Speaker 1: On the Bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef and Best
Speaker 1: start changing it with the beck Del Cast. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Beachdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Darante.
Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Loftus, and we talk about the
Speaker 1: portrayal of women in movies all the time, but also
Speaker 1: on this podcast, which is what it's about. H I thines,
Speaker 1: this is our best interest. So good. It's Oh, it's
Speaker 1: spooky sperience in this scary month. It's Halloween. We Uh
Speaker 1: this was a requested episode, was it not? Yes? People? Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this if people wanted this one
Speaker 1: or not, but there is a Halloween coming. Sorry, I
Speaker 1: didn't want this. What you're getting it. It's a free product.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to listen to it. We are
Speaker 1: mostly doing this because of the Halloween film that is
Speaker 1: opening tomorrow. Assuming you're listening to this on the day
Speaker 1: that this podcast episode comes out. With Jamie Lae Curtis
Speaker 1: herself the Queen. She's back Scream Queen Icon. She was
Speaker 1: also in Scream Queen's Yeah Wild. Anyways, Caitlin, before we
Speaker 1: get into it, do you have a plan for your
Speaker 1: Halloween costumes this year? I have started doing a thing
Speaker 1: where I dress up as my own couple's costume. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: I was so. For example, last year, I was both
Speaker 1: Marty McFly and his girlfriend Jennifer in one outfit. So
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to do the same thing this
Speaker 1: year with materials that I already have. I have everything
Speaker 1: I need to do both a Wayne and Garth from
Speaker 1: Wayne's World, so I might do that. That's great, that's inspired. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I'm just gonna that's gonna be my my
Speaker 1: new thing because a few years before that, you know
Speaker 1: how people will dress up like as catch up and Mustard,
Speaker 1: while I dressed up it's just catch up. When years
Speaker 1: was like, need no mustard, And then the following year,
Speaker 1: I dressed up as a mustard and I said, I
Speaker 1: don't need no ketchup. So and now I'm just combining. Basically,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be single forever is the theme of
Speaker 1: my costume. I am going to be the Bobba Duke.
Speaker 1: I guess that's so, I'm gonna be Boba Duck. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try really hard to be the perfect Boba Duke. Great, well,
Speaker 1: that okay, So that conversation didn't pass the Bechdel test
Speaker 1: because we talked about Marty McFly garth Algar, Bobba bobad
Speaker 1: genderless icon. So yeah, I think that that's fair. So
Speaker 1: part of that conversation passed. So we use the Bechdel
Speaker 1: test as a way to initiate a larger conversation about
Speaker 1: the representation of women in film. The Bechdel Test, of course,
Speaker 1: for us, is a test that you apply to movies.
Speaker 1: It requires that the movie has two named female identifying
Speaker 1: characters who speak to each other about anything other than
Speaker 1: a man for at least a two line exchange. For example,
Speaker 1: Hey Caitlin, Hey Jamie, did you know that the Babba
Speaker 1: Duke is a queer icon? I did know that. Excellent
Speaker 1: and night passes alright, So well, without much further Ado,
Speaker 1: let's let's get into it. I'm so excited to have
Speaker 1: our guest with us today. She's absolutely wonderful. She has
Speaker 1: a film critic and the host of the Switchblade Sisters podcast.
Speaker 1: Please welcome, April Wolf, Hi, Welcome, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me in this beautiful little studio.
Speaker 1: Of course, is it spooky and he so spooky? You
Speaker 1: guys should see what they did with the play everywhere.
Speaker 1: But I think that's just you know, I like imagining
Speaker 1: that you guys record like in a dingy basement somewhere.
Speaker 1: We used to record in an old attic recorded at
Speaker 1: meltdown back in the day, so you know, stinky attic
Speaker 1: and now no not Yeah, that's our story. That's what
Speaker 1: Oh what a story it is. Speaking of stories, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the story of Halloween, the John Carpenter nine film.
Speaker 1: Very smooth, thank you, that's you know me. I'm a
Speaker 1: segue icon, okay, like the scooter, Yeah, you're like, people
Speaker 1: are all about those bird scooters. I'm still rocking the
Speaker 1: segirl Like honey, I just paid off my segway writing that. Um,
Speaker 1: So April, tell us about your history, your relationship with
Speaker 1: the film Halloween. Oh, I just fucking love it. Um
Speaker 1: When did you first see it? When I was probably
Speaker 1: too young to even remember that I was seeing it.
Speaker 1: My family and I used to watch horror movies when
Speaker 1: we were very very young and continued doing so, so
Speaker 1: I am a horror queen. I really enjoyed the genre,
Speaker 1: and um, I just remember it was very chilling. It
Speaker 1: was one that's stuck with me in the same way
Speaker 1: that Nightmare in Elm Street did. Those two are kind
Speaker 1: of like paired up in my mind, even though they're very,
Speaker 1: very different movies. So yeah, I've confused them before because
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if I had seen this movie or not.
Speaker 1: It's funny, but people also confuse Friday. I had to
Speaker 1: hear a very long conversation that I couldn't interrupt in
Speaker 1: the theater where people will talk. We're talking about Jason
Speaker 1: Vorhees and Halloween, and I was like, no, not Jason,
Speaker 1: the test of your lifetime. It was just like, am
Speaker 1: I going to be that person who's sitting by themselves
Speaker 1: in the theater exactly? I didn't, So Jamie, what's your history?
Speaker 1: I thought I had seen it, and I thought, but
Speaker 1: this is again one of those movies that is so
Speaker 1: known in the culture that there were certain scenes that
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I've seen that, but I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen the whole movie. So I saw it, you know,
Speaker 1: this morning. I saw it this morning and very good.
Speaker 1: It's a scary fucking movie. It's like, yeah, it holds
Speaker 1: up in terms of it was very scary. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: liked it, and I like horror movies. I just um
Speaker 1: get them confused. Sure, yeah, I mean was to confuse.
Speaker 1: There's just like a lot of murders usually a man
Speaker 1: in a mask, a mask, I mean, like they're very
Speaker 1: different movies. It's always like, uh yeah, an angry man
Speaker 1: with with a mask and also like a weirdly chill
Speaker 1: sounding name every time you're like, oh, Michael. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: also as a as a notorious collector of Michael's, this
Speaker 1: one hit close to home. Sure sure, sure. My history
Speaker 1: is I saw the original Halloween probably for the first
Speaker 1: time in college when I was just you know, you're
Speaker 1: collecting Michael's. I'm collecting having watched movies, you know, as
Speaker 1: a film student. You know, I'm just get this one.
Speaker 1: Got to catch them all, you know. But I didn't
Speaker 1: watch it again, although I did see Halloween H two oh,
Speaker 1: I think in high school. So bad movie. That's the
Speaker 1: first one night and I haven't I haven't rewatched it
Speaker 1: since then. And then I saw Halloween Resurrection in the
Speaker 1: theaters with the couple of friends of mine in high school.
Speaker 1: Really quick, where does the H two O come in? Well? Great,
Speaker 1: question there is. I did not realize quite how extensive
Speaker 1: the Halloween franchise was. But we've got this first, the
Speaker 1: original one in nineteen seventy eight, Halloween two comes out
Speaker 1: in eighty one, and we've got Halloween three, Season of
Speaker 1: the Witch, and we've got Halloween four, Return of Michael
Speaker 1: Myers in ninet, Halloween five from nineteen eighty nine, and
Speaker 1: we've got Halloween The Curse of Michael Myers from nine.
Speaker 1: I will admit that I've not seen them all up
Speaker 1: to a point. I kind of was picking and choosing,
Speaker 1: and we have I mean, we haven't even hit Halloween. No, no,
Speaker 1: like this is a long way. God, Halloween. Is it
Speaker 1: just a remake of the first one? But Underwater? Was
Speaker 1: my couestion. Is it Titanic or is it not? Because
Speaker 1: I will see it if it's the Titanic. There there
Speaker 1: is a movie called ghost Ship, which I think is
Speaker 1: the closest thing we'll get to a scary Titanic. Then
Speaker 1: we've got Halloween h two. Oh colin twenty years later,
Speaker 1: with Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode,
Speaker 1: but underwater, but underwater this time she's in Scooby. Then
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, we've got Halloween Resurrection again featuring
Speaker 1: Jamie Lee Curtis as her Laurie Strode character. And finally
Speaker 1: we've got the Halloween Movie coming out in two thousand
Speaker 1: eighteen with again Jamie Lee Curtis. And then that is
Speaker 1: not even including the two reboots that Rob Zombie made.
Speaker 1: I think we should forget about those. Yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: they're bad, but I know that Rob's alv fans just
Speaker 1: love them because it's his style, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's whatever you want. But for me, they're not part
Speaker 1: of the franchise, and that's that's fine. You know, like
Speaker 1: like them, but they're not part of this franchise. I
Speaker 1: feel got it. So the Halloween franchise, it is fairly extensive,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna we're focusing on just the first one
Speaker 1: for this episode. So my my background with the film
Speaker 1: isn't super you know, I've just seen it a couple
Speaker 1: of times now. As I've said before, horror is not
Speaker 1: my favorite genre. Not that I don't like it, it's
Speaker 1: just that I feel like you're like Scarity qualifying that
Speaker 1: for me, like no, no, it's okay. You can like it.
Speaker 1: It's fine, No, I really my so slasher movies. I
Speaker 1: tend not to like very much. The horror movies that
Speaker 1: I like the most um usually more of a supernatural
Speaker 1: devil component to them, like Rosemary's Baby and on the
Speaker 1: Exorcist and like the Olmen. I like that kind of
Speaker 1: sub genre of horror a lot more. April is Michael
Speaker 1: Myers like in your Tops In terms of like a
Speaker 1: horror movie villa, I mean, I guess there's a lot
Speaker 1: of horror movie. Yeah. I think some people don't realize
Speaker 1: how deep the horror genre is because they you know,
Speaker 1: you really only see the top ones constantly. But I mean,
Speaker 1: he's definitely a wonderful creation because he is such a
Speaker 1: blank slate. And yeah, there's always going to be that
Speaker 1: really beautiful sequence of a little boy in a clown
Speaker 1: costume holding a bloody knife, which is you know, it's
Speaker 1: a great idea for a murderer, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that scene because it keeps the camera keeps pulling
Speaker 1: out and it's just his two parents standing on either
Speaker 1: side of them, not reacting at all. They don't go
Speaker 1: into the house to see her hands are in her
Speaker 1: pockets like she's like again, you know, like we're on
Speaker 1: that scene for like maybe ten seconds or more and
Speaker 1: not doing anything, and it's like, are you going to
Speaker 1: investigate why your six year old son is holding it
Speaker 1: crane for a day? You know, you would buy that
Speaker 1: crane per day shot, hold the shot as long as
Speaker 1: you can't get that crane, Like, okay, kid, continue to
Speaker 1: look baffled at what you've done that. Yeah, shall I
Speaker 1: do the recap? Yeah? Yes, So we open on a
Speaker 1: scene where this little boy stabs his sister to death.
Speaker 1: Oh and not just his sister, his completely nick sister.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're just chilling in your room totally
Speaker 1: nude and your brother comes in and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: get out of here, and you don't make any effort.
Speaker 1: You turn your tips towards him. You're like, hey, come on,
Speaker 1: Like that was really funny. That's my first favorite male
Speaker 1: gaze moment of the movie. And I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: when my child brother comes in and I just make
Speaker 1: no effort to conceal my tips at all. Right, they're
Speaker 1: really good tits though, too. I remember being like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: I don't think I appreciated those when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: Just beautiful if I had seen If I had seen
Speaker 1: the movie when I was younger, they would have made
Speaker 1: me feel bad because they're that good. Yeah, they're that good.
Speaker 1: I would have taken it personally. Okay, So then um,
Speaker 1: she dies and the reveal is that, oh, the person
Speaker 1: who just slaughtered this young nude woman was a six
Speaker 1: year old boy and her parents don't care. And then
Speaker 1: we cut too. I believe it's fifteen years later. There
Speaker 1: are a few medical personnel who go to this psychiatric
Speaker 1: ward to move Michael Myers, the man that this little
Speaker 1: murder kid grew up to be, but he has already
Speaker 1: gotten out. He attacks the nurse and he steals their
Speaker 1: car and escapes. So that would put Michael Myers in
Speaker 1: his like early twenties. Yeah, yeah, you know, he's he's young,
Speaker 1: yearning to be free, young buck. I could drink. Now
Speaker 1: get this guy, and let's get this guy in night school.
Speaker 1: We can turn this around. We should say that Donald
Speaker 1: Pleasants is one of the Yes, he is the one
Speaker 1: of my favorite actors of all time. So he plays
Speaker 1: Dr Loomis. So Michael Myers is he's out on the town.
Speaker 1: He's looking for a zomba class, and it is Halloween. Now. So,
Speaker 1: then we meet Laurie Strode Jamie Lee Curtis's character. She
Speaker 1: is a teenager. Her dad is trying to sell the
Speaker 1: Myers house that we can assume has been abandoned for
Speaker 1: quite some time. And throughout the day she starts seeing
Speaker 1: this creepy guy in a mask who appears to be
Speaker 1: stalking her. A few of her friends are around and
Speaker 1: they don't really believe her. Um then we see Dr
Speaker 1: Loomis notify the town sheriff who is also Annie, one
Speaker 1: of Laurie's friends. That's her dad, and Dr Loomis is
Speaker 1: all like Michael escaped and he's on the loose. Then
Speaker 1: later that night, Lorie is babysitting for a little boy
Speaker 1: and her friend Annie is also babysitting for another neighborhood girl.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different houses and babysitting situations, some real,
Speaker 1: some real like questionable logic to get Annie out of
Speaker 1: her clothes is given. I really liked that seeing Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a butter, She's like this is
Speaker 1: a mess, strips nude and then there just happens to
Speaker 1: be like a men's white dress shirt around where I'm
Speaker 1: just like Lindsay's dad's shirt. She's like, I'm too much
Speaker 1: of a hurry for pants. You know, she just can't.
Speaker 1: She's so hardy she doesn't even put on pants. Silly
Speaker 1: of the house. It's like, it's great. She gets stuck
Speaker 1: in the window like Winnie the Pooh. It's crazy. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: she's just like horny chaos that she's my favorite. I
Speaker 1: really liked her. I was like, man, I would that's
Speaker 1: that's who I wish I was in high school. So
Speaker 1: their other friend, Linda is hanging out with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1: So then Annie swings by with her child that she's babysitting,
Speaker 1: and she's like, here, Laurie, take this kid. I have
Speaker 1: to go have sex. No pants. No she's not with pants,
Speaker 1: No questions about that, just yeah, Laurie says nothing. Lori's like,
Speaker 1: that's my friend is no pants any but we love her.
Speaker 1: So Annie leaves. She leaves to go hang out with
Speaker 1: her boyfriend, but before she can get there, Michael Myers
Speaker 1: gets her and he kills her. And then we moved
Speaker 1: to Linda and Bob's area where they're hanging out, which
Speaker 1: I think is either in Annie's house or the house
Speaker 1: that Annie's supposed to be babysitting in it's at that
Speaker 1: house because they like stumble into that house and the
Speaker 1: start humping each other with the door unlocked, and then
Speaker 1: they get the call that no one is coming back
Speaker 1: after all, and I think that they decide to stay
Speaker 1: right yeah, and then they're just like, let's get drunk,
Speaker 1: like sleeping the people's like. Then another one of my
Speaker 1: favorite it reacts and the whole You know, when you
Speaker 1: know your boyfriend shows up at your door dressed as
Speaker 1: a ghost with a sheet with glasses on over top
Speaker 1: of it, and once again you whip your tits out
Speaker 1: and you're like, you're like, oh my god, you like
Speaker 1: what you see? I love God, which we should say
Speaker 1: that actress is also one one of my favorite movies,
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll High School. Yeah, she's the lead in
Speaker 1: that movie. She's also in a recent episode We did
Speaker 1: carry a Girl. Yes she is, she's the Sportyes she
Speaker 1: She wore her hat to the audition and they were like, no,
Speaker 1: that's who your characters and she's like, oh funk, I
Speaker 1: want to play someone else. It's a very productive couple
Speaker 1: of years for this lady. Yeah. So, uh, Linda and
Speaker 1: her boyfriend have sex and then they get murdered whenever
Speaker 1: Michael Myers comes in. They had sex after all, exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that. Um. And then so Laurie goes
Speaker 1: to investigate because she's like, hey, my friends aren't where
Speaker 1: there said they're going to be, and she finds their
Speaker 1: dead bodies. Then Michael Myers pops in. He's like hey,
Speaker 1: and he cuts her arm. He's literally like hey, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like, oh hey. They scuffle, she hurts her legs.
Speaker 1: She she gets away, runs back to the house that
Speaker 1: she's babysitting at. She's screaming, somebody please help me. Where's
Speaker 1: Dr Loomis and all this we don't know. Then Michael
Speaker 1: Myers comes into the house. He's trying to get her.
Speaker 1: She's fighting back. She stabs him with a knitting needle.
Speaker 1: He collapses. He seems dead, but he's not. Come on, Laurie,
Speaker 1: that's not going to kill someone probably, So then she
Speaker 1: like barricades herself in the closet. He's breaking in. She
Speaker 1: pokes him in the eye with a clothes hanger. He
Speaker 1: drops his knife. She stabs him. He collapses again, seeming dead,
Speaker 1: but he's not because then gets back up, and then
Speaker 1: there's one final struggle and then Dr Loomis comes in
Speaker 1: shoots him. Michael Myers falls out the window and then
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, we got him, but then when they
Speaker 1: look outside, he's gone. And that's the end of the movie.
Speaker 1: It is, so let's take a quick break and then
Speaker 1: we'll come back to discuss, and we're back. So this
Speaker 1: movie was co written and produced by a woman, Deborah Hill.
Speaker 1: Um I believe John Carpenter's then girlfriend, later his wife,
Speaker 1: and then even after that his ex wife. But it's
Speaker 1: my understanding that she wrote a lot of the dialogue
Speaker 1: for the women, while Carpenter wrote most of the dialogue
Speaker 1: for the men. In April you I think no more
Speaker 1: about this. So yeah, I believe that she was very
Speaker 1: involved in the story structure. And if you watch the
Speaker 1: movie very prominently, it says a Deborah Hill film, does
Speaker 1: not say a John Carpenter film, because she was the producer.
Speaker 1: So as the creative producer on this project, you know,
Speaker 1: she was shepherding it all the way through. And it's
Speaker 1: a weird thing to go into maybe like um freshman
Speaker 1: year film classes or something where they're watching Halloween and
Speaker 1: they talk about it as though it's a not Tours film,
Speaker 1: and that's wonderful. And I love John Carpenter with all
Speaker 1: of my heart. He's one of my favorite cranky assholes.
Speaker 1: But this is a collaborative film, and so much of
Speaker 1: his work was collaborative with Deborah Hill and with other
Speaker 1: people as well. So it's it's a strange thing to
Speaker 1: think that a woman was the driving force behind this
Speaker 1: movie and helped him push it over the threshold. So
Speaker 1: I hope people remember it as a Debora Hill film,
Speaker 1: but they don't because because yeah, it's really interesting to
Speaker 1: look at her New York Times obituary. She did die
Speaker 1: very young. I think No. Five, yeah, and No. Five,
Speaker 1: and she was only like fifty. So the headline of
Speaker 1: her obituary says, you know, essentially the woman who helped
Speaker 1: create Halloween. And it's real fucked up for me to
Speaker 1: think that, like the story genesis actually might have been hers,
Speaker 1: because if it says a Debris Hill film, she was
Speaker 1: probably the one who was behind the right. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, she helped create it, you know, But that's
Speaker 1: such a it's such a diminutive way of talking about
Speaker 1: her role in this movie. And then the other John Carpenter,
Speaker 1: But I guess. You know, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where headlines there are just like so and so's wife
Speaker 1: does this, you know, Yeah, it's the his wife of
Speaker 1: his wife. Yeah, it's that's really frustrating and disappoine I'm
Speaker 1: saying she also was involved with The Fog, Escape from
Speaker 1: New York and Escape from l A some of my
Speaker 1: favorite films for sure. Well, poor went out for Deborah tonight.
Speaker 1: That's so fucking frustrating. I love. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: things is that she I hope that she came up
Speaker 1: with the conkis to door storyline for the Fog. You
Speaker 1: guys have ever seen that, It's just like I have
Speaker 1: ghost conkyst doors are just like sure invading a radio station,
Speaker 1: so wonderful. And yeah, I I feel like a woman
Speaker 1: being a driving force behind this project does show at
Speaker 1: a lot of points because because I do have a
Speaker 1: lot of these horror movies of this era conflated, I
Speaker 1: assumed that this movie was going to be less good
Speaker 1: to women that and that the female characters in the story,
Speaker 1: I guess we're going to be less active than they
Speaker 1: than they ended up being. Because I think that I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of horror movies that came out like
Speaker 1: when I was in high school. First of all, they
Speaker 1: were remix of a lot of these, and they were worse,
Speaker 1: where like female characters were even less active, and there
Speaker 1: was even more pressure for them to be you know,
Speaker 1: scantily clad. And I mean, I guess, you know, Annie,
Speaker 1: there there are some clear moments, but I I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was flord. Something happened in the nineties and early
Speaker 1: aughts that turned me off of a lot of horror films.
Speaker 1: And it was really nice when I could find some
Speaker 1: that kind of bucked those trends, some international movies that
Speaker 1: had come around around that time that you know, we're
Speaker 1: just a little bit different, or some indies, you know,
Speaker 1: like the movie May came out around that time, Lucky
Speaker 1: McKee's movie, and you know that's one where like a
Speaker 1: woman is very very present and wonderful and so good
Speaker 1: Angela Bettison, Anna Faris or in that one. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of it kind of just
Speaker 1: turned into this like torture porn genre of you know,
Speaker 1: just like brutality with like no nuance almost, but again
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about it's true, So really it
Speaker 1: was a driving force in that and it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting thing. I did interview one of the directors of
Speaker 1: the Saw franchise, um Darren Bousman, who it's a really
Speaker 1: kind person and you know, he owes a lot of
Speaker 1: his career to Saw, but you know he's got children
Speaker 1: now and he's like, I would never direct one of
Speaker 1: those movies if I were the person that I am now.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not sure if I would. I'm not
Speaker 1: comfortable with it. I'm not I don't want to put
Speaker 1: that into the world, you know. So he's like a
Speaker 1: weird thing that happened and in that time period. That's
Speaker 1: so interesting that he went on record as well, well,
Speaker 1: well link that to that interview too, because that is
Speaker 1: I think kind of like cool of him to to
Speaker 1: cop to as well. Interesting. You know, everyone outgrows some
Speaker 1: of their their old desires, their old things that they
Speaker 1: wanted to make, and you feel like it's childish and
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're kind of caught up in like
Speaker 1: this is the zeitgeist of what was going on in horror.
Speaker 1: Then sure, kind of going off of that, that was
Speaker 1: the reason I wasn't, I mean, part of the reason
Speaker 1: I'm not that into horror movies because I you know,
Speaker 1: wasn't allowed to watch any of them growing up. But
Speaker 1: the reason I wasn't allowed to watch them wasn't because
Speaker 1: of the fact that they were scary. It was because
Speaker 1: of the torture are elements to it, where I remember
Speaker 1: my mom was very turned off by the like sexualized
Speaker 1: elements of the movies that we're coming out. Then I
Speaker 1: think that the Final Destination franchise also kind of fell
Speaker 1: into that category as it went on for me. I
Speaker 1: like those movies. Yeah, jeff I mean Jeffrey Riddick, like
Speaker 1: a gay black man, created one of the most successful
Speaker 1: franchises in horror history. And I am a very big
Speaker 1: fan of the first few Destinations, like really big fan
Speaker 1: of them. I saw three first, and I have such
Speaker 1: a the roller Coaster one. I think that the first one.
Speaker 1: I I love three and our producer Sophie really was
Speaker 1: what an iconic movie. I really loved the roller Coaster
Speaker 1: one stuck with me for years, like that was so
Speaker 1: the tanning bed, Yeah, they're electrocuted. Oh my god, it's horrible.
Speaker 1: I mean we're not even talking about the lumber whatever
Speaker 1: coming off of the back of the truck going through
Speaker 1: to OK. We got to talk about Halloween. But but
Speaker 1: all I have to say, you know, Halloween is marketably
Speaker 1: different from for sure and the early two thousands. So
Speaker 1: Halloween is not the first slasher movie. There's some kind
Speaker 1: of debate as to what it is. But but Halloween
Speaker 1: is credited as ushering in the popularity of the slasher
Speaker 1: sub genre because this was a huge box office hit.
Speaker 1: It had a low budget if I think around dollars,
Speaker 1: and it grossed seventy million in the box office, you know,
Speaker 1: super popular. Really helped usher in the slasher sub genre,
Speaker 1: and it made Jamie Lee Curtis. That was like her
Speaker 1: first Scream queen role. I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: people understand when they try to copy these kinds of movies.
Speaker 1: They don't understand what the key to success was in
Speaker 1: the first one. Like I do think that, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're looking at Nightmare on Elm Street, I think
Speaker 1: that that's a really great six us full kind of slasher,
Speaker 1: you know, rip off in some ways of these slightly
Speaker 1: earlier ones, because there is a very interesting and enigmatic killer,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's very creative, and you know, you
Speaker 1: look at this as a precursor to any other slasher
Speaker 1: and you're like, wow, this is extremely creative. Um, and
Speaker 1: now it's just been done so many times. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: also I didn't know. I didn't know the origin story
Speaker 1: of Michael Myers, but just the fact that he was
Speaker 1: originally among memonies, not this like abstract monster that you
Speaker 1: don't know where he came from. He literally came from
Speaker 1: the same suburb where he's now. I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: that makes it scarier, just like for sure. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the brutalization of women in
Speaker 1: horror movies. So what are you talking about? I don't sorry,
Speaker 1: I made a mistake to um, I'll just go home.
Speaker 1: So horror as a genre, as with all genres, there
Speaker 1: are certain genre specific tropes that revolve around gender, and
Speaker 1: many of those tropes mean a misguided or damaging portrayal
Speaker 1: of women. But horror especially, I think it's worth talking
Speaker 1: about because unlike say, action adventure, fantasy sci fi movies,
Speaker 1: where women are generally sidelined and not allowed to participate
Speaker 1: much in the story, horror movies, especially slashers and probably
Speaker 1: other subgenres, generally allow women to be much more active
Speaker 1: participants in the story. But this means that they are
Speaker 1: also often very heavily brutalized. So I want to kind
Speaker 1: of break down the people who get attacked in this
Speaker 1: movie by gender. So the first thing we see is
Speaker 1: the Myers teen girl at the very beginning being brutally stabbed. Look, yeah,
Speaker 1: look at my tids, little brother. She's proud of them.
Speaker 1: She is like eight year old packing the clown mask shot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do have to say the clown masks shot
Speaker 1: actually does obscure some of the tips. It's it's a
Speaker 1: weird thing, like it's less lurid than it would be.
Speaker 1: Just it also makes you think that he's much taller. Yeah. Anyways, right,
Speaker 1: um So, then her boyfriend leaves before the stabbing happened,
Speaker 1: so he escapes the brutality. There the nurse outside of
Speaker 1: the hospital that she and Dr Lomas go too, she
Speaker 1: gets attacked, not killed, but Michael Myers does kind of
Speaker 1: like struggle with her. Meanwhile, Dr Loomis is not attacked,
Speaker 1: so so far it's two women and no men. Like that.
Speaker 1: That woman never shows up in the movie again because
Speaker 1: she's like, no, fuck this, you guys do like I am,
Speaker 1: like I'm getting transferred. This is fucking not okay. Good
Speaker 1: for her up. Nurse Betty is who she became. I
Speaker 1: would watch that TV show, watch that sitcom. Isn't there
Speaker 1: a movie called Nurse Betty did? Yeah with them? She
Speaker 1: has amnesia. She seems like a murder and then has
Speaker 1: amnesia about it. Literally this movie. Okay, okay, yeah, Nurse Betty. Okay.
Speaker 1: Next thing we see is a dead man's body by
Speaker 1: a red truck. He's already dead. There's no woman present,
Speaker 1: so we don't see a man attacked, but we do
Speaker 1: see his dead body. Next thing is Annie getting strangled
Speaker 1: in the car and then her neck is slashed by
Speaker 1: Michael Myers. Annie's boyfriend Paul, however, is not present, so
Speaker 1: he is not attacked too bad. Maybe he had pants
Speaker 1: kind of lens um. Then we see Linda get attacked
Speaker 1: and strangled, and then her boyfriend Bob also gets strangled
Speaker 1: and then stabbed, so finally there's a We see a
Speaker 1: man crucified teen boy as well, and then at the
Speaker 1: very end, Laurie is repeatedly attacked by Michael Myers, but
Speaker 1: there's no sort of male counterpart there for him to
Speaker 1: be attacked, so it's essentially five women we see attacked
Speaker 1: in the movie and only one man we see being
Speaker 1: brutalized April. This is not an unusual ratio, is it? Or?
Speaker 1: Or is it? No? Now, I mean there's usually I
Speaker 1: mean you might say it's like if there are seven people,
Speaker 1: who's usually four women and three men. You know, there's
Speaker 1: always at least one more woman who's who's separate, and
Speaker 1: she's usually like the slut, you know, and it's great.
Speaker 1: She's like the most charismatic character and everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's definitely dying Paras Hulton and the House of Wax.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah, is the one I got to
Speaker 1: do for that. Yeah, let's I guess I have seen
Speaker 1: a lot of these things. Um, yeah, I liked. I
Speaker 1: did like the skanky ones of the early and mid auts.
Speaker 1: Those are most of the ones that I saw. Five
Speaker 1: right well to that point. Of the women who are
Speaker 1: attacked and killed, certainly in this movie and in many,
Speaker 1: if not most slasher movies, all those women are sexualized
Speaker 1: in some way. Where the Meyers girl at the beginning
Speaker 1: is seen making out with a boy and then presumably
Speaker 1: they have sex, and then she is stabbed. Annie is
Speaker 1: on her way to have sex with Paul. We see
Speaker 1: her undressed because of the butter, she apparently spills all
Speaker 1: over her clothes mad. She gets so mad about the
Speaker 1: whole butter situation. I'm like, Okay, it seems like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of metaphors in this movie, like what's the butter?
Speaker 1: It's like I spilled loop all over myself? Oh no,
Speaker 1: um and the and then Linda has sex with Bob
Speaker 1: and then gets strangled to death. So because and we've
Speaker 1: hinted at this before, we've talked about this before, I
Speaker 1: think on the Friday the thirteenth episode, and it's worth
Speaker 1: going into a lot more on this episode because Laurie
Speaker 1: Strode is, you know, the virgin type. She ends up
Speaker 1: being the final girl where while she is attacked by
Speaker 1: the killer she survives. Well. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of indicators attached to Laurie's character that, from my read
Speaker 1: of it, went even beyond her being the virgin where
Speaker 1: and it's kind of all the classic indicators. But you know,
Speaker 1: at the beginning, we find out that she's very into
Speaker 1: her studies and she like gives a funk that she
Speaker 1: forgot her chem book and everyone else was like whatever,
Speaker 1: where you know butter? And she instead of hanging out
Speaker 1: with boys, she's doing a very maternal activity. She's taking
Speaker 1: care of children. Uh, she is. She's she's knitting, you guys,
Speaker 1: Like she actually brings her knitting materials with her her.
Speaker 1: The two weapons she uses are a knitting needle and
Speaker 1: a clothes hanger, so she's using I think we were
Speaker 1: talking about this recently, like just domestic kind of feminine
Speaker 1: weapons to attack this man, which I thought was kind
Speaker 1: of like cool and an interesting I mean, she is
Speaker 1: kind of she's resourceful, but it also does mean that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking about on the Raiders of the Last
Speaker 1: Dark episode where Mary and Raven would right. The one
Speaker 1: weapon she uses is a frying pan to like hit
Speaker 1: a guy over the head with, which is another domestic item.
Speaker 1: It's an observation of something I think. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: different ways to look at it where you know it
Speaker 1: could be used to her advantage of Like, yes, she's resourceful,
Speaker 1: she's using what's around um and she's not I guess
Speaker 1: taking the mass like the masculine whatever phalic item to
Speaker 1: turn it on a man. And you know she's using
Speaker 1: the feminine objects that are around her. I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I can I can see that both ways,
Speaker 1: but there's and then she's dressed differently than every other
Speaker 1: woman in the movie too big baggy sweaters, really cool
Speaker 1: penny loafers. Though I really like I'm like really into
Speaker 1: her style. I like and he's my favorite, but I
Speaker 1: liked the look. That was a good look. They bought
Speaker 1: her wardrobe at j C. Penny. Is some trivia that
Speaker 1: I read does not surprise me. And I also am
Speaker 1: a Penny kid. So all of my clothes from like
Speaker 1: ages I think five till eighteen were bought at j C. Penny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that we got my clothes at Marshals and
Speaker 1: they had bought it from j C. Penny. So it's
Speaker 1: like last season J Cure. Sure, but you know it
Speaker 1: trickles down. Uh So. Kind of looking at this from
Speaker 1: a screenwriting perspective, I do have a master's screen in
Speaker 1: screenwriting from Boston University. I hate to bring it up,
Speaker 1: but I think there is a very specific reason the
Speaker 1: slasher movies like this have a lot of women in
Speaker 1: them as the main characters. Because filmmakers of horror movies
Speaker 1: are going to use whatever tools they can to heighten
Speaker 1: and amplify the horror, and they think that it's scarier
Speaker 1: when a woman gets attacked, because women are perceived as
Speaker 1: being weaker by society, so brutalizing women has a greater
Speaker 1: like emotional impact on the audience. Well, I also, I mean,
Speaker 1: I also think that it's just in the world more
Speaker 1: likely that men are attacking women for reasons that are
Speaker 1: deep seated women don't fully understand than than the reverse. Well,
Speaker 1: there's also the I mean, this is a biblical story construction.
Speaker 1: I think people forget that horror movies are actually drawn
Speaker 1: from very deep, long histories. Um. And so even if
Speaker 1: you look at Night of the Hunter, for instance, that
Speaker 1: is you know, really kind of beautiful fairy tale of
Speaker 1: an early horror film, and it is also one where
Speaker 1: women who feel sexual are the ones who are murdered.
Speaker 1: And it's also you know, a comment on what that
Speaker 1: is on the Killer and you know, talking about God
Speaker 1: talking to him and telling him to do these things.
Speaker 1: And in the same way you can see a little
Speaker 1: bit about Michael Meyer perhaps having someone kind of talking
Speaker 1: to him and telling to him that this is a
Speaker 1: moral thing and that morally these people are bad. And
Speaker 1: so it is to me it's always been very very biblical,
Speaker 1: And I was raised Roman Catholic and we love horror movies.
Speaker 1: It is about us. It is about us. It's like
Speaker 1: our story where we're like, oh, yeah, that's so fucked up,
Speaker 1: let's watch this, you know, and um, you know, you
Speaker 1: can see that that trajectory from the earliest of horror
Speaker 1: films of morality and women and um sexuality and who
Speaker 1: gets punished and who isn't sure you know, watching something
Speaker 1: like this where women are brutalized in some ways, it's
Speaker 1: you know, reinforcing what I was taught as a child,
Speaker 1: you know, about about that morality. And then also it
Speaker 1: is circumventing it because there there is one woman who survives,
Speaker 1: you know, and there is you know, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: never like all good or all bad, you know. Sure,
Speaker 1: a few different interpretations. I did some research afterwards just
Speaker 1: to sure that I was that my reading of it
Speaker 1: was sort of tracking, because you know, the morality play
Speaker 1: elements of it seemed to read very clearly, where it
Speaker 1: also didn't resonate with me on first viewing that there's
Speaker 1: an implication at least that the reason because I was like,
Speaker 1: why does Michael Myers kill his sister? Like, but I
Speaker 1: didn't figure that out the first time, and then went
Speaker 1: back and watched that scene again to be like, did
Speaker 1: I miss something? I think the implication and then I
Speaker 1: sort of checked this against other stuff is that he's
Speaker 1: upset that she is in you know, like engaging in
Speaker 1: sexual whatever instead of taking care of him, instead of
Speaker 1: paying attention to him. And so it's his anger at
Speaker 1: her sexuality versus taking care of him that motivates that killing,
Speaker 1: which helps me out a lot with not justifying but
Speaker 1: what is motivating the other Like it makes him so
Speaker 1: mad when teenage women are sexual because they're not babysitting him, right,
Speaker 1: But then I I was I think he's an in
Speaker 1: cell and he's absolutely if only he just had that
Speaker 1: terrifying internet community to go to at that time. And
Speaker 1: then but then John Carpenter and it's again it's like
Speaker 1: I wish I knew what Deborah Hill thought about this,
Speaker 1: because Carpenter later went on the record is saying he
Speaker 1: doesn't think Halloween is a morality play at all, and
Speaker 1: he says people who say that completely missed the point
Speaker 1: and then says quote the one okay, and his readom
Speaker 1: like did you see your own movie? He says, uh,
Speaker 1: quote the one girl who is the most sexually uptight,
Speaker 1: just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's
Speaker 1: the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him,
Speaker 1: not because she's a virgin, but because of all that
Speaker 1: sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those
Speaker 1: phallic symbols on the guy. So that isn't that so too? Yeah? Also,
Speaker 1: this happens a lot where critics of horror movies will
Speaker 1: be like, the fallace is the knife and the thing,
Speaker 1: and I don't really get I mean, I get why
Speaker 1: this happens, but equating stabbing someone to death with a
Speaker 1: knife and equating that too, I think that's a giant
Speaker 1: clip personally, Like, you're just killing someone with a gigantic
Speaker 1: Why are we equating penis vagina heteronormative penetrative sex? Why
Speaker 1: does that get? I know why, But why does it
Speaker 1: get equated with stabbing someone and murdering someone to death? Oh? Boy?
Speaker 1: I mean I mean that maybe it's too much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like, don't sexualize my knife. My
Speaker 1: knife is my knife just for murder, not don't gender
Speaker 1: my knife. Um, guns are pretty clear, those are pretty
Speaker 1: obviously penises when they come and they kill had Um,
Speaker 1: we gotta take a quick break, but we'll come back
Speaker 1: for more. And we're back. Can we talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the Final Girl trope? Because okay, no, I
Speaker 1: mean you're this is, this is. We've only talked about
Speaker 1: the Final Girl trope once last year when we did Friday.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk about what it is and then we're
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in what your read of it is
Speaker 1: because I'm sure there's a whole secret history we don't
Speaker 1: know about. Yeah. So um. It has become such an
Speaker 1: easily recognizable trope that other horror movies have been referencing
Speaker 1: it for a couple of decades now, Like in Screaming
Speaker 1: gets talked about a lot, it gets alluded to in
Speaker 1: Cabin in the Woods. There's even a movie called The
Speaker 1: Final Girls that came out in two thousand fifteen, which
Speaker 1: I did see in theaters brag um. But there's also
Speaker 1: another movie called Just Final Girl came out like a
Speaker 1: year after that. The trope is that the kind of virginal,
Speaker 1: studious good girl who is among the cast of peers
Speaker 1: who are are much more sexual than she is. She's
Speaker 1: the one who gets away, She escapes and or defeats
Speaker 1: the killer. Basically, she's the last survivor left alive after
Speaker 1: the killer has murdered everybody else live long enough to
Speaker 1: fuck baby? Can't I virgin? Right? So that's the thing
Speaker 1: you behind that right there? Are Yep, I've read feminist
Speaker 1: arguments for and against this trope and slasher movies in general.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm curious to hear your take. It's something
Speaker 1: that I've had to talk about so much then, like,
Speaker 1: what have I not said before? Because if you're a
Speaker 1: woman who is in horror, who likes horror, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the first thing that people wanted to talk about. Um.
Speaker 1: Annabella got herself into some trouble recently, director of a
Speaker 1: movie called The Love which because she said that she
Speaker 1: thinks that the Final Girls bullshit. UM, And it's Uh,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where are women who are
Speaker 1: talking about the Final Girl and embracing the Final Girl.
Speaker 1: Are they participating in their own you know, patriarchal destruction
Speaker 1: or are they actually doing something that is feminist? And
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's any one answer to to that. Um.
Speaker 1: The way that I think about it is, um, something
Speaker 1: that women have not had that many movies that we
Speaker 1: get to see ourselves in right. And so one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I was always gravitating towards horror was
Speaker 1: because you actually saw a female character, at least one generally,
Speaker 1: who was very well developed. Um, and so it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: great and she you know, often very strong, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And in the same way that gay people
Speaker 1: and people of color have had to kind of reinterpret
Speaker 1: movies for their own use and their own instruction and
Speaker 1: their own kind of like piece of mind. There you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing. It's like, we find what
Speaker 1: we want in movies. And I think that it's completely
Speaker 1: okay to look at a movie like you know, Halloween
Speaker 1: and say, I idolize Jamie Lee Curtis's character in this
Speaker 1: Laurie Strode, because you know, she survived and she's a
Speaker 1: great character. She's got some texture and she's interesting. And
Speaker 1: to say that that's something that you can exalt. And
Speaker 1: I'm also okay with Annabeller saying that it's bullshit. You know.
Speaker 1: I think that I think that you you look for
Speaker 1: things that you want to be in film, even if
Speaker 1: they're not quite there. Um. Some obviously are better than others.
Speaker 1: I do think that Halloween has some interesting characters who
Speaker 1: I love. I love sluts movies. I love them so much.
Speaker 1: They're so fund annie. And that's one of another thing
Speaker 1: where like in a horror movies, you only get to
Speaker 1: see sluts in horror movies like kind of like fully,
Speaker 1: kind of like self actualized, like this is who I am.
Speaker 1: Of course, they get murdered, and I try not to
Speaker 1: think about that, but I love their characters so much
Speaker 1: and I love spending time with them. Um and so
Speaker 1: you just have kind of have to look past some
Speaker 1: other things and to enjoy what you want from it.
Speaker 1: I definitely agree that it's a matter of examining each
Speaker 1: individual movie and looking at how it decides to portray
Speaker 1: the female characters, how it kind of comes about the
Speaker 1: final girl scenario thing. It's not. I don't think the
Speaker 1: idea of the final Girl is inherently good or bad.
Speaker 1: I think it's just a matter of, Okay, how does
Speaker 1: this movie, how do you handle it, and how how
Speaker 1: do you interpret it as it plays out on screen?
Speaker 1: In each individual movie, there's a I mean and and
Speaker 1: I've like tempted to give Debra Hill most of the
Speaker 1: credit for the parts of these movies that of this
Speaker 1: movie specifically, that might kind of bug me, or I
Speaker 1: might roll my eyes at another horror movies that I
Speaker 1: didn't in this particular one. But one of the reasons
Speaker 1: this movie was like still kind of scary to me
Speaker 1: was it's like great use of voyeuristic shots because there's
Speaker 1: so I mean, like that's worth A lot of the
Speaker 1: horror comes from before people die. For minutes you're seeing
Speaker 1: you're in the predators mask, or you're right behind him
Speaker 1: and you're you're watching you know, you're watching Annie inexplicably
Speaker 1: strip of nude in someone else's kitchen and put on
Speaker 1: a dad's shirt or just stuff like that that plays
Speaker 1: so well, especially when I was younger and still living
Speaker 1: in the suburbs, of like the feeling of being watched
Speaker 1: by a masked man when you're just trying to do
Speaker 1: do your fucking thing, which I don't know, Like I
Speaker 1: definitely had some peeping toms when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: Like they were gross and my my stepdad had to
Speaker 1: chase them away from the window, Like it was just weird.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that's like extremely you know,
Speaker 1: resonant for a lot of suburban We had girls we
Speaker 1: had like a closed shade rule after like six pm,
Speaker 1: all shades to be closed once like me and my
Speaker 1: cousin's hit Puberty. It was just like by towels over
Speaker 1: the just in case. You know, like well because you
Speaker 1: can see the shadows. That was an issue in my
Speaker 1: neighborhood where we were closing the shade but you could
Speaker 1: still see the silhouettes and the shadows, and that was
Speaker 1: also not good. So the peepers was stay peeping in silhouette.
Speaker 1: They would be old timey peeping and uh, and so
Speaker 1: you had to like go the next So it does resonate,
Speaker 1: it does, and you know, there's it's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: that they have scenes of Annie just doing laundry like
Speaker 1: that's just the and you're like, but you just know
Speaker 1: that he's out there somewhere when she couldn't watch whose
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, she's dead, but then she's not. Then
Speaker 1: the then then Lindsay the kid who for oh like
Speaker 1: a large portion of her time on screen is catatonic
Speaker 1: watching the thing, which that was really funny. That was
Speaker 1: something because we're recording an episode on Scream tomorrow and uh,
Speaker 1: something that showed up in this movie. And then in
Speaker 1: Scream as well as like they're watching horror like this
Speaker 1: is this horror movie takes place in a world where
Speaker 1: horror movies already exist, which to me seems like why
Speaker 1: they kept cutting back to the thing and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of referencing stuff like that, which I think does
Speaker 1: something to like strengthen the characters within the world, because
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's it's so frustrating when you
Speaker 1: see a character go into the place they shouldn't be
Speaker 1: going into, and it's like, have you ever seen a
Speaker 1: horror movie before? So a movie going out of its
Speaker 1: way to be like, no, they've seen a horror movie before.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Yeah, I do find out fascinating. And
Speaker 1: there's definitely a lot more we can say about that
Speaker 1: when we talk about Scream. But um, one of the
Speaker 1: things I wanted to point out about Laurie's Strode as
Speaker 1: the you know, final girl, as the as the remaining
Speaker 1: survivor of this movie, is that we see her fight back.
Speaker 1: She as we talked about, uses a few different weapons.
Speaker 1: She is many toning up a fight, she's running away,
Speaker 1: she's screaming for help. People are like bystandering the funk
Speaker 1: out of that situation and ignoring her. There's a moment
Speaker 1: she gets Tommy's attention by throwing the plant up at
Speaker 1: his window, and she just like get the funk down,
Speaker 1: which is also a questionable decision, but whatever. She's like,
Speaker 1: let's get into the house where there's children. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she does not think. She's not thinking. I mean
Speaker 1: she's there's like a fight or flight situation going on,
Speaker 1: and then it is I did find myself frustrated at times,
Speaker 1: and maybe this is unfair of me because I have
Speaker 1: not been in a situation where I've been chased by
Speaker 1: a murderous, crazy person with a knife. You gotta try it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you can pay to get that done. I'm
Speaker 1: just like people love experiences. It's experienced. But I was like,
Speaker 1: she stabs the guy with a knitting needle and then
Speaker 1: she just like collapses on the couch for a while.
Speaker 1: The knife is right there, she drops it and it's
Speaker 1: just like, no, like kill him some more like make
Speaker 1: sure he's dead. Uh. And then so I was like frustrated.
Speaker 1: But so I was like if I was in her shoes,
Speaker 1: I would probably not be thinking clearly either. It's not
Speaker 1: easy to kill a person, as it turns out movies
Speaker 1: kind of make it seem as though it is easy
Speaker 1: to kill someone to like get even if someone's trying
Speaker 1: to hurt you. Having to hurt someone else in that way,
Speaker 1: it's extremely difficult, for sure. I thought of that as well,
Speaker 1: But then I was like, oh, it's probably like a
Speaker 1: character thing, like they wouldn't want the leading lady to
Speaker 1: to kill someone too hard or like or go quote
Speaker 1: unquote overboard with like you know, forties stab wounds. Right,
Speaker 1: that would have ended it right there, which I think
Speaker 1: might be because Magic, well, yeah, because he keeps coming
Speaker 1: back for all the sequels, even apparently if you're mentally ill,
Speaker 1: you also are, yes, which is just a whole other thing, right,
Speaker 1: If only that'd be, I'd be well, I think that
Speaker 1: is why the thing happens at the end where Dr
Speaker 1: Loomis is the one who kind of swoops in, and
Speaker 1: I would argue saves Lorie by shooting Michael Myers, And yeah,
Speaker 1: so I would have rather that not have had to
Speaker 1: happen where a man kind of comes in and saves
Speaker 1: the woman. I think it could have easily been that Lori,
Speaker 1: who would have been perfectly justified, and she she had
Speaker 1: it but yeah, Dr Limas comes in, shoots him and
Speaker 1: then he falls out the window. Michael Myers disappears and
Speaker 1: you know he's waiting for production to start on this
Speaker 1: sequel whatever. But um yeah, he zaps over to like
Speaker 1: a meeting. He's like, sorry, I got a development meeting. Um,
Speaker 1: but we don't have to say that. Like, this is
Speaker 1: kind of before we were getting like a lot of
Speaker 1: horror movies that add sequels like in that period. So
Speaker 1: it was a very brave thing of them to do narratively,
Speaker 1: to be like, let's set up a sequel, because like,
Speaker 1: was this going to be a sure hit? You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't know. So having that kind of unresolved thing
Speaker 1: in the end of this film is also, I have
Speaker 1: to say, very fucking weird. Yeah all right. Um. I
Speaker 1: also wanted to talk about the whiteness of horror movies
Speaker 1: because maybe until very recently and even now, most slasher
Speaker 1: films have a cast that is all or predominantly white,
Speaker 1: as Jada Pinkett Smith's character in Scream Too, which I
Speaker 1: recently rewatched, as she says the horror genre is historical
Speaker 1: for excluding the African American element, and she says about
Speaker 1: the slasher movie she's about to see in theaters is
Speaker 1: a dumbass white movie about some dumbass white girls getting
Speaker 1: their white asses cut the funk up. So that that's
Speaker 1: pretty well sum up what a lot of slasher movies are. Um,
Speaker 1: if there are people of color in the cast of
Speaker 1: a slasher movie, they are often the first to die,
Speaker 1: and they almost never survive until the end. And I
Speaker 1: was kind of I was trying to do some reading
Speaker 1: up about this and was sort of like trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of why this is and and what are
Speaker 1: the implications of this? And I think it's part of
Speaker 1: it is that stories about rich tract of white women
Speaker 1: are very sensationalized in the media, either in horror movies
Speaker 1: or in the news. I mean, like think of John
Speaker 1: Beny Ramsey and how we're still talking about that when
Speaker 1: it's like her brother talking about Sorry, I mean, I
Speaker 1: have seen every single everything pretty. And then when you
Speaker 1: think about like the most famous serial killers, they are
Speaker 1: the ones who generally targeted young white women. We started
Speaker 1: to keep poking holes, right, So sorry barbaratus is the
Speaker 1: exception to every role the golden standard. But story, real
Speaker 1: life stories about women of color being killed are largely
Speaker 1: ignored by the media. They don't get nearly as much
Speaker 1: press coverage. And I don't know if slasher movies excluding
Speaker 1: people of color from their stories is active commentary on that.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think white people just don't
Speaker 1: think about it. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about slashers
Speaker 1: proliferating in the nineteen eighties when we also had um
Speaker 1: John god sorry, what's his name, sixteen candles John Hughes.
Speaker 1: So you've got John Hughes on this kind of like
Speaker 1: family friendly type of thing, and he's doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: and slashers are doing the same thing. The nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: was the time of like flipped up collar assholes just
Speaker 1: like you know heroes as heroes like you know, running wild,
Speaker 1: They're the center of the story, They're the center of everything.
Speaker 1: Even though that was, you know, the nineteen eighties, if
Speaker 1: you look at the economics of that time, that's that's
Speaker 1: representative of a very very small small number of people.
Speaker 1: Reagan era movies are so fucking weird, fucking Reagan dude.
Speaker 1: Although I love Land of Confusion video that Genesis, it
Speaker 1: was so good, I would also guess that it was
Speaker 1: just literally lack of thought. The closest I could get
Speaker 1: was there representing like upper middle suburbia which probably wasn't
Speaker 1: as accessible to non white people in this time. But
Speaker 1: there's never I mean, there's no excuse to I feel
Speaker 1: like this is probably across all genres at this time. UM, April,
Speaker 1: have you found that that has changed significantly over time
Speaker 1: or has has there been any progress whatsoever. It's weird.
Speaker 1: You're seeing a lot of films that are UM, a
Speaker 1: lot of directors, people of color specifically, who are kind
Speaker 1: of in development on features right now, people who have
Speaker 1: had shorts horror shorts or sci fi shorts that are
Speaker 1: screening at festivals right now. And you see that and
Speaker 1: you're saying, oh, that's the next generation. Um. When Tales
Speaker 1: from the Hood came out, Rusty Kundiff's anthology horror, that
Speaker 1: was one of the few that kind of really spoke
Speaker 1: to that. Then you've got also um lepricn in the Hood,
Speaker 1: and then it's follow up also embraced you know, African
Speaker 1: American actors and you know, gave people their own slasher
Speaker 1: And I have to say, Lepricon the Hood is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite movies. I haven't seen. It is so
Speaker 1: wonderful and there's actually some really interesting performances and those
Speaker 1: are really amazing movies, but they're also quite rare. There's
Speaker 1: a woman who runs a website actually called Grave Shift Sisters.
Speaker 1: Graveyard Shift Sisters, that's what it is, and that's UM
Speaker 1: specifically developed to talk about women of color in horror,
Speaker 1: and so people are interested in that. Graveyard Shift Sisters
Speaker 1: has some really interesting essays and kind of digs in
Speaker 1: to find not just the women of color in features,
Speaker 1: but in the shorts that you know, from those directors
Speaker 1: who might go on to make these features. So it's
Speaker 1: it's very fun to see that everyone checked that outs
Speaker 1: so cool tweet out that link. That's awesome. When I
Speaker 1: mean this is sort of casa because we're covering a
Speaker 1: lot of movies this month that came out in the seventies.
Speaker 1: We just did carry. Not only is it an all
Speaker 1: white cast, but in terms of the women that we see,
Speaker 1: there's no range of body types at which is you know,
Speaker 1: almost goes without saying, but there it is. There. It is. Yes,
Speaker 1: um also as per usual and extremely hetero movie, not
Speaker 1: not a glimpse of queerness. Bapa Duke isn't anywhere to
Speaker 1: be seen. Where's the Baba Duke in Halloween? He just
Speaker 1: shows up. He's like, hey, Michael mis is like, that's
Speaker 1: my line. Queerness in norror movies is also its own thing,
Speaker 1: because you know, you do have some really wonderful kind
Speaker 1: of lesbian vampire films that have been made, but then
Speaker 1: you also have you know, like Buffalo Bill and Silence
Speaker 1: and the Lambs, which is a construction that trans people
Speaker 1: have had problems with, you know, for but also some
Speaker 1: people have embraced him because of or her. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't remember like what we would refer gender. Well,
Speaker 1: that's because I think the movie misrepresents the trans experience
Speaker 1: so much that it's hard to interpret what exactly they're
Speaker 1: going for. Ye, And so yeah, there's you know, like
Speaker 1: these lines between again, are you we rewriting it to
Speaker 1: embrace this person because we don't see this person and
Speaker 1: to kind of envelope them in our love and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have empathy for you. I have sympathy for you
Speaker 1: because I understand it was so difficult or something. So
Speaker 1: you know, Buffalo Bill is a really we you know,
Speaker 1: weird example to put into that, but you know, um,
Speaker 1: there is a really great article that my friend Jordan's
Speaker 1: Cruciola wrote for Vulture that is like fifty of the
Speaker 1: best queer horror films, and I would highly suggest that
Speaker 1: people check that out. Interesting, And you're you hit on
Speaker 1: this point very briefly about Michael Myers and sort of
Speaker 1: the way that horror movies deal with mental illnesses there
Speaker 1: could you expand on that a little bit. I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in that side of it, and it's, um, the
Speaker 1: exploitation of mental illness in horror movies is something I've
Speaker 1: thought about for a very long time. I am a
Speaker 1: person who I would say is like mentally well now,
Speaker 1: you know, but I've obviously, you know, being a woman,
Speaker 1: have had my bouts with i'm sure my own mental illness.
Speaker 1: So it's something that I even wrote an article about
Speaker 1: this where I interviewed a few schizophrenic men about schizophrenia
Speaker 1: portrayed in horror films to talk about how they get
Speaker 1: that experience wrong or right. And it's something where we're
Speaker 1: just trying to exploit what we think it is. You know,
Speaker 1: there aren't many people who actually know what mental illnesses,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's something that we're more careful
Speaker 1: about now. But damn, we didn't fuck it up for
Speaker 1: so many years, you know, And it's a it's a
Speaker 1: I'm trying to even think about ones that get it right,
Speaker 1: but there's always something that you can pick apart about it,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, in this movie, it's um, I mean,
Speaker 1: I am not a therapist or psychiatrist, so I can't
Speaker 1: really properly diagnosed Michael Myers. Yes, but he has some
Speaker 1: sort of some sort of psychosis is what he seems
Speaker 1: to have, dissociative I I don't want to even pin
Speaker 1: it to a specific mental illness, right. His doctor is like, nope,
Speaker 1: just pure evil, and you're like, yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: if your doctor so it's pleasant. Right, So it's basically
Speaker 1: equating mental illness with evil. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: a pretty free which doesn't set a good precedent. I
Speaker 1: just remembered Black Swan, I think is one that actually
Speaker 1: does get a kind of mental illness corrected. So I
Speaker 1: need to rewatch that. Um. I think it's an interesting
Speaker 1: depiction that even most most ballerinas who suffered with issues,
Speaker 1: we're just like, oh no, no, he gets it. This
Speaker 1: is right. This is like it feels, you know, like
Speaker 1: you're just depressed and you're really love that movie. It's
Speaker 1: so good. I really really love that movie. But yeah,
Speaker 1: horror movies mishandle a lot of things a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, often specifically the portrayal of mental illness, the
Speaker 1: representation of the trans experience, and then it ends up
Speaker 1: perpetuating the stigma against mental illness and society it creates
Speaker 1: more transpanic things like that. So and that's why, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that even with genre movies, it's useful because
Speaker 1: it's easier to spot this stuff because they're like campiness
Speaker 1: and being over the magnified, right, Like, I think this
Speaker 1: stuff is present in all movies, like any drama that
Speaker 1: came out, and I'm sure that these same elements are present,
Speaker 1: but because everything's turned up to an eleven, it's that
Speaker 1: much more clear that when you look at it, what
Speaker 1: is it forty years later now you're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: couldn't be more obvious, when at the time that I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah, just like the values of the
Speaker 1: society are turned up to an eleven, and so I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it's helpful to look at movies
Speaker 1: like this now into some degree because you don't have
Speaker 1: to dig that deep to find to find out what
Speaker 1: what is, what's going on. But there's also I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm like looking at my phone trying to
Speaker 1: find this. But there's some listeners of my podcast who
Speaker 1: are making a trans vampire zombie movie, I think, and
Speaker 1: they were doing a go fund me and I can't
Speaker 1: find what it is. If I can, we would love
Speaker 1: to Yeah, we would love to see, but you share it.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: for horror and the futures. You know. I go to
Speaker 1: these film fests and I see like Quarterly Fargiat's Revenge
Speaker 1: movie and it is a rape prevenge movie that is
Speaker 1: done in a way that I've never seen before, and
Speaker 1: it is just like chills of you know, this woman
Speaker 1: destroying these people, and but there's also a motion to it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's like inner interiority, and there's character and
Speaker 1: there's you know, and I'm excited about you know, Julie
Speaker 1: Ducarnell's Raw, which is one of the best coming of
Speaker 1: age sexuality movies that I've seen, and it is a
Speaker 1: perfect movie. I will go on record as a perfect
Speaker 1: movie thirty years from now. You will ask me April,
Speaker 1: was this really a perfect movie? I'll say it is
Speaker 1: still a perfect movie. I guarantee you. It's one of
Speaker 1: Aristotle's picks too. Yeah, we keep getting a recommendations. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Does anyone have any other final thought about Halloween as
Speaker 1: it pertains to the treatment of women and just speaking
Speaker 1: to the movie in general, still scary and weirdly as
Speaker 1: I think sort of genre films tend to be an
Speaker 1: education on the values of that time in a pretty
Speaker 1: tight hour and a half, which I always appreciate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh great, I love this. It's like
Speaker 1: under an I was like, we're out of here is great? Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just want to say, like, in keeping with
Speaker 1: something that we had brought up Earli, where there are
Speaker 1: more women who are, you know, killed in these movies.
Speaker 1: I do think that one of the reasons why is
Speaker 1: because women just make they actually make better characters. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, they are different, And there's there's something about
Speaker 1: like getting to know someone before they're murdered, because it
Speaker 1: makes you cringe. You're like, oh my god, oh my god. No.
Speaker 1: So there's something about like and I'm thinking about the
Speaker 1: screenplays that I've written, like the horror screenplays, and I
Speaker 1: do have more women in mine who get killed, but
Speaker 1: it's just because I have more women characters because I
Speaker 1: actually enjoy writing them more, and I think they reveal
Speaker 1: their emotions and theirselves so quickly on screen in a
Speaker 1: way that men it takes like much longer to get
Speaker 1: them to come out and years long. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like the economy of having women characters is also
Speaker 1: I think something that speaks to to horror like that
Speaker 1: people understand that they do make good characters. So for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons that I'm not super
Speaker 1: fond of the slasher sub genre is the very prominent
Speaker 1: brutalization of women. But it is a sub genre where
Speaker 1: there's mostly women present in the story and participating, and yes,
Speaker 1: some of them get brutally killed, and it's hard to watch,
Speaker 1: but we see a lot of granted it as mostly
Speaker 1: young white women who by Western beauty standards, are attractive,
Speaker 1: but it has produced some interesting characters. Um. I think
Speaker 1: there's a reason that the lore E Strode character keeps
Speaker 1: showing up in these movies and people are really excited
Speaker 1: about this, so shots out Jamie Lake Curtis, she just
Speaker 1: is she's great. Yeah, she's great. Big fan of her.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like she's got some pretty good jeans.
Speaker 1: Janet Lee True and um Curtis, Uh Curtis, thank you.
Speaker 1: Couldn't come by it more. Honestly loved Freaky Friday. Yes,
Speaker 1: her loved Friday. Freaky. If it paved the way for
Speaker 1: Freaky Friday to happen in two thousand and three, I
Speaker 1: have to support it. I can't a good conscience not
Speaker 1: But yeah, I still have mixed feelings about this genre.
Speaker 1: This movie I think is scary. It's well crafted, it's
Speaker 1: well shot, it's well acted. There's more nuance to it
Speaker 1: than a lot of slasher movies that showed up in
Speaker 1: its wake. But I'm rarely going to watch a slasher
Speaker 1: movie and feel empowered unless there was And maybe there
Speaker 1: is an example of this where the killer is a
Speaker 1: woman who kills a bunch of men. It's called the
Speaker 1: Witch who Came from the Sea, and it's a great
Speaker 1: I've got the Blue ray if you need to borrow it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth buying the Blue Ray. It's also
Speaker 1: very hard to find, and it is a woman who
Speaker 1: cuts off dicks. Yes, so, and it's beautiful. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful film. It's so gorgeous and trippy and wonderful. Nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Oh wa era, Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so slad. There
Speaker 1: are slasher films that are easily read as feminist films.
Speaker 1: There are This one I would say is very feminist film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's some gray areas. Yes, mistakes were made, stakes
Speaker 1: were made. Oh, one last thing for anyone who's keeping
Speaker 1: track of what my name Caitlin Darante anagrams too relevant
Speaker 1: to this movie. Caitlin Durante and ams to Lorie can't
Speaker 1: die t N, as in Lorie can't die die misspelled,
Speaker 1: it's just d I without the e, and then t
Speaker 1: N obviously stands for tonight, So Lorie can't die tonight. Wow,
Speaker 1: wish't you you have such an anagrammable name? Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, thanks Mom and dad for I'm sure that's
Speaker 1: why they Yeah, they're like, uh, we could name her
Speaker 1: like you know, joey um? Shall we? Uh? Does this
Speaker 1: film pass the vectal test three one? Yes, especially at
Speaker 1: the beginning, Yes, a lot. While the women are still alive,
Speaker 1: other women are still alive. They're talking about a lot
Speaker 1: of books stuff. They're talking about a dance they're going
Speaker 1: to go to, their talking about how Lorie doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do that night and why it's like, oh, duh,
Speaker 1: you're a virgin. Therefore you are not busy that the
Speaker 1: line of latches, visions are just they're just waiting, they're
Speaker 1: hanging out. They're talking about weed, weed stuff. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was great and again shouts out to Debra Hill,
Speaker 1: because you know what chances are if it was just
Speaker 1: you can always tell, and we talked about this in
Speaker 1: the Carry episode two. You can always tell when a
Speaker 1: group of men are trying to write what they think
Speaker 1: teenage girls sound like, because it's insane, just like Uncanny Valley,
Speaker 1: full on polar express, like what are what has happening?
Speaker 1: It's just insane. So but but the dialegue between the
Speaker 1: women here, you know, it's like not they're not talking
Speaker 1: about heavy hitting stuff, but there you know, they're typical
Speaker 1: teenage girl talk tracked for me, Yeah, for sure. Shall
Speaker 1: we rate the movie on our nipple scale? Let's do it.
Speaker 1: We've got a nipple scale. It's zero to five nipples,
Speaker 1: where we rate based on its portrayal of women. I
Speaker 1: this is a tricky one for me, as I'm still
Speaker 1: not putting it up against other horror films, are just
Speaker 1: all films in general, because that's also a yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think you kind of have to compare
Speaker 1: it to other films of this specific genre, because if
Speaker 1: we're putting it up against all movies, where most movies
Speaker 1: don't brutally murder, you know, four different women, it's not
Speaker 1: fair to can't be genres to every single yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, just putting it up against other slashers, but
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that it is a movie that exists
Speaker 1: within the whole, you know, umbrella of American film. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm gonna land on like a two and a half,
Speaker 1: which might seem low, it might seem high. I don't
Speaker 1: know what I feel, because we do see the Laurie
Speaker 1: Strode character is through resourcefulness she is able to escape
Speaker 1: from uh certain death. She does have to have a
Speaker 1: man kind of come in and save her at the end,
Speaker 1: but overall, the development of the characters is I would say, again,
Speaker 1: compared to other movies of this genre, I would say
Speaker 1: it's pretty strong. Although her close friend Annie is very
Speaker 1: mean to her a lot of the time, that seems
Speaker 1: realistic for summer here because like sisterly different times, like
Speaker 1: when they're talking about their plans for that night and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh good, I've got three choices. Watch the
Speaker 1: kids sleep, listen to Lynda, screw around, or talk to
Speaker 1: you Lori. And it's like, oh, I was talking to
Speaker 1: your good friend Lorie as unappealing as the other two options.
Speaker 1: So that's not nice. I mean, to be fair, Lorie.
Speaker 1: She literally cops her. She's like, I'm never doing anything,
Speaker 1: so like not your first choice for a hang the
Speaker 1: one who's like, yeah, no, I'm not up to anything
Speaker 1: at any time, Like you're not my first call. Because
Speaker 1: childhood there's only so many options. You're just the suburbs,
Speaker 1: you know. I was that boring friend to many where
Speaker 1: it's like, well she's you know, she's a she's a
Speaker 1: good last pick because she'll be around. Yeah, they're right,
Speaker 1: you guys want to come over and watch a movie.
Speaker 1: My mom's got the hot glue gone out, Like that's me.
Speaker 1: That was me, So yeah, I mean I think that
Speaker 1: because this movie, I would say, handles, you know, the
Speaker 1: nuance of of being a teen young woman in a
Speaker 1: slasher movie better than other movies of its genre, but
Speaker 1: also still requires that a bunch of women get killed
Speaker 1: because they wanted to have sex. So yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: land right in the middle on a two and a half.
Speaker 1: I'll give two to Laurie Strode and I will give
Speaker 1: my half nip to the lack of understanding and the
Speaker 1: misrepresentation of mental illness in horror movies. Fundip. I'm a
Speaker 1: two for this one. Um not because I didn't enjoy
Speaker 1: the movie and I see a lot of value in it.
Speaker 1: And this is again, it's like, I would love to
Speaker 1: watch this movie in a group and you know all
Speaker 1: that stuff, but I would kind of argue that we
Speaker 1: actually don't know these women very well. I like them all,
Speaker 1: and I love Annie's character especially. I like Linda's character.
Speaker 1: I like that they are openly sexual. Obviously they're punished
Speaker 1: for it. That goes out saying for a lot of
Speaker 1: these movies. But I can't name a second thing about
Speaker 1: them really other than maybe they have a boyfriend, So
Speaker 1: I don't know that. Actually, Linda says totally a lot,
Speaker 1: so that's her thing. Two things seventeen years of Life
Speaker 1: has a boyfriend, says totally loves beer, loves drinking and driving.
Speaker 1: There's given the amount of time, because it is like
Speaker 1: impressive and cool how much screen time women take up
Speaker 1: in this movie. But given the amount of time they're
Speaker 1: especially like long scenes we have with these women, I
Speaker 1: do wish that there was a little bit more we
Speaker 1: knew about it, because it's not like they're not there enough.
Speaker 1: So I think, and and then I mean sort of
Speaker 1: all the stuff we hit already. That is also a
Speaker 1: criticism of the time in history, of the heteronormativity, of
Speaker 1: the all whiteness of sort of what is almost expected
Speaker 1: in in a movie of this time, and in the
Speaker 1: mental illness stigma. I think it is. It isn'teresting. I
Speaker 1: like the idea behind Michael Myers a lot where it's like,
Speaker 1: this is a villain who hates women, and that's I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that's good, but I am saying that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of heroes in movies who hate women. Um
Speaker 1: So in terms of like someone who's openly hateful of women,
Speaker 1: at least it's pretty well understood that he is bad.
Speaker 1: So thumbs up for that, Yeah, to to for me,
Speaker 1: and give one to Laurie Strode, and give one Annie.
Speaker 1: She she's just she's I want to be her friend.
Speaker 1: She's so cool. I don't think she would have hung
Speaker 1: out with me. She would have guarantee it. I'm what
Speaker 1: about you. I'm going to go three, just because of
Speaker 1: the kind of depth I have of knowledge of other
Speaker 1: slashers and the more lured way in which these murders
Speaker 1: are generally filmed. There's no, for instance, a knife kind
Speaker 1: of lingering on a woman's naked belly or something like that.
Speaker 1: There are there are different things that happen in slashers,
Speaker 1: and I would say, this is actually quite tame. You know.
Speaker 1: This is almost like the Hitchcock version of it, where
Speaker 1: you never see the stab kind of thing, and that's, um,
Speaker 1: that's just very different. I mean, I remember there are
Speaker 1: movie scripts that I was reading when I was in
Speaker 1: development horror films where it was just like a man
Speaker 1: rapes a woman as he pulls out her spine, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're looking at this and and those terms were
Speaker 1: like I would say, like, that's you know, like the
Speaker 1: real gross part, right, and then this is just it's
Speaker 1: it's not as bad filmically, you know, it's it's the
Speaker 1: cinematography is is much more tasteful, and the representation of
Speaker 1: that is much more tasteful if you can be tasteful
Speaker 1: about playing a woman. I don't know, but it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's almost like not over the top, and that's
Speaker 1: something that I appreciate and I and I think that
Speaker 1: you know what you're talking about with the fear coming
Speaker 1: from the possibility of these murders is much more kind
Speaker 1: of tangible and interesting to me. So yeah, three nips
Speaker 1: for me? Would you like to give them too? I
Speaker 1: gotta say, just like given to my three girls, right,
Speaker 1: one for Linda, one for Annie, and one for Lorie.
Speaker 1: Friends forever, friends, forever until in the next dimension. Maybe. Yeah. Well, April,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here and educating us too,
Speaker 1: because we we truly haven't explored this genre very much
Speaker 1: on this show, So thank you so much. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Guys, where can we Where can we find you?
Speaker 1: On on the webs? Well you can look for me
Speaker 1: my maximum fun show called Switchblade Sisters, and on Who
Speaker 1: Shot You Pod? And then um, you know, I write,
Speaker 1: I write everywhere, It's true, everywhere it's yes, read April's stuff. Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll link to a lot of everything we discussed in
Speaker 1: the show. Today as well, and you can follow us
Speaker 1: at Bactel Cast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: to our patreon ak Matreon, which is five dollars a
Speaker 1: month and it gets you two bonus episodes every single month.
Speaker 1: Really good month. This month we've got Bob, who was
Speaker 1: noticeably absent from the film Halloween, and my new favorite critics,
Speaker 1: it's the new Alpha Bollina Is. Didn't see the Baba
Speaker 1: Duke in this. I think Alpha Billina would have. I
Speaker 1: actually he was Michael Myers. We don't know, we don't know,
Speaker 1: and early part I know, um so early role for him.
Speaker 1: You know, he's still scraping around. People don't want to
Speaker 1: see his face yet because it's just the world not
Speaker 1: ready right. So anyways, people you know Indiana Johnes is
Speaker 1: his first credited role, but it's just really the first
Speaker 1: time you see face yea, yeah, yeah, so yeah. You
Speaker 1: can go to um patreon dot com, backslash Bechtel Cast
Speaker 1: to become a matron quick plug about our East Coast tour.
Speaker 1: We're going to be in a few cities starting November three.
Speaker 1: We're going to be in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On November four,
Speaker 1: we're going to be in Washington, d C. And on
Speaker 1: November five, we're going to be in New York City
Speaker 1: as a part of the New York Comedy Festival. More
Speaker 1: details about the movies, recovering guests, venues, and how to
Speaker 1: get tickets go to bectel cast dot com. Go to
Speaker 1: our live appearances tab and we'll have information there. You
Speaker 1: can also check our Twitter and Facebook will besting the links,
Speaker 1: so if you live in or near any of those studies,
Speaker 1: we hope to see you there. Also go to t
Speaker 1: public dot com slash the Bechdel Cast. Some special Halloween
Speaker 1: designs will be loose by the time this word. Hey,
Speaker 1: you want a feminist icon beetlejuice shirt, It's there, Like
Speaker 1: it or not. It's available for a limited time only. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we have our of course, our classic feminist icon
Speaker 1: queer icon uh and other designs there. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: how does the music again? Already? Forget? Oh? I was like,
Speaker 1: do do do do? That's absolutely wrong. Bye bye