Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House we're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighty seven cult sci fi action film The Hidden,
Speaker 3: directed by Jack Shoulder, starring Kyle McLaughlin, Michael Neori, and
Speaker 3: Claudia Christian. Big spoiler warning at the top of today's episode.
Speaker 3: As always, we're going to be talking about the plot
Speaker 3: of the movie in a lot of detail, and this
Speaker 3: movie today contains major twists and surprises which are pretty
Speaker 3: bizarre and I would argue quite pleasing to follow if
Speaker 3: you go in cold. So this is one where you
Speaker 3: really might want to think about watching the movie without
Speaker 3: listening any further. I will give a warning the top
Speaker 3: that The Hidden is incredibly violent, like tons of on
Speaker 3: screen murder and blood squibs, almost non stop gunfire. But
Speaker 3: if you have the stomach for that sort of thing,
Speaker 3: if you know you can be into like eighties R
Speaker 3: rated cop movies that have that kind of violence, And
Speaker 3: if you want something that is I would say one
Speaker 3: part like hardcore eighties cop movie with ultra violence and
Speaker 3: all the cop cliches just kind of you know, meat
Speaker 3: loaf mouth ribbing of cops going at each other, and
Speaker 3: then another part absolutely wacky. I really would recommend watching
Speaker 3: this movie without reading or listening to anything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just know that it's the sort of cop movie,
Speaker 2: an LA cop movie from the eighties that we would
Speaker 2: cover on Weird House Cinema. And then you're good to go.
Speaker 2: And if you're wondering where you can find it, well,
Speaker 2: this one's pretty widely available to stream. I watched it
Speaker 2: on the Warner Brothers Blu ray, which is a rather
Speaker 2: nice little package. It features a director's commentary track plus
Speaker 2: a special effects feature. I rendered this one from Atlanta's
Speaker 2: own video dro.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if you want to pause the episode, go
Speaker 3: watch the hidden and then come back. Here is your chance. So,
Speaker 3: now that we're done with the warning, we can go
Speaker 3: on with the description and talk about how for the
Speaker 3: first ten minutes or so of this movie it seems
Speaker 3: like it's gonna be a routine cop movie. It just
Speaker 3: starts off with like a violent bank robbery and then
Speaker 3: a car chase, a bunch of shooting and explosions, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly I think it's about thirteen minutes into the
Speaker 3: movie you get this hard shift into sci fi horror
Speaker 3: when a spree killer and just general crime maniac languishing
Speaker 3: in a hospital bed after the opening action scene, suddenly
Speaker 3: barfs up a black slug from outer space into the
Speaker 3: mouth of another page in the hospital, transferring the real
Speaker 3: thrill killer of the movie, which is an alien parasite,
Speaker 3: into a new human host so that he can continue
Speaker 3: he can escape the hospital and continue his rampage. And
Speaker 3: then so that's the villain of the movie. And then
Speaker 3: Michael Newry and Kyle McLaughlin will spind the rest of
Speaker 3: the film chasing this alien slug psycho as it hops
Speaker 3: from body to body, committing random acts of violence, also
Speaker 3: acts of theft and gluttony. It's just generally a creature
Speaker 3: of desires, and it's going around always looking for a
Speaker 3: new sports car to steal, and they're going to be
Speaker 3: chasing it the whole time. And then we may have
Speaker 3: more secrets to learn beyond that initial reveal as well.
Speaker 2: That's right, we won't spoil all the spoilers during this portion.
Speaker 2: We'll get into some of them during the plot. But yeah,
Speaker 2: i'd say this particular cocktail of a film is roughly
Speaker 2: two parts. Even nineteen eighty five's To Live and Die
Speaker 2: in La so strong elements of that, you know, like
Speaker 2: the hard, you know, gritty contemporary crime saga told from
Speaker 2: the standpoint of you know, mostly police characters. But then
Speaker 2: there is there's a little bit of Terminator in there.
Speaker 2: There's also, as we've already alluded to, a strong dash
Speaker 2: of alien parasite films, bringing to mind things like seventy
Speaker 2: five Shivers or of course, the various adaptations of The
Speaker 2: Puppet Masters, in which there's some sort of indo parasite
Speaker 2: that controls the body.
Speaker 3: Was The Puppet Masters an uncredited inspiration on the movie
Speaker 3: we covered from the fifties called The Brain Eaters.
Speaker 2: I believe it was, Yes, yeah, this will quote. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The whole idea of like a parasite controlling you, of course,
Speaker 2: is gonna it's gonna fit very snugly in sort of
Speaker 2: the Macarthy era, you know, Blacklist era of Hollywood, when
Speaker 2: there's the you know, the fear of like some sort
Speaker 2: of communist parasite from outside is going to you know,
Speaker 2: change your romance, tick partner or your best friend into
Speaker 2: a communist. That sort of Thing.
Speaker 3: Maybe we should actually take a minute here to talk
Speaker 3: about the body hopping scenario in sci fi and horror movies,
Speaker 3: because you're right that that scenario is similar to other
Speaker 3: types of subgenres, like you know, replication like you would
Speaker 3: see in The Thing, or you know, an invasion of
Speaker 3: the body snatchers, but this is a little bit different
Speaker 3: in that it involves possession of the original bodies. So
Speaker 3: these are movies where the villain is some kind of
Speaker 3: alien or monster or demon that can take control of
Speaker 3: the bodies of human beings and then goes about hopping
Speaker 3: from one victim to the next, using the human disguise
Speaker 3: to its advantage.
Speaker 2: And it is a specific entity. And that's I think
Speaker 2: another thing that sets it apart from some of the
Speaker 2: other films I was trying to I was trying to
Speaker 2: think of other films that fit this category, and like,
Speaker 2: if it's a situation where a like demon in general
Speaker 2: are possessing people left and right, well that's that's not
Speaker 2: really That only match up with the Hidden It has
Speaker 2: to be a film in which there is a single demon,
Speaker 2: So not a demon that is Legion, but just a
Speaker 2: demon named Legion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, Well I was trying to think of examples,
Speaker 3: and I thought of a few. There's a movie I
Speaker 3: actually have never seen in full. It's one of those
Speaker 3: I saw like half of on TV years and years ago,
Speaker 3: but Fallen from nineteen ninety eight with Denzel Washington and
Speaker 3: John Goodman. I know it's a demon movie. In this case,
Speaker 3: it's a demon possessing human victims. I don't know what
Speaker 3: the demon's goal is in that movie. I think, is
Speaker 3: it just trying to take over the world or something?
Speaker 2: You know. I think I watched parts of this. I
Speaker 2: had it like on in the room in the dorm
Speaker 2: room when in college at some point, but I was
Speaker 2: like doing something else, I was studying or something. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but I think this film obviously you have
Speaker 2: some great actors in this. But one of the things
Speaker 2: about a body hopping film, as we're describing it now
Speaker 2: is in general, you're talking about a film where you
Speaker 2: don't have a single enigmatic bad guy player. You're gonna
Speaker 2: have to have multiple people play the bad guy, to
Speaker 2: be the sleeve for the bad guy, to be the
Speaker 2: body for the bad guy, and that could be anti
Speaker 2: climactic in some cases. I think this film does it
Speaker 2: really well. And we'll discuss all the ways that it
Speaker 2: does such a good job with it.
Speaker 3: You mean this film The Hidden or this film Fallen
Speaker 3: the Hidden?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my memory of Fallen is too vague to remember
Speaker 2: how well they played it. Like, I think John Goodman
Speaker 2: ends up being possessed at some point, and if so,
Speaker 2: I'm willing to guess that plays really well because John
Speaker 2: Goodman is a great actor.
Speaker 3: He can do he can do lovable and hateable and
Speaker 3: does both in the same movie sometimes. Yeah. Ever seen
Speaker 3: Barton Fink? I mean yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's great
Speaker 3: in that. But yeah, it does does both there. But
Speaker 3: and so there's another body hopping movie that came to
Speaker 3: mind for me. Rob. Have you seen Shocker the West?
Speaker 2: I've never seen Shocker? No, I know this is This
Speaker 2: is one of your faves. I've heard you talk about
Speaker 2: it multiple times.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to do Shocker on Weird House one day,
Speaker 3: and we may also have to review the old segment
Speaker 3: from the Ciskel and Ebert TV show where Gene Siskel
Speaker 3: is just trying to explain why he thinks Shocker is
Speaker 3: a great movie, Like he's got words seem to be
Speaker 3: failing him. But so the premise of this movie is
Speaker 3: You've got a serial killer played by Mitch Poleggi his
Speaker 3: Skinner from the X Files. And this serial killer works
Speaker 3: a day job as a TV repair man, and when
Speaker 3: he so, he gets caught for his crimes and they're
Speaker 3: preparing to execute him in the electric chair, but before
Speaker 3: that happens, he does some kind of satanic ritual involving
Speaker 3: a TV and jumper cables, which transforms him into an
Speaker 3: electricity ghost who can travel through power lines and come
Speaker 3: out of electrical sockets, come out of TV screens, and
Speaker 3: he can also possess human beings, so he jumps into
Speaker 3: people takes control of their bodies. A motive of the
Speaker 3: body hopper in this movie seems to be it's mostly revenge,
Speaker 3: like he wants revenge against the protagonist of the movie,
Speaker 3: who is a high school football player who happens to
Speaker 3: be psychic played by Peter Berg. This character helped catch
Speaker 3: the killer in the first place, and I think also
Speaker 3: he just wants to keep on doing crimes and he's
Speaker 3: going to do them in Electricity Ghost Slash, possessing human
Speaker 3: bodies for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I never saw this one, but I do remember
Speaker 2: the trailers for it. I saw the trailers for it
Speaker 2: when you know, as a child, I just believed everything
Speaker 2: that the trailers were throwing at me. I thought this guy,
Speaker 2: the main character, was going to be the next Ready Krueger.
Speaker 2: I don't remember if they actually made that promise, but
Speaker 2: they probably heavily hyped from the creator of a Nightmare
Speaker 2: on Elm Street, and I was like, Oh, this is
Speaker 2: going to be the next big franchise.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think that's what they were going for,
Speaker 3: because he's already late sequel Freddie in terms of he's
Speaker 3: doing a lot of he makes like jokes, he has
Speaker 3: one liners. He's like a wise, cracking, sinister kind of villain. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: not soft spoken. Another one actually to complete the You know,
Speaker 3: so you got the Freddy analog on one side the
Speaker 3: Craven verse. Also, did you know that there is a
Speaker 3: Friday the Thirteenth movie that's a body hopping movie.
Speaker 2: This this is something I always forget about, and I
Speaker 2: don't think i've seen this one in full, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it makes sense that they would begin to
Speaker 2: run out of things to do in the Friday the
Speaker 2: Thirteenth franchise.
Speaker 3: So Friday Thirteenth Part nine Jason Goes to Hell is,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, the worst of all the Friday thirteenth movies.
Speaker 3: It is enlivened only slightly by some well one thing
Speaker 3: that sort of perks it up for a moment is
Speaker 3: the presence of a bizarre character named Creighton Duke played
Speaker 3: by the actor Steven Williams, who is some kind of
Speaker 3: bounty hunter who's supposed to be hunting Jason Vorhees, the
Speaker 3: hockey mask guy in the Friday movies. It's been a
Speaker 3: while since I've seen this one, but I recall there's
Speaker 3: a part where he divulges lore about how Jason can
Speaker 3: only be killed by another vor he Is from the
Speaker 3: Vorhe's line, it's like from a Varhe's was he made
Speaker 3: only by a Varheez? Can he be unmade? And they
Speaker 3: also have to use a magic dagger? But in this
Speaker 3: movie Jason. One of the big criticisms from fans of
Speaker 3: the series is that for most of the movie, or
Speaker 3: at least half of the movie, Jason doesn't look like Jason.
Speaker 3: He's not the guy in the jumpsuit with the hockey mask.
Speaker 3: He's body hopping. So it's in the beginning of the
Speaker 3: movie like a bunch of FBI agents or something kind
Speaker 3: of blow Jason up into pieces and then some and
Speaker 3: then there's like a medical pathologist who's doing an autopsy
Speaker 3: on the remains of Jason's body, and I think gets
Speaker 3: like hypnotized by Jason's evil heart and then eats his
Speaker 3: heart and then gets body possessed and like turns into Jason,
Speaker 3: but doesn't look like him except in a mirror, so
Speaker 3: it's just a regular looking guy walking around. And then
Speaker 3: he trades bodies a few more times in the movie,
Speaker 3: so he exists as this weird little like fecal rat
Speaker 3: snake demon who like goes out of the mouth. I
Speaker 3: think he gets like pooped out of somebody's mouth into
Speaker 3: somebody's other somebody else's mouth, much like the Slug and
Speaker 3: The Hidden actually quite mechanically similar. I'm going to say
Speaker 3: this effect in the Hidden looks a lot better than
Speaker 3: the one and oh, Jason goes to Hell.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what it looks like. And Jason
Speaker 2: goes to Hell, but it's perfect in the Hidden, so.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I can't I can't prove, but suspect that
Speaker 3: both Shocker and Jason Goes to Hell were influenced by
Speaker 3: the Hidden.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean the Jason goes to Hell concept here.
Speaker 2: First of all, it's also I think this movie bombed
Speaker 2: for a lot of people because the title sounds like
Speaker 2: you're getting Jason, you know, in the Divine Comedy that
Speaker 2: he's going to go to help on. Yeah, it's going
Speaker 2: to be incredible, Like, what a great title. And then
Speaker 2: it doesn't deliver on that. But by enlarge, the concept
Speaker 2: of like, oh, we are all potentially Jason now, like
Speaker 2: that could have been really good if the well wasn't
Speaker 2: so poisoned by this movie. I could imagine going someone
Speaker 2: going back to that, you know, because it's like all
Speaker 2: you have to do now they got a hockey mask on,
Speaker 2: they're killing people. You know, it's a you know, it's
Speaker 2: you know, this type of person one minute, this type
Speaker 2: of person the next. Who will the next Jason be?
Speaker 2: Could have worked?
Speaker 3: I mean I think anything could work if done well.
Speaker 2: But it's just was not done.
Speaker 3: It doesn't do it for me. I get a lot
Speaker 3: of tolerance for Jason movies. Also, even like the not
Speaker 3: good ones, I can just I have a good time
Speaker 3: sitting through those, but this one doesn't do it for me.
Speaker 3: All right, But yeah, so and then I was also thinking, Okay,
Speaker 3: what's the motive of the monster there? I think I
Speaker 3: think it's just Jason, like it wants to, you know,
Speaker 3: he does what Jason does, even when he's in somebody
Speaker 3: else's body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, rise out of water, destroy teenager, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I do think in this case, he's trying to
Speaker 3: destroy the people who could I don't know, he's trying
Speaker 3: to destroy his relatives or something, because they're the only
Speaker 3: ones who can unjason him with a magic dagger. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: and self defense new lore introduced in part nine, Thank you.
Speaker 3: But anyway, this got me thinking about trends and themes
Speaker 3: in body hopping movies as opposed to other types of
Speaker 3: horror and sci fi movies. And it got me thinking
Speaker 3: about how they're really like two different kinds of body
Speaker 3: hopping scenarios in these movies. And I just made these
Speaker 3: terms up. I would call this like common deering versus repurposing.
Speaker 3: So in your commandeering story, the original person who gets
Speaker 3: possessed in some way remains alive and could, in theory,
Speaker 3: reassume control of their body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and generally there'll be a scene where someone's like,
Speaker 2: I know, you're still in there, Sally, Yeah, remember this
Speaker 2: photo of your dad, remember this stuff to animal and
Speaker 2: or the other side of that too, is like the
Speaker 2: possessing entity like brings out the evil side of the
Speaker 2: person it's possessing.
Speaker 3: That's sort of right. Yeah, And sometimes they're fighting for
Speaker 3: control of the body. But so and it can have
Speaker 3: different versions, like so the commandeering story, it could have
Speaker 3: the person sort of rendered unconscious by the process of
Speaker 3: the monster taking control and using their body. But other
Speaker 3: times it's like they're conscious and aware, but they're just
Speaker 3: powerless to control their own actions, like they are being
Speaker 3: forced to sit in the passenger seat of their own
Speaker 3: body while somebody else takes the wheel. Whereas I would
Speaker 3: say that the repurposing version of this storyline is the
Speaker 3: original person is gone and their body is now simply
Speaker 3: a shell or a vehicle to be used by the monster.
Speaker 3: I think this is the case in The Hidden I
Speaker 3: don't know if you can think of a counter example,
Speaker 3: but I don't think we ever get any indication that
Speaker 3: the original person could or does survive in any way.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. It seems like once the monster's
Speaker 3: in there in the Hidden There, the person is dead
Speaker 3: and the monster is just using the body to blend in.
Speaker 2: That largely seems to be the model here. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's complicated by the fact that the possessing evil entity
Speaker 2: generally has no intention of you know, returning the vhs
Speaker 2: at the end of the rental. You know, he drives
Speaker 2: them all like he stole them, you know, generally into
Speaker 2: the ground and into an explosion, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And then also we see cases where he is possessing
Speaker 2: a body that he is either already fatally injured or
Speaker 2: about to die, or may in fact be dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So I was thinking about the ways
Speaker 3: that these slightly different ways of dealing with the scenario
Speaker 3: bring up different themes, like how commandeering scenarios in storytelling
Speaker 3: generally introduced themes of agency and control. It's like you're
Speaker 3: talking about with the scene, like I know you're in
Speaker 3: their sally. You know you can fight back. And these
Speaker 3: can often be metaphors for like real situations that make
Speaker 3: people feel as if they're not in control of their
Speaker 3: own actions, or situations where people act against their interests.
Speaker 3: So subjects like addiction or compulsive behavior, temptation against our
Speaker 3: better angels, and things like that. Whereas repurposing scenarios, I think,
Speaker 3: tend to be more about external threats, about trust and suspicion,
Speaker 3: and they raise questions like can you ever really know
Speaker 3: another person? And are other people really who you think
Speaker 3: they are? And I think that The Hidden does in
Speaker 3: fact deal more with the latter themes than with the former.
Speaker 3: It's not really about agency and control, but it is
Speaker 3: very much about are people really who you think they are?
Speaker 3: And that comes through in multiple ways. The themes are
Speaker 3: kind of subtle because on the surface level, it really
Speaker 3: is like a meathead action movie, like it's a bullet
Speaker 3: hell plot. It doesn't usually stop to get very, you know,
Speaker 3: very thoughtful. The ways in which it's thoughtful are just
Speaker 3: kind of for you to find on your own mostly,
Speaker 3: But I think these themes are there, like it asks
Speaker 3: can how can we really trust that people are who
Speaker 3: they say they are? And that applies to politicians seeking
Speaker 3: power and to family members seeking love and intimacy. It
Speaker 3: is a question raised in multiple ways by the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I would agree that that that
Speaker 2: depth is there for you to explore on your own
Speaker 2: if you want to.
Speaker 3: In between explosions, Yes, but I would also say that
Speaker 3: of all the movies we've been talking about, I think
Speaker 3: The Hidden makes better, weirder and funnier use of the
Speaker 3: body hopping plot convention than most of the other movies
Speaker 3: that I can think of that do some version of this.
Speaker 2: I would agree this movie is tremendous if you're on
Speaker 2: board for the eighties cop violence, and I have to
Speaker 2: distress like the violence in this film. You know, it's
Speaker 2: nowhere near like the RoboCop level of like disturbing violence.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's a there's a lot of shoot
Speaker 2: them up in a lot of squibs, like you said,
Speaker 2: But on the whole that the tone here is fun.
Speaker 2: It is not a feel bad motion picture. It isn't
Speaker 2: It is body horror, but not not body horror in
Speaker 2: the sense that we often think about it today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say I agree with you about the
Speaker 3: violence because like most of the stuff, it moves on
Speaker 3: from pretty quick. But there is some violence in it
Speaker 3: that feels pretty nasty because it is the alien doing
Speaker 3: its crime spree, and not just like fighting cops, but
Speaker 3: just like randomly killing like random civilians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you if you don't want to
Speaker 2: see that kind of thing, because obviously it does mirror
Speaker 2: things that happen in our real world. Give it a
Speaker 2: skip or you know, wait till you're in the right
Speaker 2: mood for it. But but if you're willing to stomach
Speaker 2: all of that, it's pretty fun.
Speaker 3: Uh So elevator pitch. I mean, we've sort of gone
Speaker 3: over this, but I would say it's like one part
Speaker 3: by the Numbers hardcore cop thing. It's one part like
Speaker 3: satirical science fiction. It's Kurt Vonnegut in a way almost.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's a little bit overpraising it,
Speaker 3: but it's it's a little bit Vonneguty. It's one part
Speaker 3: proto Twin Peaks and another part just watching somebody play
Speaker 3: Grand Theft auto.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point, and I'll give it
Speaker 2: an alternate elevator pitch. I'm just gonna say Space slug
Speaker 2: the motion picture. Oh yeah, all right, Well, let's get
Speaker 2: into the folks behind this one. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: add another spoiler warning here because in running through the cast,
Speaker 2: I am going to go ahead and reveal many of
Speaker 2: the people who end up getting Space Slugged that end
Speaker 2: up being possessed and becoming the meat suit for the
Speaker 2: parasite because it's ultimately important for evaluating the actors performances,
Speaker 2: I think because absolutely some of the if we just
Speaker 2: told them, oh yeah, this guy plays a dude in
Speaker 2: the hospital, like that doesn't tell you anything like that,
Speaker 2: they really get to shine when they are possessed by
Speaker 2: the space lug.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I agree. This is again why I put the
Speaker 3: spoiler warning right at the top of this episode, because
Speaker 3: this is one where we really just like, you can't
Speaker 3: talk about it at all without spoiling some of the surprises,
Speaker 3: and we have to be able to talk about it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we're warning again if if you didn't heed
Speaker 3: us the first time and you want to keep and
Speaker 3: you want to watch it with some surprises still intact,
Speaker 3: stop here, go watch it and then come back.
Speaker 2: I have to say this. I'm I'm really I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed this one. I had never seen it before, and
Speaker 2: I'd really heard very little about it. It'd come up
Speaker 2: previously on Weird House Cinema because of a connection we're
Speaker 2: going to get into here. But since it has kind
Speaker 2: of maybe flown under the radar to a certain extent
Speaker 2: and you know, still has its I think has its
Speaker 2: own sort of cult status. But but it isn't the
Speaker 2: sort of thing that's just going to be naturally spoiled
Speaker 2: for everyone out there. So I think it's a lot
Speaker 2: easier to come in fresh on this one versus certain
Speaker 2: other like spoiler heavy movies out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not like knowing that Rosebud is a sled.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, all right, Well let's get into it here.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the director who we mentioned earlier. It's
Speaker 2: Jack Shoulder born nineteen forty five, American director whose credits
Speaker 2: go back to nineteen seventy three with the film The
Speaker 2: Garden Party, which he also wrote adapted from the Catherine
Speaker 2: Mansfield short story. After this, in eighty two, he wrote
Speaker 2: the hockey mask slasher movie Alone in the Dark that
Speaker 2: had Jack Palance, Donald Pleasants, and Martin Landau in it,
Speaker 2: and that came out just a couple of months after
Speaker 2: Friday the Thirteenth, Part three, the first movie I Believe
Speaker 2: in which Jason actually wore the hockey.
Speaker 3: Mask, right, no hockey mask in one or two. Jason's
Speaker 3: not the killer in the first movie, and the second
Speaker 3: movie he wears a bag on his head, which actually
Speaker 3: is creepier than the hockey mask. But the hockey mask
Speaker 3: is a better choice overall in making him an iconic
Speaker 3: and recognizable villain because the bag is creepy, but it's
Speaker 3: not distinctive.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, as far as I can tell, these two
Speaker 2: movies both just kind of have the same idea at
Speaker 2: the same time for different reasons. And to be cleared,
Speaker 2: neither was the first kind of like killer movie in
Speaker 2: which the killer wears a hockey mask.
Speaker 3: All right, well, do you know what the first one was?
Speaker 2: I do. Let me try to remember what its more
Speaker 2: pleasant title is.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: No, it is a film called Act of Vengeance from
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four. As far as I know, there may
Speaker 2: be something earlier than that, but that I think is
Speaker 2: the earliest motion picture in which a killer or villain
Speaker 2: of some sort has a hockey mask on.
Speaker 3: Oh does it have an alternate title? You didn't want
Speaker 3: to say out loud?
Speaker 2: Correct? Yeah, you know it has a I've never seen it.
Speaker 2: In my understanding, it's an imperfect film that doesn't really
Speaker 2: handle its themes very well. Okay, So yeah, after a
Speaker 2: loan in the Dark, he goes on to direct nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty Five's a Nightmare on Elm Street too, Freddy's Revenge.
Speaker 2: This is one that has. I don't know. I think
Speaker 2: for a while was maybe considered a lesser Nightmare installment,
Speaker 2: but I believe has has been reevaluated a lot in
Speaker 2: like over the last couple of decades anyway, in large
Speaker 2: part because of its homo erotic elements.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's a movie that has clearly a lot
Speaker 3: of like gay themes coming through. And I think that
Speaker 3: used to be received more with mocking and derision because
Speaker 3: it was perceived as like an unintentional thing about the movie,
Speaker 3: and it's like, oh, it's so weird that it has
Speaker 3: all these gay themes when it's not supposed to. And
Speaker 3: then I think the more recent strain and interpretation is like,
Speaker 3: well maybe it was just supposed to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding of it. I don't think
Speaker 2: I've ever seen that one. I've of course seen the
Speaker 2: first Nightmare, and I've seen I've seen a lot of
Speaker 2: the sequels after that, maybe not like a committed viewing,
Speaker 2: but sort of like you know, high school viewings. But
Speaker 2: I don't think I ever watched two. But we'll have
Speaker 2: more to say about Nightmare on Elm Street. This movie
Speaker 2: has a lot of Nightmare on Elm Street connections. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's see this. So after this movie, he did The Hidden.
Speaker 2: The Hidden was his follow up to Nightmare two, and
Speaker 2: subsequent films included eighty nine's Renegades, ninety nine's Wish Master two,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one's Aracknid, and he also just did
Speaker 2: a lot of TV work, including episodes of Tales from
Speaker 2: the Crypt. The episode in particular is a Fitting Punishment,
Speaker 2: which is a good, if not super fun episode. I
Speaker 2: believe this is the one that's set at like like
Speaker 2: a black funeral home and has some really good actors.
Speaker 2: This's come up on the show before because of you know,
Speaker 2: dip connected actors. Let's see. He also did an episode
Speaker 2: of the TV show Generation X, which was like a
Speaker 2: marvel thing Mortal Kombat conquest, as well as at least
Speaker 2: one episode of The Trimmer's television series, which I don't
Speaker 2: think I've ever watched that either, but does have a
Speaker 2: good cast.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say that of the Jack Shoulder movies
Speaker 3: I have seen, the Hidden is Head and Shoulder is
Speaker 3: the best one. I think this is like a crowning
Speaker 3: achievement here. Yeah, though I haven't seen every one of
Speaker 3: his movies.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's really solid, like if The Hidden was
Speaker 2: your first Jack Shoulder movie to see, you'd be like,
Speaker 2: I've got to see all the other things this guy did.
Speaker 2: Let's see that Mortal Kombat conquest.
Speaker 3: But the Raknid from two thousand doesn't quite live.
Speaker 2: Up to Yeah Yeah, but it is really solid. And
Speaker 2: I didn't have the time to really get into the
Speaker 2: commentary track, but I did check out the special effects feature,
Speaker 2: which has some thoughts from Shoulder about the film, and
Speaker 2: I thought he was very well spoken about some of
Speaker 2: the choices they made, and we'll get into some of
Speaker 2: those as we discussed the plot. I will note that
Speaker 2: there is a sequel to this movie, nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: is The Hidden two. It features no returning talent outside
Speaker 2: of archive footage, but Todd Masters was involved in the
Speaker 2: special effects, which is a good sign, so if nothing else,
Speaker 2: it probably has some interesting effects work in it, all right.
Speaker 2: The screenwriter on this film is someone we've talked about
Speaker 2: in the show before. It's Jim Coff born nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: writer and producer who was involved in a little film
Speaker 2: from nineteen eighty one called The Buggins Unbelievable.
Speaker 3: This is like several levels above the Bogins as a script,
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, No, I mean The Buggins was fun,
Speaker 3: but like, this is actually an interesting and funny movie.
Speaker 3: It has a lot of cliches and stuff in it,
Speaker 3: But I would class this as like a really good script,
Speaker 3: And I don't know if I'd say the same about
Speaker 3: The Buggins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but both are bug movies. In fact, you could
Speaker 2: make an argument that the space lug in this movie
Speaker 2: is a bugin in the sense that if we're going
Speaker 2: to use boogin as a as a general term for
Speaker 2: some sort of a mysterious, nasty insect type creature.
Speaker 3: What if the Buggins did what the Yeah, so you
Speaker 3: take that story. But the Buggins just crawl into people's
Speaker 3: mouths and possess them.
Speaker 2: Why not? Why not? We don't know the full life
Speaker 2: cycle of a bogin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's right. Man. Can you imagine putting
Speaker 3: Kyle McLaughlin in that cabin? That really would have mixed things?
Speaker 2: That would have it might have been interesting. Kyle McLaughlin
Speaker 2: does bring a special charm to things. One more thing
Speaker 2: about Jim Coff, I'll just say that, as we reference
Speaker 2: in that episode on the book Ins, a very successful
Speaker 2: career He wrote his screenplay credits on such films as
Speaker 2: ninety eight, ninety eighth Rush Hour, two thousand and four's
Speaker 2: National Treasure, twenty sixteen's Money Monster, and one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty three episodes of TV's Grim, which he also created
Speaker 2: and produced. All Right, yeah, let's now, let's get to
Speaker 2: Kyle McLaughlin, who plays FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher in this film.
Speaker 2: Born nineteen fifty nine. We previously discussed McLaughlin in our
Speaker 2: two part episode on David Lynch's Dune, in which he
Speaker 2: played paul A Tredes in his film debut. We have
Speaker 2: to that's always kind of mind blowing to realize that
Speaker 2: though he had previously been an extra in nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: The changelingk McLaughlin, of course, is in a accomplished American
Speaker 2: actor who excels really especially when you think about like
Speaker 2: things that you've seen Kyle maclaughlinin where he really steals
Speaker 2: a show. I find that he's really great at navigating
Speaker 2: this space between traditional handsome, almost innocent, you know, seeming
Speaker 2: at times leading man. He has that charm for sure,
Speaker 2: and in that sense, you could you could put him
Speaker 2: in a time machine and send him back to the
Speaker 2: fifties or the sixth or you know, certainly the fifties,
Speaker 2: even though you know the forties, and he would excel.
Speaker 2: You know, he has all the all the tools he
Speaker 2: needs to succeed there. But he also can vary with
Speaker 2: great skill. He can enter into weirder, darker territory, and
Speaker 2: so he kind of has a foot in both worlds. Well.
Speaker 3: I think this is the thing that makes him the
Speaker 3: perfect actor to be a David Lynch lead. I mean,
Speaker 3: he just fits right in with the David Lynch sensibility
Speaker 3: of the character in the world that is, at one
Speaker 3: sense leave it to beaver and in the other sense
Speaker 3: exploring the darkest and strangest things in the human heart. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they able to just really dig into those roles.
Speaker 2: So yeah, McLaughlin's great in everything. Two time Emmy Award
Speaker 2: winner for his work on David Lynch's Twin Peaks, and
Speaker 2: of course he also worked with Lynch on eighty six
Speaker 2: is Blue Velvet. He remains highly active today, with notable
Speaker 2: roles on TV's Fallout. He was on the at least
Speaker 2: the first season of The Lowdown. The Hidden was only
Speaker 2: his third credited acting role, following Dune and Blue Velvet. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: he'd appear in the eighty nine TV movie dream Breakers
Speaker 2: before starring in Twin Peaks.
Speaker 3: So he was an FBI agent in this movie before
Speaker 3: he was Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks, sort of the
Speaker 3: role that I think for a lot of people defines him.
Speaker 3: Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2: Like? I would think so, I mean, that's where he
Speaker 2: That's where I think I weirdly enough saw him first,
Speaker 2: just because you know, even if you didn't watch Twin Peaks,
Speaker 2: it was all over TV. I think I was aware
Speaker 2: of Twin Peaks before I was even aware at least,
Speaker 2: you know, so level before I was aware of Dim. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and yeah, he's great here. He plays that in the
Speaker 2: FBI agent sense. You know, he plays a fish out
Speaker 2: of water. You know. We have this gritty world of
Speaker 2: hard boiled LA detectives, you know, who are just trying
Speaker 2: to get through the day, and then here comes this
Speaker 2: FBI guy in a nice suit, in a nice car,
Speaker 2: and he's pursuing this strange and dangerous killer and seems
Speaker 2: to have knowledge that the LA detectives do not have.
Speaker 3: I I mean, so there are multiple movies where this
Speaker 3: movie makes a step change into a different type of weirdness.
Speaker 3: And one of the big ones is the scene we
Speaker 3: already talked about and we will talk about again where
Speaker 3: there is a space slug vomited from one mouth into another.
Speaker 3: Like that's a big change. But I would say there
Speaker 3: is also a more subtle shift in the tone of
Speaker 3: the movie when Kyle McLaughlin arrives, because you meet the
Speaker 3: other cops first, but the other cops are all movie cops.
Speaker 3: They're all these like tough talking, macho cop guys talking
Speaker 3: their cop cliches. And then when Kyle McLaughlin appears, he
Speaker 3: has such a different energy. There is this this soft,
Speaker 3: kind of wise, but kind of aloof a little bit
Speaker 3: reticent strangeness about him that is so ill fitting with
Speaker 3: all of the other characters. You're right that it's a
Speaker 3: fish out of water, but it's a I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's a fish out of water unlike any I've ever
Speaker 3: seen before that in this like cop movie world, this
Speaker 3: strange ethereal being walks into it and is like, Hi,
Speaker 3: I'm the head cop now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we should also, you know, we can
Speaker 2: also say that in any of the different cliches that
Speaker 2: this movie is playing with in different tropes, one of course,
Speaker 2: is the buddy cop scenario, or in this case, it's
Speaker 2: the the hard boiled LA detective who must team up
Speaker 2: with this FBI outsider in order to chase the bad guy.
Speaker 2: And in this our main hard boiled LA police detective
Speaker 2: is Detective Tom Beck played by Michael Norri born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five. And I would also argue that he I
Speaker 2: think he's also our structural protagonist in many ways as well.
Speaker 2: We meet him first, it's his understanding of this FBI
Speaker 2: agent and his sort of you know, what he's learning
Speaker 2: about this killer. Thereafter, it's his point of view that
Speaker 2: we're mostly interacting with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that, certainly in the first
Speaker 3: half of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the explosions happened, certainly. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Michael Norri, I thought he's really great in this one
Speaker 2: thing you mentioned, you know, all the cops are you know,
Speaker 2: they're spouting a lot of the lingo, a lot of
Speaker 2: the cliches are in play here. But that being said,
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of cop media over the years,
Speaker 2: as have most of us, because it's like half of
Speaker 2: everything that's out there. And I did feel like all
Speaker 2: of the purely cop scenes were really well done. I mean,
Speaker 2: you have a great cast of character actors that are
Speaker 2: filling out the rest of the police precinct here, so
Speaker 2: you know, everybody's doing a great job. Everything feels like,
Speaker 2: like realistically gritty and doesn't feel you know, they're kind
Speaker 2: of going for that to live and die in La Vibe,
Speaker 2: which isn't you know. It's not too far into any
Speaker 2: kind of like noir or neo noir. It's maybe a
Speaker 2: little more in keeping with some of the like the
Speaker 2: mainstream cop TV show stuff that's out there, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about even stuff like The Wire, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right. I mean, it is doing a thing
Speaker 3: that is familiar with the cops, but it's doing it
Speaker 3: pretty well. Yeah, And I would also flag that it's
Speaker 3: doing a slightly different thing because we're used to seeing
Speaker 3: these like gruff, hard working cops that are like, you know,
Speaker 3: ribbing each other and everything. But the context in which
Speaker 3: they're doing that in this movie I picked up was
Speaker 3: that these cops are overworked. They're public servants who are
Speaker 3: being there being sort of overworked work to the bone,
Speaker 3: and we are seeing them coping with that scenario. So
Speaker 3: it's kind of like RoboCop in that sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there is a strong sense of burnout too,
Speaker 2: certainly to Michael Nory's character a detective back here. So yeah,
Speaker 2: Norri's great in this. I wasn't super familiar with him.
Speaker 2: His credits go back to nineteen sixty eight, and at
Speaker 2: this point he had already played Count Dracula on NBC
Speaker 2: in a nineteen seventy nine TV serial. But don't get
Speaker 2: too excited, because it was the Curse of Dracula, in
Speaker 2: which the Prince of Darkness is teaching college in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: So still, you look at the stills and you look
Speaker 2: at Michael Norri in this film, and you can totally
Speaker 2: imagine this guy playing Dracula, regardless of the tone.
Speaker 3: You know, I was trying to think who Michael Norri
Speaker 3: reminds me of other actors who were in the same
Speaker 3: kind of zone. He's a little bit more macho, but
Speaker 3: very much reminds me of Chris Sarandon, who also played
Speaker 3: a Dracula character. They have similar like, you know, voluminous, lush,
Speaker 3: curly hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. He also reminded me just a little
Speaker 2: bit of Stephen Bauer. M Okay, yeah, So but anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Noori's great. Here, let's see he another major thing he
Speaker 2: was in. He played Jennifer Beal's romantic romantic interest in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty three film Flash Dance, which I haven't
Speaker 2: seen in a bit, but you know, amazing theme song
Speaker 2: on that. As we've discussed in the show before.
Speaker 3: Hold on, was that the the fulchy musical movie flash Dance? No?
Speaker 2: No, Flash Dance is the murder rock I think he
Speaker 2: murder rock? Yeah, murder rock would have been, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: would have been tremendous had the music been good. I didn't.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to be on board for murder rock,
Speaker 2: but I did not like any of the murder rock music.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a bummer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but
Speaker 2: at any rate, Nori's subsequent film output includes nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: Captain America from Albert Pune.
Speaker 3: Oh, the one with Salinger in it with what's his name?
Speaker 2: Uh? Oh?
Speaker 3: I always forget his first name? Hold on, yeah, J D.
Speaker 2: Salinger's son, is that, yes, playing Captain America.
Speaker 3: That's right? Hold on, let me, I'm sorry, DJ Salinger.
Speaker 3: I think I just looked it up. Sorry, I always
Speaker 3: forget his first name, Matt Salinger, as we've talked about
Speaker 3: how maybe we should do the Pune Captain America at
Speaker 3: some point, especially because I've seen it, but it's been
Speaker 3: so long I barely remember it. I remember it being funny.
Speaker 2: I definitely watched it.
Speaker 3: I remember it being funny. But the strange thing is,
Speaker 3: after we did the episode on Nemesis, I was reading
Speaker 3: that there's apparently another cut. There's like a substantially different
Speaker 3: re edit of Pune's Captain America, which people say makes
Speaker 3: it a lot better. So I don't know, and check
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's see. Other films include nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: ones The Psychic and ninety five's Hologram Man. But with
Speaker 2: lots of TV work on major shows including The OC
Speaker 2: and Damages, and he recently recently appeared on the popular
Speaker 2: series The Pit. Yeah, all right, let's talk about some
Speaker 2: getting a little factioning with the rest of the cast
Speaker 2: here and spending a little less time with them. Let's
Speaker 2: get into some cops of note here. One of them
Speaker 2: is Lieutenant John Masterson, played by Clarence Felder born nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight, American character actor of stage, screen, and TV's
Speaker 2: credits include eighty six as Ruthless People and eighty nine's
Speaker 2: Nightmare on Elm Street, The Dream Child. He acted on
Speaker 2: Broadway and worked extensively in television. He's also written and
Speaker 2: produced solid as one of the cops is the Lieutenant. Here,
Speaker 2: he indeed gets possessed by the space Slug and has
Speaker 2: a great run in space Slug possession mode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he does a rampage inside a police station much
Speaker 3: like the original Terminator movie. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we'll come back the specifics of that later,
Speaker 2: but he's great. Loved him, all right. We also have
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Ed Flynn and he's played by klu Galligher. Small
Speaker 2: role does allow the you know, the character to have
Speaker 2: the old Gulligher shine and you know you always can
Speaker 2: recognize that voice and that drawl, but does not get
Speaker 2: space slugged, which I took his relief.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, you didn't want him to get slugged. I
Speaker 3: didn't want him to get slugged.
Speaker 2: No, No, I didn't think he needed he needed to
Speaker 2: take one off. Last time we watched the Clue Galligher movie,
Speaker 2: he got killed by mute cat. So I was like,
Speaker 2: let him have this one. Let him have this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, oh that was Uninvited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, nineteen yeah, yeah, was that ninety eight?
Speaker 2: Do I have that wrong in my notes?
Speaker 3: That's definitely wrong.
Speaker 2: That's definitely wrong.
Speaker 3: It's much eighty nine, more like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like seventy eight. Yeah. So yeah, he
Speaker 2: was in The Uninvited And we previously talked about that.
Speaker 2: He had a great TV heavy run as an actor
Speaker 2: in mostly westerns back in the sixties, but then became
Speaker 2: a horror movie staple in the nineteen eighties, and in
Speaker 2: this film, in the Hidden he was coming off roles
Speaker 2: in a Nightmare on Elm Street Part two and The
Speaker 2: Return of the Living Dead, which is a big one.
Speaker 2: That's that's a huge part of his you know, late
Speaker 2: career turn back into horror.
Speaker 3: Very funny. In Return to the Living Dead and Nightmare
Speaker 3: on Elm Street Part two, he plays the protagonist's dad,
Speaker 3: I believe, and I think he gets attacked by an
Speaker 3: exploding parrot.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, all right. Another cop of No We Have
Speaker 2: willis Cliff Willis, and he's played by Ed o' ross
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty nine, American character actor with a great
Speaker 2: face and a knack for playing tough guys from cops
Speaker 2: to gangsters, and then back to cops again, and then
Speaker 2: back into gangsters again. In fact, he played the gangster
Speaker 2: Itchy in nineteen nineties Dick Tracy. I included images of
Speaker 2: this character Jove, you don't remember. I think his whole
Speaker 2: thing is that, you know, like all the villains in
Speaker 2: Dick Tracy, if you don't remember, are like comic book mutants,
Speaker 2: and they're not supposed to be mutants, but they take
Speaker 2: a special effects, makeup heavy approach to portraying the the
Speaker 2: unrealistic way that they were portrayed in the original comic books.
Speaker 2: Itchi's whole thing, though, is he's just Itchy. I think
Speaker 2: he has psoriasis or something. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I remember there's one called little Face. The little face
Speaker 3: and a big head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, really, I mean it feels like body heart.
Speaker 2: When you have characters like that and prune Face and
Speaker 2: shoulders and so forth, all of them looks like monster men.
Speaker 2: Itchi less so, but also memorable. And if my vague
Speaker 2: memory is correct on this, I think Itchi had a
Speaker 2: pretty strong run in the film. I think he had
Speaker 2: a fair amount of screen time. Some of these mutant
Speaker 2: mobsters got killed off pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Other credits. Other films people might know him from include
Speaker 2: eighty seven's Lethal Weapon, eighty seven's Full Metal Jacket, eighty
Speaker 2: eight's Red Red Heat, as well as Action Jackson and
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two's Universal Soul. He also played a cop
Speaker 2: twice on Seinfeld and is still still active, still playing cops,
Speaker 2: I imagine. So, I mean, you know, like I say,
Speaker 2: a great, great character actor with a you know, a
Speaker 2: real real shine for playing you know, kind of heavies.
Speaker 2: I also have to really give him credit because he's like,
Speaker 2: what is he six sixth billing here in this film?
Speaker 2: Very much playing a supporting role, but on like the
Speaker 2: poster for the addition that I rented, and really one
Speaker 2: of the main posters for this film in general. His
Speaker 2: face is plastered all over it. So half of his face, yeahs,
Speaker 2: half of his face on the poster. So what a coup, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, well done. I don't know how it happened.
Speaker 3: Well, if I had to guess, it's because some climactic
Speaker 3: events take place while he is being space slugged.
Speaker 2: That's right, he gets space slugged and he's he's really
Speaker 2: good in that role. Yeah, all right, let's talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about the Beck family. This again we have
Speaker 2: Detective Beck, and this is the Detective Beck's wife and child,
Speaker 2: you know, side characters, but important ones. His wife, Barbara Beck,
Speaker 2: is played by Catherine Cannon born nineteen fifty three, mostly
Speaker 2: a TV actress whose biggest main cast shows were Father
Speaker 2: Murphy and Beverly Hills nine O two one. Oh. And
Speaker 2: then we have the little girl, Juliet Beck, played by
Speaker 2: Kristin Clayton. Child actress. She played a little girl in
Speaker 2: Nightmare on Elm Street three as well as Nightmare on
Speaker 2: Elm Street four, and was also a little girl in
Speaker 2: an episode of Freddie's Nightmares, Oh.
Speaker 3: The Freddie TV show. It's strange that we have all
Speaker 3: these Netmore on Elm Street connections going beyond just the
Speaker 3: second one, which.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it would make sense that there would be one,
Speaker 2: you know, tied to the movie that the director had done.
Speaker 2: But it's just in general, a lot of Nightmare on
Speaker 2: Elm Street energy here. She was also in the Gromlins
Speaker 2: movie Munchies Strike Back in ninety four. That was a
Speaker 2: Jim win Norski film. All right, and then we have
Speaker 2: some civilians of note. First of all, we have, let's
Speaker 2: see Jack deav Rise. I believe his name is Debreez Jacktavrees.
Speaker 2: We never really get to know this guy because this
Speaker 2: is our initial parasite host.
Speaker 3: We only know him under the influence of space slug.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And he is played by Chris Moulky, American character
Speaker 2: actor with a very expressive face. Again, another great character
Speaker 2: actor with a with wide range. But he might be
Speaker 2: most recognizable to many folks out there for playing the
Speaker 2: villainous Deputy Ward in nineteen eighty two's First Blood. That
Speaker 2: was if you don't remember that as a Rambo movie,
Speaker 2: that was the first Rambo movie, right, This was the
Speaker 2: first one. That's one where he's in the woods, right.
Speaker 3: Right, because you know, you know the titles, the progression
Speaker 3: of titles. You got First Blood, First Blood, Part two,
Speaker 3: Rambo and then Rambo three and then Rambo.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, Molky's in that one, playing kind of
Speaker 2: a sadistic deputy. He's he's been active since the mid seventies,
Speaker 2: still highly active today. Also a blues musician. Other credits
Speaker 2: include eighty four's Dreamscape, as well as Runaway, the Michael
Speaker 2: Crichton tiny robot movie that we should probably do at
Speaker 2: some point. He was in nineteen nineties K nine thousand.
Speaker 2: This is a cyborg dog movie. I included the poster
Speaker 2: for you here, Joe, and I encourage everyone to look
Speaker 2: it up. Looks incredible.
Speaker 3: It looks like a cross between Rin ten ten K
Speaker 3: nine Cop and night Rider.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this particular box art says man's best friend, crime's
Speaker 2: worst enemy. The dog of the future is here. The
Speaker 2: robot dog, I think a cyborg of some sort. I
Speaker 2: don't know, don't know the details, don't know how much
Speaker 2: is dog, how much is machine? Oh but anyway. Molki
Speaker 2: was also in Ghost in the Machine from ninety three,
Speaker 2: which we previously covered on Weird House Cinema. But I
Speaker 2: don't recall off hand who he played in that or
Speaker 2: how significant his role was.
Speaker 3: I don't remember. I mean funny, this is not our
Speaker 3: only connection to Twin Peaks. In the Hidden he was
Speaker 3: also in Twin Peaks. He plays Hank. He plays one
Speaker 3: of the bad guys in Twin Peaks.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he has a lot of range,
Speaker 2: but he does bad guy well. And in this he yeah,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss. Yeah, he's our first host of the parasite.
Speaker 3: His role in Twin Peaks is kind of interesting because
Speaker 3: he's part of like a succession of never ending. There's
Speaker 3: a worse guy revelations in Twin Peaks. You know, there's
Speaker 3: like kind of a scary guy at the beginning, and
Speaker 3: then there's a scarier guy who scares that guy, and
Speaker 3: then there's a scarier guy who scares the scarier guy,
Speaker 3: and this is like the third scariest guy.
Speaker 2: All right, let's see. Another civilian of note is the
Speaker 2: character Jonathan Miller played by William Boyett, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty seven through two thousand and four. Believe it or not,
Speaker 2: another tough guy actor with a lot of crime and
Speaker 2: cowboy roles going back to the nineteen fifties, played a
Speaker 2: lot of cops, played a lot of military guys, mostly
Speaker 2: in supporting roles. His other film credits include seventy nine's
Speaker 2: When a Stranger Calls, ninety ones The Rocketeer, as well
Speaker 2: as Strays, a Killer Cat movie which also featured Claudia
Speaker 2: Christian who's in this, as well as ninety five's Theodora
Speaker 2: Rex That was a film that starred Whoopy Goldberg, a dinosaur,
Speaker 2: Carol Kine, and Bud Coourt. Amazing, but Boyet is great here.
Speaker 2: In fact, for me, I thought he was a real
Speaker 2: highlight of the film. We never meet his human character,
Speaker 2: but his body gets to play host to the alien
Speaker 2: parasite for an extended stretch and probably the I mean
Speaker 2: there's a lot of violence in his stretch, but also
Speaker 2: there's a lot of humor in his stretch. But he's great.
Speaker 3: I'd say his arc is the funniest of all of
Speaker 3: the possessions in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, he's really good. He has really great steely eyes.
Speaker 2: Reminded me like not only his eyes but also kind
Speaker 2: of as like general build. I got a little bit
Speaker 2: of a George C. Scott kind of vibe from him.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he does a really great job generating the
Speaker 2: feeling of unknowable alien presence that is doing expected things
Speaker 2: but also unexpected things and it's strange quest to survive.
Speaker 3: He has eyes that say I'm hungry. It's like I
Speaker 3: want I want that, which he says also out loud
Speaker 3: a number of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is a the the entity. As we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: it is interesting to try. You spend a lot of
Speaker 2: the movie when things are not exploding, sort of trying
Speaker 2: to understand what it wants, and in many ways. What
Speaker 2: it wants is very obvious. It's some sort of a
Speaker 2: creature of yeah, of want and desire. It it wants
Speaker 2: to control, It wants to survive, It wants to cause pain.
Speaker 2: But it also like it just it likes music, really
Speaker 2: likes music, heavy metal, heavy metal especially. It doesn't really
Speaker 2: I don't think it would like ambient all that much.
Speaker 2: And anytime things not rocking it can produce anger. But
Speaker 2: we never really explore why. We're just kind of left
Speaker 2: to sort of imagine, like, you know, what is it
Speaker 2: about the music that is it enjoy music in the
Speaker 2: same way we do, or is there some something else
Speaker 2: that ties into its alien nature that's important here.
Speaker 3: It seems to like, you know, it likes breaking the law,
Speaker 3: breaking the law, and I think it's that the spirit
Speaker 3: of breaking the law in heavy metal, that is what
Speaker 3: it likes about heavy metal.
Speaker 2: Fair.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's the sonic qualities quite so much, though,
Speaker 3: then again, I don't know. We do see it kind
Speaker 3: of bobbing its head to the music occasionally, Yeah, but
Speaker 3: it also likes using loud music to intimidate other people,
Speaker 3: you know, like it likes to turn up the loud
Speaker 3: music in the in the diner and refuse to turn
Speaker 3: it down when when asked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so yeah, I enjoy I look forward
Speaker 2: to talking more about this performance. Other like non police
Speaker 2: characters of note, here we have the actor John McCann
Speaker 2: playing Senator Holt TV actor going back into the Field,
Speaker 2: whose film credits include eighty three's Erotic Images as well
Speaker 2: as Scarface. He does pop up in Scarface. And then
Speaker 2: we mentioned Claudia christian Is in this. She plays this
Speaker 2: character Brenda, and Brenda is essentially a This is another
Speaker 2: case where we get sort of two performances because when
Speaker 2: we meet her, she's a sort of world weary, you know,
Speaker 2: slightly worn out and much in the same way that
Speaker 2: the cops are tired out. She's very tired. She's a
Speaker 2: dancer at this club. But then she gets possessed by
Speaker 2: the bas slug and becomes a machine gun toting alien
Speaker 2: psychopath as well and gets to really blow things up
Speaker 2: terminator style. Yes, so we've actually talked about her before
Speaker 2: because she popped up in nineteen eighty nine's Arena Arena
Speaker 2: being the sort of Star Trek the Alien Boxer movie
Speaker 2: that I thought it was a lot of fun and
Speaker 2: had some great Aliens in it. But yes, she is
Speaker 2: one of the supporting human actors in that film.
Speaker 3: I had forgotten about that, but you're right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most people, I think, are going to be familiar
Speaker 2: with her work on the sci fi or I would
Speaker 2: say most people of a certain age are going to
Speaker 2: remember her from Babylon Five, where she played Commander Susan Ivanova.
Speaker 2: I don't know if people were watching Babylon Five these days,
Speaker 2: because it was, but it was at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: a very ambitious sci fi series that got into the
Speaker 2: sort of space opera treks sort of universe area made
Speaker 2: at the time really captivating use of computer generated effects,
Speaker 2: and so that makes me wonder like how well it
Speaker 2: has actually held up to modern viewing. But I remember
Speaker 2: at the time thinking it was really cool.
Speaker 3: I actually never watched it, but I got the impression
Speaker 3: that it was trying to be a rival to Star
Speaker 3: Trek to create a kind of equally expansive lore and
Speaker 3: its universe and all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had some some really neat alien
Speaker 2: species and cultures and all. Let's see, Okay, who else
Speaker 2: do we have here? Oh yeah, Danny Treehouse shows up
Speaker 2: as a prisoner.
Speaker 3: He has one line, but it's very memorable.
Speaker 2: Yeah he does, Yeah, he yeah, and it's it's a
Speaker 2: role with lines. He shows up blade in the film.
Speaker 2: He's an inmate during the big showdown at the at
Speaker 2: the jail. And this was pretty early on for him.
Speaker 2: This was his fourth credited screen appearance, very soon on
Speaker 2: the heels of his appearance in eighty five's Runaway Train.
Speaker 2: That was a film where the made use of his
Speaker 2: experience as an actual incarcerated individual. And I believe he
Speaker 2: was also Eric Roberts boxing coach on that film. But yeah,
Speaker 2: at this point he's been in a bazillion films and
Speaker 2: still still very much active. Oh and we have another
Speaker 2: nightmare connection here. Last actor I'm gonna mention for this movie,
Speaker 2: we have Roy the Dog playing the dog Jake dates Dog,
Speaker 2: the dog that.
Speaker 3: Has given free reign of crime scenes.
Speaker 2: By the way, Yes, yes, because he is. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: one of the lieutenant's dog, So Roy the Dog. I
Speaker 2: couldn't find any dates for Roy. I believe he's currently
Speaker 2: living upstate and is fine. Though has not been in
Speaker 2: movies and decades. Jake's big breakthrough came in the form
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty four Is Up the Creek, in which
Speaker 2: he played Chuck the Wonderdog. Jake's other credits include eighty
Speaker 2: five's The Explorers, nineteen eighty eight's a Nightmare on Elm
Speaker 2: Street four, The dream Master, eighty eight's Two Moon Junction
Speaker 2: that's a Zalman King film, and oh yeah, the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight talking horse movie Hot to Trot starring Bobcat
Speaker 2: Goldway and John Candy. Oh and he's also in Peter
Speaker 2: Bogdanovich's Texasville in nineteen ninety. So really quite a canine
Speaker 2: filmography here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is quite the RESUMEA. So this is our
Speaker 3: fourth now Nightmare on Elm Street Connections. Yeah, yeah, strong
Speaker 3: nightmare energy here for sure. Amazing.
Speaker 2: And I'll just mention real quick that the visual effects
Speaker 2: supervisors credited here were Lorenzo Contreras as well as Justin
Speaker 2: Claren Beck. I don't know either of these individuals super well,
Speaker 2: but for their credits include let's see. Contreras worked on
Speaker 2: Blake Trinity two thousand and four, Sin City two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, two thousand and seven's The Missed, twenty thirteen's
Speaker 2: Warm Bodies, and clari Ambeck worked on eighty seven's Lost
Speaker 2: Boys eighty eights, Phantasm two and eighty nine's National Lampoon's
Speaker 2: Christmas Vacation and then getting to the music here. Michael
Speaker 2: Convertino born nineteen fifty two did the score. His first
Speaker 2: score was actually the one to Tim Burton's nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four short film Franken Weeney. Subsequent credits include eighty six's
Speaker 2: Hollywood Vice Squad and also Children of a Lesser God
Speaker 2: from the same year, Bull Durham in eighty eight, ninety
Speaker 2: fives Things to Do in Denver when You're Dead, and
Speaker 2: ninety seven's Jungle to Jungle.
Speaker 3: Saw that one in the theater Okay as a child.
Speaker 2: Even Jungle to Jungle probably needs a score. Not every
Speaker 2: film needs a score, but hard to imagine Jungle to
Speaker 2: Jungle going without one.
Speaker 3: Just you know, we're not haters here, but that was
Speaker 3: not one of my best theater going experiences.
Speaker 2: Finally, I will mention real quick that the soundtrack on
Speaker 2: this film is really fine. We mentioned that the alien
Speaker 2: really likes the music, so there's a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of needle drop in this one. It
Speaker 2: features Let's See the Truth, the Lords of the New Church,
Speaker 2: hunters and collectors, and concrete blonde. Yeah, and maybe one
Speaker 2: or two other artists that we'll mention when we get
Speaker 2: into the plot.
Speaker 3: It's got a metal band called Shock Paris that they
Speaker 3: play the opening song, or not the opening song. The
Speaker 3: song's in the opening chase scene. I guess we're about
Speaker 3: to talk about it anyways, do so okay? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: time for the plot? Anything else?
Speaker 2: I think that's it, let's jump into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So the film opens on grainy, black and
Speaker 3: white security camera footage from the lobby of a bank,
Speaker 3: and at first there's just quiet, uneasy music playing. We
Speaker 3: see customers coming and going, lining up for the tellers,
Speaker 3: security guards wandering around. Nothing much is happening. Then a
Speaker 3: tall man in a trench coat enters the frame and
Speaker 3: he stands with his back to the camera, not moving
Speaker 3: for a few minutes while people walk around him. And
Speaker 3: then from the back of the bank where the vault is,
Speaker 3: we see a group of men in uniform coming out
Speaker 3: through the lobby. I think these are supposed to be
Speaker 3: armored truck couriers. And when they get close, suddenly the
Speaker 3: man in the trench coat whips out a huge shotgun
Speaker 3: and just starts blasting. He kills the couriers seemingly also
Speaker 3: just kills some random people standing around. He walks over,
Speaker 3: he picks up a few small bags of cash, and
Speaker 3: then before he leaves, he stops and looks straight up
Speaker 3: into the security camera and gives a huge grin all teeth.
Speaker 2: And it's alarming how quickly this starts, Like the shotgun
Speaker 2: blasts begin when we just have the security camera footage,
Speaker 2: which I thought was just going to be there to
Speaker 2: play behind the credits. I thought, nothing's really going to
Speaker 2: get started. I could get up and you get a
Speaker 2: cup of coffee, or go use the restroom if I
Speaker 2: need to, because nothing's happening yet. But no, this movie's
Speaker 2: off to the races already.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So now we're out of the security camera footage.
Speaker 3: We're in full color and we see outside the bank,
Speaker 3: and to my surprise, this is a branded bank massacre scene.
Speaker 3: So you see the like the logo up front it
Speaker 3: says Wells Fargo Bank. It's like, did they pay for
Speaker 3: that placement?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Did they tell them what sort of movie they
Speaker 2: were going to be filming there on a Sunday morning?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. So once the perpetrator is outside, we
Speaker 3: see that this is Chris Maulky. This is the guy
Speaker 3: I always think of his Hank from Twin Peaks. He
Speaker 3: kills another security guard on the way out, and then
Speaker 3: he after all of the shooting, he plods rather calmly
Speaker 3: toward his car. He pays no attention to the people
Speaker 3: who are screaming and running for cover all around him.
Speaker 3: There was a weird thing I noticed the second time
Speaker 3: I watched this, which is his clothes. We mainly see
Speaker 3: he's got a trench coat on on the outside that
Speaker 3: he was concealing the shop, but underneath the coat he
Speaker 3: is wearing what looks like a pink and lavender plaid blazer,
Speaker 3: a pale pink shirt with a yellow and blue striped tie,
Speaker 3: and low rise loafers like a little slip on loafers.
Speaker 3: So apart from apart from the trench coat, he doesn't
Speaker 3: look dressed for crime. He's dressed more likes he's like
Speaker 3: the mayor of Easter Bunny Village. And suddenly he just
Speaker 3: grabbed a shotgun and threw on a trench coat and
Speaker 3: went to do crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's telling Yeah, and second viewing, because we
Speaker 2: know that he has spacelug, that he is. This is
Speaker 2: just a body worn by something, and it is not
Speaker 2: the first body that it has worn.
Speaker 3: Right, But there's no indication of this at first, so
Speaker 3: we're just watching a guy doing crime. He just he
Speaker 3: So he goes to his car, which is a black
Speaker 3: sports car Ferrari, I assume, because we will learn that
Speaker 3: this villain is obsessed with Ferraris. He tosses the gun
Speaker 3: and the money into the car. He gets in and
Speaker 3: then he pops in a heavy metal cassette tape and
Speaker 3: then revs the engine and peels away, and pretty much
Speaker 3: the whole time here his expression, his expression is totally flat.
Speaker 3: There's no excitement, no urgency, no distress. It just kind
Speaker 3: of stonefaced. And this leads into an extended, high octane,
Speaker 3: hyper violent car chase where Mulki is driving. He's like
Speaker 3: the car just screaming through the streets of LA with
Speaker 3: police vehicles in pursuit. He's got his metal blasting. And
Speaker 3: this is the part where it very much reminded me
Speaker 3: of watching somebody play Grand Theft auto. He's just careening around.
Speaker 3: He is paying no heed to human life or property.
Speaker 3: He's just out there having a good time. And the
Speaker 3: song that's playing I wanted to look this up because
Speaker 3: I was like, is this maybe Iron Maiden or Judas Priest.
Speaker 3: It's roughly in that zone British fast tempo metal, kind
Speaker 3: of rob halford sounding vocals, But I looked it up
Speaker 3: and it's not either of them. It is called on
Speaker 3: your Feet by a band called Shock Paris, but Shock
Speaker 3: is spelled shok. I think this song was selected in
Speaker 3: part because it one thing, is just fast metal, so
Speaker 3: it sounds appropriate, but also it has lyrics that sound
Speaker 3: vaguely like they are advocating the commission of crimes. It's
Speaker 3: very you know, take take what you can. You know,
Speaker 3: the fires are raging, it's all for the taking, that
Speaker 3: sort of thing. So the cops chase Mulky around LA
Speaker 3: while he's evading them, and Mulky he's mostly stone faced,
Speaker 3: but he does kind of smirk a little bit when
Speaker 3: he gets opportunities to hit random civilians with his car.
Speaker 3: He also takes an opportunity to drive through a pane
Speaker 3: of plate glass that some installers are carrying across the road,
Speaker 3: and that was funny because that was like, okay, the
Speaker 3: glass movers moving the glass. That did not work in
Speaker 3: a melon card, but you could have seen that coming next.
Speaker 3: But by this point we start to get to get
Speaker 3: the picture that maybe the bank robbery wasn't primarily about money.
Speaker 3: This guy just seems to enjoy break in the law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a full blown rampage.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, elsewhere we meet up with another character. This
Speaker 3: is Detective Tom Beck played by Michael Newy. He is
Speaker 3: interviewing the neighbors of the character played by Mulkey, who
Speaker 3: we learn is named Jack Devrees, and his neighbors say, oh,
Speaker 3: such a polite man, very nice man, a real gentleman.
Speaker 3: So it seems like this guy Davrees has been on
Speaker 3: a multi day crime and murder spree, and Beck, along
Speaker 3: with his partner, Detective Cliff Willis played by ed O Ross,
Speaker 3: are working the case. In the middle of an interview
Speaker 3: with the neighbor, Willis comes running up to tell Beck
Speaker 3: that they know where Devrees is. He's in a car
Speaker 3: chase in West Hollywood, so they hop in their car
Speaker 3: and go to intercept. This car chase ends in a
Speaker 3: police barricade of the road. When Beck and Willis show up,
Speaker 3: we meet another character, Detective Sanchez played by Richard Brooks.
Speaker 3: The police line up behind their cars crosswise on the road.
Speaker 3: The aim shotguns. Dvrees approaches the roadblock at full speed
Speaker 3: and he's still bobbing his head to shock Paris, so
Speaker 3: he doesn't seem worried at all about this barricade. He
Speaker 3: never slows down. He just smashes straight through in a
Speaker 3: hail of gunfire, seemingly like taking tons of bullets in
Speaker 3: the process. And then his car eventually comes to a
Speaker 3: stop when it crashes into a wall behind the barricade.
Speaker 3: Defrees gets out of the car the crash car, he's
Speaker 3: covered in blood, and then he smiles, like what a
Speaker 3: great time we're all having. The car explodes in a
Speaker 3: gigantic guzzoline fireball, as you know cars in these movies
Speaker 3: are wont to do. And I guess that we think, well, okay,
Speaker 3: that's the end of Defrees. He exploded in Fireball, right,
Speaker 3: couldn't be any more of him, all right.
Speaker 2: But that it's not necessarily the case. And really this
Speaker 2: is gonna this is going to teach us what to
Speaker 2: expect out of the space lug here and it's it's
Speaker 2: it's hosts. We're going to quickly learn that whatever body
Speaker 2: it's controlling, it can take a whole lot of damage,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't seem to have to worry about any
Speaker 2: risk to itself. So it's not that it is I
Speaker 2: mean it's it's not that the body is maybe even
Speaker 2: protecting it, but maybe like it in and of itself,
Speaker 2: it cannot be harmed by bullets. Yeah, so anything, any
Speaker 2: damage you're doing, it doesn't care. It knows it cannot
Speaker 2: be hurt by what you were doing.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, we'll talk about that more later. But
Speaker 3: here we cut to Mulky in a hospital bed. He
Speaker 3: looks like melted, burned to a crisp and detectives Beck
Speaker 3: and Willis are in the room with him, where a
Speaker 3: doctor tells them that this guy probably is not going
Speaker 3: to survive the night. In fact, they have no idea
Speaker 3: how he is still alive at the moment, and the
Speaker 3: detectives are like, good, hope he dies. For some reason,
Speaker 3: the doctor tries to argue with them as they're walking away, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, why would the doctor bother trying to
Speaker 3: argue with them about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it could be I mean, granted, these are detectives, right,
Speaker 2: but I mean I've been in hospitals before where I've
Speaker 2: seen medical staff put but police officers in their place,
Speaker 2: you know, so, I think sometimes it does come down to,
Speaker 2: you know, whose turf this is?
Speaker 3: You know, well, I could imagine that happening if they're
Speaker 3: trying to do something that the cop. But like they
Speaker 3: just express a sentiment and then walk away. He like
Speaker 3: chases after them to be like, you're wrong to say that.
Speaker 3: So I know he's standing for the battles, doc, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's standing up for the value of human life, or
Speaker 3: at least what he thinks is human life. But then
Speaker 3: Willis explains their point of view. They're like, no, this guy.
Speaker 3: He just starts rattling off the list of every horrible
Speaker 3: thing this guy has done. He lists all of the murders,
Speaker 3: and then after the murders, he moves on to talking
Speaker 3: about all of the Ferraris this guy stole. But it's like,
Speaker 3: is that important to mention after you've already talked about
Speaker 3: the murders.
Speaker 2: Think about the ferraris, the poor blameless Ferraris.
Speaker 3: Yeah so, but yeah, so he explains all the gruesome
Speaker 3: murders into pravities and he just leaves the doctor standing
Speaker 3: dumbfounded in the hall. Well, the two detectives, they head
Speaker 3: back to the station station, we meet a few more
Speaker 3: characters and get some plot exposition. We meet Klu Guliger
Speaker 3: as you said, Gulligher. I guess it's Gulligher. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can't remember which one it is, so I don't sorry,
Speaker 3: I assume you're right. So Clu Gullagher as Lieutenant Ed
Speaker 3: Flynn and Clarence Felder as Lieutenant John Masterson, they're the
Speaker 3: bosses at the station, and these are going to be
Speaker 3: your guys who are there to say, you're a loose
Speaker 3: cannon mcgarnagald, you got a hand in your badge, here's
Speaker 3: your new partner, all that kind of stuff, taking it
Speaker 3: too personal, taking it too personal. So they're having an
Speaker 3: argument about who is going to be assigned to the
Speaker 3: protection detail for a visiting politician named Senator Holt who
Speaker 3: is expected to announce that he's running for president while
Speaker 3: in the city, and we see some Senator Holt ads
Speaker 3: on TV later. His brand is I'm a good politician.
Speaker 3: I'm the kind who does good things and helps people,
Speaker 3: and so Flynn wants Flynn wants Michael Newi assigned to
Speaker 3: protect the senator. After all, it would be terrible for
Speaker 3: the department's reputation if something happened to him while he
Speaker 3: was in the city, and Masterson wants him to use
Speaker 3: the Edo Ross character instead, He's like, he's a change
Speaker 3: de man now. They don't say what his issue before was,
Speaker 3: but anyway, the argument is neutralized by the arrival of
Speaker 3: a new character. There's somebody from the FBI who needs
Speaker 3: to meet with Lieutenant Masterson. The door opens and in
Speaker 3: walks Kyle McLaughlin. So this is pre Twin Peaks post
Speaker 3: done Kyle, and he introduces himself as Agent Lloyd Gallagher,
Speaker 3: who is in town running down a federal case against
Speaker 3: their suspect of devrees. He needs to borrow their best
Speaker 3: man to help him work the case while he's in town,
Speaker 3: so he needs Beck. Beck is not happy to be
Speaker 3: paired with Gallagher. I think, for one thing, it's just
Speaker 3: going to be additional work for him. Like he has
Speaker 3: his own cases to deal with and nobody's around to
Speaker 3: take those over, so he's just also now got to
Speaker 3: go around hand holding this fed all day on top
Speaker 3: of all of his own cases.
Speaker 2: This is definitely a cop movie that acknowledges that there
Speaker 2: is paperwork to be done and that you know this
Speaker 2: not just super copping it up all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as we mentioned earlier, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of cop movie cliches here, dynamics that feel familiar, but
Speaker 3: they're done pretty well here. So some of the things
Speaker 3: that will be familiar are mismatched new partners, federal versus local,
Speaker 3: jurisdictional conflict, killer on the loose. You know, the clock
Speaker 3: is ticking, but the cliches feel fresh to me here.
Speaker 3: I think for two reasons. One is the sci fi element,
Speaker 3: which will come into play pretty soon in the movie.
Speaker 3: And then the second thing that I think really makes
Speaker 3: them feel different. Even the things that are familiar feel
Speaker 3: different is the presence of Kyle McLaughlin. Like his screen presence,
Speaker 3: he is not a normal law enforcement movie character or
Speaker 3: Gallagher has this soft, gentle, ethereal presence. I kept thinking
Speaker 3: of him like he was a ghost who had come
Speaker 3: back from the other side to like bring knowledge or
Speaker 3: whisper warnings about the crimes of the future or whatever.
Speaker 3: And I think there are a lot of things about this.
Speaker 3: One is the way that McLaughlin plays the character. Another
Speaker 3: thing is the way even his makeup is done. Like
Speaker 3: I think he's a little bit overpowdered, making him slightly
Speaker 3: look a little bit corpse like, but also look kind
Speaker 3: of young and innocent, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good that's a good note. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he does have that young and innocent quality, but also
Speaker 2: at the same time he's very confident, yes, and seemingly unafraid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, confident, but not brash. It's a it's a very reticent,
Speaker 3: soft spoken confidence, if that makes any sense. Like, he's
Speaker 3: a hard contrast with Michael Newry's character, who is tough,
Speaker 3: cynical and just flush with attitude and testosterone. And that
Speaker 3: is also the general tone of the detective's open office,
Speaker 3: which is it's like a high school locker room. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just like this constant back and forth of crude
Speaker 3: jokes and insults and all that. Meanwhile, coll McLachlin comes
Speaker 3: into the room and he's just a warm breeze off
Speaker 3: the sea. And so anyway, you know, they compare notes
Speaker 3: and Gallagher fills back in about his fugitive. It is Devrees,
Speaker 3: So uh oh, this is new information for Gallagher. His
Speaker 3: suspect is already in the hospital about to die. Nuri
Speaker 3: thinks like, oh, okay, well that means I don't have
Speaker 3: to help the FBI guy after all, you know whatever,
Speaker 3: this is already done. Gallagher receives this information with urgency.
Speaker 3: He hurries off to see the purp, but he will
Speaker 3: not get a chance because the next we cut to
Speaker 3: the hospital and we get one of the most amazing
Speaker 3: scenes in the movie. Devrees, still burned to a crisp,
Speaker 3: is lying on the hospital bed. And at this point,
Speaker 3: if you go in without knowing anything in advance, you
Speaker 3: might still think this is a totally normal terrestrial killer,
Speaker 3: you know, serial killer movie or not serial killer, you
Speaker 3: know crime crime and cop movie. But we see him
Speaker 3: lying there. Chris Malkey's lying on the hospital bed sharing
Speaker 3: a room with another patient in the bed next to him. Now,
Speaker 3: normally I would wonder, if there is a suspected mass
Speaker 3: murderer under arrest in the hospital, do they have him
Speaker 3: share a room unattended with another patient. I don't know,
Speaker 3: that's a little I do understand the hospitals do a
Speaker 3: lot of cost cutting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can be crowded certainly, depending on what's
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 3: But I would tend to think, I don't know, you
Speaker 3: wouldn't just leave another guy in there with the with
Speaker 3: the guy who just you know, ran the ferrari through
Speaker 3: the police barricade anyway.
Speaker 2: But necessary to grease the plot here.
Speaker 3: Right, so suddenly defrees sits straight up in his bed, awake,
Speaker 3: He in a profunctory way, just yanks all the tubes
Speaker 3: out of his body, staggers over to the guy in
Speaker 3: the other bed, pulls the other guy's tubes out, holds
Speaker 3: the other guy's mouth open, opens his own mouth, grimaces,
Speaker 3: and then behold the glory of slug. So out of
Speaker 3: the mouth come these tarantula legs, just hairy black spider legs,
Speaker 3: coming up past the lips, gripping the outside of the
Speaker 3: chrismulky face and pulling the rest of the body out
Speaker 3: through the lips. The rest of the body is this
Speaker 3: black slug, the size of a bread loaf, with whipping tentacles,
Speaker 3: with the hairy black tarantula legs, and a sort of
Speaker 3: head that looks a bit like some a sea creature,
Speaker 3: kind of a sea horse head, but covered in a gelatinous,
Speaker 3: translucent membrane like a slimy, clear plastic bag that all
Speaker 3: oozes out of Devreeze's mouth and then into the mouth
Speaker 3: of the other patient. It is one of the greatest, like,
Speaker 3: what the hell scenes I've ever seen, Like ten thumbs
Speaker 3: up to the scene.
Speaker 2: Yes, the space slug transfer scene. It just incredible, incredible
Speaker 2: bit of effects work here in the design of the
Speaker 2: creature is tremendous as well. In that special effects feature
Speaker 2: on the disc that I checked out, they pointed out
Speaker 2: that apparently the original script called for it to be
Speaker 2: some sort of an amorphous black mass, so maybe something
Speaker 2: that was maybe more blob like, or even maybe more
Speaker 2: plasma like. I don't even know if it was necessarily
Speaker 2: even liquid like. Maybe it's something else, But the effects
Speaker 2: team moved more towards an indo parasite design, and I
Speaker 2: lovingly keep thinking of it as a space slug, and
Speaker 2: we're going to keep calling it a slug, but it
Speaker 2: does have slug like qualities we already have touched on,
Speaker 2: how you know, kind of has Tarantula's legs at the start.
Speaker 2: By and large, it kind of reminds me a little
Speaker 2: bit of certain Noodi Bronc species, you know, which is
Speaker 2: to say, it looks really alien, unique design, and so
Speaker 2: much of its functionality is also visible in the design.
Speaker 2: You know, the long trailing tentacles, those are going to
Speaker 2: come into play later. We come to imagine that those
Speaker 2: must weave throughout the body of the possessed, you know,
Speaker 2: almost almost like puppet strings. Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, is like they
Speaker 3: go to every finger in tow. You know, they they
Speaker 3: are the things that control the body with by by
Speaker 3: twitching the little nerves.
Speaker 2: Another great thing, the really interesting thing that the Shoulder
Speaker 2: had to say about this sequence is that they shot
Speaker 2: this sequence and they did it. It's so well done here,
Speaker 2: And he pointed out, you only need to see this
Speaker 2: once in the movie, so you're not gonna there are
Speaker 2: gonna be plenty of other host transferences that take place,
Speaker 2: but you're not going to see another one exactly. This
Speaker 2: is the only time we're going to get the long
Speaker 2: drawn out transfer sequence. And yeah, he says, like, once
Speaker 2: you've seen it the one, you don't need to see
Speaker 2: it again. You know, you don't have to. It's it's
Speaker 2: burned in the audience's mind. And I don't think it's
Speaker 2: an effect sequence that anyone is soon to forget it.
Speaker 2: And it totally stands up.
Speaker 3: I absolutely agree with that as a as a creative
Speaker 3: choice as well. It is much better to do it
Speaker 3: one time very well than to show it multiple times,
Speaker 3: because we can imagine what it's like the other times. Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the next thing we see after this is doctors
Speaker 3: are now in the room using defibrillator paddles to try
Speaker 3: to resuscitate the man who just received the slug. Somehow
Speaker 3: the process shocks the doctor who's doing the defib and
Speaker 3: sends him tumbling to the floor. And then suddenly the
Speaker 3: new slug host sits up. He opens his eyes and
Speaker 3: he has this expression on his face. It's that Boyett
Speaker 3: expression that's just like I want I'm hungry.
Speaker 2: Yes, yea, so good. It's just such a great performance
Speaker 2: here because yeah, he's like, he's like, I'm hungry. I
Speaker 2: need guns, need diner food, and I need some heavy
Speaker 2: metal music and I need all of it at the
Speaker 2: same time. Right.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Agent Gallagher arrives at the hospital and gets a
Speaker 3: debrief from the doctors. We learned that the sky miller
Speaker 3: had a bunch of things wrong with him. He had
Speaker 3: severe gastritis, he had a triple bypass surgery, he had
Speaker 3: a massive coronary and somehow he just walked out of
Speaker 3: the hospital. Docs say they cannot explain it. Quote, but
Speaker 3: they say, quote, I know that's not the man you're
Speaker 3: looking for. Jonathan Miller would never do anything to break
Speaker 3: the law. He has a very kind, very honest gentleman.
Speaker 3: It's the second time they've used the word gentleman to
Speaker 3: describe somebody who's been possessed by the space Lug. And
Speaker 3: then from there we cut immediately to Miller in a
Speaker 3: record store shoplifting heavy metal cassette tapes, just putting them
Speaker 3: in his jacket pocket, just one after the others. Pretty great,
Speaker 3: Oh Maiden, Yeah, getting some Maiden. And then the cashier
Speaker 3: sees what he's doing and tells him to stop, and
Speaker 3: then Miller beats the guy to death with I think
Speaker 3: he's got a stun baton or something. He takes it
Speaker 3: from the guy, beats him with it, steals all the
Speaker 3: money in the cash register, also steals a boom box,
Speaker 3: and then walks out onto the sidewalk just blasting his
Speaker 3: metal tapes everywhere he goes.
Speaker 2: I have to wonder it was like a shock baton,
Speaker 2: like this was just standard issue for record stores back
Speaker 2: in the day. Because there was like a small record
Speaker 2: store in my hometown when I was in high school,
Speaker 2: A friend of mine worked there, and I remember her
Speaker 2: showing off the stun baton that they kept behind.
Speaker 3: The desk, and she's supposed to use it if I guess, Yeah,
Speaker 3: tried to steal steal a cassette.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess standard issue.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they So we're onto our second hop and
Speaker 3: the body hopping crime spree. Agent Gallagher comes back to
Speaker 3: the station and fills back in. Okay, Devrees is dead,
Speaker 3: but we've got a second suspect to track down. Now
Speaker 3: we're chasing Jonathan Miller. This leads into the setup for
Speaker 3: the rest of the movie, which will basically follow a
Speaker 3: pattern of the murder. Slug commits random crimes, seeks power,
Speaker 3: seeks pleasure, ultra violence, and then hops into a new
Speaker 3: body when the previous body becomes too damaged or used up,
Speaker 3: and then Gallagher and Beck will continue to track the
Speaker 3: slug through its hosts, occasionally getting close enough that there's
Speaker 3: a shootout or a car chase. And during their partnership,
Speaker 3: Beck and Gallagher first clash for various reasons, especially because
Speaker 3: Gallagher seems to know things about what is going on,
Speaker 3: like he's aware of the body hopping scenario and Beck
Speaker 3: is kept in the dark, at least at first. He
Speaker 3: only gradually becomes aware of the weirdness in play.
Speaker 2: So that's the main knowledge that Gallagher seems to be
Speaker 2: entering in with. Presumably because he's FBI, he knows already
Speaker 2: that there's something jumping from body to body and that
Speaker 2: the crimes are not going to end with the death
Speaker 2: of the suspect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the relationship also develops because maybe it becomes apparent
Speaker 3: that there's something Gallagher is not letting on about himself
Speaker 3: as well. You know, we'll eventually discover what that is,
Speaker 3: but we'll hold on to that for just a moment.
Speaker 3: So one thing I guess we should do is just
Speaker 3: mention the succession of host bodies that the barf slug
Speaker 3: takes over. So you've got the Miller body first. In
Speaker 3: this body, the alien goes to a diner, eats breakfast
Speaker 3: while just like cooking the place with the metal from
Speaker 3: his cassette deck, so he's blasting it at his table.
Speaker 3: They ask him to turn on the volume and he won't.
Speaker 2: And then also just occasionally like belching and farting. Yes,
Speaker 2: because this is interesting to think about. We see that
Speaker 2: the parasite when it comes to stealing an automobile, goes
Speaker 2: straight for high performance. You know what's the fastest sports
Speaker 2: car that I can jump in and drive often with
Speaker 2: its human host. It's especially with the Miller body. You know,
Speaker 2: this is not a high performance. This is a Jalopy.
Speaker 2: This one was already this one was was set to
Speaker 2: be junked. But that doesn't seem to matter as much.
Speaker 2: Like he can see he can steal he yet whatever
Speaker 2: the gender of the alien here, it can jump into
Speaker 2: a body that is already almost dead and it can
Speaker 2: still do everything it needs to do. Presumably.
Speaker 3: I've got some thoughts about that that we'll come back
Speaker 3: to in just a minute, But first I'm going to
Speaker 3: mention the other things the boy at body does here.
Speaker 3: He attacks a Ferrari dealership because he like sees a
Speaker 3: lady driving a sports car on the street and then
Speaker 3: chases the car on foot but cannot keep up and
Speaker 3: then maybe having a heart attack or something. I don't
Speaker 3: know if he's having trouble, uh, And then he's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I need to go steal a car. So he goes
Speaker 3: to a Ferrari dealership just kills a bunch of people
Speaker 3: in the process of stealing a Ferrari. U. Somehow off
Speaker 3: of this lead, he ends up getting a bunch of
Speaker 3: gun I think maybe the guy who was buying the
Speaker 3: car was an arms dealer.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, he ends up going to his house
Speaker 2: and getting a bunch of weapons.
Speaker 3: And he also there's cocaine everywhere in the sequence. Also,
Speaker 3: it's like, you know the Ferrari dealership. It seems to
Speaker 3: me it's just deriger that when you're buying a Ferrari
Speaker 3: the salesman gives you a few bumps of cocaine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has the cocaine in the trunk of a
Speaker 2: toy car in his desk.
Speaker 3: Yes. And in this sequence we start to see a
Speaker 3: formulation that the slug host will speak. He says, I
Speaker 3: want this car, and the alien often says, without elaboration
Speaker 3: or explanation, simply I want X just says I want it. Uh.
Speaker 3: And somewhere in the middle here also, I think this
Speaker 3: may be after the cops go to the scene where
Speaker 3: the where the scene at this guy's house where all
Speaker 3: of the weapons were there is the most chekhoved of
Speaker 3: Chekhov guns in movie history. I think where you just
Speaker 3: see a cop walk into frame with a flame thrower,
Speaker 3: and it's just like, look at this awesome flame thrower.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be interesting if this showed up again in
Speaker 3: Act three?
Speaker 2: You know, I should have thought that, but I actually didn't.
Speaker 2: When the when the first time I watched it, the
Speaker 2: when the when the flamethrower does show back up again,
Speaker 2: I was like, whoa.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, well no, no, no, I mean I think
Speaker 3: it was supposed to be a surprise, So I'm glad
Speaker 3: it worked for you. I think maybe maybe I'm overly
Speaker 3: attuned to check off guns. I'm always looking for them.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a lot more obvious, like how much time
Speaker 2: is going to be taken to discuss the functionality of
Speaker 2: the Chekhov's gun. Sometimes that's the case, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is coming back for sure.
Speaker 3: So in the Miller Body this, the alien has continuous
Speaker 3: vehicle maintenance issues, as we were just discussing, So there's
Speaker 3: all this stomach gurgling. I think maybe he's literally having
Speaker 3: heart attacks when he exerts himself, but he just pushes through.
Speaker 3: And I think there's another subtle theme here in the
Speaker 3: movie about the way the alien just uses up human bodies,
Speaker 3: Like the alien seems superhuman when in his host and
Speaker 3: I think it is the case that our Earth weapons
Speaker 3: cannot harm the space Slug. We will later learn there's
Speaker 3: an alien weapon that can be used to harm the
Speaker 3: slugs in its own true form. But the bodies, the
Speaker 3: bodies that it inhabits, can themselves be damaged. But it
Speaker 3: seems like they can absorb an awful lot of damage
Speaker 3: before they finally shut down, Like he will, the you know,
Speaker 3: the space slug in Miller body and in these other
Speaker 3: bodies will just keep getting shot and injured and still
Speaker 3: keep pushing on. I was kind of thinking that maybe
Speaker 3: it's not so much that the slug makes the bodies
Speaker 3: super resilient. Rather, it's more like the slug is thinking,
Speaker 3: I will drive this car until the wheels fall off.
Speaker 2: I think that's that. Yeah, it's absolutely drive into the ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, So that a lot of the things that
Speaker 3: would stop a human from being able to continue are
Speaker 3: like needing to recover after an inner, an injury, or
Speaker 3: trying to prevent further injury or something, But the alien
Speaker 3: doesn't care about that. It's just it's just using our
Speaker 3: bodies up. And this actually mirrors something we see with
Speaker 3: other characters in the movie in relation to their work,
Speaker 3: like the cops in the police station, or also like
Speaker 3: the dancers, Like we see people just being worked to
Speaker 3: the bone with more and more responsibilities piling up, like
Speaker 3: there's no consideration of them as human beings. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think we see that maybe Beck's home life suffers
Speaker 3: from working too much. Yeah, so I think that's another
Speaker 3: one of the themes here. It's something about like exploiters
Speaker 3: using human beings up like their machines. They're just something
Speaker 3: to be operated to the point of failure and then discarded.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, that's a good read. I like that.
Speaker 3: Also, though on the more comedic side, there are these
Speaker 3: funny compatibility issues with the alien and the boyette body,
Speaker 3: Like we keep seeing the slugs tentacles accidentally poking out
Speaker 3: through an arm and spraying blood everywhere, and like the
Speaker 3: one part where like a tentacle pokes out of the
Speaker 3: arm and he's like, I get back in there, and
Speaker 3: he like tapes it up with a bunch of packing tape.
Speaker 3: There's another part where he's in a bar and I
Speaker 3: think tentacles are poking out and bleeding all over the
Speaker 3: place and the bartender is like, hey, what you got
Speaker 3: going on and he's just like whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Luckily the la of this film is hell City
Speaker 2: enough that the bartender is just like, are you're bleeding
Speaker 2: all over the place? All right, fair enough, buddy, but
Speaker 2: I just want to I check with you once. That's
Speaker 2: the law, that sort of thing. But you know, I
Speaker 2: mentioned how he doesn't seem too choosy about the bodies,
Speaker 2: but the next body that he occupies is going to
Speaker 2: be that dancer character played by Claudia Christian, and perhaps
Speaker 2: in that in this instance, he does realize like, well,
Speaker 2: this bodies kind of a piece of junk. This one
Speaker 2: was already mostly used up when I jumped into it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get a valuable body. I'm gonna get a
Speaker 2: body that is, you know, in peak condition. And then
Speaker 2: later he's going to realize, I think, or it's going
Speaker 2: to realize, you know, there's physical condition, but there's also
Speaker 2: sort of like their social status, there is political power.
Speaker 2: And what if I got a body that already had
Speaker 2: these powers just sort of you know, socially available to it.
Speaker 2: What could I do with such a body? Then?
Speaker 3: What if I got a body that could command other bodies?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that I don't just run this body into
Speaker 3: the ground. I can get a body that makes other
Speaker 3: bodies run themselves into the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, so in the middle though, before we
Speaker 3: get the Claudia Christian possession, there's a dinner scene. The
Speaker 3: scene where they're working the case and Beck invites Gallagher
Speaker 3: back to his house to have dinner with his family.
Speaker 3: And this scene is interesting because as Kyle MacLaughlin seems
Speaker 3: very perplexed but also peaceful and happy to observe family life,
Speaker 3: Like there's a bit of us so this is how
Speaker 3: you how you creatures live.
Speaker 2: But also there's like, you know, maybe a class difference here,
Speaker 2: and also a single versus married slash family, right, a
Speaker 2: sort of scenario like single guy just has no idea
Speaker 2: how this works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. It could pass as like we're starting to
Speaker 3: get clues that maybe call MacLaughlin is not exactly what
Speaker 3: he says he is, but you're not. It's not one
Speaker 3: hundred percent clear like, oh, he's an alien, yet he
Speaker 3: could be just another you know, like a guy with
Speaker 3: a different kind of life. M It's like, I wonder
Speaker 3: what it's like to be married, to be a father
Speaker 3: or something like that. Oh, but also there are these
Speaker 3: weird moments, like when he's at Beck's house, Gallagher has
Speaker 3: a moment of staring in the mirror like curious and
Speaker 3: almost kind of afraid, looking like looking at his own flesh.
Speaker 3: Also in the scene, we learned that Gallagher does not
Speaker 3: react well to beer, and Beck warns him to stay
Speaker 3: away from alcohol thereafter. But back to the body hopping,
Speaker 3: so at this strip club that the slug goes to,
Speaker 3: it discards the Miller body and switches to the body
Speaker 3: of this dancer named Brenda Lee van Buren, and in
Speaker 3: this body, Brenda decides to do more crime. She leaves
Speaker 3: the strip club. She goes back to her car to
Speaker 3: have sex with a creep who was cat calling her
Speaker 3: on the sidewalk. She kills the guy in the process.
Speaker 3: Not sure exactly what happens here, we don't. It's kind
Speaker 3: of filmed from a distance.
Speaker 2: Death by snoozsnow. That's all we know, I think so.
Speaker 3: And then this flows into a car chase where Beck
Speaker 3: and Gallagher they arrive on Zcene. They find her and
Speaker 3: they chase her in this car in their cars until
Speaker 3: they crash into a building. This turns into a gunfight
Speaker 3: where they pursue her onto the roof, and eventually her
Speaker 3: body becomes badly damaged in the fight and she jumps
Speaker 3: from the roof. Now, this whole time, during the fight,
Speaker 3: Gallagher has had with him a strange weapon, shaped sort
Speaker 3: of like a gun, but with no visible moving parts.
Speaker 3: It's this solid piece of silver metal, and he seems
Speaker 3: to plan to use it on the alien, but only
Speaker 3: after the human body has been killed and the slug
Speaker 3: emerges from the mouth, and so it can only harm
Speaker 3: the slug in its exposed form. So here I guess
Speaker 3: we should divulge the full final twist. So putting things together,
Speaker 3: it starts to become clear that Gallagher is also not
Speaker 3: what he seems. We discover that he is also an alien,
Speaker 3: also inhabiting a stolen human body, the body of a
Speaker 3: dead FBI agent, which is also driving a stolen car. Yes,
Speaker 3: and driving a stolen sports car. Now he's not a
Speaker 3: spree killer like this other alien. He's not on a
Speaker 3: crime spree. We learn through subsequent developments. It doesn't all
Speaker 3: come at once, but we will learn that he is
Speaker 3: basically as sort of a energy being who is some
Speaker 3: kind of alien cop or law enforcement. I think he
Speaker 3: says he's from a planet called Altaire, which is the
Speaker 3: planet from Forbidden Planet, and he is named al Hog.
Speaker 3: He's been chasing the space slug across worlds because in
Speaker 3: another life on another planet, this slug killed his partner
Speaker 3: and his family. So when Beck starts getting some parts
Speaker 3: of this, he doesn't get the whole story at first,
Speaker 3: but he gets some parts of it, and he temporarily
Speaker 3: jails Gallagher in the middle of the movie because he
Speaker 3: doesn't believe this stuff. So Gallagher is not able to
Speaker 3: kill the slug when it comes out of Brenda's body.
Speaker 3: Before he can get down to it with his special
Speaker 3: alien weapon, it has jumped into a dog. Ye uh oh.
Speaker 3: I think this leads into a scene that feels to
Speaker 3: me inspired by the thing when the dog sneaks up.
Speaker 3: So it's Lieutenant Masterson's dog, the police chief's dog who
Speaker 3: is allowed to freely roam crime scenes for some reason,
Speaker 3: and this leads into the possession of Lieutenant Masterson, the
Speaker 3: boss of all the cops, and this leads into a
Speaker 3: rampage inside the police station like the scene and Terminator,
Speaker 3: where you get a very heavily armed Masterson blasting through
Speaker 3: the station. I believe the goal is to kill Gallagher.
Speaker 3: He's trying to get to Gallagher in his cell and
Speaker 3: eliminate him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, we would have never gotten to
Speaker 2: this point had the LA Police Department been using K
Speaker 2: nine thousand instead of traditional organic police dogs here.
Speaker 3: That's a good point that slug would try to get
Speaker 3: in the mouth and then be like in there exactly.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, So you have the possessed Masterson fighting
Speaker 3: his way through the station, the other cops fighting back.
Speaker 3: There's a great Danny Treyhoe cameo in the scene. What
Speaker 3: exactly does he say? He calls somebody a hippie. He's like,
Speaker 3: what did that hippie guy do? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What kind of dude are you? He also says something
Speaker 2: like that, you know, just you know, sort of standard
Speaker 2: you know, purps calling from cells in a movie like
Speaker 2: this sort of thing. But yeah, super fun because it's
Speaker 2: Danny trehow and it's like, oh yeah, he's going to
Speaker 2: be in literally a million more films after this.
Speaker 3: So obviously, through this this attack, it actually confirms some
Speaker 3: of what Gallagher was telling Beck about about it being
Speaker 3: an alien that can hop their bodies. So Beck his
Speaker 3: his trust is one. Now back back to Gallagher. Gallagher
Speaker 3: and they are reunited in their interests in this big fight.
Speaker 3: But it's not over when Masterson is defeated.
Speaker 2: Oh man, is this the Masterson though? Is Masterson the
Speaker 2: one who suddenly he jumps out at them with a bazooka. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's gonna shoot them at point blank range with
Speaker 2: a bazooka and nearly does, which you know, is is
Speaker 2: ludicrous and great but also like totally uh, you know,
Speaker 2: totally realistic for the space Plug to do, because Space
Speaker 2: Lug can't kill itself with the Bazuko blastback. It just
Speaker 2: wants to go ahead and kill these guys that are
Speaker 2: standing in the way of its ambitions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so they temporarily get the upper hand on Masterson,
Speaker 3: but Masterson is the Space Lug's not defeated. It body
Speaker 3: hops into another person, into Willis Beck's original partner. Oh no,
Speaker 3: it's Edo Ross.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and again he has a great grim face.
Speaker 2: And so once he's in slug mo tremendous, tremendous.
Speaker 3: So we've got real big problems here because this is
Speaker 3: the guy who's been assigned to cover security for Senator Holt.
Speaker 2: Senator Holt, who is about to announce his presidential campaign.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this leads to an attack on Senator Holt,
Speaker 3: who in turn does get possessed by the Space Slug.
Speaker 3: During this they're trying, Gallagher and Beck are trying to
Speaker 3: prevent this. During the fight, Beck is severely wounded in
Speaker 3: a shootout and he gets taken to the hospital. So
Speaker 3: now Gallagher is left alone, and now the Slug is
Speaker 3: a highly protect to politician.
Speaker 2: And I thought this was going to be kind of
Speaker 2: the dark ending I was. I was watching the film,
Speaker 2: I thought, oh man, the Slug is safe. Now the
Speaker 2: Slug has ascended to a level of society where Tom
Speaker 2: maclaughlin's character Gallagher cannot touch him anymore, and this is
Speaker 2: just going to be kind of like the dark commentary
Speaker 2: on society here. I kind of it ends up not
Speaker 2: being the case. Yeah, I thought that too.
Speaker 3: But then, so what happens is at Senator Holtz next
Speaker 3: prece event, he's he gets a question, somebody asks him
Speaker 3: about his future political ambitions, and then he takes hold
Speaker 3: of the microphone and in a phrasing we've heard from
Speaker 3: the Space Slug many times already now, when he says,
Speaker 3: I want that car, I want whatever he now says,
Speaker 3: I want to be president. It's chilling and hilarious. This
Speaker 3: is great.
Speaker 2: This is of course, years before the Treehouse of Horror
Speaker 2: episode where King and Codos become So Kang. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: Force Citizen Gang, before you know, they become Dole and
Speaker 2: clint On. Uh but but very much the same energy.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, but then remember we mentioned Chekhov's flamethrower. In
Speaker 3: the middle of this press conference. In an absolutely shocking twist,
Speaker 3: Kyle McLaughlin Babyface Kyle McGlaughlin appears below the stage at
Speaker 3: the press conference with the flame thrower we saw earlier
Speaker 3: at the police station and torches the possessed husk of
Speaker 3: the politician. He's immediately surrounded by armed surrounded by armed
Speaker 3: men until we see the alien slug crawl out of
Speaker 3: Holt's mouth, and then Gallagher uses his alien weapon to
Speaker 3: finally terminate it once and for all. So the slug
Speaker 3: is defeated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, yeah, so the politician's body is blackened and yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, totally scorched, and then the black slug comes
Speaker 2: out of the mouth and then yeah, it's like screaming
Speaker 2: or something, and he blasted with the alien gun. And
Speaker 2: again everybody witnesses this and they're kind of like, I
Speaker 2: guess they're like, Okay, maybe they're just still processing it.
Speaker 2: But everybody sees it. There's no second guessing what happened.
Speaker 3: Here, So you might think there couldn't be any more
Speaker 3: crazy twists coming after this, But then we get to
Speaker 3: the final ending, the coda, which is, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I've been very curious to hear what you think about this.
Speaker 3: So in the ending, we go into Beck's hospital room.
Speaker 3: We find that he is mortally wounded. He's lying in
Speaker 3: a hospital that the doctors are making it clear he's
Speaker 3: not going to survive much longer. We see his family
Speaker 3: is distraught. He's lying there dying, and then Gallagher is
Speaker 3: left alone with him in the room for a moment.
Speaker 3: Kyle McGlaughlin leans over Beck's body and transfers himself into
Speaker 3: Beck's dying body. Now he's not a black slug, He
Speaker 3: is some kind of like yellow stream of energy, like
Speaker 3: angelic light. But he takes over Beck's body and now
Speaker 3: instead of dying, Beck makes a shocking, sudden, full recovery.
Speaker 3: He pops up alive, and his family comes in and
Speaker 3: they're reunited. His daughter's like daddy, and she seems maybe
Speaker 3: a little concerned at first, but then it seems like, Okay,
Speaker 3: he's going to be accepted, but it's not really him.
Speaker 3: Nobody else knows, but we know it's al Hag, the
Speaker 3: alien possessing him. So I was like, what the like
Speaker 3: was this ending supposed to be sweet and happy or
Speaker 3: creepy and grim or like darkly comedic. I really can't tell,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, so, like, if it's actually supposed
Speaker 3: to be a happy ending, I think it mostly fails
Speaker 3: because while we can understand it from the alien's perspective,
Speaker 3: like mourning the loss of his own alien family, it's
Speaker 3: way too creepy from the perspective of Beck's family. But
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think maybe it's just supposed to
Speaker 3: be like a daring, like what the hell kind of
Speaker 3: ending where it makes sense that this is what happened,
Speaker 3: what would happen based on the characters that have been
Speaker 3: set up. But you're also thinking, I really just can't
Speaker 3: believe they did that at the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: It really I think you're right. I think it feels
Speaker 2: like a case where it was written as just like,
Speaker 2: let's go for it. What's the wildest ending we could
Speaker 2: we could really put together here. But then I feel
Speaker 2: like the director and the filmmakers involved here really probably
Speaker 2: set down and we're like, Okay, how are we gonna
Speaker 2: shoot this? Like what's what kind of tone are we
Speaker 2: going to go for? And they kind of walk it
Speaker 2: down the middle like they're not they're not completely going
Speaker 2: for dark. Uh, they maybe live a little room that
Speaker 2: wigal room. So if you you're not gonna maybe just
Speaker 2: consume it as the happy ending that you know you
Speaker 2: could I guess still could interpret it as. And it
Speaker 2: leaves you this space to sort of think about it
Speaker 2: and think about these bigger questions identity, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: was thinking about it quite a bit, because on one level,
Speaker 2: it does raise questions like, you know, you know, we've
Speaker 2: talked about this in the show before, like are you
Speaker 2: the same person you were before? You know, when you
Speaker 2: go in and you go into anesthesia and then you
Speaker 2: come out again, are you the same person after a
Speaker 2: traumatic experience? You know, there's a case to be made
Speaker 2: that you're not entirely you know, we change over time.
Speaker 2: And on the other hand, I mean not as as drastically.
Speaker 3: As another fully formed personality possessing your body, right, especially
Speaker 3: in secret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's that angle, and then there's also the
Speaker 2: like like what would what would I want to happen?
Speaker 2: You know, like if I knew that I was dying,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm going to leave people behind, but
Speaker 2: there but an alien that I know to be a
Speaker 2: good nature could like step in and become me and
Speaker 2: you know, continue to make me be there for my
Speaker 2: family for a bit longer. I don't know, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are all sorts of potentially, you know, there are
Speaker 2: all sorts of caveats that come up a lot of questions,
Speaker 2: how are you going to do this?
Speaker 3: You know, I assume you'd want your family to know though, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, like the thing is like the aliens are
Speaker 3: always they're blending in, like you never know that it's
Speaker 3: them until like the secret comes out. I guess.
Speaker 2: I guess. Like one of the questions is what would
Speaker 2: you do if you were in this position and you
Speaker 2: could assume the alien could completely take on your identity?
Speaker 2: We have no indication that that's the case here. If
Speaker 2: that's a power that al Hag has, it is not
Speaker 2: really spelled out. But if that were the case, like
Speaker 2: would you want that, you know, if you could be
Speaker 2: a perfect replica, and this perfect replica of you could
Speaker 2: then continue to be there for your family after you're gone,
Speaker 2: I don't know. And then then that kind of like
Speaker 2: then spirals back into into these bigger questions about identity
Speaker 2: and self and you know, and you know memories like
Speaker 2: the person you remember you were ten years ago? Are
Speaker 2: you still that person? Is that person still alive today?
Speaker 2: Or you somebody different? You know?
Speaker 3: And so for well, I mean, this does bring it
Speaker 3: back to like I think one of the major themes
Speaker 3: here of the the body hopping is like how do
Speaker 3: you know people are who they say they are? In
Speaker 3: both senses? Yeah, In one sense that's like are people
Speaker 3: identical to the person that they are claiming to be?
Speaker 3: Like are you really my husband? Tom? But then the
Speaker 3: other thing being like are you are you the way
Speaker 3: that you say you are? Which you get with the politician,
Speaker 3: you know, so they're like it's he's a guy who's
Speaker 3: like saying nice platitudes. But it's always something we wonder
Speaker 3: about people that we hand power to. Are they really
Speaker 3: going to be like with the way they say they are?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Or in either case, like is there at least metaphorically
Speaker 3: an entity inside them that has its own designs that
Speaker 3: you're not aware of, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though, I think that we can easily imagine that
Speaker 2: this portrayal will not last too long without the family discovery,
Speaker 2: because you know we saw earlier doesn't know how to
Speaker 2: how Alca celster work has to be explained to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he eats the Alca Celtic.
Speaker 2: So like it's going to be like, you know, Dad's
Speaker 2: night to cook dinner, and then what is our space
Speaker 2: alien going to do? What is all ha going to
Speaker 2: do about that? When he doesn't know how to make
Speaker 2: you know, the back family pizza or whatever the case
Speaker 2: may be, it made you boiled potato chips. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I love all of this. I love this about an
Speaker 2: ending that really makes you think and ask all of
Speaker 2: these questions and is just yeah, daring and weird. A
Speaker 2: nice weird capper to a weird movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So The Hidden not going to be for everybody,
Speaker 3: but I think it's very strong.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this one's kind of a real gem that
Speaker 2: I'd never know outside of discussing it briefly in Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema, I really didn't know anything about it. It
Speaker 2: was just kind of buried there. So I'm super glad
Speaker 2: that I got to jump into it totally. All Right,
Speaker 2: we're going to close it out here, but we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from all of you out there. Do you
Speaker 2: have memories of watching The Hidden? Do you have any
Speaker 2: encouragement or warnings about seeing The Hidden? Part two? Right in,
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear anything you have to share about
Speaker 2: all of that other body hopping movies that we should
Speaker 2: know about or remember. It's very possible we have there's
Speaker 2: an episode, an episode of Weird Out Cinema where we've
Speaker 2: talked specifically about a body hopping movie and we just
Speaker 2: have forgotten that that's what it was. So yeah, right in,
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from you. Just a reminder. The
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast with core episodes and Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
Speaker 2: on Fridays we set most of the serious stuff aside
Speaker 2: and we just talk about a weird film here on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. If you use letterbox dot com, look
Speaker 2: us up on letterbox. We are weird House. There, follow
Speaker 2: us check out the list that we keep there. It
Speaker 2: has a collection of all the movies we've covered over
Speaker 2: the years. And sometimes a peek ahead at what comes
Speaker 2: out next. Wherever you get the podcast, rate reviews, subscribe
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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