Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Jim McCormick, and we have got a post
Speaker 3: apocalyptic buddy cop movie for you today.
Speaker 2: That's right, So peel a chocolate off the side of
Speaker 2: your fridge, sugar down your coffee, and prepare for the ride.
Speaker 2: That is nineteen ninety two's Split Second.
Speaker 3: Now this was new to me. I actually just finished
Speaker 3: watching it minutes ago. But you had already seen this one,
Speaker 3: I think last year or the year before or something,
Speaker 3: so you brought it back up for the show, right right.
Speaker 2: I had watched it in one setting sometime in the
Speaker 2: last few years, and I was watching it late at night,
Speaker 2: so I got a little sleepy towards the end. Not
Speaker 2: not the film's fault, but my fault. This time around,
Speaker 2: I watched it in chunks, often first thing in the morning,
Speaker 2: while I myself was having a cup of coffee. So
Speaker 2: I really got to appreciate every detail, every nook and
Speaker 2: cranny of this film. And I feel like second helpings
Speaker 2: have Split Second Yeah, really paid off for me.
Speaker 3: Now, did this movie convince you to use about three
Speaker 3: quarters of a cup of sugar per mug of coffee.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, as well, we'll get into in this
Speaker 2: we there's just such all reckless disregard for our hero's
Speaker 2: health as he does he doesn't drink, which I think
Speaker 2: is more anymore. Yes, he's given up the alcohol but
Speaker 2: has taken to just reckless consumption of chocolate and sugar
Speaker 2: heavy caffeine.
Speaker 3: And like his teeth are like Swiss cheese, Like he
Speaker 3: is just and I bet this world. So this is
Speaker 3: a dystopian future buddy cop movie that is set in
Speaker 3: a future London that has been flooded by global warming.
Speaker 3: So like water levels have risen, the ten is now
Speaker 3: creeping out into the outer burrows I guess. So all
Speaker 3: the streets are now like the canals of Venice just
Speaker 3: flooded with gross, muddy rat water and the cops have
Speaker 3: to like drive around in them in these big jeeps
Speaker 3: that can drive in the shallow water or actually navigate
Speaker 3: them in fan boats like it's a bayou movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is the Again, this is a ninety
Speaker 2: two film, so this is the future of two thousand
Speaker 2: and eighty. But one of the things about this film
Speaker 2: is that I feel like. It does have a really
Speaker 2: solid visual feel. It has a great esthetic, you know,
Speaker 2: just all these scenes of just a two wet London
Speaker 2: and everything's at least partially flooded. It's just a soggy
Speaker 2: mess and everything else the rest of the world has
Speaker 2: a suitably industrial grime to it as well. It looks.
Speaker 2: It looks great. I really enjoyed the look of the film.
Speaker 3: It's the steam injected microbial matt future of Highlander two
Speaker 3: where everything is always just dark and moist and unpleasant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a little bit of a blade Runner DNA
Speaker 2: in this for sure. We'll discuss. Another great thing about
Speaker 2: this film, and we'll touch on this time and time
Speaker 2: again too, is that it has all the hallmarks of
Speaker 2: the film in which the script has been reworked multiple
Speaker 2: times with different intents in mind, and its result it
Speaker 2: results in a kind of chaos in key places, kind
Speaker 2: of ambiguity that can in the right proportions, work really
Speaker 2: well for a detective story or a monster story, and
Speaker 2: luckily this film is both.
Speaker 3: I would say for me, this was one of the
Speaker 3: funniest movies we have watched so far for Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: and to explain what I mean, so it has. It's
Speaker 3: like a cargo truck just packed with every grizzled, macho
Speaker 3: buddy cop movie cliche and every dystopian sci fi cliche
Speaker 3: all together, but at such a volume and velocity that
Speaker 3: it does not seem just like lazy hack writing, but
Speaker 3: more kind of transcendent parody. But at the same time time,
Speaker 3: it doesn't go to the level of parody where it's
Speaker 3: winking at you about it. It plays it straight, which
Speaker 3: makes for a much funnier end product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I feel like when we laugh at this film,
Speaker 2: and I laughed at it at two, we're not laughing,
Speaker 2: you know, at somebody's failed art or something here. You know,
Speaker 2: We're not just we're not. It's not like a mean laugh.
Speaker 2: I feel like we are laughing in a way that
Speaker 2: was intended by at least a large number of people
Speaker 2: involved in this film.
Speaker 3: Yes, Split Second is not a failure. It succeeds.
Speaker 2: Yes, though that.
Speaker 3: Seems to have been lost on people when it originally
Speaker 3: came out, who seemed to just regard it why or
Speaker 3: at least some of the reviews we were looking at
Speaker 3: people were just saying, like another you know, hackneyed, cliched
Speaker 3: dystopian sci fi movie. You can skip it. I think
Speaker 3: this one is worth a solidly worth a watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I looked it up after i'd seen it
Speaker 2: the second time, I looked it up in the Psychotronic
Speaker 2: Video Guide from Michael Weldon, and I found he didn't
Speaker 2: care for it. He called it a quote boring, dull,
Speaker 2: misty science fiction movie. And yeah, greedy disagree on this one,
Speaker 2: because I think it's pretty terrific. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was just too fresh in nineteen ninety six
Speaker 2: and hasn't hadn't aged enough yet. I'm not sure. But
Speaker 2: then again, you could also argue that the tropes wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been as trod well trod in the early nineties
Speaker 2: as they would be in the year twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of the funny stuff in this movie
Speaker 3: would continue to be used unronically for the next decade
Speaker 3: or two in straightforward like a list cop movie. Yes, oh,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if we've been mentioned. Also, this
Speaker 3: is a monster movie, so it is a dystopian sci
Speaker 3: fi movie, a grizzled buddy cop movie, and a monster
Speaker 3: movie all crammed into one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's your elevator pitch okay. In the Gritty future
Speaker 2: of two thousand and eight, a murderous horror emerges from
Speaker 2: the flooded London underground, and only the gruffiest cop imaginable,
Speaker 2: supercharged on a diet of anxiety, coffee and chocolate, can
Speaker 2: stop it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you noticed that. You said gruffiest,
Speaker 3: which I I think that is the right term, because
Speaker 3: he's gruff and he's scruffy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a combination. It's a hybrid that he has
Speaker 2: absorbed the DNA of both qualities.
Speaker 3: Let's hear that trailer audio.
Speaker 2: He can hear its heartbeat. There you go. He knows
Speaker 2: it's out there.
Speaker 3: Somebody must have seen something. He knows what it can do, you're.
Speaker 1: Telling me, but's something running around loose in this city,
Speaker 1: ripping a hot out.
Speaker 3: Of people, anything though, maybe eat some for breakfast.
Speaker 2: Now it's really pissing him off.
Speaker 3: But the.
Speaker 2: And his new partner work.
Speaker 3: Makes two paranoid people with guns are a menace to society?
Speaker 2: Do you need paranoid to like this?
Speaker 3: Follow you?
Speaker 2: Rutger Hower? Split second?
Speaker 3: Nice timing? Split second?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Well, oh sorry, did you specify before that this is
Speaker 3: a rutger Hower film.
Speaker 2: I don't know that we did. It'll probably be obvious
Speaker 2: to a number of people. And maybe there's a picture
Speaker 2: of rutger Hower, you know, capping this thing off. But yes,
Speaker 2: this is this is a rutger Hower extravaganza. In the
Speaker 2: same way that modern film fans a lot of you
Speaker 2: like the cage Rage. This one is filled.
Speaker 3: With Howard power, yes, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: But there are other people involved too. Let's let's start
Speaker 2: where we tend to start. Let's start with the director. Okay,
Speaker 2: guy by the name of Tony Mayleem, English director who
Speaker 2: also directed the nineteen eighty one slasher film The Burning.
Speaker 2: Mayleem also went on to do a fair amount of
Speaker 2: documentary work, and I'm to understand Split Second was a
Speaker 2: particularly grueling project for him, and he had he had
Speaker 2: to step away towards the end of the production and
Speaker 2: let Ian Sharp finish directing the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can imagine this might have been some trouble
Speaker 3: because you're dealing with a lot of flooded sets. I
Speaker 3: mean almost you know, like every other set in this movie.
Speaker 3: There's just water everywhere, and I would imagine that makes
Speaker 3: filming very difficult and tedious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you got to have a pigeon wrangler.
Speaker 2: You got to have a rat wrangler. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 2: gotta have a Hower wrangler, and every every everybody's got
Speaker 2: to be on hand.
Speaker 3: I didn't check for the credits, but was there an
Speaker 3: assistant to mister Hower in there?
Speaker 2: I didn't notice. Yeah, I should have. I should have looked.
Speaker 2: Somebody had to get him his coffee.
Speaker 3: The Hower power generator.
Speaker 2: He might. I think he might be self powering. I
Speaker 2: really don't know enough about We'll get We'll get to
Speaker 2: Howard in a second.
Speaker 3: Power is renewable.
Speaker 2: Yes. Now. The writer on this was a guy named
Speaker 2: Gary Scott Thompson. Not a lot that I know about him,
Speaker 2: except that he is the guy who gave us Too Fast,
Speaker 2: Too Furious. He also wrote the Hollow Man Joe It
Speaker 2: was Too Fast, Too Furious, one of the good fast
Speaker 2: furious movies.
Speaker 3: No, you generally want to stay away from the even
Speaker 3: numbered ones until you get to around six or eight.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Once you get once you get past five, everything is
Speaker 3: like bad but worth watchings. Everything's kind of good bad
Speaker 3: After that's where you're in, like the Flying Cars era,
Speaker 3: the real ones you want to stay away from I
Speaker 3: think are like two and four, which I remember being
Speaker 3: rather boring.
Speaker 2: All right, cool, I'll keep that in mind well.
Speaker 3: And also The Hollow Man. God. I love Paul Verhoven,
Speaker 3: but that is just a dreadful movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember anything good about that one. Now.
Speaker 2: As for split second here again, this script seems like
Speaker 2: it was probably changed a number of times, and I
Speaker 2: think that was the case based on some just IMDb
Speaker 2: stuff I looked at. It has a lot of the
Speaker 2: obvious signs of Blade Runner and Alien on it, as
Speaker 2: you would expect at that time, and certainly casting Rudger
Speaker 2: howerd is that was, you know, one of the films
Speaker 2: he made a big splash in Blade Runner. But it
Speaker 2: also to me anyway, I feel like there's a huge
Speaker 2: two thousand and eighty comics influence here as well. I
Speaker 2: have no proof of that. And Gary Scott Thompson, I
Speaker 2: believe is an American writer, not British, but there are
Speaker 2: a lot of British folks involved in this one, and
Speaker 2: I feel like it thematically has a lot of the
Speaker 2: elements you find in those original Judge Dread comics, you know,
Speaker 2: where there's a grittiness, but there's also this comedic and
Speaker 2: satiric vein going through everything like everything's over the top, like,
Speaker 2: and we lose some of that in the americanized versions
Speaker 2: of Judge Dread you know where in the films. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Judge Dread is you know, grumbling and blasting things with
Speaker 2: an enormous gun. But he doesn't have a humorous made
Speaker 2: or funny robots in his life like he does in
Speaker 2: the comics.
Speaker 3: So one thing that's funny about this movie is that
Speaker 3: it is very British. It's not just incidentally set in London. Like,
Speaker 3: the setting is very pointedly British, and some of the
Speaker 3: characters are very pointedly British in the way they're characterized.
Speaker 3: But our main hero, Howard, despite being Rutger Hower, is
Speaker 3: a very American cop character. He's very much like an
Speaker 3: American tough guy cop lead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, despite of course being Dutch. Rugger Howard
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen forty four and died in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: In this he plays Harley Stone, a character we will
Speaker 2: discuss at length here, but yeah, he was a wonderful actor, environmentalist.
Speaker 2: He also had a nonprofit aimed at HIV and AIDS
Speaker 2: awareness called The Rugger Howard Starfish Association, and he wrote
Speaker 2: to prominence in the films a fellow Dutchman of filmmaker
Speaker 2: Paul of Villehoven, who we just mentioned and made a
Speaker 2: huge splash in American cinema in nineteen eighty two's Blade Runner.
Speaker 2: He's also very notable in nineteen eighty five's Lady Hawk
Speaker 2: and nineteen eighty six is The Hitcher. And he's worked
Speaker 2: with Hooven culminated in the nineteen eighty five medieval adventure
Speaker 2: film that I have not seen, Lesh and Blood, which
Speaker 2: co star Jennifer Jason Lee and Ronald Lacy. And I
Speaker 2: understand that the two disagreed on the nature of his character.
Speaker 2: Howard wanted to get away from villain roles, but Verhoven
Speaker 2: wanted him to play a more morally ambiguous character. And
Speaker 2: that's an interesting wrinkle to think about because in this
Speaker 2: obviously he's our hero, and I can't think of a
Speaker 2: lot of films like Later On where he played anything
Speaker 2: other than a protagonist, you know, like, what are the
Speaker 2: big rudger howand villain roles? Yeah, you named Blade Runner
Speaker 2: the Hitcher, but anything else, well, I would.
Speaker 3: Argue that maybe you shouldn't even think of him necessarily
Speaker 3: as the villain of Blade Runner. I mean in Blade Runners,
Speaker 3: I would say he's something more like the creature in Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: as someone true does bad things, who harms people, but
Speaker 3: in other ways is sort of a sort of a
Speaker 3: babe in the wilderness, like he's lost and desperate and
Speaker 3: doesn't know what to do with his own mortality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you can easily imagine the like the filmmaking
Speaker 2: system after Blade Run, it's like, oh, can we get
Speaker 2: Howard to play this terrorist? Can we get Howard to
Speaker 2: play this this evil king? And it sounds like he
Speaker 2: was like, I don't want those type of roles I want.
Speaker 2: I want something different. I want and you know, you know,
Speaker 2: my mind come turns to Batman begins.
Speaker 3: Right, he's a corrupt business man.
Speaker 2: He's a corrupt businessman, but he's yeah, he's a suit
Speaker 2: in that.
Speaker 3: Oh I think he's also I remember, God, I haven't
Speaker 3: seen sin City in many years, but I remember him
Speaker 3: being some kind of evil corrupt like yeah or something
Speaker 3: in that also.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, he maybe managed to sprinkle some villainy in
Speaker 2: the later movies, but yeah, he went on to be
Speaker 2: in a ton of films and TV projects, one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy five acting credits on IMDb, and they really
Speaker 2: run the gamut from B movies to blockbusters, Like, he
Speaker 2: was just in a lot of stuff and he's I've
Speaker 2: never seen him in something where I'm like, ah, that's boring.
Speaker 2: You know, he's he's he's an exciting element, even in
Speaker 2: a bad picture.
Speaker 3: Oh, you should try to watch Dariu Argento's Dracula.
Speaker 2: Oka the second time You've challenged me on that one.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not saying I've watched it. I'm saying I've
Speaker 3: never been able to watch more than like sixty seconds
Speaker 3: of it. Okay, But so, I guess if we're talking
Speaker 3: about Rutger, how are we got to talk about the
Speaker 3: tears in the rain monologue? Which this is a famous moment,
Speaker 3: probably the most famous moment of Rutger Howard's career, also
Speaker 3: the most famous moment of Blade Runner the movie. The
Speaker 3: context is, of course, Harrison Ford in the movie plays Deckard,
Speaker 3: who is a type of police officer or bounty hunter
Speaker 3: who is hired to quote retire escaped replicants. Replicants are
Speaker 3: you know, sort of androids or humanoids who are created
Speaker 3: by this company to essentially be forced labor, and they
Speaker 3: have a very short lifespan there so that they don't,
Speaker 3: you know, get off and get ideas about independence. They
Speaker 3: can only live for something like four years. And so
Speaker 3: the plot of Blade Runner is that there are a
Speaker 3: group of replicants who escape and they're trying to find
Speaker 3: a way to get more life. They want to extend
Speaker 3: their lifespan. Meanwhile, Harrison Ford Deckard is trying to hunt
Speaker 3: them down, and in the end of the movie, he's
Speaker 3: chasing around in a building while the rain is pouring outside.
Speaker 3: He's chasing Rutger Hower's character, a replicant named Roy Beatty,
Speaker 3: and there's a moment where where Deckard is almost about
Speaker 3: to fall to his death off the roof, but then
Speaker 3: Roy Baty grabs his arm and saves him. Despite him
Speaker 3: being there to kill him. He saves him and then
Speaker 3: he gives this speech. It's a soliloquy. He says, I've
Speaker 3: seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire
Speaker 3: off the shoulder of Orian. I watch seabeams glitter in
Speaker 3: the dark near the tan Hauser Gate. All those moments
Speaker 3: will be lost in time, like tears in rain. It's
Speaker 3: a beautiful moment and a beautiful metaphor. But what I've
Speaker 3: read is that apparently there was a line similar to
Speaker 3: that already in the script, which I think was written
Speaker 3: by David Peeples, but apparently Rutger Hower himself rewrote the
Speaker 3: line before filming, and he was the person who added
Speaker 3: the comparison to tears in Rain the most famous part
Speaker 3: of it. So that's from the actor himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've always been impressed by that, and of course
Speaker 2: that that monologue we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 2: Oh here's the line that DJs should be using in
Speaker 2: their tracks. They definitely got the memo on Tears and Rain,
Speaker 2: because man, I can think of so many different mixes
Speaker 2: and tracks where something from Roy pops up. That pops
Speaker 2: up on it's a I mean, it's just a great piece.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's such a great line that in a
Speaker 3: way it's kind of lost its power by being over
Speaker 3: analyzed and over quoted.
Speaker 2: There's a band called Grumbling Fur and they have a
Speaker 2: song titled The Ballad of Roy Batty and it's this
Speaker 2: this kind of somber British song, but it's the lyrics
Speaker 2: are that that monologue. Oh wow, Yeah, So check that
Speaker 2: out if you want.
Speaker 3: But here a very different role in this. So he
Speaker 3: plays in Blade Runner he is a tragic Frankenstein's creature
Speaker 3: type character who who doesn't understand the point of his
Speaker 3: own existence. He wants more life, but he can't have it,
Speaker 3: and he and he ends in this tragic introspective state.
Speaker 3: In split second, Hower is just Hower is the ultimate
Speaker 3: like beef steak grumpy cop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he is something. It's worth noting that he
Speaker 2: was I believe forty seven or forty eight at the time,
Speaker 2: so this is, you know, slightly older Rutger Hower certainly
Speaker 2: compared to like Blade Runner and stuff. He's carrying a
Speaker 2: bit of weight in this though though nothing that feels
Speaker 2: like awkward or anything. But I think it feel like
Speaker 2: it feels like his physicality works perfectly well portraying this
Speaker 2: cop on the edge he's not taken care of himself,
Speaker 2: who lives this reckless lifestyle and the bit of a slob.
Speaker 2: And yeah again, While they avoid the hard drinking stereotype
Speaker 2: in this because he's apparently quit drinking, he does smoke
Speaker 2: like a chimney, just constantly smoking, consumes copious amounts of
Speaker 2: cough sugar, chocolate, and man that name to Harley Stone.
Speaker 2: It's motorcycle plus rocks. You know, you couldn't do any
Speaker 2: better than that.
Speaker 3: That was the thing that convinced me to watch this movie.
Speaker 3: I looked it up and I saw the main character
Speaker 3: is named Harley Stone, and I was like, I'm in.
Speaker 2: Yep, I mean yeah, and he has I think a
Speaker 2: Harley in his apartment, so it's I guess that's part
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: But actually no, no, it was multiple things. I'm sorry
Speaker 3: I have to add on his name is Harley Stone.
Speaker 3: And then of course it becomes a here's here's your
Speaker 3: new partner buddy cop movie. It's like Tango and Cash,
Speaker 3: but said in the future, where there's a he's got
Speaker 3: a partner who's the opposite of him in every way,
Speaker 3: and this partner is named Dick Durkin.
Speaker 2: Yep, Harley and Dick. The Adventures off. Well, we've touched
Speaker 2: on the tropes here, but like one of the big
Speaker 2: tropes with this guy with Harley Stone is he's the worst.
Speaker 2: I can't stand him, but he's the best. We've got
Speaker 2: to use him, like he's just a walking disaster, but
Speaker 2: nobody does it better than Harley Stone, so we have
Speaker 2: to use him. He's the only one who can get
Speaker 2: our man and.
Speaker 3: Or monster exactly. It's the you're a loose cannon, you're
Speaker 3: off the force, you're the only man for the job.
Speaker 2: And Howard is is I mean, he is so good
Speaker 2: in this because this character, this Harley Stone. At times,
Speaker 2: there are all these moments where you realize that the
Speaker 2: film is winking at you that it's you know that
Speaker 2: he's just so over the top. He's just doing what
Speaker 2: he's doing in the way he's acting is just it's
Speaker 2: it's just ridiculous. But yet Howard also walks that line
Speaker 2: to where he is, you know. I feel he is
Speaker 2: definitely cool in a lot of the film too, in
Speaker 2: a way that the mini actors wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: pull that off, you know, like like here's this uh this,
Speaker 2: you know, this this over the hill rundown cop. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he looks pretty cool in those glasses and that giant
Speaker 2: leather coat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it never gets too juicy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's ultimately just a joy to watch him.
Speaker 2: I think some of the best scenes are ones where
Speaker 2: they're just we're just going about about a day, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a ride along with Harley Stone as he does
Speaker 2: things like like sha at a bar where he has
Speaker 2: shown up for breakfast, you know things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he goes to like a moody night club for
Speaker 3: breakfast where they're playing Knights in White Satin on the jukebox,
Speaker 3: and they give him a big old plate, a full inger.
Speaker 3: I think it is a full English breakfast, meaning that
Speaker 3: it's not just eggs and bacon, but there's baked beans
Speaker 3: on that plate and he's slurping it up and shaving
Speaker 3: with an electric razor over his plate.
Speaker 2: Yep. And yeah, so, oh my god, he's just so good.
Speaker 2: But let's talk a little bit about that partner. This
Speaker 2: would be again, Detective Dick Durkin, played by an actor
Speaker 2: by the name of Alistair Duncan.
Speaker 3: You know I love this guy too.
Speaker 2: I think he's great in this role. Like again, he
Speaker 2: hits just the right note, like he's he's not too comedic,
Speaker 2: he's just comedic enough.
Speaker 3: He's the perfect foil to Harley Stone. So they're setting
Speaker 3: it up like a you know, a Rigs and Myrtle
Speaker 3: or Tango and Cash kind of thing where they're opposites,
Speaker 3: but they end up complimenting each other. And this guy,
Speaker 3: this guy is the the wimpy, bookish nerd who went
Speaker 3: to Oxford.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean not completely wimpy. He's a he's
Speaker 2: very fitness conscious, right true. And uh and and he's
Speaker 2: a yeah, but he's by the books. He's he's I
Speaker 2: think he's doing tai chi in one scene. And he
Speaker 2: of course Rudger Howard's character Stone is like just so
Speaker 2: anxiety written. At one point he's like, let me give
Speaker 2: you a massage, let me let me help you out.
Speaker 2: He's like, don't touch me, like take the town in
Speaker 2: his nose. But uh, but yeah, yeah, he's great in this. Uh.
Speaker 2: Duncan perfectly fine actor. He's done an increasing amount of
Speaker 2: high profile voice work over the over the years, especially
Speaker 2: in major video games, but he was a steady actor
Speaker 2: in the nineties as well, showed up on things like
Speaker 2: Highlander of the TV series, Hercules Murder. She wrote, so
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3: Wait, he's not the voice of Wheatley in Portal Too,
Speaker 3: is he?
Speaker 2: He might be? I don't know. I didn't look that
Speaker 2: one up specifically, but I did notice that he's okay,
Speaker 2: you know, for instance, you know the the mortor games
Speaker 2: where you.
Speaker 3: Know, I'm sorry, I looked it up No, that's a
Speaker 3: guy named Stephen murch But for a second I thought
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 2: Possible Stephen, they're kind of cut from the same cloth, though,
Speaker 2: I can imagine Merchant in this role, but no, Auster duncan.
Speaker 2: I believe one of his more high profile roles is
Speaker 2: those the Shadow of Mordor Games. He plays like the
Speaker 2: raith elf that is your alter ego or whatnot. I
Speaker 2: haven't really played the Games, but he's that character. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: but let's not forget our female lead, Joe Ooh.
Speaker 3: So this movie has Kim catroll in it. She plays
Speaker 3: Michelle McLain and so, of course. Kim Cattrall is a
Speaker 3: Canadian actress, probably best known today for being part of
Speaker 3: the main cast of Sex and the City, but with
Speaker 3: a long career of lots of interesting movie and TV roles.
Speaker 3: More in The Weird House, Wheelhouse, you might say, Big
Speaker 3: Trouble in Little China, in which she plays Gracie Law,
Speaker 3: or Star Trek six The Undiscovered Country, which I think
Speaker 3: she was filming either right around the same time as
Speaker 3: Split Second or simultaneous to Split Second.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because of the hair, right right, And.
Speaker 3: I gotta say I love Kim Katrol. People who have
Speaker 3: only seen her in like more straightforward roles I think
Speaker 3: might not appreciate just how good her comic timing is
Speaker 3: and how good she is at walking that fine line,
Speaker 3: which is like exactly what she's doing in this movie,
Speaker 3: that that tight rope of like absurdity and parody but
Speaker 3: not quite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree, absolutely certainly, Big Dub and Little
Speaker 2: China is a great example for work. But prior to
Speaker 2: Sex and the City, she was in a fair amount
Speaker 2: of genre pictures. She kind of reinvented ourselves herself, I
Speaker 2: guess with the Sex and the City role. But before
Speaker 2: that she was in she was in an episode of
Speaker 2: the nineties Outer Limits. I don't think one I've seen yet,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to get to it as I steadily
Speaker 2: make my way through all that. But she was also
Speaker 2: in a nineteen ninety eight TV adaptation of Peter Binchley's Creature,
Speaker 2: in which she and Craig T. Nelson battle a Nazi
Speaker 2: engineered killer shark.
Speaker 3: I watched that on TV when it premiered when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. I think I was in I don't know,
Speaker 3: it would have been like sick grade or something, and yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: it was a it was a winner.
Speaker 2: So Kim is great and split second given the limited
Speaker 2: amount of stuff that she's given to work with. So
Speaker 2: this is a film where she doesn't have much of
Speaker 2: a role, but she manages to shine through that role anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, let's talk about some of the other bit
Speaker 2: players in this. Oh you have this guy all In Armstrong.
Speaker 3: Is that not just Is Alan?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry it's a Alan, but I guess it's Alan Alan.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm just gonna call him Thrasher because
Speaker 2: that's his character's name. So born in nineteen forty six,
Speaker 2: Armstrong is a great British character actor. You would recognize
Speaker 2: him for instance, very recognizable face. But he's been in
Speaker 2: films such as Kroll, Brave Heart, Van Helsing and Sleepy Hollow,
Speaker 2: The Double There and tons of TV were And he's
Speaker 2: great in this because he plays the I mean, this
Speaker 2: is a trope too. You have your problematic cop, but
Speaker 2: then you have their just just completely enraged boss who
Speaker 2: just can't take this guy anymore. But he's the best,
Speaker 2: so you got to work with him. And that's what
Speaker 2: Thrasher is. Except Thrasher manages to be like the angriest,
Speaker 2: foulest police chief ever, like just bristling with rage. Just
Speaker 2: his face, his kind of already gargoylish face is just
Speaker 2: twisted with anger and just resentment of Stone. And he
Speaker 2: also has I love his hair in this because he
Speaker 2: has this great dying widow's peak, you know where it's
Speaker 2: like it used to be a widow's peak and now
Speaker 2: it's barely anything, and it somehow elevates the character to
Speaker 2: an even greater level of just again, just such visceral
Speaker 2: hate in every breath he takes.
Speaker 3: At the British casting office, they were like, get me
Speaker 3: the actor who's every breath says you're off the force.
Speaker 3: Here's your new partner.
Speaker 2: Yes, except louder and more intense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because some expletives in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he's wonderful in this and he has some
Speaker 2: great scenes. Now the next actor of note sadly doesn't
Speaker 2: really have any great scenes but is just by all accounts,
Speaker 2: was a tremendous actor, Pete Posselthwaite, who lived from nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six through twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: I love Pete.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you don't recognize the name, look him up.
Speaker 2: You recognize the face. Tremendous English actor with instantly recognizable
Speaker 2: from such films as Alien three, in the Name of
Speaker 2: the Father, Amistad, The Sharp Films, The Lost World, Jurassic Park.
Speaker 2: I believe he was the big game hunter character in that.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, he was yep.
Speaker 2: Great look, great actor. Again, not much of a role
Speaker 2: for him in this, but but you know, he's great
Speaker 2: in so many other things. We have to point him out.
Speaker 3: Well, most of the parts in this movie are sort
Speaker 3: of underwritten compared to the main two cops. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: the cast members really do shine through, like you were
Speaker 3: saying with with Kim Cattrol and Alan Armstrong, they all
Speaker 3: kind of bring you to attention.
Speaker 2: Now, one interesting thing about Pustlethwaite in this is that
Speaker 2: he's a guy who largely kept out of the spotlight,
Speaker 2: but he was passionate about various causes, including anti war
Speaker 2: protests and environmentalism, which is which is interesting given the
Speaker 2: environmental I don't want to say theme of this film,
Speaker 2: but like mild sprinkling to the plot. Because he starred
Speaker 2: in a film in two thousand and nine titled The
Speaker 2: Age of Stupid, in which quote a failed archivist looks
Speaker 2: at old footage from the year two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: to understand why humankind failed to address climate change. So
Speaker 2: basically it's a documentary and at some point in making
Speaker 2: the film, they decided they wanted to add a like
Speaker 2: a fictional narrative structure to it, where it's like somebody
Speaker 2: from the future looking back on today. And they reached
Speaker 2: out to him because they knew he was great and
Speaker 2: they knew that he was interested in these causes, and
Speaker 2: he ended up signing up for it, and it allowed
Speaker 2: the film to just to reach a lot more theaters
Speaker 2: and to really reach far more people with its message.
Speaker 2: So it's a documentary but has a sci fi narrative structure.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Now, there's another character in this movie that is
Speaker 3: very weird, but we don't get to until like the
Speaker 3: last ten to fifteen minutes of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I kept thinking, did I miss Michael J.
Speaker 2: Pollard Because Michael J. Pollard who is in this He
Speaker 2: plays this rat catcher character and it's a very small role,
Speaker 2: but he has a very fun scene with our detectives. Now. Pollard,
Speaker 2: American actor, lived thirty nine through twenty nineteen, probably best
Speaker 2: well known for his one of his earlier roles in
Speaker 2: Bonnie and Clyde Well I say, earlier roles. But he
Speaker 2: also was in a lot of TV stuff before that,
Speaker 2: like Andy Griffith's show, Classic Star Trek, Albert Hitchcock Presents.
Speaker 2: But he was in sixty seven's Bonnie and Clyde.
Speaker 3: Is that's the one with Warren Bady.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Faye Dunaway, Yeah, yeah, the Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time since I've seen that, but
Speaker 2: I can picture it like I remember his character Pollard was.
Speaker 2: Also he was in a bunch of stuff, but you
Speaker 2: might recognize him from Scrooged. He was in Roxanne in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, and some listeners to Weird House especially
Speaker 2: might remember him from Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses.
Speaker 2: He was also, like a lot of actors of that generation,
Speaker 2: he showed up on Tales from the Crypt in an
Speaker 2: episode titled Came the Dawn. So he was in a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff. Always good, all right, Just a couple
Speaker 2: of more two small acting roles of note here. Ian
Speaker 2: Durry plays his character JJ, very small part. But this
Speaker 2: is Ian Durry of the Blockheads, and he was part
Speaker 2: of the new wave in post punk scene. Lived forty
Speaker 2: two through two thousand. I don't really know him or
Speaker 2: his work, but as a fun Easter egg, I imagine
Speaker 2: for some of you music fans out there.
Speaker 3: I don't remember who JJ was in the movie.
Speaker 2: I think I'm like thirty five percent sure he was
Speaker 2: the bartender, but I don't remember. I just know he's
Speaker 2: in it. And then there's this also, this character in
Speaker 2: it named Pat O'Donnell, played by an actor by the
Speaker 2: name of Tony Steadman or Steedman, I'm not sure, but
Speaker 2: this is an English character actor who played Socrates and
Speaker 2: Bill and Ted. Oh. Okay, yeah, so in this he's
Speaker 2: just the guy who checks out weapons at the London
Speaker 2: police Department.
Speaker 3: Well, actually all he does is he says like, no,
Speaker 3: you can't have that, and then they grab it behind
Speaker 3: his back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He's like that gun's too big and they're like, no,
Speaker 2: we're taking it.
Speaker 3: We need big guns.
Speaker 2: He's like, all right, I did what I what I could.
Speaker 2: Now getting into some of the other people involved in this.
Speaker 2: This is also pretty interesting because you listen to the
Speaker 2: musical score in this film, and it's from my point
Speaker 2: of view, it's not bad. It's it's at least not
Speaker 2: you know, classical piano, but it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: ultimately kind of lukewarm. It has kind of like hell
Speaker 2: razorily hell Hell razory synth corals at times. You know,
Speaker 2: it's got some synth drums and so forth. So it
Speaker 2: works for me. I never hated it, but he's interesting
Speaker 2: considering what might have been.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right now, how did you come across this
Speaker 3: next fact? Give me the story?
Speaker 2: Well, there's not much story, Like a lot of these things.
Speaker 2: I think I was just reading IMDb too much. And
Speaker 2: it was noted that the filmmakers actually rejected the original score,
Speaker 2: which was composed by the legendary Wendy Carlos.
Speaker 3: How could you reject a Wendy Carlos score?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Wendy Carlos is a legend basically twofold.
Speaker 2: On one hand, she wrote the scores for this like
Speaker 2: the Shining Tron a clockwork Orange, but also just in general,
Speaker 2: she's a true pioneer of electronic music and the use
Speaker 2: of the synthesizer. Yeah, Andy, as we touched on on
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind before. She's also a great
Speaker 2: solar photographer. So how could you say no?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy? So the yeah, the score. They ended
Speaker 3: up going with I feel like it is extremely generic.
Speaker 3: It's just doo doo don don doo doo dun is
Speaker 3: a standard ominous future drums and drone. And I went
Speaker 3: and I looked up some clips because you provided a link.
Speaker 3: There's like an AllMusic page where Wendy Carlos at some
Speaker 3: point released a collection of lost or themes from movies,
Speaker 3: including a couple of things she composed for this movie
Speaker 3: that never actually made it into the film. The two
Speaker 3: tracks here are Visit to a Morgue and Return to
Speaker 3: the Morgue, which I thought was funny, but I checked
Speaker 3: them out, and having heard both side by side, I'm
Speaker 3: certain her complete score would have been one hundred times better.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I listened it to these tracks as well, and
Speaker 2: I think they sound great. I'd love it to hear
Speaker 2: the whole thing. If you want to listen to these tracks.
Speaker 2: The album to look up is Rediscovering Lost Scores, Volume two.
Speaker 2: I'll try to include a link to it on the
Speaker 2: post I do for this episode at samoodimusic dot com.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's quite good. Sadly, I don't think you
Speaker 2: can find this on Spotify right now.
Speaker 3: Wendy Carlos is still alive. I don't know if she's
Speaker 3: composing anymore, but filmmakers out there, if you have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to get a Wendy Carlos score in your movie,
Speaker 3: don't pass it up.
Speaker 2: Now. One last interesting individual involved in the creation of
Speaker 2: Split Second, Stephen Norrington was involved in the creature design.
Speaker 2: So some of you might recognize the name. This is
Speaker 2: London born effects makeup artist who worked on such films
Speaker 2: as Aliens, Young Sherlock Holmes, Hardware, Alien Three, Jim Henson's
Speaker 2: The Storyteller, and then he would go on from this
Speaker 2: to direct a film titled Death Machine with Brad Doriff
Speaker 2: and Richard Brake. Before I think any I don't think
Speaker 2: I knew who Richard Brake was at that time, but
Speaker 2: he's since gone on to make a name for himself
Speaker 2: as a as a reliable, intimidating character actor. But he
Speaker 2: followed this film up Norrington did, directing nineteen ninety eight's Blade,
Speaker 2: the film that started all of the Marvel Cinematic universe, starring,
Speaker 2: of course, Wesley Snipes.
Speaker 3: Now, I know you're kind of a bladehead, and the
Speaker 3: only I think I've only seen the original Blade once
Speaker 3: many many years ago, like in middle school, and that's
Speaker 3: that's about all I know.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, you need to see it again because it
Speaker 2: absolutely holds up. I do remember.
Speaker 3: I remember a lot of gross scenes where they're like
Speaker 3: they're like shining a flashlight on a on a big
Speaker 3: fat vampire to like burn his skin and make him talk.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep that happened. Yeah, that that's that's a fun thing.
Speaker 2: I love the first two Blade movies, and and that
Speaker 2: was that was Norton here. But from there he went
Speaker 2: on to make a film title The Last Minute that
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about, and then the film that
Speaker 2: caused him to I think peace out on directing entirely,
Speaker 2: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But I believe you guys
Speaker 2: continued to work in effects in other areas of filmmaking.
Speaker 3: I never saw that one, but it is notorious. I
Speaker 3: remember the day that my friends had been out and
Speaker 3: seen it earlier in the day, and then I was
Speaker 3: hanging out with them later in the day and they
Speaker 3: could not stop talking about how awful. It was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never saw it. I read the graphic novels
Speaker 2: by Alan Moore and love those, and it has so
Speaker 2: many tremendous actors in it. But yeah, it was. It
Speaker 2: was apparently no fun for anybody that was involved in
Speaker 2: it or solid. But you know, this brings me to
Speaker 2: a good point that I feel like we need to,
Speaker 2: you know, make sure we hammer home every now and then.
Speaker 2: Is that, you know, between Norrington's case and Meleem's experiences
Speaker 2: that we mentioned earlier, I think it's always worth reminding
Speaker 2: ourselves that it's an endeavor for any motion picture to
Speaker 2: be made, and it's ultimately kind of a minor miracle
Speaker 2: that any creative process of the scope actually reaches completion,
Speaker 2: and the stresses of creative projects like this are very real.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's you know, it's surprising you don't
Speaker 2: see more pictures where people you just have to step
Speaker 2: away from it because it's too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of the kind of beautiful things about
Speaker 3: B cinema, emphasized in even in great movies like the
Speaker 3: movie ed Wood about the actual director ed Wood, that
Speaker 3: B movies, to whatever extent they succeed or fail, can
Speaker 3: often be funny, but it's also it's kind of it's
Speaker 3: kind of magical that they get made at all.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's get into the movie itself. This
Speaker 2: one starts out with an opening scroll and opening some
Speaker 2: text to read, which I always like because I feel
Speaker 2: like that way time travelers from the early days of
Speaker 2: cinema won't be instantly out of place when they go
Speaker 2: to the movie theater. You know, it's going to be
Speaker 2: a talkie, it's going to be a lot, but it's
Speaker 2: going to start off the old fashioned way with some
Speaker 2: words on a screen and.
Speaker 3: A guy playing the piano in the side of the theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Basically, the opening scroll is after forty days and
Speaker 2: nights of torrential rain, the city is largely submerged below water,
Speaker 2: a result of the devastating effects of continued global warming.
Speaker 2: The warnings ignored for decades have now resulted in undreamed
Speaker 2: of levels of pollution where day has become almost endless night.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll have to check, but I do not
Speaker 3: recall endless night being one of the one of the
Speaker 3: proposed consequences of a warming climate.
Speaker 2: No, that's day for night sometimes. Now, yeah, this one this,
Speaker 2: And also it also brings up the idea that it
Speaker 2: was just it recently rained a lot, which also seems
Speaker 2: out of keep. Like I thought it was just the
Speaker 2: fact that London is pretty flooded. These days because of
Speaker 2: rising yah, you know, rising sea levels, but also some
Speaker 2: other like sinking issues that have been going on with
Speaker 2: the city for some time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, so they start while they're showing this text crawl
Speaker 3: like the Star Wars thing. Instead of a starfield, it's
Speaker 3: panning over an aerial shot of a flooded London with
Speaker 3: a kind of sinister tangerine sun flaring in the background.
Speaker 3: And it's brighter in that opening panning shot than it
Speaker 3: is at any other point in the movie. True, true,
Speaker 3: But I did find myself wondering how did they achieve
Speaker 3: this shot because it does actually look like an aerial
Speaker 3: shot of London and it does actually look flooded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are details you see, especially as they sort
Speaker 2: of re use this footage later in the film. You
Speaker 2: can see like, oh yeah, that's that looks like a
Speaker 2: lake over here. And you know they didn't do it digitally.
Speaker 2: This is nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so was wondering what was going on there? I mean,
Speaker 3: did they did London actually flood at some point and
Speaker 3: this was real footage of it that they digitally altered
Speaker 3: somehow I don't know.
Speaker 2: But it's convincing. It does set the stage and again
Speaker 2: let the city that the city is just a flooded
Speaker 2: mess throughout this entire picture. You buy it completely. It's
Speaker 2: not like they just give you this bit of world
Speaker 2: building and then that it's is ignored for the rest
Speaker 2: of the film. No, It's present in virtually every shot.
Speaker 3: And one thing I like is that before you see
Speaker 3: the title of the movie, you just see Rutger Hower
Speaker 3: red letters.
Speaker 2: As it should be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then when the when the title of the
Speaker 3: movie comes up, it looks really funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for a film with such a strong sense of
Speaker 2: its own aesthetics, the title card just looks really dumb.
Speaker 2: The letters are like these big blue balloons, like they're
Speaker 2: should be floating in the sky of a Mario Brothers level.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and it's so it's it says split second.
Speaker 3: But I was experienced a kind of I was seeing
Speaker 3: a kind of selective dyslexic effect where it was hard
Speaker 3: for me to not see the title as spilt second.
Speaker 3: And then also because of the way the L and
Speaker 3: the capital I come together sput second, kind of like
Speaker 3: the celebrity Jeopardy for and Flicks problem. And I've just
Speaker 3: now wondered for the first time, what is the significance
Speaker 3: of the title split second.
Speaker 2: I don't think it has any significance at all other
Speaker 2: than it just implies a pacing that is largely backed
Speaker 2: up by the picture. You know, stuff is just happening,
Speaker 2: and characters are especially stone. It just has a gut
Speaker 2: level response to everything. So I guess that's the extent
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the movie might as well be called exciting exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, they didn't take long for hud or
Speaker 2: Howard to pop up. He has a lot of screen
Speaker 2: time in this and the first I think we see
Speaker 2: of him is he's walking up in leather, scratching his groin,
Speaker 2: putting on a pair of shades. He's got a big
Speaker 2: old gun. And then then shortly thereafter my favorite, one
Speaker 2: of my favorite sequences in the film, he lights his
Speaker 2: cigar with a blowtorch, then gets out of his vehicle
Speaker 2: calls a dog a dickhead on his way into a
Speaker 2: grimy nightclub. For some reason, it's just so it's such
Speaker 2: a funny scene. Like when I saw that scene the
Speaker 2: first time I watched the film, I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, I'm watching all of this.
Speaker 3: I'm in Before he even gets in the car, we
Speaker 3: just get this corridor advancing scene. This is our introduction
Speaker 3: to our protagonist, and god his costume. So he's got
Speaker 3: the sci fi stomper boots. I guess these are actual
Speaker 3: all weather boots of some kind. I don't know what
Speaker 3: they're called, but they're the ones with a bunch of
Speaker 3: straps and buckles poking out all over the place. And
Speaker 3: then we get holster vision, like an extreme close up
Speaker 3: of all his different holsters and the guns in them.
Speaker 3: Of course, he's wearing a long coat, right, klflinth coat,
Speaker 3: because hey, how else are they going to know that
Speaker 3: you're bad?
Speaker 2: Yeah, despite it being like really humid looking in this city.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it just seems like the smells, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: You would not want to wear that coat, I don't think.
Speaker 3: And then and then he's wearing just plastic pants with
Speaker 3: a gut stabber silver belt buckle. It looks like if
Speaker 3: he bends over to tie his shoes it's going to
Speaker 3: cause internal bleeding and is large intestine.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And you don't get the sense that he's
Speaker 2: purchased any new This character has not purchased any new
Speaker 2: clothing since he's let himself go, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right, exactly sunglasses with tiny frames like the beady
Speaker 3: little circular frames that are about the size of a quarter,
Speaker 3: like they simultaneously like they kind of look cool but
Speaker 3: it's also funny. Yeah. And cigar in his mouth at
Speaker 3: all times, just pathological oral fixation. It never leaves his lips.
Speaker 2: Yeap constantly, just a halo of smoke around his head.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. So in a way, he's kind of a
Speaker 3: dystopian sci fi pouci.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but but again is rugger Hower, and he
Speaker 2: manages to strike that balance where it you know, you
Speaker 2: in any given scene, you're either buying into the coolness
Speaker 2: or noticing again the wink in his performance and or
Speaker 2: the writing.
Speaker 3: So here's a question I don't know if you have
Speaker 3: an answer to. Maybe if you don't, maybe the listeners
Speaker 3: can add some input. Where does the long coats as
Speaker 3: cool thing come from? In movies where you got a
Speaker 3: character who's just a real like a just bad to
Speaker 3: the bone, he's got to wear like a calf length coat.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I don't know, But it's it's
Speaker 2: been around for a while at this point. It doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be going away anytime soon.
Speaker 3: Like it was already in place at this time, really
Speaker 3: realized in Matrix Chic. But yeah, but this was way
Speaker 3: before that, and it was definitely in movies even before this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have an answer for that. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: one we can our listeners will have some insight on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. Oh and also this movie is if anybody
Speaker 3: out there is actually like a gun owner or into
Speaker 3: firearms safety at all, this movie will just make you
Speaker 3: shudder because all Rutger Howard does is just walk around
Speaker 3: swinging big guns all over the place and tossing them
Speaker 3: around like Duffel bags.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, gesturing with them. He'll stick a gun in
Speaker 2: your face for virtually no reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to play around, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, other character, other characters to pick up on this
Speaker 2: this recklessness and start engaging in it. And boy, there
Speaker 2: there's some big gun Like the guns look good in this,
Speaker 2: like the gun these are some some video game asque weapons,
Speaker 2: you know, Like he has this pistol that just looks
Speaker 2: like a big just sci fi cannon. And then later
Speaker 2: these like mini gun looking combat shotgun things. It's pretty crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not joking about that. They literally have like
Speaker 3: it's like a mini gun barrel so like the multiple
Speaker 3: barrels and the rotating I don't know what you call
Speaker 3: that piece, but like like like what Jesse Ventura has
Speaker 3: in Predator, except it's supposed to be shotgun barrels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a shotgun gatlin gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then at the very beginning, so we see
Speaker 3: him come down the corridor showing off his cool look,
Speaker 3: and then he gets into a jeep and drives away,
Speaker 3: and of course we see that his car is just
Speaker 3: a rolling sty It is full of garbage, mostly coffee
Speaker 3: cups and the containers of sugary products.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like he's a one brand guy when it
Speaker 2: comes to these sugary things. I think maybe they're donuts
Speaker 2: or chocolate balls. But like when we say that he
Speaker 2: lives on a diet, like that's directly from the film
Speaker 2: that they say that he lives on a diet of
Speaker 2: of what caffeine, sugar and anxiety anxiety, No caffeine, no sugar,
Speaker 2: chocolate in anxiety or is it sugar?
Speaker 3: I think coffee sugar or sugar chocolate in anxiety?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Maybe, yeah, yeah, I think so. And so that's
Speaker 2: like literally if he's not smoking, and or if he's smoking,
Speaker 2: he's also liable to be consuming chocolate and putting just
Speaker 2: tons of sugar. Like it's a scene where he fills
Speaker 2: up his coffee in an office and it's just like
Speaker 2: thirty percent sugar and then the rest is coffee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he's driving around. You mentioned that he's
Speaker 3: on his way to this filthy nightclub he's going to.
Speaker 3: But also, for some reason at the very beginning, it's
Speaker 3: not established why this is at all, he's being pursued
Speaker 3: by police, so he is a police detective. But he's
Speaker 3: also like while he's driving around, there are cops chasing him,
Speaker 3: being like, where's Harley Stone going? Just unbeatable? Yeah, But
Speaker 3: he ends up in this dirty night club that he
Speaker 3: has to enter through like a corrugated aluminum sewer tunnel
Speaker 3: that has a bunch of wet socks dangling from the walls.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what the deal with that was.
Speaker 3: But he goes inside. He's told there's a two drink minimum,
Speaker 3: and he orders two coffees with extra sugar, and he
Speaker 3: seems to be here trying to scope things out. It's
Speaker 3: like he's got a sixth sense that there is a
Speaker 3: that there is Duin's afoot in the club. And he's
Speaker 3: just scoping around and eventually ends up trying to make
Speaker 3: a phone call I think, but it's hard to understand
Speaker 3: what he's saying on the phone because he's still got
Speaker 3: the cigar in his mouth.
Speaker 2: He's not here for fun though, because I don't think
Speaker 2: Harley Stone does fun.
Speaker 3: No, he does not go to the club to party.
Speaker 3: He goes to the club to find the killer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he's looking for somebody, I guess, the killer. But
Speaker 3: then meanwhile there's a scream and we find that a
Speaker 3: woman has been murdered in the bathroom. There's blood splattered everywhere,
Speaker 3: her heart has been removed, and there is there are
Speaker 3: the words I'm back scrawled on the mirror in blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is one of many scenes that will
Speaker 2: come in this film where a filthy environment is sprawled
Speaker 2: with blood and it looks it looks great like it
Speaker 2: this film man Like Again. The aesthetics of this film
Speaker 2: are pretty tremendous, and there's something about like. It has
Speaker 2: an almost erotic fixation on blood and death, and you
Speaker 2: see the first taste of it in this scene.
Speaker 3: And we see that Harley Stone, the character is also
Speaker 3: fixated because he's he's not just on a case. He
Speaker 3: is obsessed. He starts chasing down the blood trail that's
Speaker 3: running out of the bathroom. He's freaking out. He's pointing
Speaker 3: his gun at random people as he runs through these alleys.
Speaker 3: Other police are trying to like join in and help him,
Speaker 3: I think, but he's screaming at them to get out
Speaker 3: of his way. And here I believe we have a
Speaker 3: classic case of taking it too personal.
Speaker 2: Yep, he's taking it too personal.
Speaker 3: Chief says he's taking it too personal. That's right, you
Speaker 3: can't stop. I mean, he's the best, even if he
Speaker 3: has taken it too personal. And the whole chase we
Speaker 3: get this doom doom. We hear a heart beating and
Speaker 3: heavy breathing that suggests a psychic connection somehow between the
Speaker 3: killer and Harley Stone. But I guess somehow he gets subdued.
Speaker 3: I think he ends up like on a fire escape,
Speaker 3: just kind of I don't know, hyperventilating and leaning against
Speaker 3: the railing. And then we cut to the fan boats,
Speaker 3: you know, the Bayou boats, except they're out on the Thames,
Speaker 3: and we hear the Chief of Police Thrasher, talking to
Speaker 3: this other guy, and we get some backstory on Harleystone.
Speaker 3: Is he talking to Dick Durkin?
Speaker 2: I think so, yeah, because he's preparing him. Because again,
Speaker 2: he's the best. We've got to use him. But we
Speaker 2: need a good cop to pal around with him, to
Speaker 2: keep tabs on him, keep him from getting out of hand.
Speaker 3: Right, we need a nerd cop to put a leash
Speaker 3: on the loose cannon cop. Yeah, And so it's just
Speaker 3: perfect cop movie cliches. Butt on a fan boat on
Speaker 3: the Thames and Thrasher talks about how it took four
Speaker 3: officers to subdue Harley Stone and now he's in lock
Speaker 3: up and Dick Dirkin is so curious what happened to
Speaker 3: Harley Stone to make him this way? And Thrasher says, well,
Speaker 3: a serial killer murdered his partner Foster three years ago,
Speaker 3: and he was there when it happened. And Dick Dirkin says, oh,
Speaker 3: is it survivor's guilt? And Thrasher says, nah, just plain guilt.
Speaker 3: He had an affair with Foster's wife, left her, hit
Speaker 3: the booze went over the edge. Now he lives on
Speaker 3: here's the quote anxiety, coffee and chocolate. Oh, and they
Speaker 3: specified that he's worked in every hell hole in the
Speaker 3: world and he's been fired from all of them, and
Speaker 3: they say he's the best.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, what are these other hell holes? I wonder
Speaker 2: It's like there's a whole there's a whole universe of
Speaker 2: Harley Stone adventures we don't know anything about.
Speaker 3: Right, So he's worked in like every city in the
Speaker 3: world or something, or only the ones that are hell holes.
Speaker 3: Which are those?
Speaker 2: Yep? Just every like flooded, monster ridden metropolis on Earth.
Speaker 3: I guess we may have missed our chance for a
Speaker 3: prequel that's like the Adventures of Harley Stone in I
Speaker 3: don't know, New Orleans or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know who the young Rutger Hower would be.
Speaker 2: I mean, he can't really replace him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But so Harley Stone's back in the station. He's
Speaker 3: raging against the bars and lock up, rattling them, and
Speaker 3: then he gets out eventually and he's getting coffee. And
Speaker 3: here we get one of the great coffee scenes where
Speaker 3: he puts like, you know, eighteen spoonfuls of sugar in.
Speaker 3: And then we meet Pete Postelwaite and they have a
Speaker 3: big confrontation. It is clear that Rutger and Pete do
Speaker 3: not like one another.
Speaker 2: I think it's later revealed that Pete's character was also
Speaker 2: the Swain partner's best friend, and so he holds it
Speaker 2: against him.
Speaker 3: Right, And then there's a great chief chewout scene, and
Speaker 3: so he gets invited into the chief's office. Harley Stone
Speaker 3: gets chewed out. We hear all about how he's a
Speaker 3: loose cannon, how he's taken it to personal, how he's
Speaker 3: off the force, and then here's your new partner. And
Speaker 3: the new partner, of course, is Dick Drkin, the nerd
Speaker 3: from Oxford who is getting filled in on the case.
Speaker 3: And he's like, I thought we were dealing with the psychotic,
Speaker 3: not a psychopath. But the scoop on Dick Dirkin is
Speaker 3: that he's an expert on serial killers. He's a sort
Speaker 3: of lily livered college boy who went to Oxford. And
Speaker 3: Harley Stone does not like him. I think Harley Stone,
Speaker 3: I think, clearly believes that the book learning is weak
Speaker 3: and puny.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like any kind of premeditation is puny Stone
Speaker 2: again from the gut, He's he's just all action and
Speaker 2: and and no chill. There's just his brain is just
Speaker 2: a like an exploding rat of anxiety and of you know,
Speaker 2: fueled with caffeine and sugar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then oh oh oh, and then I so,
Speaker 3: can you explain to me what you think is implied
Speaker 3: to have happened in the following scene, because after right
Speaker 3: after the chew out, Harley Stone goes back to his
Speaker 3: desk and there's just a cooler with a heart in it. There,
Speaker 3: like a cooler full of ice that's got a chewed
Speaker 3: up heart. And I don't know why it's on ice,
Speaker 3: because this is not going to be a successful transplant
Speaker 3: or like donor organ. It has a bite taken out
Speaker 3: of it, but for some reason it's on ice in
Speaker 3: a cooler sitting right next to his desk. Are we
Speaker 3: to understand that this heart has been delivered by the
Speaker 3: killer to his desk?
Speaker 2: I think, okay, So out of picture, I would say
Speaker 2: this is a clear sign of an earlier draft of
Speaker 2: the of the plot. I think at one point this
Speaker 2: screenplay did not have a monster in it. It was
Speaker 2: just a serial killer flick. It was supposed to be
Speaker 2: a serial color story. I think, if I'm going to
Speaker 2: try and read into the movie, I'm going to live
Speaker 2: within the narrative of the film. The monster killer villain
Speaker 2: must have hired at delivery service to deliver this heart,
Speaker 2: I mean, must have stolen the cooler and some ice
Speaker 2: from like a local store in order just to mess
Speaker 2: with Stone.
Speaker 3: Why the ice, The heart's not going to be used
Speaker 3: for anything.
Speaker 2: I think it basically the well out of picture. The
Speaker 2: reason is because it looks really cool glistening among the ice.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a beautiful one of these scenes that again,
Speaker 2: things that are dead or bleeding in this film are
Speaker 2: the only things that are beautiful aside from Kim Cattrell.
Speaker 2: Everything else is grizzly and dirty. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 2: think that's the real reason. Otherwise, I guess just shock value,
Speaker 2: just to be like, hey, here's this heart on ice.
Speaker 3: Maybe the dewey, glistening cubes of ice as they slowly
Speaker 3: melt into a puddle, they symbolize the fleetingness of human life.
Speaker 2: I guess. So, Yeah, it's impossible to say. With this
Speaker 2: monster slash Killer.
Speaker 3: They pretty much go straight out into the field. So
Speaker 3: it's Harley Stone and Dick Dirkin learning to be buddy
Speaker 3: cops and finding out about each other, finding out about
Speaker 3: each other's minds and bodies as they investigate the scenes
Speaker 3: of the crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and oh man, there's some there's so many great
Speaker 2: hijinks that come out of this is they you know,
Speaker 2: feel each other, and it's basically you know, odd couple,
Speaker 2: mixed body cop kind of stuff. But it's just really
Speaker 2: well done.
Speaker 3: There's a part where a murder gets called in and
Speaker 3: they go to investigate the murder and it's like on
Speaker 3: the top floor of an apartment building and we see
Speaker 3: that Harley Stone has trouble climbing the stairs, I guess
Speaker 3: because he's out of shape, and he asks to stop
Speaker 3: for a cigar halfway.
Speaker 2: Up, out of breath, got to stop and smoke, right,
Speaker 2: But so we find.
Speaker 3: There's another victim of the killer up in this apartment.
Speaker 3: It's a twenty eight year old man who has had
Speaker 3: his heart torn out, and Stone somehow knows intuitively what
Speaker 3: the time of death was. And this is one of
Speaker 3: the hints picking up on the thing at the club earlier,
Speaker 3: that there's a psychic connection between Harley Stone and the killer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, and here we get a there's a really funny
Speaker 3: part here where there's just a rat execution, like the
Speaker 3: partner Harley Stone pulls out his gun and it looks
Speaker 3: like he's about to shoot Dick Dirkin in the face,
Speaker 3: but instead he shoots right over his shoulder to shoot
Speaker 3: a rat that was going to bite him or something.
Speaker 2: It was a monster. It looked like a monster rat too,
Speaker 2: because there are plenty of live rats in this picture,
Speaker 2: But right before he shoots it, it looks like it's
Speaker 2: a like a puppet rat and looks extra gross. So
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, Couch that within the narrative,
Speaker 2: as you will.
Speaker 3: Oh, and clearly the killer is trying to send a
Speaker 3: message with these crimes, because there are multiple messages for Stone,
Speaker 3: his dead former partner's gun is at the scene of
Speaker 3: this crime, and there is an occult symbol in blood
Speaker 3: on the ceiling and Dirkin immediately starts coming up with
Speaker 3: theories about this. He's I guess he knows all about astrology,
Speaker 3: and he's like, it's the symbol of scorpio. It's used
Speaker 3: in the occult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of occult nonsense that it's brought
Speaker 2: up as they try and figure out this killer.
Speaker 3: Oh and then there's a there's a great moment where
Speaker 3: they get they get to Harley Stone a dental cast
Speaker 3: based on the bites on the heart, and it's a
Speaker 3: giant beast mouth. But still after this, everybody's talking about
Speaker 3: a serial killer, like this isn't just an obvious piece
Speaker 3: of evidence that it's a monster they're dealing with. Yeah,
Speaker 3: is this a serial killer with a panther's head?
Speaker 2: Because as well, we'll find out later, and becomes increasingly
Speaker 2: clear this is not a human we're going up against.
Speaker 2: This is a monster. This is essentially a grindel beast.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And meanwhile, some things happen. Harley's own has
Speaker 3: another like anxiety attack in an alley and starts shooting
Speaker 3: his gun randomly at the sky. I think he has
Speaker 3: to get talked down. But eventually, finally we get to
Speaker 3: meet Kim Katrol. So Harley Stone goes to I think
Speaker 3: the grave of his former partner. Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And she's there, she's placing memento on his grave. Is
Speaker 3: she supposed to be his dead partner's widow? I might
Speaker 3: have missed that, Yes, yes, okay, because they've previously had
Speaker 3: a relationship, right, okay, Well, as soon as he arrives,
Speaker 3: she shows concern for his well being. She observes that
Speaker 3: he is he is not the cleanest or the most
Speaker 3: well rested, and that he needs caring for I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, So they go back to this apartment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they go back to his filthy apartment that just
Speaker 3: looks like the inside of of like an unethical animal enclosure.
Speaker 2: It is it is. I mean, it's like every scene
Speaker 2: in this film. It's like they went wild decorating. It's
Speaker 2: any grizzly details in this just pig style that he
Speaker 2: lives in, including live pigeons and live rats.
Speaker 3: Yes, live pigeons, live rats. So a few other details
Speaker 3: I want to run by you to make sure I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken here. Number one, does he keep his gun
Speaker 3: in a refrigerator?
Speaker 2: Yes, though we don't have a clear indication that the
Speaker 2: refrigerator is on.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe it is just using a broken refrigerator as
Speaker 3: a shelf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has an actual refrigerator in which he keeps
Speaker 2: other foul things. But there's like a convenience store refrigerator
Speaker 2: that might not be plugged up and has like a
Speaker 2: shotgun and some ammo in it.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's what I thought. And then also, yeah, the
Speaker 3: apartment's full of live pigeons and motorcycles. There are just
Speaker 3: his apartment is full of motorcycles.
Speaker 2: How motorcycle signs as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, how did he get them in there? Did he
Speaker 3: get those Harley Davidson's up the steps?
Speaker 2: I guess so?
Speaker 3: And then also we at one point we see inside
Speaker 3: his refrigerator, which seems to contain exclusively coffee, and then
Speaker 3: like mud, there's just a big, just a big canister
Speaker 3: of mud that is spilled everywhere.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there are chocolates in there, or perhaps don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know. There are those chocolate things that he
Speaker 2: eats out of those little bags. So the refrigerator has
Speaker 2: those bags in there. Yeah, and yeah, and also these
Speaker 2: foul looking chocolates.
Speaker 3: And so basically, as soon as they get to his apartment, well,
Speaker 3: Kim Katrol is still surveying the land of disgust. She
Speaker 3: she he like falls asleep on the couch with a
Speaker 3: cigarette burning right next to his eye, and she has
Speaker 3: to go put it out for him. But I think
Speaker 3: the implication is this, this this filthy down on his
Speaker 3: luck cop Uh just just needs his own his own
Speaker 3: personal Kim Katrol to help make his house into a home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's really she's not tremendously disgusted by this environment.
Speaker 3: No, she she kind of rolls with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, despite being like this yellic being really yeah. Oh.
Speaker 3: At some point also, I think, to emphasize how dirty
Speaker 3: he is, he combs his hair with like a shoe
Speaker 3: polish brush.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yep, because he does groom himself. He's not like,
Speaker 2: you know, completely abandoned self care, but what self care
Speaker 2: he does, it's reckless in you know, the wrong place
Speaker 2: is like at a bar.
Speaker 3: At some point later, Durkin and Harley Stone are driving
Speaker 3: around and they're trying to like outmacho each other. Rutger
Speaker 3: Hower is derisively tossing aside books that he finds in
Speaker 3: the car. The implication, I think is that like books
Speaker 3: are for weak, puny men.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. I think this is also the scene where
Speaker 2: we find out that that Dirkin has sex every night.
Speaker 3: That is what he claims. Though you wonder if he's
Speaker 3: just trying to impress Harley Stone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Stone is doubtful.
Speaker 3: Oh oh oh, And then there was this fascinating strength.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, while they're out doing something I don't remember
Speaker 3: what they're doing. They're driving somewhere and we see Kim
Speaker 3: catroll back at Harley Stone's rancid cell and she finds
Speaker 3: a bunch of chocolates that are just stuck to the
Speaker 3: outside of the filthy refrigerator in the shape of a heart.
Speaker 3: And then she plucks one off of the refrigerator facade
Speaker 3: and she eats it. Disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this, this made no sense that you would like,
Speaker 2: why are they stuck there? Why are they being stored
Speaker 2: there again in a place that clearly pigeons and rats
Speaker 2: have access to. Uh huh. It seems like a terrible move,
Speaker 2: even if you want ready access to your chocolate. And
Speaker 2: then for her to be like, oh, this is fine,
Speaker 2: this is normal. I'm hungry for chocolate.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, no, no, no, I remember where they were going. Now,
Speaker 3: this is when they're going out to get quote breakfast,
Speaker 3: but they go to like the moody night club that's
Speaker 3: playing Knights in White Satin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then that's where he shaves.
Speaker 3: He shaves over his plate at the bar.
Speaker 2: But they're getting work done. They're figuring out what the
Speaker 2: killer might be, right.
Speaker 3: Durkin has a theory. He thinks that he's like, I
Speaker 3: think you and this killer are on the same psychic wavelength.
Speaker 3: What sign are you? And it's revealed that he's a
Speaker 3: scorpio and Durkin has all kinds of astrologic theories about
Speaker 3: when the killer strikes. And then meanwhile, there is a
Speaker 3: tent scene where the killer breaks into Harley's apartment while
Speaker 3: Kim Katral is taking a shower. It's very psycho and
Speaker 3: he's sneaking around doing his heartbeat thing, and of course
Speaker 3: Harley gets a bad feeling, you know, get through his
Speaker 3: psychic connection and him and Durkin run back to the
Speaker 3: apartment and they're rushing up to the rescue. I was
Speaker 3: really afraid Kim Katral was going to be killed, but nope.
Speaker 3: Instead they heard her scream earlier, but she screamed because
Speaker 3: the water got cold, and instead, somebody somewhere else in
Speaker 3: the building got their heart ripped out. So Stone and
Speaker 3: Durkin chase, and then a lot happens really fast. We
Speaker 3: find somebody else with their heart ripped out. Durkin gets
Speaker 3: blasted with a shotgun by the killer.
Speaker 2: And what looks like he's blasted through a window with
Speaker 2: it as well, so you just think he's dead at that.
Speaker 3: Point, yeah, And then yeah, yeah, he goes out the
Speaker 3: window after getting hit like in the belly with a
Speaker 3: scatter gun. And then we also find out, Kim Katrall
Speaker 3: gets bitten on the shoulder by the monster.
Speaker 2: Somehow we do not see that happen, though they're.
Speaker 3: Still talking about this being a human killer. And again,
Speaker 3: this is one of the things where like I think
Speaker 3: the script I don't know, like you were saying earlier,
Speaker 3: like the earlier drafts are showing through. Because are we
Speaker 3: to understand in the final version of the movie that
Speaker 3: the monster shot Durkin with a shotgun?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, and if you I was watching for it
Speaker 2: this time, and it's the shotgun is clearly held by
Speaker 2: monster's hands. So our monster is clearly capable of utilizing
Speaker 2: modern tools, well like the cooler that he somehow delivered
Speaker 2: through a shipping service, but also he can handle a shotgun.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, But anyway, we find out after this
Speaker 3: big shootout, we find out everybody's okay. Durkin is in
Speaker 3: fact is not dead. He's like, haven't you ever heard
Speaker 3: of a bulletproof vest? And Kim Cattrall's okay. But Harley
Speaker 3: Stone has another panic attack again. He starts freaking out
Speaker 3: in the alley and he has to get sedated by cops.
Speaker 2: I have to say, it is kind of interesting to
Speaker 2: see a hero suffer a panic attack in a film
Speaker 2: like split second, like a believable panic attack, you know,
Speaker 2: not like a and not one that reeks of like
Speaker 2: machismo all that much. But because generally in a film
Speaker 2: like this, it's kind of a rule that stress never
Speaker 2: gets on top of your hero. You know, they're they're, they're,
Speaker 2: they're up for the battle. You know. It's like Beowulf
Speaker 2: doesn't have a panic attack. So I don't know, in
Speaker 2: a way, it's kind of a nice human element that
Speaker 2: that Harley Stone is is human enough to you know,
Speaker 2: to not be able to stay on top of it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is unusual. So he is a gruff and
Speaker 3: absurdly macho in that classic cop protagonist style, but he
Speaker 3: also clearly has real anxiety issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like to the point where there's a medical intervention
Speaker 2: here because he's having such a panic attack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that that does not seem usual. I can't think
Speaker 3: of other examples of that. Maybe there are some, but
Speaker 3: oh oh, and then we get a good flashback scene
Speaker 3: where it's revealed that he saw his partner gets slaughtered
Speaker 3: by the killer. He just like they're walking around in
Speaker 3: ankle deep water in some gross place and his partner
Speaker 3: just gets yanked down under the water, and then the
Speaker 3: killer somehow mauls him, mauls Harley Stone, leaving a big
Speaker 3: scratch on his arm, and then after Harley Stone comes
Speaker 3: to later, Durkin sees the big scar going down from
Speaker 3: his shoulder to his arm and he's like, that's it.
Speaker 3: That's the psychic connection. But back at the station there's
Speaker 3: another great chief chewout scene where there's suddenly just an
Speaker 3: exposition dump. They're like, oh, we got to move this
Speaker 3: plot along. So there you find out that during the
Speaker 3: gunfight earlier, Rutger howerd shot the killer a bunch of
Speaker 3: times and yet it's still alive, so something's up. And
Speaker 3: then they also get some lab reports back where they
Speaker 3: say that the killer's DNA is polymorphic. It has the
Speaker 3: DNA of all its previous victims put together, including Harley Stone,
Speaker 3: I think from when he got scratched by it, and
Speaker 3: it has his dead former partner's fingerprints, and it has
Speaker 3: like rat DNA and rat virus DNA. Yeah, this scene
Speaker 3: is a supreme pizza. They're getting you everything.
Speaker 2: All the topic click all the boxes. Yes.
Speaker 3: Oh, And then there's a great so right after this
Speaker 3: there's a great scene where Durkin and Harley Stone go
Speaker 3: to the Morgue because they realize, oh, the killer didn't
Speaker 3: manage to get the last victim's heart. The heart is
Speaker 3: still in them. So they're like, oh, it's going to
Speaker 3: come back to the Morgue and try to get the heart.
Speaker 3: So they go to the morgue. This is actually kind
Speaker 3: of a cool looking scene the way it's set up,
Speaker 3: with like all the plastic and there are these nasty
Speaker 3: like ivy bags everywhere.
Speaker 2: But otherwise it's a very sterile and wide environment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because again this film, it there's an eroticism of death.
Speaker 2: So the cleanest, holiest place, the holiest scene in the
Speaker 2: entire film, the holiest setting is the Morgue. Yes, it
Speaker 2: feels like a heaven with corpses in it.
Speaker 3: And since they're returning to the Morgue here, I think
Speaker 3: this would have been the occasion for Wendy Carlos's return
Speaker 3: to the Morgue theme, which you can hear a clip
Speaker 3: of online. Yeah, and you know, once again we wish
Speaker 3: we'd had that score. But so they're creeping around trying
Speaker 3: to find things. They end up pointing their guns at
Speaker 3: some unwitting lab technician who's like, oh, no, what's going on.
Speaker 3: And then there is a really funny part where they
Speaker 3: start they start to see that the ceiling panels are jiggling. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think that means, oh, the monster is up there.
Speaker 3: And they have to face the monster. And there's a
Speaker 3: big scene where they start shooting at it while it's
Speaker 3: running around, and eventually it escapes. But Durkin, having now
Speaker 3: confronted the monster firsthand, is a changed man.
Speaker 2: Yes, and here we get to probably my favorite part
Speaker 2: of the whole film, the conversion.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where so Durkin has encountered the killer
Speaker 2: and he is shaken by this and he undergoes what
Speaker 2: is kind of a religious conversion, and Stone is here
Speaker 2: to guide him along the way. So he's like that
Speaker 2: anxiety you're feeling, now, well here. First of all, that
Speaker 2: anxiety is good. That will fuel you. But you need
Speaker 2: more fuel. You need these chocolates, Eat this chocolate, Drink
Speaker 2: of this burnt coffee that's thirty percent sugar. And now
Speaker 2: let's get you a giant gun right out of you know,
Speaker 2: some ridiculous video game. This is the Harley Stone Way
Speaker 2: and this is how you're going to live your life
Speaker 2: from here on out. And I am not exaggerating.
Speaker 3: Chocolate, sugar, coffee, and the guns from Doom. And he
Speaker 3: converts him to the religion of Harley Stone. You are
Speaker 3: one thousand percent correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he stays converted for the rest of the picture.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, and he basically reverts to adolescents. So he
Speaker 3: like really starts loving Harley Stone's motorcycles in this apartment,
Speaker 3: sits on them and he goes.
Speaker 2: Like broom, broom, yep, yep, and he keeps mumbling. It's
Speaker 2: like a mantra. He's like, we need big freaking guns. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we need big freaking guns, big freaking guns.
Speaker 3: And he also starts dressing like Harley Stone. I don't
Speaker 3: remember when this starts, but he puts on a big
Speaker 3: leg their coat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again it's this is so like, this is
Speaker 2: this was no accident, this is this is brilliant. Uh.
Speaker 3: And then I guess maybe after this point, I'm going
Speaker 3: to describe the plot in less detail, but we'll just
Speaker 3: say it goes into third act overdrive, and there are
Speaker 3: various people getting kidnapped. Durkin gets kidnapped and then Harley
Speaker 3: Stone goes back to get him. Michelle McLain gets kidnapped.
Speaker 3: That's Kim Control. She goes missing and then they're trying
Speaker 3: to find her. There's a great part where after Durkin
Speaker 3: has been kidnapped to the monster has apparently like carved
Speaker 3: all of this like occult symbology into his chest, and
Speaker 3: then they realize like, wait, it's not a cult symbols,
Speaker 3: it's a map, and they're like holding a map up
Speaker 3: to his chest while he's bleeding everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bleeding chest. It looks it awful, like he needs
Speaker 2: to go to the emergency room. But you know it's
Speaker 2: like all right, bundle up, grab some chocolate. We're going
Speaker 2: out in the field.
Speaker 3: And there's a big set piece at the end where
Speaker 3: they have to go rescue Kim Katrol in like a
Speaker 3: flooded subway tunnel and they confront the monster and there
Speaker 3: are various kinds of like traps and weapons setups they
Speaker 3: use against him. They try to use electricity and they
Speaker 3: try to use explosives, and then in the end this
Speaker 3: was totally inexplicable to me. Did you understand why Harley
Speaker 3: Stone was able to do a Temple of Doom style
Speaker 3: reverse heart ripping on the monster.
Speaker 2: I think it was. I think it's kind of like
Speaker 2: when obi Wan battles General Grievous, Like General Grievous is
Speaker 2: damaged enough in the battle that obi Wan is able
Speaker 2: to target the inner weak spot. Okay, so I think
Speaker 2: that's basically what's happened here, is like all their attempts
Speaker 2: to blow him up and shoot him and to electrocute him,
Speaker 2: it managed to expose the heart enough that he was
Speaker 2: able to reach in and pull this grotesque like black
Speaker 2: just solid black heart out of the monster that continues
Speaker 2: to beat like NonStop after he rips.
Speaker 3: It out, and then he shoots it while it's in
Speaker 3: his hand point blank. Yes, it looks like you would
Speaker 3: have shot his fingers off.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: But so one of my favorite things about this movie.
Speaker 3: I kept thinking, like, Okay, so what are we going
Speaker 3: to find out about the monster in the end, We're
Speaker 3: going to find out like it's actually his former partner
Speaker 3: as or something like that. But nope, it's like it
Speaker 3: has no it's not any character we previously knew. It
Speaker 3: doesn't really have any causal connection to anything else that
Speaker 3: happens in the story. It's only really apparently after Harley
Speaker 3: Stone just because they happened to have met before. Like
Speaker 3: it's just a random monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and but it's increasingly difficult to try and figure
Speaker 2: out what this monster's supposed to be, uh huh, because
Speaker 2: we have all these strange qualities that are brought up,
Speaker 2: some oftentimes conflicting. So we know it's it's humanoid but
Speaker 2: not human. It lives in the sewers and flooded ruins.
Speaker 2: It has rat DNA, but it also has DNA from
Speaker 2: all of its victims, so it's some sort of a
Speaker 2: gene stealer. It's intelligent, it knows human language, it knows
Speaker 2: occult symbology. It can use weapons and tools and delivery services.
Speaker 2: But it's also this total grindel monster. It's a bestial killer.
Speaker 2: It has monster hands and monster teeth. We're largely left
Speaker 2: to assume it is completely organic and or naked, but
Speaker 2: in one of the rare glimpses we see of it,
Speaker 2: it has this kind of motorcycle visor kind of head
Speaker 2: that makes you think, well, maybe it's part robot or something,
Speaker 2: or costume or something as well.
Speaker 3: It looks like a cross between the xenomorph venom and
Speaker 3: like Judge Dread with the helmet.
Speaker 2: Well, this more specifically reminds me of Judge Death. I believe,
Speaker 2: one of the foul evil judges where you have like
Speaker 2: the big teeth underneath the Yeah, I think that's Judge Dead.
Speaker 2: I may have my Judge.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know Judge dread World all that. Well,
Speaker 3: I just mean, like, yes, you're exactly right. Its head
Speaker 3: does look like a helmet with a solid black visor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and on top of that, it may think it's
Speaker 2: the devil, or is the devil? It eats human hearts,
Speaker 2: there's a psychic can between it and the people it's harmed,
Speaker 2: or at least with stone. Itself obsessed with the occult
Speaker 2: and the Chinese zodiac. It's active during the year at
Speaker 2: the rat and again it's weird. Black heart continues to
Speaker 2: beat outside its body, so you're left asking, like, what
Speaker 2: exactly is this thing? Did a human killer mutate into
Speaker 2: this in the sewers? Is it an emergent horror, a
Speaker 2: genetically engineered monster, an alien we just don't know.
Speaker 3: Is it a rat virus that took on bodily form?
Speaker 3: What was the part about it being a rat virus?
Speaker 3: There's just like one line about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, perhaps all these rewrites are the cause. But
Speaker 2: ultimately I really liked this. I love not knowing what
Speaker 2: this thing is because again, monstrosity is often about category confusion,
Speaker 2: and this monster is confusing. Yes, there's a chaotic ambiguity
Speaker 2: about it, and I find that I ultimately really like
Speaker 2: that it's emerged from the inhuman realm and humans are
Speaker 2: able to kill it. Possibly we have that stinger with
Speaker 2: the bubbles, but human understanding fails any attempt to comprehend it,
Speaker 2: and so it has this kind of pure monstrosity to
Speaker 2: it that works. And they also don't shoot it. A lot,
Speaker 2: we don't see much of it, so there's a lot
Speaker 2: of mystery regarding what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't change a thing.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: One thing I forgot to mention that I thought was
Speaker 3: great about the conversion to the religion of Harley Stone
Speaker 3: is that you also see after the plots resolved, like
Speaker 3: further religious disciplining to keep him on the path. Because
Speaker 3: Durkin at one point they ask after they've beaten the monster.
Speaker 3: I think Kim Katral says, is it dead? And Durkin says, existentially,
Speaker 3: that's difficult to answer. Philosophy of death is one of
Speaker 3: my hobbies and then they both yell at him like Durkin.
Speaker 3: I think the implication is that, uh oh, it sounds
Speaker 3: like he's reverting to his puny, milksop intellectual personality and
Speaker 3: they need to like, you know, whip him to make
Speaker 3: sure he adheres to the Harley Stone path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eat some chocolate and have some more coffee and
Speaker 2: cigars right now. Uh yeah. I feel like the Harley
Speaker 2: Stone way is also similar to like my taste in films,
Speaker 2: and perhaps someone out there might might see one of
Speaker 2: the films we cover on Weird House and for the
Speaker 2: first time and experience a similar conversion, you know, like
Speaker 2: something has shaken you, something has changed after seeing a
Speaker 2: film like Split Second or Mad Love or Teens in
Speaker 2: the Universe. What do I do now? Well, let us
Speaker 2: recommend this cinematic diet of chocolate, brain jarring, coffee and
Speaker 2: violent excess. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Put that coat on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, put this coat on. Have a seat on this motorcycle.
Speaker 3: Gets you some plastic pants.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this one's really fun. I recommend it. Let's
Speaker 2: see places to see it. I think we both watched
Speaker 2: it streaming on Amazon Prime. It's part of the Prime
Speaker 2: streaming plan. Right now, at least in the United States.
Speaker 2: It's probably I think it's one of these films is
Speaker 2: ultimately available wherever you buy or rent things digitally. I
Speaker 2: forgot to check place. Yeah, yeah, I forgot to check
Speaker 2: if there is like a really good Blu ray or
Speaker 2: anything of it. But I hope there is. If not,
Speaker 2: there should be one.
Speaker 3: Wait, I thought you, I thought the last time you
Speaker 3: watched it, you rented it from videodrome.
Speaker 2: No last time, or did I hmm hmm.
Speaker 3: Our local video store where yes, you can still rent
Speaker 3: movies on disc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent place. Well I would have rented it there.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, I take that back. There is
Speaker 2: This is not the addition that I rented if I
Speaker 2: did rent it, But there is a very handsome looking
Speaker 2: Blu ray of this available now Criteria not Criterion. It
Speaker 2: looks like it's MVD. I'm not familiar with that, but
Speaker 2: it has some wonderful brand new art on the cover
Speaker 2: that looks absolutely snazzy. Looks like this came out. Oh,
Speaker 2: this just came out in August of last year, so
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, check this out. I feel kind
Speaker 2: of foolish for not picking this up on Blu ray
Speaker 2: now and it looks like it. Oh my goodness, it
Speaker 2: has audio commentary Terry's. It has a bunch of stuff
Speaker 2: on it. So yeah, if you're into this, go check
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 3: The tagline on the cover. So a few things about
Speaker 3: the box art. I think this is the original box
Speaker 3: art that may have the newer version may have something
Speaker 3: more elaborate.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: First of all, the old box art looks like a
Speaker 3: Sega Genesis game. Yes, you see that. And then second,
Speaker 3: I want to talk about the taglines says Rutger Hower
Speaker 3: split Second, and then it says he's seen the future.
Speaker 3: Now he has to kill it, and he does. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he kills the future. Oh and it also says he'll
Speaker 3: need bigger guns. It's like they couldn't decide, so they
Speaker 3: included both possible taglines.
Speaker 2: Yeah I think that. So yeah, this this Blu ray
Speaker 2: looks impressive and has a mini poster that comes with
Speaker 2: it with the original style VHS artwork. But I don't
Speaker 2: say see anything about Windy Carlos score being an option
Speaker 2: on there, so sadly that will remain lost to history.
Speaker 3: If you've got connections in the film world, you want
Speaker 3: to put out a new remastered version of Split Second,
Speaker 3: with the all new original Wendy Carlos score. I would
Speaker 3: pay top dollar for that disc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking thirty forty bucks here. Yeah, so make
Speaker 2: it happen. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 2: close this one out, but we'd love to hear from
Speaker 2: everyone out there. You know, people who saw Split Second
Speaker 2: back in the day when it came out, people who've
Speaker 2: discovered it since then. What are your thoughts on the
Speaker 2: film with the performances. Yeah, everything's on the table. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 2: of Weird House Cinema, this publishes every Friday in the
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You can find
Speaker 2: that feed wherever you get your podcasts, and we just
Speaker 2: asked you rate, review and subscribe as I have been doing.
Speaker 2: If you go to Summuta music dot com, it's se
Speaker 2: m U T A m U s I C dot com.
Speaker 2: That's a little personal blog, but I will put up
Speaker 2: bits about the episodes of Weird House there. So some
Speaker 2: of these other media bits that I've discussed here, I'll
Speaker 2: include them there for your easy access.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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