, there's this white metallic furniture,
Speaker 3: like a desk that's made out of a white metal.
Speaker 3: It's just very it's like a catalog shot. And my
Speaker 3: heart that and the ambient chimes, my heart was soaring
Speaker 3: at this point.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, Dave. But as a former child,
Speaker 1: I'm always instantly interested and a little bit judgy when
Speaker 1: any show, regardless of time period, presents us with a
Speaker 1: child's bedroom, because it's always fascinating to sort of pick
Speaker 1: it apart, like which details that have either sloppily or
Speaker 1: lovingly been added, which ones feel authentic, which ones are branded,
Speaker 1: which ones are like noticeable some of them. Occasionally see
Speaker 1: some where I'm like, Okay, I specifically remember that generic
Speaker 1: poster from Getty Images. I know that you just bought
Speaker 1: the rights to use that, or it's like free to use.
Speaker 1: None of these are things that a child would actually
Speaker 1: have hanging in the room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think sometimes you get that, like what an
Speaker 3: interior designer at Sears would do for one of those
Speaker 3: model bedrooms that they're trying to sell you the furniture
Speaker 3: pieces within. You get that vibe a lot. And yeah,
Speaker 3: books that are just encyclopedias that are neatly stacked on
Speaker 3: a desk, or like you said, posters that are essentially
Speaker 3: clip art from that time, or sometimes you get you know,
Speaker 3: I don't have a specific example of this offhand, but
Speaker 3: you get a snapshot of what the director's room would
Speaker 3: have been, but were they a child? And I think
Speaker 3: you see that maybe in Terry's room, which is almost
Speaker 3: skipping ahead a little bit, but it's almost over disheveled
Speaker 3: in terms of messiness. But I will tell you as
Speaker 3: a father myself, my child's room does get close to
Speaker 3: that state sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same as the father of a young boy. Like
Speaker 1: you see that energy where it's like, yeah, I really
Speaker 1: like the image on this box of Pokemon cards. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to take this box, flatten it, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to tape it to the wall because I want
Speaker 1: to look at it exactly. So yeah, I buy Glenn's
Speaker 1: room as well, though, and you get and it's great
Speaker 1: peek into the personality of a child, and if it's
Speaker 1: executed right in the film, we see that Glenn is
Speaker 1: he's clearly into like a little bit of sports here
Speaker 1: and there. I think he's a baseball you know, very
Speaker 1: you know, typical American kid in that. But also it
Speaker 1: becomes very clear that Glenn is a total rocket nerd.
Speaker 1: He is super into NASA. He's almost always wearing a
Speaker 1: NASA jacket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Glenn is, he's a rules guy, He's an orderly guy.
Speaker 3: He frequently wants to call mom and Dad throughout the
Speaker 3: movie as things get worse and work, which I think
Speaker 3: is very sweet. And he does have this jacket that
Speaker 3: is patched with NASA patches, And at first I thought
Speaker 3: that he was a specific kind of kid, like you said,
Speaker 3: a real NASA buff, But I learned throughout the movie
Speaker 3: that his sister Al also has the same jacket and
Speaker 3: they both have it because they launched the rockets together,
Speaker 3: and that was kind of their commonality that was had
Speaker 3: deteriorated at the start of the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the film builds up over time you realize, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have this sweet relationship, though they also are at
Speaker 1: echoes to others throats at times, so you totally buy
Speaker 1: the sibling relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. And there's also this element of Al being
Speaker 3: a little bit older, starting to hang out with teens,
Speaker 3: starting to gravitate away from that family dynamic, and you
Speaker 3: see that in the interactions with the whole family. But
Speaker 3: you really see how that impacts Glenn, specifically in how
Speaker 3: left behind he feels. Even as the events of the
Speaker 3: movie and the gate opening or unfolding, he still feels
Speaker 3: a little bit of that distance from Al.
Speaker 1: Now, coming back to the whole dream, sequence. Yeah, Glenn's
Speaker 1: wandering around this empty house. He goes into the backyard,
Speaker 1: he climbs into the treehouse. It's in the black backyard.
Speaker 1: He ascends into the treehouse, and then lightning strikes it,
Speaker 1: the causing the treehouse to collapse. And then of course
Speaker 1: he wakes up. He hears chainsaws or buzzsaws running, and
Speaker 1: then when he looks out the window, oh, it looks
Speaker 1: like the tree was actually struck by lightning and was
Speaker 1: completely destroyed. Workmen are clearing everything away. And I thought
Speaker 1: this was neat too, in two different ways, because on
Speaker 1: one hand, this felt very like on par with the
Speaker 1: childhood experience, where important things like the destruction of a
Speaker 1: treehouse occur when you're asleep, and then when you wake
Speaker 1: up or look out the back then adults have already
Speaker 1: tended to it. Adults are already on the scene dealing
Speaker 1: with it, and you're just like, oh, I wonder what
Speaker 1: that was about. But then also so like, symbolically, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this innocence of childhood threatened imagery that's clear in
Speaker 1: all of this. The treehouse is the iconic fortress of
Speaker 1: childhood freedom and it was just destroyed by I guess
Speaker 1: like a literal act of God here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the terror of being in a treehouse in
Speaker 3: a tree that is falling over, It's not It's worse
Speaker 3: than being in a tree that's falling over. You're in
Speaker 3: a structure inside of it, and I can't imagine feeling
Speaker 3: more helpless than that. I do think from a narrative perspective,
Speaker 3: I was scratching my head pretty early on about did
Speaker 3: this happen while he was asleep? Had this? Was it
Speaker 3: just a coincidence that it happened while he was dreaming
Speaker 3: about it? Did he cause this to happen by dreaming
Speaker 3: about it? The parallel between what was happening in the
Speaker 3: dream and what was happening in life while he was
Speaker 3: asleep kind of confused me a little bit. And there's
Speaker 3: a little bit of both sides the line that this
Speaker 3: movie does in that regard throughout. On the one hand,
Speaker 3: I think it is a little bit puzzling as a choice,
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, I kind of like the
Speaker 3: ambiguity of it because it's a question that doesn't need
Speaker 3: to be answered, and a lot of what is going
Speaker 3: on with these children and what these children are facing
Speaker 3: it shouldn't have an explanation. Children should not know exactly
Speaker 3: what the situation, No human would you know, And I
Speaker 3: think it's kind of a brave choice in that light
Speaker 3: to play into that a little bit.
Speaker 1: One quick note, I want to point out this wasn't
Speaker 1: party music, but there is a music video playing in
Speaker 1: the dream, and we see a clip of the music
Speaker 1: video for No Pressure by Canadian new wave performer Eva Everything.
Speaker 1: This is a nineteen eighty four single. She had a
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four album titled boob Tube, and she went
Speaker 1: on to be a science communicator and producer. I'm not
Speaker 1: super familiar with this because I wasn't I don't think
Speaker 1: I was watching any of these particular shows, but it
Speaker 1: looked like she was involved in something that was kind
Speaker 1: of like Channel one that we had in the State,
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not familiar with. But I'm looking at this
Speaker 3: album cover now and it's got a very aha vibe
Speaker 3: with a little splash of color across the eyes and
Speaker 3: an otherwise black and white picture. It's very very cool,
Speaker 3: and I was digging the video.
Speaker 1: All right. So back in we're in the Waking world now,
Speaker 1: and we stay in the Waking world for the rest
Speaker 1: of the film, and it's not long before we finally
Speaker 1: actually meet Glenn's friend Terry. Let's describe Terry oh Man.
Speaker 3: Terry rules first, first, and foremost, Terry rules. Terry's got,
Speaker 3: you know, these dark rimmed glasses. It's got short hair.
Speaker 3: He's this lanky kid Masters of the Universe T shirt,
Speaker 3: leather jacket. I keep wanting to is it a leather
Speaker 3: jacket or is it a leather vest I keep thinking
Speaker 3: of it as a vest.
Speaker 1: I think there's a costume change. I think when we
Speaker 1: first see him, it's a leather jacket with a patch
Speaker 1: on the back for the English heavy metal band Venom,
Speaker 1: and later he's wearing like a jean jacket vest thing
Speaker 1: and that has I think a patch for the Canadian
Speaker 1: metal band Killer Dwarfs.
Speaker 3: Wow, so somebody knew their stuff when they were putting
Speaker 3: this outfit together.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So right off the bat we realize, yeah, Terry's
Speaker 1: interested very much so in heavy metal, and then we
Speaker 1: learn later a little bit into demonology via the heavy metal. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, without getting too ahead of ourselves,
Speaker 3: I really do like how this movie flips the satanic
Speaker 3: panic angle of the time and turns the satanic panic
Speaker 3: into what saves these kids, and presumably the world is
Speaker 3: using these demonic lyrics to undo a curse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In many of the metal sploitation films of the era,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, the dangerous metal band is bringing demonology
Speaker 1: to the children and he gets them in all sorts
Speaker 1: of trouble. But in this film, as we find out, no,
Speaker 1: the metal rockers are actually wise wizards who have given
Speaker 1: us the tools for our own liberation and are actually
Speaker 1: teaching us how to defeat the well.
Speaker 3: And they do it pretty deliberately too, by a minutes
Speaker 3: long narration at the end of a song that is
Speaker 3: just an incantation basically, yeah, all.
Speaker 1: Right, But before the demons show up, we have to
Speaker 1: deal with geodes because basically the way the whole ball
Speaker 1: gets running here is as the workmen are hauling the
Speaker 1: tree pieces away, Glenn spots a geode in the roots,
Speaker 1: you know, like you often see, well, maybe not often
Speaker 1: see a geode, but sometimes you'll see the roots of
Speaker 1: an uprooted tree gripping a stone. It's always kind of
Speaker 1: weird and neat, and in this case it's a geode.
Speaker 1: So he and Terry realize, well, they're probably more geodes
Speaker 1: in that now filled in hole. Let's go dig around
Speaker 1: in there and get some more. And they find one
Speaker 1: the size of a beach ball, and there's this great
Speaker 1: exchange where they find this geode and they're both like,
Speaker 1: we're rich this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what their sense of the market value
Speaker 3: of geodes is, or if they're near a Renaissance fair
Speaker 3: or a flea market or something like that that might
Speaker 3: give them an inflated sense of what they could do
Speaker 3: with a geode. But I did have to posit at
Speaker 3: this point because you know what's coming. They're standing at
Speaker 3: a hole, they're pulling out these rare crystals. They're excited
Speaker 3: about it. So I paused it and looked at the timestamp.
Speaker 3: This is six minutes into the movie and we're already
Speaker 3: at the demonic hole in the ground. We've already seen
Speaker 3: a scary nightmare. We've already seen Glenn in peril falling
Speaker 3: over in the tree. I mean, this movie wastes no time.
Speaker 1: It's great. Yeah, you get right to the gate. It's
Speaker 1: called the gate. It's not the road or the path
Speaker 1: to the gate. Here we are literally at the action point.
Speaker 3: That's right. So is this the point that al comes
Speaker 3: out and she's bringing a bunch of trash out to
Speaker 3: the trash can, or is that later in the movie.
Speaker 3: It's basically that she's bringing the rockets out that defined
Speaker 3: kind of her childhood relationship with Glenn and is tossing
Speaker 3: them in the trash. Glenn's upset about that because she
Speaker 3: was going to save them for him, and her comment is,
Speaker 3: while they've been sitting there for months and you haven't
Speaker 3: touched them, so I'm getting rid of them. He kind
Speaker 3: of digs through them, and I think does take one out.
Speaker 3: But that's kind of your first realization. You saw the
Speaker 3: jacket with the patches. Now you're seeing that he has
Speaker 3: a love of rockets that he shared with al and
Speaker 3: that that love is no longer shared.
Speaker 1: I have to admit that I didn't pay enough attention
Speaker 1: to this the first time I watched it, because I
Speaker 1: think part of it is with movies like this, usually
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah, this is not real character development.
Speaker 1: It's not really important. It's just about moving character from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. But no, this is actually
Speaker 1: all building to something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really loving effort to tie these characters
Speaker 3: family stories together in a way that you know, I
Speaker 3: had an older sister. She's four years older than me.
Speaker 3: I definitely went through these emotions as she was growing
Speaker 3: into being a teenager, spending less time with the family,
Speaker 3: spending more time with her friends, and feeling those feelings
Speaker 3: that Glenn was feeling. We didn't shoot rockets together, but
Speaker 3: I can imagine, you know what that shared interest is
Speaker 3: that kind of morphs into just your interest, and it
Speaker 3: has a different taste and a different feel. So I
Speaker 3: think Terry talks Glenn into lighting off one of the rockets. Glenn,
Speaker 3: I believe, says, I'm not supposed to do that, but
Speaker 3: Terry encourages him to do that. He does it, and
Speaker 3: it zings off into the house and leaves kind of
Speaker 3: a burned stain in the side of the house. And
Speaker 3: I believe that gets Glenn into trouble with mom and dad,
Speaker 3: who show up to parent for a good sixty to
Speaker 3: seventy seconds.
Speaker 1: And they're quick to throw Glenn under the bus as
Speaker 1: being a bad influence.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that the dad explains to Terry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: This happens at a different point, but Glenn is talking
Speaker 3: to his dad. He tells him a story that Terry
Speaker 3: told him about a workman that was trapped in the
Speaker 3: walls of the house when they were building the house,
Speaker 3: and that the dad since kneels down to Glenn and says, yeah,
Speaker 3: Terry has some problems, just a very dismissive yeah. And
Speaker 3: the dad had to have known what that kid's history was,
Speaker 3: you know, And to be that insensitive is really a
Speaker 3: insensitive but be really on point with a lot of
Speaker 3: the parenting from that era too, so it's not so
Speaker 3: so disparate. But whatever it is, it's insensitive to Terry,
Speaker 3: and it's not very thoughtful of Glenn's state of mind either,
Speaker 3: especially regarding his friend.
Speaker 1: Now. I think it's at this point that we learned that, hey,
Speaker 1: mom and dad really want to go out of town.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what they're going out of town for,
Speaker 1: but they want to do it. But they're having second
Speaker 1: thoughts about it because Glenn is being bad. But al
Speaker 1: the sister is quick to jump in and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look I got this. I can I can take care
Speaker 1: of Glenn, I can take care of myself. I can
Speaker 1: take care of the house. You guys go, Everything's going
Speaker 1: to be fine. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that there's a babysitter that they reference that
Speaker 3: maybe they should call and I'm trying to remember her name.
Speaker 3: It becomes a pretty miss Vandergriff is her name, and
Speaker 3: it becomes a pretty clever through line throughout. When much later,
Speaker 3: when things are all just going to shambles, I believe
Speaker 3: he says, I wish missus Vandergriff was here, and just
Speaker 3: a fantastic callback to this moment, this decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish that the parent approved authority figure we're
Speaker 1: here because we cannot handle it. We cannot handle it.
Speaker 1: But the whole time she's like no, there multiple times
Speaker 1: later in the film where things are getting progressively worse,
Speaker 1: and like we should call mom and dad, and now's
Speaker 1: very clear, and like, no, we do not have to
Speaker 1: bring mom and dad into this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's at this point she has already kind of
Speaker 3: ditched the family to go off and hang out with
Speaker 3: her teen friends, to go shopping. You can tell that
Speaker 3: she's got teen ideas in my with what to do
Speaker 3: with an empty house, and that is borne out almost
Speaker 3: instantly once the parents go out of town and she
Speaker 3: throws a party. I thought that this party could have
Speaker 3: been just a full blowout nineteen eighties high school party scene,
Speaker 3: but I was struck by the balance of beer and cigarettes,
Speaker 3: which is happening, but also there's a lot of soda
Speaker 3: and bowls of chips set out, and something very childish
Speaker 3: about that too, And it really showed how at that age,
Speaker 3: and I think Al at this point has shown a
Speaker 3: little bit of remorse for leaving Glenn high and dry
Speaker 3: and kind of comes back to include him a little bit.
Speaker 3: It shows how she's not really completely there like the
Speaker 3: other teens are, yet there's still a little bit of
Speaker 3: kid left in her and a little bit of that
Speaker 3: bridge still.
Speaker 1: The party has a lot of great eighties hair hit
Speaker 1: with some eighties fashion. The dog Angus, the sweet old
Speaker 1: dog that the family has, is going around helping himself
Speaker 1: to some of the human food, the human snacks that
Speaker 1: are left laying about.
Speaker 3: And the boy is not at the party. Terry wants
Speaker 3: to be in the party, but Glenn's got them up
Speaker 3: in the room. He knows that Al doesn't want him
Speaker 3: down at the party. Terry's trying to talk him into it.
Speaker 3: They're working on this geode. Terry can't crack it for
Speaker 3: some reason, and then Glenn takes a shot at it
Speaker 3: and succeeds almost instantly. Yeah, cracks open and let's out
Speaker 3: kind of a sigh of gas.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's like purple smoke, purple lights. When they
Speaker 1: start looking at it, it's sparkly like geodes typically are,
Speaker 1: but it's purple light, sparkly, like it's emitting its own light.
Speaker 1: And then also it seems to have left some sort
Speaker 1: of satanic message on their magic slate that they have.
Speaker 1: They're the one where you pull up the the I
Speaker 1: don't even know if they still have these around, but
Speaker 1: they were definitely a big part of my childhood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like that flimsy layer of plastic that you
Speaker 3: can write a message into and it'll kind of magnetize.
Speaker 3: That's the wrong word, but stick with something darker underneath it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it barely works. It was I remember loving these,
Speaker 1: and you could they were sometimes branded with different TV
Speaker 1: shows and whatnot that they barely worked. Anything you'd write
Speaker 1: in it or draw in it would kind of like
Speaker 1: unstick and become unclear. So really, the demons here trying
Speaker 1: to reach out and converse with humans through this medium.
Speaker 1: It was a poor choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it barely works here. You can barely make out
Speaker 3: that there is an incantation. I kept thinking that one
Speaker 3: of the kids had written something and just done a
Speaker 3: bad job at it. But it is the demon speech.
Speaker 3: They picked the objectively the worst tool to communicate with.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, downstairs, the party has has gone on to the
Speaker 1: next level, which is storytelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the camera pans across and there's a group of
Speaker 3: about twenty teenagers sitting around listening to one teenager tell
Speaker 3: a scary story which is like a camp fire style
Speaker 3: scary story, not even specifically or related to them or
Speaker 3: related to their lives, just a very kind of hokey
Speaker 3: scary story. Candle light all over the room, these party
Speaker 3: animals who are throwing down so hard just moments ago.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine what the transition would have been to
Speaker 3: candlelight scary story time. But that's where they.
Speaker 1: Are, yeah, because there doesn't seem to be a clear
Speaker 1: leader of the party and we don't see al commanding
Speaker 1: them all right story time, But the next time we
Speaker 1: check in with them, they've moved on to attempting levitation.
Speaker 1: And it gets pretty plot oriented here because one of
Speaker 1: the jockeyer teens that they can't get him to levitate,
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, let's get He sees Glenn and
Speaker 1: Terry coming by. It's like, well, let's make him do it,
Speaker 1: let's get the little guy, and he agrees, but it
Speaker 1: gets scary pretty quickly. This is where we get into
Speaker 1: that weird area and we have to ask the question
Speaker 1: is Glenn magic? Because Glenn actually does levitate and he
Speaker 1: ends up hanging on to a light. The light breaks
Speaker 1: and it's scary and Glenn runs off crying.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He goes like full Wonka with the fizzy lifting
Speaker 3: drinks and like you can't stop, and keeps kind of
Speaker 3: going up and going up, and then does break the glass,
Speaker 3: which I guess breaks the spell somehow, falls down, gets
Speaker 3: really embarrassed and cries, which, again like the way he
Speaker 3: plays these these childlike moments, the way he plays his
Speaker 3: excitement at being asked to come and participate in the levitation.
Speaker 3: They're so authentic and he does such a great job
Speaker 3: at delivering those.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this was the point in the film
Speaker 1: where I really started realizing that when you have the
Speaker 1: moment of him crying, you know, like a child, but
Speaker 1: also kind of unlike action oriented child characters in movies
Speaker 1: typically of this caliber, they seem to really take the
Speaker 1: take him seriously. Yeah, them together so he's up in
Speaker 1: his room crying. All and Terry come up to sort
Speaker 1: of talk him down. Glenn says, I want to call
Speaker 1: mom and dad, and All insists that it's not necessary.
Speaker 1: But me, I'm watching this and as a parent, I'm thinking, no,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't call mom and dad, Like lights have been
Speaker 1: broken at this point, mom and dad should be called.
Speaker 3: But ol overrules and I think Glenn speaks to this,
Speaker 3: but the focus is so not on the fact that
Speaker 3: this child has levitated off of the ground up to
Speaker 3: the ceiling, like nobody else acknowledges or it seems to
Speaker 3: care about that. And to me, that is like, don't
Speaker 3: just call your parents, Like everybody's gotta go. We got
Speaker 3: to get everybody out of this house. We've got to
Speaker 3: get over to Missus vander Griff's house, get away from
Speaker 3: that situation. And it, you know, it speaks to this
Speaker 3: recurring sentiment that I had throughout the movie of what
Speaker 3: are these demons trying to do? Are these just the
Speaker 3: effects of opening the gate and they're just being a
Speaker 3: little bit more of a ethereal state to the world
Speaker 3: around the house, or are they trying to be scared?
Speaker 3: Are they trying to be manipulated. Is something intentional happening
Speaker 3: to them?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, and we never get a real and it's
Speaker 1: kind of nice that they keep it ambiguous. Nobody ever,
Speaker 1: like it would have been a different type of film
Speaker 1: if what's your name, Missus Vanderbeek, Missus vander Griff, mister
Speaker 1: Vandergriff were to show up at one point and it
Speaker 1: turns out, Oh, she's actually like a Mary Poppins demon
Speaker 1: fighter and she's like, look, the demons are trying to
Speaker 1: inspire your fear, which they feed off of, and then
Speaker 1: they use the energy the fear to open the gate.
Speaker 1: And then she's like, you know, killed by a demon
Speaker 1: before she can help. But we don't get that, and
Speaker 1: I kind of like that we don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it leaves it a lot more ambiguous,
Speaker 3: but also just leave space for fun and that's what
Speaker 3: this movie delivers.
Speaker 1: And when you think fun, you think sleepovers, and we
Speaker 1: get the first of many sleepovers at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Terry wakes up. I believe Terry is the first
Speaker 3: to wake up.
Speaker 1: Correct Terry's sleeping over. Like it's kind of like Al's solutions,
Speaker 1: Like we're not going to call mom and dad, but
Speaker 1: you know, Terry can sleep over.
Speaker 3: There's a very cool effect happening at the transition to
Speaker 3: the scene where it is the moths that are surrounding
Speaker 3: the bug zapper outside of the window or being projected
Speaker 3: onto the wall of the bedroom, and it's a stop
Speaker 3: motion effect that's really really effective. It makes the mall
Speaker 3: this look enormous and it really Chef's kiss to that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, something unsettling is happening, and you see it
Speaker 1: reflected in nature before things start getting really weird, and
Speaker 1: then they get really weird pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Terry has dreams of his mother. I think he
Speaker 3: wakes up and here's her calling him. I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: goes downstairs, opens.
Speaker 1: And she Yeah, she walks in and it's like an
Speaker 1: angelic scene where there's like smoke and white light and
Speaker 1: she holds up her arms and she's like like, Terry,
Speaker 1: I'm back.
Speaker 3: And he engages in a awkwardly long embrace with his
Speaker 3: mother where they spin around. And then I believe that
Speaker 3: that Glenn and Al wake up and do they hear something?
Speaker 3: Do they for some reason they get up and they
Speaker 3: come out to investigate.
Speaker 1: There's like a sound and then there's like stuff moving
Speaker 1: around in the walls, you know, kind of like Freddy
Speaker 1: Krueger's style, where it's like poking up the walls, and
Speaker 1: the walls were made out of rubber, and so everything's
Speaker 1: getting freaky, and so Glenn and Al come out, or
Speaker 1: Glenn comes out, Al hears this, or Al comes out,
Speaker 1: or he wakes Al up, and then there's Glenn down
Speaker 1: there and well, and then it gets even weirder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they call his name, and he kind of snaps
Speaker 3: out of his dream or sleep and realizes that he's
Speaker 3: holding Angus the dog in his arms. And this is
Speaker 3: the point where I'll confess to being a little bit confused.
Speaker 3: He throws the dog down because he's surprised that it's
Speaker 3: not his mother justifiable. The dog is dead, and I
Speaker 3: cannot figure out was Angus dead while Terry was holding him.
Speaker 3: Did Terry throwing Angus down kill him. I'm not even
Speaker 3: going to get into at what point was Angus in
Speaker 3: the situation, because I don't think Angus opened the door
Speaker 3: and walked in on two hind legs, you know. I imagine
Speaker 3: that Terry picked Angus up at some point to at
Speaker 3: the point he needed to hug something. Would be my
Speaker 3: take on it. But what are your thoughts. Did Terry
Speaker 3: accidentally kill the dog or was the dog dead? Slash
Speaker 3: did the demon kill the dog?
Speaker 1: I am absolutely not gonna lump this one on Terry.
Speaker 1: I think it had to be the demon. Nobody blames
Speaker 1: Terry for this in the film. Later on, when they're
Speaker 1: talking about it, Glenn's like ingus was super old. They
Speaker 1: don't live much longer than this anyway. So other than that,
Speaker 1: they don't really engage with the whole scenario too much.
Speaker 1: But either way that the dog is the dog is dead.
Speaker 1: And I will say that I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people do not want to watch a film in which
Speaker 1: a dog dies, at least in this film, when the
Speaker 1: dog dies, like everything else we've been discussing, they take
Speaker 1: it seriously like people are affected by it. It's actually
Speaker 1: part of the plot and it's not just like, let's
Speaker 1: shock that audience by having a monster eat a dog.
Speaker 3: That's right. They don't spend a lot of time showing
Speaker 3: it either. I think they There is a weird bit
Speaker 3: where Al's boyfriend or suitor offers to take the dog
Speaker 3: to be cremated or buried but cannot do it, and
Speaker 3: he's kind of carrying the dog around in a blanket
Speaker 3: this entire time, puts it in the front seat of
Speaker 3: the car, tries to drive it to the animal shelter
Speaker 3: or the animal hospital, and then it's closed and has
Speaker 3: to drive back. We're not there yet, but I agree
Speaker 3: they do do it very sensitively and delicately, and most
Speaker 3: of all, they spend a lot of time on how
Speaker 3: Glenn feels about it and how upset he is by this.
Speaker 1: And again he's like, look, how the dog has died.
Speaker 1: We should call mom and dad. And she's like, nope,
Speaker 1: no need to call mom and dad. And again I'm
Speaker 1: thinking is especially as the parents like no, you call
Speaker 1: mom and dad, Like the light is broken, the dog
Speaker 1: is dead. Call mom and dad and at least let
Speaker 1: them know, because I think, for a while there I'm
Speaker 1: not even clear that there. I was like, would they
Speaker 1: do with the dog? Is he in the freezer? It
Speaker 1: only becomes clear later that one of the team friends
Speaker 1: has been tasked with taking the dog unceremoniously to like
Speaker 1: the animal shelter or whatever, to have it disposed of.
Speaker 3: And to be quick about it, because they're going to
Speaker 3: the beach and they want him to join them at
Speaker 3: the beach. Sooner than later. Yeah, so it's a weird
Speaker 3: friendly gesture. It's weird that Al isn't going with him
Speaker 3: on this trip, and it's weird that they want him
Speaker 3: to be quick about it. It is a little bit
Speaker 3: strange how removed Al is from the situation. She doesn't
Speaker 3: seem nearly as upset about this as Glenn does. And
Speaker 3: maybe it's because she doesn't want to think about these
Speaker 3: things that are happening. Kind of a Stephen king It
Speaker 3: level of a grown ups not thinking about this the
Speaker 3: same way that a kid is. But again, she's on
Speaker 3: that bridge between childhood and being a grown up, so
Speaker 3: she's on and off with her sensitivity to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, sometimes something strange or traumatic happens, you
Speaker 1: got to get your mind off of it, which is
Speaker 1: what this is what Glenn does. Because Glenn goes home.
Speaker 1: We get to see Glenn's home at this point that
Speaker 1: it is a wreck. The living room is just like
Speaker 1: in the kitchen just has stuff everywhere. There's cold pizza
Speaker 1: out and he just grabs a slice and eats it,
Speaker 1: presumably for dinner, and we get the idea that like
Speaker 1: this is kind of par for the course these days.
Speaker 1: Home is not made not all that great for Glenn
Speaker 1: at the moment, but then he goes to his room
Speaker 1: and it is a glorious site. We described it a
Speaker 1: little bit already, but it's Transformer's Optimus Prime kite hanging
Speaker 1: from the ceiling, heavy metal posters on the walls, many
Speaker 1: of which appear to be real. I do get kind
Speaker 1: of a clip art vibe from some things that are
Speaker 1: on the wall, but for the most part, it's believable.
Speaker 1: And he even has a handmade banner back there that
Speaker 1: just says metal.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that really says the most about
Speaker 3: his character to me is the posters on top of posters, yeah,
Speaker 3: which is a very genuine kid thing of Hey, I
Speaker 3: like these, and I'm gonna put another one up and
Speaker 3: it's gonna cover a quarter of it, but that's okay.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be at an angle. But this is the
Speaker 3: band that I really like at this moment. I don't
Speaker 3: not like the band that it's so it just kind
Speaker 3: of becomes this ever growing patchwork of stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 3: just a filthy room. He's jumping up and down on
Speaker 3: the bed, rocking out, listening to some metal. Do we
Speaker 3: know the name of this band?
Speaker 1: I think this is supposed to be the fictitious band
Speaker 1: Sacrifice or Sacrifice. It's s a c R I F
Speaker 1: y X. The album is the Dark Book because we
Speaker 1: see him handling it. But yeah, wait, at first, he
Speaker 1: just he throws a blanket over, like a rainbow blanket
Speaker 1: over his shoulders, and he's rocking out and he's he's
Speaker 1: lip syncing to all the cool metal voiceover stuff in it.
Speaker 1: But then it begins to dawn on him. It's like
Speaker 1: there's something in these lyrics. It's matching up with what
Speaker 1: is going on in the neighborhood here. That's what's going
Speaker 1: on over at Glenn's house. He busts out that that
Speaker 1: Sacrifice album and the record booklet for the Dark Book
Speaker 1: is the Dark Book. It's like basically a tone of
Speaker 1: demonology that's just ready to go in the vinyl record.
Speaker 3: Just imagine put it yourselves in the in the in
Speaker 3: the shoes of whatever necromancer or wizard this was who
Speaker 3: wrote this demonic tone of how to presumably both release
Speaker 3: and seal these demonic entities. And you call it the
Speaker 3: Dark Book like it's the Dark Book. It's gonna be
Speaker 3: the only dark Book that ever exists.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe it's translated from the Latin. It sounds cooler Latin, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right, Maybe it's a dark book in Latin, and
Speaker 3: they acknowledged that they would be more and that this
Speaker 3: was just.
Speaker 4: One of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also not very long if you can fit
Speaker 1: it inside of a vinyl record. Maybe there's just Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the demon summoning ritual is a lot more simplistic in
Speaker 1: this in this film because it can be actually accidentally done.
Speaker 3: The demonic realm is kind of a unitask thing is
Speaker 3: there's just one demonic realm, one demon, and like a
Speaker 3: can opener, there's one tool to summon and seal it.
Speaker 1: So at this point in the film there are like
Speaker 1: a few different things going on at once. We uh,
Speaker 1: we have the teen dude that's taking the dead dog's
Speaker 1: body around, trying to drop it off in animal control.
Speaker 1: Like we said, he comes back to the house with
Speaker 1: it because they won't take it. Nobody seems to be home.
Speaker 1: But then he sees he sees that hole in the
Speaker 1: backyard and we don't see him do it, but then
Speaker 1: we later see that the hole has been filled in,
Speaker 1: so presumably he dumps the dog in there, but he
Speaker 1: does a nice job laying the sod back in place
Speaker 1: using the sod squares, So it's not as lazy an
Speaker 1: act as you might think.
Speaker 3: I do wanna you know, I have in my notes
Speaker 3: here at this point in the film, and I'm not
Speaker 3: sure if it's in this scene or a scene that
Speaker 3: we just went past, but you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: the kids insults to each other are pretty unacceptable, pretty
Speaker 3: unforgivable then and now. But one that that shines through
Speaker 3: is quote buzz off clown face, which is delivered directly.
Speaker 3: I think Glenn says it to one of the sisters,
Speaker 3: and it's said so sincerely and so earnestly, and it's
Speaker 3: such a quaint, charming, but no less sharp and cutting
Speaker 3: insult that I had to make a note of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the kids are and the teens are downright mean
Speaker 1: with their insults at times. But yeah, certainly some of
Speaker 1: these insults that are thrown by the kids have not
Speaker 1: stood the test of time.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. So Glenn's at home alone, he
Speaker 3: looks out and he sees that the hole is back,
Speaker 3: and then they pull some wood over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yearehouse. They're like, well, let's covered up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't understand. I guess that's to keep things
Speaker 3: from falling into it. This is happening while Eric is bringing.
Speaker 1: The dog back, right, Oh yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: So we're getting kind of a split back and forth
Speaker 3: take between the two of them. This is where Terry
Speaker 3: is talking to Glenn about the Dark Book and kind
Speaker 3: of onboarding him to the concepts. And this is where
Speaker 3: again Chef's kiss. He puts the record on and plays
Speaker 3: it backwards, and when you play the record backwards, it
Speaker 3: tells you how to seal presumably the whole how to
Speaker 3: seal the gate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a wonderful scene in Glenn's This is in
Speaker 1: the basement. This is Terry's basement, right or is this
Speaker 1: Glenn's basement.
Speaker 3: I think it's Glenn's basement.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, there's like a drum kit down there, but
Speaker 1: more metal posters, like all the metal posters that didn't
Speaker 1: fit in his room or down here. And he's walking
Speaker 1: him through everything. He's given him the full pitch on
Speaker 1: this band about how they were really deep into demonology
Speaker 1: and they had this thing called the Dark Book quote
Speaker 1: that's like the Bible for demons. And this is where
Speaker 1: they got all their lyrics from but yeah, there's this
Speaker 1: they really stress that this particular metal band sacrifice or sacrifice. Yeah, essentially,
Speaker 1: they're wise wizards who are giving us information on how
Speaker 1: to not only summon the old gods, but also how
Speaker 1: to defeat them.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. It's just that simple. And it's
Speaker 3: as simple as writing a song with forward sounding lyrics
Speaker 3: that make sense but also work as backward sounding lyrics
Speaker 3: that actually impart information difficult, difficult to follow information.
Speaker 1: So at this point, with their newfound exorcism skills from
Speaker 1: having listening to listen to this album once and read
Speaker 1: the liner notes, Glenn and Terry they go back to
Speaker 1: the pit. They're like, let's go ahead, let's seal this
Speaker 1: puppy up. Uh and uh, And so they start reading
Speaker 1: some stuff, reciting some stuff. Al walks up. She's suspicious
Speaker 1: of this whole affair. But then we transition into this
Speaker 1: kind of sweet moment where we were we had the
Speaker 1: understanding that Al was going to go to the beach
Speaker 1: with their friends, but instead she reveals that no, she's
Speaker 1: she's not going to go to the beach, and she
Speaker 1: has a gift that she gives Glenn, this thoughtful gift.
Speaker 1: Of course, turns out to be more rocket stuff, and
Speaker 1: so we this brings back this bond between them, some nice,
Speaker 1: some sweet stuff going on in this scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, And they launched the rocket right after that,
Speaker 3: and it again is a testament to with all the
Speaker 3: craziness that's going on, all the weird stuff that's going
Speaker 3: on in this hole that keeps appearing in the backyard,
Speaker 3: this levitation, this dead dog, and they're able to just
Speaker 3: kind of shrug it all off and have a really
Speaker 3: kid moment where they're launching the rocket together. At this scene,
Speaker 3: Al does have the rocket patch jacket on as well,
Speaker 3: so they're both kind of in uniform, just like the
Speaker 3: picture that Glenn looks at on the wall earlier in
Speaker 3: the movie. It's a very sweet moment.
Speaker 1: Now, pretty much from this we transitioned to Al, Terry
Speaker 1: and Glenn playing cards later that night. But then the
Speaker 1: Lea sisters come over. So even though the beach party
Speaker 1: was canceled, the Lee sisters decided to come over and
Speaker 1: hang out. It looks like there's gonna be There're gonna
Speaker 1: be yet again more sleepovers, this time dueling sleepovers. The
Speaker 1: Lice sisters doing a sleepover with Al and then Terry
Speaker 1: and Glenn doing a sleepover. Of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a scene where Glenn and Terry are are
Speaker 3: messing around in the parents closet and just just a
Speaker 3: rifle shotgun in the closet that Glenn's picking up and
Speaker 3: winging around and again very of the time, I'm sure,
Speaker 3: but so so bizarre y.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot, a lot to be dissected about
Speaker 1: that then, for sure, certainly kind of horrifying to modern viewers.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh my god, they've gone straight to the gun,
Speaker 1: Dad's gun in the closet. This will of course be
Speaker 1: a plot element later on, but we have but we've
Speaker 1: established it for now.
Speaker 3: One thing that we kind of glossed over when Glenn,
Speaker 3: when Terry was onboarding Glenn into the Dark Book and
Speaker 3: the contents of the Dark Book, is that we do
Speaker 3: see what I keep referring to in my notes as
Speaker 3: the minions, not those minions, guys, but actually little humanoid
Speaker 3: creatures that are probably what ankle now shin shin hid
Speaker 3: to knee high probably about that. That's the first that
Speaker 3: we see them kind of recorded in some official record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, these little I haven't refer to creatures like
Speaker 1: this as Gromlins, because there's sort of generic grimlins, but
Speaker 1: these guys. These guys are tremendous. They're one of my
Speaker 1: favorite effects from the screen. We see more and more
Speaker 1: of them as the film proceeds. They're little homunculi dudes
Speaker 1: with like glassy eyes and little little vampire mouths and
Speaker 1: pointed ears. They're hairless, and the effects here. You might
Speaker 1: expect creatures like this to be created via stop motion,
Speaker 1: but instead it's a force perspective stuff. For the most part,
Speaker 1: I think there's a puppet here and there, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, we're looking at multiple costumes worn by
Speaker 1: presumably full sized adult humans that are then made to
Speaker 1: look like tiny, scampering, squealing creatures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think there's a combination of the
Speaker 3: stop motion, there's a combination of well, no, it's the
Speaker 3: same combination stop motion, and then there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of force perspective with humans and costumes, and then there's
Speaker 3: a little bit of that projection that you see a
Speaker 3: lot of in Ghostbusters or other worldly effects. And I
Speaker 3: think the projection really stood out to me, because once
Speaker 3: you see something like that, it's hard to unsee it.
Speaker 3: But the stop motion and the rubber suits force perspective.
Speaker 3: I found myself trying to figure out which was which
Speaker 3: in a lot of cases. And that's that's good effects.
Speaker 3: And if you ask me, I think if you're if
Speaker 3: you're even hesitating to be able to tell the difference
Speaker 3: between the two, they've done their job really, really well.
Speaker 3: And sometimes they'll be back to back shots of stop
Speaker 3: motion Gromlin. I like that better than Minion taken right
Speaker 3: next to a human in the costume looking through large
Speaker 3: stare banisters.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, it's pretty seamless. I like it.
Speaker 1: So a lot of a lot of weird stuff is happening,
Speaker 1: like this is the night of where everything goes haywire,
Speaker 1: So a lot of different things start occurring, a lot
Speaker 1: of weird stuff. So something's creeping around the house. A
Speaker 1: window in Glen's room explodes like something like some force
Speaker 1: is busted in, so he wakes up Al. I think
Speaker 1: the Lee sisters get up now, or maybe they stay
Speaker 1: asleep for a little while, but they go and wake
Speaker 1: up Terry, and we get this switch this scene where
Speaker 1: they're trying to wake up Terry and then Terry walks
Speaker 1: up behind them and he's like, hey, guys, what's up,
Speaker 1: and we get that Nightmare revealed that, oh, it's the
Speaker 1: dead dog Angus in the bed in Terry's place, But
Speaker 1: Terry's there in the room with them. All three are screaming,
Speaker 1: and then Nightmare monster hands reach out from under the
Speaker 1: bed and start grabbing their ankles and they're trying to
Speaker 1: pull al under and it's a really scary scene out
Speaker 1: of nowhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a perfect one two punch of you think,
Speaker 3: this is the impactful moment when they realize that it's
Speaker 3: the dog and that somehow the dog is back. Even
Speaker 3: backing up a little bit more, it's a really impactful
Speaker 3: moment when the mob are attacking the window and the
Speaker 3: window shatters.
Speaker 1: That's right the months to Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you come up and see Terry, but
Speaker 3: it's not really Terry, it's Angus. There's a shock moment
Speaker 3: at that and then at that moment the hands reach
Speaker 3: out and grab her and it really is a one
Speaker 3: two three punch that it's thrilling.
Speaker 1: And so the Lee sisters are up at this point.
Speaker 1: It's and they realize what they need to do, need
Speaker 1: to get out of this house, so they run for
Speaker 1: the front door. They they're actually going out the front door,
Speaker 1: and then seemingly Mom and Dad show up, but it's
Speaker 1: not Mom and Dad. These are clearly demonic doubles of
Speaker 1: mom and Dad. And when who is it? Is it
Speaker 1: Glenn or is it Al that runs up to Dad here?
Speaker 3: So Glenn runs up to him. And the reason that
Speaker 3: I remember this is this kind of kicked off a
Speaker 3: little bit of the wish fulfillment thing that you're referencing
Speaker 3: in the Gate too. Terry got it a little bit
Speaker 3: earlier with his mom during in the dream, and Glenn's
Speaker 3: getting it a little bit now because he's been wanting
Speaker 3: to call Mom and Dad this entire movie, and now
Speaker 3: he comes out on the door and sees them. He's
Speaker 3: so excited that he runs up to them and pretty quickly,
Speaker 3: I mean, they can't keep this charade up for very long.
Speaker 3: The dad's voice transform. He kind of does a you've
Speaker 3: been bad yeah, and grabs Glenn and tries to squeeze him,
Speaker 3: choke him.
Speaker 1: I think it's like that. Yeah, Glynn like reaches up,
Speaker 1: touches his face, and like Dad's face immediately collapses into
Speaker 1: a stream of Puss's. It's horrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it kind of folds inward on itself, Puss comes
Speaker 3: out of it, he drops Glenn. Glenn backs away from it,
Speaker 3: and then his head falls off. The Dad's head falls
Speaker 3: off and shatters on the sidewalk, which is just an amazing,
Speaker 3: amazing effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they went nuts with these effects above and beyond.
Speaker 1: But the kids at this point realize, oh, lou better
Speaker 1: turn around, so they run back into the house. But
Speaker 1: the house is also where the monsters are, so they
Speaker 1: go for the back door. And when they're heading out
Speaker 1: the back door, that's when the Gromlins the little homunkey
Speaker 1: lie tack and we get the first of many tremendously
Speaker 1: fun scenes with these little guys scampering around. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love it that we get to see him in
Speaker 3: the flesh. Literally. The combo of stop motion and rear
Speaker 3: projection is really strong in this sequence. One of their
Speaker 3: arms gets cut off in a door when the door
Speaker 3: is shutting. The shot is in the trailer. You see
Speaker 3: the arm kind of descend down the crack, fall onto
Speaker 3: the floor, and then turn into kind of these little
Speaker 3: stop motion worms that kind of skit her off off
Speaker 3: off camera. They seem like, I want to say, there
Speaker 3: was a Sesame Street sequence that had these little clamation
Speaker 3: worms on them, same similar type of effect, but all white,
Speaker 3: all the same color as the Gromlin, and presumably going
Speaker 3: to reform the Gromlin somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Let's see other strange things happen. The phone rings, they
Speaker 1: pick it up, but it's a demon prank call.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 1: We get that dad voice going, you've been bad, and
Speaker 1: then the phone melts. And I love the you've been
Speaker 1: bad part because it's such a great demonic exaggeration of
Speaker 1: a very simplified childhood fear of both doing something bad,
Speaker 1: having done something bad, but then being caught yeah, and
Speaker 1: having your parents disappointed or mad at you over it.
Speaker 3: It's also a line that Sloth uses against Ma for
Speaker 3: Tlly and Goonies, which happened a couple It came out
Speaker 3: a couple of years before this, and I kept wondering
Speaker 3: if that was a reference to it. I think it's
Speaker 3: a stretch for it to actually be. But that phrase
Speaker 3: you've been bad is a very short, strong and powerful
Speaker 3: one that works really well in both movies.
Speaker 1: Well, at this point in the film, the kids realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: we tried to running out the front door, didn't work.
Speaker 1: Tried going out the back door, didn't work. We've got
Speaker 1: to close the gate. So really, without much more tarrying about,
Speaker 1: the kids head out back to deal with the gate.
Speaker 1: The Lee sisters are initially with them, and then they bail.
Speaker 1: They realize, well, this sounds a bit too dangerous and
Speaker 1: we're side characters, so we're gonna go back in. So
Speaker 1: they get to the gate, the eight opens. It's spewing
Speaker 1: purple smoke in light. Terry tries reading the Bible at
Speaker 1: it a little bit. They got a Bible out of
Speaker 1: one of the drawers in the house and it seems
Speaker 1: to be working, but then the whole swallows Terry up
Speaker 1: and we get another homuncular attack sequence where Terry is
Speaker 1: attacked by tiny demons in the hole. They're climbing on him,
Speaker 1: they're biting him, they're swarming over him and pull it,
Speaker 1: pulling on his legs as he's trying to climb back out.
Speaker 3: That's right. I do want to point out a small
Speaker 3: movie flub here in this scene is that Terry's reading
Speaker 3: the Bible. He doesn't know what to read. He's saying,
Speaker 3: you know, he's asking for suggestions. They're saying, just read anything,
Speaker 3: and so he reads from Genesis, which you know, in
Speaker 3: the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, which, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're gonna pull a random line, like, go for it.
Speaker 3: But the book he's holding, he's halfway through, and we
Speaker 3: all know that Genesis is the first book in the Bible,
Speaker 3: and that this is on the first page of the
Speaker 3: first book in the Bible. So I'm going to ding
Speaker 3: these guys a little bit. It's not going to hurt
Speaker 3: their overall score, but just know that that somebody's watching
Speaker 3: this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Unless they had one of those reverse books where Old
Speaker 1: Testament comes after New Testament.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, there's the revised Standard. Yeah yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 3: the minions start to swarm Terry while he's in the hole,
Speaker 3: and this is a pretty intense moment, particularly for Terry.
Speaker 3: I might be naive, but I had in my mind,
Speaker 3: maybe we're misunderstanding these Gromlins. I know, I'm going back
Speaker 3: and forth between minions and Cromlins. I just can't get
Speaker 3: the Minions label out of my head. But I thought,
Speaker 3: maybe we were misunderstanding these guys. Maybe there's a chance
Speaker 3: that they're helpful or something like that, which is like
Speaker 3: a wrinkle that they would bring into a horror movie nowadays,
Speaker 3: you know, like, no, the humans were the monsters, but no,
Speaker 3: they prove themselves out to be monsters for the first
Speaker 3: time in this scene where they are actively biting Terry.
Speaker 3: They're chewing into his flesh, they're chewing into his neck.
Speaker 3: He's like fending them off, getting away from them, but
Speaker 3: their numbers are increasing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Luckily Alan Glenn are able to get a rope
Speaker 1: and throw it down the hole. Carry's able to fight
Speaker 1: him off a good bed. He stomps one of the
Speaker 1: creature's pretty good. They get him back up out of
Speaker 1: the pit. They read a little more Bible at the pit,
Speaker 1: and then they just go ahead and pitch the whole
Speaker 1: book in and it explodes like a hand grenade, the
Speaker 1: fire for the moment like they want.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it closes back up magically and they're sod
Speaker 3: there too, I think. Don't quote me on that, but
Speaker 3: they jump up and down in celebration on top of
Speaker 3: the hole to hell that has just closed up. And
Speaker 3: I get that they're kids and that they're not thinking
Speaker 3: this all the way through, but they've been pretty competent
Speaker 3: so far. It's like, maybe give it a little bit
Speaker 3: of clearance and give it some time to cool and
Speaker 3: settle in.
Speaker 1: That's the advice I give my son. I'm like, look,
Speaker 1: if you ever open up a pit to hell and
Speaker 1: you successfully close it up with an explosive bible, don't
Speaker 1: just start stomping because it can't be one hundred resent
Speaker 1: sure that it's closed.
Speaker 3: It thirty to forty five minutes. Go have a snack
Speaker 3: and see if you still want to jump on the
Speaker 3: hole in celebration, and then go for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they go back inside. Eventually they find the
Speaker 1: Lee sisters hiding in the closet, which I was relieved by,
Speaker 1: you know, and not that we're super attached to them,
Speaker 1: but it's nice that they were not murdered by tiny
Speaker 1: creatures off screen.
Speaker 3: Comically huge layers of garlic around their necks and they're
Speaker 3: holding kitchen tools in kind of a cross in front
Speaker 3: of them. Very funny scene.
Speaker 1: Very funny, but also it made me think, like how
Speaker 1: much garlic does this family keep? So like we've got
Speaker 1: maybe two pieces of garlic in the house at a
Speaker 1: time that this is like like like three dozen garlic
Speaker 1: yeah heads.
Speaker 3: In here, easily thirty to forty heads of garlic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they get them out and then what more
Speaker 1: teen boys appear. They have shown up with beer, ready
Speaker 1: to party. Al wisely just sends everybody. She's like, I've
Speaker 1: had enough surprises for one night. Everybody has to go home.
Speaker 1: No parties are taking place, and they begrudgingly agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and really, you know, docs some cool points from her,
Speaker 3: which the teens make clear, and she does not care about.
Speaker 3: Which good on al. You know, she's finally kind of
Speaker 3: realizing what's important. And you know, I might suggest she's
Speaker 3: growing more than they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it took an actual
Speaker 1: portal to hell opening up in the backyard, but still
Speaker 1: growth appreciated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and seeing your father's face caved in and rolling
Speaker 3: off of his body.
Speaker 1: But of course it's not over yet. Things are not
Speaker 1: going to end that simply. Later on Glenn and Terry,
Speaker 1: they're hanging out, I think in the den. They're kind
Speaker 1: of horsing around with the geode. It bangs into the wall.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the wall erupts and this dead workman is hanging
Speaker 1: half out of the wall. This is the workman from
Speaker 1: Terry's story about some workman being sealed up dead in
Speaker 1: the wall of the house.
Speaker 3: That's right, And this is where Terry reveals that he
Speaker 3: made that story up, which again another wish fulfillment kind
Speaker 3: of manifesting. This is less of a wish but more
Speaker 3: of an idea that was in his head made real.
Speaker 3: And Terry gets taken.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the creature comes alive. It's a zombie grabs Terry,
Speaker 1: pulls him to the wall, and then the wall seals up,
Speaker 1: so at this point it's just Alan Glenn. They get
Speaker 1: attacked by the by the workmen. They call him the
Speaker 1: zombie creature. Again. There's a great scene where they're cornered
Speaker 1: by the workman. Al throws a boombox at it, hits him,
Speaker 1: hits the creature in the head, nail or nails him
Speaker 1: in the face. He falls over and immediately shatters into
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of these tiny demons are just running around.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's an amazing scene again in the trailer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's made up of them. Again. I don't want them
Speaker 3: to explain it to me, but I do want an answer,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm living in that dual space.
Speaker 1: So at this point they're like, okay, well we got
Speaker 1: to go for that gun. Let's get Dad's gun. So
Speaker 1: they go to the closet. But at this point two
Speaker 1: things happen in quick succession. That zombie demon Terry attacks,
Speaker 1: like Terry's head coming out and biting at him. So
Speaker 1: Al comes in and stabs Zombie Terry in the eye
Speaker 1: socket with a Barbie doll leg.
Speaker 3: So good, so good. This is for me scariest moment
Speaker 3: of the of the film, that, yeah, he's poking his
Speaker 3: head out there, that he is actually biting, that he
Speaker 3: has then attacked, that the kids have to attack their
Speaker 3: own friend. It's just terrifying stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Barbie doll leg part of it is
Speaker 1: like knowing that baby Barbie doll legs are a little weird, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we both had sisters, so both were around
Speaker 1: Barbie dolls and they have that weird thing where it's
Speaker 1: like the Barbie doll kind of has like flesh and bone, right,
Speaker 1: and it has it's it's rigid yet soft, And somehow
Speaker 1: the idea of it going into an eye socket feels
Speaker 1: more impactful than if if the zombie Terry had been
Speaker 1: stabbed with literally anything.
Speaker 3: Right, And the fact that the Barbie's legs and feet
Speaker 3: are pretty firm and solid, and that those feed are
Speaker 3: in particular are pointy that, you know. I had a
Speaker 3: note that it really shows the tone of the movie
Speaker 3: and the intended audience of the movie, that this is
Speaker 3: all pulled up. You never see the barbie go into
Speaker 3: the eye, you see the wind up, you hear the impact,
Speaker 3: and then you see the blood soaked barbie leg and
Speaker 3: the resulting stabbed eye, but you never get it's a
Speaker 3: punch that's intentionally pulled to be mindful to the audience,
Speaker 3: and I think it's a really thoughtful one and characterized
Speaker 3: by many other moments in the movie as well.
Speaker 1: Now, shortly after this occurs, the workman shows back up again,
Speaker 1: more chaos. I believe the shotgun goes off, but then
Speaker 1: the workman grabs al and drags her away into the wall,
Speaker 1: into the closet wall, and now both of them are gone.
Speaker 1: It's only Glenn. And earlier in the picture it was said, well,
Speaker 1: you know the demons, the old gods, they only need
Speaker 1: two sat human sacrifices in order to fully open the gate. Well,
Speaker 1: now it looks like they have two human sacrifices, so
Speaker 1: things are not looking great.
Speaker 3: That's right, and you get what, for my money, is
Speaker 3: probably the most impressive set piece of the film, which
Speaker 3: is Glenn running across this large living room floor of this,
Speaker 3: like I said earlier, amazing, amazing looking house, and that
Speaker 3: whole floor opens up as he runs across it, and
Speaker 3: we see that the entire kind of footprint of the
Speaker 3: house practically is now the gate and a purple light
Speaker 3: is coming out of it. Again, that shot is in
Speaker 3: the trailer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it gives a lot of this away. But yeah,
Speaker 1: now in this we're getting into the final showdown because
Speaker 1: at this point I think Glenn seems to realize he's
Speaker 1: going to need that big rocket and the demon little
Speaker 1: demons are swarming all over the place, and then this
Speaker 1: is when the giant Demon Lord arrives. We saw a
Speaker 1: drawing or a wood cut off him in the liner
Speaker 1: notes to that heavy metal album in the Dark Book.
Speaker 1: But now he has arrived and he looks tremendous. This
Speaker 1: is like a stop motion creature. It looks very original,
Speaker 1: but also seems like it is like like a fifth
Speaker 1: level mega evolution all of the little demons and Ray
Speaker 1: Harry Housen would be proud of this thing. This thing
Speaker 1: looks great.
Speaker 3: Totally agree. He looks like a leveled up version of
Speaker 3: one of those Gromlins. He's got twice the eyes, twice
Speaker 3: the arms. The second set of arms are much smaller
Speaker 3: than the first arms. Just a lot of thought went
Speaker 3: into this creature and the articulations of this creature, and
Speaker 3: the way that he emerges and arises out of the
Speaker 3: hole is just an effect that it works just so well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's like the showdown with the big demon
Speaker 1: and Glenn. It like grabs Glenn and then weirdly it
Speaker 1: marks him. It touches him and an eyeball opens and
Speaker 1: Glenn's palm, which is really well done effect. And it's
Speaker 1: also just a real shame because Carrie has been taken away.
Speaker 1: Harry would have loved this. This is what was all
Speaker 1: get out. And then the demon leaves him. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like the Demon's like, hey, you had a hand
Speaker 1: in this, so here you get a special demon gift
Speaker 1: from me, and you get to live to see the
Speaker 1: new demon world I get, you know, maybe he's going
Speaker 1: to be an ambassador. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what again. A thing that I couldn't figure
Speaker 3: out was was the demon rewarding Glenn. Was the demon
Speaker 3: marking Glenn so that he could see through that eye
Speaker 3: that's now in Glenn's hand. All we know is that
Speaker 3: Glenn was spared, the demon retreated, and Glenn looks down
Speaker 3: and he's just revolted by this eye that's in his hand,
Speaker 3: which I agree, amazing effect. I don't know how many
Speaker 3: times I can say amazing effect during this episode, because
Speaker 3: but there truly are so many amazing effects here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in different different realms, Like this is a
Speaker 1: different style effect than anything I think we'd seen thus far.
Speaker 1: It's weird, I guess it. It reminds me a bit
Speaker 1: of the Steve King's story. I Am the Doorway. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, where the guy comes back with eyeballs opening
Speaker 1: up in his hands, and this is a way for
Speaker 1: alien entities to see through him.
Speaker 3: That's right, And I think that that, to me suggested
Speaker 3: that Glenn was maybe now a minion of the dark one,
Speaker 3: the larger demon, and maybe was serving as his eyes
Speaker 3: at least in that space, and that was why he
Speaker 3: felt like he was no longer needed and retreated. But
Speaker 3: it's pretty revolting, and it's a very convincing. I can
Speaker 3: figure out these other effects, I can't figure this one out.
Speaker 3: I don't know how they pulled this one off.
Speaker 1: All right, So we get down to the final bit here.
Speaker 1: So the great Purple Vortex is rising up out of
Speaker 1: the pit. The demons are cementing their control over the earth.
Speaker 1: Only Glenn can stop them, one assumes, so if I
Speaker 1: remember this correctly, the way it goes down as he
Speaker 1: stabs the palm eyeball, presumably to call the Big Demon back.
Speaker 1: Big Demon comes back, is on his way back. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Glenn is setting up the launcher for the rocket, big
Speaker 1: rocket from the closet, but also using part of a
Speaker 1: rocket kit that Al gave him. He's scrambling for batteries,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like the classic must reload of
Speaker 1: the last second bit from an action film. And I suspense.
Speaker 1: The Demon Lord returns and Glenn fires the rocket into it.
Speaker 1: And this is great too, because the rocket has been
Speaker 1: cemented in the picture already. Is this It's kind of
Speaker 1: this thing. This represents this loving bond between the siblings,
Speaker 1: So it makes sense within the context of the film
Speaker 1: that it's not just a random child weapon. This is
Speaker 1: not just kid rambo a fighting off a demon like
Speaker 1: this is something that represents bonds of love and truth
Speaker 1: that would naturally slay a demon and it does just
Speaker 1: blows the demon all to glowing pieces. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I loved the sequence. I do have to admit that
Speaker 3: this is where the movie started to lose me a
Speaker 3: little bit, this concept of this being the solution to
Speaker 3: the problem. I was on board with the demonic incantation.
Speaker 3: I would have been on board with them finding a
Speaker 3: way to more articulately work that into a message of
Speaker 3: love and light. I think I like the idea of
Speaker 3: a symbol of love and the shared bond and how
Speaker 3: well they seated that being what saves them. But for
Speaker 3: some reason it lost that connective tissue at that point
Speaker 3: for me and just felt like a very convenient way
Speaker 3: to end the movie. But regardless, it works, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean narratively it worked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it saved the world. All the weird purple weather
Speaker 1: stuff goes away, the pit seals back up, and then well,
Speaker 1: everyone's still alive. Al shows back up, here's Terry so al,
Speaker 1: Here and Glenn are all reunited. The house is wrecked.
Speaker 1: The parents are not going to be crazy about this,
Speaker 1: but we get the sweet scene where everybody's still okay
Speaker 1: and they have successfully defeated the demon.
Speaker 3: I do want to point out that when the demon explodes.
Speaker 3: There's a hilarious explosion scene where Glenn is propelled out
Speaker 3: of the house end over far overhead in a projection effect,
Speaker 3: but literally pinwheels out of the house and lands to safety.
Speaker 1: We get one final scene too, where we see the backyard,
Speaker 1: we see the place where the pit was, and there's like,
Speaker 1: there's a sapling growing up there, you know, the like
Speaker 1: the tree that was there before is being regrown, and
Speaker 1: there is Angus. The dog is still alive, carrying a
Speaker 1: shoe around, and it's it's sweet, it's nice that the
Speaker 1: dog didn't actually die but is back, but on this
Speaker 1: the same level. And I didn't think about this till
Speaker 1: the second time I was watching parts of the film.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, well this this scene is also
Speaker 1: very disconnected from the rest of the movie, almost as
Speaker 1: if a test audience thought it was sad that the
Speaker 1: dog truly died. And then I go, let's just bring
Speaker 1: the dog back. We don't need any of the kids
Speaker 1: for this scene. We'll just shoot the dog in the
Speaker 1: same backyard. Yeah, but either way we'll take it. A
Speaker 1: wholesome music plays in the crash.
Speaker 3: I think that it makes as much sense as anything
Speaker 3: else if two human sacrifices were needed for the demon
Speaker 3: to in heard the realm, then Al and Terry should
Speaker 3: be dead. Through that same lens, the dog should be dead.
Speaker 3: They're all alive. I'm happy that they're all alive, don't
Speaker 3: get me wrong, But something doesn't add up here. It's
Speaker 3: not where they revived. Where they I mean, Angus had
Speaker 3: to be, so presumably Al and Terry are. It's asking
Speaker 3: a lot of questions that a child's audience isn't really
Speaker 3: going to want to or be prepared to answer. So
Speaker 3: it's kind of a wash at that point. And like
Speaker 3: I said, for such a thoughtful movie to have kind
Speaker 3: of that gap of logic there at the end, again,
Speaker 3: not of how the magic works, or how the necromancy works,
Speaker 3: or how the gate works itself, but why everything turned
Speaker 3: out great at the end of it. It feels like
Speaker 3: it just couldn't find a way to do it, you know,
Speaker 3: And so I got to take another ding for that.
Speaker 3: But it's not going to affect its overall score. I think.
Speaker 3: There's also the final line that Glenn mentions to both
Speaker 3: Terry and Al as the camera pans away, is you're
Speaker 3: my best buddies, and that's it. That's the end.
Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, they crank the wholesomeness up all the way
Speaker 1: and the music is really it's sweet. It's almost sickeningly
Speaker 1: sweet at this point. But I let it slide, Let
Speaker 1: it slide. Yeah, it's kind of nice that a movie
Speaker 1: like this ends on a good note.
Speaker 3: The house is still all jacked up. The parents have
Speaker 3: not returned yet, so there is kind of I don't
Speaker 3: know if that gets addressed in the sequel what the
Speaker 3: parents thought about the state of the house when they
Speaker 3: got back. But there's a reckoning coming that we the
Speaker 3: audience are no longer a part of because we've seen
Speaker 3: the happy ending. The best buddies are all survived, Angus
Speaker 3: has been brought back to life, and the gate theoretically
Speaker 3: is closed until nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: All right, well this was the gate. Yeah this is
Speaker 1: This is a pretty fun, one, pretty sweet movie. I
Speaker 1: think holds up pretty well outside of a few bits
Speaker 1: of colorful and offensive language from the children that I
Speaker 1: guess flew okay in the in the late eighties but
Speaker 1: definitely is not okay today. So that would be my
Speaker 1: main reservation about say, letting children watch this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I ran into a similar
Speaker 3: instance trying to show Bill and Ted's bogus journey to
Speaker 3: my son recently within the past year or two, and
Speaker 3: there are some insults that are along the same line
Speaker 3: as are used here that are just unacceptable. And the
Speaker 3: lift of having to explain that to a child is
Speaker 3: you don't want it, you know, Yeah, yeah, but I
Speaker 3: think this. God, I can't. I can't tell you enough
Speaker 3: how much I enjoyed watching this movie, how great it was,
Speaker 3: how fun it was, how deeply I connected with the
Speaker 3: characters in the movie, more so than I would expect
Speaker 3: from a horror movie, let alone, you know, a kid's movie.
Speaker 3: It was just really, really thoughtfully and tastefully done.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I agree, And it's been fun chatting about the
Speaker 1: movie with you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Likewise, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for coming on. So we're gonna go and
Speaker 1: close it out here. Before we go, tell us one
Speaker 1: more time. What do you find Talking Tofu?
Speaker 3: All right, So you can find Talking Tofu wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts. It's You can also reach out to
Speaker 3: us on Twitter and Instagram at talkin Tofu pod. You
Speaker 3: can also find me at line Leader on Instagram and
Speaker 3: Twitter if you want to uh and yeah. I think
Speaker 3: if you want to hear us jabber on about snacks.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we even eat snacks on mic. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people are really into that sort of thing,
Speaker 3: come check us out. We'll have a lot of fun awesome.
Speaker 1: Well. I'll remind everyone out there that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays
Speaker 1: we do Weird House Cinema, and that's our time to
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film. If you want to follow the movies that
Speaker 1: are covered here, I blog about them at simmutomusic dot com.
Speaker 1: But also if you use letter box dot com that's
Speaker 1: L E T T E R B O x D
Speaker 1: dot com. We have an account there weird House, and
Speaker 1: you can see all the films laid out there that
Speaker 1: we've covered, and sometimes a peek at what's to come.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with with me
Speaker 1: and and or Joe, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: it's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. And if
Speaker 1: you have anything you want to say to Dave through
Speaker 1: that email, I'll forward it to him. But also I
Speaker 1: believe you guys have a have one talk intofu pod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. That's t A l k I
Speaker 1: N t O f U p O D at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. And I do want to remind everyone talking tofu,
Speaker 1: it's t A l k I n apostrophe, right and
Speaker 1: then tofu.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little advice to people who are naming podcasts.
Speaker 3: Don't get silly with the language or leave off critical
Speaker 3: letters because it really does make it just that much
Speaker 3: more difficult to get in touch with somebody. But that's correct.
Speaker 3: Let's talk without the.
Speaker 1: G, talking without the G. All right, Well, thanks as
Speaker 1: always to Seth Nicholas Johnson for producing this show. And yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to reach out, just email me at
Speaker 1: contact at Stuffdblow your Mind dot com.
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