Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's us Josh and Chuck, and we want
Speaker 1: you to know we are coming somewhere near you. We're
Speaker 1: sure if you live in North America this year, that's right,
Speaker 1: We're going on tour, and uh, why don't we just
Speaker 1: rattle through these dates? Okay? Uh? Toronto August eight at
Speaker 1: the Day and Fourth Music Hall, Chicago August nine, the
Speaker 1: next day at Harris Theater. Then we are taking some
Speaker 1: time off to recover after that two day grind. We're
Speaker 1: eating Vancouver the Vogue Theater September twenty six, followed by Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be at the Pantageous Theater again on September
Speaker 1: that is correct, yep. And then Austin Chuck on October
Speaker 1: tenth of the Paramount Theater. Yes, and very special show
Speaker 1: in Lawrence, Kansas at Liberty Hall on October eleven, yep.
Speaker 1: And then we're gonna do a three night stand October
Speaker 1: two at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, New York. And then Chuck,
Speaker 1: take it home. Uh, well take it home literally, because
Speaker 1: we are finishing up November four right here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: at the Bucket Theater and this is a very special
Speaker 1: benefit show, uh, and all the proceeds will be going
Speaker 1: to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta in the National Down
Speaker 1: Syndrome Society YEP and for more information in Dubai tickets,
Speaker 1: just go to s y s K live dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant Towdy. Middle names Wayne middle name's Malcolm.
Speaker 1: There we have I always forget about that. Malcolm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Wayne named if you're Wayne Coin right, Uh no, John Wayne,
Speaker 1: and then you were named after Malcolm in the Middle.
Speaker 1: That's right, right. Frankie Munis is my namesake. I hope
Speaker 1: he's okay. Early Brian Kranston too. I used to love
Speaker 1: that show. Oh it's a great show. I watched it,
Speaker 1: um like within the last couple of months. I was
Speaker 1: cleaning the house and put it on Netflix and still great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really is a good show. So you clean your house,
Speaker 1: you put on your VR goggles and just cue up
Speaker 1: Malcolm in the Middle. No, I just walk around and
Speaker 1: bump into things and it's right exactly. But I put
Speaker 1: on like a huge feather duster suit. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: just cleaning and bumping into things. That's right, That's how
Speaker 1: I do it. Yeah, it works kind of Well, someone's
Speaker 1: gonna take that idea. Yeah, they like the shark Nado. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they should just they should sell that suit with
Speaker 1: purple drink. I think you just get one spot on
Speaker 1: the floor, really really clean. Uh, what are you gonna
Speaker 1: title this one? By the way, because this was your pick,
Speaker 1: and we title our own shows some horror films that
Speaker 1: change the genre, all right, and you should add this
Speaker 1: a k A. How could you guys forget blank? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should say like this. First of all, this is
Speaker 1: a Grabster article. So it's Grabster's list, and he knows
Speaker 1: what he's talking about. If you look at some of
Speaker 1: the entries, some don't even have source tags. He's just like,
Speaker 1: I just know, he just Grabster. But we even took
Speaker 1: his list and carved some out and put some in.
Speaker 1: So this is how about this? This is Josh and
Speaker 1: Chuck's idea of some horror films that change the genre,
Speaker 1: featuring the mind of the Grabster. Yes, in other words,
Speaker 1: it is not a complete list of every horror film
Speaker 1: that changed the genre. Yes, because I would argue that
Speaker 1: well and actually I see grabs Her put Texas Chainsaw
Speaker 1: Masker in there. He said that if this were a
Speaker 1: top fifteen list, that would be in there. So would Alien. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has that Alien ring you and the U S
Speaker 1: remake ring, and I would lobby for Well, Psycho didn't
Speaker 1: make it onto his list, which but we're going to
Speaker 1: put that in. And there was one more. Oh, even
Speaker 1: though I didn't really think it was that great, the
Speaker 1: movie Saw I think kind of changed horror films, and
Speaker 1: that's this list is not best horror films, but things
Speaker 1: that kind of changed the game. It seems like Saw
Speaker 1: kind of kicked off that that torture porn, Yeah, didn't it.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if it was that or Hostile one
Speaker 1: of the two. It was definitely one of the two.
Speaker 1: For a sub genre, well it's pretty accurate, actually it is.
Speaker 1: But most of these are movies that either uh, we're
Speaker 1: the first of its kind and maybe did start a
Speaker 1: sub genre, or movies that were so popular that they just,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of rewrote how people view horror movies.
Speaker 1: Some of them because of marketing, some because they were
Speaker 1: really good movies, some because of box office. But all
Speaker 1: of these I don't think anyone could argue did not
Speaker 1: change the genre. How about that? Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: well put dude. Uh. And before we get started speaking
Speaker 1: of horror, I want to give a plug to WHOA
Speaker 1: my friend Toby's movie that's coming out. He's a producer
Speaker 1: on a movie coming out called The Ghost Story. Yeah Toby. Uh.
Speaker 1: When we met Toby, well you knew Toby before me,
Speaker 1: of course, because he's your friend and I know him
Speaker 1: through you, so really, but he was he was small
Speaker 1: time doing short films and stuff. And since that time,
Speaker 1: and this has been within the last like since we've
Speaker 1: been doing this podcast, he's now big time. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: did Pete Dragon yeah. Um, and then yeah they have
Speaker 1: this this they did Ain't Them Bodies Saints was I
Speaker 1: think the one that they kind of broke out with,
Speaker 1: which I love that movie, and then this one. Um,
Speaker 1: it definitely kind of falls into that same look and
Speaker 1: mood and feel. What It's called The Ghost Story, and
Speaker 1: I think it comes out in July, and I think
Speaker 1: it's labeled a drama rather than horror or even supernatural
Speaker 1: or thriller. Um. But the reason I tie it into
Speaker 1: horrors because A four is releasing it, and A four
Speaker 1: is killing it with horror movies lately. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good Uh, that's good outfit. They did The Witch, they
Speaker 1: did The Black Coat's Daughter. Have you seen that? Uh No,
Speaker 1: it's on Amazon Prime. It's on Amazon Prime right now, dude.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best four movies I've seen in
Speaker 1: a while. I think The Witch is probably my favorite
Speaker 1: right now. Black Coat Stater is a close second. And
Speaker 1: then last night I saw it Comes at Night in
Speaker 1: the theater and it Comes at Night actually upset my
Speaker 1: stomach the ending? Did it was? It was that rough? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're we're we're at a place with horror
Speaker 1: movies that we haven't been in a long time, like
Speaker 1: a really genuine yeah, like the whole torture porn sort
Speaker 1: of era is over and the found footage thing is
Speaker 1: so played. But I think we like with movies like
Speaker 1: the which I think we've really like, there's some really
Speaker 1: creative uh it follows. Did you see that one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like some just really creative ways of bringing scares that
Speaker 1: I haven't seen before. Get Out. That was amazing, Man,
Speaker 1: I still haven't seen it. You're gonna love it, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm envious of you. It's really it's great movie. Na. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't get to the movies much anymore, and the
Speaker 1: only time I could was a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: and I elected to see Wonder Woman. Yeah. Not so
Speaker 1: long way of saying congratulations to Toby and his new film, Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny. We also need to congratulate Toby too, because
Speaker 1: Toby just got married. Toby and Nell are now married.
Speaker 1: Sols to them as well. So this is this new
Speaker 1: movie with his uh directing partner David Lowry Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and Rooney Mara. Yeah, they definitely do. So it's gonna
Speaker 1: be good. I'm looking forward to it. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: get started. Thanks for indulging that. Thank you everybody. So
Speaker 1: the first, the first movie on our list is what's
Speaker 1: widely considered the first horror movie, and it's a nine
Speaker 1: movie out of Germany that um basically was the first
Speaker 1: film that undertook what's the artistic movement known as German
Speaker 1: expressionism called the Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: some say, like you said, it was the first horror movie.
Speaker 1: Some say it was the first cult film. Um it uh, well,
Speaker 1: just you may not be able to get to the
Speaker 1: whole thing if you're not into silent movies, but you
Speaker 1: should queue up a little bit of it and watch
Speaker 1: a little bit of it because it's hugely impactful. Um
Speaker 1: and still to this day like very disconcerting to look
Speaker 1: at because of it how um ominous and weird it looked,
Speaker 1: just physically looked. Yeah. Like the sets that they built
Speaker 1: are obviously um constructive manufactured. They were not in any
Speaker 1: way shape or for him going for realism. They were
Speaker 1: going for surrealism for sure. And so like the staircases
Speaker 1: are at crazy weird curves and angles and um like
Speaker 1: everything from the house, the houses rooftops to the blades
Speaker 1: of grass are super pointy and sharp, and and the
Speaker 1: shadows that they employed were just perfect. You've never seen
Speaker 1: a better use of shadows than this. They didn't get
Speaker 1: in the way, They just created this mood. And it
Speaker 1: was the first movie to really kind of do that,
Speaker 1: to just take to use the camera for something other
Speaker 1: than capturing realism. Uh, and it it it for that reason,
Speaker 1: it's considered the first horror movie because that that's such
Speaker 1: a standard part of horror, whether large like in a
Speaker 1: large part like in a Tim Burton movie, or in
Speaker 1: small part you know where you're Um, you're using small
Speaker 1: spaces to create claustrophobia. The idea of using the set
Speaker 1: to mess with the viewers mind I think was born
Speaker 1: in Dr Caligary's cabinet. Yeah, it's almost like they they
Speaker 1: took a child and gave them construction paper and said
Speaker 1: cut out scary things. Uh. And then like like that
Speaker 1: movie The Baba Duke, I think the actual book within
Speaker 1: The Baba Duke was hugely inspired by this. Uh, the
Speaker 1: actual movie itself. Um. The plot is about a side
Speaker 1: show operator, a hypnotist who um has a patient that
Speaker 1: he takes around into the side shows with sleep disorders.
Speaker 1: Supposedly he's been asleep his entire life, and he uses
Speaker 1: this patient to commit murder. Right, he's like a sleepwalker, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a somnambulist. So that in itself is a pretty frightening plot.
Speaker 1: And to think about that being cooked up in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty when there weren't really not such things that you
Speaker 1: think of as horror movies is pretty impressive. Um. And
Speaker 1: then some of the deeper critiques I've seen of it
Speaker 1: was like the the explanation for why the filmmakers chose
Speaker 1: like these weird odd angles to kind of depict insanity
Speaker 1: or that kind of thing. Um was rooted in World
Speaker 1: War One. The horrors of World War One had just
Speaker 1: been seen and revealed and recently taken place, and it
Speaker 1: upended Europe in general, and especially Germany as well. Um,
Speaker 1: And that the idea is that they might not have
Speaker 1: had this idea, They might not have had this desire,
Speaker 1: this drive to create this, this weird set and in fact,
Speaker 1: this weird movie had World War One not happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this there's this writer Jeff Saparrito, who um kind of
Speaker 1: put it this way about German expressionism because I wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly sure how to define it, but you're kind of
Speaker 1: right on the money, he said. Germany was largely isolated
Speaker 1: from the rest of the world following World War One,
Speaker 1: so expressionism therefore became confined to the country. Refers to
Speaker 1: a number of creative movements from World War One through
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. Expressionist works examined the current in future
Speaker 1: state of the culture through bold and artistic creations of creativity,
Speaker 1: and often explore topics of madness, betrayal, and other intellectual concepts.
Speaker 1: And nothing encapsulates these ideas more than the cabinet of
Speaker 1: Dr Call. That's basically what I said. Yeah, you did
Speaker 1: you read that or were you just uh that I
Speaker 1: don't know that that one or not. It sounded kind
Speaker 1: of familiar. Yeah, not to say you came up with it.
Speaker 1: Um so the the the idea of the set just
Speaker 1: creating like a creepy tone and texture to everything. Um
Speaker 1: that was Dr Calgary. That's how it changed the genre. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Tim Burton say thank you. Yeah, have you seen Coraline? No?
Speaker 1: But I know it. It's ah. They did that to
Speaker 1: a very good effect. You know. I think Hodgeman does
Speaker 1: a voice in that, doesn't he does, He does the dad.
Speaker 1: He did a spectacular job because you actually forget it's
Speaker 1: Hodgment while you're watching it. That's impossible. Alright, Chuck, Moving on,
Speaker 1: that was We're gonna fast forward all the way to
Speaker 1: what nineteen sixty nineteen sixty three. If you're talking about
Speaker 1: Blood Feast, Well I wasn't, but let's uh. Cybern Simon
Speaker 1: Abraham's of Roger Ebert dot Com says, this Blood Feast
Speaker 1: is a terrible film and a historically important one too.
Speaker 1: And I think that's sort of the deal with blood Feast.
Speaker 1: It is not good by any accounts. Did you watch
Speaker 1: any of it? Yeah, sure it's not good. No, it's
Speaker 1: not good. It's terrible. It was written on a basis
Speaker 1: on a fourteen page outline, didn't even have a script.
Speaker 1: It's got the same could cloying technicolor of like an
Speaker 1: early Hawaii five episode directed by Herschel Gordon Lewis and
Speaker 1: producer David F. Friedman, And basically the idea was the
Speaker 1: ce S guys did not see films as art. They
Speaker 1: saw them as a business and thought you were foolish
Speaker 1: if you thought it was anything else. So they sat
Speaker 1: around they brainstormed movies that they thought no one else
Speaker 1: would make. Yeah, because they started out making like Porky's
Speaker 1: esque type movies and they were they were doing fine
Speaker 1: with that, but apparently they were successful enough with it
Speaker 1: that they started to be imitators and the market was crowded,
Speaker 1: so they said, where can we go make movies that
Speaker 1: no one else is gonna make? Yeah, because we want
Speaker 1: to shock people, essentially, So a couple of ideas they
Speaker 1: had that did not make the list was Conman Evangelists
Speaker 1: and Nazi torture, which which were later made exactly, and
Speaker 1: they finally said, you know what no one's really done
Speaker 1: yet is hardcore gore yea, like everyone always cuts away
Speaker 1: when the knife come and you're like, what if we
Speaker 1: showed the grossest glorious stuff imaginable on screen? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: even still they didn't show so like one of the
Speaker 1: first murder a woman stabbed through the eye and then
Speaker 1: the murderer hacked their legs off of the machete, and
Speaker 1: they didn't show the knife penetrate the eye. They didn't
Speaker 1: show the machete making contact with the skin. But what
Speaker 1: they did in blood Feasts and what made blood Feast
Speaker 1: the first of its kind, was they would show the
Speaker 1: what came after that. They would show the brains on
Speaker 1: the ground, They would show the entrails like on the knife. Um.
Speaker 1: They would show the leg being you know, that had
Speaker 1: been dismembered, being put into a bag, and like the
Speaker 1: wound that was left by like that that. This was
Speaker 1: no one had ever done anything like that on film before. No,
Speaker 1: And it paid off. They depending on who you ask,
Speaker 1: the budget was uh, anywhere from like twenty to thirty grand,
Speaker 1: and it made between seven and thirty million dollars, Like
Speaker 1: I said, depending on where you get your info. But
Speaker 1: by all accounts it was a huge financial success compared
Speaker 1: to what they paid to make it. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: shot it in six days or something done in Miami. Um,
Speaker 1: based on a fourteen page outline. There wasn't even a script.
Speaker 1: It as an alline, and basically it was like, murderer
Speaker 1: goes and kills this girl, next girl, murderer comes in
Speaker 1: and kills girl, cuts off leg, that kind of thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it matters the movies about serial killer caterer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. There's your plot right there. Um. But the
Speaker 1: the it was just such a revolutionary movie that the
Speaker 1: sensors at the time there wasn't such a thing as
Speaker 1: the m p a A hadn't been formed yet, um,
Speaker 1: And there was basically no one except for local censors
Speaker 1: overseeing movies. So you know, you you could be playing
Speaker 1: in one town um all audiences, and then the next
Speaker 1: town over it could be banned. But the sensors had
Speaker 1: never seen anything like it, and they didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with it. So it was hugely successful commercially too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another big impact it had was it inspired a
Speaker 1: generation of special effects. But basically, UM, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: young boys who were doing this on their own Super
Speaker 1: eight films, right, and said, wait, uh, I can get
Speaker 1: a job doing this. Yeah. So Tom Savini I think
Speaker 1: was inspired by it, wasn't he? Or was he inspired by? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think he was inspired by Blood Feast um. And
Speaker 1: then we should also give a mention of the Graham
Speaker 1: Gun y'all. Is that how you think it's pronounced Grand
Speaker 1: Guen y'all? It was a theater in Paris, I believe,
Speaker 1: from the late nineteenth century onto I think nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: so the year before Blood Feast came out had closed up.
Speaker 1: But it used to do this stuff on stage. It
Speaker 1: was like a gore fest um. And there was lots
Speaker 1: of like blood and sex and and like depraved themes
Speaker 1: in the plays that were put on at this theater.
Speaker 1: People loved it. They were crazy for it, um. And
Speaker 1: this was kind of like the Grand Gun y'all tradition
Speaker 1: put onto film for the first time and who read
Speaker 1: for that? You want to take a break, Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: do it, all right, Charles, we're back, So n sixty
Speaker 1: or nineteen sixty eight. I've got nineteen sixty eight in
Speaker 1: front of my face. Uh, and that could be no
Speaker 1: other movie the Night of the Living Dead classic George
Speaker 1: Romero film. Romero was a TV director, making TV commercials.
Speaker 1: Commercial director. Rather, he was also making sure films for Mr.
Speaker 1: Rogers neighborhood at the time. Yeah, and he was he
Speaker 1: was young. Yeah, I don't I don't know how old
Speaker 1: he was, but he was pretty young guys still. I
Speaker 1: think when he made Shot and that in the Living Dead,
Speaker 1: he was like twenty six or twenty seven, so uh yeah,
Speaker 1: but any standard, that's still pretty young unless you're three.
Speaker 1: So he'm he had um. He and his buddies were like,
Speaker 1: let's make a horror movie, but let's not make a
Speaker 1: stupid horror movie. Let's make on with like an actual
Speaker 1: plot that explores like deep themes too, like a good movie.
Speaker 1: Let's let's make the first good horror movie. Well yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and we'll delve into that a little more. But that
Speaker 1: that was definitely a different thing at the time. And
Speaker 1: the other different thing was that all the horror movies
Speaker 1: up to that point, Uh, they were called the Universal
Speaker 1: monsters from Universal Studios, you know, all the kind of
Speaker 1: the classic Frankenstein and Dracula and Creature from the Black
Speaker 1: Lagoon and the Werewolf, and that was where that was
Speaker 1: mainstream horror. And George Romero comes along and says, um,
Speaker 1: how about zombies? And everyone said, what in the world's
Speaker 1: a zombie? And he said, well, let me define that
Speaker 1: for every future generation of movie and TV goers. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and there have been zombie movies before, but they had
Speaker 1: been things like like Dr Caligari's Cabinet, somebody who was
Speaker 1: under the control of something someone else or something like that,
Speaker 1: there was a hypnotist or this was like the first
Speaker 1: time what we think of as zombies, wherever introduced like
Speaker 1: flesh eating ghoules who were dead and I come back
Speaker 1: to life, just what you think of as a zombie.
Speaker 1: This guy started that genre, like you said. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: shot it outside and in Pittsburgh on about hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollar budget, ended up grossing twelve million domestic,
Speaker 1: not bad, and I think close to twenty worldwide. And
Speaker 1: um was eventually selected by the Library of Congress for
Speaker 1: preservation in the National Film Registry. It's a good movie.
Speaker 1: It's a very good movie. He shot in black and
Speaker 1: white to save on cost, even though color was the
Speaker 1: standard by that point, and black and white is also
Speaker 1: a little more forgiving for rudimentary special effects. And one
Speaker 1: of the revolutionary things he did was, uh, cast a
Speaker 1: black actor as the lead and for no other reason
Speaker 1: than hey, this guy Dwayne Jones is really good, exactly right. Like,
Speaker 1: he didn't go back and go, oh, well, you know
Speaker 1: our our heroes black, so we need to make the
Speaker 1: whole thing of meditation on race and have him confront racism.
Speaker 1: It was just we're here's the script, and then the
Speaker 1: guy playing the lead just happens to be right, and
Speaker 1: he was the best guy in the auditions. And you know,
Speaker 1: in eight this didn't really happen. You didn't just cast
Speaker 1: a black guy as a lead actor for no with
Speaker 1: no like ulterior motive, basically right. So I read this
Speaker 1: review from the from the time from nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: the year after it came out. Young Roger Ebert went
Speaker 1: and watched it and he wrote, um a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: interesting review, which is basically it was about the reaction
Speaker 1: of the audience. And he went to a Saturday matinee
Speaker 1: that was populated almost entirely by ten eleven year old
Speaker 1: and they were used to seeing the creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon. For Frankenstein or um, you know, just just
Speaker 1: movies that any kid could handle and could enjoy watching,
Speaker 1: and you know, fun, scary kind of stuff. And he said,
Speaker 1: that's how that that was how the crowd reacted for
Speaker 1: the first half of the movie. But then about the
Speaker 1: point where and here's here comes spoilers. Everybody, if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen Nither Living Dead, just hit yourself in the
Speaker 1: knee with a hammer. Um you the the teenage couple
Speaker 1: go to get gas and when their car blows up
Speaker 1: and his engulfs in flames, they die. They're burned to death.
Speaker 1: He said. Right about that time, the tone, the mood
Speaker 1: of the theater changed and there was no like gleeful
Speaker 1: screaming anymore. Kids were starting to like not move and
Speaker 1: we're afraid to like move in their seats, and some
Speaker 1: works quietly crying to themselves. And from that the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole point on, it just got worse and worse
Speaker 1: for these little kids watching this movie. So it was
Speaker 1: a huge impact on horror movies a it uh, Like
Speaker 1: you said earlier, it was kind of the first one
Speaker 1: to really sort of delve into other issues like if
Speaker 1: if you look up, like significance of Neither the Living
Speaker 1: dead or um meaning of neither living dead, or something
Speaker 1: like that. There score of articles that have been written
Speaker 1: over the years of how it was a metaphor for
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, or an allegory about distrust of authority
Speaker 1: or the collapse of traditional family. And I think Romero said, like,
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily mean all these things, but you can
Speaker 1: certainly find it in the movie. That is art. Like,
Speaker 1: one of the great revelations of my adult life is
Speaker 1: that the artist, the writer, the songwriter, the um, the
Speaker 1: author rarely intends to imbue as much meaning into their
Speaker 1: work as people take from it. That that's part of
Speaker 1: art as interpretation in that neat like you don't if
Speaker 1: you're a writer, if you're a young writer right now,
Speaker 1: who's just sitting there racking your brain for how to
Speaker 1: insert metaphor and meaning into this, just write your story
Speaker 1: and people are going to find it for themselves. Agreed.
Speaker 1: I wish somebody had told me that. When I was younger,
Speaker 1: I had teachers that said stuff like that. Oh I did,
Speaker 1: like good college professors in English that would when students
Speaker 1: would argue like I think he means this, he would say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, he may or she may not have meant anything, right,
Speaker 1: that's the revelation I had teachers that would just go wrong. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other thing about Night Living Dead as it spawned, um,
Speaker 1: obviously the zombie genre and uh sequels Dawn of the Dead,
Speaker 1: Day of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, the
Speaker 1: Walking Dead remakes shout out, shout out, Stephen Youne, Yeah right,
Speaker 1: why not? I'm still into the Walking Dead. You Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this. Yes, yes, gay Steven Youne listens anyway,
Speaker 1: Zombies are I think still hot and we can so hot.
Speaker 1: We we owe that all to Mr Romero, master of
Speaker 1: the genre. Yep. Took one more thing too, that that
Speaker 1: Night a Living Dead did that they weren't the first,
Speaker 1: but very famously Romero did was kill off his hero
Speaker 1: senselessly and shockingly. Yeah at the end, good point, thanks man. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's move on. Like I said, yes, stay after Christmas.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been uh in Washington, d C. At
Speaker 1: the end of M Street, you might have noticed very
Speaker 1: uh during the daytime, ordinary set of stairs. At nighttime,
Speaker 1: maybe they look creepy to you because those are the
Speaker 1: Exorcist stairs. Yeah. I'm trying to conjure the music in
Speaker 1: my head but all I'm coming up with is the
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mysteries music. It was quite right, so close, but
Speaker 1: it's not it. I'm so unsatisfied right now. So the
Speaker 1: Exorcist was based on a book by William Peter Bladdie
Speaker 1: who wrote this uh in V one and then in
Speaker 1: seventy three the movie was made. Uh. And there's I
Speaker 1: think I referenced not too long ago a great Mark
Speaker 1: Mayrin interview with UM William Friedkin. He talks about the
Speaker 1: audition process for Linda Blair. So you should go listen
Speaker 1: to that because it was pretty insightful. But, um, the
Speaker 1: Exorcist really kind of changed the game, UM, and that
Speaker 1: it was a it spawned a bit of a sub
Speaker 1: genre of UM demonic movies. Sure I were like religious based, yeah,
Speaker 1: even though I guess Rosemary's Baby was before that. But
Speaker 1: the Exorcist was such a mega hit and it was
Speaker 1: nominated for Best Picture, the first horror movie to be
Speaker 1: nominated UM for for that, and so it was just
Speaker 1: like it was a big deal. It was. It sold
Speaker 1: six million tickets in about two months. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: This is a horror movie, right, and it came out
Speaker 1: in nowhere. UM apparently The effect it had on audiences
Speaker 1: was extremely pronounced. There was a woman in Boston who
Speaker 1: had to be carried from the theater and she goes
Speaker 1: it cost me four dollars, but I only lasted twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: So we're like that's the stories of that got around
Speaker 1: and and people wanted to see you know, this movie
Speaker 1: can't be that scary, and they went and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that movie is that scary. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it holds up too. I mean, um, special effects are
Speaker 1: they'd never quite hold up. But it's still a very
Speaker 1: creepy movie. Um. Very Famously, Linda Blair played the little
Speaker 1: girl who was possessed by a demon, and uh, the
Speaker 1: the heavy hitters were called in the two exercises Demon,
Speaker 1: including um a Max van Seedl who was only forty
Speaker 1: four when he played this guy in his easily in
Speaker 1: his seventies. Yeah is he Benjamin Button? Well know they
Speaker 1: made him up. Wow, they did a great job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I don't see why they felt the need to
Speaker 1: do that, I know they God, who else did they
Speaker 1: almost cast? Oh? Brando? They almost cast Brando, but that
Speaker 1: would have been a colossal mistake. Well, Freedkin said, you know,
Speaker 1: as soon as you do that it's a Marlin Brando movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think he'said picture a Brando picture. Sure, that's
Speaker 1: what they said. Uh. And he wanted to be a
Speaker 1: Brando picture. He wanted to be the Exorcist. Um. So
Speaker 1: the you said it was based on a book from
Speaker 1: two years before by William Peter Bladdie. He apparently was
Speaker 1: known as a comedy writer and he wanted to do
Speaker 1: something different. He said, Hey, wouldn't it be funny if
Speaker 1: the little girl's head spun around and she keeped green bile?
Speaker 1: And wait, what do you hear? What I ever do
Speaker 1: with the crucifix? Hey? So? Um. He actually wrote the
Speaker 1: book because he wanted to scare America back to church.
Speaker 1: That was his aim with the book. He he believed
Speaker 1: that there was real evil going on the world, that
Speaker 1: part of it was because of a a loss of
Speaker 1: faith or a loss of religion, I guess. And that's
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do with it. Um. And when
Speaker 1: the movie came out there was a huge pushback from
Speaker 1: religious a thor He's like Billy Graham said, he believed
Speaker 1: the movie itself was possessed by a demon. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how that would happen. But that was like a
Speaker 1: huge thing at the time. UM and a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of other um religious establishment types were like,
Speaker 1: don't go see that movie. It's evil. But there were
Speaker 1: some who who were part of part of religion, major
Speaker 1: organized religion, who kind of saw through it and said, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is it's good that we're talking about this, that
Speaker 1: there we're telling people, you know, or people are seeing
Speaker 1: that there there's such a thing as like good versus
Speaker 1: evil literally combating on earth, you know, and people are
Speaker 1: talking about this and thinking about it. And so in
Speaker 1: that sense, the Exorcist like really kinda went to bat
Speaker 1: for organized religion. I saw another um criticism of it though,
Speaker 1: that that said, one of the themes of the movie
Speaker 1: that the book hadn't really intended, but the movie picked
Speaker 1: up on and expounded on was intergenerational conflict. That that
Speaker 1: it was Reagan the child represented the younger generation who
Speaker 1: was at war with the establishment, and that it even
Speaker 1: goes um so far as to where her mother, the
Speaker 1: actress the movie that she's working on is about campus
Speaker 1: takeover by young radicals, So that that's kind of a
Speaker 1: theme that was apparently part of the subtext, but was
Speaker 1: a major part of it in the movie at least interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought so too, because apparently, I mean you think
Speaker 1: of intergenerational conflict now, Apparently in the late sixties and
Speaker 1: early seventies it was sharper than it probably ever has
Speaker 1: been before or since. Yeah. Mm hmm. The only other
Speaker 1: thing I got is that the uh, the green stuff
Speaker 1: that she projectiles was Anderson's p soup and a little
Speaker 1: bit of oatmeal texture Anderson's PC of Well, bet you
Speaker 1: can't give that anymore, Chuck, Let's do Jaws and then
Speaker 1: we'll take a break. I love talk about Jaws. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Jaws is on. You know, I did my
Speaker 1: top favorite movies list at one point on our website,
Speaker 1: and I listed Jaws is my favorite movie favorite of
Speaker 1: all time. Yeah, I mean that list changes, but it's
Speaker 1: Jaws is always in my top five. I can watch
Speaker 1: it anytime it's on. Uh. It is one of the
Speaker 1: i've a I've often said it's a perfect movie. Um,
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is there's just not
Speaker 1: a misstep. Like, the casting was perfect, the acting was great,
Speaker 1: the script was great. It played out just perfectly throughout
Speaker 1: the film. Um. He like Spielberg was just a master
Speaker 1: storyteller with that movie. You were talking about how young
Speaker 1: George Romero was in Night of Living Dead. Spielberg was
Speaker 1: twenty six when he made Jaws. He was thirteen years old.
Speaker 1: He uh, and he was apparently scared to death when
Speaker 1: he finished filming. The schedule had been for fifty five days,
Speaker 1: It went to a hundred and fift nine. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: had I think been allotted four million dollars. He ended
Speaker 1: up spending twelve million on it. Um. Yeah, largely because
Speaker 1: a shooting on water is notoriously difficult and be the
Speaker 1: shark mechanical shark they used was legendarily um wonky and
Speaker 1: how it are not wonky but wonky wonky. It didn't work.
Speaker 1: It rarely worked. So they spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: and burnt a lot of hours trying to get this
Speaker 1: shark to do its thing, and uh so much so
Speaker 1: that it didn't even make that many appearances in the movie.
Speaker 1: I think they even kind of scaled it back and
Speaker 1: then ended up being better for the movie because you
Speaker 1: didn't get as much shark. I looked up the um
Speaker 1: the urban legend about the shark being named after Spielberg's
Speaker 1: lawyer Bruce and apparently it's true. Really, Yeah, Bruce Rener
Speaker 1: was the name of Spielberg's lawyer, and the that was
Speaker 1: the nickname for the mechanical shark on the set was Bru.
Speaker 1: That's pretty funny. So with Jaws, right, we're talking about
Speaker 1: horror movies that changed the genre. Jaws not only changed
Speaker 1: the horror genre, it changed movie making to this day
Speaker 1: and in multiple ways, multiple massive ways. It changed the
Speaker 1: entire film industry almost single handedly. Yeah, it was at
Speaker 1: the time, there was a there was no such thing.
Speaker 1: You take it for granted now, but there was no
Speaker 1: such thing as a quote unquote summer release. No, a
Speaker 1: lot of theaters closed down because a C wasn't in
Speaker 1: every theater and people didn't want to sit around in
Speaker 1: a hot movie theater for two hours. Yeah, a summer
Speaker 1: release or a tent pole film or a blockbuster feature
Speaker 1: like Jaws was the first one of all those. At
Speaker 1: the time, when Jaws came out, they used to um
Speaker 1: release a movie on maybe one two screens and say
Speaker 1: New York or l A for a week, and they
Speaker 1: didn't make its way to you know, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago
Speaker 1: for a few weeks and then eventually make it to
Speaker 1: your small Town six eight weeks later. That was how
Speaker 1: movies were released, not Jaws. Jaws was released on four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five screens across the country, which is huge,
Speaker 1: which is part of the part of the UM Summer
Speaker 1: blockbuster release playbook now. Yeah, and it was also the
Speaker 1: first movie to to spend lots and lots of money
Speaker 1: on marketing UM. And so I think the studios were like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, if you spend some dough on marketing,
Speaker 1: you released this sing wide. You can make a ton
Speaker 1: of money in the first month that a movie's out,
Speaker 1: and you're kind of set, like after that, it's anything
Speaker 1: else's gravy. Yeah, and that's after the first week or
Speaker 1: two probably, Yeah, it was. Yeah, the whole the whole
Speaker 1: point of blockbuster now is to get that opening weekend,
Speaker 1: to make all your money back in the opening weekend,
Speaker 1: and then everything else is gravy on top of it. Right,
Speaker 1: Jaws was it didn't make it. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: it did make its money back in the first weekend
Speaker 1: because it hit a hundred million dollars in like seventy
Speaker 1: eight days or something incredible like that. Because it was
Speaker 1: the first movie too had a hundred million dollars, and
Speaker 1: it did it in just a couple of months even. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it eventually went on to make about two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars domestically, which is I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: great take now, yeah, you know, much less the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies for a twelve million dollars spend, for sure.
Speaker 1: My only beef here is that I would not consider
Speaker 1: Jaws a horror movie. Yeah. I think it's an adventure film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you're right, with a scary antagonist. Yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how much I quote that movie in my
Speaker 1: day today life. Yeah, just just just Shark. That's a
Speaker 1: great that's a classic. All right, let's take a break.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna meditate on that line, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a few other scary movies, including one that was originally
Speaker 1: titled scary movie. Okay, moving on to Halloween. Halloween Chuck eight,
Speaker 1: I believe Halloween. Yes, John Carpenter, uh, the youngish John
Speaker 1: Carpenter who originally titled this movie The Babysitter Murders No
Speaker 1: Little on the Nose. Yeah, pretty terrifying title, I guess.
Speaker 1: Young Jamie Lee Curtis, her very first movie was it really. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: she went on to become known as the scream Queen
Speaker 1: for all the horror movies she was in total and
Speaker 1: this was shot in twenty days and uh South Pasadena
Speaker 1: as the Midwest and um it's credited as being birthing
Speaker 1: the slasher genre. Yeah it did. So there were slasher
Speaker 1: films before the Town that Dreaded Sundown. It was like
Speaker 1: based on a true crime story actually in Transas, one
Speaker 1: called Black Christmas the Grabster sites from enour haven't heard
Speaker 1: of that one. But the idea of um of a
Speaker 1: faceless almost a like nonentity entity coming at you, uh
Speaker 1: and relentlessly stalking you, being impervious to harm, as the
Speaker 1: Webster puts it, um, and just coming at you again
Speaker 1: and again trying to kill you. That that was. That
Speaker 1: was all established by Halloween and it was done like
Speaker 1: too too great effect as well. Yeah, and it holds up.
Speaker 1: It's still scary. Uh. Michael Myers of course was the killer. Um.
Speaker 1: The music that John Carpenter score, I mean he he
Speaker 1: scores most of his movies himself, but very iconic, uh,
Speaker 1: basic thing. I think he only took a couple of
Speaker 1: days to come up with it. But like the Michael
Speaker 1: Myers character and the mask or so iconic the music
Speaker 1: is so iconic. Do you know about the mask, right, Schattner, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead. I went and check that one out too
Speaker 1: to verify that it was true. And it definitely is
Speaker 1: true that Michael Myers mask is actually a Captain Kirk
Speaker 1: star Trek mask painted white. That is history. Yep. The
Speaker 1: in the in the script when it came to the mask,
Speaker 1: it just said pale, neutral features of a man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes the whole thing even creepier because he's implacid
Speaker 1: or is that the right word. I don't know, He's
Speaker 1: just it's just almost like a just an emotionless killer.
Speaker 1: It made the fact that he was merciless, ruthless, pitiless,
Speaker 1: and and all arbitrarily killing people almost all the more
Speaker 1: pronounced because his expression never changes. Well, to me, the
Speaker 1: two things that were creepies about Halloween was the expression
Speaker 1: never changed because of that mask. And he did not run,
Speaker 1: like oh yeah, he would just walk, and you still
Speaker 1: got the feeling like you can't outrun this guy even
Speaker 1: though he's walking. That was another creepy part about it.
Speaker 1: It follows with the walking aspect of it, sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the same way that like twenty eight days Later
Speaker 1: was freaky and that it took zombies and made him run. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or I remember when I saw Friday I'm sorry, uh
Speaker 1: Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time, and Freddy
Speaker 1: Krueger was running around. I was like, that's not what
Speaker 1: scary dudes do. Yes, scary dudes don't try. No, they
Speaker 1: walk very creepily towards you and still somehow gained speed
Speaker 1: on you even though you're running for speed. Freddy scared
Speaker 1: me to death the first time I saw that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one was pretty good one, but Halloween established this,
Speaker 1: like you said, it established the slasher genre, and everything
Speaker 1: about slasher films still today all rooted in Halloween John
Speaker 1: Carpenter's tropes. Yeah, and again, like you said, there were
Speaker 1: a couple of other slasher films before, but none of
Speaker 1: them gross close to fifty million bucks. Wow, is that
Speaker 1: how much Halloween made? Yeah, forty seven million domestic at
Speaker 1: about a three hundred thousand dollar budget. So it uh,
Speaker 1: you know this sort of like with the Exorcists, Like
Speaker 1: there were other movies that sort of did this thing before,
Speaker 1: but when you have a huge hit that does it
Speaker 1: is when it sort of redefines the genre because it's money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all. Everyone starts paying attention after that. All right,
Speaker 1: what's next? What's next? My friend? Is a movie that
Speaker 1: came out when I don't know, were you still in college? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: you must have just been out then I was out
Speaker 1: a few years. Okay, well we're are. Let's around our
Speaker 1: college era. This movie came out, because up to this point,
Speaker 1: everything's come out either when we were little or before
Speaker 1: we were born. This one was right in our wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: It was The Blair Witch Project, which came out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh. One of the big things that um Blair
Speaker 1: Witch Project did well two things. Really, it established the
Speaker 1: found footage genre or subgenre that is so overplayed now,
Speaker 1: uh in the viral marketing campaign. And that's how I
Speaker 1: came upon it. I remember very specifically being in the
Speaker 1: apartment of Scotta Polito, who you know, he shot our
Speaker 1: TV show, one of my oldest friends, and I was
Speaker 1: sitting in his apartment on Claremont Avenue Indicator and I
Speaker 1: happened upon this. And this was pre Facebook. I don't
Speaker 1: even know how I found it, you know, before things
Speaker 1: were being shared around and I happened upon this website,
Speaker 1: the very first Blair Witch Project website, and I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: come over here and check this out. This is the
Speaker 1: scariest thing I've ever seen. And I remember the website
Speaker 1: set it up as if it was real, and that
Speaker 1: this found footage thing, it's so overdone now it's hard
Speaker 1: to go back in time and remember when it was fresh.
Speaker 1: But I remember looking at and being like, did this happen?
Speaker 1: Did they really find this footage of this murder in
Speaker 1: the woods? To see this? That was the rumor that
Speaker 1: this was actually real, man. And this is, like you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is before the found footage genres. So
Speaker 1: people were being exposed to this concept for the first time,
Speaker 1: and we're kind of falling for it. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: either in college or you're just recently out of college,
Speaker 1: so you're maybe slightly more guldbal than you are ten
Speaker 1: years ready to believe it. You want to believe, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, the idea that this was actual found footage
Speaker 1: it just made it all the more enjoyable and people
Speaker 1: were buying into it. And I think the other part
Speaker 1: of it too, was that the filmmakers, partly because they
Speaker 1: didn't have the budget for actual effects left a lot
Speaker 1: of the scariest parts to your iagination. Yeah, nor did
Speaker 1: they have the talent to make a good narrative film,
Speaker 1: because I mean they worked on a sixty four page script,
Speaker 1: which I was surprised that it was that that big.
Speaker 1: But they shot it for eight days and originally they
Speaker 1: were going to make it like a documentary about the
Speaker 1: found footage, and then one of them had a flash
Speaker 1: of of perspective. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: let's just release it like it's found footage. And that
Speaker 1: was that. The rest was history. Yeah, and I'm poking fun.
Speaker 1: That was not very nice at all. Um Eduardo Sanchez
Speaker 1: and Daniel Myrick or Merrick, the co directors, they they
Speaker 1: should be credited with the truly ingenious uh campaign and
Speaker 1: invention that Well, they weren't the first to come up
Speaker 1: with found footage, right, there were some films before. Um.
Speaker 1: I've never known how to pronounce it. Mondo Kane, Ormando Kane.
Speaker 1: I think, Connie. It's from nineteen sixty two and it
Speaker 1: was supposedly a documentary about um like some like weird
Speaker 1: tribal rituals. I think there's head shrinking maybe involved, and
Speaker 1: it purported to be like real footage. Same with Cannibal Holocaust. Man,
Speaker 1: if you've never seen Campbell Holocaust, go out and watch
Speaker 1: it right now. It's very disturbing. Um. And it's so
Speaker 1: disturbing that the director of the movie was charged with
Speaker 1: murder because they believed that the actual murders depicted they
Speaker 1: were so realistic. They thought that it was a snuff
Speaker 1: film basically, but it was supposed to be a documentary
Speaker 1: as well, so there was an idea of like found
Speaker 1: footage or documentary style horror movies that had come before,
Speaker 1: but nothing like The Blair Witch where it was just
Speaker 1: straight up these people. We found their their old camera
Speaker 1: and this is what was on it. Well, and they
Speaker 1: were smart enough to kind of dig up an old
Speaker 1: thing that never went huge, you know, and they're like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: like these other movies, they never really hit it big,
Speaker 1: and they it was a timing thing. They they I mean,
Speaker 1: hats off for them to them, Yeah, good for them,
Speaker 1: and to them nice going alright to scream, yeah scream.
Speaker 1: I tease that it was originally titled scary movie. I'm
Speaker 1: glad it wasn't, because scary movie is awesome. Scary movie
Speaker 1: ever would have been called maybe it would have never
Speaker 1: been made, or maybe they would have called that Scream.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess so. So Scream was a very
Speaker 1: big deal when it came out. The writer Kevin Williamson um,
Speaker 1: and this is still the highest growing slasher film of
Speaker 1: all time, basically scream Way. It was huge. I got
Speaker 1: Nev Campbell's haircut as a result of it. Like it
Speaker 1: was a big, big pop culture water mark. It was.
Speaker 1: And one of the big things about it, aside from
Speaker 1: the boatloads of money that it made, was it spawned
Speaker 1: a sub genre called meta horror, which is um even
Speaker 1: though it had been done by no less than its
Speaker 1: own director Wes Craven with Wes Craven's New Mare Uh
Speaker 1: two years before Scream, it wasn't nearly as popular. But
Speaker 1: met a horror is this idea. And if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen Scream, you know they're constantly just referencing horror movies
Speaker 1: like this is where you know, you don't go out
Speaker 1: and make out in the car because that's where you
Speaker 1: get killed. And then they would do that and get killed,
Speaker 1: although I don't think that specific thing happened, like don't
Speaker 1: go back into the house. Yeah, like all the tropes
Speaker 1: of horror movies are addressed in the movie, and they're
Speaker 1: talking about them as the horror movie tropes. Yes, yeah, exactly, horror. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there are plenty of other things that came along
Speaker 1: met he met a horror UM examples like have you
Speaker 1: seen Tucker and Dale Versus Evil? Uh No, check it out, man,
Speaker 1: that's a good movie. Um. Zombie Land to see that
Speaker 1: where he's rattling off all of the things that you
Speaker 1: need to notice survive a zombie apocalypse that he learned
Speaker 1: from zombie movies, right. And then Cabin in the Woods.
Speaker 1: Did you see that? One? Great movie? It was a
Speaker 1: great movie. It was really good. I mean from beginning
Speaker 1: to end, it was a great movie. Did you like Scream? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love Scream. I like all the Screams. I only
Speaker 1: saw the first two. The second one I think might
Speaker 1: have been even better than the first. And that the
Speaker 1: second was shot Emily worked on that it was shot
Speaker 1: here in at Agnes Scott College. Part if we go
Speaker 1: back and watch it knowing that now, I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've driven past that place. Uh So I got a
Speaker 1: few tidbits, like I said. Initial title of scary movie
Speaker 1: UM number two, The Weinstein Brothers initially offered it to
Speaker 1: George Romero and Sam Ramy, um, what else do I
Speaker 1: have here? Drew Barrymore was originally supposed to play Sydney,
Speaker 1: the lead character, and then she said, no, how about
Speaker 1: if I just play that girl at the beginning, which
Speaker 1: kind of was a big thing because you see Drew
Speaker 1: Marry Barrymore, And it was a big shock when she
Speaker 1: died in the first scene, right, you know you can't
Speaker 1: kill off your heroine right away. Yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember that first scene really really scaring
Speaker 1: me when I saw it the first time in the theater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It's a scary, gruesome gory. Yeah, very well played. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then before he went to um Nev Campbell, he
Speaker 1: went out to Alicia Witz, Brittney Murphy and Reese Witherspoon
Speaker 1: and then Campbell your christ choice. Uh. And then the mask,
Speaker 1: the iconic screen mask apparently wasn't off the shelf mask. Wow,
Speaker 1: that made that company's money. Yeah, And the wine scenes
Speaker 1: didn't like it. They were like, I hate that mask.
Speaker 1: Everything else is fine, huh. But west Craven said, no,
Speaker 1: it's got to be that mask would be stupid. Bob,
Speaker 1: all Right, we're gonna finish up with our own addition
Speaker 1: here finally X yes it Psycho. I can't believe this
Speaker 1: wasn't in the list. I think Ed kept this off
Speaker 1: the list to toy with somebody he doesn't like specifically.
Speaker 1: That's the only explanation. Yeah, because Psycho changed everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really did. I mean it was the you could
Speaker 1: say that it was one of the first slasher flicks.
Speaker 1: It was a early psychological thriller. Um. It was based
Speaker 1: on the real life story of Ed Geen. I mean
Speaker 1: it doesn't exactly mirror a Gaen's life, but the idea
Speaker 1: of um being obsessed with your mother so much that
Speaker 1: you will commit murder uh is definitely rooted in a
Speaker 1: Gaen story. Um. If you're not familiar with ed Geen,
Speaker 1: he not only he was I don't even know if
Speaker 1: he was a serial killer. I think he only I
Speaker 1: think he murdered one, maybe two people, But more than anything,
Speaker 1: he was a grave robber. But he likes to um
Speaker 1: dress up in people's skin, women's skin and pretend he
Speaker 1: was his own mother. Which may that's a lot of
Speaker 1: years on the couch working that one out. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: you can just die at the hands of Cops one
Speaker 1: of the two. Um. And he also inspired leather Face
Speaker 1: from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah, and and Buffalo Bill of course.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Sounds of the Lambs. Yeah, one guy
Speaker 1: inspired all those, all those guys. So I found this
Speaker 1: article Psycho colon the horror Movie that Changed the Genre
Speaker 1: by Owen Glieberman or is it Gliberman think he wrote
Speaker 1: for a legendary critic, wrote for e W for years
Speaker 1: and years and now rights for a variety. Oh he does, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he uh he put it best. He said, Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the iconic shower scene, first of all, is
Speaker 1: hugely important because it was Hitchcock really kind of ripped
Speaker 1: up the script, not literally, but the horror movie's script
Speaker 1: when he kills off Janet Lee halfway through the movie.
Speaker 1: It was you just didn't do that at the time.
Speaker 1: We can out of nowhere, and we've seen come up
Speaker 1: later on like at the end of Nither Living Dead
Speaker 1: or Drew Barrymore and scream. His Cock was the first
Speaker 1: one to do that. Yeah, And uh, Glieberman puts it
Speaker 1: this way. He said he was also slicing through years, decades, centuries,
Speaker 1: even of audience expectation that the hero or heroine of
Speaker 1: a fictional work would be shielded and protected or would
Speaker 1: at least die, usually the end in a way that
Speaker 1: made some sort of moral dramatic sense. Uh. In Psycho,
Speaker 1: the murder made no sense at all, right, And he
Speaker 1: really kind of hits it on the head there. It
Speaker 1: was like, if you've never seen Psycho or heard of it,
Speaker 1: the movie is just going along about this woman who
Speaker 1: likes steals some money from a work and she's kind
Speaker 1: of on the lamb and checks into this hotel, and
Speaker 1: you don't even know it's a horror movie. You're thinking
Speaker 1: it's a a movie about a lady who steals money
Speaker 1: and is trying to get away from getting caught, right,
Speaker 1: and then just out of nowhere, she's hacked up in
Speaker 1: a shower and at the time, audiences and still if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, it's shocking. The audiences were just
Speaker 1: like they didn't know what they'd seen, right exactly, So
Speaker 1: you're not not only is is the hero no longer safe?
Speaker 1: That means maybe you're not either. So it has it
Speaker 1: had a really huge unsettling effect. And then Owen Glieberman
Speaker 1: points out that Hitchcock was so smart that he even
Speaker 1: he he even made a nod to the the type
Speaker 1: of pat expected horror that the audience was used to.
Speaker 1: In the house that he used for Psycho, the Bates House.
Speaker 1: It was this huge, rambling Victorian mansion on a hill.
Speaker 1: There's lots of taxidermy, and it was like over over
Speaker 1: decorated and just creepy. But up to that point, like
Speaker 1: that was horror. That was what a horror movie looked
Speaker 1: like and felt like. And this was this was kind
Speaker 1: of Hitchcock's homage to that. But at the same time
Speaker 1: he was also putting the heel of his shoe on
Speaker 1: it as well. Yeah, in that house was I mean
Speaker 1: almost a character in itself. Like if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: the recreation of it at in in Los Angeles, I
Speaker 1: think it's a universal Did you see it? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I never did. The closest I came was I think
Speaker 1: when different Strokes went there. That's the closest you got
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah. Uh yeah. Man, if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: the thing in person, like it's it sends a chill
Speaker 1: up your back just seeing this thing in like a
Speaker 1: sunny Los Angeles day. Still, it's such an iconic house,
Speaker 1: It's like, oh man, uh there it is. That's where
Speaker 1: Norman Bates lives. He's the most disturbed human of all time. Right.
Speaker 1: So in the movie, of course, there was the mother
Speaker 1: character who is sort of reference throughout the movie. And
Speaker 1: it is not until the end that you realize that
Speaker 1: there is no mother. Mother is dead. There's just Norman
Speaker 1: Bates and all his rage and hang ups. So all
Speaker 1: the monster movies about giant ants and or the creatures
Speaker 1: from a black lagoon, monsters things they were and other
Speaker 1: that a normal person had to do battle with that
Speaker 1: was gone. Now the monster had been on screen the
Speaker 1: whole time, and you had noticed it. And now what
Speaker 1: do you think about your neighbor who has seemed a
Speaker 1: little weird from time to time before? Could he be
Speaker 1: a murderer who thinks he's his mother? Who knows? This
Speaker 1: is what Hitchcock did everybody back in nineteen sixty and
Speaker 1: you almost get like, I think, Owen Gliberman points it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does. At the beginning, he basically says like, um,
Speaker 1: we probably didn't see Psycho. If you're reading this, you're
Speaker 1: probably too young to have seen Psycho in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: and we should all feel sad that we didn't because
Speaker 1: it's so changed everything. We can't do anything but take
Speaker 1: it for granted now. And everything that's come since then
Speaker 1: has been trying to regain that shock and horror that
Speaker 1: it instilled in audiences, and and thus far no one's
Speaker 1: actually been able to do it. Yeah, and the other thing,
Speaker 1: I remember when I saw it when I was younger.
Speaker 1: I think I saw this when I was like fourteen ish, um,
Speaker 1: And I think it had this impact on just about everyone.
Speaker 1: I don't think I took a shower for a month.
Speaker 1: I was straight up bathtub curtain open, doors, open, windows open,
Speaker 1: making your mom watch, she's keeping watch. You know that
Speaker 1: would have been full circle back to Yeah, you didn't
Speaker 1: even want to have anything to do with your mom. No. Man,
Speaker 1: Like it changed the shower curtain industry for a while
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, very good movie. And um, there were
Speaker 1: a couple of Hitchcock movies in the last few years, uh,
Speaker 1: two different ones, one with Anthony Hopkins and one with
Speaker 1: Toby Jones that were both really good, and one was
Speaker 1: about the years that he was making Psycho. The other
Speaker 1: was about the years when he was making The Birds.
Speaker 1: And they were both really really good movies, and you
Speaker 1: should check those out two. You should repeat that. We
Speaker 1: just got a interjection from Nol, So go ahead and
Speaker 1: say it again, Josh, in case it didn't come through.
Speaker 1: So Nol just said that. Um. The director of The
Speaker 1: Black Coats Daughter is Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates
Speaker 1: in Psycho's Son. Wow. He also did another movie now
Speaker 1: that Noel says that. Thanks Noel. Um. It's called The
Speaker 1: Pretty Little Thing That Lives in the House, which is
Speaker 1: another horror movie, a ghost story that was his first one,
Speaker 1: and I think that might be on Netflix. It's great.
Speaker 1: It's a really great movie too. Man. This has got
Speaker 1: me fired up to see some horror movies. It's a
Speaker 1: renaissance of horror. Yeah. It's tough though, because Emily doesn't
Speaker 1: really dig it, so I have to just find a
Speaker 1: loane time to do that to watch in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, if you want to know more about
Speaker 1: horror movies, go watch horror movies. Go forth. Uh, and
Speaker 1: I don't know what we missed, for God's sake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out the Grabsters list, type
Speaker 1: in horror movies on the search bar at House of
Speaker 1: Works dot com and will bring up this fine, fine
Speaker 1: list that you will disagree with and um, since I
Speaker 1: said disagree, time for listener mail. Uh. This from Eric,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna call it what he called it, a
Speaker 1: Schoolhouse Rock nostalgia theory. Alright, I think he's pretty right
Speaker 1: on this just came in. Actually, there's a hot take,
Speaker 1: hey guys in Schoolhouse Rock. So Josh made the statement
Speaker 1: that gen xers are most nostalgic generation and attributed to
Speaker 1: this success of Schoolhouse Rock. I'm going to offer my
Speaker 1: own theory. I propose that gen X is nostalgic mostly
Speaker 1: for pop culture because of the prolifer that word of
Speaker 1: child targeted advertisements and marketing in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: Certainly something we talked about. Theories got like while our
Speaker 1: little impressionable brains were developing, we're being taught by those
Speaker 1: who are steering pop culture to long for and find
Speaker 1: fulfillment and the toys and other products our cartoons were
Speaker 1: pushing on us. Now, as adults, those messages are still
Speaker 1: deep in our psyche. We can't shake the idea that
Speaker 1: we still really need those Star Wars action figures to
Speaker 1: be happy, not because the toys and the shows were
Speaker 1: so great, because we had been tricked into believing we
Speaker 1: need them. I have nothing scientific about this up, just
Speaker 1: a hunch yet. What you mean there hasn't been a
Speaker 1: study from m I t alright on Star Wars toys.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised by that as well. I thought
Speaker 1: you were being facetious at first, and yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know which ways up at this point. Yeah, nothing scientific
Speaker 1: to back this up, but I'd love to hear what
Speaker 1: you all think. See if anyone out there is any
Speaker 1: respectable and informed input. Eric, that is from Eric Lewin
Speaker 1: and Erica. I think that's super valid. Yeah, I do too, Eric.
Speaker 1: I think you've really hit upon something here, and that's
Speaker 1: all I have to say about it. If you have
Speaker 1: a great theory, fan theory, real life theory, whatever, we
Speaker 1: want to hear them there, especially if it's interesting. You
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast
Speaker 1: or Josh M Clark. You can post it on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email. The Stuff podcast to
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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