Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob and I'm Joe, and today we are
Speaker 3: going to unscramble the cable signal and tune into some
Speaker 3: Tales from the Crypt.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, we have another slice of nineties genre
Speaker 2: cinema for you this week. Except this one's far cheaper
Speaker 2: than Free Jack. I think, ultimately a more enjoyable film,
Speaker 2: but it is, of course the initial cinematic spinoff of
Speaker 2: HBO's Tales from the Crypt. It is Taiales from the Crypt,
Speaker 2: Demon Knight from what nineteen ninety five?
Speaker 3: That sounds right, Yeah, it looks very mid nineties. So
Speaker 3: I guess this one and last week's are a little
Speaker 3: bit more mainstream than we usually go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're more mainstream. But Demon Night is also one.
Speaker 2: I mean, Freejack is definitely a film that it did
Speaker 2: not perform to expectation and was kind of just thrown
Speaker 2: out there and died and was forgotten by many. Demon
Speaker 2: Night is a film that I think also is you know,
Speaker 2: we're talking about this before we started recording, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe a little underappreciated, though it certainly has its following
Speaker 2: and oh yeah, and you know, continues to be popular
Speaker 2: to this day. But you don't hear it championed that
Speaker 2: often as being like a great piece of horror horror
Speaker 2: comedy from the nineties.
Speaker 3: I guess it's hard to argue that it's great, but
Speaker 3: it is really fun. This is a really fun, r rated,
Speaker 3: frisky piece of horror comedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's It's essentially a siege movie. So the basic
Speaker 2: structure is pretty pretty nailed down, you know, like you're
Speaker 2: gonna have characters go somewhere, they're gonna hold up there,
Speaker 2: and then things are gonna try and get in and
Speaker 2: get them. It's the basic Night of the Living Dead scenario.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Night of the Living Dead, evil Dead assault
Speaker 3: on Precinct thirteen, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so well, let's just jump right into the elevator
Speaker 2: pitch on this one just now. This is the elevator
Speaker 2: pitch for the basic movie itself. The Unholy Demon Lords
Speaker 2: have six of the seven keys they need to drag
Speaker 2: the universe back into darkness, and the only thing standing
Speaker 2: in their way on Planet Earth for that last key
Speaker 2: is one immortal drifter and a ragtag bunch of losers.
Speaker 2: In a rundown hotel in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, in a place called Wormwood, New Mexico. I
Speaker 3: looked it up. Not a real place.
Speaker 2: It sounds nice and biblical, though, which is good because
Speaker 2: there's a lot of biblical nonsense going on in this
Speaker 2: particular movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this movie is just jammed with drifters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's all it's basically all drifters. I mean,
Speaker 2: and I've actually seen it discussed in the sense that
Speaker 2: it's like the meek shall inherit the earth, and this
Speaker 2: is the meek. These are all the sorts of losers
Speaker 2: that Jesus Christ himself would have hung out with in life.
Speaker 3: Maybe not Thomas Hayden Church. He's not that meek, but
Speaker 3: he's a scumbag in this So yeah, that's true. So
Speaker 3: the Pharisees come to Jesus and they say, hey, you
Speaker 3: sit down to eat with the sinners and tax collectors
Speaker 3: and even with Thomas Hayden Church.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's go ahead, have just a little
Speaker 2: bit of the trailer audio here, and there's probably gonna
Speaker 2: be a little criptkeeper in there.
Speaker 1: Universal Pictures is proud to present the Motion picture Directing
Speaker 1: debut of.
Speaker 4: One of America's most talented and respected artists.
Speaker 2: Hot Cat.
Speaker 4: Oh hello kitties, So glad you could join me? Your pal.
Speaker 4: The Cryptkeeper has gone Hollywood in a big way. I'm
Speaker 4: directing my first feature film, Care for a Little Shriek preview.
Speaker 3: My Big Scream premiere.
Speaker 4: I wanted lots of suspecse, special effects, sex, the kind
Speaker 4: of thing you could really sink your teeth into, frights,
Speaker 4: camera and ladies if you think demon nice gross and yucke.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: All right? So yeah, basically the idea here, but the
Speaker 2: whole Tales from the Crypt thing is, you know, Tales
Speaker 2: from the Crypt was like the show on HBO back
Speaker 2: in the day, and we've talked about it on the
Speaker 2: show before here on like some of our horror anthology
Speaker 2: specials around Halloween. You know, it's basically it's based on
Speaker 2: the old horror comics, and each little story in the
Speaker 2: horror comic would be about some horrible person getting their
Speaker 2: come uppance, and so each episode of Tales from the
Speaker 2: Crypt generally revolves around that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah to me, the opening theme music of Tales from
Speaker 3: the Crypt, I think it's composed by Danny Elfman. It
Speaker 3: just sounds like the nineties, and it sounds like being
Speaker 3: a kid in the nineties trying to watch stuff that
Speaker 3: you're not allowed to watch.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's like it's the.
Speaker 3: Sound of I think we may have made this comparison before,
Speaker 3: but it's the sound of a scrambled cable channel that
Speaker 3: you don't get that shows are rated depravity all night
Speaker 3: and every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it really does. And I guess one of
Speaker 2: the interesting things about this is, like you can imagine
Speaker 2: the studios came in there, some folks behind the scenes
Speaker 2: were like, Hey, this show's really successful, we should do
Speaker 2: a movie. The thing is, Tales from the Crypt doesn't
Speaker 2: really lend itself well to that kind of format, unless
Speaker 2: you're going to do an anthology film with just a
Speaker 2: bunch of little stories, much like the original Tales from
Speaker 2: the Crypt film, the nineteen seventy two anthology picture from Amicus.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think I even knew that existed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has the Cryptkeeper in it, but the Cryptkeeper
Speaker 2: is played by Sir Ralph in like a hood.
Speaker 3: That's nice. Yeah, But so, as you mentioned, the standard
Speaker 3: format of a Tales from the Crypt episode, and you know,
Speaker 3: there's some variation but the most common format is that
Speaker 3: you have basically a sleazy salad of gratuitous gore and
Speaker 3: nudity in which a morally bankrupt person does something evil,
Speaker 3: they think they're going to get away with it, and
Speaker 3: then they get their just desserts via the vengeful wrath
Speaker 3: of a monster, demon, ancient curse, haunted scarecrow, chainsaw freak
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in a way, it's it's like horror in
Speaker 2: a very simple form, fulfilling a societal need. You know,
Speaker 2: we need the villains in our world, in our life
Speaker 2: to suffer, and these little stories provide that suffering along
Speaker 2: with some you know, gratuitous violence, maybe a little nudity
Speaker 2: in maybe a few laughs as well. A lot of
Speaker 2: gallows humor finds its way into these episodes.
Speaker 3: And lot of puns. I mean, the crypt Keeper loves
Speaker 3: to make death related puns.
Speaker 2: That's right, because, of course, the big thing about the
Speaker 2: HBO series is hosted by the crypt Keeper, this wonderful
Speaker 2: puppetry creation of a reanimated corpse that just gleefully takes
Speaker 2: you on this journey to hear all of these tales.
Speaker 3: You know who the crypt Keeper is, It's the preserved
Speaker 3: remains of Jeremy Bentham. I couldn't stop thinking about that
Speaker 3: this time. I mean, like God, that rotten looking head.
Speaker 3: It's almost perfectly the crypt Keeper.
Speaker 2: Well, let's start with the Cryptkeeper. Talking about people involved
Speaker 2: in this one. The Cryptkeeper's voice is, of course John
Speaker 2: Casser born in nineteen fifty seven. He's a longtime actor
Speaker 2: and voice actor, but he's most well known as the
Speaker 2: voice of the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt on
Speaker 2: HBO from eighty nine through ninety six, as well as
Speaker 2: the cartoon Tales from the Crypt Keeper nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety nine three Tales from the Crypt movies.
Speaker 2: Will get a touch on that in a bit, but basically,
Speaker 2: just with the crypt Keeper, we have a great voice
Speaker 2: coming together with an amazing puppet, at least for most appearances,
Speaker 2: and all this based on one of the EC comics
Speaker 2: horror hosts. You know. Other hosts included things like the
Speaker 2: Vault Keeper and the Old Witch.
Speaker 3: But those were just in the comic right, They were
Speaker 3: not on the TV series.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Though. Occasionally the crypt Keeper has
Speaker 2: a guest that's not a corpse in those little segments,
Speaker 2: and we'll touch on some of those examples as we
Speaker 2: go here. But of course in this movie Tales from
Speaker 2: the Crypt Demon Night, the crypt Keeper is just there
Speaker 2: to set things up to say, hey, we can hear
Speaker 2: it is for you a movie. And the movie itself
Speaker 2: is pretty self contained. It has a few nods to
Speaker 2: Tails from the Crypt within it, but still you could
Speaker 2: watch it on its own, without the intro or the
Speaker 2: outro and you'd get it. So I guess the first
Speaker 2: person we should talk about is the director. This was
Speaker 2: directed by Ernest Dickerson. Dickerson was born in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: and he was a classmate of Spike Lee at the
Speaker 2: Tisch School of the Arts, and so he went on
Speaker 2: to work as a frequent collaborator with Spike Lee as
Speaker 2: a cinematographer on various Spike Lee joints including School Days,
Speaker 2: Do the Right Thing, Mo Beetter, Blues, Jungle Fever, and
Speaker 2: Malcolm X. He also worked as a cinematographer on films
Speaker 2: from John Salis, the film Brother from Another Planet, and
Speaker 2: Jonathan Demi, and more recently you might have noticed his
Speaker 2: name as a director on a number of TV projects,
Speaker 2: including multiple episodes of The Walking Dead, Tremay The Wire.
Speaker 2: He seems like one of those TV directors that just
Speaker 2: works all the time, and he's also done a lot
Speaker 2: of work in the horror genre. He was a cinematographer
Speaker 2: on the TV series Tales from the Dark Side, an
Speaker 2: anthology series, and while Demon Knight was his first horror
Speaker 2: or sci fi film as a director, he went on
Speaker 2: to direct nineteen ninety eight's Future Sport, which looks interesting,
Speaker 2: and the two thousand and one Snoop Dogg ghost movie Bones,
Speaker 2: which I haven't seen, but I was reading a little
Speaker 2: about in it. It seems like it has its following,
Speaker 2: so maybe it's worth trying out. Yeah, Okay, I mean
Speaker 2: it's Snoop is always entertaining. Yeah. So Demon Night, though,
Speaker 2: follows up on Dickerson's nineteen ninety two film Juice, which
Speaker 2: starred Tupac Shakur, and also the exquisite nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: film Surviving the Game. Do you remember this one, Joe, Of.
Speaker 3: Course I do. Surviving the I don't think Surviving the
Speaker 3: Game is as good as Demon Knight, as comparing Dickerson's
Speaker 3: violent thrillers here Surviving, But one thing that is great
Speaker 3: about Surviving the Game. Basically, it's an adaptation of the
Speaker 3: short story The Most Dangerous Game about a group about
Speaker 3: like a rich guy on an island who hunts human
Speaker 3: beings for sport. This adapts that to the modern world,
Speaker 3: and it's a movie about a character named Mason played
Speaker 3: by iced T, who is like homeless and depressed, and
Speaker 3: he gets offered a job by a guy who he
Speaker 3: meets somewhere I think maybe at a like a like
Speaker 3: a place where they're feeding the homeless, and he gets
Speaker 3: recruited for this job to be a wilderness guide for
Speaker 3: a bunch of rich dudes played by people like Rutger Howard,
Speaker 3: Charles Stutton, Gary Busey, f Murray Abraham, John C. McGinley.
Speaker 3: It is a real powerhouse cast, like every person who
Speaker 3: could have played like, you know, the cocaine king of
Speaker 3: the Week in an eighties crime movie. They're one of these,
Speaker 3: one of the party of the hunters in this movie.
Speaker 3: And then of course the twist is once they get
Speaker 3: out in the woods, they tell iced T Okay, well
Speaker 3: we're gonna hunt you now, but iced T outsmarts them all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I remember catching this one on cable, I think,
Speaker 2: and I remember finding it irresistible, just drawn right.
Speaker 3: Int Yeah, And I gotta say Iced Tea has a
Speaker 3: very weird charm in this movie. It's hard to describe
Speaker 3: exactly what it is, but he plays a He plays
Speaker 3: a very rude and sympathetic protagonist as he's like chugging
Speaker 3: along through the forest while they're chasing him on ATVs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so it's some notable films from Dickerson there. Now,
Speaker 2: coming back to Demon Night, there's a there's an excellent
Speaker 2: Shout Factory slash Screen Factory Blu ray of this film
Speaker 2: that came out, and that's that's what I watched for this.
Speaker 2: But it also includes some some really cool features, including
Speaker 2: interviews with Dickerson among others, and one of the things
Speaker 2: that came out of it, aside from him just being
Speaker 2: really chill and apparently easy to work with and open
Speaker 2: to some of the lunier ideas that the actors brought
Speaker 2: to the table, he was also a major force behind
Speaker 2: having a more diverse cast on this film, including the
Speaker 2: casting of African American actors Jada Pinkett, C. C. H. Pounder,
Speaker 2: and Mark David Kinnerley who plays a very small part
Speaker 2: towards the end, but also presumably First Nations actor Gary
Speaker 2: Farmer who will touch on here in a bit. And
Speaker 2: it's worth noticing that even our secondary minority characters in
Speaker 2: this film survive quite far into the picture, right.
Speaker 3: The cliche long being that in many horror movies it
Speaker 3: is and for the cast to be all white except
Speaker 3: for one black character, and the black guy dies first.
Speaker 2: Right. So yeah, it seems that having a black director
Speaker 2: at at the front of this thing really helped out
Speaker 2: in that regard. For instance, the main character, the character
Speaker 2: the Jada Pinkett plays, you know, Jada Pinkett Smith plays
Speaker 2: in this like that was I think the studio wanted
Speaker 2: I forget which actor, but they wanted a white female
Speaker 2: actor for the role, and he insisted on this, and
Speaker 2: I think it's a better film for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, the screenwriters on this were Ethan Rife, Cyrus Voris,
Speaker 2: and Mark Bishop, so that this trio. They had written
Speaker 2: a post apocalyptic movie called Escape from Saithe Haven in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight and that was directed by Bishop, and
Speaker 2: Bishop didn't seem to go on to do much else
Speaker 2: in film, but Rife and Voris went on to do
Speaker 2: quite a lot, including two thousand and eight Kung Fu Panda.
Speaker 2: They wrote that and you'll find their names attached to
Speaker 2: anything involving Kung Fu Panda. They also twenty ten's Robinhood
Speaker 2: that's the Ridley Scott version starring Russell Crowe.
Speaker 3: M I didn't never saw that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, and Demon Night was apparently a spec script
Speaker 2: that they had out there and people were excited about it,
Speaker 2: and it got picked up by this Tales from the
Speaker 2: Crypt trilogy idea, like they were. The basic idea is like,
Speaker 2: let's do three Tales from the Crypt films. We'll find
Speaker 2: the screenplays and we'll we'll just you know, put to
Speaker 2: some crypt keeper at the beginning, some crypt Keeper at
Speaker 2: the end, and he got yourself a franchise.
Speaker 3: Now, unfortunately, being a feature film instead of being made
Speaker 3: for TV, it does not have commercial breaks for the
Speaker 3: crypt Keeper to come in in the middle of the
Speaker 3: movie and comment about what's currently going on in the story.
Speaker 3: He's just at the beginning and the end. But even
Speaker 3: with only the beginning and the end of Brackets, the
Speaker 3: crypt Keeper is a very welcome presence.
Speaker 2: Yes. Now, apparently I was watching some of the making
Speaker 2: of and apparently there was some push and pull on
Speaker 2: the idea of like what the movie itself was going
Speaker 2: to be. The screenwriters really thought, this is more of
Speaker 2: a hero movie, This is about a hero's journey, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And then everyone else was like, well, but it's a
Speaker 2: monster movie. It needs to be a monster movie. It's
Speaker 2: Tales from the Crypt. And then, you know, ultimately it
Speaker 2: goes back to what we said earlier, like this is
Speaker 2: not a come upance film. It's not a film about
Speaker 2: a horrible person getting their come upance. It ends up
Speaker 2: really being more of a hero's journey kind of a
Speaker 2: story with monsters, but with the Tales from the Crypt branding.
Speaker 3: But also, I mean, I think Dickerson handles it exactly
Speaker 3: right in that it is not overly serious in any way,
Speaker 3: Like it is a very loose, fun, frisky movie that
Speaker 3: does not ever stop to take itself too seriously. And
Speaker 3: the scenes that do get kind of serious addressing, like
Speaker 3: the you know, the recurring hero motif or whatever, those
Speaker 3: are brief enough to be kind of welcome, and then
Speaker 3: it quickly gets back to goofy gory jokes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Well, let's start talking about some of these
Speaker 2: heroes again. Jada Pinkett, who would become Jada Pinkett Smith
Speaker 2: later on Sheep Hero and this is jerry Lyne Jerry Lynn,
Speaker 2: like Jerline Jerrelene. It's one of those where I got
Speaker 2: prepared for it to be pronounced a certain way and
Speaker 2: then it was not in the film.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, I think different characters in the movie pronounce
Speaker 3: her name different and you might say, hey, that's not consistent,
Speaker 3: But then hey, have you ever known somebody whose name
Speaker 3: as written could be pronounced different ways? People pronounce it
Speaker 3: different ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we're going with Jerline Jerlene. Okay, jery Lene.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try and be consistent. I may just say
Speaker 2: Jada Pinkett anyway. Yep, she's in this. She had not
Speaker 2: yet married Will Smith, but she was on the rise here.
Speaker 2: She was coming off of the Hughes Brothers Minace to
Speaker 2: Society as well as Jason's Lyric, and she would apparently
Speaker 2: go on to like really break out in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: six is the Nutty Professor. Then she was in Scream two,
Speaker 2: the Matrix sequels, just to name a few.
Speaker 3: I saw that she's going to be in the upcoming
Speaker 3: new Matrix movie, so I forget who her character is,
Speaker 3: but whoever she is, she must survive the third film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, let's see this is not a hero. This
Speaker 2: is our main antagonist in the film, but we have
Speaker 2: Billy Zaine as the collector.
Speaker 3: Billy Zaine is just wonderful in this movie.
Speaker 2: He is he's I mean, Zayin has a very punishable
Speaker 2: face and a lot of roles and oh he's so
Speaker 2: punishable in this he's he he just he hams it
Speaker 2: up so much like he's great playing like a smug,
Speaker 2: privileged sob and in so many other films, I mean,
Speaker 2: especially Titanic comes to mind, but yeah, he's he's like
Speaker 2: a Looney Tunes character in this in all the right ways,
Speaker 2: with the in the appropriate in the appropriate ways. He
Speaker 2: is just like a cartoon character.
Speaker 3: Oh well, you included a detail that he I think
Speaker 3: revealed in one of the making of features. You said
Speaker 3: you were watching that once. Once I read it, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, that's absolutely right, the one
Speaker 3: about Aladdin.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, he says that he approached the role like
Speaker 2: he was playing the genie from Alatin, except evil, and
Speaker 2: then you see it in everything.
Speaker 3: It's exactly what he's doing. He's almost Robin Williams, but
Speaker 3: a little bit less manic and more smooth, but smooth
Speaker 3: in a very sinister and silly way. He's perfect in
Speaker 3: this role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is apparently one of his favorite
Speaker 2: roles that he did, and yeah, he really shines in it.
Speaker 2: You know, no matter what your opinion is of Zain
Speaker 2: in general, you know, he's been in some real some
Speaker 2: real stinkers for sure, but yeah, this says just the
Speaker 2: right amount of Billy Zay. And oh and this was
Speaker 2: fun too. This was revealed on one of the featurettes.
Speaker 2: This was apparently Zay's first film without a hair piece. Huh.
Speaker 2: So yeah, apparently he came in to meet Dickerson and
Speaker 2: he brought in like a little suitcase and he opened
Speaker 2: it up, uh, and he was completely bald, you know,
Speaker 2: shoes and shaved down, and he showed him the hair pieces.
Speaker 2: He's like, which one do you want me to wear
Speaker 2: for the film? And Dickerson's like, I don't know, I
Speaker 2: like what you've got going on there, And so that's
Speaker 2: what they which.
Speaker 3: Is bald right? Which yes, yeah, yeah, his bald head
Speaker 3: is exquisite. And I wonder if that inspired the scenes
Speaker 3: in the film where he's carrying around a suitcase or
Speaker 3: maybe that was part of the script anyway, I mean,
Speaker 3: so we should say that. In the movie, we said
Speaker 3: he's the villain, but he is the titular demon Knight.
Speaker 3: He is a hell beast who's a kind of smooth
Speaker 3: talking prints of the infernal realms, who wants to do
Speaker 3: some kind of apocalyptic magic, and it involves him frequently
Speaker 3: getting out a suitcase and asking people to put a
Speaker 3: thing inside it.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, yeah, So he does have a suitcase around,
Speaker 2: so presumably a very similar suitcase that held his many
Speaker 2: different hairs.
Speaker 3: Now, you've got a lot of films listed as Billy's
Speaker 3: An credits that almost none of which I had any
Speaker 3: idea Billy z An was in.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he was in nineteen eighty five's Back to
Speaker 2: the Future.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: He was in nineteen eighty six's Critters. I had no
Speaker 2: clue on that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no idea.
Speaker 2: I guess he really stood out. I guess one of
Speaker 2: the early roles where he really stood out would be
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty nine thriller Dead Calm alongside Sam Neil
Speaker 2: and Nicole Kidman. And he's he's quite good in that.
Speaker 3: I've never seen it.
Speaker 2: Oh it's good. It's a really good, solid thriller.
Speaker 3: Uh huh? Was that the one where he plays like
Speaker 3: a he's like an evil guy on a boat.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, it's a thriller.
Speaker 3: That's probably oversimplifying it.
Speaker 2: But yeah yeah, I mean I haven't seen it in forever,
Speaker 2: but I remember it as being quite good.
Speaker 3: It's like you take the end of Cape Fear and
Speaker 3: make it a whole movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess so, yeah, Zay And of course
Speaker 2: did a lot of TV work as well. He was
Speaker 2: on Twin Peaks, he was in the film Tombstone, and
Speaker 2: of course we can't forget his starring role in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six is The Phantom, because there was that whole
Speaker 2: period in the nineties when Hollywood decided that old timey
Speaker 2: characters like Dick Tracy and the Shadow were the next
Speaker 2: big thing.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, and that was a weird time. I kind
Speaker 3: of wait, So was the Phantom an old property that
Speaker 3: was being revived or was it a new property in
Speaker 3: the style of the old adventure serials?
Speaker 2: The Phantom was an old character?
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh okay, yeah, I know the Shadow was. Didn't
Speaker 3: Alec Baldwin play the Shadow and the Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah that one. I do not remember that one
Speaker 2: as being good, but it had Alec Baldwin and it
Speaker 2: was directed by Russell McKay. So I'm sure if I
Speaker 2: were to watch it again, I would I would find
Speaker 2: some some lovable, weird things in it. But I don't know, Uh,
Speaker 2: there are other Maquay films I would rather see.
Speaker 3: Now. I know you have unspeakable love for Dick Tracy.
Speaker 3: Do you want to talk about that?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, I wouldn't say it's unspeakable love because I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it since I was a kid. But it
Speaker 2: it was one that was not as good as anticipated, perhaps,
Speaker 2: But it had such weird mobsters in it, Like all
Speaker 2: the mobsters, you know, in a way they're they're trying
Speaker 2: to create the kind of the like rough charactertures of
Speaker 2: the of the of the Gold comic, and in doing
Speaker 2: so they created these monstrous, mutant gangsters that were just,
Speaker 2: you know, you're resistible, and also just so weird, Like
Speaker 2: it's so weird that the movies filled with them.
Speaker 3: Wasn't there one called Little Face who had a huge
Speaker 3: head with a little face in the middle of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there was Flat Top, and.
Speaker 3: I think there was one called No Face who didn't
Speaker 3: have a face.
Speaker 2: There's one called the Brow with just this enormous, grotesque
Speaker 2: brow Like, it's just tons of those type characters, most
Speaker 2: of which they did nothing with. Most of them are
Speaker 2: just I think like they have like a good dozen
Speaker 2: of them that they kill in one scene just in passing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they just have like the Star Wars canteena scene
Speaker 3: but it's mutant mobsters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I feel like that kind of ruined me
Speaker 2: for traditional gangster films to a certain extent, because you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, Godfather's good, but he didn't have any mutants
Speaker 2: in it. Oh.
Speaker 3: I like the Godfather.
Speaker 2: God Godfather is good, but yeah, but I'd like to
Speaker 2: see mutant gangsters come back. I feel like that's the
Speaker 2: that's the takeaway from Dick Tracy.
Speaker 3: I agree, a little bit more boiling acid version of
Speaker 3: The Godfather.
Speaker 2: All Right. We said that there was an immortal drifter
Speaker 2: in this, and there is the character breaker played by
Speaker 2: the always excellent William Sadler.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, William Sadler, he's got one of those faces, right,
Speaker 3: That's just he has an inherently evil looking face, which
Speaker 3: makes me assume that in reality he must be a
Speaker 3: nice guy, because I recall there being a bit about
Speaker 3: this in the novel Around the World in Eighty Days,
Speaker 3: which I haven't read since I was a kid, but
Speaker 3: I remember there's a part where a police detective is
Speaker 3: talking about how people who have criminal looking faces have
Speaker 3: no choice but to be honest, because you know, everybody
Speaker 3: looks at them and suspects they're a criminal. It's only
Speaker 3: people who look very trustworthy who can really get away
Speaker 3: with great crime. So I don't know for sure, but yeah, Sadler,
Speaker 3: he just has that face where he looks like a
Speaker 3: devil person. And there are other people like this who
Speaker 3: just kind of naturally look like a cartoon devil, like
Speaker 3: Malcolm McDowell kind of looks like a cartoon devil. There's
Speaker 3: a Prosperity Gospel TV preacher Mike Murdoch who just looks
Speaker 3: like a cartoon demon.
Speaker 2: Well, Sadler, Yeah, he definitely has that sort of face.
Speaker 2: He's played a fairly fairly diverse amount of roles. I
Speaker 2: don't know, he does tend to sort of play your
Speaker 2: rougher characters. He's he's played villains of differing varieties, Like
Speaker 2: he's definitely played the the suit wearing villain, but he's
Speaker 2: also played the you know, the sort of you know
Speaker 2: dirt kicker kind of a villain as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for instance, he's he might be best known for
Speaker 2: his role as the Seventh Seal inspired death in the
Speaker 2: Bill and Ted movie.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, the Reaper. Yeah, they melvin him yep.
Speaker 2: And and also, interestingly enough, his rendition of that character
Speaker 2: shows up on Tails from the Crypt at one point
Speaker 2: in the Crypt Keeper sequence where he's like playing a
Speaker 2: game of chess with the Cripkeeper or something. But he
Speaker 2: was in Shashankrediction, he was in the Second Diehard movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's the guy. He's like the new martial arts Kernel.
Speaker 3: I remember he's in the hotel room doing like naked
Speaker 3: yoga or something, and then he I think at some
Speaker 3: point he like punches out a TV screen.
Speaker 2: He he was on Tails from the Crypt. He appeared
Speaker 2: in in what I believe was the pilot episode The
Speaker 2: Man Who Was Death, And he also played the host
Speaker 2: of a Tale from the Crypt spinoff, the title of
Speaker 2: the Two Fisted Tales. This apparently wasn't picked up. They
Speaker 2: ended up just using the three episodes. I think that
Speaker 2: they shot using them as Tales from the Crypt episodes.
Speaker 2: But he had this whole persona of mister rush a
Speaker 2: crazy old cowboy in a wheelchair and if you look
Speaker 2: it up on YouTube you can find clips of it.
Speaker 2: It's like he's just completely over the top in the role,
Speaker 2: as one should be.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Williams. Saddler is always like a high tension cable,
Speaker 3: you know, He's like one of those like steel cables
Speaker 3: that a tram car rides along.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but yeah. Throughout his career he's played very
Speaker 2: serious characters and he's played just yeah, real live wires.
Speaker 2: He seemed to have a tremendous amount of range there,
Speaker 2: but you don't see him, I guess, playing the hero
Speaker 2: as much in this in this one.
Speaker 3: Because he's got an evil looking face.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but it works here because he's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: He's a I mean, he's a guy on the very
Speaker 2: you know, margins of law and society.
Speaker 3: M yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: Some of the rest of the cast here. C. C. H.
Speaker 2: Pounder we already mentioned. She plays a character, Irene. She's
Speaker 2: a She's a talented actor, probably best known for her
Speaker 2: role on the Shield. She was in Avatar, she was
Speaker 2: in RoboCop three, and a lot of TV work.
Speaker 3: I think she does one of those big crime TV shows.
Speaker 3: Now didn't she like in CIS or something.
Speaker 2: I think so, yeah, she That's the sort of show
Speaker 2: that she seemed to get a lot of work on. Now,
Speaker 2: another character actor in this is somebody who recognized from
Speaker 2: previous episodes of a Weird House, and that is Dick Miller,
Speaker 2: who plays Uncle Willie. That's right, Yeah, I would say this,
Speaker 2: whatever you expect of a Dick Miller character, you will
Speaker 2: get it from this film. He's not really playing against
Speaker 2: type or anything, but it's a substantial role. And I
Speaker 2: found out on the special features for this one this
Speaker 2: was his first time in his entire career in which
Speaker 2: he wore a prosthetic makeup.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I assume this is for the part where
Speaker 3: he turns into a demon, not for his regular regular appearance,
Speaker 3: because here he is, like you say, playing perfectly to type.
Speaker 3: He is just a whiskey guzzling drifter.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And there's some great drifter to drifter relations between him
Speaker 3: and William Sadler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they have. They have some good scenes. Apparently,
Speaker 2: like Dick Miller was, you know, in all these old
Speaker 2: older films, He's Corman films and all. So apparently the
Speaker 2: effects guys and Dickerson himself, they were just super thrilled
Speaker 2: to have Dick Miller on the picture because you know,
Speaker 2: this is a guy who was in all those old
Speaker 2: films that they grew up watching. So that's pretty much.
Speaker 3: Was you a vacuum salesman in a movie I saw
Speaker 3: when I was a kid. Yeah, and you get taken
Speaker 3: down to the furnace by by the Marlborough man.
Speaker 2: It's like, I've seen you die so many times, how
Speaker 2: about one more time? Let's see Thomas Aiden Church is
Speaker 2: in this plays a character named Roach. Kind of Church
Speaker 2: is kind of like a younger handsomer William Sadler in
Speaker 2: some ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in this movie. So he plays this swaggering creep,
Speaker 3: but with a swaggering creep with a luxurious like Jethro
Speaker 3: tull Roady hair, and he's also wearing a Trent Reznor
Speaker 3: style see through T shirt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's He's absolutely hateable in this role in
Speaker 2: all the right ways. Like he really really makes you
Speaker 2: hate this character. This was only his third film role though.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he'd go on to I mean he was I
Speaker 2: think he'd already been on the show Wings and that's
Speaker 2: what he was mainly known for. But he went on
Speaker 2: of course being Sideways and Spider Man three.
Speaker 3: Now the movie, of course, like any good horror movie,
Speaker 3: especially any good horror movie from the nineties, has its
Speaker 3: share of useless cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have two useless cops in this, one
Speaker 2: of which dies pretty soon. The other is the deputy
Speaker 2: deputy Bob Martel, that survives very long into the film.
Speaker 2: And this is played by character actor Gary Farmer. And
Speaker 2: here is your absolutely solid Overdrawn in the Memory Bank connection,
Speaker 2: because he was in over Drawn in the Memory Bank.
Speaker 3: Really I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that, of course was a nineteen eighty three
Speaker 2: American playhouse rendition of over Drawn in the Memory Bank
Speaker 2: that starred Rawle Julia And he just has a small,
Speaker 2: ultimately kind of awkward role in it. But he went
Speaker 2: on to be in a ton more stuff. So he
Speaker 2: was born in fifty three. He's a Canadian First Nations actor.
Speaker 2: And let's see something like, for instance, he went on
Speaker 2: to be in Dead Man the Western with the Johnny J.
Speaker 3: Jarmusch movie, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And then also in his film Ghost Dog Way of
Speaker 2: the Samurai. He actually plays the same character in those
Speaker 2: two films. He plays his character named Nobody. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And he was also apparently under consideration for the role
Speaker 2: of doctor Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: but that didn't come together for some reason.
Speaker 3: Oh, that ultimately went to what's his name, Benicio del Toro, Yes,
Speaker 3: Benicccio del Toro.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Oh you know what, Actually I should go back on
Speaker 3: what I said earlier, because I said that this movie
Speaker 3: has useless cops, and it is a very reliable trope
Speaker 3: of horror movies, especially like horror movies of the nineties.
Speaker 3: But it's it's pretty much always there that you can
Speaker 3: just count on cops to not be useful in them,
Speaker 3: you know, like you run up. You never have the
Speaker 3: scene where you run up to a cop and say
Speaker 3: there's a monster chasing us and they whip out their
Speaker 3: gun and say where get behind me. No, it's always like, oh,
Speaker 3: calm down, missy, and then there's just like a claw
Speaker 3: sticking through their face or something. But in this movie,
Speaker 3: Gary Farmer's deputy Bob, he actually he becomes more useful
Speaker 3: as the movie goes on than is actually kind of
Speaker 3: heroic by the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, even though he you know, as a character actor,
Speaker 2: he has this kind of like bumbling quality to him.
Speaker 2: You know, it plays well to comedy, and he does
Speaker 2: some good comedy in this. But yeah, he also they
Speaker 2: do more with the character than just have him fumble
Speaker 2: a gun and get killed by a monster. All right.
Speaker 2: Another interesting character we have in this is Charles Fleischer,
Speaker 2: who plays his character Wally. I think this is a character.
Speaker 2: A lot of you may not recognize his name. Some
Speaker 2: of you may not even recognize a picture of him,
Speaker 2: but you would recognize his voice, at least one voice
Speaker 2: that he does because he was the voice of Roger Rabbit.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And outside of that, he often plays weirdos. He has
Speaker 2: a real kind of like weirdo look to him. You know,
Speaker 2: he plays that kind of character. Well, he doesn't disappoint
Speaker 2: in this film. He plays another weirdo.
Speaker 3: He plays a very awkward guy in yeah movie.
Speaker 2: But I've seen him in a number of things. He
Speaker 2: had a fun role recurring role on Jonathan Ames TV
Speaker 2: series Blunt Talk. So he's always a treat when he
Speaker 2: shows up. But it doesn't seem he doesn't show up
Speaker 2: a lot in things I watch.
Speaker 3: Now. We know that Ernest Dickerson was himself cinematographer on
Speaker 3: a bunch of other movies, so he's directing here. Who
Speaker 3: does the cinematography.
Speaker 2: One Rick Boda or Bata Bota, who went on to
Speaker 2: direct not one, not two, but three direct to video
Speaker 2: Hell Raiser sequels Ride in a Row, Hell Seeker, Debtor,
Speaker 2: and Hell World.
Speaker 3: I believe that's gonna be your numbers six, seven, and
Speaker 3: eight in the Hell Raiser series. I would say that
Speaker 3: is not a high point of the series. But it's
Speaker 3: weird because so those are not very good Hell Raiser movies.
Speaker 3: But I like his cinematography style in the movie. It's nothing,
Speaker 3: you know, it's nothing all that artistic, but it's very fluid.
Speaker 3: I mean, like it's good in the sense that it's
Speaker 3: the kind of good filmmaking that don't you're not thinking
Speaker 3: about technique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And it has some some nice use of
Speaker 2: gels in places that they kind of give it that
Speaker 2: tales from the crypt vibe without like overdoing it right.
Speaker 2: Like you see a similar thing done in what was
Speaker 2: Stephen king Creep Show, where it was also an homage
Speaker 2: to horror comics of old, But there are scenes in
Speaker 2: that where they just go crazy with the gels to
Speaker 2: create these kind of comic book colors, and so there's
Speaker 2: a little lot of it in here, but it feels
Speaker 2: a lot a lot more restrained.
Speaker 3: So Hell World is the Evil Dead or not Evil
Speaker 3: Dead the I've totally forgotten what it's called hell Raiser
Speaker 3: hell hell World is the hell Raiser movie where the
Speaker 3: tagline is evil goes Online. Oh man, it's the one
Speaker 3: where they go to So I think it's supposed to
Speaker 3: be that the Pinhead is in a computer or something,
Speaker 3: but then nobody ever really goes online in the movie.
Speaker 3: I was talking to my friend Chuck about this not
Speaker 3: too long ago. He pointed out that it's really a
Speaker 3: very offline movie. It's about a party. People go to
Speaker 3: a big party at somebody's house and Pinhead starts killing him.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Well, yeah, I never saw any of those,
Speaker 2: those these three hell Raiser films in particular, but they
Speaker 2: all had Doug Bradley and then at least a little bit,
Speaker 2: so they have that going for him.
Speaker 3: I guess Hell World also has Lance Hendrickson.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, Oh, I think I read about that
Speaker 2: where they were able they were able to get him
Speaker 2: for the role because he happened to be in I
Speaker 2: want to say, these were filmed in Romania, and he
Speaker 2: was in Romania already filming some other role and they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: we can get Lance Henderson. He's got another day or
Speaker 2: two on his hotel room.
Speaker 3: And they did it perfect serendipity.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, we mentioned that the cinematography of the movie is
Speaker 3: quite effective. It's nothing too flashy, but it's fun and
Speaker 3: it's loose and it's very fluid and you're just right
Speaker 3: in there in the action. I would say the same
Speaker 3: thing for the makeup effects in the movie, which are
Speaker 3: quite good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the makeup and the monsters in this are great.
Speaker 2: And we have the Todd Masters Company to think for this.
Speaker 2: They did all the special makeup on the picture. They
Speaker 2: did the monsters, and Masters was ideal for this because
Speaker 2: he was a Tales from the Crypt veteran already at
Speaker 2: that point, and he's done a lot of film and
Speaker 2: TV work, and he did a great job on the
Speaker 2: monsters in this film as well, from like a just
Speaker 2: from like a conceptual standpoint, because apparently in the early
Speaker 2: stages the monsters were going to be more zombie like
Speaker 2: or just kind of like possessed people, and he ended
Speaker 2: up pushing for a different design, a design that ultimately
Speaker 2: I think ended up being cheaper, which the studio liked,
Speaker 2: but it leaned heavily on body paint and lean actors
Speaker 2: in stilts with just prosthetic heads and some interesting like
Speaker 2: growin and tail features that we'll get to here in
Speaker 2: a bit. The monsters are terrific, but Masters has been
Speaker 2: involved in a number of different films that have great
Speaker 2: practical special effects like Necronomicon, Book of the Dead, Hell Raiser, Bloodline,
Speaker 2: The Resurrected. The Resurrected is the good Lovecraft movie that
Speaker 2: I was trying to remember in a previous episode. He
Speaker 2: was in the fifth Nightmare on m Street movie. He
Speaker 2: was in Return of not In. He did the effects
Speaker 2: for them, Return of Swamp Things, Slither Star Trek, First Contact.
Speaker 2: He did the borg stuff in that with the you know,
Speaker 2: the boorg Queen. He was responsible for that. And apparently
Speaker 2: he's going to do a movie according to IMDb, about
Speaker 2: giant leeches. So bringing the giant leeches back. I think
Speaker 2: they've been absent from cinema for well, what since the
Speaker 2: fifties or something.
Speaker 3: Oh, bring them on. But yeah, I agree with everything
Speaker 3: you said. I really love the monster design in this movie.
Speaker 3: It's simple. They look great. They've got green glowing eyes
Speaker 3: and mouths. That's excellent.
Speaker 2: All right, Well let's jump into the film itself. Let's
Speaker 2: let's roll through the plot.
Speaker 3: Well, so, first of all, you have a classic Tails
Speaker 3: from the crypt opening, which is, you know, your Dolly
Speaker 3: shot through the Cobweby mansion, and then you go down
Speaker 3: a secret passageway into the dungeon and it looks like
Speaker 3: it's the layer of Doctor Faustus. And then the crypt
Speaker 3: keeper he pops up out of the coffin and cackles
Speaker 3: at you. And as I said before, all the sound
Speaker 3: effects here, it's the Tales from the Crypto music is playing,
Speaker 3: and then you get there crypt keeper laugh. That is
Speaker 3: that is such a powerful auditory queue to nineties childhood mindset.
Speaker 2: I showed that, just the opening to my son to
Speaker 2: see how he would dig it, and he did not
Speaker 2: dig it. He found it, Oh, he found it. They
Speaker 2: found it frightening, and he did not want any part
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: That's probably all for the best. This movie is not
Speaker 3: for kids.
Speaker 2: And I'm not to say he was traumatized by it
Speaker 2: or anything, but I was like, you want to check
Speaker 2: this out for Halloween, and he's like, okay, sure, and
Speaker 2: then he saw it and he's like no, thank you.
Speaker 3: Now. I don't know if we even mentioned this before,
Speaker 3: but the movie starts with an opening segment that is
Speaker 3: not connected to the rest of the plot. I guess
Speaker 3: we did mention that there were brackets, but it starts
Speaker 3: you off in media res with stuff going on with
Speaker 3: other characters you like. Pan up and it's on the
Speaker 3: scene of a woman reclining in lingerie talking on the
Speaker 3: phone about how she has just murdered her husband, like
Speaker 3: his bloody clothes are still all over the place, and
Speaker 3: he's and we see he's downstairs dissolving in a tub
Speaker 3: of acid in the basement, and she's tall looking to
Speaker 3: her lover on the phone about how much they're going
Speaker 3: to enjoy spending all of the dead guy's money, and then,
Speaker 3: of course, pretty much immediately the tub corpse wakes up,
Speaker 3: and then it climbs the stairs and it has a
Speaker 3: hatchet in its hand and it charges in on her
Speaker 3: in a psycho style scene where she's in the bathtub
Speaker 3: and he's like ah, and then we get a cut, cut, cut,
Speaker 3: and it turns out it's a movie within a movie.
Speaker 3: The corpse man is being played by John Laura Keett,
Speaker 3: which is just excellent wait, did we already talk about
Speaker 3: John Laura Keett.
Speaker 2: We didn't. But of course he's most famous, or at least
Speaker 2: for older TV viewers, for being the lawyer what was
Speaker 2: the name Felding on Night Court?
Speaker 3: I never saw Night Court Handfielding.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: He also plays a lawyer at some point on The
Speaker 3: West Wing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he played a lot of characters like that. But
Speaker 2: for horror fans, he of course was the narrator on
Speaker 2: the original Texas Chainsaw Masker, that opening scroll that sets
Speaker 2: the tone for the film, and he did that at
Speaker 2: least in the the follow up in Texas Chanceallmascer two.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if he did any of the sequels
Speaker 2: beyond that. I think he did, but most notably that
Speaker 2: first one though, really the first thing you hear in
Speaker 2: that picture.
Speaker 3: He's good at playing a kind of like a thundering, conceited,
Speaker 3: pompous wind bag exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's That's everything that he played to a tee.
Speaker 3: But in this movie, it's funny because he's just got
Speaker 3: this bit part where he plays an actor playing a
Speaker 3: tub corpse who's about to hatchet his his scheming ex
Speaker 3: wife to death. And then but it turns out it's
Speaker 3: a movie within a movie. And then we pan up
Speaker 3: on the crypt Keeper, who's sitting in the director's chair,
Speaker 3: so imagine Jeremy Bentham's preserved remains and start he starts
Speaker 3: screaming at John Larroquette about how he can't act at all.
Speaker 3: He's like, you're no Gory Cooper, You're not even a
Speaker 3: Robert Dadford.
Speaker 2: And he was an ambitious bit of special effects here,
Speaker 2: because they clearly had a live actor doing some sort
Speaker 2: of like green screen head and then they put the
Speaker 2: puppeteered crypt keeper head over that in post so it
Speaker 2: looks and it looks maybe a tiny bit rough. You
Speaker 2: can tell there's some ambitious special effects going on here.
Speaker 2: But it's still amusing, which makes sense. You know, this
Speaker 2: is Tales from the Crypt the movie. You should go
Speaker 2: for it right.
Speaker 3: Right, And it's great because so this opening film within
Speaker 3: a film thing is perfect. It is a Tales from
Speaker 3: the Crypt episode. You know, it's a c detail in
Speaker 3: which a bad person gets what's coming to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But so then of course we get the crypt Keeper
Speaker 3: introducing the main story. He's you know, I can't remember
Speaker 3: exactly what he says, but he makes a bunch of
Speaker 3: puns and then he's like, I call this one demon night,
Speaker 3: and then we cut to the opening credits over a
Speaker 3: car cruising on a dark desert highway with the most
Speaker 3: perfect nineteen ninety five soundtrack choice.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's filters hey Man, nice shot, which is
Speaker 2: also in the trailer I think, which I think is
Speaker 2: just mandatory. This was just us law that if you
Speaker 2: had a film that came out in ninety five, you
Speaker 2: had to use hey Man I shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was. It was hard to contain the laughter
Speaker 3: while that was going on. And then of course we
Speaker 3: see William Saddler driving and he's you know, looking over
Speaker 3: his shoulder as if pursued by the hounds of hell.
Speaker 3: But no, it's even worse. It's Billy Zane and a
Speaker 3: cowboy hat. And it's very funny when it first reveals
Speaker 3: Billy Zayne's smirking face in the in the car that's
Speaker 3: chasing William Saddler, and so William Sadler starts to run
Speaker 3: out of gas on this desert highway and there is
Speaker 3: a highway showdown slash shootout, like Billy z Ane's riding
Speaker 3: up on him, and William Sadler gets out a rifle
Speaker 3: it's like a lever action rifle, and starts shooting at
Speaker 3: Billy Zanne's car. Eventually the car catches on fire, but
Speaker 3: Billy Zayn, undeterred, just rams straight into Saddler's car. Saddler
Speaker 3: gets out of it at the last second, and there's
Speaker 3: this huge fiery ramming explosion. So William Saddler escapes the
Speaker 3: flaming wreckage. And I guess we're supposed to assume, as
Speaker 3: the naive audience, that Billy Zain has been killed in
Speaker 3: the explosion, I guess, But why would we actually believe that?
Speaker 3: I mean, would it make sense for Billy's aying to
Speaker 3: be killed. No, it doesn't, doesn't. But William Sadler he
Speaker 3: looks at his palm and he sees a bunch of dots.
Speaker 3: I think they're a little like star tattoos on his palm,
Speaker 3: and some of them are glowing and others are not.
Speaker 3: And then he just sort of ambles on through the night.
Speaker 3: He's got drifter energy.
Speaker 2: He's got places to be apocalypses too for event.
Speaker 3: Right, And so he ambles on into Wormwood, New Mexico,
Speaker 3: again not a real place, and goes up to a
Speaker 3: diner called the Halfway House Cafe and immediately starts trying
Speaker 3: to jack cars, Like he gets out a butterfly knife
Speaker 3: and is sticking it in the keyhole of a car
Speaker 3: outside in the parking lot, and a kid comes out
Speaker 3: and he's like, hey, are you stealing my daddy's car?
Speaker 3: And he's like, no, I'm just testing the lock.
Speaker 2: Wormwood, New Mexico seems like a very interesting place because
Speaker 2: not only do they have drifters, it seems to be
Speaker 2: exclusively populated by drifters. Like I want to meet other
Speaker 2: drifters that make up this town, like Mayor Drifter and
Speaker 2: the rest of the post office, Like everybody's kind of
Speaker 2: like a suspect, a drifter type character.
Speaker 3: It's a drifter community. Like the characters in the town
Speaker 3: who are not drifters, they're written in such a way
Speaker 3: that they're like one decision away from being a drifter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we all are, really, but especially these characters.
Speaker 3: So anyway, a bunch of people run out of the diner.
Speaker 3: I think one of the people who runs out is
Speaker 3: Thomas Hayden Church. But a bunch of people run out
Speaker 3: and then they run William Saddler off, so he's chased
Speaker 3: off into the night where he runs into Dick Miller
Speaker 3: as an old drunk and they share some whiskey and
Speaker 3: commiserate for a bid and then Dick Miller tells him that, hey,
Speaker 3: I know a place where you can bed down for
Speaker 3: the night, and so they're funneling him toward this old church.
Speaker 3: You can immediately tell the sort of plot mechanics that
Speaker 3: are happening here. We're sivving all of the characters into
Speaker 3: this one fortress location.
Speaker 2: Now, fact about this location, it looks really great, it
Speaker 2: lose phenomenal. But when they went to put the film together,
Speaker 2: Dickerson particularly did not want to film at night and
Speaker 2: have like really long nights of shoots for the cast
Speaker 2: and crew. So that was one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: instead they got an airplane hangar, and in it they
Speaker 2: built that building and the immediate surroundings oh nice like
Speaker 2: in its entirety, so that they could just film during
Speaker 2: the day at their leisure and have complete control over
Speaker 2: the lighting. But there was one issue. Pigeons were already
Speaker 2: living in there in the airplane hangar, and you know
Speaker 2: how pigeons are, They're constantly making noise, making these pigeon noises.
Speaker 2: So they couldn't get rid of the pigeons. But what
Speaker 2: they ended up doing is every time before they would
Speaker 2: the roll the camera, before they'd say action, they would
Speaker 2: fire off a blank They would fire off a gun
Speaker 2: in order to just frighten the pigeons and get them
Speaker 2: to shut up, so they could they could have this
Speaker 2: window of time in which they could film before the
Speaker 2: pigeons started to their ruckus. Again.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's funny. Somehow I feel like I could kind
Speaker 3: of sense that it was that it was indoor for outdoor,
Speaker 3: even though it's a vast expanse, like you can't see
Speaker 3: the walls of the airplane hangar or anything.
Speaker 2: But that's good.
Speaker 3: And I think I've said this on the show before.
Speaker 3: I for some reason always really enjoy a good indoor
Speaker 3: for outdoor set. Well.
Speaker 2: It can make a very surreal environment, you know. And
Speaker 2: it makes sense for this film because the only exteriors
Speaker 2: we have were this loathsome former church in the middle
Speaker 2: of a desert at the end of the world, and
Speaker 2: then one flashback to the Crucifixion. So yeah, so it
Speaker 2: makes sense that that we have this alien environment created
Speaker 2: by shooting everything inside of an airplane hangar exactly.
Speaker 3: But so what is this church? Dick Miller explains to
Speaker 3: us that it's a church that isn't a church anymore.
Speaker 3: He says they decommissioned it in the fifties due to
Speaker 3: lack of interest.
Speaker 2: That's the official monology on the decommissioning.
Speaker 3: Form, right, Yeah, it was like interest on who's part,
Speaker 3: like on the preacher there, or.
Speaker 2: I think it was the town. There's just you know,
Speaker 2: it's just a bunch of drifters.
Speaker 3: It's just like, I'm not interested in that reverend. But so, yeah,
Speaker 3: it turns into it turns out to be this boarding house.
Speaker 3: It's like a desert hotel sort of. And it's it's
Speaker 3: like we said, it's like the evil Dead cabin for
Speaker 3: the movie, the Fortress of Order that will collect the
Speaker 3: characters and then fall under attack. It's the supernatural Alamo.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, and then meanwhile we also see that Billy Zain
Speaker 3: is hooking up with the police, Like the police are
Speaker 3: investigating the crash on the on the highway. The cars
Speaker 3: are on fire. They're like nobody could have survived that.
Speaker 3: Those cars hit each other going one hundred miles per hour,
Speaker 3: which we saw that opening scene. They were not going
Speaker 3: one hundred miles an hour, but whatever. So but then
Speaker 3: Billy Zaine just sort of like walks out from behind
Speaker 3: the flaming car and he's like, hey, what's up, and
Speaker 3: they're all like, oh, I didn't think you could have
Speaker 3: survived that. But so he explains to them that he
Speaker 3: was chasing a man who stole something, and so they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we'll help you find him, and so Zayan therefore enlists
Speaker 3: the police on his team.
Speaker 2: Initially, yeah, he's just so ding dang charming, they just
Speaker 2: can't say no. Yeah. Now, I have to say the
Speaker 2: film does a great job setting all this up, there's
Speaker 2: no wasted motion really, and getting us from here into
Speaker 2: our siege location and beginning to establish the rules for everything.
Speaker 2: And then the characters are mostly there to fulfill basic
Speaker 2: tropes in the story, you know again, like the bumbling cop,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But you know, I feel like it comes
Speaker 2: together rather well and also ultimately surprises you with a
Speaker 2: few choices in terms of like who survives and who doesn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally all.
Speaker 2: Right, we got everybody more or less bottled up inside
Speaker 2: this old building. Who are our characters?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm not gonna remember all of them, but so
Speaker 3: the main ones. I guess. You got William Sadler as
Speaker 3: this guy who will find out his named breaker. He's
Speaker 3: the drifter. You've got Jada Pinkett playing Jerlene, who is
Speaker 3: she is somebody who I think formerly was in prison
Speaker 3: and now she's working for the boarding house on work release.
Speaker 3: Then you've got c h. Pounder who is playing Irene,
Speaker 3: who is the owner proprietor of the boarding house. You've
Speaker 3: got Cordelia who is a prostitute. You've got Wally who
Speaker 3: is a mail carrier. You've got Thomas Hayden Church. I
Speaker 3: don't remember his character's name, but he's the creep. He's
Speaker 3: the guy roach right, Yeah, he's like the cook at
Speaker 3: the diner who is just a nasty backstab and woman
Speaker 3: Hayten creep. And then a few others.
Speaker 2: Well, you got uncle Wally in there.
Speaker 3: Oh did we not already talk about uncle We talked
Speaker 3: about uncle Uncle Willie, Uncle Willy. That's that's that's stick Miller.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then and then we'll have the police and then
Speaker 3: oh and there's a kid who shows up later, I think.
Speaker 2: But that's basically it. That's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, okay, I thought I may have forgotten somebody.
Speaker 3: There's a great scene when we're sort of just getting
Speaker 3: to know all the characters. There's a scene of Breaker
Speaker 3: eating this food on the table. It's just bright green slop.
Speaker 3: It looks like the slime that they used to have
Speaker 3: on Nickelodeon.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: So it's just bright green liquid that he's eating with
Speaker 3: a spoon and he slathers it in ketchup.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but he's happy to get it. He's just
Speaker 2: he's clearly famished.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then eventually the police arrive with Billy Zain
Speaker 3: in response to a report of an attempted car theft.
Speaker 3: I think that was William Sadler trying to jack the
Speaker 3: car with his knife earlier. And as soon as Billy
Speaker 3: Zay arrives and sees William Saddler in the sporting house,
Speaker 3: it's just like this is like the you know, the
Speaker 3: lights go off and he's sick in the cops on him.
Speaker 3: They've got William Saddler in cuffs and Zayne is looking
Speaker 3: for what Breaker stole, which is an antiquity of some kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's going to be our main plot element
Speaker 2: here that we'll get to do in a bit. This
Speaker 2: is the key. This is the thing that the demons
Speaker 2: want and that the the mortals in the universe absolutely
Speaker 2: cannot let fall into their hands.
Speaker 3: Right, And then Dick Miller sells him out. I felt betrayed.
Speaker 3: They've got him in the cuffs there, they're like, where
Speaker 3: is the thing? They've been looking around for it. I
Speaker 3: think they come across Thomas Hayden Church in the middle
Speaker 3: of some kind of sex act that involves him getting
Speaker 3: hooked up to a car battery.
Speaker 2: Oh. Yeah, he has a great line, didn't He's like,
Speaker 2: my nipples are burning.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think he says they're smoking.
Speaker 2: Smoking, My nipples are smoking. Yeah, it's good. I hope
Speaker 2: it's in his reel.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's got to be.
Speaker 2: But yeah.
Speaker 3: Eventually they've looked all over for this thing. They can't
Speaker 3: find it. Then Dick Miller sells him out. He sells
Speaker 3: out breaker. He's like, hey, actually the artifact is just
Speaker 3: here under the table where everybody's standing. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 3: some kind of key, But it's also like a bottle
Speaker 3: filled with some liquid, and Billy Zay won't touch it.
Speaker 3: It's clear something very significant is going on. What he
Speaker 3: wants is for Dick Miller to pour out its contents
Speaker 3: and then put it into a suitcase for him, and
Speaker 3: Breaker tells him not to do it, and they argue
Speaker 3: back and forth, and eventually the cops are like, ah,
Speaker 3: the hell with it. Both of the cars from this
Speaker 3: car crash were stolen. You're both going to jail and
Speaker 3: we'll figure it out later. So they try to take
Speaker 3: Sadler and Zaane off to jail. But then Zaye I
Speaker 3: think the a switch flips and he comes off the
Speaker 3: leash with an excellent punch right through the sheriff's head.
Speaker 3: Through the sheriff's head Ricky O style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, except unlike Ricky Oh, he's got this wonderful awkwardness
Speaker 2: of the head being stuck on his fist on his arm.
Speaker 2: Seems like having to try and get that off of
Speaker 2: his hand.
Speaker 3: It's pretty great, yeah, And then all hell breaks loose.
Speaker 3: Billy fights to get the key, Breaker burns him with it,
Speaker 3: so it's like a vampire with a crucifix, you know.
Speaker 3: If you touch the key to his face, it seems
Speaker 3: to burn him. And then Billy Zaying flies out the
Speaker 3: window and then stands there while everybody watches him, and
Speaker 3: he pierces his palm with a fingernail bleeds a bunch
Speaker 3: of green blood all over the place. The drops of
Speaker 3: his green blood on the earth make an army of
Speaker 3: demons to attack the house.
Speaker 2: He throws a nice hissy fit first, though, there's a
Speaker 2: there's a great but yeah. Then he starts summoning the monsters,
Speaker 2: and man, if you if you weren't already on board
Speaker 2: with this, once the monsters pop out in this film,
Speaker 2: you're really good to go, because these are some great monsters. Again,
Speaker 2: these are like they're They're unlike most monsters I've seen
Speaker 2: in other films. They're like these ghastly gaunt grave walker
Speaker 2: types but with also with the with the glowing green
Speaker 2: eyes that we mentioned, but also like piercings in places,
Speaker 2: but but not in like a punk sense, in a
Speaker 2: like a seemingly like antique sense, like they're creatures of
Speaker 2: another time. Yeahn you know, Yeah, so they have I
Speaker 2: feel like they play against expectations in the of the
Speaker 2: typical demon and zombie trope, like.
Speaker 3: Like the jewelry you might find in like an ancient
Speaker 3: grave or something, you know, like ancient Egypt or something
Speaker 3: who or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have kind of a gin quality to them,
Speaker 2: and they have a great silhouette to them. You know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like when you think of like having
Speaker 2: a good logo, they say, well, it has to be
Speaker 2: able to work in black and white. I mean you
Speaker 2: think of like a iconic characters like Darth Vader, you
Speaker 2: can recognize him by his silhouette, and these monsters cut
Speaker 2: a really signature silhouette, which is key because they're often
Speaker 2: just shot there. You see some great close ups of them,
Speaker 2: but they're often just in the background, in the in
Speaker 2: the shadows, kind of creeping about and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's great also because they provide a sort
Speaker 3: of textural setting that really allows Billy Zaane to shine
Speaker 3: because Billy Zain is the front man doing his uh,
Speaker 3: doing his his funny stick. He's like a you know,
Speaker 3: a burlesque comedian or something. And then he's got the
Speaker 3: green eyed goblins all slinking around behind him to back
Speaker 3: him up. They're his course line.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Now on the feature at one cool thing
Speaker 2: they mentioned, I mentioned how like basically these are these
Speaker 2: these outfits depend heavily on just body painting, like slender actors,
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of like skin involved, and there's stilts.
Speaker 2: But then they have an awesome prosth had it looks
Speaker 2: kind of like a you know, demonic pickled pig or something.
Speaker 2: And then they then they have this they're they're groin
Speaker 2: and their their there there that area is covered up,
Speaker 2: and they have these tails, uh, these like stunted tails
Speaker 2: that wag and apparently those were radio controlled and the
Speaker 2: actors had to stow the battery like high up between
Speaker 2: their legs. So it was quite a demanding role a
Speaker 2: you know, stilts battery between your leg big piece of
Speaker 2: prosthetics over your head. But the end result looks tremendous.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. So so once these monsters are in
Speaker 3: play and Billy zines outside trying to cause trouble, we've
Speaker 3: got scenes of William Saddler running around the house trying
Speaker 3: to seal up the openings, like seal up the doors
Speaker 3: and windows with blood from this key. And then we
Speaker 3: get flashbacks of the Crucifixion of Jesus yep, involving green
Speaker 3: eyed demons and lightning strikes.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and again they have a has an excellent
Speaker 2: otherworldly feel to it, like this could be the Crucifixion
Speaker 2: on an a world, which especially since it seems a
Speaker 2: bit different, because I mean, some of you you ever
Speaker 2: went to Sunday School and you know you've ever read
Speaker 2: your Bible, You probably don't remember the hooded demons that
Speaker 2: are showing up and chasing people around at the foot
Speaker 2: of the cross, but it happens here.
Speaker 3: History is written by the victors, you know. The demons
Speaker 3: lost that struggle, so they got written out of the story.
Speaker 3: This is funny because it made me think about what
Speaker 3: is the best Golgotha scene ever in a horror movie?
Speaker 3: And another one that occurred to me is Layer of
Speaker 3: the Whiteworm by Kim Russell, which is an awesomely weird
Speaker 3: movie that we may have to cover on here someday.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that one has a good one. I
Speaker 2: feel like maybe there's at least one other Kim Russell
Speaker 2: film that has a crucifixion scene in it. Doesn't it
Speaker 2: show up in His Last Devils? Well maybe in The Devils,
Speaker 2: but also in The Altered States, right.
Speaker 3: Oh, the one where William Hurd is sort of playing R.
Speaker 3: Gordon Wasson or maybe he's playing what's his name the
Speaker 3: guy you did in as about.
Speaker 2: Oh John C. Lilly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that
Speaker 2: one has a weird crucifixion in it. There's also an
Speaker 2: excellent otherworldly crucifixion scene in the Ninth Configuration, the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty film directed by William Peter Bladdie and written by him,
Speaker 2: based on one of his novels. Yeah, it's that one.
Speaker 2: Who that's a weird film we could discuss, and it's
Speaker 2: got some great performances in it.
Speaker 3: So after this part where the demons are set loose,
Speaker 3: the rest of the movie you could say it becomes
Speaker 3: less structured, I guess, because it's just sort of like
Speaker 3: a you know, you get different sort of vignettes within
Speaker 3: the supernatural demon siege, Like you get Billy Zane issuing
Speaker 3: hallucinatory temptations to various characters in the boarding house, and
Speaker 3: then often this temptation scene will be followed by demon
Speaker 3: possession of the person, and then there will be attacks
Speaker 3: by monsters, human attempting to escape and so forth, and
Speaker 3: more flashbacks about the backstory of the key. We get
Speaker 3: to see Breaker in World War One, it seems, looking
Speaker 3: exactly the same. Age he's in the trenches. A buddy
Speaker 3: of his gets killed somehow and is bleeding all over
Speaker 3: the place, and the guy's like, now you are the
Speaker 3: chosen one, and the I guess the memory of the
Speaker 3: crucifixion of Jesus gets like downloaded into William Sadler's brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's now part of this lineage of immortals
Speaker 2: that have to protect the key and carry it through time, right.
Speaker 3: And eventually Breaker has to explain this to all the
Speaker 3: other characters and they're like, wow, that's interesting. You're the
Speaker 3: chosen one across time and you've been alive since World
Speaker 3: War One. And Thomas Hayden Church, who I just realized
Speaker 3: earlier his initials are THHC. But anyway, he comes up.
Speaker 3: So he's been a jerk the entire time so far.
Speaker 3: He's been, you know, acting cowardly and cruel to others.
Speaker 3: And after this story he comes up to a Breaker
Speaker 3: and he's like, wow, I really admire what you did.
Speaker 3: I was wrong about you. But then, of course, what
Speaker 3: he's really trying to do is get Breaker to let
Speaker 3: his guard down so he can double cross him, and
Speaker 3: he swipes the key from him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now he's swiped the key. Meanwhile, the temptations continue
Speaker 2: because even though Billy's ain and his demon minions are
Speaker 2: stuck outside for the most part, he can reach out
Speaker 2: to your mind and tempt you last Temptation of Christ
Speaker 2: style with something you want, And some of the these
Speaker 2: make for some nice, fun little sequences. For instance, when
Speaker 2: he's tempting Jada Pinkett's character, it's it's the this is
Speaker 2: the sequence where it's like in it feels like it's
Speaker 2: in a parking garage and there's this weird scene of
Speaker 2: her face on a screen and they're like demon hands
Speaker 2: on the other side pressing against it. And then when
Speaker 2: that rips open, she's she sees this image of breakers
Speaker 2: Breaker like being torn apart by the creatures of them
Speaker 2: eating his entrails.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he's I think Billy Zane's tempting her with
Speaker 3: the idea that she that he could make her like
Speaker 3: rich and famous and she'll see the world. Yeah, she'll
Speaker 3: see the world. Oh, it's like it's like the vivid
Speaker 3: you know, which they'll like to see the world. And
Speaker 3: it seems Jada Pinkett really would like to see the world.
Speaker 3: Like she's interested in this temptation, though she doesn't fall
Speaker 3: for it. She's got the heroic constitution to resist the temptation.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what would that what would that saving
Speaker 3: throw be?
Speaker 2: In D and D h I guess that would be
Speaker 2: they'd be like a wisdom saving throw. Okay, so maybe
Speaker 2: a charisma. I don't know, it depends how you play it.
Speaker 2: Probably wisdom.
Speaker 3: She succeeds on the wisdom saving throw. She resists the temptation,
Speaker 3: but what he's tempting her with is like, it's not
Speaker 3: exactly clear, but it seems to suggest like, yeah, you
Speaker 3: could have your face on the cover of magazines and
Speaker 3: you could travel to all the capitals of the world
Speaker 3: and see Rome and everything. Wouldn't you like that?
Speaker 2: Oh? And the whole time the grave dig is track
Speaker 2: one eight hundred Suicide is playing, which is just a
Speaker 2: great beat in the background.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an awesome song. I don't does it ever
Speaker 3: get to the part with lyrics? I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think they that much of it. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: just use the intro. You got to be looking for
Speaker 2: it to notice it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that is a great beat. It does not
Speaker 3: get to the part about confront an alligator let it
Speaker 3: eat your raw.
Speaker 2: Ah man. But there are other temptation scenes as well, right.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, there's a bunch of them. There's the temptation
Speaker 3: of Dick Miller is great because his is quite different.
Speaker 3: His is a world of beautiful naked women offering him
Speaker 3: bottles of scotch. And then he just sort of like
Speaker 3: wanders through this crowd of ladies being like, try mine
Speaker 3: and holds up but they're all holding identical bottles of scotch,
Speaker 3: I think. And then he goes up maybe maybe Dick
Speaker 3: Miller is just dedicated to one brand. I couldn't tell
Speaker 3: what brand it was. They've got the labels turned away.
Speaker 3: But then he goes up to a bar. And then
Speaker 3: it turns out Billy Zain is the bartender in this
Speaker 3: temptation dream and he so he's a friendly bartender who
Speaker 3: offers him booze, but I think is also supposed to
Speaker 3: be Hunter S. Thompson. Was I mistaken here?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I think you're right. It's very very much a Hunter
Speaker 2: S Thompson. Look he has going on behind the bar there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and again it's it's it is Billy Zayane is an
Speaker 2: evil genie from the Disney movie Aladdin here and in
Speaker 2: it way works really well.
Speaker 3: I can't remember what Billy Zain says, maybe something about
Speaker 3: the golf shoes, but it works. Oh but anyway, this
Speaker 3: leads to, you know, as the standard sequence is somebody
Speaker 3: has a temptation, they succumb to the temptation. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I want I want what you are putting down. Billy
Speaker 3: Zain and Dick Miller obviously wants this, and so he
Speaker 3: turns into a demon and attacks some of the characters.
Speaker 3: I don't remember all who, but I think maybe he's
Speaker 3: fighting with Jada Pinkett and with William Sadler, and somehow
Speaker 3: his head gets cut off, and there's a great scene
Speaker 3: where they, oh, the demons are vulnerable in their eyes.
Speaker 3: The way you can put a demon down is to
Speaker 3: like shoot it in the green eyeballs. And so the
Speaker 3: way they stop Dick Miller's severed head from continually commanding
Speaker 3: his body to attack them is one of the characters
Speaker 3: grabs his head and shoves it into the antler of
Speaker 3: a mounted stag.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's some great eye violence to the demons
Speaker 2: in this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's also a great scene where Billy Zain is
Speaker 3: wheeling and dealing with Thomas Hayden Church because I remember
Speaker 3: thhc is. He's been like, hey, I've got the key,
Speaker 3: I stole it. You know, I'll give it to you
Speaker 3: if you let me escape. And so they're they're talking
Speaker 3: about their deal and Billy's ain is just walking on sunshine.
Speaker 3: He is so light on his feet and frisky and exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah he is. It's another great scene and it's and
Speaker 2: you know exactly what's going to happen, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's it's delightful. This is a scene in which it's
Speaker 2: it's like Tails from the Crypt classic again because you
Speaker 2: have a horrible character that's gonna make making this choice.
Speaker 2: You think he's gonna get away, but no, he's not
Speaker 2: gonna get away with it because he's gonna be double
Speaker 2: crossed by Billy Zaine. Of course, he barely makes it
Speaker 2: down the stairs before he says, actually, I lied, You're
Speaker 2: not gonna make it away safe, and all the demons
Speaker 2: turn on Thomas Hayden Church and Terry's character to be.
Speaker 3: The next thing that was really funny was that there
Speaker 3: is a scene of the next Temptation scene is of
Speaker 3: the Kid Billy where he is turned into a violent
Speaker 3: maniac by reading a copy of the Tales from the
Speaker 3: Crypt comic book.
Speaker 2: I like that because on one hand it does it
Speaker 2: is the idea of like the corrupting comic book, but
Speaker 2: it also made me think. You know, with the adults,
Speaker 2: Billy Zain's character, the Collector, he's like, what if I
Speaker 2: offered you travel? What have I offered you all the
Speaker 2: beautiful women and booze in the world. But for a kid,
Speaker 2: he's like, what if I just literally turned you into
Speaker 2: a bloodthirsty monster? Would you be down for that? And
Speaker 2: the kid's like, yes, yes, I vote yes, Let's do
Speaker 2: exactly that then, And that's what happens, pure honesty.
Speaker 3: I love it now. As the characters, it's the kind
Speaker 3: of standard thing where in one of these supernatural fortress
Speaker 3: siege movies where the characters are continually driven further and
Speaker 3: further into retreat, like further back into the bailey or whatever.
Speaker 3: And so at this point they end up retreating to
Speaker 3: the attic, and at each point of retreat there's some
Speaker 3: kind of battle that goes on, and we get some
Speaker 3: chances for characterists to actually be like courageous and be heroes.
Speaker 3: So Deputy Bob and Irene at one point, like the
Speaker 3: suicide bomb, a bunch of the demons with a vestimate
Speaker 3: out of grenades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've been watching aliens?
Speaker 3: Where did they? Yes, they pull Aasquez and it's kind
Speaker 3: of sweet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it is, and of course Breaker bites it
Speaker 2: as well shortly thereafter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he gets maimed. And then of course he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: oh they got me, They got me. You got to
Speaker 3: become the new Chosen One to Jada Pinkett and she's
Speaker 3: like what but she I guess she like catches his
Speaker 3: blood I think in the key, and it's just understood
Speaker 3: that yep, from now on, she's just going to be
Speaker 3: immortal and carrying this key around. But then then Billy
Speaker 3: z Ain comes in for one final showdown with with
Speaker 3: Jada and so, and I got to say, at the
Speaker 3: beginning of the scene, he's got on sunglasses that make
Speaker 3: him look like Riddick.
Speaker 2: Oh but kind of like ridic.
Speaker 3: Yeah wait what kind of ridic.
Speaker 2: Like pre Ritic? This would the Riddic didn't exist yet, right.
Speaker 3: Oh I guess not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like maybe Vin Diesel eventually he saw Demon nine.
Speaker 2: He's like that that's the look I'm going.
Speaker 3: To steal exactly. No, I'm not saying they're imitating Ritic.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying he does look like him.
Speaker 2: They look kind of like, yeah, almost like wrap around goggles.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But there's another temptation scene where I guess he's
Speaker 3: trying once again. I think he's trying to convince Jeralene
Speaker 3: to marry him. I didn't exactly follow what was going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was basically it's like, well, I've won at
Speaker 2: this point, I'm going to kill you, but if I
Speaker 2: could turn you instead, if I could, you know, if
Speaker 2: you marry me, then I'm even more of a success
Speaker 2: back home in the in the hells. So he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot the moon. I'm going for it,
Speaker 2: you know. He's he's feeling on top of it, and
Speaker 2: he makes the offer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Billy's saying he is on broiler mode. In
Speaker 3: this scene. He is like the energy is electric. And
Speaker 3: there's a part where infernal lightning erupts out of his groin.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's explained why he's just been
Speaker 3: like talking and then like lightning shoots out of his crotch.
Speaker 2: That was in the featurettes. It was mentioned that this
Speaker 2: was Zaane's idea for the character, and Dickerson was like,
Speaker 2: let's do it, let's roll with it, let's give it
Speaker 2: a shot.
Speaker 3: Good choice. Yeah, And then there's a good climax that
Speaker 3: involves Jada Pinkett the whole time that she somehow has
Speaker 3: gotten William Sadler's blood in her mouth, and the whole
Speaker 3: time Billy Zaane's like asking her, well, what do you say?
Speaker 3: He's trying to get her to say something, and she won't.
Speaker 3: And then it's revealed that, oh, she hasn't said anything
Speaker 3: because she still has the blood in her mouth, the
Speaker 3: blood of Christ, I believe somehow.
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, we can go ahead and talk about
Speaker 2: this real quick. The idea is that this key with
Speaker 2: the special glass container portion of it here, they it
Speaker 2: was used to collect the blood of Christ at the crucifixion,
Speaker 2: and it's like the rail myth. Yeah, yeah, and there's
Speaker 2: still a little Jesus blood in there, but it's been
Speaker 2: replenished with other people's blood, especially the blood of the
Speaker 2: chosen Ones, over time. And so I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: the genetics of that works out or if that's important
Speaker 2: for holy blood, you know, hurting demons, but that's apparently
Speaker 2: how it's supposed to.
Speaker 3: Work, right, And so she's got this blood in her mouth,
Speaker 3: and what do you know, she spits it all over
Speaker 3: Billy Zane's face and that that defeats him in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great melt. He's a great death scene because he
Speaker 2: melts a little bit.
Speaker 3: Then he turns into a puppet.
Speaker 2: He turns into a giant skeletal demon, and then he explodes.
Speaker 2: They just do all the things, like the FX team
Speaker 2: just they had no chill on this film. They're just yeah,
Speaker 2: one hundred miles an hour the whole time.
Speaker 3: And so I guess we're just going to assume that
Speaker 3: now Jada Pinkett is going to live for eighty years
Speaker 3: or whatever until eventually she has to find the next
Speaker 3: chosen One to put her blood into so they can
Speaker 3: go on preventing Billy Zain from taking over the world.
Speaker 3: Or I guess it's not Billy Zayne. I think he's destroyed.
Speaker 3: There's just going to be a new collector from Hell
Speaker 3: chasing her around.
Speaker 2: Right, and we see him at the end. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: she gets on a bus and when she gets on
Speaker 2: she does the thing with the blood that's done throughout
Speaker 2: the film where you form a seal that the demons
Speaker 2: cannot cross. And then this other guy that has a
Speaker 2: briefcase for the key, he sees it and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: I'll wait on the next bus. And so the chase
Speaker 2: continues and it potentially sets up a sequel that we
Speaker 2: never got. But man, I think it would have been good,
Speaker 2: would have been far preferable to Bordello of Blood, which
Speaker 2: was the actual Tales from the Trip film to follow.
Speaker 3: I never saw Bordello of Blood, but I remember a
Speaker 3: when I was in elementary school, a friend of mine
Speaker 3: telling me about how his mom had a copy of
Speaker 3: that movie on VHS, and I was like, I did
Speaker 3: not know what Bordello meant, and I knew nothing of
Speaker 3: Dennis Miller.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, well, yeah, it definitely has Dennis Miller
Speaker 2: in it. I never saw that one. There was even
Speaker 2: a third one that was I think is even less
Speaker 2: worth seeing. I think it may have Tim Curry in it,
Speaker 2: but it's like a New Orleans zombie kind of a thing.
Speaker 3: How could a movie with Tim Curry be not worth seeing.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It just doesn't it. I just don't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't call out to me. Maybe other folks have
Speaker 2: seen it and they can tell us how it is.
Speaker 2: But I also understand that like some releases of it
Speaker 2: didn't even have the Cryptkeeper sequences on it. They released
Speaker 2: it as its own thing, and then other versions they
Speaker 2: put the crypt Keeper back on. But it's also not
Speaker 2: really top shelf Cryptkeeper puppetry going on. So it just
Speaker 2: sounds it sounds like it would be sad to watch.
Speaker 2: I'd rather stick with Demon Night and like the really
Speaker 2: great tales from the Crypt episodes. Okay, now, in turn,
Speaker 2: we've already talked to a good bit here about the
Speaker 2: monsters and so forth. I guess it is worth noting
Speaker 2: that we do have holy relics that are at least
Speaker 2: alleged to contain the blood of Christ. I was looking
Speaker 2: around a little bit. There are a couple of relics
Speaker 2: of the Holy Blood. There's one in the Basilica of
Speaker 2: Saint Andrea. There's one that at least was at some
Speaker 2: point in Westminster in England. There's the relic of the
Speaker 2: Precious Blood in Viegotten Abbey in Germany. So the idea
Speaker 2: of this key containing the blood is it does seem
Speaker 2: to be based on actual holy relics that allegedly contain
Speaker 2: holy blood. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think also this ties into the grail legend, like
Speaker 3: the idea that at the death of Christ that Joseph
Speaker 3: of Aramathea held a grail that caught the blood of
Speaker 3: Jesus stripping from the cross, and that somehow later he
Speaker 3: brought with him like containers of this blood to other places.
Speaker 3: I think like that's part of the local Glastonbury legend
Speaker 3: in Britain.
Speaker 2: Now. I don't know if any of these have actually
Speaker 2: been used against demons though, but perhaps perhaps, Man, there's
Speaker 2: so much they could have done with the sequel though,
Speaker 2: you know, they could have had a thing where all right,
Speaker 2: she's on the run as always, the demons are after
Speaker 2: but then where does she wind up a genetics laboratory?
Speaker 2: What do they want to do? They want to use
Speaker 2: the precious blood in the key. They want to try
Speaker 2: and clone Jesus or something, and then that becomes a
Speaker 2: whole plot element.
Speaker 3: But then he'd be a mutant because he'd be like
Speaker 3: part Jesus, but then also part William Sadler and part
Speaker 3: Jada Pinkett.
Speaker 2: William Sadler is Jesus Christ in Demon Night two. There's
Speaker 2: still time.
Speaker 3: There's still time, Ernest Dickerson, if you're listening, please make it.
Speaker 3: I will watch it. I will. I will take all
Speaker 3: my friends to see it.
Speaker 2: I will as well. All right, Well, before we close out,
Speaker 2: I just want to I'll mention again that You can
Speaker 2: rent or buy this one digitally most places these days.
Speaker 2: But that twenty fifteen Blu ray release from Shout Factory
Speaker 2: Scream Factory Import is really slick and it's loaded with
Speaker 2: cool content. So if you're a Demon Night fan, that's
Speaker 2: worth picking up.
Speaker 3: If you're a demon Yeah.
Speaker 2: We rented our copy from Video Drum, the last video
Speaker 2: store here in Atlanta, Georgia. So if you live in Atlanta,
Speaker 2: go check out Videodrum. It's great. And if you don't,
Speaker 2: look them up online because you can buy some of
Speaker 2: their cool merch.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they got great T shirts and stuff. Oh
Speaker 3: I was gonna say that the T shirt I'm wearing
Speaker 3: right now is one of theirs. It's not, but it
Speaker 3: could be. It's of their style.
Speaker 2: Oh oh oh, I see it. It says her Zog
Speaker 2: and then it has the Danzig logo.
Speaker 3: Nice Rachel got me this one?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, anything else we need to say about
Speaker 2: Demon Night before we close the crypt down this one?
Speaker 3: I think that wraps it up, but I just say again,
Speaker 3: great fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, as always, we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 2: out there. Do you have memories of seeing this when
Speaker 2: it came out? We're discovering it later on. Do you
Speaker 2: have particular episodes of Tales from the Crypt that were
Speaker 2: your favorite, We'd love to hear from you about that
Speaker 2: as well, or just any of the other elements in
Speaker 2: this be it Holy Blood or really cool demons. It's
Speaker 2: all on the table. Dick Miller movies that we should
Speaker 2: add to the list. Let us know. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: if you want to check out other episodes of Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind podcast feed. Also, I try to put
Speaker 2: up a blog post about the Weird House series at
Speaker 2: Samouda music dot com. That's sem Uta music dot com.
Speaker 2: It's just my own personal blog. We don't have anywhere
Speaker 2: else to put blog type content these days, so I'm
Speaker 2: just slapping it up over there.
Speaker 3: Long. May you slap blogging and slapping huge Thanks as
Speaker 3: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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